“We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals... In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.”

  if i had a parasol i could star in my own post-apocalyptic merchant-ivory film.  i found my hat and my hanky, now i need the bag and the shoes.  a travelers friends after Earth and the Sky.  hot.  impromptu lake rendezvous and the dyslexian prophecy, iris and Isis and fruit. 

"...too prodigal, too amorous, too weak, too indolent, and too melancholy..."in short, “a rotten lot, and nearly all stark-staring mad”. 

Love is the message.
went out later and watched the moon rise out of dusky clouds.  found a light to guide me who helps to  make me worthy of my Soul.  this incremental awakening.
dancing seems to be a big part of it.  ive been gone so long.
practice Being.  practice feeling okay. 

"Your assignment is to stop reacting to 
every little blip that leaps into your field of vision, and start surveying the 
long-term cycles of your life from an expansive vista. Be a proactive 
visionary. Be a high-minded explorer...The next phase of 
your liberation requires you to slough off petty concerns and trivial 
details."

he twice in the cards, the clutcher, the keeper, his energy all under his shoes, 

pressed against his chest.  and She, prism of all Light, giving.

he cut the strands away from me, i put back the redcoral and the star. 

flash flood knockout to get away from the spinning sick. 

 and today for the first time i practice restraint.  

the last of the plants go in, the tropicals, and some cleome, snapdragons for T. 

greek oregano and a lavender for the bed. 

this is the year i watch how the flowers grow, where the spaces really are.

"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance."

"Hey, man, you don't talk to the Colonel. You listen to him. The man's enlarged my mind. He's a poet-warrior in the classic sense. I mean, sometimes he'll, uh, well, you'll say "Hello" to him, right? And he'll just walk right by you, and he won't even notice you. And suddenly he'll grab you, and he'll throw you in a corner, and he'll say "Do you know that 'if' is the middle word in life? 'If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you'..." – I mean, I'm no, I can't – I'm a little man, I'm a little man, he's, he's a great man. I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across floors of silent seas – I mean..."

this ones for Sister Mother, the cowboy, and my dog.

this ones for cowboy again.  what i learned.

my father listened to dylan.  i remember listening to desolation row with him in the old house.  nashville skyline is high school.  dylan never sounded weird to me.  not even self portrait.  what sticks with me about dylan is that he was always ready to change, to bust out and grow and not make excuses.  because were here to change and bust out and grow.  and he was able to communicate what he saw when he got there to a world of people that needed to hear that someone out there was busting.  had made it through the walls and the wire.  even his voice changed over time, even that had no constant cause the only constant is change, right?  hes always been a dandy even his early workshirts were clean and that mustache now.  he followed his heart down the road and it led him through his life authentic and extraordinary.  he never apologized or tried to explain.  because he knows that its not him thats important.  its the living.  the things we learn that we leave behind.  dylan has always been foxfire.  diggin his own trip no thought of keeping it to himself he turned the beatles on.

im a wordhead so he spoke to me, like springsteen would, knopfler.  i even loved to rub myself against the tolkien-crowley nods of plant-paige.  but for whatever reason dylans delivery won my heart.  and offered me the words to say squatting in a parking lot in front of a convenience store in new paltz to a splendid black haired irish boy to spring tears of joy and amazement, i keep that second of my life alive in my mind all this time.  pat and billy, as if dimaria flagrance, i remember you.  i listen to its all over now and tambourine man and visions of johanna and i think, its all there, man.  i went to see dont look back when it came to the arthouse.  i had boots of spanish leather and my mother threw them out.  dylan took the opportunity to be alive.  im ready to be alive now and i think of my whole life i wasted and then i remember some people never get to be alive at all.  

dylan is one of those vessels, channels i talk about.  the light just comes rushing through him.  and sometimes there was a mighty conflict in him, powers vying for airspace.  thats a fundamental conflict in us all, but in dylan it was of mythic proportions because he knew what he had there he knew what the powers wanted, the possibility that were all tempered for.
some of us sitting stacked in a velvet lined cedar box under the couch for good occasions and some of us hammered and holed and now were windchimes.  

standing at night at the white house the three of us and he gave me words to say that you would understand because they were words to a song youll never explain to me. to hear the last acts strung like tiny beads of words into something beautiful.  the songs are all hindsight and decline and looking back at us over his shoulder singing the travels, a map.  the heros journey.  blood on the tracks.    ramona is a woman i loved.  i realize my dylan albums are gone.  theyre cool to have, albums are such visually intense and tactile objects.  the ritual fragility we ascribe them to, theres an integrity there lacking in the world today.  everything is plastic now.  except books.

his hearts always been pure.  he took everything he was and gave it to the world.  simple twist of fate is a boy i knew since kindergarten whos a doctor now near ventura and a mango.  leopard skin pill box hat is buffalo.  youre gonna make me lonesome when you go is the woman who wont ever forgive me.  he wrote down what we wished we could say.  he burned it all down.  he didnt want to stand on anyones shoulders.  hollis brown is puppetman in the pearl street kitchen.  hard rain is a list of first lines.  

dylans a playwright with elaborate scenes, bard, poet, prophet, judas!  

he turned newport on.  catalyst.  a heart so pure the identities dont stick.

one day if were lucky we realize were listening.  that we understand more than its beautiful and deep.  like explaining the ocean.   dylan songs are lotus seeds.  decades later an awakening.

a fractal from which we all took something different which was really all the same.  

the finger pointing to the moon.  jewels and binoculars hanging from the head of a mule.

what songs have i loved?  boots of spanish leather, buckets of rain, baby can i follow you down, isis, abandoned love, visions of johanna, golden loom, seven days.  i fell madly in love with both nashville skyline and new morning.  its all over now baby blue, mr. tambourine man, winterlude.  angelina not farewell angelina which is my mother.  the basement tapes.  desire.

LAST THOUGHTS ON WOODY GUTHRIE

When yer head gets twisted and yer mind grows numb
When you think you're too old, too young, too smart or too dumb
When yer laggin' behind an' losin' yer pace
In a slow-motion crawl of life's busy race
No matter what yer doing if you start givin' up
If the wine don't come to the top of yer cup
If the wind's got you sideways with with one hand holdin' on
And the other starts slipping and the feeling is gone
And yer train engine fire needs a new spark to catch it
And the wood's easy findin' but yer lazy to fetch it
And yer sidewalk starts curlin' and the street gets too long
And you start walkin' backwards though you know its wrong
And lonesome comes up as down goes the day
And tomorrow's mornin' seems so far away
And you feel the reins from yer pony are slippin'
And yer rope is a-slidin' 'cause yer hands are a-drippin'
And yer sun-decked desert and evergreen valleys
Turn to broken down slums and trash-can alleys
And yer sky cries water and yer drain pipe's a-pourin'
And the lightnin's a-flashing and the thunder's a-crashin'
And the windows are rattlin' and breakin' and the roof tops a-shakin'
And yer whole world's a-slammin' and bangin'
And yer minutes of sun turn to hours of storm
And to yourself you sometimes say
"I never knew it was gonna be this way
Why didn't they tell me the day I was born"

And you start gettin' chills and yer jumping from sweat
And you're lookin' for somethin' you ain't quite found yet
And yer knee-deep in the dark water with yer hands in the air
And the whole world's a-watchin' with a window peek stare
And yer good gal leaves and she's long gone a-flying
And yer heart feels sick like fish when they're fryin'
And yer jackhammer falls from yer hand to yer feet
And you need it badly but it lays on the street
And yer bell's bangin' loudly but you can't hear its beat
And you think yer ears might a been hurt
Or yer eyes've turned filthy from the sight-blindin' dirt
And you figured you failed in yesterdays rush
When you were faked out an' fooled white facing a four flush
And all the time you were holdin' three queens
And it's makin you mad, it's makin' you mean
Like in the middle of Life magazine
Bouncin' around a pinball machine

And there's something on yer mind you wanna be saying
That somebody someplace oughta be hearin'
But it's trapped on yer tongue and sealed in yer head
And it bothers you badly when your layin' in bed
And no matter how you try you just can't say it
And yer scared to yer soul you just might forget it
And yer eyes get swimmy from the tears in yer head
And yer pillows of feathers turn to blankets of lead
And the lion's mouth opens and yer staring at his teeth
And his jaws start closin with you underneath
And yer flat on your belly with yer hands tied behind
And you wish you'd never taken that last detour sign

And you say to yourself just what am I doin'
On this road I'm walkin', on this trail I'm turnin'
On this curve I'm hanging
On this pathway I'm strolling, in the space I'm talking
In this air I'm inhaling
Am I mixed up too much, am I mixed up too hard
Why am I walking, where am I running
What am I saying, what am I knowing
On this guitar I'm playing, on this banjo I'm frailin'
On this mandolin I'm strummin', in the song I'm singin'
In the tune I'm hummin', in the words I'm writin'
In the words that I'm thinkin'
In this ocean of hours I'm all the time drinkin'
Who am I helping, what am I breaking
What am I giving, what am I taking

But you try with your whole soul best
Never to think these thoughts and never to let
Them kind of thoughts gain ground
Or make yer heart pound
But then again you know why they're around
Just waiting for a chance to slip and drop down
"Cause sometimes you hear'em when the night times comes creeping
And you fear that they might catch you a-sleeping
And you jump from yer bed, from yer last chapter of dreamin'
And you can't remember for the best of yer thinking
If that was you in the dream that was screaming

And you know that it's something special you're needin'
And you know that there's no drug that'll do for the healin'
And no liquor in the land to stop yer brain from bleeding
And you need something special
Yeah, you need something special all right
You need a fast flyin' train on a tornado track
To shoot you someplace and shoot you back
You need a cyclone wind on a stream engine howler
That's been banging and booming and blowing forever
That knows yer troubles a hundred times over

You need a Greyhound bus that don't bar no race
That won't laugh at yer looks
Your voice or your face
And by any number of bets in the book
Will be rollin' long after the bubblegum craze
You need something to open up a new door
To show you something you seen before
But overlooked a hundred times or more
You need something to open your eyes
You need something to make it known
That it's you and no one else that owns
That spot that yer standing, that space that you're sitting
That the world ain't got you beat
That it ain't got you licked
It can't get you crazy no matter how many
Times you might get kicked

You need something special all right
You need something special to give you hope
But hope's just a word
That maybe you said or maybe you heard
On some windy corner 'round a wide-angled curve
But that's what you need man, and you need it bad
And yer trouble is you know it too good
"Cause you look an' you start getting the chills
"Cause you can't find it on a dollar bill
And it ain't on Macy's window sill
And it ain't on no rich kid's road map
And it ain't in no fat kid's fraternity house
And it ain't made in no Hollywood wheat germ
And it ain't on that dimlit stage
With that half-wit comedian on it
Ranting and raving and taking yer money
And you thinks it's funny
No you can't find it in no night club or no yacht club
And it ain't in the seats of a supper club
And sure as hell you're bound to tell
That no matter how hard you rub
You just ain't a-gonna find it on yer ticket stub
No, and it ain't in the rumors people're tellin' you
And it ain't in the pimple-lotion people are sellin' you
And it ain't in no cardboard-box house
Or down any movie star's blouse
And you can't find it on the golf course
And Uncle Remus can't tell you and neither can Santa Claus
And it ain't in the cream puff hair-do or cotton candy clothes
And it ain't in the dime store dummies or bubblegum goons
And it ain't in the marshmallow noises of the chocolate cake voices
That come knockin' and tappin' in Christmas wrappin'
Sayin' ain't I pretty and ain't I cute and look at my skin
Look at my skin shine, look at my skin glow
Look at my skin laugh, look at my skin cry
When you can't even sense if they got any insides
These people so pretty in their ribbons and bows

No you'll not now or no other day
Find it on the doorsteps made out-a paper mache
And inside it the people made of molasses
That every other day buy a new pair of sunglasses
And it ain't in the fifty-star generals and flipped-out phonies
Who'd turn yuh in for a tenth of a penny
Who breathe and burp and bend and crack
And before you can count from one to ten
Do it all over again but this time behind yer back
My friend
The ones that wheel and deal and whirl and twirl
And play games with each other in their sand-box world
And you can't find it either in the no-talent fools
That run around gallant
And make all rules for the ones that got talent
And it ain't in the ones that ain't got any talent but think they do
And think they're foolin' you
The ones who jump on the wagon
Just for a while 'cause they know it's in style
To get their kicks, get out of it quick
And make all kinds of rnoney and chicks

And you yell to yourself and you throw down yer hat
Sayin', "Christ do I gotta be like that
Ain't there no one here that knows where I'm at
Ain't there no one here that knows how I feel
Good God Almighty
THAT STUFF AINT REAL"

No but that ain't yer game, it ain't even yer race
You can't hear yer name, you can't see yer face
You gotta look some other place
And where do you look for this hope that yer seekin'
Where do you look for this lamp that's a-burnin'
Where do you look for this oil well gushin'
Where do you look for this candle that's glowin'
Where do you look for this hope that you know is there
And out there somewhere

And your feet can only walk down two kinds of roads
Your eyes can only look through two kinds of windows
Your nose can only smell two kinds of hallways
You can touch and twist
And turn two kinds of doorknobs
You can either go to the church of your choice
Or you can go to Brooklyn State Hospital
And though it's only my opinion
I may be right or wrong
You'll find them both
In the Grand Canyon
At sundown


Bob Dylan

"give the anarchist a cigarette"

its been awhile.  this ones for cowboy.  

and A Brand New Day.

“No matter how fast light travels it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.”

my horoscope says, "Instead of spending your time fearfully battening down the hatches, raise your sails and get ready for an amazing adventure."  so thats what i do. 

"The motive for metaphor, according to Wallace Stevens, is a desire to associate, and finally to identify, the human mind with what goes on outside it, because the only genuine joy you can have is in those rare moments when you feel that although we may know in part, as Paul says, we are also a part of what we know." 

a sunday well navigated.  early in the garden and reading.  to the road and the modulated mid-spring endofthewoods where the dog and i walk.   we wade into the encroaching tide to spy sketched-out grapevine nurseries and the appaloosa phlox.  beyond our sway cardinals engage in ancient terretorial duels and the chipmunk metropolis hesistates along our pause.  writing it down i notice in both the notebooks the work of the leftbrain are like legos in a cup of tea.  

"It is absurd to divide people into either good or bad. People are either charming or tedious."

ribcage clouds and the locust blossoms smell like snow and something baking.
the widow throws her mothers day roses over the bank to feed next years crocus.  last week the old woman at the turn rolled the snapneck skunk carcass down into her far ditch and today not even the dog is curious.

recent random word poems:

"swans and tigers"

darkness
abundant
luminaries.

Gettysburg
third rail
an intricate web
the woman i love.

the northern border
lays bare
green
branches

the dog doesnt like heat, water or riding so i scribble in the rare shadow on the verge with paganini crickets vibrating crescendos in the tall grass.   out and about of an evening a walk about the shire to see how folk are buttoning up for the flirting darkness.   waves of dames rocket and fresh hummingbird food, an apple and a kiss.  i get hired to play Chauncey ("This is just like television, only you can see much further") Gardiner for The Business.  even that relationship is clarified, brass tacks all around like stars in the reborn sky.
Remeber, "Life is a state of mind."

"How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being?"

the house had been condemned and then abandoned.  i razed it.
we can build something now together.
something strong and safe and worth living in.
blessed be.

"How glorious it is, and also how painful, to be an exception."

late may.  everything pollinates.  theres a telegram just for me this morning from a woman i love.  fairy tale cabbage moths cavort and mesmerize in the air.  last night T and i saw five buzzards in the trees above an expired squirrel.  

"i wrote that in my biography," he says.  "i cannot stand the smell of a dead squirrel."

this morning all of it is gone.  

what grand and beautiful clockwork is the earth. 

"The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance;  the wise grows it under his feet."

shout out to the hill st. phantoms for tomato plants, all good green growing things.  pumpkins are in, beans and sunflowers and two nasturtium volunteers i moved to ring the Mother Comfrey.  lupine peeks through one of a hundred eyes.  reading alan watts yesterday, what im looking for rides on the back of my head like a butterfly.  my life a shadow cast by a me shaped hole in the space inside the snake of time.  im it. 

"when one man, for whatever reason,  has the opportunity to lead an extraordinary life, he has no right to keep it to himself."

the first painted lady, indescribable orioles, the jays harder and harder to find in the dim of leafed-out waysides.  alien whir of the machine one road over more dense and invasive today, tire tracks in a sand mandala of bullfrog monks chanting mindfulness along the pond beyond which in the fen geese play small tibetan horns for the yellow bloom of may that offers up its compost to the green of june that spreads up and out in everything.

if i were a bird, which bird would i be?  a heron?  a magpie?  a swan.  i think you said apteryx once, or something like that.  a chickadee?  an albatross?   i dont think id ever be a bird at all.

ten for today:

zuzu
the grateful dead
reading in bed
dr. martens, shoe technology you can feel
"its all good"
synchronicity
orioles

synchronous posting by gurldoggie.  wheres my teleporter?

"Teaching writing is a hustle."  Cormac McCarthy

this

MAKE THE FUTURE from Alex Dobbin on Vimeo.

 

‘There seems to be a kind of order in the universe, in the movement of the stars and the turning of the earth and the changing of the seasons, and even in the cycle of human life. But human life itself is almost pure chaos. Everyone takes his stance, asserts his own rights and feelings, mistaking the motives of others, and his own.

Human life itself may be almost pure chaos, but the work of the artist — the only thing he’s good for — is to take these handfuls of confusion and disparate things, things that seem to be irreconcilable, and put them together in a frame to give them some kind of shape and meaning. Even if it’s only his view of a meaning. That’s what he’s for — to give his view of life.’

 

"I think of her sometimes now
and wonder if I am becoming her.
My shoes turn up like a jester’s.
Clumps of my hair, as I write this,
curl up individually like toes.
I am shoveling the children out,
scoop after scoop.
Only my books anoint me,
and a few friends,
those who reach into my veins.
Maybe I am becoming a hermit,
opening the door for only
a few special animals?
Maybe my skull is too crowded
and it has no opening through which
to feed it soup?
Maybe I have plugged up my sockets
to keep the gods in?
Maybe, although my heart
is a kitten of butter,
I am blowing it up like a zeppelin.
Yes. It is the witch’s life,
climbing the primordial climb,
a dream within a dream,
then sitting here
holding a basket of fire."

 

-Anne Sexton

for the evening, and the Good Old Boy in the International Harvester hat who stopped and asked me directions. 
(i wanted one with duane but couldnt get good audio.  this ones got derek.)

"Entering the Beauty is realizing that you're in the Beauty."

open the aperture.

knowing this, i accept Gogol Bordello as my personal saviour.
Hutz and all the wild gypsy angels, ecstatic bloodlife of my mothers people.
i need those speakers fixed.
i need to laugh and dance.
i need to be my soul in the World.
dont worry.
make it a good happy life.
 make it full of light.

"Be small and love beyond the realm of measure."

the smoke flows down the stick somehow from an emberhot peak and tower of ash.  the smoke flows down into the bowl into the bowl of salt i lose the trail and there is nothing but a sweet smell in the air.  Life flows through us down from Elsewhere somehow our time is white heat and dust.  Life flows through us into all Interbeing losing the illusion of separation and the presence of Love like a sweet smell in the air.

"Give freely with both of your hands."

i am grateful to have been given this time to understand.

after dense relentless Rroma angels drive me out to the light i need a little Eno, the wide spaces, like emerging from some endless canopy onto the shore.

i am on the shore.

i forgot that parsley takes forever.  that the true leaves come later.  that it takes an oak tree sixty years to sing an acorn.  but now i remember. 

and it doesnt matter how many times i fall down, out, apart.  as long as its always one time less than i rise.

thats why were given this time that for us seems so long.  so we can keep learning.  so we have lot of opportunities to understand, and help others in their understanding.

not opinions.  not division nor even aspects.  but initial essential understanding of self/soul as part of Whole.  

The Whole Thing.

Priestess Initiate of The Whole Thing.

Blessed Be.

"Kindness.  Honesty.  Sharing.  Courage."

with every evolution the matter refines.  from such dim and viscous matter did rise this wiser Light before you.

with every turning it comes closer and clearer.  and i have the help of a Great Teacher, and the aspiration to Girl Power, and the gift of Grace. 

i have Duane Allman and Derek Trucks and Steve Earle and the Dead.  i have Susan Tedeschi and Kathleen Edwards and Maddy Prior and Nina Simone.  i have candlelight and kissing and wildwood and night.  i have bright mornings and clean water and Reindeer and little birds.  there is nothing i lack.  tide turns with waxing lamp of the Traveler.  the aperture opens.  the farther In i go. 

ten for today:

1.  rain 

2.  dogs

3.  bread

4.  music

5.  books

6.  tea

7.  plants

8.  coffee
9.  brownies
10.  gogol bordello.

if i have a revel this autumn, Sister Mother, will you attend?

hey Cowboy, lets go.

the old woman at the crossroads got a hive.  

like heaven, or a bed, past wild rose and lesser jasmine lies a good green lawn of tall grasses. 

voices carry over the valley.  voices of beasts and of man.  voices of the machine.

it might not be pretty words after all.  perhaps i just snapped, fled at the worst moment, nothing whatsoever left in me to hang on, for faith or friend or sense.  

may, blessed among months, green buds bursting with Light and gorgeous orioles, giddy in the trees.  

the man said multiple phase boxes and i thought thats what we are.  multiple phase boxes. 

for a very long time now, a few years, ive been wondering what i believe.  and at some point over the last few days it came to me.  it came to me walking to Sister Mothers house, one of those sudden mystic epiphanies many crave.  or it may have been so satisfying only because the wait so long, the longing so great.
i believe life is a learning experience.
thats a concept ive understood for awhile now, that life is some sort of celestial proving grounds in which to test and temper souls, at the very least a cell in some infinite glorious organism (he said man was a cancer on the planet).  but for a wordhead to have the distillation of her desire presented to her in seven is a gift from Great Love and Grace.
Blessed Be.

there in the middle of the little river, a place of great power and water singing (like the place before), i produced the symbols of my true return.  it had been uphill grabbing at trunks and roots and offpath through thickets and finally just you and me on a rock in a place of great power and water singing wild columbine clinging to wet slate cliffs my beloved devas of fern and moss attending to the great power of this place and we are quiet and satisfied and glad.

thank you for being who i thought you were.

seedlings.  my mugwort!  my monarda!  corn radish and peas eager for the world, i can only now make out the small petals of lettuce, the red veined arms of chard. 
radish reminds me of my sister, incommunicado since christmas.
my beloved sunflowers, tithonia, hoping for a cleome volunteer since i didnt buy any seed this year.  remembering the datura i wrestled with last summer, my garden reminds me of you, Zuzu.  i will admit to the painful space where you are not in my life.  i hope one day you decide to let me know how you are.
i am happy home in this small subculture, returned to Innisfree, the big bed and beaten track.  trying to connect, a little, vaguely unsuccessful, the harder i seek the deeper it hides.  the water of the world begins to drip through. 

"I am not educated, but I do read books."

ten for today:

(books i plan to read)

1.  Mexico City Blues, Jack Keroac

2.  Absalom, Absalom, William Faulkner

3.  Five Skies, Ron Carlson

4.  The Children's Book, A.S. Byatt

5.  The Wilderness, Samantha Harvey

6.  The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B.,  James Donleavy

7.  Gold Bug Variations, Richard Powers

8.  Although of Course You End up Becoming Yourself, David Lipsky

9.  The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain

10.  Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann

‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’

By William Butler Yeats

I WILL ARISE AND GO NOW, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

Mexico City Blues
Chorus 113
by Jack Kerouac

Got up and dressed up
and went out & got laid
Then died and got buried
in a coffin in the grave,
Man –

Yet everything is perfect,
Because it is empty,
Because it is perfect
with emptiness,
Because it’s not even happening.

Everything
Is Ignorant of its own emptiness–
Anger
Doesn’t like to be reminded of fits–

You start with the Teaching
Inscrutable of the Diamond
And end with it, your goal
is your startingplace,
No race was run, no walk
of prophetic toenails
Across Arabies of hot
meaning you just–
numbly don’t get there

leaving is not enough; you must
stay gone. train your heart
like a dog. change the locks
even on the house he’s never
visited. you lucky, lucky girl.
you have an apartment
just your size. a bathtub
full of tea. a heart the size
of Arizona, but not nearly
so arid. don’t wish away
your cracked past, your
crooked toes, your problems
are papier mache puppets
you made or bought because the vendor
at the market was so compelling you just
had to have them. you had to have him.
and you did. and now you pull down
the bridge between your houses,
you make him call before
he visits, you take a lover
for granted, you take
a lover who looks at you
like maybe you are magic. make
the first bottle you consume
in this place a relic. place it
on whatever altar you fashion
with a knife and five cranberries.
don’t lose too much weight.
stupid girls are always trying
to disappear as revenge. and you
are not stupid. you loved a man
with more hands than a parade
of beggars, and here you stand. heart
like a four-poster bed. heart like a canvas.
heart leaking something so strong
they can smell it in the street.

— marty mcconnell