Category: Creative Nonfiction

Literature

Herringbone does not yawn

Fuzzy balance

of positive and negative space

on a cape that I drape around me

to step outside.

The grey morning opens wide

And inhales me into its reality.

Here we go again.

/

I fell into fitted sleep last night

while listening to to

to the British “Sir” talk consciousness.

I read two of your books.

A late night compatriot who noticed

the emporer was still naked.

(“A new theory,” he said, “not another reinterpretation.”)

S/he should borrow

My houndstooth.

/

I awoke to your unannounced reentry.

There is nothing to take, hurt, or steal

but me

But, you could still lock the door

When you do leave.

What I heard

Young man,

you predict myself to my face.

Giggle-snarl.

And also, you may be right.

But, hush and do not assume

you just keep those precocious eyes closed,

precious.

Pressingly and curiously

like a street legal switchblade,

a switchboard operation.

Useless matter does not

deserve smashing

just a quick slashing.

Diamond cutters crying with

those backseat jumpercables.

I missed the film but

I want to watch the movie.

My cellular telephone

likes to automagically

Prompt me.

It told me, after I typed /i/,

‘don’t get internet culture.’

Howl.

Didn’t you k/no/w the anxious

(ancients) taught music

And, invented time

For others?

They were just counting to eight,

Again and again, and, it

Turns out that this moves time forward

And that this everlasting, temporary

Retrograde is the forgotten remembrance.

This time

The blue specks return at

this time of day.

Scepters of spectres.

Spectators of the Spectra.

Speculators and crusty prospectors.

Gold merchants running along-

side the train.

The Highwaymen will

see to

them soon enough.

Yelling: always pay yourself first.

The only people not fearful of

such speak

are snickering kids.

The immortal ones.

How old do you feel most

of-the-time?

The sun will set in the next

five minutes to five hours.

It gets

Tricky.

The salt is gone.

Now, I see how large this place is.

The placelessness is almost too big.

Me and these ghosts make good company.

The chorizo finishes.

Eggs and a bottle of white

Microwave hood fan

Setting two.

Discounted granola.

Time to cut meat from casing.

An unused balcony.

The window with the looking-glass.

The other window that is looking-glass.

I drove the perimeter of a street festival.

Ludicrous.

People formed a line at the

Automatic Teller Machine.

I could have walked for my eggs.

But, the milk would

Have gotten spilt.

I arrive home.

My salt is gone

Summer Maize

I made my hair sit straight yesterday.

But, summer has its ways

Of sweating my scalp.

Salt and the occasional breeze.

“You should write about that,” said the girl,

Who stopped for a smoke,

About something else

Entirely.

“Thanks.”

Kind.

A little

Shock ti

Power.

Speak-easys and

Music without lyrics.

Talk of narcissism

And, I wonder,

Do narcissists know they are as such?

The dog was all fur, and

presumably

Sweaty as howl, too.

Fur ball coat

Dandelion-white.

The masters smiled

And said, “her name”

Meant /hair/ in another language.

Doubling the word

In affection and affectation.

Cars pull u-turns,

To go to the street festival.

They hold traffic while invisible things

cross the street.

Huh, huh?

I saw the last five yards of your memory.

You were simply sleepwalking

Lucidity from insomnia.

Asleep and awake at the same time.

Rest here.

For a moment.

You are still

In the field.

Come here but close your eyes.

When

I did write something for you

before we met.

At the little theater you barely

Remember.

Painted stars on the roof

twinkled to indicate

the show was shortly

Underway.

A connoisseur versus a collector.

Coat-tailers and chasers

Partners in crime.

A trail-off of the trellis

Braided-up locks

Flow like tresses

Caught in bureaucratic

Lochs

Being and nothing

Ness

Scorches from Summer Clouds

The dragon is impatient.

Selectively scorching leaves

Such as these

Fading embers still ablaze

Sparks off burned tar.

Shedding hair is ripped.

Old roots know where to look

And look gracefully.

A leaf suspended.

Not alit by wind.

Brambles

Steles revel as Black Pond evaporates.

A lean-to against a cut-down.

A greasy blender rubbed wrong.

Proof of I.D.

It is infinitely easy to identify with someone

(but not any-body?).

So you hate cool, swift breezes on hot days?

I don’t.

I leaf notes to future me.

Encryption ain’t the new

Steganographia.

They remind me to

Remember right.

Write.

This is a thread to me.

Leaves about a spine.

Fluttering

For no-one but page

turners.

I slept in

I slept until three p.m.

Because I could-no usual m.o.

In the pac NW 7 a.m., 3 p.m., and nine p.m. all

Look the same

Waking from dreams to remember

This is the one from which you do not know how to wake.

I imagine the world can

See and know what my mind holds

In that state.

Like there is nothing to doubt

Nothing to fear.

The cat slept on my feet.

They were not cold.

The gray summer sky

Resembles the colors of your silent eyes.

I slept by scraps I scrawled for you.

I slept by a bit of wrapping paper from a gift

Half a year old.

Oh howl, you make me sentimental.

To ask for what you hope

And to wait.

As hard as crying non-sad tears must appear to observers.

The sea is soft today.

But, í can always find a reason to smile.

I.e. “cheesecloth”

Sobriquet que ridiculoso.

Like young skin

You are smooth

Like young skin.

It is this present, separating the two.

Coarse still.

Contained infinitely

Keeps

You always new.

Presently

So í present me as í will and wilt be.

Your grains grew.

Became rough?

Hard to go against.

A backwards shove.

A cat pet the wrong way.

Your backwards glance, surreptitiously noticed.

I told you

I pay attention to your punctution.

Paints dried as fast as grass grew.

But, never as fast as the weather changed.

Everything happened so quickly

In slowness.

Living with punctuated equilibrium ages me in bursts.

The course grain leaves red rubs on skin like indian burns from childhood.

Asked for and still bemoaned.

Like saying: I miss you.

Dreamed

I ran with you in dreams last night.

There was a small bit of lace hiding a bit of my clavicle.

When you lifted it

The notation for

a song was below.

Then I remembered

The lyrics.

“Oh yeah.

I wrote this for you

Before we met.”

Another start

Splash the water on your face and remove the split of confusion.

Spit out last night’s sleepy breath.

Open wide into the mirror

Let it swallow all of you into today.

Thump

The issue is psychic unity of intent?

Can you not see your ally, lily, and enemy

In everybody?

Your lover and your birth

And your death?

Fractitiously cohesive

Paradigmaticly nightmarish.

Delight.

From a car ride: Phoenix to a Grand Canyon

Sun-chapped, vermillion gravel lines the Arizona interstate. The smell of civil anticipation of draught conditions.

De-ride derision. Re-sent. De-ridden. Hostile.

Reproachful.

Regurgitate…come here, baby bird.

Under my wing where the sun does not scream.

Absolution awaits.

Abscond

like wild things run fast.

I run so quickly it looks as though I am lazy.

Because, I smiled all the time, my narrowed eyes confuse.

Rode hard but not to be

Put up wet.

I asked him not to say things that seem to be true.

Show.

A certain gaze becomes requisite.

A dis-focus agile like a cacti forest.

Look for the invisible shrub-brush. The one that may or may not actually be there.

When you see that you do not see it, you will know you’ve got off on

The good foot.

So scratch, scratch pen to paper. Then take tips to keyboard.

Pleas. If you cannot silence your mouth, write it instead. For yourself.

Spit yourself upon the page.

See what floats.

Mercury corresponds here, where air is the element?

Striations of stratifications.

I am not what you expect, because I am not as you’ve known me to be.

Newly transmuted. I let my stomach gnaw on it’s own emptiness.

Acclimation. Deceleration of mass.

A bob becoming weightless, still tethered to a Flagstaff.

Asphalt lanes crisscross terrain like varicose veins.

Little, red blood cell cars traverse. Scrub-brush grows on either side.

Entering Sedona. The elevation changes. Ears pop.

The energy comes on before you fully make it to the valley.

Invigoration as my heart beat hastens, my skin quickens.

I feel my circulation pulsing.

We are told to Be Prepared to Stop.

We prepare.

We are stopped.

My father acclimatizes to the energy but not the dry air.

My sister fidgets with her fingers in her mouth.

My mom crossed and uncrosses her hands. Fingers tapping on top of knuckles.

The four of us seem far too old to be in a car on a road trip. We do not mind.

Joe Cocker. Feeling Alright plays on FM.

Sharp. The energy is sharp. It will hone you.

Make you diabolical, I giggle.

I feel you giggle against my ear. Echoed back to me despite your absence.

Despite your presence on another curve on another side of the world

I magnetize you to my mind’s eye.

There is a church situated in an open expanse. Nothing surrounding on its acre.

There even an atheist might easily see some god.

The orange and red rest easy in my eyes.

Like short pants slung low on hip bones.

S/crawled

I found a word on a notecard.

Assoil.

Present it between gritted teeth,

heavy lidded. Pleas

see before my snarl creeps back.

To acquit, absolve.

Solve Loose.

I call this word how we untangle each other.

You are Unmade and in need of collection.

Soft, sweet, slow.

Until inertia overcomes.

A harsh lunar body with love that annihilates

Your self-doubt ,

Ashames with kindness.

Pains with inelegant honesty.

You

Have

My attention and pulse,

sorrell.

Kept with you and resent but a moment ago.

And, I wonder where

we find ourselves

On this reading of what I just write to wrote?

To discern the coefficient of friction.

Re-scribed an umpteenth time.

For your inexorable sea, no doubt,

remains a’wave.

Unyielding. Relentless. Assiduous.

Paramour. Swoon over and give us some room.

Aragon and lavender, salty mists of sea tides

Aroma wafting through the scene.

A contention that new tangential elaboratorations

exert mild pressure.

“You are uncomfortably comfortable,” whispered with gravity.

So came I, cloaked.

Amateur ingenue

Feminine made anew.

I sow.

Sew you a pillow case all the colo(u)rs of Joseph’s coat.

You will dream of Argonauts. You will watch legion run

head first off the cliff.

They seek demise, but you have desire and

A dexterous handle with an au gauche moniker.
There is power in having a title, because to have is

To hold(,) dear.

To become the multitudes contained

within my circles.

The circles I contain.

The circles containing me.

A ruddy red demonstration of diameter.

Obstinte and obdurate at heart

I am a junkyard bitch who sometimes likes to bark.

Your home is no show place, but you are so fine

that lyrics write idylls for you

and scheme to catch just a sight of you

blushing. I’d sooner have you stern

Looking.

Æffect & Cause

The lost cause of

how you used to be?

The wilted cæmellia

tucked behind the hero/ine’s ear?

Wilt

wither and thither.

Return to stasis,

never static, sugarfoot.

But, what you chew up and

cannot swallow

will feed your

root structure.

Poison returns if you

leave it elsewhere.

Sum it up and send it

Back to the earth

Quake for rebirth.

You saw a wryneck

Hum

In shallow waters of a

Good place to be

Candide.

The best of whose

Possible worlds?

It is how you

See the question.

Just glad to hear

The presumption of my

Body is no assumption.

Getting ready

To be fretted

For being willing

To be the bay-at-sea/c.

A cistern formed by basins of shale

Far beneath and beyond

The pale where

Sun is always shadowed

But for somme.

Parçigal Dreams of Sleep

Until three days ago, Parçigal had not slept well, no more than three hours in a sitting. Her mind ran busy moving invisible, imaginary things.

She was not tired. Her eyes unfocused but wide ovals.

Had she dreamt it all?

Maybe she had it confused: was she awake for those three hours, and, in fact, actually sleeping right, exactly now?

No-mind either way. Sleeping and waking became less distinguishable to her a decade ago. There was just lucid and sleepwalking.

She plods herself with aloof-nonchalance that conceals a passionate heart (smart or not). She can look until something appears.

Then the sleep will always follow.

Trivia: she says “thank you” aloud every time she yawns. To remind herself.

What a strange breath is a yawn. Inhalation and exhalation are required to breathe and live. Sneezing cleanses. Yawns seem like alarm clocks to wake you up from real life and let you know it is time to lucid dream. Yawns are the only type of breath that appear to be contagious.

What Parçigal found three days ago:


“The immediate source of Eschenbach’s poem [sic. Parzival] was a Provençal romance written by one Kyot or Guiot. Of this writer nothing further appears to be known.”

Mr. Price Preface from History of English Poetry from the Twelfth to the Close of the Sixteenth Century. By Thomas Warton, B.D. With a preface by Richard Price, and Notes Variorum. Edited by W. Carew Hazlitt. Volume 1.* London: Reeves and Turner, 196, STRAND. 1871.

Capricious as she had not been seeking it. But, sometimes she can see things when she believes them.

Curiouser and curio-user.

*Incidentally, “Of this Edition 500 copies are printed on small paper,

and 50 on large.

What are we to make of this?

Accrass

Clicking another bullhorn

Tapping.

Not getting cold.

I don’t forget to remember

Nor do I remember when I forget.

I collapsed once, a/broad,

Trying to fit a key

In a lock.

Only to come to

In the room which

I tried

To unlock