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7 April 2025

you are a body

what are you afraid of?

everything is broken & split & damaged anyway
everything is connected & beautiful & stuffed to brim-
-lessness with possibility anyway


there is no         i             wholeness            perfection      
                          image                    purity

                               to protect anyway.


6 April 2025

tomato sauce

the chopping knock knocking
fine lines from sharp knife
red cubes in single files
piled higher each slice

garlic in oil starting to sputter
scent turning brown umami
then overtaken by freshness
flesh & water meeting heat

slowly
the thickening
the splitting the crushing
the floating green seeds
bright skins of thin films

the salting the stirring
the waiting
slowly
the thickening
the wafting 
a small spoon tasting
more salting more stirring
for a rich & deep & saucy sauce

5 April 2025

puzzle

if i knew
the sense i had as a child
of being alien, apart, unknowing,
thrust into a human body with no manual
or coaching, sent with only a fiery belly,

would only be magnified with age
would i have approached the puzzle differently?

the doorway of each day bursts open in my mouth
like a too-bright lime. memory feels less real
than dreams, which feel less real than stories
i can read. so i write my archives of selfhood
over & over, creating new flamboyant keys
for all the locks that stay grim & rusted shut
& all the hurts flowering into vivid wounds
& all the secrets, unseen, catching secret fires
in a jagged metal playground. if i knew as a child

that the hurts would never dim
instead transform with a fury 
little child-me had never seen
into exploding stars black holes
tightness incineration & ache

would i have loved the puzzle anyway, as i did?
would i still fail each day, in more flamboyant ways?
would i scrape the mango stone
with my crooked teeth & roving tongue
would i rub it around my gleeful face 
in secret ritual anyway?  


4 April 2025

the news

all of a sudden i got tired of everybody
talking, and all their tired opinions. 
i didn’t want to hear about movies, or cinema.
literature festivals. performance art. new books.
i didn’t want to hear who made them angry,
or their tepid takes on politics, or weather.

but i liked when you described the birds to me 
in the morning, their colors and quirks,
which ones are polite recipients of your rice,
and which ones unkind. i liked when you
strummed guitar or read me a poem.

*

i don’t want to hear anybody tell me the news,
it is always awful. the world is sad, and strange,
but most of all absurd. there is beauty everywhere.
and also ugliness. in the very heart of the world,
and in all its tendons and veins. in the furthest
reaches of every system. even in the beautiful chest
on which i rested my hand, and then my tired head.

3 April 2025

every day is a doorway

but something ineffable remains just the same
no matter how many thresholds i cross

if there is any god i pray to it is transformation
but perhaps this turning wheel is what it means

to be a person, some continuous self, a thread
carried through the churning soup of time

and turned into nothing new, no transformed
material, no perfect nostalgia, no solved puzzle.

2 April 2025

midweek dream

there are endless doors 
inside every one of us
& some of them open
to places we don't want to go

we are mazes we are mirrors
deformed funhouse mirrors
mystified & mysterious
most of all to ourselves

events & actions astound me
burbling creeks have found me
city lights are crackling loud
my heart is quiet as a mouse

perhaps i can forget everything
start over on a hill of snow
fly my self into the wind like a
bright & hopeful kite

1 April 2025

invocation

something i will create here
a cycle a season a ripple of thought
like brief patterns on black sand

i have seen enough i have seen too much
i do not know how to be a professional 
or a person or a body or a temple

too many days feel like time loop movies
something eerie is wrong with the air
some truths make living feel like a bad trip

but i am alive & i am getting older
which means nothing except the days
are getting shorter & the secrets darker

world come read my half eaten dreams
like reality they are garish & incomplete
i have no finished drafts or selves

but something i am going to make
of my life my breath these dusty words
something i cannot sell you

15 November 2024

lovers

the words are little coins
one of us still dropped
in the grimy well

we are lovers, we are hopeful

the world continues to simmer and burn

on occasion my wrists are kissed 
by somebody who has eyes like stars

what could i have done to receive such kindness?

people continue to die, and to suffer before that
now or later everybody i love hurts and heaves
there is so much that can fail in these brittle bodies
there is so much pain in these hardened hearts

i make my lover laugh but it is true
i feel too much, the great wave of feeling
knocks me over each day, i walk through
it like quicksand, weak ineffective knees,
time thickens around me and i am made
soup, i am loose, i am lost, i have flew.

the calendar flits onwards. loss stays
in the air like smog. love comes, holds me,
loves me, leaves. in the chalk-drawn world
i am still here, i am still learning, i will
learn until i am drawn white and time
eats me, leaves no bones. i will learn and learn.
kiss me, please, and let me mourn.



22 April 2024

tip for monsoon

clove oil 
sprayed on every surface
saves objects from 
the relentless armies
of fungus and mold.

who knew the kinds
of things that grow?
little hairs of filaments
gentle dust of spores

if D sprays clove oil on 
their old watercolors,
the pigments may change.

*

two unseasonable 
april showers later,
the mulch is dry again.
but the air nearly hums
with all that held water.

this is where we will live,
in a see-through soup,
until different days arrive.

the rain is many-hoofed 
and persistent. the rain likes
to be heard, to be felt, through
the creases in your raincoat,
in the ankles of your shoes.

the rain knows you are asking
yet again: who will i be 
this monsoon? how will i love?
will it make sense, all the turns
taken in dry months? will it
make sense, the endless days
turning to dust in my fingers?

the rain is thrilled
to blur your vision again
to fill your mouth with water
if you ask too hard
and do not sit in the silence
of thunder and rain-hooves
your skin wet but finally
feeling again


7 August 2023

the singing

O broken world
thank you for having
me here & also broken

thank you for breaking
me in this way

long muscle in the leg
aching, aching

vibrant green of my heartspace
muddied by all the grief

there is so much to cry about
yet it is hard to cry

all the grief lives like rocks
in the riverbed of our souls

it is what moves the water 
through, what causes burbles

O broken world
today I cried at how nothing
can ever be perfect or even
just okay: this wild & tender
living breaks me, aches me

yet imperfections are what 
make us, the glitches in genes
shape us: species upon species
& each one buzzing in aliveness

feather colors popping, & textures
& faces, little hairs waving, & all the
delicate physics required to work
an ear. All comes via error. & here
we are, and we can hear.

& how the songs all make us cry.
O broken self, so the songs can slice
through us & beyond. O broken world
you are my heritage & I will learn
to love you, to live you, to sing