perkasie dirt

Faith is Taking the First Step

2012-01-16T21:03:00.000-08:00

Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.

Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase.

--Martin Luther King, Jr.

I wrote the poem below when I was about 9, after I watched the MLK documentary on PBS. I cried for hours, during and after that program, was stunned and felt empty and unsafe. I was very young and overly emotional: a little frizzy head brown girl in a town where I was chased home from school, pelted with rocks and snowballs, and called nigger. Yes, nigger, in the 1980's, in a middle class educated rural neighborhood one short hour from the West Philadelphia cultural oasis where I sit and write today. I can hardly believe it myself, and if I hadn't lived it I would think that last line a dramatic exaggeration. It happened.
A child, I wrote this poem in honor of an amazing man that I felt, somehow, was fighting for me from beyond the grave. His grace and love, his words, helped me bare and sit stony-eyed while boys twice my size hocked spitballs into my hair on the school bus, overjoyed by the fact that my thick curls (nickname: "brillo" and "SOS") made it impossible to remove them out without getting slime all over my hands.

Thank you Mr. king, for what you've done.
You let freedom ring, for each and everyone.
You didn't live to see fifty-eight
but your spirit lingers on, strong and great.
Now here we are working and living,
us in our homes, and you in heaven.
And it doesn't matter now, what happened in the past
because we're all god's children, and Free at Last.

Not exactly a work of art, and at the time I was more focused on meter and rhyme, and not so much content, because I knew sadly (then and now), that "what happened in the past" does matter, and we have a long way to go until we are all free. Yet, I took his words and his life's cause to heart, and they live in me, still.
I hope never to stop taking those steps, even when I can't see the whole staircase.
I hope to always know it's there.
I hope for the same in all of us.
I hope.

I've been "Cartooned"

2012-01-02T21:18:00.000-08:00

Thanks to First Person Arts!

Selling the Farm

2011-12-07T22:23:00.000-08:00

sestina for my brothers

I dreamed again of our old farm last night.
In sleep the land is forever changing,
Chestnut mares constantly running, running,
their finely chiseled forms slick with cool sweat –
I see their muscles flexing, fluid skin,
I smell the strong musk of manure, sweet grain.

The sky opened up – a starburst of grain;
the silo shot like a rocket last night,
oats showered dried earth and the smooth skin
of the mares, their shapes and colors changing
as I, too, begin to move, my own sweat
dripping, my bare feet slapping dirt, running.

The orchard shook, fruit fell from our running
thick pungent sumac patches bent like grain
while my feet cracked and my eyes stung with sweat,
the pounding of hard hooves rattled the night,
in moving through acres I was changing,
my own muscles flexing beneath my skin.

The mares’ thick switching tails flick at my skin,
I don’t know why I continue this running.
Am I also frightened by the changing
sky and the explosions of glistening grain
shooting forth, bright tiny jets in the night?
Bending graceful necks to drink, the mares, sweat

pours from their bodies becoming streams of sweat,
cascading from smooth coats and slickened skin
draining into the dried earth and dark night.
The mares begin once again their running,
bodies like wet chestnuts, manes like light grain.
I move along the fields, body changing

all the while running to avoid changing;
the slipping away of the farm like sweat
from our bodies, the sting of the grain
as it pelts, welts and sticks to our wet skin.
Then I realize it’s the earth that’s running –
a huge treadmill spinning the farm into night.

We grew up with foals, whose coats changed like our mixed skin –
our futures sliding apart, spreading like the sweet sweat
of the horses that run
only through the high grain fields of my dreams at night.

Note on the form:
The sestina is divided into 6 sestets (six line stanzas) and 1 triplet called an envoi which is just a concluding stanza that is half the size of the rest. It is usually unrhymed and works by repeating the end words of each line. The envoi contains, in any order, all of the six end-words. The catch is that one has to be buried in each line and another must be at the end of the line. The pattern for repeating the words is like this: (stanza A) 123456, (stanza B) 615243. This 615243 pattern is how each of the next stanzas are made.
Winner of The Julia Fonville Smithson Prize, this is my first Sestina.

Listen

2011-12-06T19:03:00.000-08:00

Listen. There is something I need to tell you. And when I'm done there is no guarantee this will still be true, but for now these are the only words I know. Before I was born I was water. And when she was alone, when all was silent, we would ease into a stillness. Sometimes, there was a great and urgent conversation inside, beyond the thump of our hearts. The language was one I spoke but lost the night I dreamed of laughing and woke up flesh, blood, bones, hair--
breathing air instead of water.

rise and fall

2011-12-03T21:34:00.000-08:00

She had a lover who was cold, she had a love who loved her flesh
but did not love her whole.
She had a lover incomplete-
lost and tireless empty wanderings.
Had a lover who filled and stroked her, shielded her face,
then left her squinting curbside, splayed.
She had a lover tender and gripping who dove into her eyes
and never rose for air.

Had a lover who
leaned into her ribs, listened and cracked
the code of her thumping chest,
made a map of fingerprints
to find her way back.

She had a love who made a home of her heart, who with each rise
and fall
gently pried loose her lips and let her breath.

Things Written Down to Cassendre Xavier's Voice

2011-12-01T22:16:00.000-08:00

So, this small storm comes on, a prickly tidal wave :
Some
how
her
song
travels from the canal to the skin, lower back, ears, lower

and back.

Can feel even as we hear, or we are not hearing until we first feel.
It’s a chill, a warning, a takeover.

How to say -- feel music so much as hear it
without saying what has been said before?

Redemption, Redemption, Redemption, birth rite.

So, this small storm comes on, a prickly tidal wave :
it sounds like with-with, heart stop, with –

it sounds like shhhhhhhhhhh

It sounds like learning, learning, learning, lifting burning.
Willing, willing willing.
shush.

It sounds like looking back, looking forward, looking-

Joy can be mine?

I have learned

I won’t be cruel

I have learned

the path Less Broken, less broken.

What would you do what would you do what would you do what would you
do if I told you

I am not back

I’m back

I’m not back

I’m back

I'm
not ready not ready not ready
never ready
for pain.

The Ways We Try

2011-11-01T22:35:00.000-07:00

It wasn't so much that she had not spoken to him in nearly six days. This was bad, Til decided, but not the worst. Nor was it that she had not nestled her backside into the curve of his belly during the long, long nights of the last week. What is was, was this: Til felt sure that in spite of herself and her best efforts, Lee's heart was slowly moving away from him.

The first indication was how often her eyes, usually so full of intent focus, now seemed to drift somewhere up to and beyond his hairline. He could no longer hold her gaze. Even when he pleaded for her to look at him, her eyes would only shift down to his nose or the curve of his upper lip.
And his lips -they ached. Even in other days, during other fights or difficult moments, Lee would silence the silence between them with a soft and purposeful kiss. If she could not speak she would instead mouth a tiny bit of magic into his mouth, and offer Til the miracle of reassurance in this way. But tonight, this day, he'd had none of this from her and he suffered.

As the hours slipped by since their last kiss, Til found himself approaching the ledge of a frank and intense cliff of loneliness.

Asleep with the TV, Waking up to "Cheaters"

2011-10-25T09:00:00.000-07:00

"He was always
at the club."

"You
were my friend
for thirty years."

"What the [bleep]?"

"Who are you? Who are you?"

"Why
didn't you
just tell her."

"Get out of my house!"

"Oh, SNAP!"

"How long
have you been married?"

"No-no no-no-
no-
no-no"

...Double life, double life

"He's got a gun! -------------------------------------- " ("It ain't loaded.")

Investigation, Day Two

"I told you when,
we first got together:
you weren't going to play me"

"Open the door, Dewey.

Open the door"

The Poetry of Life

2011-08-22T23:32:00.000-07:00

"If poetry is your life, then your life must be the poem, a life that exists only for the reader."

-Louis Jenkins, Sea Smoke

Tiny Magics

2011-08-04T22:11:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it is an outrage. When Mila considers the chances and possibilities in this world, the fine lines and gaping canyons between what is good or not, the distances between blessed and cursed, she is outraged enough to spit!

"I have had a hard life, no doubt," she mutters inwardly on her way to catch water from the well. "I've had a life that makes others wonder how I have managed, still, to have an open heart and loving. I am flawed and far from perfect but I BELIEVE!"

Mila believed in goodness and love and light, even after the days of Noe and all the hurtful ways and words. She believed she was blessed and graced with rare and tiny magics.
"A fact," she whispers into the darkness, "a fact is that flowers make me happy. A true and honest joy in this world so full of those anxious to grind any bit of beauty straight to monkey shit. This happiness is a miracle."
"Who needs millions? Let me lay down on a blanket in the grass, let the sun shine, let the dog come in and snuggle me, let me hold a child or a grandmother's velvet hand. Give me coffee!"

Once, while swimming naked in the inlet, a manatee gently licked her foot and swished slowly away --she was wealthy!
At times she thought her heart would burst in gratitude.

Piss on all of you who think the goal is everywhere but love and your own stupefyingly gorgeous souls. You are poor fools destined to die as you live: empty into eternity.

This is as close as Mila comes to prayer. Once said, she can kiss the ground and begin her day.

Advice for the Dead

2011-07-18T08:32:00.000-07:00

I have been waiting
in this dark garden a long time
for you to arrive.

First things first, I hope you lived well. What ever that may mean for you, now that you are dead. I f you believe, as my father does, that nothing but rotting happens when you die, perhaps you now sit, satisfied in your lump of disintegration. Is that what you once believed-- your body becomes compost as soon as your last breath escapes, your essence simply dissipating into The Almighty Maybe?
Dead one, did you go first? Is there someone, or more than one, waiting and wondering, hoping that your energy is still here, hovering on the edges of our mere existence? Did you find that there are some things you take along, though your body, that gorgeous organic pod, is now quickly melting into the grass and ground? Did you have some ray of light in a silo of loss? You are not dreaming, you are here with me. I am here with you; I have never left.

Dearest Dead, I hope you had love. All sorts of love and lots of it -- sweet savory, and downright bitter. I hope that some one's smell and smile sent you out into the street at some point, weeping, screeching, sure that you would explode with desire. I hope, too, that on occasion, you sent another screaming outdoors for the same reasons. Did you laugh at the awkward moments? Did you find a way to say the difficult things? Life. Jenkins said:"One is only alive for a short while and dead for a very long time."
And Neruda: "Loving is short, forgetting is so long."

Did you appreciate what is worthwhile, and not mire too long in the monkey shit? Anytime of the day or night, there is proof that someone somewhere is struggling.
Feel that bloody, gushing, pounding inside? My heart, I am in awe of you.

Let us walk away from these many darknesses and into the ceaseless shine: you have built a stunning foundation of memories from which to soar of into the great beyond.

Wooden Shoe, 09, Repost.

2011-07-10T20:29:00.000-07:00

Blind Foal

2011-07-08T20:04:00.000-07:00

published in The Apiary, Fall 2010

Sweet Jesus, grant me the power to delve
deeper, deeper still: cracking it all up,
unsheathing, splitting everything then leaving it out in the sun, exposed.

Give me some bitterness and irony
like the blind foal born when I was ten,
pushed out slick and steaming,
tearing his mother with urgent hooves–
then shot in mercy a day later.
(The mare stood, her tender parts swollen and stitched,
missing the colt’s nubby mouth nudging her belly.
All that work for what?)

Don’t listen, if at some future date,
I beg for release, pray for numbness. I may say different,
but this is what I really want. Really–

to scream at the difficult moments,
say the awkward things. Let my flustered lovers leave me,
let heartache leave me brave.

To remember and shudder; let some pain drive me into corners
collecting the God almighty ashes and dust, making my own.

Silent Friend of Many Distances

2011-07-01T20:57:00.000-07:00

The problem with an orange tree in Greece
whose perfume fills the straights between Poros
and Kimon’s Peloponessos is the peace
of beauty radiating always close,
which never can respond but does its part,
issuing hope to make me live. It makes
it come from me. The problem with the heart,
a tool of time, is want can never speak.
The problem with the brain is darkness. It
has no self-lamp or sun to give it place.
Silent friend in heaven, the problem is
I love you, and, like every love, far space
creates intensity yet it rains spit
on us. I am an outrage until you rise.

-Willis Barnstone

Live on WXPN

2011-06-30T15:30:00.000-07:00

Listen to me and other local artists --some amazing tales and tunes!

View: Live at Kelly Writers House.
Episode 83 Produced and hosted by Erin Gautsche.
Click names below to select individual performance, or Listen to Full program.

Erin Gautsche - Introduction
Angel Hogan - Introduction
Angel Hogan - Reading
Leah Walton - Introduction
Leah Walton - Reading
Ross Bellenoit - Introduction
Ross Bellenoit - Performance
Eric Thomas - Introduction
Eric Thomas - Reading
Katonya Mosley - Introduction
Katonya Mosley - Reading
Mike McCarry - Introduction
Mike McCarry - Reading
Tre Rials - Introduction
Tre Rials - Reading
Ross Bellenoit - Closing Performance Intro
Ross Bellenoit - Closing Performance
Erin Gautsche - Closing Remarks

Peonies

2011-06-20T14:30:00.000-07:00

When you shoot yourself in the foot there is blood, not nectar.
If stolen it is bitter and bites, nectar.
If given it is sweet and invites more nectar.
"Help" or not, the blossoms push past the nectar.
If you hoard the juice it rots --let go, nectar.
Blossoms make deals with the ants and nectar;
they save what is needed for themselves -nectar.
...and in the end get what they want: nectar.

People trying to get at this nectar.
Can't be bought or sold, nectar.
More like honey or gold -- nectar.
Watch as the blossom unfolds, sweet nectar!

Moonstone Reading

2011-06-14T11:21:00.000-07:00

City Paper HERE
Moonstone HERE

Elegy (II) for Gil Kalt

2011-06-05T09:41:00.000-07:00

Gil,
I dreamed again of you last night.
In the dimming light, your eyes
seemed green, and true
I am no longer sure they were blue.
Oh! and your feet were bare
but
striking more was your hair, a swept
up affair much less you than those eyes:
green not blue.

Last night I smelled again your salt and your sea,
laid my head close to your heart, a mystery
warmly caged. I clutched you like a land bird after a day
stuck in a tree. You smiled at me.

I am a child still grasping but no longer asking
you to stay.

"Less than a month after joining the police department as
Philadelphia's only open gay officer, Thomas G. Kalt Jr.
took his own life today by shooting himself once in
the head near the historic First Bank of the United States
at Third and Chestnut Streets."
Philadelphia Inquirer

Fringe Festival

2011-06-01T15:56:00.000-07:00

photo: www.francescacostanzo.com

photo: http://www.francescacostanzo.com/

In(visible) Keepsakes
Fringe Festival II New Philadelphia Poets

Always Already

2011-05-30T19:46:00.000-07:00

These ache-days are slipping always through.
Already gone, it is now barely possible to speak on
what could not be spoken of.
All nights, no thing evoked, except the dreams-
warm mud-filled.
In the filled mud-warm, it is murky without.
There are always all days to endure
the mereness of these specifics.

"Heidegger argues that our ontic feelings of anxiety testify to the "groundlessness" of human existence, revealing an ineradicable insecurity which Heidegger connects to the fact that our existential trajectories - the life-projects, roles, and identities that define who we are - have "always already" been shaped by a past that we can never get behind and head off into a future in which these self-defining projects will always be incomplete, cut short by a death we can neither avoid nor control. In Heidegger’s famous phrase we exist as a "thrown project": thrown out of a past we cannot get behind, we project ourselves into a future we can never get beyond. "Existence" (from the Latin Ek-sistere, out-standing) is this standing-out into time, a temporal suspension between natality and mortality."

Triolet for Neruda

2011-05-19T20:46:00.000-07:00

I no longer love her, that's certain,
but maybe I love her.
I grow strong for drawing this curtain-
I no longer love her, that's certain.
Wallowing, I crawl through the hurt, then
wonder how this occurred?
I no longer love her, that's certain.

But maybe I love her.

Love is so short, forgetting so long.
Drawing the curtain, forgetting the song.

For my 'Mujeres que aman demasiado.'

Barrio

2011-05-15T08:17:00.000-07:00

Dear Sweet East Harlem,
I am falling in love with you.
Duane Reade, ready streets, fried plantains
and those 3am Puerto Rican rice and peas.

LOVE!

Your buses come on morning routes still humming.
Panucho, pasteles, Horchata, have I been here before?
Music, music, so much music.

Whatever it Takes

2011-05-11T20:40:00.000-07:00

Outside a pub in Jenkintown, a beefy man named Ezri told me that the night's first stars are the twinkling eyes of young angels.
"If you believe," he said "and if you look up to the sky at twilight, you will see them peeking through the clouds."
Ezri told me that angels in their youth are actually devilish and bold. They like to play pranks, and more than anything else they most wish to be seen.
"These are child warriors," he explained. "Angels, when fully grown, go to wherever there is wrong and make it right, even at their own demise."
I thought about these young angels, bold little kamikaze soldiers-in-training, preparing to fling themselves into the intricate and complicated defense of our souls; I was awe-struck and unexpectedly moved. I was also drinking summer wheat ale, which makes me a little loopy. Either way, let the moments all come, even those strange and beer-addled! Here's to the angels!
Ezri told me that angels are the tip on the spear of righteousness and hope, and that violence is not their wish but often it is inevitable. Ezri then looked long and frankly at my legs and told me, smiling, that he was of good Ukrainian stock and that his calves were bigger than my thighs; he'd show me if I'd like to see.
I went back inside the pub.

Light and Honey Reading

2011-05-10T14:20:00.000-07:00

LTP Philadelphia

2011-05-03T19:04:00.000-07:00

I'm so excited to be a teaching artist for Literacy Through Photography: The Philadelphia Project (LTP) is a new multi-year initiative at Moore College of Art & Design focusing on collaboration, community engagement and the impact of art education on learning, supporting Philadelphia’s city-wide goal of improving literacy and arts access for school-age youth. LTP is supported by grants from the William Penn Foundation, U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services, The Elizabeth B. and Arthur E. Roswell Foundation and The Barra Foundation. Visit BLOG.

Beefland

2011-04-29T00:44:00.000-07:00

Many things happened to Dell on the treacherous drive from North Granola to New Nimby. To say he was terrified was an understatement. His entire childhood was spent in the North of the state, isolated. Dell only ventured away once with his parents on a family trip to Beefland, to visit to his Aunt Pimmy’s farm. Dell loved the land. He loved the cows, loved the chickens, loved the scratchy barn cats, but he did not love his Aunt Pimmy, nor did he love the Horehound candies she would thrust upon him as a bribe to pick burrs from the fur of her snippy little Cashew.
Aunt Pimmy named her dog after her favorite food, for although she lived in the heart of Beefland, Pimmy had closeted legume leanings. She preferred her cashews buttermilk-dredged, cornmeal-dusted, quick skillet fried with butter, garlic and (when she could get them) shallots. Uncle Roy thought his wife was addled and quite possibly sun-spanked for eating gummy dirt turds while they were surrounded by a bounty of flesh. Anytime he found her humbly corner-crunching, he wondered how he’d been wrangled into marrying the freak cracking and spitting shells before him.
Whenever Dell and his family would arrive for a visit there would be a lot of dust kicking and general stomping. This was always the fight when it came time to prepare dinner: come evening, Aunt Pimmy would start up her screech, pissed off to see Uncle Roy marinating the steaks, again. But in Beefland meat always won. Aunt Pimmy ate cashews alone with Cashew, considering the faraway fields of Knoblespit.

Sweet Horses

2010-11-19T18:05:00.000-08:00

Inspiration Dinner Party

2010-09-25T18:34:00.000-07:00

I’m just back from the corner store and haven’t had a chance to wash the grapes when Berryman arrives, moody. Joe was supposed to give him a ride, but was too high on afternoon whiskey in the sunlight and now won't arrive until sundown.
“I’m too old and tired and hungry,” Berryman says. “I’m sick of sleeping and I don’t have time to wait.”
I think to mention that it’s 5:00pm and the invite said 6:30, but instead I put him to work slicing the cheddar and breaking up the dark chocolate, while minding the dogs, cats and the piglet.

I see on caller ID that Alice is phoning and I let voicemail pick it up. I know she is fighting with Toni, but they are both still invited and I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Berryman, annoyed, wants to know why I won’t answer my own phone, and I try to explain but he waves me off saying: “Alice should try spending 11 years straight dreaming in the icy desert! See if she wants to fight with anyone then.”

I am anxious now for Grace, David and Jane to arrive and take him off my hands.

I hear the porch swing and music: Patty is here, sitting and blessedly singing:

All the girls with the broken arms
All the girls with the deadly charms

All the girls in the restaurant
Pretending to be nonchalant
Funny girls on the TV shows
Close your eyes and they turn to snow

Be careful how you bend me
Be careful where you send me
Careful how you end me
Be careful with me

and I finally begin to relax, thinking the dinner and evening will go over well. As I open the wine I see James through the window, smiling as he leans in to pluck a Peony from the walkway.

Key (my dream dinner):
Berryman = John Berryman
Joe= Joe Wenderoth
Alice= Alice Walker
Toni= Toni Morrison
Grace= Grace Paley
David= David Sedaris
Jane= Jane Smiley
Patty= Patty Griffith
James= James Baldwin

Walking Glass: Altered Book Project

2010-08-14T20:21:00.000-07:00

Altered Book Exhibit with Pigeon Arts Collective

Exhibit Space Number 2

Exhibit Space number 1

Images of my altered book, Walking Glass:

The Original Mix (another too-much)

2010-04-17T18:55:00.000-07:00

Who are these shits?
For whom every thing
never will be
and it is not enough?
Another the blessed moment bled.
Staved away,

then razed.

What is this place?
where you plan to be first
in that long list of thank-yous?
Or, at least not fourth,
not mentioned.

Let's not debate and just succumb
to the fantasy!
Oh, such love!
Smear that love on your neck
like mud. Let it dry to crush us. Let it crumble.
Don't act like you don't know.
You there: with your feet and your face—
You the unspeakable weeper—let's just not kid ourselves.
I can smell you watching.

Altered Book Project, Images 1 & 2

2010-03-27T21:45:00.000-07:00

Samples from an altered book incorporating original and found poems as well as images.

Philly Vs. Chicago Slam: "Mortified"

2010-03-06T18:55:00.000-08:00

Butterflies Outside the Ruins

2010-02-01T11:42:00.000-08:00

Though the nuns wept and urged her to stay, Grace left the Albuerge and made her way back to the warm three rooms she shared with Shella. The simple care she'd received while she withdrew -- the cool palms and prayers in Spanish, the endless glasses of Jamaica with ginger and lime -- for these simple things she was alive and grateful. Thin, pale and weak, her dress of dark sleeves and long pants for her slow walk to Centro under the bright sun brought shameless stares from children and their mothers and fathers alike. At home, she was not surprised to find the cats using her room as a respite, lazing about on the cool tiles under the hammock. Shella left the ceiling fan on so the sheer blinds grazed and billowed at the slotted windows. Nothing changed in the three weeks since she'd left. It looked as though she'd stepped away, for minutes -- for milk or beer, and was just now returning home. The four marbled ashtrays remained positioned near the corners, mostly full of butts and tiny bent spikes. In the nights before she left she had begun sleeping with a Pharmacy tech, who would arrive each evening with clean syringes. In those last days before the Albuerge, though shamed and abused by Cito and others, Grace felt giddy and flush with needles, no need to share or re-use. Her only books in English, three of them, lay wedged the far wall below the hanging cross the landlord insisted remain nailed tight and steady. Tired and damp from the walk and the heat, Grace made her way to room’s sole piece of furniture, an ancient dresser with drawers swollen shut from the humidity.

Reaching inside, she searched for her old notes and found the three folded pages beneath a musty pile of t-shirts. She pulled one out and unfolded it carefully and there found, once again, the hard pressed script of Noe.

Babe, he never used her name.
I been clean now for nearly three weeks, and you know everyone says I look good. I gained some weight and feel pretty good. And I look better, you should see it, everyone says so.

Sitting slowly down on the hammock, Grace presses Noe’s letter to her face and inhales. She used to believe she could still smell him, even months after he was gone. But today, on this hot afternoon with the walls swelling in around her, Grace smelled nothing but her own skin washed in the nun’s chamomile soap.
The gate outside clanks and, keys jangling, Shell appears in Grace’s doorway with a tired smile. Reaching over to lightly swing the hammock, Shell asks if she is thirsty.
“Yeah, I am. Just haven’t mustered myself into the kitchen yet,” Grace grips the floor with one foot and pushes, making to get up.
“No, no, I will. I have something special…” Shell is already moving pass the hall window to the kitchen. Seconds later, she is cursing the tiny fire ants that have once again invaded the sink.
“Rotten little shits! Where do they all come from?”

Grace smiles and pushes herself into an easy sway, still clutching Noe’s note. She is wondering how it was, not so long ago, that she and Shell fought bitterly and regularly – that she and Shell once didn’t speak for nearly 7 months.

At one time, they lived together in Brooklyn with Noe crashing for weeks at a time. There, the nights ended with many, many slammed doors and Grace crying into Noe’s armpit while they lay on the futon.
“She can be such a bitch!” She once slobbered into his fine hairs and folds, and she felt his body shaking with a stifled giggle.
“What! What?” Her anger was amplified ten-fold, finding that her lover wasn’t taking her side.
“No, no! It’s not you, it’s not – it’s just that the sniffling and tears makes me tickle!” He was laughing outright now, no longer able to hold it. Slowly, Grace began to laugh, too, while curling herself into his slim body, inhaling deeply. She can smell his sweat and skin, warm like cinnamon and musk.

Swing swinging in the hot room in Centro, Grace smiles sadly at the memory, realizing now that Noe would be dead within twelve days of the night they laid laughing together.

Many Distances

2010-01-24T11:52:00.000-08:00

The problem with the heart,a tool of time, is want can never speak.
-Willis Barnstone

And then there is this offer of a mouth
A layering of tongues
Teeth breath, lips, with-with - - -
Barely an idea, a trick
Flickering in the corner of your eye:
Your lover awaits life from your gaze
Your breaker baits a heated barb
Your beloved dies and rises beneath you
Your keeper sinks to your hips
Your warden walks the mighty yard
Your sweetie stays in the strange
Your crush stands in the wind.
Your mistress lifts one aching calf
And bites the tender skin.

Now there are fingers
A layering of flesh,
The almighty touch, a whisper…
Now a flame:
Your lover says your name
Your honey sets the blaze
Your teacher wets your belly
Your partner parts your thighs
Your escort knows your secrets
Your precious lights your skin
Your guide finds you adrift and tangled
then sails you home again.

Bank Barn

2010-01-13T21:51:00.000-08:00

Bank barn, shed
hay bale bed,
horse manure
sweet feed,
sticky wishes, Milk weed.
Sumac, Mulberry tree,
torn bib,
corn crib,
chicken shit, dust,
Lilacs, rust.
Buttered kernels, whole,
at the bottom the bowl.
Trouble seeker
liar, leaper
thunder-loss, laughter
running faster,
By law.
By love.

Barefoot, blindness-
religion of kindness:

With an iron fist.

With a broken wrist.

Crab apple, broiled steaks
Queen Anne’s lace
Cat tails,
Wild Mustard seed.
Pussy willow, wallowing.
Walnut tree swallowing
Swallowing Elephant leaves
Swallowing dirt-dirt dreams,

Dried out creek,
Blood-fat ticks.
Sticky pickers,
curly hair
sun fried ants
truth or dare
lead rope
garter snake
halter, bridle

earthquake.

First Time

2010-01-03T20:41:00.000-08:00

for DH

So many minutes,
hopeful shoulder dozing—
So many neighbors,
High-rise project swampland
And last stop.

Weeping wound
Weeping desert,
wood worn and songs petering
nothings running ...
... ...
...
Where did the day go? Where did the year?
Pole-dancer, jerking for a quarter
the Coney Island princess
has lost her shine.

And everyone looks unamused
And everyone is a part of the show
Just who do we think we are?

It’s cold. The Comet has stalled.
Here is where fathers
bring their weekend babies

Tattered cat, grifters.
3 darts for a dollar
Deflated balloons.
Murky ocean, deserted walk

Tell you what: this one’s free!
Tell you what, this one’s on me.

The Summer Day

2009-11-02T20:08:00.000-08:00

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

-Mary Oliver

The Divine

2008-06-10T14:33:00.000-07:00

"Innocents awaiting the divine, suddenly propelled forward on the edge of an alien tsunami. Fifty years gone in blink."
-Bill Baker

Visit his blog at:
www.bill-baker.blogspot.com

...

Find out Who the Teacher is!

2008-04-20T09:40:00.001-07:00

Kabir says:

Friend, hope for the Guest while you are alive.
Jump into experience while you are alive!
Think...and think... while you are alive.
If you don't break your ropes while you're alive,
do you think ghosts will do it after?
The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic
just because the body is rotten --that is all fantasy.
What is found now is found then.
If you find nothing now,
you will simply end up with an apartment in the City of Death.
If you make love with the divine now, in the next life
you will have the face of satisfied desire.

So plunge into the truth, find out who the Teacher is,

Believe in the Great Sound!

Kabir says this: When the Guest is being searched for,
it is the intensity of the longing for the Guest that does all the work.
Look at me, and you will see a slave of that intensity.
(Translated by Robert Bly)

2006-01-16T09:33:00.000-08:00

Butterflies outside the ruins