obey your flesh and descend

i am of the country.

these brooklyn nights of mocked moons pass through us unslept

marrows of darknesses are unmet, forgotten in teemingness light

but it is we who forgot ourselves in the screaming clout of engines

and it is my flesh unkempt that has been arcing to and fro, unable to let go.

then somehow always dawn arrives as it has for a clockless bygone.

when once it spilled itself in silence til the sounds we made sung it found

now it bays our paused bones like bells.

in landscapes of skin you are here with me

and so is my witching soul dwelling--

its brawn of strange poetry clicks placelessly

while facing its fans on the embers of stagnant hours

words are spells, time has to be devoured and

death is gifting a secret forever.

i've learned how to hold a seed out among a crowd of deserts

and watch as their plantless dunes pant.

i trust language as an experiment of faith

though these sentences insecurely admit it

what we seek are not stars seen through chinks and mirrors.

what we seek are not shapes dancing anonymously behind a curtain.

i can feel your body and its faces

mid-blurring in cisterns of my mind swimming closer.

memories are not anonymous though their imagery is tricky

every day the red fruit i brought above roofs is for you

and i hope it is ok when carried off by living birds

to boughs of bridges

barely swinging in the gaps

we did not make but cross.

my totem body looks toward it loudly from the exhausting mud

what is it? only my confessions of diminishing teeth have guessed

my jaw sits bound so tightly it grinds in a veneer of sleep.

but you're right, when the cage door is opened my love does not step out.

ever since our answers disguised themselves as questions and

desires have been unlived ghosts called freewill.

i don't know who unlocked it and why.

each new day in modernity begins pre-haunted with

the hearts of people in the custody of history.

so you're right, i have been unyielding, bitterly and

my roots sent out poisons so that nothing may grow nigh

what gathers does so along borders

you have all stood in the shadow of my wounded dream

as it darkened--as it coiled and begged.

but we need not be bigger or smaller than we are.

i've shed and let it go, though very close to the sun, i had no one.

in lieu of a Man ill be a man and a woman and the plainest flower in the field

and become every day less afraid of myself

and less obliging to the throne of Men made gold and baroque with rape.

my chimera heart that has stiffened and stalled and trusted only itself

will transform and adapt along a curve not an angle.

what remains is sung

i am of the country.

i am of land and its wide sweeping parts belong to what we've lost.

i do not understand why we forsake life's tests and endless place to take our breath

so forgive me while running until no cars are felt and no road lies under feet.

love me and run alongside, and if in our steps we lurch, we can rest.

this day does not burn, or rather it does, but doesn't hurt.

what remains is screamed

i am of the country!

we must keep working and loving and learning

even amid flowers waking up in beds of dead bees.

we must keep walking an already over-trodden land

even as it yawns an uncharactered emptiness.

we must want yes while war is noisome and no and emptying

while its black blood runs deeper because we want life to be easy.

there can be no rising if we think we are falling

we cannot stand to not feel this--

something is waiting beyond our veils.

the expanding spring is here.

it is this lonesome side-walk sapling that is boxed in and pretty

it is the restrained blossoms

cajoling our callow nature,

but it is not this feast of fancy crumbs,

our jeering treeless stretches and

the worldless eye of city skies.

my existence was folded neatly and i needed to carelessly break it.

now i back track a mind that has lived to strip itself but worries about being too naked.

those of us who know how to weave find it tempting to unite loose ends that are messy

but even knots seeming to hold can unravel.

so be it. uncertainty is the soul of pleasure.

how could we not try? what else would we do?

this is why the wild fox said the prince the point is to create ties.

what we love we should tame, but we should not tame what we cannot love.

we have tamed the world as intensely as we fear to love it.

more than ever blood and bone are only home for the spirit that sees this.

so no more bloodletting, a body needs itself.

even if our love at times scares us and makes us strangers

it will always invent new invitations.

i try not to doubt this friend-studded roam

it's the only thing i know.

friend-ship wards off the bullshit of an uncertain tomorrow.

things are not always as they seem

baaaah! [chirp chirrrup] [cluclucluCLLAAA] [phhhhhhhhhhh] [druh druhh druh] [flapflapflap] [breathe--in. breathe--out]
i find myself (over and over though some parts run faster than others crawl)
on a ranch out in fiddletown--
some things same old,
semi-retired corporate giant
turtlenecks and all food names in french or italian and
every story is a one-upper and he knows the best about everything
starts farm on some land with his womanfriend
then she leaves
and he invites wwoofers in to let the goats in and out to graze
to count the sheep
to feed the dogs
to wonder what the garden used to look like
to imagine artists standing on each others' shoulders to make these huge graffiti murals
at times beautiful and at times absurd among blood-vessel-manzanita trees and live oaks.

same old
community of a kind over cardune gratin and oxtail stew
some kind-of-friends over for dinner and
he's hopped up on vicodin
[he pulls me in to dance (/cuddle)]
and asks why such a beautiful girl is trying so hard not to look like a girl
and why i'm hiding my boobs
and why i cut all my hair
when i'm such a beautiful girl,
[he squeezes my knee]
halfway through dinner
he just wants to know, just one question,
do i like cock?
susan drops her fork and
shannon pours her vicodinified lover another glass of wine
trying to restore the thin veil that was pulled away from her lover's mind
and steve apologizes afterward
and swears he'll never have him over again
and i'm bored already

same old
wine-tasting in amador county and
maggie (the other wwoofer, who's a little depressed)
puts on makeup and i my suspenders and we put on our british accents
hailing all the way from sedgewick hop from red wine to red wine
all brewed in our honor
and i say in the car "you know, i find all these people quite boring"
and we're both tipsy with names of thick-skinned grapes floating in our ears

same old
i wake in the middle of the night, pry open my eyes to see if it's light
go back to sleep
start a fire in the morning that gets rained out by noon
surprise steve by trying the oxtail stew
an ox i never met raised and killed by steve's doctor who lives right up the road

same old, i start to think of moving
living on the land i start to think in seasons, years, generations, centuries,
the time it takes a tree to grow, an inch of topsoil to lie down in the forest,
my mind thinking in moments, tiny dramas, eurekas
my travelling body feeling in two- and three-day stints (it's been three here and i'm starting to itch for another life), months at the most

even after so little time here (in the scheme of a tree)
i'm leaning elsewhere, towards laughter and love and spirited vision, a new book of poetry, communities that celebrate and cook together, nourishing our foundations and not just living day-to-day,
wondering too what path i'm on, what the story is of where i'm going with bits of grass and mushroom slime on the back of my hands and a bag of zines and tinctures
when i'll meet up with my kindred (which are to be found in every tree but also today feel rather far away)--

bug-eyes, holes in the ground, peeing on lawns

yesterday i fed the bunnies alfalfa pellets and hugged ruben from behind as he stirred mikey-the-goat-meat chili for lunch,

today i woke up in a mummybag on a white carpet of a floor of a house in columbia city in seattle in a different world.

i have not been posting much recently, though i've been reading avidly and thinking about it,

guess because relationships in my world were moving and shifting,

reading about the diggers in california in the 60s, the san francisco mime troupe and the free family setting up explosive cultural-overhaul communes left and right,

and what do i think? in any moment? and what am i doing, what are we doing?

i am full of vivid images...a winter picnic at the edge of the plateau we lived on, andrew communing with a twisting oak that leaned out over the edge. sarah and i dancing with finger puppets performing a drama of interspecial romance in high british accents as walt watched and smiled and occasionally muttered puns. the front stoop of my trailer. hands twisting in the dark, our last slumber party at windward, and where is the line between sensual and sexual. the feeling of the kitchen at night after everyone had gone to bed and i sat alone with a notebook.

driving into seattle was something

at first the lights were exciting

then i realized i couldn't look at things fast enough,

too much too fast,

so i closed my eyes and played seven with ethan.

the world is big! the universe is loving! all people are beautiful!

i am excited to set out soon (wednesday i think?) on my way down south, traversing new worlds and unknown territories, seeing how my life looks when i offer it in stories. i am excited to see my family-friends-community, thread together different worlds we live in. i am excited to walk outside and smoke a cigarette.

so hello and hello and hello...

i have a fever in my skin

a festering sore on my chest

a hole in my heart, it hurts

even the sky is bored

but dammit

i will run in this rain

and i will remember that we are just some moody monsters

with sudden aches and groans

scowls and caprice

who push and pull and forget what we want but know we want it bad

until we can feel silly about our sickness

let go our fists

look at our half-comprised lives

and know we love them