Blood clot seaweed

clumps up the blue sea

from shoals to shining glee.

We carry in the slightly

while searching for our minds

in the copper forests:

thought that, maybe we

could climb the cliff to see

the seagulls catch

and drift all hopeless

in the fighting wind

of gales on jet streams

are rip tides in the air,

sweeps us off all bare

and stripped down

to our skins.

Often I find a peace

of time is sliced

already buttered,

I've lost, I've shuddered

and sheltered off the storm,

searching for the warmth

that blooms within

my molten belly:

give me peanut butter,

hold the jelly

and throw it to the fishes,

feed it to the listless

and spurt it off

the crispness of summer

in the Nor Cal.

O carry me carefully

as a cold gotten colt

is oily on the ridge,

a rabid rainbow kid

is begging for a fix,

but a slice of pizza

does the trick, to ease

his swollen veins,

his scram-rock brain

all jagged, I've often

seen him ragged

and humbled as a bird,

call me your bird

and eat like a bird

all picking thru the trail mix

and digging thru the trash can,

the thick of all that's madness

is swelling into gladness

to have my breath so taken.

I find my soul awakened

to a sunning lizard disposition,

a red desert rock, followed us

to the Manchester Beach pines

are we vain to believe in movement?

naïve, to be confident in the passing of things and ways to another?

eyes veiled in light-bulb night of daytime

when i snap pictures: a traveling six

horse band of outsiders and rough rider

gutter punk gypsy skunk, scragglier

than the last time we all converged

upon some sleeping stowaway

on a fool's errand, thru gold mines and Mordor:

the hurried wars

and old castle rocks

stacked like wood letter blocks,

tossed out "now-and-zen" clocks

it's time we had a time,

laughed through a rhyme

of sage wrapped entwined

in our souls all slying the Great Divide

from one side to another

in a dark Boulder basement

of slo-flowing life matter

all prickly hairs up on the ends of our skin,

pulling it up into thousands

of tiny mountains,

smoking at their peaks,

exhaling silver leaf

reflections on the nature of intimation

on the passage of time from the time we had

a time to the time we stopped

believing in mountains

because some shirt tenure said, "enough with it,"

in a checkered picnic basket,

the fact is, I've sat there til I was uncomfortable

until I was comfortable again,

I find myself trying again

to say something true to you

when all of it is blue

and jeans faded, and holes in your flannel

remind me of the wood panels in our basement

back in Maryland—we left our lunch boxes there

burned to the bottom of the stairs

that we bounded down without underwear

or caring whether outsiders were there

to be surprised: Four Loko in hand

and rubbing your bare belly, a man

a man a man is a boy is a girl

and a woman is love in our hearts

and out from our hearts to the world

• The pines along highway 59
• stretch high through Mississippi
• and on thru Louisiana too,
• again on Texas 105,
• we're driving by it drier,
• a little higher from the ground,
• the sky a beveled crown
• that keeps us feeling still,
• kicked back on the window sill,
• I got the feeling I've seen
• this place before, In Bedford,
• in Beaumont, In Tallahala-
• Cunt Shop, we forgot
• we are still in College Park,
• slipping quick into the stark
• flatness of record drought
• weather and whether or not
• we bust a flat tire, we push
• off the tired and fly
• a second wind, a third one too,
• on thru Louisiana too, 
• again on Texas 105
• we're feeling fine,
• reminded of the time we had
• a time and this time
• we keep on laughing
• back the watch an hour
• for the fuel from Sour Lake
• that bakes us like a biscuit,
• that bigger Texas sun,
• fed on steak and greens
• and come the oil rigs
• all craning necks
• thru the rust, making dust
• out of our lust to push on thru
• the Mississippi pines
• down highway 59,
• stretch sun salutation
• Louisiana mossy fornication
• and sing a drier tune
• to carry us thru the Texas 105.

• Day 3/4, thru the Appalacians, and in the Great Smokies
• 1.
• two troubadours traveling
• tirelessly hourlessly
• 2.
• Shawnee Springs
• from Paw Paw,
• Burnt Church Road,
• you're really picking
• my flowers,
• you're plucking my petals
• like God was beating the dust
• out of his Persian rug,
• He rippled the ground
• 
  
• 3.
• Leg shakin lonely blues
• bare run nicked
• sunrise skinny dippin,
• trissles sun ladle kisses.
• 4.
• Widow's Creek,
• a thousand little fists
• all bursting on the dash,
• ab som lom, slolom
• mountain pass Baptists,
• we were taught better
• than these thoughts
• on the fly buzz
• 5.
• The universe smiles at us
• like an old woman,
• and I am smiling back.
• 6.
• Don't forget your gypsy trinkets,
• bean fried bucket sense
• in grilled potatoes,
• potluck marshmallow
• candied yam mustachio,
• perhaps we go,
• maybe then we stay
• but we never go away
• from here

Rough draft

To start writing anything, I tell myself that no one will read it.  That way, I can say what I need to say without feeling inhibited. The challenge with this mentality when it comes to creating a portfolio, is knowing that someone will read its contents for the purpose of evaluating its worthiness, to pick it apart—or glance over it and toss it out—makes me keenly aware of myself, and my words as a reflection of that self—not as a mirror image, but as an outward manifestation of my attempt to arrive at an inner truth. 

I see poetry is an honorable lie, taken on with a naïve sort of wisdom. The struggle becomes one inside the mind of the author, and is worked out malleably through the journey of the poem: the journey of the author in discovering the words and hearing them, happening upon them as if they have always been there, waiting silently to be heard.  There is also the journey of any presumed reader, as they navigate the text and interact with it.  The words themselves are on a journey; only, they are not so destination oriented, even if they are sometimes grounded by physical or geographical setting.  Words are nomadic in nature.  They pause and settle briefly on the buds of my synapses, only to immediately thereafter be transmitted over illegal broadcasts stationed in mare liberum.  My job, as the author, is to tune in, and try to catch what I can, before the words are off again, without a chaperone. 

For all their flightiness, words hold certain permanence in our society: in the words of the title character of V for Vendetta, “words always retain their power. Words are the means to meaning, and for some, the annunciation of truth.”  The “meaning” of words, however, maintains a flexible workability to be re-appropriated in definition, tense, and implication.  Of course, one could say that words, on a page, or saved on a hard drive that commits clicking suicide, lack permanence: we can burn books, and computers, are computers.  Perhaps then, the sense of longevity comes down to letters, even as they have evolved in physicality and sound.  Symbols to represent sound existed before we developed the intellect to harness and manifest them physically by writing or carving them out, in so many variations as there are written languages, and people to pronounce them differently; with that, we each know the sounds (and, by extension, the syllables and words they comprise) differently.  Perspective is the stuff of existence: what makes each of us our own being, but that we are all beings of one being, at the risk of straying to the metaphysical.  It begs the question of whether sound directly affects our understanding of words, not merely in terms of inflection and stresses, but at the more elemental level of individual sounds.  If we grow up deaf, we understand language more manually: learning to make sounds that we cannot hear, by observing and learning muscle movements.  It is not to say that we understand words any less if we do not hear them, but that we interact with them differently on a fundamental level: to not hear the words coming out of our own mouths, but rather to know words in terms of their tactility, how they move mechanically through our mouth.  When sounds are on a page to be read as letters, it allows words a layered texture: an amplification when spoken, and a more subtle understanding when they lie quietly confined to ink lines on the page.

For a time, I separated oral and written poetry in my mind.  There were certain poems that I would perform at an open-mic that I never would have brought into an academic workshop.  I didn’t see one as greater than the other, but I did see them as apart from one another.  In terms of content and style, I was more willing to be abrasive when performing in front of an audience, where my poem would be taken as an overall experience, than I was in a classroom, where I knew it would be “put on the chopping block”.  On the other side of it, I would write poems that didn’t flow as well out-loud, and I saw those as best kept silent on the page.  I shared this with a creative writing Professor at UMD, who made the suggestion, that I try to do both: to write something that spans a bridge between the two spheres in my mind, so that it would carry the same weight on the page as it did off.  At first, I didn’t see how I could reconcile the differences between my two main audiences, the colloquial and the academic.  I became very frustrated with my writing; I felt like I had lost the ability to produce something original, something that would garner a reaction, and, ultimately, that I would be proud to call my own.  I had arrived at the root of my problem: I needed to stop writing for other people, and return to writing for myself, as I had as a child, as pure creative expression without motive.  I began to see writing as a meditation of sorts: once I found a first line, I would try to keep writing, without thinking about what I was going to say next, lilting the flow, uninhibitedly. 

I have developed a fascination for sound, and how it determines words.  When I am writing, and I come to a point where I am stuck, but the poem is not finished, I shut-up and listen for it: what sound or syllable should come after last word, or letter? What is a word that starts with the sound I am hearing?  Sound allows me to drive the poem forward, it forces me to find thoughts and ideas that I wouldn’t have otherwise. Often when I return to a poem, to read back what I have just written, I surprise myself, as if I have stumbled upon some form of truth.

O Holy Moses wash,

O desert climb the lost sand monster

and watch the sun fall down and shiver

like an amber river

down the black shadow mountains,

Twenty Nine Palms is half past to Baghdad

and we've dropped it down a telephone pole:

let it roll, and crush his shoulder,

the bone's popping out

but, no, check my back, brother,

they're gonna keep me home another

time again and I wish

I could go with you, brother

and watch your back, your night,

your fright, throw it out the window,

and catch it like a whim

then shovel it in the roadside ditch

all addled with jerry-rigged switch blade

human jerky making devices

and alto vice for civil riots in London

and air plane pilots who forgot their hats,

forgot how to tap the breaks

and embrace the faces of our New

Orleans graveyards

all sable harsh wailing

like a fever: a hee-yawp,

a breath of the dry sun,

the death of a young son

and someone's baby born

is screaming like a gun

is bucking off his yoke

and chasing after no one--

Watch the heat roll

across the sand, 

stretch the air 

like blond betty yoga

sun salutation, tan no pants 

hey hey surfer man

bronzed so good 

on the California barbeque,

babelicious booty 

take me for a ride on your wave

and teach me how to stand, 

balance my beach

is stuck to the backs of my legs,

and a rainbow poncho

to warm me up from the clear cold water:

the cloudy morning before

family darlings show up to book

their silly bellies like whales:

we are being watched grey 

from the ramped and covered

lifeguard stands swept of stray sand

blown in the night when no one was watching

or waiting for someone to start to drown,

only slipping under silkily in the night

under the come guzzling breakers

all fornicating felicitously

as forgotten fortune teller palm readings 

on brick Pearl Street in Boulder

followed me thru the mountains, 

through the unforgiving desert

that could bury me shallow 

under the Joshua trees

and walking cacti 

carried by their very roots 

towards any water they can find off a fly 

away to Huntington,

past the nasty L.A. smug-filled lung

hanging like dirt clods,

suffocating the trees to emaciation,

asphyxiation, evisceration, 

liposuction the city 

all nit-gritty: I'd rather have another hit

of sex drugs and dubstep, 

rocknrolla kids for John Lennon 

Nixon made him an enemy of the state 

because visions of peace are scary 

to a nation that prides its history

on violent victories and modern slavery

is a bad trip twisting

that metaphorical knife around

for the thousandth time--

how are we not dead yet? 

like taking an RPG to the head and living

to get with a Romanian chick, I can't wait

to go on leave so I can get high,

everybody just wants to get higher

than the last time, up the dose 

on my anti-depressive, over the counter 

under the dark dawning zombie apocalypse

would solve all of my immediate problems:

get me to the Dick's Sporting Goods,

the one one next to Weiss supermarket

and the Patient First, we got all we need to survive--

Monday night rage

gyrating, undulating wildly

while I'm bumping 

and grinding it out

I'm wasted 

leave me alone 

where am I gonna be for a while? 

losing my mind 

it's the springtime

white wining, and crying 

before tying my life to another, 

living under the cover of moonlight:

I get right when it shines 

my sight gone blind 

and I find 

a peace of mind, 

a diamond fire cole mine

of desire, haven't I met you before? 

yeah man i fell through your trap door, 

let you come in my back door 

and since, i'm feeling sour

more so every hour

of every year 

I fear something new:

something true 

comes from being blue

being used, left bruised,

and bemused 

and belied, 

feeling beside myself

and outside my self,

despite myself

i'm fighting my self 

inside myself,

I surround myself 

with those who hold me 

until what I am is a wagon wheel, 

going gray on a film reel 

that chips my hands 

into rusted beams: 

broken seams

on stonewash jeans 

and magazines proclaiming prophesies, 

I lost my car keys again, 

where are my keys man? 

ask me please man, 

and I'll help you, 

I'm striving to help you 

but I can't help you 

if you ain't gonna let me 

make a fool of me:

I see between the lines 

on your forehead, 

furrowed in your bed sheets, 

buried red and bundled with blue, 

take me back 

a white flag, 

sling me 

over your shoulder 

and do me no harm:

shepherd a flock of fools 

who have lost all their gumption, 

a human malfunction,

your skin is bleating 

out your pores, 

the sun 

has blotted out your Lord 

and rolled him in a spliff:

Jesus ruins good guitar riffs 

and splits me like bamboo:

I'm having a good old time, 

having a fool around 

and biting my lip now,

confusing night for day, 

there's got to be another way 

to say what you want to say 

without alienating your audience, 

making available your consciousness 

and splaying it open and naked.

raw squid

rough cable wires

haw the line

of rural broadband

and micromanaged

book worms

turned computer geeks

working the Genius Bar

are leveling me

like a two ton jet fan

whirring away

on an empty runway:

white WWII lines

painted thick and bold

wave lengths

of Hawaiian bases,

awaiting bullet holes

riddled as a Libyan

truck bed,

confused

as illiterate girls

raped in Johannesburg

by their brothers,

high on glue

takes away the hunger

pains and carves

scars in their cheeks

gaunt as starved meth

addicts in Mississippi

Delta swelter

and swagger,

turn off the lights

and watch them scatter

like cockroaches

and rats up-chucked

from the green sewey-holes

of backwater mud flats

damage still left

boarded up and festering

in Katrina's body counts

two-dollar toll on prayers,

insurance rates higher

than mortgage payments

when we couldn't

afford to leave

in the first place,

what's taking our face

and leaving it on the cold

linoleum floor? sticky

with last night's cheap

gin and mud tracked in

on Tims worn thin

from man's work:

the hewing and carrying

in the load on the back

of a tractor like some

crackled old master

of tomatoes and grave yards,

blue tick hounds, yellow

bellied fost-steaders

at the head of the driving wheel

but his body never

was found until some

camo hunter ends up

pissing on his bones

and the chapel bell

tolls six [six, six]

you're fucking with me,

right?  I ask if you're

free and you said I might be,

I say yeahright, I got it,

I ought to anyway--

Dawn

Aurora is wont

to the diurnal

voyeurs waiting

on her portico.

They stand on

the sighing wood

like dogs

at green beef,

sniffing it,

but reluctant

to take a bite

from any animal

that bleeds for a week

and doesn’t die:

what is lurking

in the center cut

like a copperhead

in the briars

at the tree line,

where the dirt

is always moist

but not mud, not

without a heavy

rain.  She wades

in the whispering

wind: a subtle cup

of rose tea,

steaming soft as skin

fresh from a bath

of bodies: swimming

insides of wild

and woolly mammals,

and mammary glands,

and field working hands

that were once

polished, pale as lace

gloves and Vaseline.

She was often

found lying alone

and naked

in the woods,

with some ancient

cypress root

growing up her cunt,

twisting its way in,

sending her

into wet fits.

They are spying

on her through

the telescope

on her window’s

peak: they think

she is dying

to never come back,

but each morning,

she sits up

and is disentangled,

the root snaking

back into the ground,

and she hitches

a ride on the back

of a lark, chases

the dark, back to

its watery place.

There, she waits

for it to return

the dusk, gradiate

its musk with her

cerulean magnetism:

a wasp of pink smoke

plumes into a tulip-

bulb in her front garden,

the circular one,

under the dogwood tree

that she planted

as a sapling: a gift

from Gaia

as a token to loveliness,

a bond to earthiness

and all that is

assertively feminine.

"If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper."
                          --Thich Nhat Hanh

muscle lock murder

shod me

a rotten corn cob

with rusty bolts: made

me a crooked wood skull

bobbing the wostling coves

of a pustuling cast of lame

duck measurements of plaster,

stated to the white washed walls

where the cloudy light sinks in

and savors us, like succulent fleshlings:

chitlins, and snout, and sweetbread

with fava beans, served Hannibal style

on the cavernous fire like wine,

suffering the cracks of bells:

toting shells in yellow from the bay

where I stuff yards of trussle sails

into my eggshell bodice:

whale boning through my stays

makes me shed, like money

to a pickpocket boy

in a page cap, grappling for dickens

and strapping himself to a wheel,

spun round by the hand

of some mad heady

organic shit bag, passed out

on the front porch in a potted leaf plant:

roots clotted like dinosaur fossils

played the xylophone kids

all the way through

foodless dinner—