June 2010
7 posts
With Reverence
because i stand at the mouth of this river tonight holding the red stones and still feel the land of the dirty glass of nescafe on my skin- place of galvanized roofs and car interiors that tried to destroy me. i’ve been that dirty mama laughing faith to the ground. to the rubbish heap, tomorrow never came and the sun gave up on us there. tired, weary it moved camp. small plastic...
Origin of the Renegade Women
welcome to the dumb day. these trees across this border town have all been raped. i lay on the cement face to the ground listening to a dry leaf scrape against a dry leaf. place where dogs get stuck together. no one is telling the children to look away- they say i’m cold for saying this. i say it’s dirt. that boy on the porch, don’t ask what he collects. the people i lived...
accessible dimensions through your smoke trail
“Shamaic initiation often takes the form of sickness- the cure is the discovery of vocation” - Daniel Pinchbeck Mezcal, the crying mask one with the great antlers we move the stones i write your song on my own skin manuscript of Sun low badger we danced it outside will not surrender overtones, implications to be taken to let go (did not return) they are afraid so refrain from...
Red Alchemy
here is the red medicine you made gifted me
see how this puzzle box makes it appear opaque? just an illusion- yet another of so many it burns the skin of some, perhaps a secret kind of test a tell tale sign of- something we shall learn of later i don’t dare let anyone hold the bottle when they peer into my apothecary they want to keep it ...
Lola and Her Husband at age 12, Out at Dungeness
Where I woke up for my 12 birthday. Horseflies, blackflies Pot of sea animals and booze that made chowder. - I conjured up sea water and bull whip tea Sand between our teethe. Fever showing me Spotted dancers Bears under the pine Shake of the gray blanket Collecting shotgun shells. Where my uncle came back to camp with a beautiful woman she sat quiet, hair over one side of her face. That...
Twin Dragon
They whispered behind the closed door. Some say they were angels some say demons. Because of the way they floated on clouds. They eventually shape shifted from dirt, from the filth, mouth full of lies, sting of the bird pepper and 1000 gutted perch.Transformed first into a Phoenix, then he into the mountain, her the sea. Often times they can be heard not seen. He a pack of wolves. She the...
the other side of the hours
Running out at night and into the boys camp that was hidden in the northern pines. They had matches, cigarettes and knives there. Secret things that we were not suppose to touch. Skin of a badger and elk.
January 2010
6 posts
Ilio
I was able
To reach the bottom
Of this river
And touch you
High temple stone
Made mosaic by the mosses
And you are most beautiful
Dark Holy Mother
Across Bog Bridge
Come to your dirty mamma I am your violetta That you look for In the half light and am wet and dripping with the canal camps muddy
My toes grip the red root of the black willow which call the honey bees Beeswax seals my lips and I say nothing of how you come to me in the quiet in the chaos
I woke up naked cool with only your new moon murmurs and fireflies to clothe me
shake me ...
Aime
1
Yes I know you from the Shadows of Mekambo And the small smell of Palm oil rubbed into the masks
Yet my khush balm leaves you Copper mouthed, tumult of Sensations, Thunder Side of the Camp
2
Cleaning out the fountain In the courtyard of that place We had on Rue Royale
Water lilies and papyrus had Over took it and I tore the roots apart Lifting out the magnolia petals that Fell in...
i give you
i give you ebb and flood fistfuls of harvest at the junction of seasons
lark in the tangled meadow shows your eyes hands a ridge gullies our bodies are painted we are ashborn and are returning back to magma back to stars
i will rest here and am close dove sunset a song there
dreaming
Votive umbilicus
3 tags
Chariot
Can I carry on like 500 convicts, 25 to Life Colder than ice, colder Strap me down How many men does it take “You are vulgar,” they tell me
Requiem from the rivers Sweet overflow Dread washed in the sea Aloes and shea couldn’t ever soften his edges
They took away my husband in chains He used to bring me flowers that I swear Were funeral arrangements Perfume of camphor and ...
December 2009
4 posts
3 tags
Red Delta Topography
You have come here Beneath the still leaf
petal
Metal against bone The stench of embargo Barbed wire, broken bottles atop cement walls Too much gardenia or the sickly smell Of confined jasmine which weeps Once cut from the vine
You are my familiar Lone nightingale
Hear the festivities or the wail of funeral time Let us hush in the temple and laugh in the corridors Pushed against the...
1 tag
Greta, your Food Sucks
I am trying to write, it is days later and I am making our Sunday gumbo and weaving the sweet peas onto their supports and harvesting Meyer lemons, pressing out the Skullcap, Mellisa, Vervain, Passion Flower, Kava- name your nervine. Phone is ringing again, it is Tess, who I gather seaweed with two days out of the week. I tell her I am busy, she is asking about all this, and is not...
3 tags
True Dragon
(For Fishturn)
Amabilis Insania
“The ancients had already observed the kinship between
the imagination and dreams, hallucination and visions…
Democritus had said that one could not conceive of a great poet
who was not possessed by a certain divine delusion.
Plato declared it was impossible for the production of
ordinary artistic intelligence ever to equal divine...
I have slept
with voyant the unholy and the brigade My silence unfrocked them and they sunk Into the wallpaper of the parlor I didn’t notice Perhaps they made promises Perhaps I married them and Smoked opium all day while they Dined out with their lovers I hoped they would forget the path home
November 2009
1 post
Full moons promises
Only the ebb and flood of the sea can move me now. I cried once. Water flowed like seawater down granite at negative tide. - There’s a steady breeze tonight as I remember brothels, me on my knees them on theirs. Dark places where legs are easily spread, where promises are invented and constructed in such a way as to be easily altered at a later date, perhaps even on the same night. Lines become...
October 2009
1 post
i’m a mean bitch. won’t wash a mans back anymore and hope that any new husband i get has his hands full with a bunch of lovers that do all the work- i can’t be bothered. i’m busy dragging my vodka bottle around from room to room. people tell lies about me. they say i cuss and throw things at them, never pick them up at airports, take the phone off hook and that they cannot reach...
March 2009
1 post
rain that does not cease
perhaps i should be grateful, yet long for the desert and it’s expansiveness, to just stand in the sun like Joshua trees. arms up, all praying. we have much to be grateful for, i still rose this morning. others, many… did not. have you crossed the invisible line that some people call border? go to the places, trespass? it is said that special papers are required for entering and...
February 2009
4 posts
5 tags
extending the passport
we sigh the collective sigh with all others who disappear from time to time. we are questioning. we are looking out of our passport. some hold us responsible. for.. for… for.. soothing them. but we are not the creator, just mere earth beings. and fail so completely at times.
3 tags
Sweet Nothings Outta Stinking Lake
“Hey, get yer’ red ass out here…”
“- lost his job a few weeks ago,”
“- can’t handle the vocables, don’t know why they
can’t get that Sizzertail one either.”
“Did I say that, or think that? Did you hear that?”
“ No man, it’s just that way.”
“Hey, did you see that? I was inside out?
“Yeah man, stop looking at it so much.”
“The timing’s off.”
“No, bro, there is no time. Stop thinking.”
You...
4 tags
"Later somebody took my name" he said
someone already took ours, all of ours before i left, actually bailed (for a while) turtle island. a halfbreed you see, so i have mean and trader in me from the invaders. genocide and destruction runs through my bloodline passed down from one of my ancestors who loved wool, long knives, white sugar, white flour etc. As for the horse, i couldn’t help myself, love them… we’re a...
In Egypt I collapsed on a bed
tired from too many miles and bad water. Upon waking I went to see the Grandfather choosing horse over spitting camel. I lost my mind in Egypt, staying out in the sand well past the time when one is suppose too. Hashish and mischief, talking unreal and real things, back against largest tomb…too much lotus and attar
January 2009
7 posts
draw in the sand
did you hear about that apache girl who gave her life off this very mesa, right over the edge she flew. on a night like tonight- when the lightening seeks the tree top. perhaps she turned into the owl. perhaps some part of her was severed
3 tags
My house is dressed in furs, fried liver and...
Today I throw away old letters lingerie, dried hibiscus, mescal seed. Handfuls of trash- why did I keep it all? Jewelry, trade beads, to give, give, giveaway. Take it away. All away.
No Dove I will not wait for April, but I cannot see clients. – still unfit for human contact I heave my life into a hefty bag and set it on the curb. Garbage day. But I can write. I can still hear the medicine within...
3 tags
NyQuil and Listerine in Shots
Kills His Own sat upright dead drunk on NyQuil and box wine he told me how sacred his life has been how sacred he was i sat quiet there was a broken eagle bone whistle, silenced in his belongings, buried somewhere between Flandreau and Baja it coughed and choked when it heard his words he advised me to walk the streets to get a good education he offered to be the first to break me in i sang a...
Side Winder Sings to Iron Heart Woman
…there was a wounding
She walks toe heel, toe heel A soft padding against her mother Looking forward thinking she knew an Invisibility song, sang past a curled hand The way they do, those medicine ones…. I muse as to her Spells Sung to unwind , unwind, unwind Unwind the words, Unwind the songs Unwind the Love that mistakenly Left her heart, and made her appear Human,...
Better to be a throwback
to peer out of feral eyes, aesthetically sensitive, a kaleidoscope that sees too much and can paint the heave of the night, the ultaviolet buckle of the knees- no one sees you do this. the wild blood courses through you, and you are both interested and not interested at once. possessing the coolness and mescaline awareness of a feline. let others worry about the horror of it all. while walking...
there is the sound of rain
or perhaps it is the sea or the hiss and crack of the fire pit. oak and madrone, or a combination of both. fire and water. two opposing gods. the tide pulls back, ebbs and suddenly you think of miscarriage, anemia and hospitals. depleted you reach for B12, iron, gallons of black strap molasses. you chew on nettles, raw liver, freight trains. too late? looking down at your arm you notice thin veins...
December 2008
7 posts
i have disappeared
to most. each day i disappear even more and am wondering why they have wanted to be a part of my skin. to know me most intimately. they are confused or i am mad. i am fraudulent and wretched. a perfect horror really, yet still they come calling. don’t they know they cannot reach me by simply having their passport and overseas back account in order? there exists invisible doors and windows...
there was an angel
a demon, both. a one eyed animal in this river. a serpent, a cloud that is a thousand swallows. i thought it was you- furrowed brow, the milky way across your scar, secret map. your kiss has melted the frozen lake
my mouth
iron heart
drags her hair in the gully
the forest hushed. from their willow mask they peer at us through fog. your song is medicine on my face. some have tried to trace...
I try to stay
under the veil of this rainforest and pretend that I have not laid footprints down in places where others can recall. I live in a perpetual state of transit though I lay among the leaf and fern. I float down this river, secretly hoping that the current at the mouth of the bay will pull me under. Let me sink like a dead man, this fog fills my nose. I am half way there. Ska Pastora becomes my hair,...
Telepathine
Banisterine, Harmine
it is not a plant at all really, a snake, a river, a grimace. can i have some ginger root, a cigarette? did i say that or did you? are we…you, my relation? it is night.
i am selling
pieces of myself to street roaming boys, to witch doctors, to artists turned to dust. i shame myself and loose pieces of my compassion for mere survival.
the compass spins counter clockwise and the direction points to, sky? earth? the corner store? midnight or noon? a familiar vertigo tightens it’s grip. hotel saint james is my phoenix ward.
“No poems can please long or live that...
each one of them
told me something. we laid down in the dark night, prime mover and saw something move, drag itself off into the wood. i covered my my eyes, covered my ears, not out of fear, but because i do not need more of this you see.
my familiar. your shadow existence, stubborn, determined to stay in the bitch season, in posse, vast emptiness. i know…this place of no answers is most intimate
November 2008
1 post
4 tags
Can you forgive
that I lay dumb beside your nakedness. You recall my softness somehow and remind me that I can coax healing from lobelia, from asafetida, red paccoon, Symplocarpus foetidus and give breath to the asphyxiated, calm hysteria. Yet how is it that I heave at a touch of your gentleness- Crippled in the way of emotions. I know that I don’t even try to speak to others anymore and wonder why they can’t...
October 2008
2 posts
5 tags
i know
that we are all in the gutter, some choose to look upon the stars at times, but what do you say of the nights when we lay face down, tell me.
let me sink like a dead man, the water fills my nostrils, the sage has molded and shrinks in the corner, the sweetgrass has failed me, the poke darkens all around me.
8 tags
still
here, just barely. i almost don’t dream sometimes. i try to turn away. i come back. i turn away i come back. you. you are still here too, why not go away? why do you stay? they took my bourbon away at customs. your silver bracelet is a shackle around me, i couldn’t take it off for them, unstable, i somehow enjoyed this.