Season of Light

upon black mountains
dark storm breaks open, spills out
snowy streams of light

It seems that every holiday event I've attended thus far has focused on light. I think it says something about humanity that we all (and by all, I mean major religions that my friends observe) find in this dark season a reason to celebrate light. Of course, I know that it isn't the same, cold December the world over, and certainly not in the places where the faiths of which I speak originate, but maybe what we really yearn for, what we really celebrate this time of year is more metaphorical.

Perhaps people gathering together to light a small candle against the darkness around them would do a whole lot of good.




PS: Look guys! I posted something! Crazy. Happy midwinter holiday of choice.

Cleaning Out a Desk Haiku

in waves like the sea
the typhoon tells me to go
it lifts me away


Date of original version unknown. I had written this down on a scrap of paper and forgotten about it. Talk about your "found poetry." I guess moving is good for some things. Yesterday I found an Old Navy gift certificate for 25$ from my sister and her (now ex-) fiance, so I now have a cardigan and a tshirt on the way. At 4:15 this morning the fire alarms in my building went off, and I had to wait outside in the cold while the Housing staff and the firefighters deliberated over whether or not there was a fire until 5, reminding me that I should have slept in my new room last night instead. I think somebody's trying to hurry me out of here. They're luring me, too. I found an excellent, ancient sewing machine by the trashcans on my new floor. It weighs 30 pounds, but I think it might actually work. Who knows what this summer holds?

May Day

This is what it’s like:
the raven
blacker than the night
caws to the hills of white
that melt to grass
punches of green
bruise my heart
a sunshiney sort of wound
where the dew pours
out of caterpillar capillaries
may day or mayday or m’aidez
who will answer if not
the raven
blacker than the night?

Tonight You’re the Sea

Your jelly legs are the sea-
sickest of all sailors, tumbling and pitching
on my rolling shoulders. The gulls squawk –
or is that you? – and I smell the ocean:
salt and rum and dead things. You moan,
my bipedal mermaid, and I know

you’re glad it was I and no other who carried you,
limp and lifeless, out of the Tempest
Bar and Grill. And though I’m spearing you,
I saved you from the small fry and the pool sharks,
who would have nibbled your fingertips and fins,
sucked the kisses from your cold lips
and the sweet marrow from your thighs
and hips. I think about how many sailors
may have hauled you up before, but I know none
could hold you and rock you like me.

Though you are on land, you still have
a bit of the sea in you: your blue eyes swim,
your hair waves like Sargasso to my rhythm,
and in you I can feel the tides swell, then
retreat. You turn away, toward the ocean.
You close your eyes, curl into yourself – why
do you batten down the hatches? The Tempest
was hours ago, and you’re safe here, now, with me
as you never could be out there, surfacing in pools
of streetlamps’ shallow light Is it not safer
for you, my lost, sea-drunk creature,
to be here aboard my strong ship, to lie here in my
warm bed, my steady arms, with no tumultuous surges
but mine?

[Perhaps you will remember this haiku {it's okay if you don't}. This is an expansion, I suppose, of that haiku. Also, I told my Creative Writing class that I would write one with sexy times in. If you call rape sexy times.]

When You Sleep I Stare at Your Eyelids

I want you close like when
you turn up the volume louder and louder until 
you cringe but
it’s not enough so you press the headphones deeper until 
you hurt but 
it’s still not enough because you just want it inside you
inside your head
inside your heart 
in your belly in your hands in your feet 

I want to see you like 
when you read a book all about someone’s life and 
they seemed to know 
just what to do at every turn I know I don’t
but it doesn’t matter 
because isn’t it wonderful that someone lived loved
if they’re gone now
that doesn’t matter 
because I will watch you peel potatoes put on socks blink and
I don’t know much but
we will hold hands when the sun explodes 

I want to feel you like 
a painting when you look at the woman’s face 
and the colors and the lines 
and the soft palet ridges
they mix and blur and you can’t touch it because 
the sign says 
and because you can’t
it was another time another place
maybe the artist 
made love with the model 
every dust-filtered afternoon, but he was bothered 
he couldn’t paint the little lines in her eyes 
just right I’ve tried 
to draw you your eyes your eyes
but I couldn’t get it right.



(A revision of this prose poem).

White, right?

From a word-association exercise in Creative Writing yesterday:

White, right?
and bearded.
Always.
Good luck, then.
For me, a crane.
I like cranes
No crane ever cried
war. Never
hated. Never drowned
the world in rain. Never
did much
but fish,
and I thought you liked
fishers.
You say wrath?
I never fear
my crane-god's
wrath. It's mercy
that you want?
My crane-god grants it–
won't punish one sin.
See the crane in the water–
won't you step in?

Mother Nature (Part One)

As shadows swarmed around the woodcutter,
he tried to recall the little things, those that had seemed
so clear, so important, that morning when
he had stamped his way past the trees. He squinted
into the darkness, searching his misty mind.
Where had he come from? Where was he going?
But the way home was lost to him now, and he,
having forgotten what it was for, had dropped
his axe some time ago. Fruitless, he gave up
remembering, and settled to surveying the
twirl of the squirrels’ amorous embraces, to smell the
toadstool-kissed, decaying trunks, to heed the
sound of the salmon fry emerging in the quick, cold water.

At times he felt the forest pulse, pressing
him forward, so he went. His skin, weathered by decades
of forgotten storms and suns, became buttery;
beneath harsh wrinkles formed smooth rolls of fat.
He wiggled his toes, which seemed somehow closer, as
still the limbs pushed the little woodcutter
onward, where a growing light shimmered, summoning.
The air was thicker here; it coagulated
in his lungs until he almost choked when the very forest
floor bent itself to throw him forward; he hurtled
past spruce and moss and stream until at last
he emerged into the heavy glow. He blinked. He wept.


(Updated 3/27/09, pm)

Dead birds and then some.

When I first came to Helena, I saw at least three dead birds around town within about a one-month period. It struck me deep down. I don't think I had ever seen that many dead birds before in my life (outside of poultry, of course), but it was more than shock that affected me so deeply. I didn't – and don't – know what to think of it, but I knew it was important. Dead birds to me are perhaps the ultimate contradiction and the utmost tragedy. I once told my mother that a short life as a bird – flying, swooping, free in every way – would be better than a human lifespan filled with drudgery. She rejected this, and I've always regretted what she said a bit. Predators, she mentioned, and danger everywhere. "But they fly," I thought, and still think."But they fly."

My relationship with the night, and subsequently the moon, started out very differently. I can remember the first time I listened to Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World". He sang, "I see skies of blue, clouds of white; the bright blessed day," and I vividly remember expecting him to say something about the "dark, scary night." It is obvious now that I did not know Satchmo very well. Nor the night. "The dark, sacred night," he sang. It was a line that shook my world, and I've been growing to understand it little by little ever since.

.... Which (kinda) leads me to this poem. My Nature Writing professor Murphy let us out on Wednesday to enjoy the sunshine and write poetry, our first poetry assignment. He gave us the line "Atop this hill waiting for a glance" to use as our first line. I wrote no fewer than three different starts of poems with this, none of them satisfactory. I had all but given up until tonight, when, reading an article for some ridiculous assignment, I found that the planets had alligned. In short, I don't know what set me off, but I started scribbling on the back of the article, and this poem, for better or for worse, came into being. It may or may not be good, but at least I won't be empty-handed when Murphy comes to collect my poem.



Dead Birds

Atop this hill, waiting for a glance
a bird lies alone. During the day,
the sun beams down weakly; it tries
to heat the tiny, stagnant heart, sighing
not on my watch, dear God
not on my watch, not again.

From far away, the wind sweeps in
to say its goodbye, caressing every feather
holding each aloft just to watch it fall
again. It remembers them all, and murmurs
goodbye old friend, I understand
goodbye old friend, but we must part.

Then one silver eye glances, then gazes
into the bird’s milky one. The moon
looks silently upon her lover. She pulls
a dark veil over her face and smiles.
But he flew, she laughs.
But he flew.



Although it really deserves its very own post, "Repenti" by French crooner Renan Luce was on repeat the entire time I wrote this poem. Even if you don't understand the lyrics (I tell myself they improve my French, though I don't understand half of them), the video, though not high in quality, says it all. This song has been a favorite of mine from the first time I heard it. The repeated phrase "Repenti; j'ai trahi" means "I repent; I betrayed". I'd have embedded this baby so hard, but someone was a jerk and didn't let me.

Out of my mind.

This is mostly intentionally punctuation-light. I think I'll call it poetry. Feel free to put in line breaks and punctuation how you imagine one would. We could call it creative essay, perhaps. This is what listening to Tegan and Sara does to you. I'd listen to this song while reading in order to get the full effect. Boy, do those girls have a way with things.


I want you close to me like the music like when you turn up the volume louder and louder until it almost hurts and you’re cringing but that’s not enough so you press the headphones deeper into your ears until it almost hurts but this time not because it’s too loud but because it’s still not enough because you just want it inside you, inside your head, inside your heart in your belly in your hands in your feet Oh God, I can’t get close enough I can’t I can’t I can’t

But you go and I know you must, so I put my music on repeat and turn up my headphones.

I want to see you like when you read a book all about someone’s life and how they seemed to know just what to do at every turn or they didn’t but it doesn’t matter because isn’t it wonderful that somebody had a life and that they lived it, and if it’s gone now it doesn’t matter it’s just that they lived they loved and I want that I want to know that it all turns out okay that we hold hands peacefully when the sun explodes and I try to remember the future but can’t.

But you go and I know you must, so I plot out the rest of our days with a little room for secret plans.

I want to feel you like a painting when you look at the lines and the woman’s face and the colors how they mix and blur and you can’t touch it because the sign says and because you can’t; it was another time another place and maybe the artist made love with the model every afternoon, but he was bothered because he couldn’t paint the little lines in her eyes just right I’ve tried to draw you, your eyes your eyes, but I just couldn’t get it right and nobody would understand and I don’t think I do either

But you’re tired and want to sleep so I stare at your eyelids.

Time traveller.

can he even know
the time travelling he does
while his eyes are shut?
the clock shines 1:30
where he sleeps
but the dark, silent star
of my 12:30 dream
sighs and turns his cheek
an hour away

Recorded for your viewing pleasure.

There was a puppet show at the gas station the other night.
Bundled figures waiting for their fill of molten motion
jerked awkwardly up and down like solitary, clumsy marionettes
on the blue-cold stage, puffing fog in involuntary rhythm
with some 80s one-hit wonder as they tried just to feel again
the sensation lost from their pink hands. Under the hypothermic
fluorescent spotlights, I think the puppets almost saw in each other
a hint of the intimate absurdity of the situation

we all are in. You should have seen it, because I know you
would have laughed with your eyes
squeezed shut like twin, snapping apertures,
and I would have wordlessly watched you
as your shutter-like reflex, your need
to capture existence, took you away from me
for that split second while you processed what you saw.

And later you would have developed the image
of the cold, tragic forms in the dark-
room, locking yourself away from the light
until the sketchy shapes of white and black solidifed,
finally, just the way your pictures always turn out:
a little dark, a little hazy, never glossy.

And in the shadows of some drizzly dawn,
you would have dredged the memory
from a musty album in your mind,
perhaps the thick volume marked “Loneliness,”
and projected it briefly from your grainy grey eyes
as you laughed yourself away in the rain.


(From the series of Creative Writing class assignments.)

Holy Water.

In these thirsty times, it comes to my mind again
like the dying echoes of day in these halls holy:
that squalid afternoon the silent Indian,
a young girl, entered this hushed cathedral
to sip from the Spanish priest’s blesséd water,
sated, maybe, at the tiny oasis in this unforgiving desert

of mercy. Condemning the girl to her native desert
fate, the parish priest pointed, furious, and again
made his sign over the ornate font of water
to make it respectable and holy
for genteel believers. Outside the cathedral,
in the godforsaken square, obsidian Indian

eyes radiated from under blowing wisps of ebony Indian
hair. The girl whispered in strange desert
tongues, and her words fell on the cathedral
as if the rain had come again
from the heavens so contemptuous and holy,
but there came no clouds bearing precious water,

so the priest continued to obsess. Over the tub of water
he cursed that uncouth girl, that beastly Indian,
who, like all of her kind, blighted the holy
places the missionaries had bestowed upon the desert
and unceremoniously profaned their benefactions. Again
the priest dreamt of pure blood filling the cathedral

with proper Latin veneration, as deserves a cathedral
graced by grandsons of conquistadors from over the water.
With each passing year, I have found myself wondering again
about the girl who spoke with nothing but a fierce Indian
grace. I have tried to imagine the dusty desert
paths she has since dignified with her presence so holy.

She is my sun-red rose in a bleached-bone field wholly
populated by upstart weeds that built up their cathedral
of thorns against the ancient, sacred desert
and dared to deem themselves the true priests of water–
yes, on these days I reflect on the miracle of the Indian
and whether she will ever sanctify our streets again.

It is then that I realize that the desert long ago swallowed the girl and our water
as if they had been a mirage, and the twin Babel towers of our holy cathedral
stand only to testify my prophesy: my angelic Indian will not come to cleanse us again.



I wrote this for my creative writing class and edited with much help from Ian and Christine. The form is called a sestina, which dictates the sestet/envoy form as well as the pattern of the end words of the lines. It was inspired by my short time in Chihuahua, MX, where very young Indian girls begged in the rich shopping district. The rich Latinos (those with more Spanish blood) ignored them.

O, Abyss.

This poem was written as the second 15-liner for my Creative Writing Class. It could be seen as a companion to a much earlier (and more hopeful) composition about this same individual, whose sobriquet I chose far before I conceived of the subtext of this poem. Ophelia is a real person whose eyes really are silver bullets.


L’Inconnue

Ophelia wakes from a dream of drowning
and is perplexed to find that her skin has wrinkled –
was it true? Time and time again she forgets
Who and Where she is
between bed and breakfast, baffled
over How and When she metamorphosed –
What has she become? and Why,
she implores, must she leave the solace
of her room, her blue chair, her Chopin
and her towering portrait? Graced by the tempered
silver-bullet eyes of her now-tarnished youth,
the painted figure absently surveys itself, aged
and all but lost in the desolate
and exquisitely infinite depths
from which there will be no return.

Nobody.

All thanks to Christine for her use of her Charitable In-Box for Wayward Creative Writing Students, and to Ian for his gung-ho willingness to wade through my revisions.


He has told no one his story, but I already know it.
He is Odysseus, our cunning Champion! But in this world,
After restless wanderings through desperate taverns and roads’ end motels,
He awakes tossed upon a forlorn shore and finally understands:
There is no Penelope. There is no Ithaca.

He landed here tonight, a washed-up old salt
Who now meekly sips hot chocolate, smokes a cigarette, and
Dreams of a distant port-of-call where he met a woman
Long ago who told him something about love he’s now forgotten.
His reverie is battered by the churning chaos of café conversations–
An auditory Charybdis splashing from so many satisfied mouths.

The door’s bell cries complacently and the night’s gaping jaws
Swallow him until his hunched silhouette, solitary,
Becomes but a snow-obscured spectre
Haunting the warm reflections of contented patrons.

Verses for Snow in Three Movements.

1. Machination.

peaceful snow Whispers –
falls, white,
down through dark Night.

growl, plow,
but you cannot agitate
that which is
Ancient
and Infinite.

for the snow mutely plummets
slowly, surely;
it knows its End,
each flake embraces the outcome.

you, plow, fight your end
and the Ultimate.

2. Celebrant.

the sacred snow falls tenderly,
blessing the altar of Nature
and of Her enemies
with each kiss.

3. Snow Secret.

I hung my head as if deflated;
my feet fell heavily.
You didn’t know
my shoes were pneumatic pumps
that impelled ethereal snow
to break free of the ground
once more.
A smile was on my face.

Look up, look down –
if you don’t look around,
you will die
before you stop breathing.

From the edge of Dreaming comes Inspiration.

The Glow of Life as Seen from Night's Darkness

darkness into light
seize the emerging brilliance
let go of shadows

Al fin.

For my faithful would-be readers, a poem that you cannot read. Irony abounds.


Las rosas marchitan.
Mi abuela los vigila;
Sabe marchitar.

<<La muerte de las rosas,>>
Está dejando.

Mi arrugita,
Reducida por silla
De las ruedas

Y lagrimas
Y edad
Y muerte

Al fin.



Translation:

The roses wither./ My grandmother watches over them;/ She knows how to wither.

"I hate to see/ the roses' death,"/ She is saying.

My little wrinkle,/Reduced to [or by] the chair/ of wheels

And tears/ And age/ And death

To the end [or "finally"; literally, "at the end"].

A Haiku Sober, Virgin. Quiet.

my legs are like sea
sick sailors rolling on your
shoulders. drunkenness.


Originally recorded July 2007.

The joke is that there is no blackbird. Not one, not three.

"I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds."

- Wallace Stevens, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"

touch your look on me, ripple me.

a picture sent a photo framed
won't you fall on me?
drip, your shapes
curving face in my hands,
my soul.
rain on my head
water, water please-
don't leave me placid.

imagine please
my voice flows
the richness of mystery,
drums and chords,
winding rivulets
memory and new creation

stay and maybe your face will feel
ears will hear
the rain that tumbles
for you, for you
listen, please
won't you close your eyes?
but only the streets are wet
with rain
and the mystery slithers away,
unheard.