Sunday Morning Song

Elizabeth Cotton picking and singing Freight Train.Turns out this was the first song Lucinda Williams learned to play.

{Hither and zither, the sheet music “shows you which notes to pick”.

Giggle.

⊙

None of the clocks on my appliances match

the time displayed on the screens of my devices.

Because moments changed

Over night,

As if by magic.

The practicality of protracted wakeful periods during daylight hours.

The associated productivity increase.

You can get a lot of work done, outside, when you sleep all night

And only become conscious when the sun is up.

But, you can learn a lot by staying up all night and sleeping through the day.

⊙

My alarms continue their incremental resounding.

Like they do when I gotta work the restaurant.

But, not today.

Today

is my

off day.

⊙

/

[clears throat]

Al(l)right…

/

⊙

I let

the alarms

keep

going

off

⊙

/

Freight train,

Freight train,

runs so fast

/

⊙

I do strange things with my sleeping.

An alarm set at 3:33 a.m.

To force me awake to immediately resume sleeping.

I easily become lucid in dreams this way.

At the very least, it consistently improves my dream recall.

⊙

/

Please don’t tell what train I’m on.

They won’t know what route I’m gone.

/

…

I sleep upside down,

time

to

time.

Bed properly remade

Clean sheets

But with my head at my feet.

Pillows at the wrong end.

Feet by where a head usually is.

⊙

/

Place the stones at my head and feet

Tell them all that I’ve gone sleep.

/

⊙

I wake,

again,

thirsty.

Flit to the kitchen.

Make the mistake of reading poetic words

And I feel my heart beat.

Like the water had actually been coffee.

From The Book of Hours (Rainer Maria Rilke)

Now the hour bends down and touches me

with it’s clear, metallic ring:

my senses tremble. The feeling forms: I can—–

and I grasp the malleable day.

Nothing was complete before I saw it,

all becoming stood still.

My eyes are ripe, and whatever they desire

approaches like a bride.

Nothing is too small: against a lovely background

I paint it large and lovingly

and hold it high, and I will never know

whose soul it may release…

The Poetry of Rilke. ISBN: 978-0-374-53271-0

Sharply Honed

One is not obligated to the obliging one.

Heads.

Something bespoke is not beholden.

Taíls.

Trail heads.

Heady tales.

⊙

What is my secret?

To appear as though I have a sweet, secret.

This smile whispering to you, making you wonder:

what produces it,

it comes from the desire to make you believe that

í know something that you do not.

To make you wonder until

you must inquire,

“What makes her grin in that

small, lips-closed and

pressed-pursed way?”

To make you want to wipe it off my face,

if you cannot know.

Howl this only makes my grin grow.

Ask me in private, and you will see my upper lip

arch into a sinister snarl.

Because there is no one else t/here.

No one to save you, or overhear the

sound of the feral ferocity,

whose volume keeps rising in my harbour.

Silly beast, it is true:

You are brut(e).

You came for me.

You come to me,

to slay the dragon

stalking me; but, you

now see how it wraps itself around me,

slickly leather wings folding around my shoulders as does a shawl.

See how I play with and stroke the tips of its scaly wings?

It is my shadow companion.

My gossamer wings keeping it warm.

The fire of its breath keeping my second set of wings, steely knives, sharply honed.

This is the power of having an open secret.

Í have nothing to lose by revealing myself, but

you have everything to gain if

í do.

A hallow on the high street.

I arrive at the restaurant through the back door.

I walk through the kitchen into the back office to drop off my coat and purse.

A book of poems by René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke sits on the employee table. I know it has been dropped off for me to take and read.

But, there is no note and no one says anything of it.

I do not bring it up.

The community blocks off the high street this evening.

No cars are allowed. Only hoards of costumed pedestrians.

The restaurant is booked. Chock full of reservations.

We are situated in the heart of the affair.

The previous owner, who retired two years ago arrives

to distribute candy with the new owner.

I introduce myself and

open with: so you released this place two years ago?

Yup. After twenty one years.: he shrugs.

Did you found the joint?

No. We inherited/bought it from the previous owners.

Was it called the same name when you took over, or did you change it?

Yup. It was called by the same name.

Do you want some hot tea to take with you? It is cold out there.

I want a glass of chardonnay at exactly seven o’clock, when this ends.

I make a sticky note reminder and post it where it will continue to catch our bartender’s eyes and thus,

Attention.

⊙

The seemingly ancient regulars begin arriving. None of the regulars made a reservation

for

Tonight.

Every reservation includes a note: window table requested.

Specters at a feast, watching the separate feast of the youngest generation,

through our looking glass.

The tables have been rearranged. The layout of the floor altered to allow more tables to be in front of the huge frame windows.

I intuit how unwelcomely our regulars perceive this change.

Understand the regulars eat every night here and have done so for over a decade.

Well, I suppose we’ll sit at this table. We want to watch the trick or treaters.: they huff, already walking towards the desired table.

In anticipation of this, i have placed placards on tables reserved for those who called ahead.

It bears their name and time of arrival.

I fear this one is reserved. I can seat you here or here. Anywhere there is no placard.

But, we never call ahead: they protest.

A lot of people did: I say.

I think: how do you not know what to expect tonight? You have been eating here for decades.

None of the reservations do I recognize.

The aura of the restaurant becomes maroon instead of its usual sunset orange.

{I hear a whisper say: tulpa.

I whisper: heyoka reads, tulpa.}

⊙

An exasperated, decorous but uncostumed, regular flags me over.

She and her companion dine with a couple I have not seen before.

[Trans. They planned to impress their friends here, this evening.]

She has been painstakingly doing panto. Craning her neck, trying desperately to espy the youngbloods in the street.

Yes, Misses ______?: I say.

I don’t know any of these people you have given the good tables to. All these people made reservations?: she accuses.

Yup. They all did. And, they all specified they prefer a window seat. You know, I don’t recognize any of them either, yet something led them here. Kind of magical, huh?

If those people leave, can we move to their table?: she responds.

Perhaps.: I allude, walking away.

⊙

These reservations are specters of the feast of the specters at the feast of future ghosts.

To them, i am tonight’s hostess.

Like them, I remember I have died before, will die again, and

I forget to remember it.

I will wake up.

I will fall asleep.

I will sleepwalk.

I will lucid dream.

I will remember to not forget that I am going to fail to remember

Again and again.

In delicious, concentric, Socratic circles,

Ever issuing out to the ether.

Dream of cloaks.

Í think í awake to the feeling of faint fingertips tracing my stermum.

Í jolt and suddenly say: í want to write for you.

He says: you do that already, yes?

Yes, but í mean to say í want to write to you.: í say

You are not conscious, yet, aurora. Slow down.

⊙

Let me trace your collarbone and the ligaments that pronounce from your neck. Let me delicately pinch that sweet Adam’s apple in your throat.: í say.

He says: Anything to stop you fidgeting with your fingertips.

That’s why í keep this cord wrapped, seven times, around my left wrist. Í play with knotting it.

He says: I know knots. I also know that you loosely bind your wrists together with it when you sleep.

Sometimes, because í am curious and desirous of that which no-one has done to me.

He says: I know.

⊙

He asks: did you dream last night?

Yes.

Tell me the story you saw…

Í am in a pub by the shore. Minimal decoration. A few pithy sayings adorn the walls. The wood of the floor and the glass installation behind the bar is the crowning aesthetic detail. There is the one drunk guy. The level of toleration he receives suggests he is a bar fixture, as well.

There are, perhaps, seven tables total, yet there are multiple hostesses. They sit at a service area by the front window, giggling in hushed voices and rolling silverware into cheap, paper napkins. Bohemian Rhapsody plays.

Alone and a’sat at the bar’s counter drop, í drink my beer too quickly.

It gives me goosebumps and a head rush.

The chandelier is double-sided and made of eighty, clear, glass beer bottles with candles burning inside. Í count them up and think: í must be back in Electri-city, where there is only candle light.

It is nearly charming, but the staff is in their own world.

Bad service kills the ambience.

Í see eight people sat around a large rectangular table.

That’s my group: í think.

Í rise and find my way into the only unoccupied chair.

As í lower myself into the chair, a courier enters the pub. Wearing a solid black cloak; the hood pulled so far overhead, no face or form is visible.

The courier strides to me and hands me a parcel wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine.

Í take it.

No words.

The courier turns and walks out the door.

Open it: urges my table mates.

Í do. Inside is a hooded robe. The colo(u)r of burnt sienna. There are stars and slivers of new moons in col(u)ors nearly unnoticeable.

The others at the table clap and cheer, like this is important. Like í have earned it, somehow.

Like they already knew and had planned this as a celebration.

Í leap to my feet, having, still, spoken no words.

Í run out the door. Í look wildly up and down the street.

Who was the courier? Í must know.

This is no time for celebration, this is another moment of testing.

Í feel my heart pound.

Í want to be scared but there is no time; so, í imagine

Í am a beast, a wild animal.

A junkyard bitch set to strike and kill.

And, the adrenaline becomes ichor and not poison.

Then, í woke up to sensing your fingers on my sternum: í tell Him.

Joni Mitchell-Moon at the Window (1998)

No rights: homage to a song worth sharing.

About the ghosts.

I wrote a lot today.

You are good at what you do.: Æ says.

What do I do good?: I ask.

Being yourself: is the reply.

Thank you kindly. I’m the best at being me. Nobody does me better: I giggle.

Ghosts of stories yet to be born.

Fetal.

Feral.

A deep Joni cut.

~

/”It takes cheerful resignation
Heart and humility
That’s all it takes,”
A cheerful person told me
Nobody’s harder on me than me
How could they be
And, nobody’s harder on you than you

Betsy’s blue

She says “Tell me something good!”
You know I’d help her out if I only could
Oh, but sometimes the light
Can be so hard to find
At least the moon at the window,
The thieves left that behind

People don’t know how to love

They taste it and toss it
Turn it off and on
Like a bathtub faucet
Oh sometimes the light
Can be so hard to find
At least the moon at the window,
The thieves left that behind

I wish her heart

I know these battles
Deep in the dark
When the spooks of memories rattle
Ghosts of the future
Phantoms of the past

At least the moon at the window,
The thieves left that behind
Is it possible to learn
How to care and yet not care
Since love has two faces
Hope and despair
And pleasure always turns to fear
I find
At least the moon at the window
The thieves left that behind
At least they left the moon
Behind the blind

Moon at the window/

Off-the-cuff Choreography

A bath drawn to

to draw your words.

To soak your bones and remind your greyhound mind

to unwind.

Put the pen and paper away. I have nothing to say: he says.

Excellent. Í don’t wish to take dictation, then.

Ballet slippers donned and satin ribbons laced up my calves.

A custom pair. A parting gift from the corps

following a fall that took my left ankle’s ability to regularly dance en pointe.

There is no visible trace of the bone’s weakness, but I sometimes feel it,

still.

An act now saved for special occasions, and certainly not slick floors of bathing rooms.

But, I can still stand on my toes all day,

A white, gauzey skirt, flowing but slitted, and worn, only at home.

Black, satin camisole, containing little but fully covering.

A pinched waist.

There are valid reasons for dressing the part.

He says: Do your barre work in here. Can you extend each leg to the towel rack?

Yes, my extension is good but my turn-out requires me to warm up. Í’ll start with the countertop.

Familiar feeling of tendons pulling. Straining until a’loose.

Initially struggling to stay tight, they go loose like fretted guitar strings after many plucks.

Í arch my back and bend my spine backwards. It releases its tension more easily.

My arms move slowly like a lava flow.

Í warm my muscles.

Í imagine the heat your body feels, in the still hot bath water.

Í envision the expansion of your blood vessels and the increased flow of your bloodstream,

Therewithin.

The pulsing that your body sensates through the process of acclimating.

Í feel it.

It limbers me.

Í feel your eyes.

Í pretend not to but í delight in knowing that you know that í know that í am

under observation.

The awareness of this suddenly envelopes my attention and í slip from my posture,

but í do not fall.

Oops. Giggle.

Tell me, again, your mythos of Svetlana Zakharova and Robert Bolle.

Í love it when you have me repeat myself.

Well, she is from the Balanchine school, where every movement is lavish and ornate, pronounced and, often, painfully slow. Most male dancers get cast as choreographical fillers. They dance in support of a prima or a principal or a soloist, keeping her held in spotlights in impossible postures. This is changing, though. Bolle was the best at this. But, when he dances with Svetlana, she needed no outside support. She would hold her own positions while he knelt and/or took the spotlight. Her tenacity, strength, gave him a chance to both shine and rest. A chance to breathe. You know í found some of my prostrations from her La Bayadère variation.

He says: I know. The way you wrap your arm about your crown to cup your opposite cheek

My eyes have gone wide.

Í am loose now.

You look ready: he says.

Í know the perfect album: í say, flitting away.

From the other room, í drop the diamond tip to spinning vinyl.

Beaming.

Watch this: í say.

As the music flows.

My eyes remain open but í am not seeing.

Í feel as if becoming music in motion.

Í snake, í extend. Pronounce the flare of hips.

Í make strange signs with my fingers.

Í shift in this solo performance for the audience of the one.

His neck bends back and rests on the tub’s edge, eyes narrowing.

He begins speaking words as they come

to his mind.

There is no need to write these.

He says: I like how you begin with the restraint of ballet proper before losing yourself into more, less classical, feral movements.

Í whisper: ballet is a foundation of five simple positions from which infinite variations may be culled; but, dance is second to second and cannot be predicted, only experienced. It is undomesticated, improvised, choreography at heart.

Vellum pressed on wooden grain

You cannot awaken someone pretending to be asleep: he said.

Making a desk into one’s own.

Write upon me. Pleas: í say.

Priapus’ pen is pushing into papyrus; and, the

song of the sound produces a strange and intoxicating

ability within me to suspend mine own breath.

í hear your eyes speak to me:

If I dropped my pen to the floor,

how hard

would it be to convince you to recover it, for me, in your mouth?

⊙

And, if imagination is a precursor to reality, well,

í have got it in spades,

Howl í can only hope and imagine

Whomever, in this card game, takes the bid calls spades as trumps.

The sunny, shiny queen of magnets is also the

aloof, wide-eyed lady of looking-glass house,

and, wanting, to be

Your night witch.

⊙

Do the pillars ever leave or do they

simply appear

to leave as we move further closer

…

Further

Closer

….

As we imagine our stillness to be actually motion in movement?

/venture forth and know me/, no-one man of wildest dreams.

Howl í howl when í say or do something wild,

like the sweet, little monster í am

And, you respond: I know.

Prove it, pleas/e.

Unrooted.

The silence slaps the sweet smile from my face.

Two dimples disappear and my eyes go wide and watery like reflecting pools.

It was expected, knowing the routine.

Like my cheekbones slipping softly against your inner thighs.

I return of my own volition.

I am into repetition. Can ya tell?

A cassette played and then rewound, to be as the stabilizing soundscape to enhance feeling and gift a smile,

but cared for and never unspooled.

After doing the same action, ten times,

the action becomes anew,

because we extend the potential through practice.

Carrying wood.

Ritualization.

Not new, but still true. Reposted

Like an aged letter.

I am soft today.

Wide-eyed in hope and a hint of previous hurt.

An open vessel never being vacuous.

I embrace it,

whispering in a whimper: hey, let me in.

A Tea Party for your sobering Psychopomp.

Vamp for me, wild thing.

I will howl out the accompaniment to your movements.

The accompaniment as the autumnal ewe fades away,

but before the howling winds of this

fall remove all the leaves from your limbs

And leave You exposed to face the winter

Unrooted.

pendulous periodicity

Locals always laugh at the outfits of outsiders.

Before this autumnal fall,

í, in summer, remember when the sun would not fully go down until the double penetration of digits of the timely hour:

ten o’clock

eleven o’clock.

The midnight sun.

Mooning and fully waxed, then too soonly waning;

like how the free market prefers prefit,

favoring beholden over that which is bespoke and

hand-made.

Hot-air ballons.

so tightly wound, we no longer remember which is the right side of the road

down which to drive.

What of those howling, “sincerity is my only credential?”?

Those who live where the gravity is strange?

Where it pulls at such acutely obtuse angles?

Like shadows of the diabolicals we call hills and valleys.

Leaning forward whilst reaching back in this pendulous periodicity of the multiform streams.

Dynamic current/s.

Work.

The diabolical breathwork of

inhale

exhale.

Contract and release.

Diaphragm to breast.

Skin pulling tight enough to count ribs, like keys on a piano.

Play them as a xylophone to calm my frenetic feral fury.

⊙

It is sea shanty time at Maple Hollow.

Come to gather ’round, salty sea dog.

Exhibition of the blushing provocateur,

an energetic howling, sweet sea monster wailing for you,

swimming through kelp forests of her own hair.

Hide and seek.

Marco.

Polo?

Demure despite (but, never in spite) appearances.

Let me energize that ennui into

Dynamic current/s.La femme d’argent.

Chic Tweetz (Audio) – Desert Sessions Vol. 12

No rights: homage

to a song I cannot get enough.

Giggling my ass off since early this morning.

A lovely, silly diversion that lightens my mood.

Has a sort of Ian Dury and the Blockheads feel.

⊙

This album was released today.

Josh Homme has a disposition that attracts great talent.

From Queens of the Stone Age to Them Crooked Vultures (with John Paul Jones).

From Dave Grohl and Trent Reznor.

And, Iggy Pop.

And, now, Matt Berry.

Cheers

Mantle above hearth.

The sun hits that magic hour in its descent.

Making the black wrought iron scaffolding of the ongoing, neighboring construction appear alive and bioluminescent.

A shiny male hummingbird buzzes about my feeder.

He sounds like how carpenter ants work.

A single strand of spider web, disconnected from

save one of its points of anchorage, bandies about in the breeze like a tethered up sail boat does overnight, with its rigged sails furled tight like sleeping’s closed eyes.

The sun catches the gossamer strand in line segments up to but not including

its full length.

I smell someone has lighted a fire in their hearth for the first time in a long time.

My nostrils taste stale smoke.

Shall I gather the kindling while you carry the firewood?

My chimney flue prepared, opened after a recent clean.

Strike a match to it so I may wrap around, in the fire light,

like a little, infinite möbius

s

t

r

i

p

.

Questioning statements.

The breeze returns. Curt blasts whitecapping the water of the Sound.

My eyes return to your forearms.

Do you think sailors ever smoked to gauge the wind’s direction?: I ask.

There would be other, better ways, I imagine: he says.

But, any so physically and painfully pleasing?: I challenge.

⊙

Hear the sound of my hard swallow

after hearing you

say: no you cannot.

The yield of yielding when facing the inexorable other.

The difference between unmerciful and

mercilessly defines itself now,

Like the vulnerability of engaging in the outrageous.

⊙

Enraged does not imply rage any more than ‘engorged’ does not always imply an

Empurpled structure.

Shutter speeds of my apperature struggle to clearly capture the inside vantage point.

This lurid fecundity from your reinvigoration,

arches my spine into a gateway.

A point of entry becomes created.

⊙

Tell me something good.: he says,

as an outreach.

I say: I chop vegetables and fruits as meditation. Slowly, precisely. I pour my attention and love into the act until it feels as though they butcher themselves. Nourishing before ingesting for nourishment.

Mastery through repetition of action. I heard you swallow hard again, you know.: he replies.

My flow of thoughts continues to stream out from between my lips.

I feel my solar plexus and diaphragm release and tighten as my tongue and mouth shape the exhalations into

spoken sentences, saying:

the vivisection of a tomato is proof of magic and, isn’t it curious that oranges grow on trees whether you have a personal savior or not. I am not religious but I see the miraculous in much of the mundane. A habit can habituate into passé routine without proper inspection or

it may alchemicalize, under our will, into ritual.

Ssshhh. Your mind is always restless, do you think?: he quietly interrupts.

I think I feel a strange pleasure at you asking questions to which you already know the answer. And, yes my mind is. It takes a great deal of restraint on my part, to make it still.: I say.

Proper restraint is how we unleash ourselves and run wild.: says his voice.

The upward inflection on his final word gave the appearance of sounding like a question, even though

it is a statement.

Forward from the background

Compound the difference between want & need

with

the difference between need and neediness.

The equation yields an instrumental derivative that is also

an instructive integral,

Because the positive and negative space of herringbone (trans. houndstooth) patterns cannot be distinguished, the resulting visual is

like liquid words

wherein you may read yourself as the narrator or the audience.

Delicious dichotomy of the impeccably complementary.

R.E.M. – Orange Crush (Official Music Video)

No rights: homage to a song that found its way into my mind this morning.

Howl great is the video? V. great. Contextual.

While most artists at this time where pumping out vacuous visuals of vamping lip synced monkies dancing around, pretending to be performing, R.E.M. did this.

A good interview.

The fall of a trip.

A pair of mended pantyhose, rationed from back during war time, hang on a wire, until dry, next to a patio railing lined with salted peanuts made as an offering to the nervous yet inquisitive Stellar’s Jays.

How I appear; how I am; how I perceive.

I first steeped in the blues near the delta shores of Muscle Shoals, as a child.

Families singing songs since forgotten by most places where time flows through you more quickly.

/ the grandfather clock was too tall for the shelf, but as it weighed,

not a penny,

not a penny, weighed more/

A pendulous arm with a weighted ball

pivots about the point of suspension.

Ticking out time in mono sound.

Watch it and I will show you how that strange land taught me to turn five seconds into three æons.

⊙

And, I write these words, first, by longhand to show how inane I can be; and,

to see those recognizing

kindness is kin of open-mindedness.

⊙

Sometimes I get a little...:howls the singer.

/And, when nobody’s there to write it, I’m gonna show you everything…/

/and, I can feel it in the silence…/

/why dont you come take a trip with me./

⊙

An emptied vessel is not necessarily vacuous; but, to

presume it is craven to be filled, is teleological fallacy.

Without trying,

{still}

a cistern is what it is:

Bits of sand transmuted into glass blown

to be exploded and then recapitulated.

Sea glass is simply sandy trash recycled.

⊙

I found the open secret viz a viz a well-marked rabbithole

with a spray painted perimeter to warn that

you fall at your own sweet risk.

Efficient Efficacy

The lunch rush of the little restaurant passes by two p.m.

I feel a hand lightly touch my shoulder.

How does being driven to distraction feel?: he asks.

Like being hyper-focused yet still clicking the submit button and immediately realizing your digital letter included a typo.: I reply.

Most people include typos in their writing, these days.: he replies.

Not me.: I say.

So your precious words betrayed you?: he asks.

No, they were instructive as regards the affect of your distraction.: I say.

So, I am effective?: he teases.

At the least, the effect you produce in me is no affectation on my behalf: I concede.

And, I wonder: will it still swim in my stomach when I return to handle the dinner rush tonight?

A sound not a bay.

I am the subtle magnetic force trying to kindly shift

your aged space and the immediacy of your moments.

Or, is that you?

Pulls of the polarized enliven me.

Maybe I am your current, optimal conditions,

an ideal, unidyll ether enabling materialization.

I see from the lonely vacuum without feeling alone.

Electric light and natural radiance.

A backlit screen,

The sun striking the pages of written text in a newly opened book.

Lidar and black holes howling in polite algorithmic rhythm.

The Oxford comma not being used within

sentences always running-on.

⊙

A’stood between two pillars of trees

with bark gnarled from time,

coarse like hands that can carry wood and graphite,

my writing flows

forward and backward.

And, simply saying, “hush” can be a come and turn-on to the fretted strings.

⊙

I see success is your proof; and, it

arouses need to draw your reaction.

Your attention.

So when you ask: Do you see?

I respond: I know.

Because I want to hear

You ask me: you know what, exactly?

i know my eyes want to watch your eyes: I reply with sheepishly calculated vulnerability.

⊙

I can see you enter a hypothetical room and

stand still.

Hell knows what I’d be doing, but

I know

I would stop doing it at the sight of your site.

To read you, without words,

your reaction. The response received from your eyes, without smiles.

Feeling as a fool tossing a coin with the Fates.

⊙

I ran with you in dreams last night: I say.

And, I understood the difference between a cagey connoisseur and a common collector: I think.

A coattailer or a partner in crime.

You tell me: your hair is a kudzu trail twisting down a terrace in tresses of winding locks.

⊙

These things are integral, like a well-timed laugh,

yet, they reduce to simple vibrations and shudders.

I live by a body of water

that is a sound oft confused for a bay.

But, my bays sound

like a whispered suggestion:

Come and bathe with me, Archimedes.