Here VIII

Here

Where is my mind
hiding. The other meaning

of yer name,
longing, the beginning

you are
my tomorrow, music.

For the night I have
no yesterday

and do not dream
for a song

other than
your song

Here

this, the universe’s
pulse is filled with you

Here

longing is
from distant provinces,

the specialty of
memory in my speech

having hit the street. The rain
continues to crawl

because of memory’s inability
to retrieve you, tomorrow

Here

a previous emotion
never tires of lying

to add what did not exist
to what did

Here

Honestly, the tree becomes a forest
unaware of the garden

or the past
in the mirror

Here

longing every movement of
time being

happy, as if you were
beginning light distilled

like a drop of water,
to enter a form for there

is no past and present
because you do not remember

one atom
on the horizon

but you see you were born
in white sleep, in this

circular
non-place

Here

you emerged from a sky
like this rising to feeling

sheer bliss
scattered on

your body, the invention
of air

just created
resembled reality

without a memory. You long a body
free of longing

the silky rain
on glass stirs desire

and a warm room
for light to rise

from the body’s night cured
of the present groaning that glitters,

tomorrow,
a star

Here

the sound of
the wind takes you

around its country
enveloped in its dark

plants until your pores soak up the smell
of longing someone

who never witnessed
a massacre hangs from a cypress tree

Here

I wish I
were there

laughing with you.
Forgive me,

I could not
find my language

Here

Where am I?
Lie to me, say: I am

alive, like you. Was death
that beautiful? I am

a body tied to wires
and I cry

out to know I am
alive for a time

even when it
takes the form of a nightmare

Here

that beautiful scar
inside this heart

is the country’s
fingerprint on this body

Here

I will come
with you after

its blemishes
have been removed

Here

Make tonight
a shared past,

a memory, afflicted with
longing to forget

the war
hasn’t ended

still
—Come with me, tonight

born from every beautiful
tomorrow before all turns to dust

Here

Here VII

Here[1]

why use
our form

give
me

only

this you

there

---

[1] Refrigerator magnet poem. May 10, 2012. Nick’s kitchen. Ypsi, MI.

Here VI

Here

I woke up remembering the world
wanted in, her

dress, the air
it seemed wrapped in perfume

falling from her bare skin
to test its freedom what I have called immortality

what I am now saying if I am
the one saying what I say.

You lie
stretched out before me

I am what you dictate
if you are the non-place

Here

in the light of absurd
reality, the imagination

is coincidence
what saves us from nothingness

Here

a rhyme brings you back
to be beyond the object of

my longing, long since gone. We were
the wind, endless     We were the world,

something new,
out of control, snow

pillowed our back,
held us

up. You wake
in the morning

to catch the dream
you missed, yearning

the meaning shadow flies toward tomorrow
open for delicate music and

language which you understand
then how to dream

your exterior
beyond this abyss

upon you
like dew

trickling
from a night embracing a day

 

 

Here V

Here

The first line asks you:
Why are you anyone. A statue

is incapable
of want.

Just of love,
open possibilities, I want

in the evening
the past tense to carry me

through lilac blossoms
and nameless plants so clear, so

do not leave me in
this distance. Tomorrow you will

become magic
at dusk, obscurity. Here you are

the laughter of winds,
volcanic in nature,

in the angularity of
things living to restore what was broken

Here

Here IV

Here

Outside when
you sing

with the light of oranges,
the rhythm of the sea

I can see my initial world
before this threshold of night.

Here

You lie stretched out before me.
I want nothing

I make. Anything being things
you occupy,

for this, even your heart
struck with love

like a rhyme—
how near you come,

fucked,
in other words,

—one surface of our sensory functions
woven of sun

sometimes not
so vague the concept

of reality, its ability to desire
to be the world

to be all I am,
no more and no less,

—the identity
of yes and no

 

Here

The memory of
music. This morning

revealed you,
infinity

and a mirror
between us

yet committed, I was unable
to dance from the non-place

I was only a farewell
that opens the beginning…

Here

The morning dawns nothing
new to breathe in this rotten air.

Here

You, a moon
and a dove

seeking refuge
of light,

free and liberated from
symbols

the soul produces noise,
strange—

a book signified
a utensil for
a homeland that exists

Here III

Here

The world you lacked and fields
come to teach me poetry,
innocence
meaning take me back

to the naked moon into
a few hours
between dream
and imagination dissolving

thought for
sound masks our animal sense
in each of us hunger
voices. Yer own silence

is in my mouth. The history of you
and yer name
go breathing
you and me

flowers. Our bodies in waves
in specialized means
of experience—duration,
graspable

—was the insides of yer thighs

Here

Sing in a thin voice.
I am aware I want

you, more
than a word

after
tomorrow

Here II

Here

You see
yourself an ocean
on which light trembles
like a sky
about to explode
you. I am the one spreading
this rumor

watching you,
a pearl of sweat
slips
down
your neck

 

desire
is as apparent as the air…

I’d lick that drop of sweat

on your shirt,

a shiver, dense,
rises for praise
through my spinal cord

—if only you were air!

Here

Tomorrow,
I don’t know,

I am still
about to begin to be

near
a past without

rhetoric, displaced
in songs slipped from

myth being born
in the wind.

They did not kidnap Helen
one day history’s

wound would know
exactly what you left behind

—the taste of forgetfulness,
honey

Here

Are we autumn?
We do not want to reach
winter, infatuated and stunned…
so why don’t we meet for coffee

on a day like this

the rhythm of our bodies filled with autumn,
cloudlessness and cloudiness, all
the more tangible, melting
at once

we surface to reach this
land filled with blue

Here

I asked you:
Does this mean enough

for now we are
still alive

in the earth’s salt without
falling in for now

the ending has endless possibilities now

stripped of certainty of…
a longing that turns all your knowledge of…

loss when it is
reduced without

roads, maps, or addresses…

 

Here

You sleep eight hours,
eight hours of words,

and touch it
bit by bit things

resemble their absent selves for
whatever reason

in sleep we bring them together

Here

We inspect
the ruins
that makes the earth more round

with you,           distant land hanging
above the clouds
in morning as does
love all that will be

was language
—that you remember of it

Here

Here

Tell me
the beginning

all over
again—

What remains remain from this
war’s a waste. They spread waste and you

bestow life
for me to be

not to be me. I have disappeared
with the voice of a bird.

No, no,
that’s not right.

Let me sleep
on it

and bring me
to a new unknown,

only wake me when
the ship stops—

Here

Here you’ve become
a synonym for sky.

Hurry, lest I forget
how to address you

before the night
tosses morning in my mouth.

Here

Thinking, anyone,
alone

trying to solve a crossword puzzle, not wanting
a cup of coffee

I discover and
then immediately forget

a lock of hair,

anything,

yet still remember jotting down notes
the light is brilliant
with a sour feeling
that is what poetry does

to the song
of two bodies then is an act of freedom
invisible
to tiny secrets.

Here

You are encounter and a short farewell,
a tree and the sea…

The imagination capable of recalling…
but the war took the interior…
the distance between us.

Here

I can no longer
weep [1].

We begin with the tongue
present

and tomorrow’s sun remains
alive in us.

I can no longer look
at the traces.

The sea is no longer
illuminated, no longer

unknown

so long as there is us—

Here

We need rains
from every port we begin us
all the interpretive instruments in our bodies

—from head to hands, legs and toes and lips—we know

because we want
to recall the body’s forest

I say: Pleased to meet you.
Let me
love you,
I am totally up
to the task

when sleepiness slips in
from the numbing wine, meaning

is formed,
made of liquid longing
without assistance or assurance.
Take me to that river
of night. There is so little time
between writing and dream.

The clocks can’t respond enough
to receive us.

You lure meaning into absurdity.
The sea wakes you up and yet
you do not know it. I cannot swim.

Poetry is measured of patching
one mistake with another. Today
to ascertain anything through the field
of your distant yesterday

crisscrossing the fusion of here
with a temporary fire
without maps and identities,
anything,

so we dance
today,here
so as not to die
there, tomorrow.

Here

Perhaps earth is you. Are you
a country
that will accept me?

Here

We wake up with Apocalypse,
wars,
earthquakes,

and floods

and have a cup of coffee.

---

[1] Men don’t cry.

I tilt with want

(anagram of a part of Anselm Berrigan’s “Have a Good One”)

Listen, moonlit lips
till I tilt

with want—I
eek Oooo, I

melt—melt
Ooooh… well hello!

are you really lava?

(anagram of Laura Wetherington’s “I love you largely”)

Evening gave me yer name
to yell out:
Mini-moon