we run like dogs,
we're tidy like books.

at night,
we climb in our favorite fantasies
like bath tubs of old porcelain
where the chips tell a tale
we drink and we loosen our lines
and we sing a little louder and we lust a lot longer
and we let our feelings get the best of us
the very best of us gifted to madness
and we play with our words like hop-scotch or bird song
and we retire to soft arms that we hook
and pillows with a billowing view
and long, sweeping novels just to read someone write "forever"

and on days when the sun vaults through
pines like shafts of powdery light,
and holy sight,
we are freckles, eyelashes and fingertips,
we are the first people,
we are the last people,
we are the creek.

we are laying on stones
and blessing our own weight,
we are bodies without a care,
we are rushing by fervently
without going anywhere.

goddamn, baby
i'm gonna dig the splinters out of you

i will suck on your bee stings

there are nettles neath your knees
and i don't care

i found a million years
drowned and sleeping in ancient tar pits
to think of all of the ways
to make it right on your mouth
to say hello and mean

you ran the past over with a steam engine

the internet is so confusing

what is the precedent for the kind of jumbling produced here in this nonspace--

"Female escorts Webcam sex District.9.720p.BluRay.x264-METiS diggu1GQfE,
Couples dating Teen dating in Grantsville WV
RT DenmarkLeo To love, work, study and travel in Denmark: Salary in Denmark, how to calculate it? 3Msnsb Disconcerting: The toilet paper of the stall you're in being changed through the wall from the
proof required: need to clarify the claim that Jon Campbell is the 5th most sampled songwriterproducer in the world 8sLImA Let me correct myself. Dont Take the Girl by Tim McGraw is by far the best song ever written.,
Saving aerospace in Washington State - sharKECN LaDainian Tomlinson No doubting Thomas fantasyspplayernflLaDainianTomlinson676780 NFL SD,"

also, in other news, i have a big crush on this song right now.

proserpina by martha wainwright

OH MY GOSH ALSO I'M STILL ALIVE!
the new world is beginning--
what are your visions intentions dreams for the beginning of the new world?

baby goat skulls forever

it's real
inspired by drawing in ROT by katrina,

drawn by chaz @ ritual arts studio, pdx
body by me
stars for mandeep, martin, mutiny/ravin, mellow

ho ho ho

friday: how many time have i listened to this today? i'm not actually gonna talk about what happened because there's enough people to do that for me. but remember, the president eulogizes, "a street corner in Chicago" and it was my first thought anyway.

saturday: i was thirteen once, with an internet connection/such a boner for homoerotic subtext and we're back at this story again but this time the smoldering exiled prince who just needs to get his people back home shtick doesn't seem so great with yet another white face and sorry baby, bodice-ripper lieutenant general, you can look like you're in some terrible norwegian doom band and i will still want to ride your face and yank you further into me by the roots of your viking hair (it will hurt) and think about you in leather pants and your hands on a huge double-necked guitar, but idk it's not as exciting as the first time around

sunday: your hubs is watching us carefully. is this scary? let's talk about pills, xanax and wellbutrin and chinese hamster ovaries and you talk about which ones made you fatter/skinnier and i talk about the ones that drove me into the lake in april. no one says nutjob. nutjob is a term of endearment. we're squawking  because of the resonance. i'm watching him, watching us, and is this what it's like to be married? he accuses you of being a lightweight. you're deffo a lil drunk. but, girl, they made us this way.

monday: don't leave the house.

tuesday: i move paper from my desk onto other peoples' desks. later in the nosebleeds, i'm not turned on by soldiers for the first time in forever. look, soldiers yank my chain the way dead girls yanked poe's, but i know no one's gonna die in this playhouse tonight. so no waterworks. after, i have to check that my life is still there so i reread all our old emails. i realize i know what i am going to say if you die young.

wednesday: four hours and no shower is not enough. send help, can't stop listening to ke$ha, can't stop thinking about zizek, like maybe he's weeping about neoliberalism (but not really because he maybe doesn't care that much) and noam chomsky comes along and fingers his asshole til he feels better. i would pay for that download. okay, i wouldn't.

p.s. hey, j, saw you on the sartorialist. how you feeling about that?

city men

oh not much

geez it is pouring out here in the west hills of portland and it sounds like the ocean crashing into the back of this mansion.

putting things in bags, this dance i have been dancing of touching things and shuffling papers,
scrounging for toothbrushes (i'm at 4 now)
flipping through books
sorting into piles
rolling up clothes
putting liquids in plastic bags.
oh geez home again home again jiggity jig.

headed to pittsburgh tonight on a bird that walks on clouds slurping gasoline
or something
it's funny to be excited about not paying rent
for a few weeks
in the house
i grew up in
for years

i'm hoping to find some ways that are satisfying for me and easy gentle for my sister brother parents to celebrate welcome acknowledge the solstice on the 21st and the full moon (the 28th?). lots of things. and a family reunion in tennessee. my mum sent out an email suggesting cabins for the "kids" based on gender and then another email suggesting instead a division of quarters based on "comfort."

yup yup,
it's portland,
everything's fuckin cute
even in the rain!
pink and purple narwhals,
uniporn,
restaurants with "toast" in the name,
splashy umbrellas,
tiny inventions
apps galore

it's been a whirlwind here, and really really fuckin lovely. lovely to walk around and say "oh i don't live here anymore!" (we just got officially "approved" to rent a house with a fruit room near wolf creek. mmmmmmhmmmm) also busy and wet and occasionally totally overwhelming.

all of these words
feel a little hollow
right now

i have a new tattoo!

Jungle guru and the search for embodiment

Grateful to rediscover this forum. A lot is shifting, oozing, and rearranging in my being, and it feels right to share. Self therapy to feel very dear and distant friends out there witnessing me.

One month ago I flew to hawaii with a dream of wildness, warmth, and simplicity. I spun the key to all this would unfold on the golden being of my friend Lucien, who breathes the jungle of pangaea, takes care of the trees, and visits the warm ponds by the ocean every day to do watsu (underwater massage) and eat sprouted cocos rich with ocean minerals.
When I arrived back to the west coast from Kauai in July I was already halfway in pangaea, and though I LOVE DANCE, theater, and spectacle, I was prideful and judgmental of the way it gets compartmentalized onto stage and dance floors. I felt that the very point of dance and expression is to blend with and decorate nature in beauty and gratitude, that this dance is meant to take place on windy bluffs and rolling rivers, not in an environment tainted with ambition and who-have-you-studied-with, which-chakra-is-alighting-now boom Chaka boom Chaka what the hell does jai ambe mean anyway?
So I thought, I have figured it out. All I need is my own embodiment, a jungle where I can be wild, warm waters to make love to. I have found the simplicity of being beyond all the madness of the world.

I didn't realize how prideful I had become, how much I looked down on and pitied folks who live in cities. How I pitied that they would never be fairies and mermaids.
In arriving to the island though, this all came up for me. Lucien turned cold and universally judgmental. I woke up everyday singing a prayer my friend wrote

We are the gold flames of violet blue black light
Warming hearts, lighting humor
Spirit, knowledge and wisdom shall kindle our own love
Free darkness
And we dwell at last in the light of the sun
And we dwell at last in the light of the sun

Singing as I whacked cane grass to poison the fire ants. Feeling an emptiness in the core of it all. A strangeness in the young drummers and old farmers drawn to this Land of lava, fruit, and dramatic cliff. Deep beauty and loneliness. Highs and lows of emotion spurred by a diet of only fruit.

I couldn't be around Lucien any longer so I decided on a whim to go to kipahulu, the mystical far out side of Maui that I'd happened upon with my dad three years ago. That was right before I went to brazil, when bao family were at the height of our bukaka spat here revolutionize being through bdsm and magic phase. I had found kipahulu where "all is one" and back then been kind of snarky. I imagined that this time I would come and allow that merging of the micro and macrocosm to envelop my being and bring me peace.
Surprisingly I found the same questions arising for me as did three years ago; something felt superficial about the sunny raw food picnics along the ocean and spiritual songs. I ended up spending most of my time alone swimming in the amazing waters, foraging for food, writing songs, brushing off the various corners of my being.

I feel I came to Hawaii in order to leave it. I am flying back to Los Angeles today and am actually excited about it. Excited about taking butoh and African dance classes, about meeting the community there, about allowing myself to enjoy a city despite the packaged food and cars. I know I want to spend my life in nature, and I also know I love culture as deeply as nature. I have a lot to learn and want to be active, growing, serving.
Excited for whatever is about to happen next. Happy to have shed some degree of pride, though I'm sure the lion will rear its head again and again this lifetime. Happy to realize I can carry the wildness and simplicity of embodiment inside me wherever I go.

days when the sun pours down
like crystalline pellets
on slick, mirror paths
and the oaks don their pearls
and the snow lifts off the mountain with the fog
to excite some other valley with its sight
and i ask the oak woman
may i be as strong as her word
as i sit in the rain
and pull back the husks
of molasses and clay
to get to the soft, gnarled center

i smell time
in the wind
turns the leaves
leaves me
on the couch time lives
where time stops
the couch we made to hold our bodies
when we tired
from the rising
birth grave gravity rising tired
bodies and chairs to sit

look upon the world
beyond glass
moving around the world changing
house on a hill
3 years ago held a family of people
now sits too gaping
the forest and field have opened it
rot brings things down
doubt brought him down first then her
then him then her

floor drifts toward the basement
the couch slides into the ground
the whole house does
babydolls, exercise weights
and books on homosexuality

what is boy?
don't google that.

baby dyke-o-rama

first, actually
hi, i read this sometimes
it's really intense.
i dont do much on the internet but email these days
thank you for sharing your feelings and findings.
i don't know if i can do that in this form
but i love you
and i love this
(i'm talkin to you t'mo)

and second,
i just found this little piece
written at age 18  (you may remember it from que(e)ry #1, which was created january 16th, 2009... 4 years ago now)
i used to do writing exercises of 100 words
here's one

100 words
Listen: I just want some cunt. I want to gaze at cunt. I want to breathe cunt. I want to inhale odorous cunt. I want to kiss cunt. I want to consume the air that surrounds cunt. I want to caress cunt. With my fingerprints, with my lifeline, with my taste buds—both sweet and bitter—, with my eyelashes, with my nostrils, with my knuckles. I want to curl the curls, the lips, and then dive, probing for mysteries and miracles alike to behold, and upon finding, marvel in silent—or not—awe. For a good time call

Measures of Personal Sucess/Personal Measures of Sucess

1. low stakes sexting
2. the rain the wind the snow and my ruddy cheeked genes don't make a good pair, i show up anyway
3. i have something to hide
4. early december, bus ride through indiana, i am scared of the man who talks to himself and mutters, "i been in the penitentiary most of ma life" and the municipal waste treatment plans don't seem beautiful to me and i know it's hilarious that i live in illinois but not in illionois, but at least i'm not claiming america looks like one place, you know?
5. my nail game/the best ass for twerking/my fuck-me face
6. my hand is on the seam-ripper
7. can you dj?
8. my whole body doesn't want me to say, my spine runs into a pin point and my veins push up to the surface of my skin and someone notices my hand shaking and maybe i need a beer before all of this, but i'm still saying it all anyway
9. still not dead yet

some people in the woods have web access

"Axes" by Mark(ie) Aguhar, queer genderqueer transfemme brown artist in Chicago who committed suicide earlier this year (1987-2012) - http://markaguhar.com/tagged/drawing

related : http://youtu.be/NGe0hHvAGkc "ugly" by 2NE1

"As the (generational) effects of global capitalism, genocide, violence, oppression and trauma settle into our bodies, we must build new understandings of bodies and gender that can reflect our histories and our resiliency, not our oppressor or our self-shame and loathing.  We must shift from a politic of desirability and beauty to a politic of ugly and magnificence.  That moves us closer to bodies and movements that disrupt, dismantle, disturb.  Bodies and movements ready to throw down and create a different way for all of us, not just some of us." 

- from "Moving toward the Ugly - A Politic beyond Desirability" on Mia Mingus' blog Leaving Evidence, keynote speech from 2011 Femmes of Color Symposium in Oakland
http://leavingevidence.wordpress.com/2011/08/22/moving-toward-the-ugly-a-politic-beyond-desirability/

so if you want to kill yourself remember that i love you

THIS WORLD IS KILLING MY FRIENDS
AND I AM FURIOUS
AND SAD.

fly high mutiny-kelsey-byrd-brainz.
another witch, another radical queer, another edge-walking boundary-defying larger-than-life whirlwind,
the third suicide of a real amazing freak friend i've seen this year,
metamour, meta-metamour,
and that's just with my eyes;
i'm wearing blinders of forest to refocus,
block out some of the horror of civ/the world/our culture/...

STOP KILLING MY FRIENDS
STOP KILLING MY FRIENDS
STOP KILLING MY FRIENDS

i'm less interested in dying than i used to be
doing this dance: facing confronting death without fear,
doesn't mean i want to die
or that it feels "okay" to see my friends killed by the world.

and what is it, what is to be done,
when i find myself wishing that facebook
had a button, a "group," a "subcategory,"
for "dead friends"
so at least i would KNOW
somehow an identity category that could be changed with a public consensus of ten or a thousand or a measure of knowing beloveds
from "alive" to "dead"
(we get to say we're alive and it's our friends who verify we've died?
is that right?)

who's to say,
who's to say,
who speaks the names of the unnamed dead
where will we build their altars
what will happen to our bodies

kimya and i agree--"don't ever put this body in a casket"
maybe we could all dive into morbidity and celebration for some time
as we are young and beautiful and vibrantly alive
and think about what we'd want to happen if we died
it's on page 9 of my journal--
if i had a funeral i'd want everyone to be invited,
i'd want people to play games,
i'd like for people to touch each other a lot,
i'd like for the people who weren't sure if they were supposed to be there
to be right in the middle of the circle,
i'd like for z and fox and tate and tmo and lelz and stam to collaborate on the playlist,
i'd like people to tell stories about me and also about my mistakes,
i'd like everyone who i made out with or was lovers with to sit together,
i'd like the food to be great,
i'd like for people to decide to do brave or weird or adventurous or nasty things after the funeral,
i'd like for everyone to really feel great about being alive,
and i'd like to become a tree.

or not, you know. we've made this many narrow escapes.
of course we would have scratches from our run from the capitalist death-machine.
how much time does the mouse spend thinking about its predators,
about where it wants to die,
such things?
does this line of thought jive with living in the fullest,
brightest and darkest,
present-est,
crafted and accidental,
most that-which-you-desire
way?

well,
what now?

when you paint your nails and put on your lipstick and get your hair cut and make sure it's big enough and shave your toes and buy a beaten ring from Forever21 and the tear in your tights peeks out from under your skirt and put your eyeliner on real thick and holster your tits and lick around the rim of a beer bottle

do you mean it?
or do you just "mean it"?

my shitty hosiery rubs a raw spot in the crease of my crotch
that's what it means to be born to die

DADZ KLUBB (NE1 CAN JOIN)

i don't want to think about my dad
as he sits alone in that house in connecticut
burning old receipts
boxes of them
when he doesn't know why he kept them in the first place
and calling me
to ask if i want to keep my dusty, water-warped artwork from third grade
when my brother doesn't come home much
and sleeps through most of thanksgiving day
in the guest room downstairs
because he doesn't want dad to know how late he got in
the landing creaks on the way up

how often does my dad call my grandparents
who are dying an ocean away
and i don't want to think
how bitter bitter bitter my granddad sounds
when he talks about the electricity board
and never talks about why he changed our family name

if the bank forecloses on a man's house
and his wife leaves him finally
and he doesn't have a job
and his son gets ready to go off to college
and his little girl is a grown up who can't remember to phone home
like she's trying to look at the sun
but instead has to look to the side of it
then
what is a man?

"i stopped paying the mortgage last august"
he says in july
i'm screaming
"why didn't you say anything? why do you never say?"
"you're old man owes 60 thou for your schooling"
"there are so many times you could have told me"
but he's the first person i call a month later
to say
"i'm nothing nothing nothing at all"
he knows
"people have been telling you what do to do you whole life"
at 22 minutes
i think it's the longest conversation we've ever had

i hope that house was fucking worth it, you ass

tar sand sundae
choke it up then swallow back
don't push me around
i want you to push me around

it's beautiful to look when you're not looking
the flicker across your eyes
the heat that spreads across your cheeks
as they fold and open, soften and surprise
your cheeks, the only thing red in this landscape
your eyelashes the curtains for some grand spinning showcase
your tongue, a path-clearing master of dissection, now spreads silent

i say nothing so i can watch a little longer
it's just you rising in this moment
and the air hangs on you
until you descend
and everything hits still
and everything fills with weight
especially that swell in your chest
we steep in the wide eyes of that tea

i like to hear your voice in this square space
it moves even the engine
our speed is measured by the tickled jolts of your collarbone
those great oaks laugh to hear you coming

i don't know why sometimes it is pain
to even put a hand to your back
or to squeeze by you
as if i do not know your body, or at all care to
or as if it hurts to even look
as if we flea each other's gaze

i can't fix the breaks
but i like to see you free
i do know
it's beautiful to look when you're not looking

kissed by a rose on a fascist's boot

uh huh huh hunnnh caffeine you devil
"does your mommy know you're a pansexual satanist on the internet?"

it's not very "don't fucking tell me what to do"
to ask for your hand to ease me to the floor by the shoulder
right?

give me your diminutives
oh you'll stand up to me, boy?
will you?
my knees'll buckle before you even begin to raise the gun
call me, boy
call me "boy"

i read "number the stars"
before i ever saw a man stuff his fist in a woman's mouth
i forced my dolls on each other
before any one ever asked, "chocolate or vanilla?"
but i definitely, definitely learned the phrase
"i'll be good for you, i'll be so good for you"
after all that

it's not sick if you imagine that someone just happens to know what's better for you, right?

hunnnnh
god bless your ragged fingernails
praise be to st. slyvia plath and daddy bastards
send prayers for the me that is when i can't get turned on

i'll ask first, i'll always ask first
promise daddy
promise, daddy

get paid to traffick culture!

http://traffickingculture.org/news/post-doctoral-fellowship-opportunity/

inspired by "pilgrim at tinker creek"

i am escaping (and just barely)
walking free toward freedom
and not without catching the edged teeth,
the beveled scraping claws of
capitalism's predators, the reaching most-on-top of this dominant culture shitstorm
i, none of us, are exactly "okay" "unharmed," "whole," exactly
and what if wholeness was the accident near birth,
and not its fracturing?
it is hard to find an unmarked hide, they say,
an 8-legged daddy long leg, impossible,
"the scarred hides of living whales, striated with gashes as long as my body, and hilly with vast colonies of crustaceans called whale lice"
so many things are trying to live all together!

is it such a surprise that some humans would think they have to kill,
scrape scrabble step on heads to get by--
some live on blood, others on sun.
and something always dies to feed, "it is chomp or fast."
"harvest or starve," might say.
of course we the living have narrowly escaped becoming food a thousand thousand close times!
every day at least one escape!
our bodies food for trains, roadrage, bears, hungry crevasses, sustained despair, disease's fecundity, contagion's desperation,
our eyes prey for the self-immolating cold fire of TV, the endless litany of scandal and porn and the blinding consumptive brilliance of Christ or a Burning Man or a bomb's wake,
our hands feed for machines
our hearts playing dead, delectable to oh so many kinds of critter, iron beast fame-gods--

oh oh in a world ruled by these gods (which?)
(any?)
we have narrowly escaped with numbered scars hidden and showing
don't stop now
(the embroidery on our earlobes)
don't stop now

here's my question,
where did it grab you as you slipped away?
at your neck or your head, your ankle or your heart, your wings?
which part of yourself did you almost leave behind?

ohmygod you guys
did you hear?
the nytimes says we're still being v. ironic as a generation
SO CARRY ON plz

saccharine damsel
dreams in distress
the stars give me clues
but the rest seems a mess

my limbs seem to freeze
when its my turn to act
i want to turn air,
i want to twist back

my seams are still ripped,
i have not learned care
i sit on my hands
into my own eyes, i stare

fanatic kingdom

who shines for you on the teevee?
o my guh
are you eye-fucking what's on that flat screen????
tell me tell me tell me tell me tell me
o my guh
ME 2
ooo woo woo woo

heyo, danger zone cuties and wet eyed adonises
WARNING
so many somebodies want to plant big wet ones on you
and that's how you end up crushed on the grand ballroom floor
for now the leash stays on
and this can go on being a paycheck for you
but don't you wonder about the hell beasts sometimes?

ca-caw shun airy tail
she looked so nice in that turtleneck and cardi set
but she blew her idols over with not even a sneeze
now she's got like 16 degrees
and clobbering fists
and a stare that makes underwear just drop off
and a gun liscense
and a give 'em hell attitude to boot
from when she snaked their spirits out their mouths with her claws

or else the frenzy goes the way of the failed souffle
and IDK
like "guh/too much/can we just/how are you real/stop that right now"
and they stay in their bedrooms
and always call their moms

it's been a long time that i think
i've enjoyed being but a
figment
of people's imaginations

a flame in a crisp, dry field
a smirking ghost among the holly
wholly unpredictable
       and fantastically fickle
riding in on the hum of mystery
      pointing all fingers to the magic of the moment,
baring it all through the width of my eye,
and slipping away before the spell can subside.

no contact, no photograph, no proof,
or poem or postcard,
just an agent of the ethers,
a friendly reminder of the  great riddle.

i feel quite differently now though..
oh, i've visited the ocean,
i've taken to the stars,
     i've immersed myself in the invisible
and now my body wants to be right where we are.

magic is not a drink to binge
for fear of the time evading.
it's not a wildfire that knows no end
or a phantom that needs no friend.

it can be trusted and real.
it can look and smell human,
toting human technologies,
and smoking modern day cigarettes.

it can plan its day by the clock,
jog alongside the flock,
and, most importantly, it can leave its print.
it can close encounters with a firm grin. it can leave and come back again.

it can leave such big footprints that life grows from the cracks in its quake.

in the hot space between our faces closing in
breath passed back and forth
I am all like
"I'm not made of glass"
"PUSH ME"
but the truth is
when I leave this bedroom, I'm already shattering

girl born and a babbler
maybe better to drug me?
and style me oracular
sit me above the ethylene vents
I'm never getting better
so let's work with what we've got
for the betterment of all mankind

sorry i didn't show up to that thing
or reply to your emails and texts and calls
i was standing on my porch
gauging the speed of the wind by the pace of the clouds
braiding and braiding and braiding and braiding my hair

GIRLZ KLUBB (NE1 CAN JOIN)

I.
Australian bartenders living in Spain
15 is old enough for Malibu and Diet Coke
but is it old enough for the third one to be free?

my drinking partner produces a pen
inks on her hand
"less chocolate = more £ for clothes"
I haul her up the stairs to the place where she is staying

or

I refuse to wear tank tops without a built in bra
I buy them tight to make sure no one sees what's started going on under my shirt
and yet
"you're so pretty. you are so pretty if I was your age I would marry you."
right in front of my parents in their unfinished kitchen
"give us a hug and a kiss"
SQUEEZE SQUEEZE SQUEEZE SQUEEZE SQUEEZE SQUEEZE SQUEEZE SQUEEZE SQUEEZE SQUEEZE SQUEEZE SQUEEZE SQUEEZE SQUEEZE SQUEEZE SQUEEZE SQUEEZE SQUEEZE SQUEEZE SQUEEZE SQUEEZE SQUEEZE SQUEEZE SQUEEZE SQUEEZE SQUEEZE SQUEEZE SQUEEZE SQUEEZE SQUEEZE SQUEEZE SQUEEZE SQUEEZE SQUEEZE SQUEEZE SQUEEZE

or

Rory? Rory and his friend and my friend Catriona
we had gone out looking for men to buy us French martinis
you can go out when you're 18 and know what's what
and I am pressed against a tree in Edinburgh's Meadow
swooning
and
gosh
"If I can do that to your neck, imagine what I can do to your pussy."
I need to find Catriona
and I only remember
when I'm 21 and a boy says to me
in response to pain
"Sorry my dick's too big."

or

in my dorm room I push too hard
despite vowing
"We don't have to do anything you don't want to do"
and I know it
and when I repeat this with another somebody
I'm 22 and he asks to go home with me in front of a room full of people
and I say no
but the idea has bloomed in me
though I guess public rejection isn't much of a turn on
I drag him back with me and he shoves me off him
I'm too horrified to apologize


II.
Sometimes I see a well-dressed girl from afar
and I think I must know her
because I know all the well-dressed girls in Chicago
or
all the girls I know are well-dressed
or
we're all reading the same style blogs

III.
let's have dinner!
on the agenda:
   -shoe appraisal and admiration
   -when we talk about glitter and castrating rapists are we doing the work of essentialization for our detractors?
   -the runes our lovers write on our throats in saliva
   -cigarettes
   -paying the bills
   -ouija board
   -white white white white white white white white white whiteness
   -maybe what we thought alone in the dark last night

IV.
I'm watching The Shining
all that sticky rage
runs down my arms
oozes between my fingers
and balls my hands into fist

it's something I can't remember the grips me
I know you've forgotten things too

The Klubb is for kissing and remembering
unspooling the spool of yourself
"silence has the rusty taste of shame"

V.
But, Jesus Christ, your mouth 

wolf creek work

reflections on "beasts of the southern wild"

(from my journal--in kings beach on lake tahoe where the fuck what the fuck where are the pinenuts)

WILD a wrenching ode to dysfunctional whole lives in place loyal to death, invaded by colonizers social service "health" "care"--not animal, yes civilization--NOTHING RIGHT destruction rampant death everywhere & is it inevitable? as the earth rears up? is the father right? tribal king-daughter of a wasteland home, survivalist ethic disrupted by mandatory eviction kicking & screaming--& the other dream sparkles with alcohol & "barely" & fire. why live if not with fire? ultimately we are our own & what is there but to care for our own?


i'd recommend it if you can go see it.
on a mad ridiculous search for pinenuts, to nevada today...

Link

oh sink me,
the child wanders out of Idyll
a tree-lined ferme ornee, manufacturing young ladies
does not make for solid ground when relegated to memory
how ancient the thought that one could always be In Uniform
married this year to this canonical text and next year to that
and the once springy ground, mossy and leaf strewn and musky
that heaved back at the step of her lined calves
which were all tennis tennis tennis
proves now to be a sinkhole
and she finds as she tumbles into the pit
not Virgil
not even Cicero, Lugubrious and hand outstretched
no Elysium alongside a pond
not even an eerie moor and a big black dog
just an endless plane of muck and more muck
unpopulated and reaking, Grendel's fen
which squelches underneath her sneakers
and to distract herself she looks at the sky

the twinkle twinkle works its magic on the hardest of hearts

how strange! an occultist borne from the shucked skin of an Enlightenment size-queen.
though if soap actors can become consciousness freaks
and groomed conservative child-kings end up writing for Canadian Zine-Empires
then perhaps not so strange
and now believing:
each human body giving off a certain frequency
music working only when it resonates in the body
hitting some strange inverse or opposite
and
spirit guides like saints but with much less strenuous standards for beatification
calling upon the dead for strength
in any foxhole
especially those with dirty lipstick red mouths
each one for each purpose
and
Charlotte Bronte's notion of strings
broken ribs strewn all over the place
the dust of bones ground under our feet blanketing the world
and
THE UNNAMED AND UNNAMEABLE
the ache that will always be and always taunt
the whispering thing, "yes I am here, I am here, come home"
and
emotional vampires/energy sucks/soul killers
split souls and lies so perfectly opposite to each other to cancel out
and
liberal rage as being so lame
and
language not needing to be preserved but fucked
in the nicest sense
tongued and licked and rolled
and
CLOWNS!

which is to say
belief can be so pure and flat and white and smooth
and explode of all a sudden into something else entirely
the shapely, gentlemanly hands of history
can slide off your neck and you can breathe

oh the cracked back of the chair will just heal itself?
what's next?
the tree that was this chair will start to grow again?
through our floor
and up into the apartment above?
you can dream a man a new set of lungs
but you can't cook them up

you are the man in the center of the room
saying "I'm dying"
i'm across the ocean
composing a letter
"pater, odi et amo"
can i make it easier for you to die?
if i write
Cruel Man! He Who Belittles Even the Caesar! You never feared the noisy, grinding gears of my brain and so neither did I. Days were I learned to talk real big at your feet. Days were you smashed girlhood on a marble floor of derision. Day was I put it back together again and realized your fear meant the newly glued together object was oh so powerful. Joke's on you, but thank you? Ah Progenitor, he who gave us our family name, Eternal Peter Pan, I wish I could wash your embittered soul in the cool water of mine.

what do you wear to the funeral of your personal boogey-man?
what do you wear when you loved him?

Portrait of new friend

me on a good day

happiness is a grave

And I intend not 
To be that kind of yes

But yes

Yes to everything 

Yes to nothing

Yes to you

Yes to me

Rain

Rai. Ran

The rain

Down upon baroque growth

Limbs of green 

hills 

Are a romance 

To humiliate

Man(un)kind's make-believe

Not busy with fear 

this great pretending called life

Little do. Fear you

Holding hands easy as breathing

Easiest breath

All We have to do to make shapes 

In such a night as this

"he could be defined by his make believe"

I am in Tennessee and

There is a tornado near by

I have to go to the basement

here is a growl

apologies.
i've been reading a lot of Andrea Coates.
i think the revolution may have been compromised.
there's poetry dying on the shelves of Quimby's.
and my new haircut is hella dumb.

MOTHERFUCKING
WHAT
DO I HAVE TO DO
TO GET IT RIGHT?

christ in heaven

both the morality of self-expression and the morality of our judeo-christian forefathers twine around each other and continue to limp on

offering us only a sense of compromised logic and relativity and disconnect/disjunct/disinfected junk

WE ARE ALL EXILES
YOU CAN NEVER GO HOME AGAIN

shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit
farah fawcett hair and me
kit kats and diet coke
somehow
sit beside
strange loops and bdsm royalty

what what what what
motherfucking
what

here's a sound poem for some undergraduate class
and a lazy bones dilettante
I never want to work another day in my life.

SLUTS
IT'S AUTUMN
EVERYTHING IS DYING
TIS THE SEASON I PRETEND TO BE A CATHOLICK
BY DRINKING A LOT OF WINE

IMMA TEAR UP THE PROLAPSED ANUS OF THIS TOWN
AND OMG, GONNA RECLAIM THE SOUL
AS AN OBJECT OF STUDY
NO GODS NO RULERS
STILL SWIMMIN IN THE DIVINE

PIERCE MY HEART WITH THE PINPRICK OF THE WILLIS TOWER
I
WILL
BE
GOOOOOOOOOOOOD

crickets, new hamshire

screaming, car brakes, creaking spires.
disintegration has noises that have no place to go
they ricochet off walls at random--one enters my window
where, like a spider hungry, i wait
once eaten i say i have disintegrated
now and again under and over these sounds
i havent seen any of your faces in quite a long time
tell me where i am:
silence.
ill ask a stranger
instead.

omg middle class assholes
moving would be much easier
if we didn't own so many books
whose fucking books are these?!

To do and to say is to admit a desire, but to never have desire is the way a girl ought to be

oh me, friday night and here i am again

kneel at the window
in all of your furs
slither the spoon to your mouth

watch the emergency crew
escort a saronged woman into the back of the truck
it's not an ice cream ad, lovely
it's just you and your cheap dress

twilight on the northside of chicago, an underpass kind of gray
oh haha what a lark
to stand at ashland and clark
to stand anywhere really and holding your breath, plug your nose
and pretend you can't smell anything

oh me, the perfective despressive
i really ought to learn to let go
oh me, saturday night and here i am again
sorry i didn't say
"i know a real bed you can sleep in"
"haha the bed's mine"
"haha what'll we do once we get there"
i liked your peppered hair

is it that i like you quiet boys?
who wouldn't ever put a hand on the back of my neck
to grab the wisps of hair there
i mean my motto is
i can do anything
if only someone would let me
waiting for invitations
i'm too scared to put a hand softly on your breast pocket
too scared to lean in and breathe in your ear

if you're reading this,
i kindly request you force my hand
my wanting you shouldn't have to be a choice

there is always something that happens
to make a drunk look like an imbecile
rather than smart, smart!

well, so be it
as long as it is no more complicated
than taking my shirt off
and sopping it up

so i do
blue meets red
on the thread of dead lacquered wood
no one knows the obvious

a wedding
his family gathers near
children appear

i hear a girl in the background
and nearly roll my eyes into her
at the attempt to make childhood last in 2012
im typing and sipping

i toast to you little one
make it count
for me too

Post-Sea Punk or How to Get Dressed in the Morning

some thoughts on witch house/ghost pop/grave wave:
in honor of its predecessor shoegaze
for a while the genre was actually being called rapegaze
(before everyone realized this was a terrible idea)
and i think it speaks volumes
there's a strange doublevision of girlhood here
the girl is dead-eyed and vague, maybe already a ghost (hair bleached out, sallow faces)
so she is dangerous, suffused with revenge and strange magical powers because of trauma
(some sort of Madea)
but her voice is always thin and distant
just an echo of something more immediate
so she's nothing
or a wisp, a slip, and a hand disappearing round a corner

the trouble with the look
is that the candy-floss hair and spikes/leather/silk/tulle ensembles
are straight out of magazines
very high fashion and very expensive looking
and the erotic boredom is American Apparel all over
so any danger
is somehow mixed in with an infinitely purchasable "breeziness"
the rich girl's straightforward simplicity of good fabrics and shoes that last
very Chanel
so you know, it's very alive, in a yacht in St. Tropez kind of way
and witch house girls are dead

but here's the thing about fashion
you know, it's a man repeller?
apparently
you're not gonna fuck anyone
if you wear that studded headband and necklace of baby dolls that you've ripped the head off
and if you wear three layers of mesh
and shoes that would be still technically be flats if it weren't for the HUGE platforms at the bottom
and that friendly BDSM look 
so that's confusing

but also, these kids love dirty south rap
i suspect for no real sociological reasons
but because the droning, prayerful, psychedelic quality
(Weezy does not have to put down the Dextromethorphan)
IS BORING
like a perfect kind of boredom, a grown ups blowing spit bubbles
boredom
that feels transcendental - it feels great have nothing to do in the 21st century, it feels horrible to have nothing to do in the 21st century
so here's an erotic boredom that can be turned into purpose
with procreation I guess
if this were actually an AA ad
but these girls are ghosts
you can't fuck a ghost (unless you are one)
so you can't turn the boredom on its head
which all the symbols in the titles is really about
you know ≈Ω≈Ω≈Ω≈Ω≈Ω≈Ω≈Ω≈Ω≈ etc
make it hard to find on the internet
and no one will overturn your boredom

every time I listen to one of these albums I think about The Flu Season. "I've felt a lot. Many people have. Where I distinguish myself  is, I stand outside at night."

it feels important but it might just be the stupidest thing
dwelling in the cauldron of the internet
so sort of leftover from girls pretending to be super into horror movies to seem cool to boys
OR
the edge of danger
girls being celebrated for being sickly, perverse, out of control, unpredictable, murderous
is important or somehow new
a kind of self-drag that we've all been waiting for
OR
it's just a version of the Virgin Suicides girl
broken and unreachable
and not really a person
but a place for a boy to rest his heart

honestly, i don't know, i just want to wear some knuckle dusters

P.S. they're might be more to say on the subject of the spiritually empty use of occult symbols and devil things but i think it might just be trappings

i was not raised by many hands
i was not raised by trees calling out for me to climb higher
to dare to race the wind
i was not raised by many faces who knew my many names
and let me crawl on their limbs
and whispered the family histories of soil, rocks and grandmothers in my ear

i was raised in small rooms
and by equally transplanted squares of grass
i was raised by a few orphaned souls, a trundle bed and and a tall rusted fence
i was raised to think that everything can be thrown away:
napkins, houses, plants, old friends, cats, clothing, one's name, one's parents
and that i would.

but once the wind spoke to me,
and maybe once or twice i felt related to a story i read in a book
that i found in the tower that houses all the other anonymous books,
and the crying that often came late at night
kept me alive and knowing there were things worth caring for.
that needed to be found.

i may be new here,
but know that i come humbly.
know that i come hungry for the company of sounds
and for spending many nights with you on the front porch looking at the stars
and for rooms covered in the soft shells of time and dust
and for watching each other change and grow.

and i may not have been raised
to know this is the place i would one day want to protect,
but my heart knows how to stretch itself big
and my spirit knows pride in our pain
and my body knows what it feels like
to stand on the cliffside
alongside the family of ghosts.

sidewalk cracks and in betweens / life in a web

whew how the spirits of places guide our ups downs inspirations despair! been back 2 weeks in portland, bopping around writing hammering gardening dancing petting cats drawing pictures making epic dinners telling stories giving gifts.

hey you, wearing your nihilist craziness anxious ambiguity like a crown of clover buds and yampah roots, let's walk together behind the goats and watch their buttholes open and close like portals to another world where pooping is easy for everyone and we can digest much more of this world without being poisoned!

here's a question: what do we do with the products of industrial civilization and the industrial food system?
here's a question: how do you call yourself back home?
here's another one: when was the last time you did something unpleasant or hard for someone you love?
and: what plants do you use eat interact with daily?
and: how are you feeling this shift into august in your body, rhythm, state of mind?

hum, these days for me have been some HARDCORE HANGING OUT
which is also sometimes organizing & planning for the life and world i want to live in
i want for future children to live in
that i was called into being to help make
family-making without gettin wholesome
keeping my goodness and magic woven with nastiness and perversity
dancing out rhythms of place and being and priorities
drawing out maps of desire and walks

pshaw let me suck on your liver
taste the bloody dandelion root
drink milk-blood smoothies like i don't believe in the circuitry of disgust
raw testicles like the most special and most easy to put in your mouth
activate your third eye
touch your bones to help you remember their knowing
"your body evokes my body" we danced this
we danced slapped poked spun pushed edged this into being

what comes easily is not always because it existed before
but flows into existence because everything was ripe for its birth
already known and remembered even as as the most new just-imagined

ROOTS. BONES. MOVEMENTS. REWILDING. IMAGINATION. THE aRT wORLD. DROP OUT. AT HOME. ALIGNMENT. TENDRILS. LEARNING. BREAK. BUILD. WALK. SING.

an outline for stories i'd like to tell:
i. walking delicately in a web of beloveds / polyglamory and lessons on boundaries.
ii. moving from homelessness to homefulness.
iii. after death.
iv. nihilism and goat herding.
v. lessons from the hoop / dancing between the wild and the city.
vi. faeries and witches.
to be continued.

leaving soon to be moving again, back to the woods to the olympic peninsula to wandering to revisiting. lovin y'all like summer.

more thoughts on home from the vaults

may 6th:

well i grew up in chicago
and around the southern parts of
this great lake. but am i FROM here?

my lens on truth was the lens
of hyde park racial tension
of bare muscley oaks in winter
of freezing, thawing, boiling
of mourning dove and big skies
of friendly neighbors whom you don't love
of folks makin their life for their family

but is this as removeable, as workable
as the capitalistic/patriarchal/white supremacist/sexist
world&structures that i grew up in? those were also the lenses i was raised in and am livin it and i don't have to be attached just because theyre what i know.
...and that's it. what/where do i really know? no where. my body knows and loves many places, seasons, sensations. i don't know this land.

so should i decide to move to wisconsin, it could/should be out of desire to learn here,
not to "live where I'm from"
yes, similar weather patterns to my youth, similar trees.
but those were the only things i paid attention to.

live in a place that calls to you.
calls to you where you are at.

after a few months fermenting in the crock...

the last time i wrote here i shared lew welch's chicago poem
yesterday i found some words in my journal from my time in chicago...:

wednesday may 2nd. 6:30am at sheffield and addison waiting for a craigslist ride to madison who never showed...

I have to be hard, hardened to live in this place.
if i care about others, i'll deplete myself.

in this city the poor are spat upon.
 ignored, told they are stupid
and dangerous and sick and wrong
 thrown into jail if they don't get killed in the streets first.

the sound of the el
is the sound of my ribcage cracking
tears of shock and pain leak
from the corners of my eyes
and i weep for the lost everything

for the four of us waiting in a tunnel
deep under the surface of the streets
for a monster to swallow us whole into
its belly
for the operator who spends every night

it is this cleaving
this separation
which makes us unsafe

how do you go out to dinner when so many go hungry?

------------->and Dear you, oh longtime
                 woodlawn englewood garfield park
                      lawndale west humboldt resident---
what do you dream of?
what is your tree of life?

yo
i mean
i want to stay home
gnashing on percy pigs on my bed
and getting sticky fingers
because i'm not really eating
but sucking on em like somebody's watching me
and maybe shoving my sugar digits
down into my incomprehensibly neon underoos
twisting the thought of pretty boys who call me daddy all up in a tight knot in my tum

yo
i mean
caaaaaalllll meeeeeee
let's dress up in Lisa Frank and silk and listen to Robitussin dreams aired on the radio from Atlanta
we'll challenge ourselves to not touching intoxicants til the sun goes down
because
as you know
days feel loveliest when you are up early
and nap in the mid afternoon to smoke your first cigarette around 4
let's play "everybody's watching" and act accordingly
HEELS, DIP-DYE, INSTAGRAM, FOOD FIGHTS, WHATEVER, DUCK LIPS
and then around 9
i'll take something
you'll take something
so we can see the whole night
when morning rolls around
let's pretend we get paid to eat breakfast
"any kind of work is drudgery"

i'm not going down with the rest of the downtrodden
so put on your candy-colored socialite suit
act accordingly

what remains 

the sting and stink of possibility

a vacant room after the party

the flower rotting inwardly 

devours itself mid air

starting with its edges

i try to not feel bad

afterall this is the feast of circles

a snake eating its tail

no beginning no end

i am life 

and so are you

you are death

and so am i

but

this is also the hunger

and the ache leftover

when you eat a thing

you do not want

there is at least one person in the world who thinks of you every time they look at the stars.

Sex

do i pace this life upon

the same Chasm.

that deep Nothingness of

Unconnection

The Father.

do i cast each man to be his likeness,

as a Bearded Silhouette to abuse me,

to aid me as i perform

with each orgasm

his wounds

as My Own.

Little?

Death 

indeed.

Notes from the Overground

I. And there's this thing about the young and the addled, who ask, "Is there a god and what does he think of me?" - treading sidewalks and ghosting over storefronts, what choice is there? - tramping from hotspot to hotspot, places we are allowed to stop and always looking to turn more places into places we can stop, click the clip lights of our bikes and take off our shoes -  we all just want everywhere to be home, so we can doff our PJs anytime.

So, my angels, and here's that ignoble lining - we'd all take the deal now. Lord love us, but somehow the self got severed from the self sometime after the war (or maybe earlier; we've got our best scientists on it, I promise), which means mustering a lot of imaginative force, which means a lot of tired people, which means a lot of bed-worshipping people, which means people who want to put on their PJs, which means people who would take the deal. In the annals of ignobility, the entire generation takes the deal because if others will happily purchase you in your unadulterated form, maybe you can get some peace, you know?

(Positive side effects of fame include using your imaginative powers for everything except living.)
(Or at least, evidence to the contrary, say the Phoenix fam, gets assiduously ignored.)

II. What the fuck is art for if you want to destroy culture?

III. The question remains, who am I doing this for? The question sometimes becomes, why would anyone do this for free? At worst the question is, WHAT IS THIS? And sometimes, there is a horrible tumbling of, how can we pretend to narrativize that which resists narrative so completely, structure the unstructured, enforce logic on the illogical and the vast, maybe we got a few things right but what if our basic assumptions are wrong spinning us out into some sort of weird collective delusion, there are no names for the nameless, action doesn't even mean the same thing it meant three thousand years ago, but really who am i to say because we move so goddamn slow as a whole, what if stories have to change to catch up with the way we think of the self now which has almost nothing to do with what we do, what of Mac Wellman's recidivist, what of quoting scripture for my purpose, what of evil, i can't even begin to imagine a new form, i'll die if i have reinvent the wheel tomorrow, i'm not ready, i'm not ready, when will i ever be ready, amen.

Ya know?

IV. Notes on tone from N+1: "Women’s websites like the Hairpin created unity among their readers by cultivating the sense of membership in an inner circle, where women displayed their intimacy and cemented their belonging by speaking to one another like high school best friends. The Hairpin’s voice, filled with chatty camaraderie, was sometimes cloying and sometimes engaging when it gave me style tips and book recommendations (“I know I made you all go out and get your Villette tramp stamps like my first day here”); but in articles that took on larger topics, that voice read as distracting, condescending, or even anxious at the prospect of alienating readers."

V.  Off to London tonight, don't really know what to do there. Turns out tickets to the Olympics are real complicated to get. Turns out the Olympics are a moral shitfest.

VI.

Warning, heavy stuff ahead

Saying no to society somehow
has lead me to saying "yes"
In hotel rooms 
To rich white men

feeling bad
feeling bad about the money
my body, the blood on the sheets
their desperate breath as they try to approach
I was writing a poem to salvage a little of myself today
When I missed my next client for 5pm in Chelsea
I lost track of time
Or it lost me
I am lost

(All this desire has been thrown upon me, yet I have none)

I want to throw up
and release this fucked up blockage
See it come out in physical forms
In chunks out of me
I just want the grey out of me

-292 bank account dollars of red numbers
Thousands owed to the state
To friends to hospitals
Everything is red and stuck
But I am blue and trying to move

(For the record, I did not drop out love left me first)

Once again the dead numbers clench
the living red things inside my chest
I worry so the chemicals of worry flow in my blood
My substance is raddled by something vacant
So vacant I can feel it
I turn around
But see nothing

Have not laughed deeply for many many weeks
Ive gone ahead with tradition and blame myself,
assume this unlaughing is my fault
Since the world seems to be laughing
Since the world kind of smiles in a way
Since the world pretends it is getting away with this
It's my fault, plenty of people are transcending this very moment.
These are Decisions I've made, Wounds I earned
I am a child still living under the cocktail table
Looking at adult legs from safety and they drink because
It's our fault we can't convert war into something else

I am trying so hard
But my heart is in a debt of shadows
Obnoxious immaterial dramas
Silly blood silly breath silly ghosts
Sun gnashing at my skin
Eyes drifting into tears
I promise more light to come
Just not today
I know no one likes to see this

No thing
No mouth, eye, dick or bird or breeze
Has said hello to me all day
I go online to download a hello 
from a stranger with a torso and splayed legs 
With tracing paper I outline
this affirmation from the screen
and Now I have something kind of real to show that
I just might have been seen

I go online to say hello to myself
Taking pictures and making silhouettes
Importing other silhouettes to mine
Suggestions of friendship, of beauty
Suggestions of love, of bodies
Of caress and forgetting my name
Suggestions of substance.
The possibility of a new and proper world 
Is more powerful than this actual world.
If the photo suggest I feel good and beautiful
Then maybe will actually feel good and beautiful

In the mirror 
I think about fame and my Art work
If I could polish my desperation 
Into a stand up show
Or a performance of some kind
Of some brutal truth 
Then via fame I am saved
Polish my pain til it turns to mirror
A mirror reflecting something of power
Then I could 
Be the freak on stage
Loved by muggles and men alike.
Then I could be on the cover of Out magazine or
Vogue, say, and have that look
Like I always knew I would be part of the club.
The world will clap and renounce ever rejecting me.
The enemy will be kind of like a friend.

one feeling

coming back from witch camp
2 days later we drove into the city
to go to a dance space
and have a circle, shared breaths,
pushing pullling sweaty fleshy sinews
dance dance
and i feel it so hard
so sad
to dance in the presence of humans as the only life in the room
no roots to tickle my feet up to my knees
no branches to inspire my waving arms
no tall grasses to nudge my inner thighs
no sun shining to squint my eyes
no insects to buzz and "disrupt" with their divine intervention
bird calls
the scent of broken yarrow
non-humans can be our greatest teachers
in this dance of living, of feeling

Gathering independence all private-like
in my room
Still hanging out with a paradise I stole
As a young boy
Panties from a babysitter's drawer
Years and years ago.
Black satin and a fake pearl.
Genitals, the moon
A window on the ugly city
performing it's own oblivion
It's starting again and again
We hold out like an audience
hoping for a good cry

No spell enters me and
No dick, no eyes, no art
All is deflected
By my new diet of weeds, dried meat
Silence and the blood of beet
Every poet in the big book of poems
Dreams of such meager angel food
Poem: Chisel, yearn, enchant.

I walk out every now and then
on the sleeping waifs
And onward to the disinterested realms
silence on the back roads of forever
It is not so serious actually
I was looking for flowers and birds
living in meadows. Even
When death passed me by
on wheels of rotten bones
It was not serious
I called out
"business in town?"
I glanced over to shapes of society
And saw its steeples of time


This body, a wandering rooftop in time finds
crossroads beneath the seasons beautiful

fucking chicago
the kinetic playground is no more!
TO LEASE!
it's swamp-ass season
and every nobody from paulina to cicero
looks like a wet flannel sheet
god damn you second city
all this regionalism is just an act

get yourself a scratch card
and maybe buy an island
even though you have no idea how to take a vacation

i cooked up a soup
1 part music consisting of radio ghosts, trapped in the ionosphere
3 parts overwhelming physio-spatial synesthetic response to sound
1 scrip for repetitive motion sickness
a pinch of a horrifying/edifying run-in with ravel's bolero due to both items above
thousands of digital pages devoted to "the worst generation ever"
the air and plaque from the 2 ventricles of my jealous heart
a short list of the parties i never made it to
936 g-chats (and rising)
a whisper of the smell of the garbage bins down round the back
(which is where all your stuff is headed)

it tastes like truffle oil french fries
sprinkled with parsley
arriving with a side of aioli
and it goes down smooth like middle-shelf whiskey

which is a shame really
considering what went into it

 

It's alright to cry, crying gets the sad out of you!

i wish it were a joke
but this year, that is 2012, has been a bumper year for awful (mostly situational)
i would like to say, inelegantly, eloquently
i'm having a terrible time

but i cried and cried and cried on the phone
about my deep down, bone threaded awful
and i said like a thousand things that didn't make any sense
mostly about how i feel unappreciated, which now, I guess, makes sense
and now i feel sort of okay, y'all

do you remember when we had shame day?
and everybody put their faces in the chopped onion to make themselves cry?
and it was sort of hilarious/great?
slight nervous breakdowns and thanksgivings are different
but hey!
it's alright to cry!
it'll make you feel floaty and nice and the words will come tumbling out and you don't have to listen, you just have to talk and maybe you'll know something you didn't before.

meta moment

also on a logistical note squidfriends
this whole new layout--huh
and i for one for reals like that our posts are tag-ful, i like looking back whatever was labeled "all is onesies" and "pop music fills my blood with ecstasy" and "baptized in ink"

so now when you go to write a post the labels are over on the right side, "labels" and you know
we could use them

i like imagining file cabinets built of fur and bones

midnight mooning, here's the list

1. woah, it's going to be okay!
2. "you should know that even though all things are liberated and not tied to anything, they abie in their own phenomenal expression." (Dōgen--this is actually very comforting to me)
and
3. "as for cities--they are (to those who can see) old tree trunks, riverbed gravels, oil seeps, landslide scrapes, blowdowns and burns, the leavings after floods, coal colonies, paper-wasp nests, beehives, rotting logs, watercourses, rock-cleavage lines, ledge trata layers, guano heaps, feeding fenzies, courting and strutting bowers, lookout rocks, ad ground-squirrel apartments. and for a few people they are also palaces." (gary snyder in the practice of the wild which i am reading and really enjoying right now)
4. idleness and mystery and stillness and the full moon and curiosity are so important. i am stepping off my ambiguity pedestal and toward desire and fire and water and the steam and smoke where they meet and walking mountains and being on the internet at midnight seeing my memories and loves and desires reflected back in a thousand tabs--oh silly but sometimes true-feeling this tool of the modern world, of our increasingly visible subconsciousnesses--i believe in german transqueer radical radio and rilke and bread and work and magic and new tattoos across knowing flesh and pain and slowness and quickness.
5. things have been rough lately and often hard. in a knowingly privileged and marginally unstable kind of way.
6. of place: wood floors. the altar moved to the next room over. it is night and the neighbors are doing some kind of loud popping project in the garage and talking about race on their porch. the walls are red and i ate a tiny plum that dropped from the tree in our front yard. there is an herb spiral and kale plants and lots of tomato blossoms. the cherries are dropping in neighboring blocks and yarrow in flower. raspberries are out, gold and red! and salmonberries! and strawberries too! and oregon grapes not too far (not that those are nearly as tasty but still). it has been sunny off and on, rainy occasionally, gray here and there often, warm but never quite hot per se, the doors are open here in the day and closed at night--it is chilly but i will sleep outside tonight.
7. STRANGERCAT i will write a poem about you soon.

Dream #1

Possess beauty or it will possess you Even as I write this a piece flesh falls to the ground The spectacle of every day The bodies suspended in time Any signs of life are much appreciated Sweat and sinews and sex. Play in the city with types of kindness and types of death. Archetypes stirred and collaborating as mutts Though a mongrel I want to be golden brown and red And almost I am An unremarkable remark Remade into a man Scheming with brown eyes Flushed with abundance of breath And secret hair softly on cheeks A mark, a question of clear bright skin Bones to fall with Muscles to pull myself up From an edge The mind Since I cannot be a bird And I have tried I'd settle for beautiful, as I choose Appear and disappear gently All with the same unending motion Of things coming together and falling apart Yes I am the one who sleeps a rest that is not real or one of many dreams that bleed themselves To show the world what it feels like Is there a single pleasure out there That does not request sacrifice? How many more times must the earth turn For another moment like the one that never seems to come

off the off the of the

oh geez summer is shattering open in so many directions,
$10 in my checking account, kazoo in my pock-ette,
looking out over this garden, these red-hot poker flowers roses and hills of competing doug firs and cedars and white oaks and maples--
discomfort is a sign of a learning edge, a rich place to dig into
i love learning so i find myself on the edge of discomfort a lot.
the wind is singing and i'm learning to translate
for the fire's licks and the groaning of this dry red soil.
i've been around the siskiyous for the past month now, never thought i'd find myself in a place like this--this dry and brittle harbor, rich and seductive and secretive hills where craziness is an edge to dance along. we the firepeople waiting for the fire, scrambling strolling in this age of consuming forces and summer sun. getting downloads and uploads from the spirit channel; this land talks loudly in a thousand voices, a thousand thousand marrowed ancestors.
oh, to be a blade of grass. oh, to be a sharp knife. oh, to be an eagle chasing a rabbit--
for now.
back to portland tomorrow--more soon.

the anwer is to become weirder
develop violent and aggressive eccentricities
when "there's nothing to resist"

if you begin to hallucinate, that's just an added bonus

Germany

Ive made it from asphalt and then through the skies I've emerged on the German side of things and I was nervous walking off the plane did I make the right choice in coming here? All my demons were there in the waiting hall holding signs up with my different names on them. I walked past, wig shielding my face. Not today guys. But a few still caught on followed me into the day. Not until now, many cigarettes and some drinks later, do i shake them off. No drama, just beat it. Arrived a few hours ago at my new home for some months. Fabian and Anetta are the bee keepers, and they are spry and kind kind. Their words are earnest, eyes and mouths earnest, skin bright. I forgot the way Europeans tend to inhabit their expressions much more than Americans. It's very refreshing to experience spirited mundanity like this. I have a good room here that has wood floors enough for dancing I have my bike with me (I successfully got it across the Atlantic) What friends we have become, my bike and me I know how to take care of it more than ever now New tires, new chain, new dérailleur, new cassette. Fabian is going to teach me about bee keeping and work is very flexible so I can dance and live as I want. This week we are going to set up hives in the city as the linden trees will be blooming His wife anneta does wood block carving/printing so I hope to mooch off her knowledge too. I saw my friend Martin who I haven't seen in two years and there is still a strong bond not to mention a healthy and intriguing tension between our bodies. it was everything to arrive here and have a friend...to not to feel alone. The destructive side of my independence is never far away It is easily provoked If I am alone alone, meaning when I start feel like a placless familyless landless desinfranchised orphan I can get very defensive and reactionary and work myself into weird states. Madness, demigod martyrdom, epic flesh, death dance. So I am glad to be in this place and get a grip on My Shit, because that is what it is. I am glad to be here among all these trees and lakes... to have a spot to swim as the summer thickens. Glad for honey. Glad for my friends. The family I do actually have. On my way over here I thought of you all so much and wanted to turn back and quit all the questions. But now that I am here I know this will be good, and you all will appreciate the changes it will bring over me. Love from Berlin.

the morning light pours in
ah it's so late that it's early

#500

slavoj zizek i'm calling you to account
even as i am drowning in a pool of your profuse sweating
crouched underneath a podium where you are speechifying
i think
you have made critique your business
so in some sleeping part of your brain
you want the structure to be critiqued to continue to exist
yes?
oh you lucky bastard to wriggle out of the blame like that
you know about fetishized distance
it's not just me that's got it

the dream is to sit in the sun
under a tree
and talk and wonder and puzzle
no
perhaps not
the dream is to sit in the sun
under a tree
and no longer need language

fevruary/2010

you show me yours,

i'll show you mine;

laughing and playing

are the fruits of life

you bring the fork

and i'll bring the knife

we can live on the clouds

we can sleep on soft gauze

just to feel peach fuzz

and dream to touch paws

we know this is it

this bright life is ours

we'll drink in the wind

and we'll supper on stars