away from self

again the window is not her skull in white by the railroad yard forgetting how to eat fire eat the ageless bodies in alchemy waiting for the hunk iron bashed open sailor to relieve the tight sewn memory the skull is dense it traps sod the brain a little brown fruit & knows fully it is far way from the shape it was born

What we all hope in reaching for a book, is to meet a man of our own heart, to experience tragedies and delights which we ourselves lack the courage to invite, to dream dreams which will render life more hallucinating, perhaps also to discover a philosophy of life which will make us more adequate in meeting the trials and ordeals which beset us. To merely add to our store of knowledge or improve our culture, whatever that may mean, seems worthless to me. --Henry Miller

craft

The word craft is such a euphemism for what we actually are doing when we make decisions about our art. The limited definition of craft, in the way I understand it, is the choices an artist makes to shape or manifest their work. The things that they do, and the steps they take to do those things. There is also a critical flavor to this word because there seems to be more favorable choices and more favorable sequences in different genres of art (even though as Rilke has pointed out, we have to as a breed of artists (divided by our certain schools), manage to forget that our tastes are dependent on the time we live and the climate of the world). When thinking about the word craft, I imagine two young artists standing in front an iconic painting and agreeing strongly with each other that, “this piece indeed has been crafted.” But I think that we are looking over a big part of the artists’ process or their craft when we see it in this way. “This way” meaning that the artist is in total control of her craft. That she is the only source of vigor which directs the creation of her work. So much of what we do, whether it is creative or mundane, is driven by what is away from us: the wild jungle of our subconscious, our oppressive histories, our ghosts and traumas, our divinity. Our craft, like our lives, depends mostly on us but also depends on the weather and all uncontrollable forces of life. It’s a play between our mortality and our ability for transcendence. It’s a game between our fate and our will. Of course our choices, our techniques are an essential part and I want to acknowledge that. Here, I’ll try to qualify how I think craft can be developed, and why some art seems to be more crafted than others. If an artist can match the tone of the outside forces, (the element of chance) with their own voice, then you have harmony. When the artist is listening as much as she is expressing, then that is a crafted piece. In order to listen this way, we have to slough our fears and insecurities. We have to keep open by not clinging to ideals about art and allowing inspiration to be a primitive experience. A total unique experience. When the artist gets away from judgments and the idea that she control her art, then she can channel the wonderful, powerful wind with all the debris of life and the supernatural—straight into her work. This is where I am trying to live as a poet, somewhere between belief and humility. I am trying to speak, after a long period of listening. To be aware of the swerving nature of being alive and invite that in to my work. To know that although I have lots to do with the manifestation of my work, I also am guided by things that are unknowable, fantastic, and heartbreaking.

mom's bio

I work on smaller pieces one at a time, pouring into them what I know and love. But when I leave each of them alone together in my art room they secretly congregate. They build a culture, some of them find life partners, make laws, draw communities. When I come back to my art room, I find a whole planet of life, using only my subconscious and my deep love as its beginning cells. This is how this compilation grew; it has an anatomy of serendipity.

errands

so much of my life isn't it it's an abstract thing i know but when i think about life when it comes to me i see a giant sapped tree aching with its weight moving towards sunlight moving in any direction it glows spreading wide its root fins all limbs, no brain not much in my life seems anagalous short breathed, lips like raisins shoulders squenched in as if someone has pulled the threads of the muscles to tightly puttering, muttering crossing out lists and writing down more watching the clock make a circle what am i planning for? who am i cleaning for? the crumbs, the stuff around the drain moving around stacks of things as if they were game pieces tomorrow the drain will have bits in it tomorrow there will be dishes in the sink again there will be errands to run but where is the living? where is the blood melt the throbbing or shining when does it pay off?

i held someone else's baby in one of those fancy canvas frontwards backpack baby carriers on a hike. the kind of carriers that I used to put my nose up to because they seem something only rich greenwashed americans buy for their baby because they are to lazy to carry their child, and too snobby to get something cheaply made. He was a sixth month old, soft headed like cheese too big for his body. He was coming in ginger blond and had big blue eyes that looked at you the same way they looked at tree branches. When my friend strapped in her nephew to my chest, she and I both knew I was nervous. While she was carrying him, hes head flopped to either side withe every stride wondering and investigating both sides of the trail. His eyes were wide and his legs kicked. Within five minutes of being strapped on to me like a tennis ball to its velcro paddle, he was head in, eyes closed, big deep breaths--the kind of breath I am constantly wishing for with nothing attached to it; an empty fish line snaking its way through clear water.  And I knew it was because he was reacting to my vibration, a chemical change in his oxygen. He was absorbing my wishes for slumped neck rest. He was connected to me, to my exhale out in the forest. We weren't there to energize, to loose weight, to clear our conscience. We were there to be lulled by the temperate and sustainable faces of trees. To be relieved of our thoughts with each plush crunch of the sod under our rubber soles. We were there for no reasons, to let go of our reasons. I had put a spell on him, and has his warm little pocket of a body throbbed with my steps I couldnt help but stare at his giant clean crown; the skin under the thin silk wheat of hair, pink white --what i imagine the beaches on the moon to look like. I held his potato head in my curved palm and I felt more like myself than I had in a long time. When i got to thinking about the last time I had felt like that, wholly myself, every molecule hammocked, I had to go way back. Nothing like that had painted me in any of my college years, none of my high-school years, not with the girlfriends I had, or lessons I have decided on. No it was something that could only happen when the thoughts weren't formed into language, before then, where you are smaller then your mind before every thing you think of can be handled by you. Thats why its hard to remember those times, because you are not aware of your surface discursive thinkings, you are settled deep in the middle of your life, where everything melts over you.   I have no real memory of these moments. But I know where they come from. I knew who they come from.

mariah, again

every dark grain of our love
spills out and hits the wood
fast coffeed rain the texture of bees
I'm yours again
the parts that have been dried out are flaked off
leaving just the wool.

they see each layer of the earth
in different colored and shaped anatomy
see the soil shift
knees under a blanket
the zip vibration of the teenage cicadas
the mule slump of the moles hips
chicken feet of rats
the carnal slurp of roots
millions of eye lash legs
digging through one grain at a time
the whole wet galaxy sifting
into the funnel of gravity

we know a version of ourselves
no word is folded into sound
not one phoneme is brushstroked behind the nose
the brain is a watercolor
as june sprays into teeth
two waterholes for eyes
where absence of will can be seen at the bottom;
it's her feet that the dragongfly lands on for a moment
and recognizes itself.

preacher 1

the unalloyed joy we want to surgically unthread from our childhood past is impossible
it's not that our ability to rest our worried mind or open our hearts like
a hungry mouth, has weakened the way our joints and eyes will
we haven't rusted inside the pipes or anything
its that the system of caring has gotten even more complex
that we have grown even more bones for deep love
so that when we get close to what we love, when our dreams
begin to crystalize, our hearts simultaneously begin to break.
because now, as adults, with 10,000 meticulous veins for love,
we know how precious our love is. we've seen enough to know
how miraculous a moment of luminaria heart is,
and there comes a terror for the moment it will go out or harden.
the crackling of worry and the paralysis of terror
is the spirit's biology signaling to us, that indeed
our joy and our hearts are working.

myth 2

each citizen will turn ill
their self laws heaped inside of them like meat into a drawer
clouding their air with brown heat
they sit waiting for the sky to wash them out
the rain to run the muck into the borders of the country
so their dreams will grow fins
and swim out of their ovens

so they can again have eyes full of fish scales
paper layered pennies
mouths a bundle of lime
waving open like sea grass
with their sour fresh limbs
so they can have hands like glass
which can only catch for a moment
the dry toothed light

in church and buoyant with prayer
the towns people can see
the devil's texture of their earth
finally run their minds over the impossible ridges
of their wood, their eggs
and can imagine how many hooves
rattle the mind of the universe
the shabby animals eyes open in birth

when they can join spirits and sing
the wrestling under the grass is known
the land moves the way water does
pulsing and spreading out
the bits that hold their children together are turned loose
and everything breathes and can be moved through
with a hand.
the unbalance of change is no longer a scare for them
because there is no pause no one to grip to
they welcome all weather
and feel pleasure in the bleed

myth series

grape tomatoes are floating in the puddle garden
all the women are baring their muscles
crystal deamoned and chewing
every bright bite of high water
cutting through our skin of earth
a peach; slobbered sunset gut.

if the earth were smooth, our brains
would be spoons
could be licked clean of its stink
our memories sliding keys
all music echoes in whales
and we could lay the tin things out like maps
make better decisions and color in
the lawns

fish mouthed, we screamed in
the homes of our lives
our guts filled with red clay
grasses and shoes
tables and spotted animals
digested or cremated into every cell
floating inside their lakes
are ten thousand birds
and families holding down their lies
their flying directions.

the fathers give like water
rising slowly and then carrying everything inside it
bones become pulp
our ribs are rainbows over their shoulders
our feet inside their hands like coins
everything is held in fiction

he caught a ladybug in his beard
and then everything set forth automatically
each heart he grew mutated into a sun capsule
a glass bead which made it hard for his feet to stick

blue blurred field

whips a ship without shape

when it catches me

I believe

I can talk to ghosts

drift away from town

further west into the  forest by the sea

a flute for the wind

playing the sea  through

its glass throat

and when I’m there

a knife inside my heart

where all things that can’t be said

are known

will glint its bouquet light

onto our feet