the first fireflies of the year pulled themselves out of the darkness ; cigarette butts flying through the sky, a thousand trilling songs swarming in the bushes / running down the streets of Princeton again ; dust wind and broccoli roots , the back porch in a thunderstorm; June, blowing in like a hurricane , the pulling of laffy taffy thoughts, hung together like rattling marbles trying to find their way through a puzzle of their own deciding ; lens focus, shot butter crisp background: perhaps all this sorrow will wrap its arms around me, make me a nest of its low hum, the weight of this heavy air, something I can rest my head against
frames
all i can do is sit and cry and cry / it’s a dream, surely it’s all a dream — i wish you had ever given me a chance // rain has pulled all the salt out of my eyes and i am flint — ash water and silver stone, i am fox-eyed and missing half my brain — words are just something i once knew how to use, but now they are all soap and water and i can’t get clean ;; maybe some day in the future i say, maybe then you’ll see — all i ever wanted, all i still want, was to stand by your side / some harbinger of sound pecks at the door, i am just wood and frames of a shelter, empty plaster and the reflections of signs on the asphalt puddles — it kept raining, and i kept wanting anything other than this world to be the one that was spinning // the clouds are laughing at me
in retrospect of the wound
A few weeks ago the light fell out of the trees ;; the river , a swamp now , and the gulping trusses of the branches gape at me ; oblong breath and armed monster teeth , shallow lunged I packed up my heart , tried to wrap a draw string around it , and left it at your doorstep / I wandered around the woods for days , May seems like a haze of thick air and buds in your hair ; of brassica family tones the thickness of bones when they crash against pavement // when I find the missing holes, I fill them with cracked clay ;; the sunlight is a shadow maker , my ashes are just fertilizer ;; nothing more wild than the tongue of the sky laughing up mayflies and gazing at misplaced rocks // nothing like the skyline of the city cracking the horizon like an egg , a fumbled sunset I am racing through ,, all the traffic lights and bumblebee license plates — the kerchief of a restaurant splayed like hands onto a street :: tumbles of spring light that fleck through water glasses and broken, unmasked laughter ;; the old clink of silverware and you, no where to be found ;;
Racing to the ocean at midnight to taste the ice cubes on your skin, the black shawl of the sky, the wildest comfort I can be granted ;; the thoughts I try to press out of my brain with a rolling pin ; the energy of cars that drive past places with names that have meaning to me now in retrospect of the wound
may 5
Even more new memories ;; like ripping up chunks of grass with my bare hands to build my own garden ; like getting trapped behind municipal gates; a car load full of compost in my trunk – the cops shaking their head at me , wondering why I need all this compost ;; like driving a stake into the ground , making a fence to keep my plants safe ;; like building a deck with my friend , throwing pallets onto the ground , screwing thick nails into the cheapest wood I could find , staining it a beautiful canyon brown ; new furniture ; looking for things I’ve never looked for before , like patio furniture , like extra plates and cups for guests ;; watching the wind topple everything over ; letting the pollen lay a thick dusting of yellow onto everything ; planting flowers , learning their names , picking them out , plunging my hands into the dirt , watering them , caring for them ;; listening to the rain as it dances on the roof of my tiny little house ;; patching up holes , repainting nicks, finding solutions to tiny leaks of light ; trying to find a rain barrel big enough to hold as much water as I’d like ; trying to pull water deep out of my well ; wash dishes with my sweet little gallon of water perched over the sink ; so much light leaking through all the windows ; pouring in to my little nest ; hammock strung up in the trees ; breezes always carrying soft scents ; the wishes of seeds that want to find the ground , carried on the wind ; Beltane and the first of May ; all the things my favorite month can do : all the things spring can bring ; the season where I am most alive , where my hands can find the dirt and sing to a seedling ; let it reach up and feel the rays of soft light – not fire yet, just the glaze of perfect warmth – a sudden toss of gentle rain , the flourish of so many buds , of so many blossoms , of so many new vegetables growing thick eyes and wide chests under the ground ; and all the little signs they send up above , all the mail they bring to my doorstep ; my watering can: my sweet new friend ; my bare feet, a hallelujah ; stringing up solar lights around my new gazebo , pulling the tent taught , karl holding the ladder while I reach and reach for a screw or a button or a hook ; the way we did it ourselves ; all the banging, tossing, screwing, sawing ; all the findings, searchings, piecing together of imaginings ; the sandbox of dragged rocks thick pulled from the creek – full with water knowledge , hidden in the woods , plopped next to my house , filled with play sand : now an imaginarium ; a planetarium ; a wild island just for one ; and the happy singing ; Jamie and his perfect oasis ; jumping on a tiny trampoline ; all the joy you cannot bottle , but that grows unkempt from the ground , never ending , always renewing , always the unending spring , always time enough to play, to laugh, to grow – to return to the dirt a small seed: graceful leaves a precious sail, a rudder on a green ocean ; wild in the sky and gracious in the grass
beyond language
She comes in waves ; pinks strutting in a parking lot ; waves of white daffodils ; purples that graze the sides of your feet // if you are lucky enough to be barefoot and let the earth touch you, you can fall through the dirt like water ; you can plant yourself everyday , and stretch , stemmed and leafed and waking towards the sky ; if you are lucky enough to be on this planet, you get to open your eyes everyday to the White of a cloud or the hum of an april rain — you get to listen when the atmosphere drops as a storm comes rolling in and out ;; you get to watch, every spring, as an unimaginable globe spurts alive like some bewitchment you couldn’t fathom in your wildest fantasy — things coming alive, pulled by a star 93 million miles away; old light coming to pull seeds out of a blanket of earth all on their own, no motors, no algorithm, just the deep instruction beyond language
color wheel
i screamed when I saw the patch of snowdrop blossoms peeking out of the fallow grass // when i feel the soft touch of the sun on my face i think i might melt, i think perhaps i am a bowl of water ; i am just here to water all these seeds, to watch the shadows of the tree against the pavement / to perch and watch the stems of a crocus peel its way out of the ground,, the soil thick ice melt and blanket of old leaves, warmly tucked in for a long nap, now peeking its dreary eyes out from underneath a lamplit afternoon // i am here to watch the waves through the leaves, a viridian sea / gold patches and eye treasure / a patch of daffodils climbing out of the dirt, the rolling wind of the spring coming to spread hues like a color wheel again
richmond, virginia
aim your camera at the sky and shoot; the catch of half a corner of a building and the slice of a power line creasing the pleats of the sky ;; capital building casting four white pillars in shadow and light, ghosts of a confederacy ; bars of soap ; the trees crackle criss-crossed now as we race back north , the chill in the air reminds me of what having feet feels like ;; so many spotted windows chase the highway , white tips of chimneys and the spark of the tallest buildings that push up over the horizon like oaks , the washington monument sits like a pale toothpick across the water as a bridge takes us in to maryland // I am desperate for nothing to be possibly interpreted in the wrong way , for I have thought of nothing else for months , and I will keep thinking of nothing else / my mistakes eat at me / I will keep waiting , keep hoping // the clouds peel across the sky, soft birds today ; and all I can do is dream of spring, of finally reaching the horizon, placing my head next to it and waking up
charleston, south carolina
clitter-clatter streetway ; brick lay of perfect lines with the street lamps bouncing off ;; here, a wrought-iron balcony; here, a sloping pastel roof — here an inlet lain with green growing spines as you walk up to the doorway ;; there, the water, gliding endlessly into the shore, pattering against a line of lilac, mint and peach house fronts — a flower box, a white crown molding ;; a plaque that dates this brick and mortar — a list of old names that line the storied rows of houses, spilling light, bouncing light — sharp 5pm light that cuts through the city like a knife; that makes shadows of every framed doorway, every walking body, every ornate window — low leveled silly putty buildings where that the sky peeks over the brows and furrows of the rooftops — a canon sits in the park, the trees twist and turn above — the air hums, the folding and unfolding of old buildings stack on top of another like a set of a well-worn books ;; a bus chimes, a bird sings; the whole city an orchestra
after all this winter, i just want to stare at the sky for 3 hours, taste the air for 7 days and watch the clouds in each and every shape and hue they want to take ;; grey, now patterned white, now dollops of blue ; the sun on my face is a friendship i do not remember ; a bird calls and i talk back , swell of warm raindrops now, wildflowers growing next to a chainlink fence, ticky tack houses and white picket fences like perfect teeth ; drizzle off a rain gutter and that bird is still talking to me ;; things that are stale too, like craters dug into the earth, plastered with cement and filled with bright blue chlorine water, where we are all astronauts with no helmets ; we float and flip in juice suspension — a science experiment gone right ;; things that swarm too – like pale pink tile in the rest stop; like spinal branches speeding up to the blue sky // the birds and the branches and i, we’ll stare at the sky for 4 hours and sing the clouds to sleep,
savannah, georgia
i watched the twilight pull the first night star out of the shadow of the sky and remembered what it is to just be ; to just be a set of eyes ; now we trace down through the line of trees, past richmond, virginia; a parking lot of yellow school buses; tractors stuck in space ; mobile homes flying down the highway; a marsh, a puddle of clouds upside down ; the trees change as we scrape southwards, and the grass preens itself, glowing itself green ; now pine, now palm, now dipping through the names of these states like several constellations in a ladle
this city, a small lace skeleton of rusty bones and swinging sighs from spanish moss and ornate steel; pastel shades and ghosts; the squares dancing with each new nameplate, each strident figurine placed inside of stone ; the river laps up onto the sides of the cobblestones and the patterned bridges; laying themselves across fire brim walls — lanterns flicker (electronic now, but still the glow dances), wilting branches seem to hold highways of effortless weight on them // a porch, a finger-ful of ivy sliding up brick, the curvature of a doorknob ; city of elegance, wide streets, praline smiles, clip clop horsing feet, pecan hands, racing steamboat song tugging away at the seams of by-gone days , down the twisting stairwell, across the boulevard covered in willows, past the peeks of first blossoms, under evening bulbs, watching the moon pull a cargo boat across the specks it leaves in the twisting water ;; warm air, the smell of things growing, down where wind sits lazily in the long hanging branches, and the light tucks itself inside the space between each leaf
