==[poems from Summer 2023]==

These poems were composed as part of a self-directed initiative to get back into poetry. They were written to be included in a series of weekly updates (correspondances, I call them) I was writing at the time. Although the poems were a late addition to the correspondances, it ended up averaging out to be that I wrote about one per week.

“This house (1)”

This house has an odor, a stench, some kind of putrid platitude that coats its walls.
Its pallid frames form a palindrome the color of carcassed human bones,
And beneath the sheets there’s a telltale cry, the thumping of a heart
Where waspy shouts of furnaces were carried from the start.

“This house (2)”

This house has a song that it sings with the sound of bricks and wind.
Innocence hangs fetidly, sunken with its chords.
A paunchy air, placidity, is plowed by choruses wrung sore.
Like industrial smog with bated breath,
The notes mill about and spill onto the floor.
And hang on chandeliers and windowsills and filter through dead foam.
This is the loneliest song that’s never been heard, and I have to call it “home.”

“Autosarcophagy”

I want a dog to eat my face
I want to break my body clean in half
I want to find the zipper on my spine and pull it to my calf
I want to tear out both my eyes and finally let them cry
I want to feel what it is to actually want to die
I want to rip up my nerves like wiring taped to a floor
I want to smash my brow into every bathroom door
I want to peel off my skin and pile it in a safe
I want to take a grater and chafe, chafe, chafe, chafe, chafe
I want to dig into my stomach and split it like it’s glue
I want to be able to look into a mirror and say “I want you”
I want to pry out my receptors, for pain and self-conception
I want to draw from Orpheus a visual reception
I want to stop self-hating
I wish I wanted to exist
But because there are no dogs around, I’ll have to use my fist

“i. e.”

Interrogate anthropocene--
Elucidate indifference--
Inebriate autocratic--
Emaciate imperialist--
Inundate ecumenical--
Eviscerate exploitational--
Instantiate iconoclastic--
That is: E. X. P. L. O. D. E.

“i woke up”

I once dreamt
That someone loved me.

“Squirrel (1)”

One gusty day she came to me.
A tiny squirl, a big oak tree.
[There] she pressed against the oak, and
I could see her grimace and choke.
Embraced in a fusion of limbs,
Pinned by nature’s torrent of winds,
[Here she was,] looking for life
Amidst a storm of wind and strife.
[And yet,] persevering despite
(The haunting gale and the not quite
Visible wind). She made it in
The end, despite a blustery din.
A tiny squirrel, a big oak tree.
And I saw her steal a glance at me.

“How does a snake solve a maze?”

How does a snake solve a maze?
Does it wrap itself around?
What if it’s long or paper thin,
Does it fold into a crown?
Would it twist around the corners,
Or climb above the walls?
Does it slither or does it slink?
Or does it go at all?
How does a snake know where the entrance is?
How does it know if it gets lost?
Do snakes use maps as vestiges
Of the pathways that they’ve crossed?
Do snakes get bored and take little naps?
Do they stop for brunch or tea?
When snakes get really lonely,
Do they try to chat with bees?
Do snakes know where they’re going?
Do they ever forget where they'v been?
Do snakes make plans? Do they improvise?
Do they need often to count past ten?
Do snakes like pretty pictures?
Can you put them in a trance?
If you taught them all the steps,
Could you ask a snake to dance?
When asking silly questions,
It’s easy to get lost,
//But as long as you keep going,
You’ll make it out before the frost.
Unless you are a snake,// and then maybe then—
Oh… but I don’t know…
If I ever see such a fellow,
I’ll ask her how it goes.
“How does a snake solve a maze?”
I wonder if she knows.

“My grandfather”

My grandfather was so afraid of death
That he scarcely moved an inch.
He sat there every morning,
With his laptop open wide.
And practice crawling slowly,
Crawling deep inside.
He cut out chunks of sinews,
Clusters of neurons,
And scraps of vein,
And satcheled them quite assiduously
Into computronic grain.
He bit off what he could chew,
And stored it there inside.
Birthdays, and pictures, and memories
Of grandchildren going down slides
He thought he was already dead,
And yet he feared it all the same.
So he practiced yielding and giving up
Whatever he couldn’t afford to tame.
He hid for hours at that machine,
Trying to make things right.
He built strong walls and fortresses
To seal himself in tight.

And one day I will wake up
And I will learn he is not alive
And I wonder then if I will find him still
Stuffing ever fuller that machinated hide.

“Rose”

Against the raking tides I squirm;
To be like her is all I yearn.
That [woman] form that comes to pass
From salty pine and clothy death.
Her sigil sears the leather hide,
As parchment and leaflets are likewise dyed,
For she is the blood and she is the body
And she is the culler of the root of tawdry.

It is the hanging question of perpetuity
That bends backward to futurity:
Is she daggered or is she fanged?
The splintered cobweb, the fate that hangs
In a balance and [] overpass,
The morose key of cloistered ink bath.
And between her tendrils, a perfect circle
That cordons off from all that hurtles.
And up above so as below
They speak about her among the crows.

She doesn’t want, she simply is,
To breathe, to suffer, away from his
Fingers and into frothy form
And flower and bloom from figures forlorn.
She is perfection, she is lack,
I live within her cul de sac.
To want to be to want to know
Where it is I ought to go.

“nature?”

I didn’t know I was haunted until
You taught me how to see.
I didn’t know I was haunted until
The mirror caught a glimpse of me.

“untitled”

When you really ask them
What they want, they
Will Say, "No More words.
No more language."

“re:session”

I went back when I heard the news.
I forgot what sadness sounds like,
Used to chopped onions.

“haiku 1”

You pull the paper
It breaks in constitution
Tears of deaded trees

“haiku 2”

Frogs sing when it rains
I wonder how it sounded
When they built that boat

“And so”

And so we danced until our legs were sore
And so we asked if we could dance some more
And so we stayed out till the crack of dawn
And so we agreed together that it was fun
And so we promised we would meet again
And so we

“untitled 2”

Mirrors don’t break unless you punch them
Of this, I wish it weren’t true
I wish all the mirrors around me
Would simply hide their magnifications away from view

“Duty to serve”

Called upon by pixies
To practice, to say,
“Eureka! I’ve done it,
It has to be this way!”
The flow of nature, the path of God,
The shuffling hunger of the fray;
The call that beckons trees,
The letters on a grave.
I wrote it down real quickly
And in writing was hunger staved.
The world has never made more sense.
Oh, how happy I am today.

“What’s he doing?”

I just saw a dog on roller skates,
I wonder what he’s gonna do.
Oh, and look, he just took a piece of gum—
And wow! He got a vaccine for the flu??
Dang! Now he’s dancing to a tango.
What!? Now he’s claiming to be crew?
“But, wait, he faked that task!”
“I saw him do it!” “Yeah me too”
Yet somehow I’m the one ejected,
I knew it was too good to be true…
And here he comes on his skateboard
Just what can’t this doggy do?

“Fib 1”

Trounced.
Flounced.
Denounced.
Forced about,
Made to feel ashamed.
Paraded around whilst enchained.
Since stolen treasure gets silently stolen away.
[Victory reflected through funhouse mirrors to stain every banner as they get raised.] *there’s something here but as written it’s right rubbish, innit?
They said the taste was sour, but I’d never thought it’d be this bad: [where tears cry out for sustenance outwetting even the birthplace of Sad.]

“Nonet 1 (h:p)”

Harbingers herald with hymnal hum
Pounding out prognostications.
Hark them, heed them, hear their call
Praise be plenty pious.
Whose haunt hast hither
Placed plentiful
Heaps herein?
Ply me:
‘Hest.

“Triolet 1”

To wonder is to wander
Beyond perilous gate.
To stay inside, to squander.
To wonder is to wander,
To approach of the point of yonder
To find yourself a bursting pate.
To wonder is to wander
Beyond the perilous gate.

“Power Outage (1)”

And suddenly the house was rattling.
And suddenly it was dark.
For a wind that could blister trees
Has got to be real sharp.

“untitled 1”
I love my mother
And yet.
I can’t help but see
All the things she’s imagined’re wrong with me

“I live in the future”

I am afraid. Because I can
Imagine tomorrow. And all that spans
Across the day. And among the week.
Yet it is with troubled voice that I here speak
About the specters that dance within
The haunted windows on shuttered hinge
That creak in flavors of roy g biv
And speak in tongues of “should I live?”

I’m afraid because I can
Think about a better plan
For treating wounds and curing sick.
Finding treasures and pathways quick
-ly crumble and choke me out
Leaving hoarsed voice yet needing shout
About what it is that is to come,
What it is that need be done
Yet here I hang, ‘tis once again,
Swallowed whole, inside doldrum.

“Misc. 1”

The estranged outbacker e
lopes
spasm.
the sight was more horrible than the conference

“Misc. 2”

circumstances call for creation myths
children: living on the margins of society
he runs away from the nun.
asunder coffins crumble

“time when waiting”

When you’re waiting
Every car that passes
Could be the one.
Crisis of futurity

“the myth of athena”

Sometimes I will stumble out whole sentences
Headaches held up in hardboiled eggs
There was too much pain and so it was already done
The myth of Athena

“the myth of the good apple”

A surplus of rot in the storage shed looks like a crisis
Unless the argonauts can grab the golden wool
This is the story most spoken
Faith in big (enough) numbers
The myth of the good apple

“the myth of orpheus eurydice and medusa”

I wonder how it would be
If a man and woman together were three
If one set of eyes couldn’t see
While the other pair couldn’t be seen
Life around mirrors isn’t carefree
The myth of Orpheus Eurydice and Medusa

“And yet”

And yet I did wake up to face the sun,
Despite how scared I was last night.
And yet I also remember,
Despite how much I tried to forget.
Fear and serenity.

“sestina”

In frothy foam and fleeting shuffle,
The tides behind did outwards shift.
They cast deeply soft pirouettes of salt
Stacking still seashells in piles of two.
Before swirling beneath our surfaced site
And returning backwards to the sun.

Within those timid waves was a mirrored sun
Whose smile turned frown as light rays shuffled
Along the sea breeze. A silent site
Of whispering where proclivities would shift
If only given stead the eyes of one or two,
Gazing until hugged with salt.

Now there comes a mewling cry from the tiny limbs of salt,
Trickling down in deltas. Our lachrymal young son
Speaks in tributaries of sadness too.
And the shores, like dealers, shuffle,
From the coasts of known to the cliffs carved of schist,
Slipping steeply up the sheerest hills and far beyond our sight.

[[To the enshadowed labor of many, must we serenity cite
As to why our seaweed snacks shrug off the sight of silt.
They slave away, the midnight shift,
Pushed off again by rest. {Unknown to sun.}
The origins of artifice have into Natural been shuffled.
Misplacing what it is we go home to.]] on one hand, this stanza is kind of very out of place, but im not convinced that that is /necessarily/ the case. Im not saying that I have accomplished it, but I think there’s something of a migration pattern in the structure of this poem (one that passes through this issue in its themes). But im not sure that this is read to anyone else but me :thinking:

Cyclical negation speaks with one, the voice of two,
Echoing the colors of sourness and bouncing off of sight
Until regret regurgitates and purpose wayward shuffles
Into the forested deck of fate. What patterns have we solved?
The transformations of age? The prodigal born son?
When purpose skitters on surface tension, we shift.

Up there in the cosmos, upside downward shifts.
Nature’s permanent revolution bleeds with human beings too.
A soft crunch below. A puddle smiles with the sun.
How did we ever invent loneliness when there exists such a site?
A taste of rocky crystal, a mouth that’s kissed by salt.
Everything will fall apart one day. The seaside shuffle(s).

The ocean holds the sun and watches it shift.
Seashells and sand shuffle, exchanging one for two.
It was always a reflective site, the birthplace of salt.

“villanelle”

I'm searching for a friend
It's something to pass the day
A beginning built into the end

After fifteen dollars I spend
I wander around the buffet
I'm searching for a friend

The injury of hunger needs amend
I come back to an extra tray
A beginning built into the end

I wonder if it was the letter I penned
Maybe it didn't my inner wants convey
I'm searching for a friend

Practice makes it easy to pretend
Smile and ask about their day
A beginning built into the end

Finally, I begin to comprehend
Where my life first went astray
I'm searching for a friend
A beginning built into the end