They have bamboo canyons

They have javelin tendencies

CLASSIC REDACT CASSIO CLASSIC REUP REVISE WINTER BREAK 2004 YALL

I was not bewildered
I have read the rules extensively, while drunk
I am not the doggy bag
I am not the floating goldfish
You don't have to send someone to collect my newspaper or stop my mail

You smoke painful cigarettes
You turn the shower hotter still
You drink to fill the bilingual silences
and tear your hair out

I made my promises
I projected my losses
You project your loss onto me
Aren't you familiar with the crackle of desperation?

you've lost weight
your face is more edged and more beautiful
your stare is cutting

I am older than you were.
You are older than you were.
I no longer have hands that you could force
I'm not your problem
I'm just the girl you love

You shouldn't move on.
You already moved.
You were gasping for breath and grinning down
knocking down the columns before your plane was off the ground

Internal Rhythm

4.

The morning is sunny,
The evening punctuated
with a quiet pink sunset
She sits on a soft leather couch
surrounded by red golden embroidery
She is sipping green tea
between bites of spicy noodles.

She is imagining this is a memory-
impossibly plush, clean, luxurious

When she is looking back someday,
when the world has gone mostly
in flames
and she is huddling
in ashes, maybe
or under the black hulk of a tree

If it comes
it will be quite suddenly
no pundits
no advance warning
but a sudden rush of hot air
the windows shaking
her voice, inexplicably
rising in a scream.

for the first time ever

yesterday was bleak
no one in the whole world wrote
even one poem.

5:48 AM

while the silent storm of night gives way into a quiet blue

your face reveals itself in all its sleeping wrinkles

heavy underlids, smooth nose and forehead

someday i will look back at this moment and think

you looked so young.

then again, purgatory could be on a bus

we have to do everything in our power to avoid rolling down the hill
inside,
warm and slow
a gentle sense of music drifting through

we are willing conspirators to this game
a family of kids waiting for the driver,
braking Buddha-like
to deliver us home safely
so we are content to sit
uncomplaining
in hours of traffic
waiting to get down the hill
to cross the drawbridge
silent
reading restaurant reviews
drowsing

walking would be faster
colder
and impossible
since we can never get off the bus
and no one can get on.

on a spectrum from intense to flitty

rhythmic fast feet
passion
building to climax
after climax
flashing eyes
wild skirts
machismo/feminina
frowning
tense eyebrows
eyebrow wrinkles
guitar, singing, footwork
tense, separarate fingers
back bends
low plies/ lunges
low leg
inwardly rotated upper arm
Spanish (speaking, looking)
perform what's been passed down
"really" Spanish
"really" gypsy
frilly skirts
black and red
flowers in hair
polka dots
big earrings
hair falling down
low bun

homogenization
exoticing

the art of making dances

in the world there is no animal, human, molecule of water
that moves without a reason for moving
always with a specific design in space
with a relationship to everything that moves around it
and a particular energetic flow and rhythm
fast for hot
etc

Without all that
your dance sucks
and let's be honest
there's a lot of sucky art out there
this bit
not withstanding.

3

tucked in with jasmine
or soaked in ice
no wizards will save them
they'll never be perfect
half of us have them
and they'll never be perfect

Red #26

I came back wearing red lipstick
I wanted you to know I had changed.

slide guitar 2

you've got a button eyelid
I would hold it open for the sight of shores unsighted
I would sign up scores un-knighted
I would assemble armies to give you an ocean
and unite divided countries to show emotion
I'd run through the wall, dear
I'd weep in the sea
But a million years won't return you to me

You're a dinosaur's drivel
You're a bird's apogee
You're a melody's opus
and a cranberry tea
mixed with blood oranges
the height of a dream
but I swear I won't lie dear,
you're ancient to me.

I will write you a waltz
and build you a palace
built of blue chalice
lapiz lazuli
Be conspicuous, darling
You're ancient to me

I will redeem my weeping
with soft apologies
I know that it's changed now-
it's always changing
And the lilt of your lace, hon
Impossible seas
makes me rhyme to the moon
and fall on my feet
That have never quite broken
Not once or not yet
But let's first ask the trees, then
before we forget
Always getting cocky
and running down the clock
Til the people arrive.

slide guitar

I wish I had a lover
or maybe just some where to be
it's easy to get distracted
when this flame won't let me see
and the wax is all bedazzled
the sunshine's mane is frazzled
our minor cloudy hassle
we promised to the sea

you hate when I am craving
and still you're craving me
my friends wish that I had you
they've sung us in a tree
your nose was always perfect
and I shiver poetry
you gripped me by the shoulders
you picked those pearls for me

I kissed you at the movie
when I was just thirteen
you laid yourself before me
by night philosophy
you wish that I would sing you
into sweet clarity
but I am just a lover
promised to the sea

Sometimes I dream of leaving
and flying to the sea
where we would swallow pearl songs
and night philosophy
and kiss inside the movies
and revel clarity
but dreams reveal a lightening
what works makes sense to me

it keeps going til the day it stops

On a gray, rainy day
in the dark kitchen
she winds up a fork of long red noodles
all of them twist and spin together in a bundle
she escorts them the short distance into her mouth
where her teeth mash them and tear apart their careful strings
into a soft, homogenous mush
that slides down her throat

later, when her stomach and various intestines
are done with their reductive labors
the nutrients and calories of spaghetti
will reform into the order of her flesh
then fire off into a burning jump
into a quickfire thought
a note of song from perfectly orderly vocal cords

Before, the spaghetti was orderly strings of wet pasta extruding, growing out like hair
before that, a mush of flour, water under machine hands
before that, smooth round wheat grains
before that, a mush of dirt, water

Now they are churning in her stomach
dissolving in a sea of mush
after that, her orderly muscled body
after that, the chaos of shit
after that, the earth

Her body too, orderly muscled, singing in time
changed somehow between the last seven years, and the seven before that
traded out and reformed
mysterious in its orderly skin cells and long strings of hair
in seven more years, slowly breaking down
vocal cords with frayed edges
after that, seven more years,
after that,
After that, a mush of dirt, water
After that,

Broom Game

always more dirt in the canyons, always a fresh track across the floor
there were times when we didn't sweep for months, do you know what happened?
things happened, nothing broke
it didn't get dirtier
it stayed the same amount of dirty

then we were living on a red couch
back then
we were galumphers, fleet-footed thieves getting our bread out of dumpsters
getting our clothes off of sidewalks
the universe seemed ready to give
and we were not ready to clean

sometimes we cleaned
people hated it when we cleaned because they didn't notice
and then we'd say PLEASE DON'T TRACK DIRT ACROSS MY NEWLY MOPPED FLOOR
and they'd look at us like fools and step 5 feet forward to get out of the way of our fresh mop
I never realized that was why she hated me, always mopping around her feet while she tried to dance
I just thought she was crazy
hating me one minute, loving me the next
now she calls me darling and hardly ever acts like I'm dead to her
which is better
because I don't mop around her feet anymore
and I AM a darling.

The Wild Internet

A skein of poetry flung out into the void
(0) Comments
A Facebook comment to a beautiful redhead you met once at a wedding
She never answered it
A posted video of your latest performance art project
5 views

The internet is a wilderness in the way that New York City is a jungle
Who knew you could be so alone among so many people
In the middle of the rainforest, you can call and call
and never wonder if a person will answer; you know they won't
Out here, there's always a chance
There's always a waiting silence
Wavering, suspended




Sometimes we cry into the wilderness
"Eleanor Rigby"
Tommy Steele 1982
Liverpool, UK

Wednesday, February 3

put up a feeder
black seeds in the cherry tree
chomped by tiny birds

We Are All Here to Help Each Other Be Who We Need to Be

No space backstage,
paid in pasta and red wine
stomping for gigglers
throwing tomatoes for performance art
This is a show we're putting on
Behind the pink door
for you, for your mom
for the faceless black of the darkened room
while we sparkle on a tiny stage
picked out in shining lights
we are more than ourselves then
we are absorbing light,
absorbing laughter
giving it back multiplied a hundredfold
We have been training for this
a long time.

But last night I watched my friends break up on stage
he played the cello, which he has never studied
and she wore what made her feel most like a goddess
he strummed,
she wiggled
he tapped
she reached for him
she looked out at us
well not at us but at the audience
whose hearts were mostly not breaking
and when she was done dancing
she gestured at him with her hand
'its time to go'
and he kept playing
and she rolled her shoulder and tossed her head
'its time to go'
and he kept playing
and she walked offstage slowly
leaving room for him to follow
and he kept playing
until she walked out of the room
then he finally stopped
and he left.

sometimes dance is beautiful
sometimes it's grotesque, sometimes funny
and sometimes it just is
and sometimes it goes.

sprout legumebean, socks get lost in the laundry one at a time

and if it's lucky
the second one is lost someday too
but more often it just hangs around
the last one left in the drawer on laundry day
waiting for its argyle mate to come back

occasionally
in a rare ecstasy
it is matched up with an entirely different second sock
a wildflower pink
a rainbow stripe
or one with brilliant yellow ducks

it will be with you a long time
a long time
waiting in the drawer
or pulled out and warming one foot
your choice.

out liar

a hundred untouchable black satin curls
a handful of purple forgettable girls
a moment of lemonade after a kiss
betrayed and delicious in Senegal's bliss

the rope of your meaning a lovely old clock
rusted and rotten and wrapped in a sock
carried to thailand and sold in bangkok
and finally forgotten and smashed with a rock

the weaker beholden to belittling strength
stroked up and down the hot link of your length
delicious but rarely to stroke your black curls
purple forgiving ridiculous girls

knee-jelly afternoons rocked in a kiss
traded to mysteries, re-dubbed in bliss
carried along like the tick of a clock
rusted and rotten and wrapped in a sock.

Know Exit

The spoiled bread pudding
we abandoned for the seagulls
and we leaned against the noon dunes
as the arching birds wheeled over our heads
We rubbed our tummies clockwise
The I Love U stroke
to push the bad air out
while the hot sand streamed over our shoulders
one tiny avalanche at a time
we sat there long enough
the streams of tiny pebbles buried us
You asked if I wanted fish for dinner
I wanted a lace tattoo, a rose kiss
I was topless in velvet pants
I was throwing the phone across the room
While you talked of blackberries and rhubarb
Yawped in many voices until I died of laughing
and came screaming on your cock
You threw an orange scarf out the window of your car
I leaned in the window to kiss you
kissing me, you pushed me back out