Ode to the Body of the Earth

God, this is a beautiful day, and I live to praise it.
I am so grateful that all this exists, that we are both here
and I meditate
on the thrumming gratitude that plays my heart
as I bury my cheek in the soil and the dusty grass
(strewn with pebbles, clover,
and anthills),
nuzzling and pressing in to
the warm shoulder of the earth
like a sweet and desirous woman: affectionate
and lusty.

As I lie over the bosom of the earth, I feel
completely grounded, calmed, and more--pulled
by an invisible force as strong as love,
but stronger, in its fixed way, like gravity,
from all the lively, spinning centers of myself.
My hot and liquid core, pulsating
and flowing with acrid, vital fluids
is drawn, irresistible,
to hers,
and our bodies lay upon each other like mirrors
and reflect an endless symmetry
until we blend into one another and are indistinguishable.

The earth is my god and my body,
and only when I think of her,
when I press myself, childlike, into her tumescent sphere,
wrap myself in her long grasses
(the first fibers to be woven into clothes) and her caressing winds,
and fill my ears with her self-bound stars,
the birds,
do I feel at peace,
and my heart opens
to encompass the entire sky.


6.30.10

The Ocean pt. II

As the glowing sky dims,
over water, over ocean-
floating pier,
men appear out of the bushes
and the drydock anchors, hushed thinkers
and fleeing criminals, all struggling
to pantomime the slow,
open and shut
motions of the hand of god

(God, who is fleshless,
God, who is the ethereal,
God the sublime).

It can only be for the sake of poetry that this
innumerable, unnameable presence
has limbs.
It can only be for the sake of my heart that this evening, Venus
shines brightly over the bay, pinkly radiating
with a blank and listless beneficence.

There can be no beatitude by the ocean. It is too weighty.



7.18.10

Alone in the Kissing Breeze

By myself, beside myself,
alone on the waterfront
tactile and sensory for the
first time, watching
like film glitches in a '40s film, rainbow
bridges and crystal globes
doubled and spinning, ringed
and familiar, like how
the halves of cut pearls
radiate
the same layered symmetry
as displayed in the miniature nymphs
that float hazily before
my eyes,
ballet-ing in and out
of the panorama I'm facing
and hanging, star-like,
from the shimmering pistils of my
blurred eyelashes.

For the first time in a year
and a half I am alone
in my silence
and quietly complacent in a self-imposed quarantine,
the nursery of all my latent
and brilliantest thoughts.

Grey-faced like a statue
of a saint,
I resolve to know the saints, to osmotically become
a manifestation of their devotion
through my understanding of their lives.
Pink and fleshy,
I shuttle my ankles closed together,
a skip-and-a-jump motion
that makes all my halfhearted attempts at modesty even more childlike;
to keep one's legs closed
and folded
on such a beautiful day
on this old pier
in this kissing breeze
will always be a halfhearted game
of hopscotch
with my impish and reluctant self.


7.18.10

Found Some Old Poems (The Ocean)

you cry on to me on
the other side of an ocean
and i want to rock you in arms made
of tear-salty waves. the liquid
from my bleeding heart adds
to the distance between us; it dilutes
the purity of the ocean's amniotic
fluid and makes both our
sadnesses spill onto the shores we've
created with our different perspectives.
On mine can be found the futility of
rebellion; on yours the stale
taste of an ultimate freedom and we
both pour our bodies into different
vessels of murky water. Your eyes
shine brightly at all times speaking
of youth in its prime and your knowledge
of how to succeed in just living. You cry
slowly into your cup of beer while
my eyes glow dully with the trembling
flame of fear and the knowledge that
nothing will stay the same. I cry
into the ocean as the water adopts
my tears, and i bathe in myself.



8.2.09

Found Some Old Poems (Leaving)

on my left hand i wear my grandmother's
ring, symbolically wedded to you
so i won't cheat when we're forcibly
separated by nothing
other than fate and my drive
to succeed. i pleasure your
name and your lips and your hair i
drive myself crazy imagining how
i'll feel when we're both home but
in different states; i imagine
you'll be crying while i grimace
and grapple with so many
different desires.

you love me now but will you
still when i give in and wrap
myself around a stranger?




8.2.09

Found Some Old Poems (Details)

this one has a renewed relevance!:


your little bear's nose and your laughing
girl's lips all pinkened by liquor and kissing
a cigarette each make me crumble
and wither inside; their perfection
reminds me that all things are fleeting.




8.2.09

Found Some Old Poems I

This one is actually the oldest of all. A poem?

"You know, although it would make me feel quite disloyal, self-sabotaging, and maybe even a bit inappropriate to ever be your friend, I like you."




9.8.08