I'm flexible, I say, not unstable, eh,
like those bridges with hinges
(not during earthquakes...),
but I get the morning shakes
when I think what it takes
just to buy
(very much less make)
these humble corn flakes

Getting it done

If I can just...
get over this hump
get past this squeeze
get through this push…

Just wait, if I can just…
Get this last task
under my belt
(like a meal devoured)
over my shoulder
(like a conquered bride)
in my rearview mirror
(like a fled town)

I’ll be satisfied
recognized
justified

Power runs in lines,
connects A with Z with time,
leaves traces of its grime and shapes (of) what’s fine;
power lines draw conclusions and sketch signs of beginnings;
power lines limit and form channelings and diversions,
perversions and polishings, abolishings and new versions:
lines of flight and might.

Fighting and uniting, omnipresent and invisible,
power lines our pockets, fills our eye sockets,
spills out of forgotten hills where the guerrilla
are hid beyond the supposedly set power grid;
there the lines are oblique and slack, fit in the cracks,
spread in waves and then rush on back…

These particular lines you read at this present time
might seem to suggest power is whatever
or solely in the eye of the beholder;
not so (for though view creates thought shapes articulation aids action,
a lover's disposition is not wholly determined by the gaze or the glower).

Neither is power so ubiquitous as to be meaningless;
rather, power is placed and displaced through patterns and signs
so diversely dispersed it is often not
recognized-conceptualized-utilized.

May this meandering musing serve to swerve you
to find the lines that preserve you
true to the crew who deserves you

and true to the battle lines that help us all
peacefully pass these troubled times

!

The Angel of Death with mouth agape and breath of flash-scraping bacteria
swoops past and grasps all you had and fast – you just gasp
and wonder whether all this is caused by some horrid blunder
or just the everyday way the world splits itself asunder

In recognition that many of the things that I write herein are hardly understood by many (including myself), I’ve decided to preface this poem with a definition:

in・ef・fa・ble [in-ef-uh-buhl]
adjective
1. incapable of being expressed or described in words; inexpressible: ineffable joy.
2. not to be spoken because of its sacredness; unutterable: the ineffable name of the deity.


I think I’m stuck in an ineffabubble…
fuck, what luck to get stuck in an ineffabubble!
I can’t even manage the prununciation of my situation
much less hold in my mind the meaning of this kind of passing the (or doing?!?) time.
So I guess while one’s in an ineffabubble
it’s best not to stress as if in trouble –
I’ll just relax and roll along, maybe strike up a wordless song,
since this weird world that whirls and twirls and exasperates my grasp
seems to pass fast… and in the lapse of this gasp
could easily stop and pop my dear ineffabubble.

Break the voting machines
awake the people’s dreams
the stakes are way too high
to trust mechanical populi

painted with kate michalske, buenos aires.

I sit like sunlight
in cypress-cool shade
while the river lies still as dirt
swallows look up at me
from the depths of their current
to the heights of my bravado
I plunge
calloused feet first
wondering when this air will end
and water and earth begin

Tengo la sensación
(o es que mis sentidos me dicen? no soy dueño de ellos)
que todo lo que toco se deshace
(sin metáforas, hablo literalmente)
lo que toco se rompe, se descompone
como si yo fuera algún Midas de mierda
y ya que todos mis sentidos son
de alguna forma tocar
(rozando con chocando contra uniendo a)
tengo miedo que destruya el mundo…
pero ya que veo el mundo
(toda creación)
como pura destrucción
¡no pasa nada!

I had a bike you could ride it if you like
it had a thing to make me sing, so just steal it,
sell it for crack, yeah, don’t bring it back,
I’ve got a stack of bikes in my kitchen.
I’m hitchin’ for trouble or bust yes trust I must
the rust on your wagon.
Taggin’ along don’t know what went wrong
must’ve hitched your wagon to a dragon…

Me fundo, derretido por este mundo de manía caliente,
ahora puro ente mando las gotitas de lo que era yo
para que vayan a cazar pasiones con ametralladora
pero lo que les (me) digo no les (me) importa…
ya escuchan la locura
la locura me adora
y su amor-sutura me hiere con su picadura-aguja moral
pero no hay cura en la agora
que me convence que su dios vence mi malaise
je suis mal à la aise
queasy as what’shisface’s disciple drinking cool-aid
entering a new phase
too tired to graze
too wired to stay unphased
wordplay is all I can neigh
wish you Word here
and wish your Word were not so queer
and wish the swishy-gishy-sloshy way of the World were not such a brain-smear

chequéa el blog que describe la exposición que estoy armando. que vengan a la inauguración!

pantallasentransmision.blogspot.com

presenta


. . . t r a n s m i s i ó n . . .
una muestra del colectivo pantallas
17 al 25 de octubre 2008
galería encontré
cochabamba 580
BsAs

Shadow, fog, and vision’s blur
attract and repulse
subtract and replace
hide and make me seek
treasure in the deep

so
I breathe before I leap,
retract to reassess,
and re-attack
my fear of lack
by smearing back
the borders that begin
to hedge me in

sharp edges soften
like oft-worn smiles
and I let go of knowing

Movimiento
catarata en viento
fuego de terremoto
espíritu que siento

Mi mano se extiende
- alcance y influencia -
con el butoh de la montaña

Mi aliento canaliza aire
- concentra energía -
con el tai chi del cactus

El mundo se mueve
y no me puedo quedar quieto.

mine eye has not seen
mine ear has not heard
naught but the Word
made manifest...
but here's the test:
have I known my self...lessness?

La noche destroza mis ojos rígidos

Gigantes se transforman en molinos
agitando brazos torpes, calcificados
luchando contra el tiempo duradero y la armadura de lo real
sueño poco, y poco lúcido, pero despierto loco de ánimo
y mis ojos chispean de ganas translucientes
(deseos temblores amores...)
Estas andanzas nocturnas
lejos de consciencia
me traen transciencia transcendente
(espejismo, quijotescismo, synaestasismo...)
Aunque no recuerdo con quien soñé
esta energía bendita desbordante
me despierta los sentidos al abrir los ojos
(los oidos la piel la mente...)
Ojalá - oj Allah -
viene de Ella que no se contiene en unidades, categorías, palabras
(ánimo alma espíritu...)

poor us!
pariahs
plastered by porous aporias
sometimes we bore us

Another test drive of new methods/media. More to come.
Otra prueba de nuevos métodos/medios. Más en el horizonte.

For best viewing, click on the link to YouTube, then click on the link beneath the image that says "watch in high quality", then make it full screen.

Para ver mejor, haz clic en el link a YouTube, entonces sigue el link debajo de la imagen que dice "watch in high quality" y finalmente hazlo pantalla completa.

I undress the emperor with my eyes
Looking, I pry open the cracks in Babylon’s disguise

My mind has been prodded and pleaded and prized
by cities whose souls got advertised,
but they can’t size me up
now that I drink down the “drink me” potion
(which can’t be sold – its old-soul essence works deeper wonders than skin lotion
–its mind-bending, kind, mending magic quiets commodity commotion)

I drink till I shrink till I sink
to the smothered pores of the great greedy Whore
where the blood of the Beast is dying to breathe
the air she denies but so desperately needs
(well, she has a prescription for a needle injection of what she thinks is nutrition
–so she’s left off breathing of her own volition)

Now that I’m tiny I tickle her grimy dead skin cells
till laughter swells like steam from hell,
till the friction of free, moving diction strokes out the choke
that’s kept her keeping us from going beyond skin-deep

So I’m vision-fasting from ads, petty politics, and other fads
and instead am on a steady diet of faces and other traces
of life amidst the mirages of the commercial desert;
this takes discipline, conviction, and love of strangers,
and even with these, the capitalist dangers capture
whether I like it or not… unless…
I look straight down at cracks in the street
or at my feet – which is not a bad way to know where I stand

There’s a boy who comes from the dead side of town. He walks down the back-lit, half-burnt alleyways in which old hobos holler on their old guitars, drinking whiskey and singing to him of the life that has passed them and him by. His profile is bright, that light creating a halo around him, as if someone had taken his photograph and etched out the details around his edges. There’s the general feeling about him (it seems to jump from his eyes, slide off his clothes onto the things he brushes against) that cries for the end of these songs that he’s always hearing, these self-absorbed ballads of despair and unworthy destruction of all that might have once been worthy. But today he is not bothered by this. He’s decided that it’s time to move on down the train tracks, to that point at which they meet on the horizon, where he’s heard nobody knows your name, and no one hides their own shame. He’s got it bad, that itch that must be scratched, that drives you crazy in bed when you know that you still haven’t earned your night’s sleep, that you just ain’t quite done what you have to do, that there’s some other action that you must bring into this world before you are allowed to pass into another. He often wonders if he’s already passed into that other world, and if this whole time he’s been trying to go back, if he’s been always as long as he can remember stuck at that point of infinity where those two parallel lines meet, where the dead has composed and rotted long enough to become the food for the living. What lies in the West he knows not, but the life of the East, of the men who do not sleep but live in their dreams, yes, this draws him on. For to the East lies the beginning, the fresh birth that smells of newly cut grass and spring rains, where the hobos drink strong whiskey and play fine guitars, singing of the falling-apart of the world as they know it, singing of the apocalypse and crying for the life that is… we’re all hoping for the end, all holding onto the beginning. Who wants the destination, when the road is so difficult? But he sees his reflection on the clear nights, in that ruddy light cast by the planets upon the pothole puddles, and then he feels that solitude in which you know that you’re the only person in your head, not even anybody else’s voices or songs or feelings or saying or thinkings, just you and your realization that you are.

If we said things straight:

"I ain't got what you're needing"
"Well I ain't buying what you're selling"
"Then I ain't telling what you're wanting and these walls won't hold you no more"

One man finds nothing and nobody to believe or believe in, and so in his mind he remains alone.

Another man believes and believes in everyone and everything, taking all at face value and imbuing that superficial thing with his deepest soul – and so feels his soul stretched thin.

A third man lets all engulf him, wash over him, buffet him, and enter him – like water that he cannot embrace or reject – and then when he feels the temperature to be just right, he leaps wholeheartedly into the current to let it carry him onward.

I was going to work last night to be ready for this morning
but instead went to bed early and slept late

was going to become a hermit-poet in the backwoods
but instead came to the metropolis’ boondocks to film

was going to do what I was supposed to do
but instead sat down to write these words

Intentions be damned, my life has its own plans

esto es un boceto para algo más complejo que ya viene, ya viene...
just a little sketch for something bigger and better...

huellas siempre son negativas: presencia que no está:

I would like to pause for a moment
and bow my head – or maybe simply bow –
to first loves.
Madness, the might of maybe, magic… mmmm…
to savor the sensual sound of the beloved’s breath,
to plunge into skin like a fanatic in trance,
to indulge amorous nonsense that claims no stance
but rather falls wildly without flailing (free),
held all the way down to subconscious glee
in the beloved’s embrace,
abandoning self in connection...

I would like to now collect myself (what’s left of me)
and give a nod – or maybe simply nod –
to home sweet home.
Let me lay my head in her lap,
and sleep deeply, for, for now,
a simple nap simply won’t do me.
Her soft eyes on me when I drift off,
and my eyes on her when I come to anchor,
not looking for something not yet found,
but rather mining mystery’s infinitely explorable layers.

A couple of centuries after the last great wars, people began to spin. This may sound strange at first, but it was in fact a mind- and body-altering custom that changed the way that human beings related to each other and the world. Basically, people got frustrated with only seeing 180 degrees (if that), so they began to spin, all the time. At first it was a subculture, which some accused of cult-like status, but since it just looked like so much fun, everyone tried it. Soon it became a worldwide phenomenon, due to the health and perceptual effects (exercise and 360 degreeness, respectively). While walking, sitting in specially designed chairs, and even in the latest automobile, spinning became the latest technology and fashion. After the initial wave, there was a backlash, but because of the heightened awareness of the spinners, the non-spinners were overwhelmed logistically and militarily.

okay, okay, so it's been a long time since I've posted... but now I have a bit of visual, sonic and theoretical poetry combined! click on the YouTube icon at the bottom right to go to YouTube and click on "watch in high quality" to see it bigger and better. enjoy!

You ask me where I stand.
What you mean (as I understand) is:
where do you base your conclusions,
where do you base this self from which these conclusions come?
I stand on shifting sands.
Let me clarify: the movement isn’t earthquaking or tectonic
nor even jarring-shaking or chronically unsettling;
rather it is and has always been
a constant flow of seething grains that gather momentum
and then come in hordes towards a single destination
and then en masse flee from where they just arrived
and then find a new space to occupy.
So I dance, and try to have my stance flow
with these infinite strands of pulverized land.

Rough hands lay every brick in Chicago
Now, mountains of mortar surround
South Side grandmas’ eyes
that have never seen hill,
canyon, starry sky splendor or sea.
They grimace
at the grit that man’s expansion paid for
as hands laid more and more
blocks for work-eager newcomers…
but man, just sit still a moment,
take stock of the current situation:
grandfather, unemployed for generations,
toyed with by ghetto-raping politicians,
alienation scraping at your crumbling door…
imagine the torture to step outside
to see slum-trashed abandoned lots…
please let my lines be a slight-binding suture
in our ruptured social fabric,
let me give you a lyrical lift,
a ride on my rhyme
so you may live what’s been denied…
but man, form flounders
in intellectual abyss, beyond the reach
of any but dreary divers...
but perhaps they will pass the pearls along…

Flying far from factory funeral desolation,
meet the ancient face of this artificial nation:
scarred, scored, worn by centuries’ wild West wind,
flameful breath sparking stone with sand
until the visage stands stark and stolid,
creases sweeping like highways through solid folds
that sigh skywards; behold it and marvel,
know that we travel somewhere in the midst
of the mountain’s streaking skids of colors,
that our matter’s somewhere in the center
with the natural fountain’s soaring chatters.
There our ancestors’ bones mix
with the peat-stone-silt to be ground
by gravity into lesser moans that regret not,
lament not and sit not still though they never will
move visibly – they seethe in the grooves
left by the swords that fell from the hordes
that cleft their words from the land,
and thus we’re not bereft of the fruit
of the work of their hands for still we see
their presence in the sand they tilled that sifts
and shifts through generations of formations
that have gently set upon the qualms of this nation
(our bloody history and shoddy society)
the calm building blocks for a new creation.

If you’re going to break down, break down in bed. Not here, not in the bathroom, where you know you’ll never reach that eyes-gazing-into-themselves-in-mirror clarity of vision. No, don’t break down here, where you’ll end up with head in hands, thoughts swimming between deafly ringing ears. Not here. Break down in bed, where you’ll quiver without jarring bones or scraping skin. In bed, where you know you’ll slide sobbing to sleep, where oblivion will engulf raw and bleeding emotion or where dreams will embrace raucous feeling into their ever mutating, transforming and potentially emancipating arms. No mirror clarity tonight. Break down in bed, where you’ll truly disintegrate, where you won’t simply chip a tooth or break a nail, where you’ll nerves will fizzle out of your pores, where you’ll be shot into the air on a gasp of despair, into the air where you’ll look down in panic and supernova, becoming a outward-hurtling junkheap of pathologies that will descend back down to Earth, where their radioactive remains will blanket the contours of the surface, creating a glowing silhouette: that’s the most clarity that you will get tonight. So now raise your face from your hands. Don’t glance in the mirror as you pass. Calmly open the door and walk down the hall. Enter your citylight-reflecting-off-of-smog -lit bedroom. Lay down. Break down.

As we enter year 6 of the war in Iraq, exceed 4,000 American soldiers killed, and pass between 80 and 90,000 Iraqi civilians killed, I thought I'd publish this poem from 2003.

I am you, US

I have reams of dreams (just)
screamin to be released (to have peace)
from their back-shelf solitude,
where they brood with ceaselessly crude
but potentious attitude
hootin boozin and shootin
for my pie-in-the-sky artificial highs to trouble my
bubbly moods, to force me to the coarse/course
to peruse and eventually vocally, locally use
their unrequited blues to proclaim their slighted, urgent news
that I been lazy, my mind’s sinned (hazy)
thinkin I grinned on hi-fi, removed from
the drive-by’s shocksong when I’ve known all along
how quick that violently slick seedy shit has flown around
to grow from the common to my higher ground (zero)
where the 9-1-1 glow has shown we reap what’s been sown
(and sometimes I try to deny that it’s doubly towerin so
when single CEOs seem to run the show
and are deemed key-to-the-city worthy
to reap oily spoils when whole peoples cower
in fear since showerin heatful sparks sear memory
with clear signs of smoke-dark skies;
lies about global liability have choked stark responsibility).

Time to wake up, find what kind of forgotten-shelf shake-up
will make myself face up those woe-begotten tracts
of visionary facts that speed my evolutionary pace up
yet avoid those drastic acts that in time stoke the spastic fire
that chokes reasonable higher minds’ dream desires
into mean crime and smoke.

It’s been a long time since I seen my baby
I’s doin’ fine till the waves’ wat’ry sheen
Hit me like the sight of my all-night lady,
The day she caught me, queen of common things.

It’d been a long day and I’d lost my taste for breathing
So I stumbled my way to the tides’ in-out
Rise and fall gather-release, and its briny seething
Crept in my lungs’ creases, inspired a fell shout:

I twirl’d me ‘bout, hands to sky, fell to sand,
Unable to stand the ground’s harsh feel
I clawed reeling at sky to deny the land…
Then above me she appeared, so real

With briny breath to flavor unsavored ideas;
Wave-shine gaze to corrugate all dull metal mental haze;
Root-firm hands that delve through false-floor sterile veneer
Through fearful surface to grasp hidden, solid ways;

Hands that suddenly grasped me by my sailing palms,
Tugged me to gasping feet and flailing thoughts as my heart raced to keep up
As she dragged me smilingly to give thanks and alms
Through acrimonious, grungy alley’s blues-rock and hubbustling boulevard’s bebop

Of people like pebbles jostling through a landslide.
On a stroll like a cyclone we took the town by storm
Taking objects in our path with such force in our minds
That they took on new life, from freezing wrath to bliss-hued warmth.

Plastic tatters flagging the breeze from brightly barbed fence
Were transformed into hula skirt for the vain
As she crowned me king of uncontainable nonsense
With thirteen steely links of newly broken chain…

Somehow, after so long balanced by her passion spell
I lost her in the clenched teeth grind of the crowd’s respiration
So now I stand drenched on the shore of despairing pell-mell
And can only chant this disintegrating song’s aspiration:
Return, my love!

It’s been a long time since I seen my baby
I’s doin’ fine till the waves’ wat’ry sheen
Hit me like the sight of my all-night lady,
The day she caught me, queen of common things.

every passing thought that you discard, disregard, or partly destroy,
that flees the best of your mind’s ploys in the moment of its finding,
that dives to the deep without warning, as far gone as widows’ mourning,
must be followed down the steep descent into dark, like the reflection
of the eye’s shiny spark in the mirror, the neverending gaze amplified
regard in regard and never dies no matter how hard you try, how deep you fly

oh
so
bright.
spotlight blinds
you quite as surely
as it gives others sight.

Carwheels on gravel
like teeth crunching Grape Nuts
like rain on rubber stretched taut
like sizzling onions
Powerline poles
like marching soldiers suddenly surrendered
like strung-together marionettes
like synchronized swimmers
Thoughts on the road
like wildly, slowly growing ivy
like the water cycle (liquid-solid-liquid-gas)
like metaphors

When I was a young student, stuck in the limbo of still wearing my pigtails but already bearing my period, my two most powerful educational experiences:

One of my teachers told me he had something that he wanted to show me. So he brought me into the most out-of-the-way bathroom in the school, on the fourth and top floor, where few people ever went. He brought me inside, and since I was just a child, I was not worried until I saw him shut and lock the door behind us. He walked toward me, and I started to feel panic pounce, but then he continued past me. My worry turned to confusion as I saw him unlatch the window, slide up the pane, and hoist himself through to the roof. As he turned and extended his hand to me, I understood: he was inviting me to escape. We walked to the edge of the roof and peeked at the pavement below, the neat rectangles of the sidewalk. My teacher gestured vaguely at the view, and told me that sometimes in order to get a better perspective you need to get above and beyond the structures that have been made to contain you. He risked everything – job, career, reputation – in order to tell me that. As if I didn’t know it instinctively already.

One of my classmates was taped to the post in the center of the school cafeteria. I remember I was sick that day, or on the other side of the school or something. As I remember it, I was terrified upon hearing this story with its grisly details. The detail that really destroyed me was not that practically the entire school, which habitually mobs the cafeteria during passing periods, had looked on as the bullies manhandled their scrawny catch, looped duct tape around him and left him bound to go to class… but rather what killed me was when I was told that not a single student out of six hundred set him free once the bullies left, leaving him there for five minutes until a teacher happened along. I remember being horrified by this event, grateful that I wasn’t there to witness it, yet fascinated by its implications.

Anyways, I have a terrible memory. So I hold on to what I remember as if it were a teddy bear and I a baby.

Oh Jeez,
please give me the strength to do what I know I must
trust you to bring me to the place I need
feed me with the breadcrumb trail if necessary
scary, you know, so although I understand the hunger
no longer do I know why it’s so meager
eagerness to have real sustenance and permanence
sense calls for striking out for the territory
for the fresh shave, the blank slate, the sweet horizon
I been there before, though, and I’m sick of reason
seasons without cycle are fine for me
we can just follow the leaves, right?

Aaaahhh!!! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh!!!!!!
The market is falling! The market is falling!

He’s jittery (of course he: only a he would so kill)
and he can’t quite keep his invisible hand quite still—
does it shake ‘cause he’s a speed pill-poppin’ fiend
or ‘cause, guiltily self-indulgent, his pants he has creamed?
He’s spooked, the kook, by his own reflection,
as he gets depressed by the thought of depression.

So, I’ll make a confession: I never liked him anyways,
what with his materialist craze and greed-glazed gaze,
not to mention his brazen pillage, setting the world ablaze.

So let him shrink, contract, take a downturn, and crash,
and maybe we won’t all die from affluenza,
the curse of too much cash.

In order to sleep soundly, I recommend:
Build a road, then let it fall into a reasonable level of decay, then construct a windowed box on wheels with shocks within which you can sit reclining back on cushioned seats while being rocked back and forth to the sight of landscape passing.

In order to be awed, I recommend:
Get dropped off in the midst of the jungle in the middle of the night, then walk towards the nearest bridge, making sure you time your arrival so that a fine mist is surrounding you that can be illuminated by a truck’s lights approaching from behind, which will cause a rainbow ring 50 meters in diameter to encircle the bridge and you.

In order to be satisfied, I recommend:
Spend hours wandering hungry and lost in an area without sustenance, and make the method of your wandering frustrating and tiring by constantly nearing promisingly bright signs of satisfaction that then dim as soon as you eagerly approach, and then stumble by chance across a dumpster overflowing with perfectly good but irregularly shaped fruit, bread, cheese, and wine.

Cuesta (duras penas, vacilantes emociones, fe) trabajar.
Cuesta (penosas dificultades, vacilaciones emocionales, fe) no trabajar.
Si extiendes la mano para tocar el cielo o no, queda igual de lejos, igual de cerca.

Notes Wishing They Were From the Underground
(Actually Coming From Suburbia)

dejá vu
(eerie, inexplicable, deeply true),
which used to pounce in strange places you’ve never been
– places so different that seem the same –
this feeling is gone
(tamed, explained, now shallowly wrong).

for no, you’ve never been here,
but yes, you know it well, don’t you fear,
because this store is like all the other stores,
– a lot so similar that should be different –
but you know what to expect, nothing’s queer,
and there is nothing new here.

He does chin-ups on the metro… while I simply hold on to the overhead bars to keep from falling and being trampled.

There were once upon a time dragons here, but they are long gone.

When their nests were paved over with strip malls, they circled for hours until their wings ached. Yet they could not find any aeries from which chainstore eyesores were not visible. And they are romantics when it comes to the view.

Enraged, they screamed with foul, belching fire. But only to be sterilized by fire hydrants. The remaining wisps of smoke were quickly protested by furious NIMBYs.

Confused, the beasts were easily manipulated. Their unexpected flight patterns were predicted and rerouted and GPS coordinated. Soon they were captured, emprisoned, tamed, and groomed. Their haphazard, reason-defyingly strong scales were arranged in grocery store aisle uniformity. This last, seemingly superfluous act by the suburbanites in fact allowed for the fatal blow: razor-sharp logic which cut them to pieces. There was to be a great feast, with well-groomed, well-fed families from all the land.

And then the once would-be feasters got distracted, each in their own solitary way, and the meat sat until it rot.

I do not pretend to master my fate

I feel my insides gradually vanish
(leaking slowly into other dimensions)
And my skin become translucent
(as my pores become fully porous)
And my mind become tubular
(a protosensitive, pregnantly empty conduit)
And I am flooded with a rush
that I could never contain
(even if I were still with my formerly solid grasp)
that washes me like my great-great-grandma
washed her daughters’ clothes in the river
(violently, lovingly, deeply)
And I am smoothed and polished like a river stone
(cleansed of consciousness’s claws and burrs)
And I am ready for the world to seize me,
possess me and propel me
(beyond my stagnant state, into a formless shape)

I implored my ancestor for a story.
Okay, okay: I wanted her story.
Okay, okay, okay: she is an unwilling, unwitting ancestor.

But I got it anyways:
although she denies that she ever had a child
or that this supposed child engendered a long line of descendents…
this line ends with me,
and I can gaze back at her
and see the never-cut cord
connecting her with her offspring…
she denies that the bastards even exist,
and so has never cut the ignored connection.

I see some descendents oblivious to their connection,
and yet still an unbroken stream of nutrition reaches me.

There was a time when I was content
To ramble and rhyme at mind’s light whim
Without a thought for what paths life sent
For my slow slip-shod feet to flip-flop in.

Now I grow uneasy with my self-conscious route
As I head from the local towards the global nerve-center
I feel queasy in the night’s shifty streetlight clout
That illuminates only the views that have been sent for

By those with trigger fingers on the power grid.
So now I survey the forgotten, the dark spots
Where the cracks, the joints of the machinery are hid;
I walk with my weight on the dimly shackled lots
of those wed unknowingly to the machine –
which brings me closer to dissolution than I’ve ever willingly been;

my feet are torn by the shifting, caught in the
hinging of mechanical sheen, as I stand
next to those thrown down during society’s surreptitious sifting –
so now my weight falls in the interstices
to be ground like grain (which is dispersed at wind’s blind whim)
into elegant mass, a meal for the marginal.