morning lines #149
The arms of forgetting pile up around me in a jumble of fusiforming phantoms. As each dream from the night turns to vapor, another arm is thrown on the heap. The arms are smooth and fleshy beige, like tubers or dead fruit on the vine. morning lines #148 Every morning, I stare at the desert mountain in my living room, the painting I can’t finish. Finishing it would take me too far from the sand, rock, ocotillo, and honey mesquite that allow me to breathe, that blow me up like a balloon and release me into the secular cerulean, across the only landscape that loves me back. morning lines #147 maybe I want to get out of bed and read this with coffee as the dog sneezes and we both listen in the queer quiet to the plastic green fan I set up not to cool the already cool room but to make noise and obliterate any nascent noise and my thoughts in their sleepless wandering morning lines #146 red swept through her not like blood not for the sake of Christ not because she raged, slapped, and swore; red was her transmission fluid red was all she said morning lines #145 leave the love and laughter to the dead man, like a surgeon in the night, he holds each with hush-steady hands and the confidence of death itself
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morning lines #144
I brought out parchment to bake the scones on. Instead I wrapped myself in it and waited for the UPS man to come with string and a gentle hand. morning lines #143 I won’t waste the season’s last raspberries on you, pink-red pouches, so sweet I could weep. They ache to be tongue-fucked. Instead, I’ll kiss their eyelashes and lick their tears before dropping them, one by one, deep into my mouth, past bitter and fear. morning lines #142 In the poem, his dog was named Blue. That was the colorful part because the poem was basically black and brown, close to the bare, broken ground and about what most poems are about: death and love drained of life. morning lines #141 How can the days go any faster, the feathered feet, mucous running from all the running, tangled vines mangling heavily dangling from the ceiling till you can't see the floor and you’re inevitably shown the door? view from the deck 2
An army of tiny Mr. Creosotes, clutching umbrellas, falls from the sky, in a rare as rummy California summer rain that smells of dogs feet and typewriter manuscript. I feel brief belligerent shocks of lightning between my ears. view from the deck 1
She threads her teeth, like buttons,
one by one, in slow consternation, onto a length of floss, thinking herself clever for choosing floss over the solid imaginary line that goes from her comfortable bed to the blue-yellow moon. morning lines #136
Wisdom is knowing how near the end is. How soon the blackbird comes crashing against the window pane. morning lines #135 “Here is a souvenir of me.” It’s not my ear. It’s not the rusty condom ring of my anus. It’s not my whisper-soft eraser-colored nipples. I don’t know what it is. But keep it as you would your precious tongue against the straight white of your teeth. Because it’s worthless. morning lines #134 mary ann They gave her red grapes every day in the late afternoon. She spat out like a bored sniper the dark leathery skins, random shots that made contact with her lap, the floor, my amused and grateful heart. I see her now in a melon-shaped hat, cherries the color of dried blood swinging from her ears. She wears a vest made of mandarins and roses, and sits as judge (with a wink and a shrug), holding, like an egg, the germ of her droll whole mind, while the plum in my chest heaves and bleeds at the loss and gloss of her. |