oeuv-her

know me

cut careful swaths through solitude, my default

where I intertwine with myself

my many wild threads

in soft prominence, an anemone's defiance

in the one gentle hand, I

am by the book, I bear my thick oaken cross quietly

fold it away tightly where no swaying, creeping eyes can look

I am the principled stance that makes you throw popcorn at the screen

I am ten thousand refrains of "Why can't you, just this fucking once..."

I march, my pale chin horse-high, let my eyes fill up like fine sparkling crystal with pristine sky

I soak up and become one with everything

Porous like a ghost,

with you and with the blistering supernovae

with the gravitational waves.

I am at all times bowing supplicant to that connectedness;

a marionette on a cosmic string.

But then on the rough hand, I feel everything

I am the shaking, shivering, shattering, trembling, quaking, blurry fever dream architect

I am the siren, the 6/8 time id

I am she, at your side, who swirls your essence around on her tongue

and becomes a ravenous animal

circling my arms and hips in time to the songs of nature

the hedonist child-mind that wants and wants and wants

for whom you are the best toy

the kind you want to play with until it has been reduced to pieces

but my other side releases one folded arm to rap my knuckles

you know how I do

stupid.

searing sweat against my prickly ropes

shivering back against the rock

where the broad winged Eagle daily glides to shove in his razor beak

smearing my milk skin with crimson syrup, he

feasts on my screaming, recoiling guts

their sorrow an ambrosia, a nectar

sprinkled down from the stars

poured into this fast footed thief of hearts

the endless screeching torment

is my penalty for having been your lover

the one you embraced

when you were not consumed in the embrace of others

you liked to close your eyes

let your outline blur into the night

your decimating darkness

you would not see

I was the moon, strung up in black isolation

bearing cold witness to all the worst

I dug this hole to plant my bones,

to watch my photophobic porcelain blossom, lush, into beasts grinding

out bright sparks, swinging their

legs in long arcs, dragging their slow, sensation-less feet

clumsy, scraping steps on

the ragged pavement,

my emissaries to regale, bowing low like wind-ripped reeds

in hushed, quiver-tones all through the scattered tales; I

was crackling-white parched to trumpet

to you,

was starved

to stretch my taut heartstrings around your

sun-bleached toffee,

fibonacci ears

my heart slammed and slugged and shrugged

my eyes became scarabs to push the sun over the horizon

fanned away with lash flutter

exhaling//inhaling

find me : save me

find me : save me

thoughts about Aunt Claire

My great aunt Claire passed away very recently after a long battle with alzheimers.

Being estranged from most of your family and seeing one of them you really liked die (there is a difference, whether people admit it or not between the people you love, and the people you both love and like, and the ones that love and like you back) is an experience I can't even really start to describe.

She was the twin sister of my mother's father, Francis, who died when I was about 11. As grandfathers go, he did the usual spoiling the shit out of me, and letting me get away with murder, etc, but more than that, he made me feel like I belonged, which was something I didn't feel a whole lot since then. Most of my memories of him have long since faded into oblivion, along with most of my other memories of that age, which were the single worst losses I could have endured, even considering all the other things that happened. But I had Claire. Like him, she was a charmer and a darling; a radiant, sparkling, generous person that was always kind of carrying the airs of the bon vivant while being sensitive and gracious... simply put, classy. She was this tiny and frail little thing a long time before she ever got sick, but her smile just sort of lit her up with this vibrant life, and she never just smiled with a smile, she smiled with her eyes.

There are a lot of things to say about Claire. She was one of the people who really showed me the value of femininity that I had always seen defamed or neglected in both male and feminist circles. Without her, I doubt that I ever would have seen it as more than a cabinet curio or a nice pair of shoes. As it turns out, it really is a thing that balances out many of the more senseless, brutalizing forces of the world; the sole antidote to many ills. In an era gone by, beautiful people were more than good looking people, but also people who spent all of their energy outward, for others, and in preparation to do that. She was really, really beautiful. She made everyone around her a little more beautiful. She made the world in her immediate presence beautiful. To be around her was to want to stay; to feel like it was all for you, that the universe was smiling upon you for a little while.

When she started to get sick, it all started to hit very quickly up to a point, but then crept into this slow, decimating decline. It was 8 years ago that I saw her and she was first leaning over and whispering to me to ask me what the words for things were as the aphasia started to "white noise" up her thoughts.

At my grandmother's birthday party, she didn't really remember us or our names, but she would give me that same old smile and touch our hands lightly and she would say "I know you" in a way I couldn't exactly know what she meant. But that was the way she was, she didn't really stop and think whether it was a good idea to love somebody. She just loved.

I have felt so bitter and so angry since it all happened, not just because I lost her, not because I haven't been able to grieve, or really parse through this all, but more because it's so cruel and unfair to have a disease not only kill you, but just dismember your mind day by day, wipe out the person that you are while you're still fucking alive. How could there be a worse thing in the world? I just feel so fucking enraged, just so fucking wrathful in a way that I can't let out, can't process, can't deal with. I mean it's so much worse than just death. How could it happen to someone I really loved? I just want to destroy, I want to scream, I want to swing my fists, I want to throw up, I want to undo it, I want to undo it, I want to undo it.

So all these things happened and all I have now is this word document my mom is showing off to my sisters and I where she eulogized her by talking about the origins of her name and her poor time management like a fucking wikipedia article and I want to print it out and burn it ten thousand times because it is so insipid and lacking. 91 years of life, 10 years of agony and what I have is a fucking .docx to remember her. But this is how they tell me how imperative it is that I show up to the family dinners that make me want to swallow ammonia rags, by not inviting me to funerals. Message received.

I stand henceforth bound to what I dream’d

you were there when my filly moon set to galloping
swinging her legs wild and reckless around the
dark matter, all aglow with her candied musings.
you had your long lined notebook,
furiously scribbling with a fevered scratching sound
as you etched with such intensity to create indentations through many sheets
my components, my habits,
the things that made my breath come fast over my lips
you spun me around with waves darting out of your eyes, over
your thick bakelite glasses for keenest observation,
weakening my resolve with the warm, long vowels in the
words "I see," levitating one brow ever so slightly
and truly, I did feel seen.
the stars got quiet when my lips parted
and the words I said, I won't repeat here
but they've been engraved in every day thereafter
a song that stills and stirs the deep
that makes the beasts go to sleep
I drink from you like an outlaw and a swill and a still
I run behind your legs and hide like a child
I choke up on my words
because they're so, so loud
and you don't think it's strange at all
goodnight beloved
the clouds will sing your praises in my dreams tonight

cattle call

I remember having a pocketful of nothing and less
starting every day with the brand-iron question
of whether I was going to make it
suck the poison out of my life, hard, and spit
before I loosened my grip on another 4 AM
it was a long time before I stopped feeling so sick
I dropped my glistening pistols flat on the table
but after that, I can't say whether I got shot
I was sipping on that slow-swirling sweet sauce
that makes you feel all the way right inside
that starts you trailing your clothes
in long swaths all over the place
that has you swearing the ore out of your long life away
sometimes all you can see is the way the light strikes things
peel open my eyes to the clearest morning, but
the humming room never comes into focus
the question remains hung on the rays of the sun like stale smoky air
Am I gonna lose today?
Is the devil gonna get paid
today?

secret hour

in the dark, I am thinking of you,
the light that pours out of your ivory chest
where I have laid my head
at intervals abandoned to sleep and sleepless
indecisively
I am your restless protector and your
enraptured, exhausted lover
experiencing years into the future
and fatigued in attempt to absorb the moments
that just transpired
and there, running my fingers over your chest
I contemplate the key inside you
that unlocked all of me
every conflicted piece
and I feel true
I feel more real than I have ever been