a node around which knowledge orbits

even an emotion is an assortment of information

Circulation

Writers, blood donors

Left weaker but stronger

By transference of essence

A stranger benefits, or else

Red pouches of rectangular life

Rest untouched on dusty shelves

Nurses & librarians

In hospitals for bodies & minds

Blood & books on carts with bar codes

Your blood is inside of you but it is not helping anyone

Your blood is only noticed in emergencies

Trickster

I was meant for the sprint, the skirmish.
I neither build nor destroy;
I move bricks.
I'm a wind-up toy
Operating in bursts.
I'm a spurt, a spirit, a spearhead.
A scavenger.

(Hope I) GetYoung (Before I) GetOld

I am a youngperson
nothing interesting has ever happened to me
& nothing ever will
but eventually
enough nothing will have happened
to distance me
from all of the other
youngpeople 
and i will be
old

Blueprint

Spontaneous arcaded corridors sweep ships of cerebral oarsmen along neuronal oceans of serotonin, synaptic tourists tugged through passageways of folded pages

An attic’s attacks, shriek-strokes of blackest bats, blots shattering silver canvas of anti-silence; grey matter

Dumbwaiter runs from succumbing to slumber, pulley tugged steeper as sleeper sleeps deeper

Padded cells, numb pillows of softest subconscious

Not-solid cement poured for floor

An abyss is a basement

Furnace thrum

I live here

a verbal noun that at the same time throws

 Singing songs

     Writing psalms 
           Reading palms
                Righting wrongs

                     Banging gongs
                          Asking alms
                              Staying calm
                                   Going long

                                        Looking on 

                                              Lobbing bombs

Shed-ule

nOOse to thGrindstone
TryItOnforSize
then bakxs againstthWall &
it'sTime forCompRoMise

Daylight Savings

Waking in white, save me from daylight
Weary, half-dead, with a steel wool head
Window's supernova has frozen my bones
Which echoes cold drones of unanswered phones
Wired to my bed by the day's webs of dread
& when it's time for night, I'm still not all right

Keepsake

i threw away her keepsake
in the hopes that this would free me
but now i feel a phantom limb 
in the place 
where her keepsake
should be

learning a skill

i have always stopped just short of learning a skill
in order to maintain my mind as 
a pristine prison
filled with billions
of cannibalistic
bats

MY POEMS ARE NOT TO BE READ BUT STARED AT

Imagining a Beautiful Girl Named Dyslexia

Eye dew this sew I can sea ewe

Won day will meat
Four the first thyme
Won step I'll take, followed buy another
Awl the weigh two the end

Aye through these words fore yew
Due ewe like yore present?

Beautiful Work

It's beautiful work
It's something to do
A stone thrown in your path
A cabinet to file
A libretto to write
It could be anything
Anything to appease the authoritarian part of you
But some part of you won't fall for that
And you can't help thinking
There was something else

Psychic's Retreat

the psychic left the stratosphere, moved out past the vibrations of the painful, set her rocket to low orbit behind the rings of Neptune
blocked from the subwoofing of the future, the rumbling of the slouching of the spiraling downwards, earthquakes draining clockwise
protected from premonitions, the tremors of incoming terror
the full force of the outcome of events
she floats, swimming in the silence of shadows
bathed in the vacuum---she heard them not listening
she heard the echoes bounce off back to the beginning from the end
the low tone of doom
hell is a decibel
hell is a decibel & she chose to hide out between tones
she left
she left them so that when they fell
there would be no one around to hear
her rocket, borne to the skies on the ripples of individuals' ignorance
now sits in the ink
she saw the future
& that's why she left
she saw the future
she saw them fall
but worst of all
she saw herself not save them

Dancers who speak

Dancers who speak, pose for your prose

The noises you make, the speeches you choke

Without an oasis, thirsting for oaths

Too heavy to hold, overflowing the throat

Tongue pushing upwards, braiding the rope

Forming a pearl from the vocals of ghosts

Depreciation

There's a coin in the road but it's nobody's lucky penny
Just a testament that Lincoln's copper profile has lost its worth
"A poem is never finished, only abandoned"
Paul Valery
Abandoned nature, abandoned industry, abandoned gray & green
Abandoned people, used up but unspent
"This land was made for you & me"
Woody Guthrie 
The first stares from the undergrowth but holds up her hand when I wave
The second circumvents the fence & asks for the time; it could be anytime
"It's ten to three"
Isaac Mell 
Fallen from a pocket, pushed out of a mind
Even the bridge will leave this flat-line road, raising up & returning to heaven 
"ROAD CLOSED"
The City of Cleveland
I fail to stop to stoop to pick up the penny
Is a poem considered abandoned if it has never been begun?

Answered poem

Fall 2008: I moved on to poetry from pottery. I spent my days spinning clay on a wheel and filling my room with pots. Then I started to treat each pot as a poem, as a life, and what are we but vessels that hold ideas, opinions, information? A pot has a purpose—to hold a substance—but you always need an opening to get it back out again. I transfer my essence to you, but it never leaves me. The liquid doubles, flowing, over the rim of my mind, the dam of my ego. My cup runneth over, and I add more clay, more grey matter, to my self, my pot, the vessel, the container. I wonder why we’d ever need containers to survive—why not lay everything out so nothing is hidden, compartmentalized, hidden? Why not pour out our liquid into a common river and comingle, together, forever linked in chemistry by the molecules of our souls? How can I change the course of the salmon in my stream, find the way back to my course. One day I’d like to point at something and say: That is my soul.
Remove the shadows. All is light. Everything is water, everything is liquid, and once we decide that we are not under water, but that we are water, maybe we can bond in spiritual cohesion. No, it won’t be just spiritual. I think one day our water will break and we’ll give birth to ourselves. We’ll give birth to ourselves and we’ll enter the womb, forever floating, thoughtless and safe. We will be. And we will be together, without a pot to hold us.

Fall 2010: Then I was mud / Slipping, babbling, sloshing, giggling, sticking unto shoes / Joyously lapping up every drop of rain / Feeling myself flowing & expanding into the infinite // & now I am baked, I am cracked, I am formed but fragile & cold / The kiln has burned the soul & the searching right out of me / If I were mud you could bend me with your hands, we could embrace between your fingers / Our forms could meld together until distinction became inapplicable / But I am dry, I am rough / I am closer to being finished but I am further from being whole

Anamnesis

I am the Houdini of memory
I bear the iron impossibility of escape
Because memory pulls you down deep into the sea, chains tight & dragging you
But the key, the metal in the back of my mouth, is forgetfulness
One day I may choke on it & die
Not from the failure to escape
But from the knowledge that trying to makes me a fraud

Blank

Allow me to fill in the blanks. 






Between being lonely & being alone.






Forgetting causes pain.






Even immediately forgotten experiences affect us & color our current state of being. 






A good day ends with a good feeling.






Listen, & fill in the blanks.






...