Green River Reservoir: Canoeing Journal Excerpts

Eat all the hunger you can,

this is not a morning for a delicate breakfast.

Your lunch is moist, day-old and smaller

as the day gets high.

A kettle lake is the kind I best know, a round glacial divot fed by meltwater, underground seepage, an island of water in the vast scar of land and people, but this lake, the Green River Reservoir, is a slowed river, outwardly connected to the water around it via channels narrow and meandering; the flowage system is elongate and fanged, with many sharp inlets, coves and bays; the trees here explode unto the edge of water, only separated by a smooth crest of rock, like foliage sprouting on the shell of an enormous ancient turtle.

Lining the bottom of the cove,
as much as I have seen follows:
Newts, decaying leaves and sticks,
some kind of seaweed, old logs, a dead sunfish.


The fluid wander becomes stagnant, glacialized; we are awash in a landscape and ourselves--

Daring the Yellow Light

I thought of a place

that could come to be

a holding cell for

the thirst in our hearts.

I held it in my mind:

--a burial ground

piled with peat and

wilted daisies,

forgone letters tapped out

lovingly on typewriters,

a thousand lonesome glances

at the hoary swelling moon,

more caskets of clichés,

more trinkets tired of dirt.

I heap higher and higher

above the settled earth,

until it scrapes the heavens'

knees, until we've set

beneath the moon's chin

like a contemplative fist.

I pull darkening blue sky

close around myself,

wrapping it like a cloak,

as it's cold above reason

near the timberline

of memory, where

roots can't hold to time,

dates without dates,

eternities spent curled together,

conversing in a treehouse always

just at dusk, laying weaved

together in a bobbing canoe,

letting the wind pull

us about the narrow pond.

I've made a bed of all of this,

plumbing a dark sky for you

--this is where I will

rest my tired eyes tonight,

the blue daring

the yellow light.

Green Canoe

The whirls were twisting in patterns

as they touched beyond the gunnel.

A paddle turns the world beneath

me, leaving stillness, leaving land.

Sweeping seaweed from my blade,

I glide through misty vastness

Leaving bounded space behind,

shedding moorings and the coast.

I was gliding there in a

green canoe. I was gliding along.

I was gliding like a hockey

puck pushed, smooth black water shifting

to blue, with the Sun peaking

just below the needled fir.

Thinking of my stroke beneath,

a feathered open row.

Ain't it a Shame?

Ain't it a shame,
this gonerism,
byeism,
simple see-you-in-Julyism?

Ain't it a shame
for your arms to slump
and your back to arch
like a dew-laden grain-
stalk bending in the dawn?

Ain't it a shame for us to
hold cold hands in a cold
parked car, and to pack off
at that moment like
shiftless old dogs?

(--and suddenly, I'm holding nothing:
one cannot hold onto a
memory's dead moments, I learned)

And so long so long,
but ain't it a shame?

I disagree, with civility.

I disagree, with civility.

But you see your argument has been
anything but civil--


Precisely as I said,
I disagree with it,
in no uncertain terms
and I am anything but
a civilian, a citizen
of a civil society,
I am a wild denizen rather
of the tumult
of the Earth, a formless
creature beholden to nothing
but exuberance, joy, liveliness,
I wander in fierce destitution and timelessness
and the Walls of Legality and Process are Jericho's
to my thunderous horn,
I marching, them falling,
forever in vitro  in transito  in lumino
and riding a white-hot bolt called
wind of momentary life and so
you see
I do not disagree as one incorporated
with civility,
but as one imbued
with all that civility lacks
and desires.

Psychonautics VIII

Tossing disc is omnipotence
when headiness high and spaced
is arranged vehemently around you
with every motion of the spinning disc
mapped  instructional  schematic  magic
across the arcing dome of your mind and
each moment and measure of mass is
asserted, willed by intrinsic forces manifest
in their paths, each throw-catch movement
a literal display of decimal places and laser-
point curves allowing a systematic mastery
of frisbee, just running high and really snapping it down.

frgmnts

briefly slots of darkling stars

fleeing tongue of saccharine caves

countenance of rigid tare

doorstop fairies  se e m i n g  of ledge

trims of legless potioneers

tincture sips of Jamborees

jungle peace of ornate rims

fleeing teaks of kindly sound

secant arms of teeming struts

roguish isles of patterned lips

acrid sacks of simmered dim n e s s

sacral crest of greenish blue

septum elves of coughing trails

Gorgon welps of withered greens

poultices of echo crimes

sorghum jellies, sou r e d of etches

denture cold of grin ning keys

putrified of puerile oats

kumquat splice of tempered flute

eyelet pin s of frigid themes

strayed for sins of lab y rinth pines

rattleskin  t w i s t  of opal lime

contrail mane of  o v o i d specks

corru gates of pencil lead

deviant of forg e d dream times

fragments of words of

fabrics misheard as

fragments of verbs of

fragments of words of

fabrics misheard as. . .

ORD/DFW/MSP

Can I glide now?

Might I expedite this trip?

Does my baggage weigh too much?

May I please get on with it?

Just six more long soulless hallways, white shoes are strictly prohibited, and please check any presentiments of hope or feeling at the gate. Also no smiling at strangers, leaning in doorways, or holding hands with loved ones. No warmth please. No kindness.

Please try and do your best to observe the moral blindness. Straight ahead dead stares will be rewarded with advanced line position. And while we're on lines, form orderly lines between the lines, fall into line, line up now

Is that all then?

Are there any more instructions?

Can I board now?

Are you done with your inductions?

Please embark, now. Mind the gap and eyes straight forward. Slower steps now, leave your grace but lug your airs. Don't bother trying to recline in that plastic go-kart chair. Don't forget to roll your eyes at the stewardess as she demonstrates the proper safety belt technique.

Please put your tray table up and apathies in their full upright positions. Remember to secure your malcontent for the passengers around you before securing your child's. Now please direct your attention to the mindsucking pamphlet tucked in the seat of the tall man reclining into your knees.

Please continue to stare deadly. Now remove the flotation device from under your seat, following all directions. Insert the plastic inflatable tube into your mouth, taking care to fill your entire mouth in order to completely obstruct your airway. Once your lifejacket is secured, pull the ripcord and wait for take-off. Runway delays are expected, so please bear with us.

. . .

Virus's Verse

After Gwendolyn Brooks: We Real Cool

We versus viruses, virus's verse,

we weirding waitresses waiting

in line. We buying sickness for

suffered and blind. We twisting

spoons with the needle and vine--

Wrapped leather belts and the

little brown bag, we squeezing

sleeveless and wiping a rag.

We holding handles and hawking

at doors, we lurking late on

the stairs of your porch.

And we diving dumpsters and we

washing cars, and scrounging for

change on the floors of the bars.

We's growing thinner, we's seeming

dimmer.

We jazzin' crazy

all night

at the moon,

passing and sharing

we get the bug soon.

a resolution of elementary semiotics regarding physiological response and responsibility

T makes me p.

Two related poems:

How a hawk sees his lunch flying over Millie Hill in September

Trees and sticks over

boulders and logs and shrubs

and a tittering chipmunk.

How that same chipmunk recognizes the advancing pall of the hawk and his own impending oblivion, and thereby avoids the clichés that accompany the last moments of many small rodents

Hark, a hawk. I guess I'm through.

Hello Gregor and Hello Charles

and goodbye to you, 

my dear sweet darling.

Where one can find that rascal and fiend Peder Swanson as he is trying to score after rolling drunks outside of C&R Bar:

Down in the hollers

hawking his dollars.

How Astral Weeks feels after a long walk in the Winter and your toes are still damp

Palate-like, a brass pin tongue 

resting in the groove,

taste: dense hysteric wisdom.

Glassy at Dawn

Walter says

his carbine is accurate

to over 300 yards but

I can't believe that old

tin scrapper is straight enough

To hit a turkey at thirty feet

though the road sign on HWY 95

That stretches through pumpkin

fields and cow pies says otherwise.

Ambrose's eyes

shiver when they meet mine

and I'm compelled to wave him

Back toward the canoes

and dust we made our trail

Of  but he can't roll his tongue

or sing in Spanish or skip   ever

Since he bumped his head falling

off the rooftop and I've stopped

Ambrose from

falling many times

since then but mostly into water

As we both have what our Paps

Walter calls trout fever   so

We sweat it out in a boat

on a cool June morning

With ducks and dusk falling

as we bob beside the quay.

Endless Elucidation

Must humanity be perpetual

for expression to be infinite?

Must societies stay small

for our art to be intimate?

If a tree falls on a half-finished canvas

can it be in canon, in conversation?

Are unfinished thoughts really things,

or merely shadows? Shades from different timelines,

only here to signal death, left on the vine, rotten,

but a swelling glass of Blush some place

where cosmic difference is no matter.

We all really want the same things.

To eat and to drink and to not get fucked.

Everyone needs a new reason.

We all want love flowing in and out.

A dead person's words are just

failed assertions of still-being.

Expression is just

another way of saying

The world is not the world without me

of saying I exist, don't you forget it

Green Specialized, in front of Angell Hall

I'll probably never see her again,

the girl that whizzed by on her bicycle--

I didn't even see her face.

But she seemed cool, which is to say

she couldn't say who totally shouldn't

have been voted off American Idol yesterday or

whether Elle's new Fall picks were so great or

when or to who J-Lo's next marriage would be.

It all seemed favorable to me just then,

her water bottle swaying from a bulky

unstylish backpack as she peddled,

holding on with one hand, wobbling a bit,

her sneakers slipping and gliding.

The event eclipsed itself as I waved

as her hair of flax waved back

and she passed, gone,

but that's not so important, as her just seeming

like my type of girl,

on a bike,

watching,

wearing only herself,

perceptive where it counts.

Blue's New Spring

That morning, a lonely jay
flitted between bare branches,
as I sipped black coffee
and admired the new skies and buds.
His feet and beak bounced back
between each spring twig bursting
with the earliest life
anyone had seen that year.

The leafless newness came on quick,
as only a rustle gave the bird to my eyes,
and as often as I saw him fly,
he rested perched in calm, unaware
of how Spring and I extolled his quiet race.

I don't know what it is about blue birds,
whether their feathers or breathy colors,
but something cold, arrested in my chest,
was thawed and replaced with a flame,
as I spotted a blue jay early,
on that Springtime April day.

The Balm of the Soul

Adjourn and welcome,
And welcome to desire,
and welcome to time held still,
and your mother still holding your hand.

Welcome to a dance with your appetites
and between your rationalities,
fitting steps with feral fictions
and bowing to your ego.

Welcome to bizarre vignettes
and compromising situations with
4th grade teachers, best friends' sisters
and a rotund clown from when you were six.

Welcome to irrational desires,
insatiable anxieties and obscene pleasures.
Welcome to wormwooded forests, purple mushroom spots,
side-winding cobras with your uncle's eyes and teeth.

Welcome to emptiness and boldness and foreboding.
Welcome to bare gums and demonic televangelist rants.
Welcome to the benthic.
Welcome to the night. Welcome.

Deviant Still Lifes

Lemon or lime or peach or mango and
lime-green gold or lemon-tinged tango or
old purloined pears, part premium part prune
and a grape-hearted goon and or rasin-brained loon,
but not withstanding, withered perjury performed with
and or (but not but) brilliant backstabbing stature
serving slain sumptuous wit, without maturity
and but tits, filed in forms, formed invections
vetting lawyers learning needless lauded needles
pricking pits, tarry tears and ageless ambers--
dino-fruit concocted stew, serving frequent frivolous
fictions formulated for the 'fore, but before and not aft,
and you all soon should be wondering
where does one get off this raft?

Small Talk

Ever many
dialogues
that slip
out of our mouths,
All the many
wordless words
worthless, worthless
every one,
that we utter
or we mutter
make me shudder
make me shudder
and I cannot
help but give
in answer:
nothing.