"The sun, an hour above the horizon, is poised like a bloody egg upon a crest of thunderheads;  the light has turned copper;  in the eye portentious, in the nose sulphurous, smelling like lightning."

today was fruit and flowers rolled oats and ripe pears

i want everyone out There to get a copy of a cd i made Samhin this.

email your address to me at blackcaribou at live dot com and i will pay postage.

 

"The nihilists say it is the end;  the fundamentalists, the beginning;  when in reality it is no more than a single tenant or family moving out of a tenement or a town."

rain.  epic skies like the yukon and the south of france.  i clean.  i bought a  pink cutoff tshirt for goodwill thats from the breakfast club soft line saying "mess with the bull you get the horns."  they wont let me play i make the dough you get the glory so i call customer service and i dont even have speakers right now its an internal frenzy moment and i feel like someones out there jamming the line, and howling.  six seven tries in i get this guy who sounds something like the men i grew up with a spicy smell like plowed earth dark hair shining moving from the hips turns out hes a cypriot and were suddenly discussin the cypriot war shouting turks!  the boats!  there were not enough boats!  and he gets me to a webpage like he was dragging me out of the ocean. and in my booeffusiveness i thanked him for hearing the mellifulent oratory he said ohokhayhokay hey im getting paid. but i still have no speakers and still cant play i make the dough you get the glory which was really important today.

 

"...as though they doubted even yet the actuality of rest, guarding with horned and penurious alertness the cessation which they know cannot last."

theyre paintings.  i think about you every day i lovelove the photoscan of us i see something i never see someone who looks like me.  i just cant get my shit together with anything involving a stamp.

suzie, remember beers?  W&B?  love is a dog from hell?

i saw t walking down the street i gave him my address here.

i walked up to the house ive watched for a million years side door like i belong there its real and peaceful and i gave her a postcard of snow on vineyards cause it was in the car somehow and wrote this websegment down and she maybe gave it to her brother and i wondered if y'all were somehow connected.

 

"It is as though the dark were resolving him out of his integrity, into an unrelated scattering of components...detatched and secret and familiar, an is different from my is."

the fitted sheet went pilly its driving me mad.  rain and dirt in a dumptruck little red leaves the endless sweeping.  red wine and christmas lights washer dryer johnlennonlplasticono christmas tshirt

catch my breath the phonejob was a quantum rag but the christmas cactus is blooming impossible birds Quetzalcohuatl in evanescent hybrid sisters stirring all over the house and the brown dress came in today something swoopy fancy ribbon dairymaids day out number.  samhain and i cant find the broom.

 

"...pale with lesser dark and with empty seeing, the pine clumps blotched up the tilted slope, secret and waiting."

ten for today:

1.  red wine

2.  pumpkin soullanterns

3.  yarn needles and safety pins

4.  roasted tubers with greek yogurt and salt

5.  washer dryer

6.  erratic chance meetings of dear acquaintancese

7.  sharp scissors

8.  night

9.  heartstone goldring

10.  air

 

this is for zusie. a treasure i glanced upon whilst seeking other.

better.  naming the moons blue glow profession peatbog faerie any moon.  a puddle we pare the bed down swedish socialist gogo boots and thou my rise bluelit always in my umbra a paintbrush thrust in my trunk and write my name is when the wind shakes off the leaves. 

 

                                            "... I'd like to live on a commune and / People can call me a hippie..."

ringos from the dingle three days ago i read.  spaceman, dogman, talkman are you receiving?  arriving with coffee and donuts come sunup something smelling like pine tar.   in my dream my sister has the old tchotchke box wrapped and wound found among my arid entrails the worn mauve leatherette hole where the ballerina used to be.  in the box was the topaz a babyfist in broad filligree i didnt want it she was giving something else to me.  couldnt see it clearly it was silver and twisted.   

making the scene like he said covering the story.  quivery lips pursed mick not mama candlelight bettes mermaid suit white sheets homemug dream of some coming some driving away.  this timeclock danube takes tinkering with deep preset circadian rhythm two blue to go under and still i get the dreaming ghost voices a black howl of dog around me.  sapped spent satisfied parboiled bed heavy with exhalations my mind wandering toward the dog that ran and impaled and pulled off the obstacles.  bled a clean wound and wandered.  wind among the leaves. 

sometimes theres a smokehole for the spirit to move through go starwandering across silver bays of grain left standing in darkmorning frost.  calligraphy you write with your tongue a brush wrapped in trunk.  palpable filiments like the nod but more easily satisfied a nip and a tuck and alls well that ends on monday.

just resting in random configurations what if she were the sun and i the earth?  he the turtle me the fruit.    theyre somewhere out there in the cloying vapors a rite of passage pilgrimage all we can do is feed them well before and sing the returning song.  wind among the trees.  a million times i begin and i count breaths in infinite space.   

 

1.  them
2.  him
3.  my boys
4.  "The staggering tale of one man's relentless pursuit of imperfection."

5.  exhaling

6.  mindwandering

7.  little birds at the feeder

8.  the sound for this round

9.  (for steve b., DOJ) 

In the darkest hour of the longest night
If it was in my power I'd step into the light
Candles on the altar, penny in your shoe
Walk upon the water - transcendental blues.

Happy ever after 'til the day you die
Careful what you ask for, you don't know 'til you try
Hands are in your pockets, starin' at your shoes
Wishin' you could stop it - transcendental blues.

If I had it my way, everything would change
Out here on this highway the rules are still the same
Back roads never carry you where you want 'em to
They leave you standin' there with them ol'
Transcendental Blues.
10.  autumn 

"Old Ones, matriarchal corn cultists, Wiccans, and alien children."

"It is as though the dark were resolving him out of his integrity, into an unrelated scattering of components."

some weak malaise, not enough to keep me under the duvet of an afternoon but glass in the throat and you strap yourself to the mast and sail on through the scylla and charybdis of your day thinking at least its not a fever the suffering that makes of you a statistical blip in a cdc powerpoint presentation.  tottering through my day, copies covers milk on the floor.

 

the key to survival is adaptability.  chapter next.  out in the thin rain a triumvirate of people who have come to a place in their life where they are recognized as adults responsible in varying degrees for people their minor people with no idea how impromptu it all is or has to be.  rain and the lights go out all over town we keep on talking my voice in the damp grey air we are connected and that is what is important.  my in with the rural underworld theyre off his suchness isnt even a wind going by anymore not a shadow on the ground theres dark weather and rain under my fingernails.  theres a long time after you now.  we listen to jimi and the pixies and in my dream someone called me caty like a long long time ago. 

 

mornings like aspic.  theres a wind on a hill somewhere nearby but im behind a window reciting the alphabet.  a lost weekend.  cars everywhere the diaspora my silver signals faint over the rim of the world.  a fruit shows its seed in an open hand.  chapter next.  definitely something (turning turning the widening gyre) there on the edge of a leaf on the wire of a pasture gate writing the name of gods with broken stems. 

 

"the process of coming unalone is terrible...i feel like a wet seed wild in the hot blind earth."

birth , i suppose.  a natural transition winter snake skin tree ring the pause between in and exhalation his hand on a calico cat it could be like that if i let it.  if you stood still could you feel it?  the rush of the rest of the universe in your hair?  spirals come undone undulate into everything he took his glasses off  his eyes look in one direction.  we recognize ourselves in the people we remember.  the toilet and the whiffle bat seem less preposterous we wear our hair proud the body so ready to receive some switch in us latebloomers the august exhalation.  august is where i am at the rim less and less i can imagine someone watching and it becomes in a slither of linens for my own pleasure of my own accord.  my life apeture clicks clearer closer to black.  a birthday.  hello and welcome.       

 

"The sun, an hour above the horizon, is poised like a bloody egg upon a crest of thunderheads;  the light has turned copper:  in the eye portentous, in the nose sulphurous, smelling of lightning."

damn fine red half a glass boo heavy southern poemhead i said if i could id show them silent movies.  id show buster keaton.  for christmas id get an accordion player.  okay.  step one, stop yelling. 

 

1.  calico cat
2.  my morning jacket
3.  the hands of etta baker
4.  independent filmmaking
5.  paid for
6.  dogs
7.  tom waits
8.  this book, finally
9.  red
10.  poemheads
11.  steve earle

"Being caribou means not having fixed goals, objectives, or destinations...swamps, muskeg, mud bogs, bears, bugs, raging rivers, stabbing cold and thin ice."

saw the wood man he was lost letter in the road rolling pointing furiously on the verge i am at the glass and he understands.  snow this morning.  tonight when its all but washed by the doings of day he pulls out a snowball from the freezer what he came to show me this morning.  brown cloak black boots in the opening atmosphere.  in halfdark corner kitchen repotting geraniums at an early hour late at night bright oil burning. 

"To all that has run its course, and to the vast unsayable numbers of beings abounding in Nature, add yourself gladly, and cancel the cost."

antler feathers golden ring waning year dragon chalice abalone rabbit egg lady lady horse boat of banyan rabbit candle cauldron feathers amber rabbit ravens compass rose.

"...in a unique combination of cytoplasmic withdrawls and amalgamations."

garlic corn stalks pumpkin frost.  leavins' from a beautiful weekend still good there were elk, for heavens sake.  elk and a pig with wretched tusks at sundown.  hearth, creatures, bed.  the reemergence of unicorns.  you know where you stand with an animal.  theres a certainty in their instinct.  in my journal, "stuff the hat."  mourning the particular pleasures of a girlbaby.  moving into the next skin im newly in. 

"Distracted by each day's doings, how can we hear the signals?"

a bit mad, liminal, how something describes a curve in the air a line drawn a certain way means water.  everywhere there are portals once he said.  these are the pictures put apart from an inconceivable whole tatters and shining bits of mirror broken.  my hands are getting old.  i start to watch my body aging  time drags the flesh away from the mind.  farther and farther until its only smoke and at the same time in the most unlikely of places we smelled pipesmoke and it pleased us. 

"Nostalgia for utopia:  a return home to no place.  O lungo drom.  The long road...such yearning is the impetus to travel...the complete progression from the collective and the abstract to a private, minutely observed world."

"The tale is never as important as the telling."

another ten i wont any longer number:

1.  dogs
2.  sd
3.  this book
4.  this book
5.  panther
6.  raven
7.  caribou
8.  many children singing me a happy birthday
9. smudge
10.  happy plans

"Free lunch, final wisdom, total coverage."

welcome to 37. 

 

too far out at times.  mostly on hold speakerphone some art supplies and time.  jimi laying it down in the big white car landau top waterside.  the morning after cigarette nutella lorna doone. first snow brings home the red squirrel return.  dog man.  white red and black the shedog was soft the hedog upright i carried a cedar dogsled like a sofa up the western stair and down backwards, which impressed him.  cold and strong dogs and a birthday. 

 

 "And then the tape recorder, for special music, and Acapulco shirts."

 of all things john barleycorn.  so much light it pushes through my skin in density.  hipswaying fire building homecoming.  i told him even if we dress like cowboys, we look like indians.  it is a blessing to be of use.

early in the morning a beastie in the grapevine plucking snaps from the very air i walk upon.  let us run, let us breathe.  my stride.  the beat poet in the street lets be actors in someone elses play walk-ons for the resurrection.  bit parts in an aeon.  eternity full of sound and fury.  i realize that now i write for you.  youre the only one it could maybe mean something to something i would mean to mean.  bookwitch.  dogwitch. tenacious fillamental connection.  a return to another story.  i wanted to say that the fall is honest.  no ones cheeks pinched by light and heat you become what you always were.  i long to become what once i was beneath the things that change.  

 

"He can swim," I say.  "If he'll just give the horse time, anyhow...."

 i get letters in the mail from a woman i love.   nothing in nature is all at once.   it feels extraordinarily strange to become a part of something.  i dont believe ive ever been part of something worth being a part of before.  i really miss my speakers.  the egg crackles on the inside.  the day was perfect affirming the worth of the day something that drives you back into the creature belly that wants to live  fills every fingernail numbers every hair.  nothing in nature is done of a sudden, even if it seems so.  so when i draw the card of ruin and dangle from some tensile tendril a dustmote wavering in exhalation of time and the quiet who's yodel, "we are here! we are here! we are here!" im good for another year and kiss the ground. 

 

he rolled the window down in the parking lot and yelled 'navajo' i said, 'caribou is my power animal.'  these boys are so funny and perfect and strange. 

i hope sometime this year to hit my stride.  its closer, more real walking into and out of some shadow.  a ship in full sail, one of the treasures.  chaotic as ever, its selfness closer to the surface.  colors there you can see colors of my sail the purple, green and brown good ground and wine in the belly.  the little girl saw grass and water.  of course the sun is a heart chakra.  indeed the thin time, this.

 

this ones for t.



and then theres this.
my uncles were russian sword dancers who once appeared on the ed sullivan show.

"...about how the artist 'appeals to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives;  to our sense of pity, and beauty and pain...and to the subtle but invincible conviction of solidarity that knits together the lonliness of innumerable hearts, to the solidarity in dreams, in joy, in sorrow, in aspirations, in illusions, in hope, in fear which binds men to each other, which binds together all humanity -- the dead to the living and the living to the unborn."

walking through the yard following a footpath trotted out by the dogs up past the shed and down toward the garden the black cat emerges from creekbrush and leads the way home.  i think:  how many other women marginalized and strange have walked in the liminal air of octobereve behind a beastie bedwarmer and heard the geese call up the journeymaking and smelled the homesafe smell of wood burning and felt accutely sweetly alive?  many, is my wager.  those of us who live with ourselves for the mostpart, who are never not aware of the watcher who watches behind our very eyes, who walk in peace with the fourlegs and the seasons but find few comforts in the company of man.  out in the mist and the micklewood, on the shore and piney snowhill we walk thinking quiet breathing our feet on the earth our eyes resting on all around us at home where noneother are.

 

i cant fully forgive us for what was done.  the way of the world and corruption absolutely but still.  we watched the fox followed the fox into a non-ending ive been seeing foxed everywhere suddenly now at ease in the decline the bloody bits rustling and more apparent.  the color of the fox and the tree on the hill and food.  the pictures are everywhere im blowing a wad on new telescopes like the magic schoolbus explores my soul.

  tonight theres one less cat and the sound of chewing bones but its a funeral wake, not an unfortunate feast.  dz.made a shrine by the back door, a watchful eye dryfood

here lies the undead monkey

two under the knife to keep the kittens from coming and tomorrow i get my chakras aligned.  i get t. all weekend blessed be and itll be cloudy with a chance of meatballs tonight we sat in the pizza parlor and laughed.  we laughed down the aisles of the store we laughed they make me laugh these are the men ive been waiting for, i suppose, my reward for being.  theres a call from the laundromat and neither of us are good on the phone.  tonight christmas lights peatbog fairies and the woodstove with beautiful hardwood blessed be books hot pizza on a rainy night in october fine wood and a good bed and sons of laughter.  

 

we got home in the pittering darkness, breathing. "home" he says.  puddles and smoke sweet from homes chimney and a dance away into a greater darkness all of us turning in seasons and tiltling toward the light.  we carry the nights bagable plenty into home light and heat we like movies and organic rainbow leg warmers.  i steal away i hear him laughing upstairs "anal dwelling butt-monkey!"  nico starts to sing.

 

did i mention them running from knoll to knoll barn and boathouse safe.  we ate good food.  i think i mentioned this.  my life is extraordinary and intense.

recent conversation at the marketstore:

Me:  "do you know dave the glassman?"

Him:  "i am dave the glassman."

the day had been such that when dz. came to the car window and in hushed tones explained that "the undead monkey isnt undead anymore" i fully imagined the jack russel we buried in august had somehow resurrected from behind the compost pile and was scratching at the door.   every surface teemed with possibility.  we discussed ozzy vs. dio and the cultural significance of joey ramone.  we discussed how eating shrooms make you see santa and why.  they warned me when improper language was coming up in the music.  this is the gift i leave the world.  t. explains on the way home that "it would have been a big bummer if you were [the cat] today."   i talk to the boys about death, im eastern european.  but its not fear or guilt its death.  its okay.

 

today the windows close.  you know winters coming when the windows close and we drive into town to buy everyone pants.  i read a childrens storybook today meant to relay the feeling of Holocaust.  rabbits and amorphous menacing clouds.  ive been thinking a lot about The Holocaust and its one of those things where suddenly its everywhere.  pregnant women and the terminally ill have the same effect on people.  one day they are nowhere and the next everywhere.  i sat at the grownups table and cried.  t. comes down:

"youll love this movie.  it has a big life lesson."

 

full moon coming on weekend sleep in superhot coffeemaker organic rainbow legwarmers sd i havent let myself read your letter yet it needs headspace i havent had all week.  this weekend headspace and your letter, mine in reply.  the garlic came and sunflower seeds doublegoldy the remember that wheels are for turning.  this newyear this winter welcomed in with black black and a glorious pointed hat of hopi guatemala hue a big fire and my 37th turn.  this winter i am initiated into the church of macrolens and learn to juggle.  this winter i read books and knit for the newone.

"Comes the morning
When I can feel
That there's nothing left to be concealed
Moving on a scene surreal
No, my heart will never, will never be far from here

Sure as I am breathing
Sure as I'm sad
I'll keep this wisdom in my flesh
I leave here believing more than I had
And there's a reason I'll be, a reason I'll be back

As I walk the hemisphere
I got my wish to up and disappear
I've been wounded, I've been healed
Now for landing I've been, for landing I've been cleared

Sure as I am breathing
Sure as I'm sad
I'll keep this wisdom in my flesh
I leave here believing more than I had
This love has got no ceiling."

cat power dog magic a readying for something wonderful large life-shaped. 

 

46 of 365:

1.  amor fati.
2.  time with my kids.
3.  rain in october.
4.  sd.
5.  [the cat] was 105 in cat years.
6.  exile on mainstreet.
7.  organic rainbow legwarmers.
8.  the satisfying spoon ring.
9.  the bed.
10.  laughing.