jack-o-lantern

pain that sticks with you
a friend from childhood
a low grade fever
keeping you just damp enough
with slow erode melancholy
each ear an engine
grinding sand in between

makes me need wild flowers
it gives them purpose
they are not just for decoration
anymore
they are graffiti
total arbitrary compassionate faces

disappointment is combustible
when in contact with relief

ignite these flowers
lightening inside us for a moment
illuminating our dark organs
just enough time to reveal
the houses built there
with reflection roofs
turning the stomach into a sun-doused penny.

reading rilke

our friendship is worth more now
that I don’t know anything with my eyes closed
or without a rationalization
the trees of my home are coming down too fast
showing the baldness of my unknowing.

but I know you—
the way I know climate of my own blood
the texture of my own love breathing
I remember how much I love you
the way you remember the shape of your own name
it’s precious, you see that now,
to know something with your eyes closed
without the luggage of language or our beehive mind
inside is its knowledge a working heart.

zen poem

bird is prophet


as is the whisper tree
olive and gray
with hands like books


wind is the beard of god
wintered and full of song


i am in one moment of flight
we are

the pillow by charles simic

are we still traveling?
whiteness, you come out of a dogs mouth
on a cold day. apron,
i lie within you like an apple.

i love when the wind talks to me
other peoples lives are so clear

nose; series; 2.

Gilman Street

lit up oil
wet wood's back up against
wet metal's
fresh corn tortillas
unrolled open
steamed rose
over chipped fence
orange barley &
old papers with ink
stacked up
dog leash

nose; series; 1.

Santa Barbara in Spring

pinch adobe wind
sea salt
hot closed fist with grass in it
mint
rosemary wheezing
under baked dust mud
clay apple
jasmine haloing like fog.

norman dubie what did you say?

Poetry Foundation

sex list. death list: a poem out of UNdoing Poetry

deep red animal
you are a lonely
god
a wonderful skin chart
of black brain/
woman puff or man hunt
what charm your breath has

a guess or a fruit
a loose swim
across children and dirt

bodiless stars
a blossomed open mouth
fragrant laughing

ode: on getting older

so here we all are at my funeral
watching the raise up
watching these tattered blue hands curve
back into berries
spinning so acutely with so much speed:
an atom, or planet, or clock wheel
watching these little piglets entwine
with those old rough sticks
the gray and gold woven
loose like a fertile blanket
and I ache so hard to be
that age again
because i loved you so much,
was a thin melon sliced up
easy
and sogging up the napkins with harps.
i was a fool, a flappy tongued fool
who had torn bruised knees
and sweet open eyes
a green topped summer lake:
the shore as anxious for tan kicking legs
as i was ready.
when the hunt still warmed me up
and i could feel the knock-over
like a cardboard house in wind
when i courted you
now there are enough shadows
in this skin, you could sew
a book of pages together
and these eyes
are small hard beans
but my chest is still open and
facing up.

kabbalistic earth

out the magenta throat
billowed music
from
an incandesent yellow orb

where voice becomes light
a holy sun meets
birth thickened into objects

& voice once weightless and moving
finds its texture
each letter growing into image
their shapes: stubby or sworded
arm and legs of skilled dancers;
these need both hand and throat


woven together tightly spinning
like bees or science
this voice made of light
and dancing drawings

speaks up a lake
thinly dressed and wet.
or an old porch splinter;
giant masculine mountains or
all kinds of hats. And
if unwraveled will
spill out honey viscus song

all things
curve by breaths.

a birthday poem

you scored a pair of
opal gills

and had I not met you,
I wouldn’t know the zest
of cool
brackish air that
rinses the braid of
dead horse kelp,
shamelessly sprawled out

over the pale morning bay

for the mark on my hand.

sweet burn


palm impregnant
indigo green
with membrane seed, I
trace your belly
as if a fetus slept there
heart beat like cabin
in black harbor
put ear to your grape skin
listen to the fluid music breathing
island shore rose with blood
say good night to you, turtle
& ruffle the white sheet over
your new pearl figure—I
love you this way; in this

maybe a series?

Y & M story: intrusions.


Y let M see three handwritten lines and then M window was splattered all over the seat.

birthday wish

I want my poems [life] to be

i heart huckabees
Croatia meets caribbean
meets motzart over
steel drums
rainer maria rilke
and leaves of grass
a giant rothko
broadside
bark thicker than blood
and each scale printed in like braille
or ancient stamps
bones and feathers
and bells
mason jars full of water
and fish bowls
hanging from the oak of myth
like kaleidoscope
shakers in bonnets
and Buddhas
sleeping in giant white barns
lanterns strung
empty night in the mountain
limes
and roots
as deep as god.

sneak preview.

want to see my daily poems? this is a collaborative project between me and the english patient. Michael Ondaatje i am yours.


like a lovers name, are carried
blue in your hands



you are cartographer
drawing wormy rivers over our backs
and picking them up like
tea cups

magic or mad

first poetry workshop 3.31.11

we could know this better.

Pema Chodron - Maitri

art 21

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/hamilton/