Older Poems

Place

my legs know something
more about the grass,
the way sun licks earth
against a granite wall

my knees bend there
until i hit something; everything
comes from here. death
is respect for change.

clouds will not be
the way they are, past
now. this instant, every instance
moves, loosens.

ties between water and air
slacken. there
is always
so much space.

my hands find a place
there, where
these blades of grass
spiral into strong, soft arms.



White in Black

i have a mind, it's all politicians.
who are these people:
they recreate me
through my exhibition of them.

once, i was something.
you're doing it to me now:
staining me through your seeing of me;
it's transformation.

all details are consequence.
i have a mind, what you tell me it is.
everything is perceived
slightly, differently.

one form becomes another, the mind
cannot judge the dispossession of itself
any more than one person

is another; we are those spaces
that give us room, that absence
that makes us touch.



Brown

there is little consideration for design,
the architecture has no blueprint, though you imprint--
but that's all
press, release, ghost.
you don't explain or deliver yourself
to our substance, the space between impact--
the moment, the segment of traditional behavior:
male and female
intimacy as expressed through speech and time,
you're getting me, you're getting
half and it isn't.

provenance is sleeping, smoked, taxed.
message is static, eyes and hair are unwired
strokes of genius--
primacy is ecstasy,
your bones break
for it, but i can't find you beautiful.
i can't find you--
you are a voice that sounds like a skyscraper.
your ventriloquism is prophesy,
a long whiteness,
posture that imposes by leaning
too far back.

use your angles, speak to yourself
then to the air. if there is no response
you will invent one, then ignore it.
we can talk about art, we can talk about books
i can look at your hands.
what can you do for me--
i can describe you here;
i can make you appear and then transcend these lines.
i can drop you from syntax, semiotics, memory--

you are lost. i like the way you are
built with patches of concept and flesh,
but functional: you are a knowledge
of that else. it is not surrender,
it is commitment. do not renounce justice
with convention. do not admit
to your mechanics.



If I Had

there is always still water beneath the curb:
find the money; to wake
when a token rests in my palm,
“it was not a dream,” knuckles in the mouth--
be comfortable anywhere (for a break,

for five minutes). from your brain
to your phone, smaller,
shorter.

sometimes i can see you,
and i know presence:

after christmas, it's just
cold. the grate is
down, someone did her job.



We Made a Nest

football, all
of Pittsburgh, the name
of your cat, hair
with free will, thick
glasses, eggs
of conversations,
joints, strong legs

we sorted through the twigs,
words we were
good for, string,
plastic tubing, provocative behavior,
corrugated cardboard, decomposing
artifact memories,

and assembled those we'd find
most comfortable

i took New York, then
techno,
my words, long curly
hair, old clothes, white smoke,
those laughs, these questions,
new drawings, a body to touch,

and carried my contribution
to the nest where we would sleep
four nights before the wind came



Yellow

old isn't old,
everything reoccurs for the first time--

my existence is real. i have a dog,
and had one
with a different name.

find the pattern first, once you've seen it,
can't you see the parade
without looking out the window--

all this smog is only
the accumulation of time.
choose one instant

that happened;
find it there.