MIDSUMMER SESTINA

The lover leaps up at the Moon in play,

but falls back to the ground, laughing, I didn’t mean it Moon

and Earth. The Moon sits still as a cat

satiated, but never truly still at all.

Wind whispers yesterday through black trees,

in another language.

Later Kathleen drew with her hands the face of the Moon.

Her hands leftover from petting the cat,

who had swallowed the perfect globe—swallowed us all.

Kathleen washed her hands on the trees,

and the Moon read her own face in another language.

Kathleen was just playing.

I loved you like a cat

loves her tiny brood, all

wound up under fairy-trees.

I love you in cat language.

We played another kind of playing,

under friendly Moons.

Striking Midnight can’t catch us all:

not the smallest schools of fish, not remember’s trees,

not the smallest family in the last corner of the world, or their secret language,

not the smallest vocalist, not the smallest play.

Mother Midnight can’t touch the face of the Moon,

after all, who makes her own fate like a cat.

Don’t forget to ask the trees.

You’ll remember woody language.

Only they can say who played

the night of the Spider New Moon,

when some lost soul cried like a cat,

and we couldn’t get home at all.

We met at the beginning of language.

I saw your mouth and wanted to play,

and we did play, gasping on milk of the Moon.

Our house was made from the belly of willing cats.

So call off your war against all,

and let’s return to the trees.

Lover, come back to Moon language;

come let us play like cats;
please stop forgetting that we were all once trees.

8080808080808080808080808080808080808080808080808080808080808080aaaaaahhhhhhhh

I walked into the kitchen to get you, I walked into the kitchen to feel free, I walked into the kitchen with fear wrapped around me. I said this word in my mouth: it’s metal, it’s a truck, it’s a toy. I want to peel it from my mouth and place it in your palm. I want to give it away. I remembered something back from four years ago when it was hot like it’s supposed to be here in June at the edge of Ohio. Something in the way the trees shivered with cool desire. With us. And we breathed. I followed you out of the kitchen, still not quite there. Unveil your heart’s heat, I said, to feel free, cold metal fear fall from me/us, fall clanging to the floor. Stomp it out. White fire. Quit the rides that aren’t cheap. Take time out of shadows. Feel me. Remember over and over again that first comes love, then fear, then love again. Even past the madman tears in the fabric, past the vast cruelty: Love is (though often hiding within the whispering grip of maya). Love is the Alpha, the Omega; Love is the (sweet none) Synthesis.

CALL IT

If it’s rugged could you call it. A bird cage. The sun beat like it wasn’t new. The dusty hawks stood still. Red-Tailed. With shoulders. Fat bee and bee things kicked up in our ears and (under our skirts). The sun shocked our skin that was and wasn’t new. Secret corners bore mammals with backs curled up escape. At last responsibility—vanquished. Vanished. Banished mammals with useless stink glands. Feathering. Drugged on rugged cage. I held my daughter at angles—telling her animal names. Pulling her close from dusty stone eyes. Hawks and turkeys. Tiny waterfall so ornamental by rugged hawk cages. The animals turn to the wall and rest, relieved. At last, the animals say,—Nature vanquished.

WE CAN'T SEE THEM

There was a man standing in the screen doorway. Or maybe it was the dirt made it look that way. Anyway, someone was murderously hungry for the wrapped sandwich on the counter. Someone asked if it was dog meat and everyone could smell it. Then forever all meat smelled like dog. At least to the littlest one: a girl of four overhearing everything.

And her aunt was telling about the near-death experience: all white and there were trees cutting through the white and voices up close in her ear like this, of all the ancestors from Kansas and Arizona. All at once. And the aunt held up the dog meat sandwich wrapped and the girl wondered how everything could be white but not the trees and where do they go.

Where do the trees go after life? Or do they just grow. Do trees reach deeper into the ground and higher into the sky and can we tell how old everything is by looking at trees?

Or dust: our hands and the linoleum and everything are made up of smallest pieces like dust, like hairs, smallest pieces moving but we can’t see them. Even the trees are made up of this dust, these tiniest trees.

The screen door slammed on the shadow man. The aunt stepped outside and unwrapped her dinner and no one seemed terrified, least of all the dogs.

SUDDEN MANIC LAZE

Thick and sudden.
An almost herb but
The Glass Menagerie
Phoenix, a moment just outside the Heard 
Museum of American 
Indian Art and History.

Just because of May.
Wonder that wrinkled grass and clovers
tapered not
cut but just under feet of snow---
my baby claws at them and the Earth doesn't mind
doesn't moan

just stands.

Oil. Pads of feet touch the wooden floor
again

the freezer banks at my first job 21 years ago
---banana ice cream hairspray---
and Lilac Wine groping in the dark bathroom
---new carpet air conditioning---
beauty school oil massage deep into knuckles, chatting 
away like there's no skin, bones in our hands
again.

AHH---too much midwestern fever
screaming birds wow it's still dawn
because of May.

Share something from a can---
the dresser facing us from the back of the pick-up has a face etched---
pass the drink back and forth
manic laze---

---there was a half dream
while the baby was talking one hand
to the other hand---micro-waving fingers 
make expressive faces
and her voice low and serious---deedle deedle-torh
and I heard a half dream about a girl's 
hell being forever in the mill.

Thick and sudden May---
forever mill---
herbs in our bones
skins in our hands.

O' WORN ASPHALT

The Moon is in synchronous rotation with the Earth—always showing the face. Art is Holy because it is associative and thereby demonstrates our interconnectedness. Art is Communion.

We are entitled to our labor but not the fruits of our labor—be free. Noise punk. That old seashell.

AAHHH—reclaim punk from good-timey retro types and macho conformists. O’ Natural Satellite. We’re all so meta---. All this metal. Luuna.

DIY. Pure art force. The Moon is the same size in sky as the Sun. Witchy space inside. Chest cavity fire. Pulling up the tides—the oceans reach up to Moona. Sex is a meaty flower. A constant offering. The rates are not constant. Mona.

Dark Maria (seas) make your face. Come at me like a radio. (Fugazi: fucked up, got ambushed, zipped in.) There is an old man (in dreams) with his back against mine leaning-pushing-moaning-drooling but who is this stranger bossing at my back? He's like...wacked the fuck out. 

The Moon reminds us: Soul.

The Red Mother. The Red Tent. Art is Holy because it is associative and thereby reflects the experience of our interconnectedness. Art is communion.

Fuck careerism—the laborNow is the fruits—be free.

No career at the end of desire.

Art Holy Communionananda.

Wikipedia: “The Moon has an exceptionally low albedo, giving it a reflectance that is slightly brighter than that of worn asphalt. Despite this, it is the brightest object in the sky after the Sun.”

NEW RELEASE

I'm honored to be on another A SOUNDESIGN release!

Tomorrow, April 18th, is the release date for a split tape in the Versus series between me and Faangface. 

Check the release out at Bandcamp here. Check out A SOUNDESIGN RECORDING here.

For more about Faangface, check out my interview with Joshua Novak. 

For more about the creator of the beautiful A SOUNDESIGN RECORDING label, check out my interview with David Russell Stempowski.