the sanity of soil

 

“In the garden of gentle sanity. May you be bombarded by coconuts of wakefulness.”   Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

This palm is fibrous, a woody husk hanging on to the instrumental shake of its juice. It grows in order to be eaten. This garden is progressive. It is hairy and hungry for soulmate of medicinal consumption. Annually, one wakes engulfed in the fear of placebo lust. Here, in this perforated part of Brooklyn, lucidity is found nearby between full-figured moon and switchblades of grass.

dear poet.

I want to put your voice between my legs and harmonize with the Whitman-soaked lunges found at the end of your stanza.

to speak on tenderness, place a ‘want’ ad and request a mountain.

One cannot plan the space between hours. All of these breaths are abstract performance pieces; you can watch and take notes.

Sip wine while photographing what you think all this might mean. Or. You can walk outside, sit in the earth’s lap and read Adrienne Rich poems to each other to learn about why all this happens.

You may be on a search for love but it’s been stuck to your skin like a birthmark before you were even able to pronounce such a word. And every human has been different. And their music deviated within each strand.

You may find comfort with a human in the darkness of a barroom bathroom, while pretending their body is yours. Their parts.

You may kiss a poet beneath the flickering moonlight on a night birthed just for that kind of moment. And then, write a song that speaks on the pull of doorframes and archived fonts.

Love is a collision of bones. Love is the ISBN you tattoo on your neck because it resembles the lines from your favorite book. Love is when she bats her eyelashes against your wrist and reminds you that scars are actually coordinates, not regret.

 

No one has imagined us. We want to live like trees,

sycamores blazing through the sulphuric air,

dappled with scars, still exuberantly budding,

our animal passion rooting in the city.

 

                                       ….Adrienne Rich.

 

romantique et trempé

Where does it begin? What leads us to desire something such as a direct stare or pressed fingers against small curve in lower back. What causes us to expose our ribcage to the ones who give us flowers or cupcakes or buttered bruises.

Communion is cannibalism (Nathalie Stephens) 

This is a rebirth. This kiss cleans out last year. And (their) touch of verbs against (my) nouns rebirths (my) solitude into springtime roots.

This unsleeping noiseless mouthing. This fanaticism desperate unbelieving. This two fingers sewn together tearing. (Stephens)

Pain is everywhere and it circles like napping dandelions blown up from toothless exhale. It is instrumental, strung up and stung by                                    by    swatted fingernails.

Your language gives me order. It says nothing of la douleur. (Stephens)

Oh agony of hips     weeds of gender pulled out and suddenly we are Picasso drips     we are gargantuous grips of desire. We are one and nothing and bits of what we once were and what we can be and what we hate and what and what.

And my thigh still grows a city. And you will not name it. (Stephens)

 

 

Scar.

gathering of rainbows

Follow the green bus. It has been gutted and gathers all those on the way toward (their version of) enlightenment.

What are you in search of?

Several years ago, I hunched back from weight of extensive backpack full of words and clothes over border into Amsterdam. Met poets and Germans and a beautiful psychology student and a doctor and a lesbian who told me she wanted to write like a writer. I fell in love with the foreign side of the moon. I was searching for closure from love in order to make room for more.

On an evening where everything has been watered from a full day of rain, I gaze into the eyes of a Poet who has just come back from several journeys. He tells me of his desire for lust in all forms and I mention to him my recent wanderings within various humans.

I want to gather myself into rainbows and find a hippie to love, I said. I want to burrow into the soil and smell the layers of earth that rarely get noticed. I want to be kissed by a human that understands all my silences……..

Recently, I re-opened several scars and tripped over some love and lust; there has been blood and guts that decorated many Brooklyn sidewalks. I have poem’d and performed on stages, unwrapping these layers of wounds in order to make sense of it all.

Now. I am thinking about a Canadian waterfall. I am contemplating a meditation of disemboweled behaviors and thoughts. I am considering a train ride to a French-speaking province. Or I just may root right here.

What are you in search of?

lust. (noun). [in sing] {in flesh}

masculinity is aromatic and may be derived from flattening or freshly-shaved haircut. it is sexy in the way that it touches and the way that it questions and the way that it challenges who can house it.

the rain outside is masculine. this coffee clinging to my sleepy insides is masculine. this stubborn fat on my belly is masculine. this lust is masculine. these fingertips this supper this stoop which is large enough for downward dog on is masculine. these breasts are masculine. this poem this book this critical thesis is masculine. she is masculine.

masculinity is rigid like teeth like concrete like complicated sentence structures like semi-colons. that umbrella is masculine. this museum is masculine. this song this ukulele this lipstick is masculine. this blood this menstruation this drip of turn-on is masculine. the sun staining shoulder blades is masculine. injuries are masculine and so are scars and so are tears. fear is masculine and so are questions and so is trauma and triggers and lace.

masculinity is multi-genre’d and gender’d. masculinity is sleep-deprived and well-traveled and an immigrant and a soldier. masculinity is hypo-allergetic and gritty and soft and can be used as a solvent. pens are masculine. pink feather boas and mothers and dresses are masculine. tulips and ferries are masculine. your kiss is masculine. this love is masculine. that music and magazine subscription is masculine and so is and so is and so is all this.

spirituality of kinetics

Dear Kazim,

The wind huddled against my back in the earliest hours of morning. I call this an encouragement to remain. Turbine tickles my spine. Tell me about your clarity.

You wrote: “I am a man with many arrows inside me, each pointing in a different direction.”

I wonder how many arrows exist in me. When the wind gets involved, does it dishonor the direction I should have gone in?

Kazim, there is so much lust in me lately. Might you call it impure if it exists for the moon or that banjo ukelele I plucked in tiny music shop off west fourth street? Even this wind raises my skin into an erect question mark. I am unsure of where I should go from here. However, what I do know is that I do not need a home in order to birth these words. A wise human recently reminded me that spaces exist all over this earth to hug me into another sentence or stanza.

There is so much music surrounding me: Howl of wind. Percussion from moon beating against my hazel. You in my hands with your words and hunger– not for food but for more prayer.

Over in the midwest, two lovers say goodnight to each other as they split into different time zones. On the east, a poet contemplates a jump from unstable home toward collapsible tent. All of this is just another page marked as necessary. As you find your way through hunger, I find mine through displacement.

 

 

light(n)ing.

They can be dragged like a slur in the air. These mythical bugs of neon. Out of focus kisses of electricity. One night, she rummaged back against blades of grass, while Whitman watched and so did everyone else in this Brooklyn park. These clouds are jam-like, she said. Makes me hunger for knives and seeds. A summer is wrapped up in fumes of question marks and genetics ground up into foreplay. Some bodies are hairy, while others grow bulbs of light from abdomen. These insects are soft-bodied and brown and how many evenings until you learn the various shades of white that can occur on the other side of bones. Then, she speaks about a bloodied staircase and two bats swoop down and music rests inside padded coffin beside you but amidst all this lust, yellow, green, red waves of light.

light can be turned on just like a body

There is no sound to it. Fingers pinch handle of light or body and illumination arrives. This is on. There is stimulation of sight as visibility fills in the cracks of dark. When hands learn the hips of another, shadows scatter and suddenly the entire earth is turned on. Electric. Decorative. Emotional. The tic of seizure’d fingers carve out the light from a body. The twist of charged particles. Thrill of power lines replace veins. Shock. Accumulation of hours from charging. Correspondance of wattage. Jolt of fire from  bulb or belly or breastbone or behind earlobe. Choice of dim or scream. Push of color from mood or bruise. Blur of contour. Murky twists shaped into wall from hoisted bones. Call this lamp or sex. Name it fluorescent or foreplay. It is track lighting; it is excessive and blind. This is sun; this is lava; this is the reflection of your tongue against the puddle of my throat. This is radioactive; this is neon and plasma; this is the composition of carbon … of gleam … of moon … of torched anatomy.