dxpoetics . We write words backwards

We've moved. Oops.

2005-09-06T17:56:00.000-07:00

Yeah, so I've relocated my blog to another server where I can do things like make it interesting and all that.

And this is where you can find my new poems. And yes, I've updated the link; my new design had broken it, but all is well again.

Dan (Always getting somewhere.)

Taking

2005-06-10T21:28:00.000-07:00

I feel like robbing
you of something that
you've forgotten to
appreciate
for far too long;
after all,
spit and polish don't
hum and spin like
rubber melting to pavement.

You'll notice that
edifice missing, I wager,
a few years from now.

But, of course, I've
actually got my hands
on the
steering wheel.

Rhapsody in Seven Colours

2005-06-09T14:16:00.000-07:00

(Red)

I want
you to say my name
and roll it on your
tongue like
a foreign phrase
now that I've
changed it a little;
if only to
remind yourself
of that night when
everything was perfect,
you were perfect,
I was perfect.
Fashion it, if you will,
like a merry little
tune you're afraid
to sing:
you might be
too happy.

(Blue)

I want
you to write
me a poem like jazz
and whisper it
into my ear
when I'm too pedantic,
or afraid to tell
you things that
I should.
There are words we
aren't able to
ratiocinate
and analyze,
but they're the dye
of our mornings, and
the stained glass
of our
goodbye goodnight godspeed.
You should dip
quill and spread
ink.
You should
tell it like it
is.

(Yellow)

I want
you to just
go for it
dammit! (Forgive the
strong words at
the slightest provocation.)
To sprint like if
you push that extra
seven feet the colours
will split seamlike and
begin spilling into your heart:
but then the fearful
consequence of
such things
involves getting what
you want,
and we all know
your rationalize your
desires as
abhorant.
You find ways to
thwart them,
to cut down trees
and build a hermitage,
but your landscape
is all stumps and
sloughage.

(Green)

I want
you to cast your
boughs to heaven and
thank
God
for wrapping your
heart in chains and
tossing you into an
ocean,
because when he gave
you gills
he meant it.
But then, I'm mixing
the metaphors like a
strong drink:
your logic can weave
them as fibrous
living threads into
a bag to carry
regrets.
Lift your boughs to
heaven and thank
God for that, then:
you still have
something
to heave over your
shoulder and
get someplace.

(Cyan)

I want
you to forget
about how the miserly
souls animadvert
simply because they've
never reached out
and grabbed
something
to clutch to the chest
and breath life into:
the facts
still the facts,
lies, damned lies,
statistics,
balances,
weights,
none of which being
alive will ever
submit to.
The subjugation
of freedom beneath
a footstool
of ambient data
speaks
more to your
state of mind than
reality:
I beg of you,
just get what you
want
despite what you
know.

(Orange)

I want
you.
Truth be told,
I want to run a
finger down your back,
shiver,
spine,
glory,
something,
something,
anything!
There - it's all about
me about you
about being
approximately
in love
with a lovely
shape
that takes my
mind and shakes
it every so often:
I keep waiting
front-of-queue.

(Violet)

I want
you to remember
playing Titanic on
a concrete ship
piered for good
in pavement feet from
the waters edge:
is that what you're after?
Something about the way
God sent a
rhapsody
in seven colours
and we thought
"Maybe he's trying to
tell somebody something."
Maybe it's me:
maybe it's you:
maybe it's that no flood
will again overtake
the mountains.
Ironic then,
how your water
has engulfed
my world.

Somewhere Inbetween Here and There

2005-06-07T17:05:00.000-07:00

If I remember correctly,
we've done this before
and suffered
through the same
silence,

only, this corpse
is speaking out of
turn:

heaven is where you
whisper in another's ear:

hell is when you
store the words
for a better
hour.

Fingerprint

2005-06-05T19:06:00.000-07:00

There she is
almost
within reach;
if I were
to strech out
an arm
and a finger
I could
touch her.

But I don't -
I never
do -
the memories
of stretching
slowly and
enfolding
her
are strangely
warped with
time -
I forget her
fingerprint
and its
ridges and
valleys,
but not what
it was
to skip like a
silverfish
from
breaker to
breaker.

Even then I
never
knew what
to expect -
is that why
I loved her?
(Partly: it
might be.)

The puzzle.
But then, if I
would bridge
these few feet
and touch your
shoulder,
my fingerprint
would linger
there for
days.

That much I
know. See?
I've figured
out a
few things.

Opportune

2005-06-05T19:05:00.000-07:00

If I wait
for the
opportune
moment,
what will
I find
lef over
for
me then?

If I wait,
will I
see that
timing is
only for the
damned?

Distance

2005-06-05T19:04:00.000-07:00

What is it that
you want?
What's keeping
you from it?

No, not the thing
itself.
Not that.

Orbital

2005-06-04T20:34:00.000-07:00

Tonight became a quick
tour of the moon's dark side:
the ink of which is
now illumination
upon return -
that this inconsistant
revolution is
all I can ever count on
with you -
that is to say,
I've missed how you
never make up
your mind:
light or dark?

Yet, you still orbit
the same planet
in the same circles -
you beautiful
orbital being.

How you still
sway my heart like
tides.

Ochre

2005-06-03T14:57:00.000-07:00

I passed by
a hillside wrapped
in a gauze of ochre
blooms, a gash
not quite flame -

once, it seemed,
a brilliant soul
had been fastened to
the earth,
reaching upward
to stroke
seedlings to
strange colours.

I have never seen such
flowers, except
when I dream
of cold sleep,
and they are
mine.

Query

2005-05-30T18:04:00.000-07:00

Let me ask you,
"when did your heart
grow blunted?"
(What will you say?)
You have
twisted
the knife thrice
and your hand
is yet on its
hilt -

would you, two
thousand years ago,
have also given
her to Moloch?

A Cold Dream of Death

2005-05-10T20:18:00.000-07:00

I feel weak in some deep
place, now
that the harvester
no longer stills
his hand -

this evasion takes
its toll,
to the weakening
of joints,
of marrow -

when I sleep,
I deam a cold
dream of
death.

Anniversary

2005-05-10T20:13:00.000-07:00

The world is a strange
place, good and evil
mixing like a recipe
made difficult to decipher.

It is true, then
that this half-baked
scheme broke an
egg or two,

and I've become
both devil and messiah
in the
aftermath.

Gravity

2005-05-01T20:30:00.000-07:00

I didn't recover
flight after
my last
brilliant
attempt -

nor will I,
if that's
the meaning
of this
word,
"free".

There are things
meant to bind
ones feet
to the ground -

this cage is
so beautiful,
so full
of gravity.

Patriarch

2005-05-01T20:14:00.000-07:00

You had woven a
strong cord
in the beginning
years,
in words and gestures
you can't name or
recall now,
curiously.

Such a small thing
to fray that
once-eternal braid -
have you noticed
that?

A dance. Not so much
a rope.
When did you
decide this bootfall
choreography?

Such a loud misstep
to ruin that
once-untarnished
score.

A play, perhaps?
You should have used
your arms.
Instead, you usurped
another's lines.

Ironic then, that to
crush my heel meant to
crush another's heart.

Maybe no one told you
about bricklaying
(it's much like braiding,
dancing, and acting).
Maybe no one
explained about
foundations.

Lovesong

2005-05-01T20:06:00.000-07:00

Tonight, half-phrased
apologies bubble to
my lips like blood
from spent lungs -
I've dealt with the lost
limb, and compensated
where you grow gangrenous -
but I feel an itch
there, sometimes,
in that extremity I
no longer posess -
it aches like a stormfront
when passing familiarity
strikes -
ergo, my apology, my
agony, my tragedy,
my lost function -
if I act like a lover,
you must forgive me.

The muscles are still
trained
to hold you.

Expanse

2005-05-01T20:02:00.000-07:00

This world is too grand
for me - too beautiful.
I am swallowed by its
hyperbole,
whole.

The words I capture it
with are frail
compared with
my own duotone patch
of sky
and earth underfoot.

You, for instance:
I'll be quiet
now.

The World is Not a Cold Dead Place

2005-04-28T19:15:00.000-07:00

The world is the
small of your back,
the curve of your lips,
the dark monolith
of your eyes.

The world is
your breath against
my neck,
your fingers laced
in mine,
a wink.

The world is not
a cold dead place,
not anymore.

Wound

2005-04-28T18:59:00.000-07:00

I will set the bones
against my palm,
hear the joints snap
back into place -
knit your skin to its
former glory,
let my fingers wield
the needle and thread
like a
fine instrument -

until you a whole,
and wholly mine.

Form

2005-04-26T18:52:00.000-07:00

Somehow, the days are
becoming longer -
we are shadows cast farther
than ever,
building stretching
into dawn
from dusk -
we're insubstatial
that way.

But in yesterday's suns
we fell
at cross-points -
something substantial
taking form.

We don't walk
there anymore.

Ripples

2005-04-23T21:18:00.000-07:00

With those morose waves
lapping at my feet,
I listened to a low
groaning stretched
over the water -

you entered me like
the great ships enter
the harbour,

majestically soot-covered,
limping as only a hull
can limp.

But you invaded like
a spy, also:
you know all my
channels;

you move silently
now,
quickly now,

diving past the bastard
skeletons of
loves past.

I feel the ripples
at my feet.

You are
nearby.

Litter

2005-04-21T20:59:00.000-07:00

I recovered my balance this
evening, after so long
precariously
teetering
on the brink of
something -
and when you asked
me why the new tone
struck my voice,
I answered in various
littered phrases.
None of them valuable,
or quite true.

Spine

2005-04-18T18:27:00.000-07:00

At eyeclose of daylight,
I escaped to an equatorial
twilight - my
perpetual balance.

You followed not so long
after,
with the
bacteria
ravaging your
spine.

Axis tilt.

Its earth grinding
legion freshly-minted
glaciers.

Rhetoric

2005-04-18T18:26:00.000-07:00

Your new heresies
rot near the breastbone,

where it
all holds together.
A curse
underneath the skin,
settling -

you can go to hell,
all of you.

Homeland

2005-04-11T18:32:00.000-07:00

Do you ever wonder
about the enclave
rent, all
torn assunder
in the final
minutes?

There exists a
mystery in it,
I think,
when we crawl
back into the
warm soil

and imagine
the its perdurable
security.

Enclave

2005-04-03T21:09:00.000-07:00

Last night
she noticed the
veil cross over my
eyes,
eclipsed in
the first water
of my enchantment
with you -

she knew my
polestar, then,
and pointed me
to the sky.

Wolf

2005-03-29T18:52:00.000-08:00

Sang, ringing, the passion
dripping red about my fingers,
I am a muzzle met
close to belly -
oh, you
thrash
in songs all screaming
affirmations,
tinctured web
between two twins -
they join combat,
the snap
of jaws like
thunder in your ear -
oh, you know
these frenzied wounds
will drain you
before morning -
you know
it streamed, sang,
bubbled at my lips -
the madness
met with madness,
tooth to bone.

Paralipsis

2005-03-29T18:37:00.000-08:00

Not to mention your
paralipsis;
not to whisper your
name unaware;
not your vibrato
parkinson fingers;
not our tangled
digits;
not a line from
a lovesong written when
not a moment rang
bitter in its passing;

not a last convention
before lapsing eyelids;
not a kiss in the garden,
Judas.

Thirty-One

2005-03-29T18:24:00.000-08:00

Scant forlorn morning, I
remember it forcefully,
desert dawning
on once oasis ozone;
a cynosure recollected
starfield lying unattended,
sphering at half-turns;
love, your bellwether
dunes all huddled at
the skyline;
wraith - I remember it
unawares,
a first blush of
rosepetals round your eyelids;
a cloistered word:
consumed, I christen you
Polaris.

Thirty

2005-03-28T17:12:00.000-08:00

She smoulders, struck
in a lighning second -
sputtering sabbath candles
resurrected -

yesterhour's ice turns,
all aflame, crackling
from breast to horn,
silt to breakers -

and as she vainly
tears the coals out of
her mouth,

her water turns to
steam -
all the air's a mirro -
and love, it's
still alive.

Twenty-Nine

2005-03-27T20:55:00.000-08:00

Put your hand on my side -
I didn't escape wounding
when I entered the tomb -
you know this
horribly,
how it wraps
around, how it fits
your sharp palm
so well,
you hand still
dripping with blood
and water.

Look into my eyes -
the last vision I knew
before expiration:
your murderous
intent -
do you remember when
you frowned and
gathered darkness
round your head?

Hold my hand,
my holy hand -
you know these marks
as aching muscle,
a hammer,
thirty silver witnesses -

you are fithy rich,
beyond your wildest
nightmares.

Twenty-Eight

2005-03-26T05:02:00.000-08:00

Raise a glass, darling,
for an aniversary -
it seems like ten minutes
ago that my bones froze
together on a winter
laneway, and you filled
me to the brim with
sadness.

We were so splendid, so
beautiful - I say it wrapped
not in metaphor but in
the cloth of half-smiles
and "do you remember" -
the best of which are
not to be forgotten,
the worst of which are
still better than this
life without you.

We were short-lived,
and questions remain, like:
how can a few months bend
me backwards and change my
life's direction? Now,
I look for you in the faces
of strangers. Now,
I dream of a kiss, a familiar
never-tasted pleasure.

Now, I raise my glass
for the anniversary -
it seems like ten minutes
till reciprocation.

Twenty-Seven

2005-03-25T17:43:00.000-08:00

Anna's ghost floats above the trees,
her notes all light and happy
to be free -
how she live a lead-boot life,
all flames and rending things in half,
but now
she is a brass reed and
silky clouds touching lips
and beaches like the tongue
of all things eternal,
whirling somewhere
in jazz moments,

Anna's ghost like a whirlwind
and a silent theme,
you.

Twenty-Six

2005-03-24T17:36:00.000-08:00

In the silent
morning of a new
day, he
ripped your wires
from his head and
started downsteam,
south to a
place he
hadn't known
to hear of.

In the silent evening,
you went deaf
and couldn't tell,
rubbing an itch
somewhere
at your scalp.

Twenty-Five

2005-03-23T14:55:00.000-08:00

Spring rolls past
a winter wall,
a cocktail party
in the closet
overflowing into
a backyard,

the wall fading
with each celsian
death knell
tolling,

singing about how
it's falling
like an autumn
deciduous,

all summer's preludes
in my
ears.

Twenty-Four

2005-03-22T11:59:00.000-08:00

Today is yesterday
in starlight's vernacular,
but then
they have a billion
fingers.

They say
it won't be
long
before we
get there.

Twenty-Three

2005-03-21T16:21:00.000-08:00

Taste the white hand,
their braided muscles,
the channels blue beneath.
Brine and bitterness.

The whiteness speaks of your breath
building cities
with the blue Earth
stored in your lungs,
an alphabet of brick and mortar.

Taste the white hands,
the musk, the madness,
where your horizon touches them
whiteness to whiteness,

to red murder. Bodies below
the walls.
Faces caked with
mortar. Concrete coffins.

There is still blood
between my fingers.

Ba'al

2005-03-21T16:16:00.000-08:00

When Ba'al fell,
flacid arns in
pieces to one
side,

cameras caught
terror in the
eyes of gilded
worshippers -

his holy asbestos in
the lungs,
his fatted calf torn
quickly
from their throats -

but when they cough
blood and it
bubbles at the scalpel,
no Elijah mocks
the frosty
sacrifice.

No one scoffs while
they plant their money
trees in groves.

Twenty-Two

2005-03-20T11:20:00.000-08:00

We are at this
corner -
backs to eachother
as if to say
something about
ignorance.

You remember bliss,
don't you?

Twenty-One

2005-03-19T20:45:00.000-08:00

He still loves her
like a good scotch,
neat,
how she takes the
shape of chairs and
disappears from sight,
almost.

She still loves him
like a good headache,
temples
throbbing with some
memory or other of
how it feels to feel
alive.

They still love. Is
that so difficult to
see?
They still pick signals
from the air and read
them aloud. They still
cry.

Twenty

2005-03-18T19:51:00.000-08:00

I picked pebbles
from the beach that
evening,

and I placed
them on my
tongue.

I am learning
to speak your
name

without
stumbling.

Nineteen

2005-03-17T12:34:00.000-08:00

At twelve I
filtered back in,
the cold all settled
on my back.
A fire crackled
welcome.
I took off
a coat.

I sat for a while
and stared
into the flames.
They look a
bit like
February.

Eighteen

2005-03-16T14:41:00.000-08:00

Darling,
my mind is filled
with ultaviolet
rainbows -

there is something
wrong with me.

I love the
muscles in your arms,

the way you
smell.

There are nights
I would
trade
everything

to push the
pieces back
into place.

Darling,
my mind is filled
with electrons:
impossible
to predict.

Love, there
is something wrong with me.

Rain

2005-03-15T19:32:00.000-08:00

Spring is walking
a figure-eight
around last
season's corpse -

raindancing
to wash away
the trace -

soon,
a crocus.

Seventeen

2005-03-15T16:25:00.000-08:00

Each spoke
tells
a different
story;

the
rattle and
hum
is a
song.

Potholes.
Speedbumps.

Sixteen

2005-03-14T10:27:00.000-08:00

After champagne,
after eyes across the matress
she finished the
last line.

After the tension,
after brimming evening
spilled
and I wiped it
from her cheek,
she wrote the
last word.

After fondness,
after winter set in
and I ground
protesting snow
beneath my boot,
she read the last
sentence.

After me,
she closed
the cover.

Fifteen

2005-03-13T05:36:00.000-08:00

I willed this land
Atlantis once,
island rising
above chaos,

but yesterday I
noticed a half-
footprint
on the beach,

and denied the thought -
not now, not
now!

But it occured
in a dream that
you were there -
saying
something

about being alone.

It was a good Friday.

Fortnight

2005-03-12T11:50:00.000-08:00

Here, let me
light the candle.

Do you like the bread?
I've heard
from seven different
people that
the bread's amazing.

Try the Bordeaux.
I swear you'll like it.

I got you something.

Yeah, it's a
strange thing to
celebrate.

Thirteen

2005-03-12T11:44:00.000-08:00

There was some
strange tension in
the air last evening,
when a bell sounded
and
I flatlined -

if intuition were
an animal,
I have caged
the little
sucker up
and thrown the
key down someone's
storm sewer -

I can't stand plumbing
divergent paths
and analyzing
data -

there's a plane leaving
for
British Columbia
in the morning -

I may just use
this damn slip
of paper.

Twelve

2005-03-10T15:36:00.000-08:00

The chains are
still in my wrists
at awkward
angles -

I sometimes spend
oblique evenings,
keeping even
keel,
polishing
the ballast -

but last night
a ghost was born
to trawl the psalms -
I felt an anklet
slip.

Bordeaux

2005-03-09T16:15:00.000-08:00

One august evening
we uncorked that
something
spoken sideways
always -

a lulled
collective conversation -
fallen fruit -

bitter at the
boot -

a vile Frenchman
wrinkled his nose
and
passed across
the street.

Eleven

2005-03-09T14:04:00.000-08:00

Dear Lord, I've
buried the love of my
life
under pinecones
and dead grass.

We used to pick
pebbles from our
soles
there.

We climbed the
spreading maple
trees.

Dear Lord, I
buried her on
an august evening;
I buried her
beside her grandfather.

Ten

2005-03-07T19:27:00.000-08:00

Some things I can't write -
sentences
I used too freely.

I'll grin, now, I think,
and tell you
about how a
good double scotch
covers their
multitude.

Surgeons

2005-03-07T18:27:00.000-08:00

With apologies to the original author, and for some reason to Jimmy Eat World.

They've all turned in
their badges to
become surgeons,
self-taught doctors -

trembling fingers
straining at the corpse,
plotting diagnoses
between warm
flesh and
an almost-beating
heart.

The merciless probing.
The determined answers.
The why.

Bloody to the elbow -
butchers.

Rigor

2005-03-07T18:02:00.000-08:00

A certain stiffness
to the muscle -
out of practice,

and stone sets
in where
plankton and
krill
moved to
flowing electrons -

a strain at plowing,
where a fossil
strikes the
blade.

Cusp

2005-03-07T18:00:00.000-08:00

Clouds have clapped their
hands over the sun's
mouth,
but a south wind
labours at the plow -

it will till snow
under and
plant a seed
of spring -

it will deny
the months
ahead:

the cusp.

Nine

2005-03-07T16:46:00.000-08:00

Over the Nile,
they carred a kingly
body to its grave,
wrapped in a
splendor
reserved for
immortality.

There was Annubis,
a promise in
his hand,
a milky ways
away
through bullrushes.

Ra came,
three stars on his
belt.

Above the
threesquare structure,
the brightest star
flickered
into view.

Eight

2005-03-06T15:50:00.000-08:00

And for a brevity,
Babel was still
cool in the morning -

but the thought fell
like a tonne of cut stone -

I no longer understand
your language.

Seven

2005-03-05T18:55:00.000-08:00

This is a solemn
aniversary:

the words are boiling
in my stomach;
they supernova,
strike paper,
form sentences:

it's been a week since
snow protested
our passage;
words boiled
in your head and
flared out into the
darkness,
forming a sentence;

I live with the
bars in that
window.

Six

2005-03-05T16:32:00.000-08:00

Let me tell you
a story about when
I was ten years old -
when the happiest
times in my existance
were spent alone,
building something
or reading
something someone
else
had built.

I was ten, kicking
a pillow
around with my
feet,
reading Hardy Boys
and wondering
idly if maybe
this one would have a different
ending than the
last thirty.
Time passed as if
it wasn't, because my
conception of it hadn't
yet hardened
like stone in my
gut.

I was ten, damming
the stream behind
those subdivisions,
digging my
fingers into
the cold, pebbly
dirt;
piling handfull
on handfull in
rapid succession,
till the pressure
behind
it built to
the point
I needed a shovel.
But I never
brought
a shovel.

I was ten,
walking through
that old
farmhouse
like I had ghostly
friend.
Punching holes
in the slat-and-plaster
just to prove
the thing was dead.
I didn't have
any friends, then,
ghostly or not,
in old farmhouses
or the warm walls
sleeping
down the street.

I was ten, picking
wild peppermint
to make tea,
walking as
far as I dared
into the woods
before running back
to the
house for
a hot meal.
But I sat thinking
about the first
farmers to
till the
soil,
break it open
for shacks
and later
houses.

I am ten,
or I am twenty-three.
Still an optimist,
because some
movie told
me it always works out.
Still wondering if
someone's going
to write a Hardy Boy
book that ends with Frank
dying.
Still building dams
till a poem
bursts over.
Still looking in haunted
houses for a friend.

Five

2005-03-04T20:27:00.000-08:00

There's a tree
centred on desert,
its branches naked in
the earth -

leaves in dirt,
springtime and pebbles -
small sharp things,
tender.

There's a deer
centred on a tree,
its atlers
caught in the roots
of a marvelous
idea -

roots buried in the
skyline
and in the stars
and skyline again.

Crisp

2005-03-03T20:30:00.000-08:00

Words are dry things,
crisp,
leaves -
the curled edges
drip ashes -

the collected ashes.

I try to pick
letters out -
form sentences.

I see the ashes under
your eyes.

I forget how they
all fit together.

Four

2005-03-03T13:52:00.000-08:00

Jostling elbow-ends -
there are so many people
crowding here - come to gaze,
gawk, ask the whys, the whens,
the wheres -
to touch the smooth
stone, her new-found skin.

The artist stands
by idly,
chisel in hand.

The art is in the answer,
and vice
versa:
her empty eyes.

Misplace

2005-03-02T21:19:00.000-08:00

Last night, when
I woke up screaming
your name,

they asked me who
you were.

I told them
all I remembered.
I fished my wallet
from a pocket.
Oh yes, that's
who I am.

They know your story,
and the name
I lost.

Three

2005-03-02T18:22:00.000-08:00

Life is a road, and the road more magician than physician. The destination seems within reach, doesn't it?

Light at tunnel's end,
great charlatan -
pulled like
a rabbit from the womb -
the soft enclosure -
the liquid -

out of body and
floating -
twice in a lifetime,
and your light
beckons

with a grey
finger.

Cobble

2005-03-02T17:45:00.000-08:00

For each stone,
an empty socket somewhere;
a road turned
blind.

A wall built
in the sight of itself,
eyes turned inward -

Oh, Iris, how we
loved you,
stumbling suddenly
in a blank
space.

Two

2005-02-28T17:33:00.000-08:00

When I think
of this trapped in amber,
you are against my fingertips
again,
the stone of your breath
whispering in the walls,
where the walls curve
in on themselves.

You were soft,
when I reaped salt
strewn in valleys.
When I traced tongue and
groove -
how it all fit together.

When I dig, now,
red twilight, yellow amber,
I remember how
you hardened
into stone.
I remember that
expression.

Retriever

2005-02-28T14:18:00.000-08:00

That sarcastic grin,
worlds turning on an
axis;
you speak in continents
and oceans,
as if I were a
cartographer;
you speak in boomerangs
and well-trained dogs.

Whirlwind. Retriever.
It's all coming
back to me now.

Facedown

2005-02-28T08:56:00.000-08:00

Last night I wracked
my body with the breath
of prayer -

are you lonely today?
I thought you might be,
and sent you strength.

This morning I woke
with your lips on mine,
till you slipped sideways
and disappeared.

Are you substantive today?
I hope you are -
here, have my body.

This afternoon, I will
eat oxygen's bread and
blow it to the sky.

I will fold my hands around
you name,
close my eyes
over your tears,
and walk that figure eight
the thousandth time.

Pebble

2005-02-27T19:14:00.000-08:00

I inter these things
to a pocket:
pebbles.
A weight gladly carried
in uetero.

Smooth to the palm
like melting ice,
inert like electrons.

Maybe I will mortar
them together,
build a wall -
push prayers into
its fault lines.
Wail.

Maybe I will write
a song
to their singsong
motions.

Click.
Leaves - waterfront.
Clack.
Rainbow.
Click.
Eyes. Just eyes.
Click.
Subway stations.
Clack.

Maybe I will mortar
them together,
build a wall -
stand on it with you.
Talk about
traffic lights.

Existant

2005-02-27T04:53:00.000-08:00

Things end - they do. And when it happens, I always wonder - is there a place the good things are kept? Are we there?

Somewhere, they keep
good things at their
breathtaking heights -
before gravity,
entropy.

Somewhere, there's an idea
big enough for this city -
to contain it,
to circle round its walls
and travel it's
boulevards.

Somewhere, I am meeting you
again,
and that glinting desire
is in your eyes:
a good idea -
a fair thought.

Somewhere, I circle
round its walls.

Somewhere, I hold
you tightly.

Caspian

2005-02-26T21:42:00.000-08:00

Caspian, I love you.
Your warm waters.
Crests. Troughs.
I am in uetero, in you.

Caspian, receding.
Earth swallows whole,
reveals your secrets.

Caspian, disappearing.
I love you.
Your sand between
my fingers.

Caspian, damn you.
I love you.
Your bitter salt
in my lungs.
My sand between
my fingers.

Caspian, I love you.
Your sand between
my teeth.

Ascendant

2005-02-25T18:46:00.000-08:00

When you were young
you were the queen
of wildflowers,
dew,
riverbeds -

against your sepulcher
pallor reigns,
iris noon closed
tightly,

a white-clenched fist
wet with honeysuckle.

Above, a battle,
a void,
a shiftless sky
of stone.

Tributary

2005-02-25T18:39:00.000-08:00

I wouldn't be so bold as to tell you what you're reading, except that some sabbath candles are torn from the throat. But some reach down to the wax and extinguish before you notice.

A cloud's lips
brushed your cheek
as you slipped above
the mountains,
wound tightly in a
ball of earth,
your twilight.

Goodbye, small
thing I have not
forgotten,
into the wide unknow -
flow,
like a tributary.

Circular

2005-02-25T18:30:00.000-08:00

I've always loved stars; watching them revolve against infernal darkness; they remind me of youth. And like youth against impending adult noonday, they never quite disappear. They're in the back of the earth's mind, waiting to be born again, perfect again.

Oh turrets of this eternal age,
your stones diamond-coated
and all glittering under the spotless morning -
the currency of light
is at our fingertips -
sparks dance like lightning
from ridge to trough
and back again -
children escape wild forest
in comet-trails
as wildly as the untended groves -
the world is a sandbox!
come revel in it!
and to the astronomer
training instruments skyward -
and to the carpenter,
hands like sandpaper -
and to the mother
free of thorn and pain at last:
we are full circle children -
we are the grain of the universe -
we are stars.

Monolith

2005-02-25T18:20:00.000-08:00

These poems were written in a series of several hours; I've included them all under the same heading, as they all relate to eachother. Somehow.

1.

I have a road for you
built somehow into a blue curve,
into an axis and back;
a roughness underfoot
of cobbles
and a wall built northward;
you run fingers
over mortar,
the textured skyline,
and wonder at my
alphabet of stone.

2.

I sleep, bedclothes
over my head. Who knows
what lingers in the chimney?

It isn't me I see in
mirrors, not my reflection
at night.

The house creaks, sometimes.
Treefingers. Werewolves.

I am a bottled scream, sometimes.
Sometimes you hold me
and there are no shadows.

3.

Your breath paints whiteness
on the air's mirror,
air all marble in lungfulls;
you still live,
rope around your ankles,
kindling, fuel.

These matches,
these stones in my
pockets.

4.

You, gypsy.
This is your city,
my finest work.
Among the towers
aspiring to granduer.
Among my monuments
all smooth granite.
Among palaces.

You, gypsy.
This is a city planned
as God might.
Open fields. Wildflowers.
Aspens scraping the sky.

5.

The antenna directed skywards,
my heart, wireless;
my soul streaming. You
are mazed in stars -
seven million sabbath candles,
you exist
certainly:

choose a galaxy, root
in its bricks and
build your temple:
starlight or eruption,
wave after supernova,

till I too
receive a signal.
Till I rest, and all
is good.

6.

Pass through the black
door, past
star-studded curtains
beyond, veil-like;

great rings
about your neck,
glaciers flowing,
your monolith pupils
obsidian -

whose darkness?
Reflection?
The black door?
Space passing
through?

7.

On your ice fields,
sunlight burns beneath
my sacreligious leather,
my temporary impressions -

I am slowly going blind,
light pockets once
hunched
with stones -

cruel, cruel beautiful
light -
even if
snow-sparrows left
picking up the pebbles -

my fingers -
my eyes!

Coin

2005-02-25T18:17:00.000-08:00

I spend these days breathing minutes,
inhaling, exhaling, until the sum
of all hours is completed,
buried in a sigh, interred;
there is too much oxygen in a day,
too many trees
to waste their atmosphere
merely existing -
but each minute marks also
a moneychanger's gold-flecked palms,
as the sum of these hours
becomes the coin of my days.

Another Day

2005-02-03T19:17:00.000-08:00

This is the autistic
pattern that caught you
so young, so young.
How, how, how,
sickness,
disease,
habit,
these things.

Can you speak
underwater?
Can you breath
beneath breakers?
Is there foam
in your lungs?

This is the mute
sunshine feeling
much like darkness,
so cold, so cold.
A heartbeat is not alway
a heartbeat.
Sometimes,
at time bomb.

Can you run with
broken legs?
Can you grab a future with
cracked forearms?
Can you
trust?

This is the sand you
swallow.
This is the sand between
your teeth.
This is an unending
thirst:

I know. Your sand is
also in my throat.

Spoken

2005-01-31T20:23:00.000-08:00

You're static,
cacophony,
difficult interpretations:
you're cracked,
backwards,
facts and fiction
and fairytales and
horror:
you're nightmares,
clinging worry,
screams,
and when I hold you
I become this thing:
all spine, all ribs,
all shades,
all reading
in the shadows
of the spoken.

Words

2005-01-31T20:18:00.000-08:00

Oh my love, my words,
my pen, paper, pixels,
I own you
and you are mine:

I desire you, I create you,
I dissolve myself
in your rivers.

We are a solitary thing,
one and the same,
two and different,
always together,

I have written you
for comfort and for a lash
and for eternity:

God has lifted you from
my lips, and set you
in the heavens.

Four

2005-01-31T20:06:00.000-08:00

This leaves me breathless
to carve ice and give it form,
and bless winter.

It left me breathless once
to see mountains pooled
in cloud and ice
that never melts.

A little cloud
escapes me now.
Beads of water
on your neck.

We are no mountain.

Poles

2005-01-31T19:52:00.000-08:00

I am suspended
between poles
and doubting.
Excuse me.
Let me be a seer,
read the future,
change it,
let it go.
Let me be a bricklayer,
build the future,
set its cornerstones,
let it rise.
Let me be a magician,
make the future disappear,
make the moment scintillate,
let it glimmer.
Above all, let me be a poet,
let me choose words,
hard words for hard times,
soft words for yesterday,
make the future bend backwards
and in on itself in figure-eights,
make the moment stretch a lifetime
and string together words like chains,
build, see, hide, and write it all down
between the poles of
doubt, belief, and
these successive
years.

An Explaination.

2005-01-18T16:45:00.000-08:00

Following this post are several others that need, I think, some small explaination. Not due to their content, really, but the form they've been written in.

I love the Japanese form of poetry known as Haiku: small, breathless poems expressed in lines of fixed syllables. While Western verse (at least until relatively recently) did something similar, Western verse forms have the added trope of rhythm and usually rhyme, something haiku doesn't really have the length to express. Any rhythm a haiku has is infused by the author alone, not that particular form of poetry.

Another interesting thing is that pure haiku tends to gravitate toward natural themes, whether by instinct, or by some mistaken Western "zen" ideal. A great deal of haiku uses nature as a symbol, or merely revels in nature as nature.

It ocurred to me (in a dream, as they would say in ancient times) that both syllable counts (5 and 7) were prime numbers. I really haven't a clue why this is, but it is. And since 3, 5, and 7 are practically the only pairing of three primes separated by only two whole numbers from eachother (3 + 2 = 5 + 2 = 7), why not invent a form similar to haiku, one that has five lines, one of 7, two of 5, and two of 7, totalling five lines (another prime)?

It also seemed right that this form be dedicated to technology, considering how important primes are to cryptography. What do I think of when I think of technology, information technology specifically? Wire. So I combined the words "wire" and "haiku" to create the moniker Waiku.

You may think it's a little hokey, or a perhaps all in very bad taste, but it's quite fun. For all we know, haiku itself began as an excersize to teach students of poetry to be concise. And maybe the first haiku was about the wheel, or forging and twisting katanas. Who knows.

Oh, and just because I made up the form doesn't mean I don't suck at it. I'm still a learner myself.

Waiku: I Am Large

2005-01-18T16:44:00.000-08:00

I am large
beyond all wild thought.
I grow in milliseconds,
in megaleaps, beyond
libraries.

Waiku: A New Page

2005-01-18T16:43:00.000-08:00

A new page;
a whiteness and glow;
a certain turn of language;
a deft stroke let fly
an arrow.

Waiku: We've Never

2005-01-18T16:42:00.000-08:00

We've never
spoken so often,
not since we flickered, wavered,
and burst mightily
into flame.

Waiku: Yesterday

2005-01-18T16:41:00.000-08:00

Yesterday
these halls went silent,
the endless hum, memory;
lit candles flicker
wearily.

Waiku: The First Wave

2005-01-18T16:40:00.000-08:00

The first wave
hits in binary:
overwhelming sensation
striking Normandy:
tsunami.

Waiku: There Are Trees

2005-01-18T16:39:00.000-08:00

There are trees
that stand naked, tall,
suggesting leaves once shaded
the birds that rest on
steel branches.

Backwards Music

2004-12-07T07:54:00.000-08:00

If informed by dark music
we dance, dirge forgotten:
what strange little men
deft tips
on a reed-harp.
Not a grave to be tread on,
not in this solemn second:
who smiles to show sadness?
Who bows as an insult?

If informed by bright tones,
a furrow, a frown:
what backward rejoicing,
black veils,
heathen candles.
Not a upward turned corner,
not if mirth was like money:
who grimaces naturally,
now?

Forbidden Words

2004-12-07T07:52:00.000-08:00

There are forbidden words
on my lips -
hanging like ripe pears,
like questions that are themselves asked -
a quirk, expression, delight
in absolution
at my lips -
I murmur them
between your shoulder blades;
they trail down
to moist soil -

forbidden words, and seeds,
and bark, and authored fruit.

Many and Few

2004-12-07T07:51:00.000-08:00

I was born, heavily,
with your name
rolling off my tongue,
no easy syllable
and syllable;
I was born of an idea,
for an idea,
to an idea,
the first of many;
born in pain
to bear pain,
also of many,
your name a breath,
a gasp:
the first,
the last
of so few.

Hum

2004-12-07T07:50:00.000-08:00

Snow explodes inside the hub,
to be packed again by passionate
forward motion: the bitter metal
against taste buds: the clamour and
rattle: the hum.
It is the cant of friction,
the hum.
It is solemn, protesting gravity.
The hum
of a good year and its winter.
The hum
and dance and
fingers on the wheel.

Boat

2004-12-07T07:49:00.000-08:00

A boat:
the broken brute forces
of sea and sun
crowd in,
as if to dine,
as if to go to tea
with the soluble soil
of a vagrant brute:
tread of a boot;
there they gather

in the boat,
the broken boat:
breakers on the rocks.

Eagle

2004-12-07T07:40:00.000-08:00

Ocular,
you rejoice in
a fleeting shadow
and feathers,
king of fowls -
alone,
crowned with field-mouse teeth,
drunk with blood -
aloft
on a willing updraft,
all wingspan and
sharp bits -
alive
with no memory
of the nest.

The Weight of a Billion Souls

2004-12-07T07:16:00.000-08:00

The four of you are worth
your weight in diamonds,
though really, no
material
is the price
of one hair, on fingernail -

so tell me: is it
worth the weight of
forty-seven countries:
a billion souls?

Variations on a Theme

2004-12-06T21:25:00.000-08:00

Clouds
without rain;
littered starlight,
footloose,
pooled in a gutter;
cement breath
around the ankles;
a sensation of drowning,
lungs afloat,
a minnow or adam's apple,
a night,
a coma,
a city.

Absence

2004-12-06T21:15:00.000-08:00

I am in your absence
changed:
flicking like
a broken streetlight.
The stench of death is
rank in my nostrils,
the motion of perpendicular
bodies altered
suddenly:

when something happens,
everything changes;
when nothing happens,
still, everything changes:

and in your absence
I am a peculiar novel,
a sleepless one,
written backwards beneath
siezured streetlamps,

words not of words
but of movement,
words that are forgotten:
a scent
that remains.

Jacob

2004-11-30T19:33:00.000-08:00

In the seven years preceeding,
the anticipation
was sparks between stones,
sparks extinguished
at the well,

but the first night,
you're invisible -

if you are there,
invisible.

2001.09.11

2004-11-26T07:10:00.000-08:00

If it was conceit
to reach to heaven,
ears popping, ascending,
now we know it --
the emperor's gunmetal
and mirror clothing,
imagination's bare construct
in shock and awe --
Jericho, not so long ago,
was the same
poem:

if there is distaster
in the city, has not
the Lord done it?

Utopia Aflame

2004-11-26T06:53:00.000-08:00

If this earth, born
in its gravitic chain-links,
labours tirelessly
at the traces,
who is man, damned man,
clapping burnished stones
together, to cast
its orbit like fishline?
The ember on your lips
soon bitter in the belly:
Utopia aflame.