invisibility free write

i remember this one time i was talking to a nice lady i had seen the baltimore symphony perform stravinsky's rite of spring which i had been waiting my whole damn life to witness 

(i got chills i had to shake off my excitement grin stuck in my face) and this nice lady shook her head and said i always feel so weird going to see a "concert" because i don't know what the hell to look at

"baby i wanna give you something that's invisible you motherfucker i'm gonna give you some of that invisibility"

karen finley said that in a performance of her piece "the constant state of desire" when i hear that phrase, "constant state of desire," i think about how i feel the most desire for something as simple as a musical phrase

i think about the constant state of learning that is wrapped up in enjoying and understanding the invisibility of a sound wave that HITS you physically compels you to react with neurons tangled up and holy

there is also a constant state of desire found in the seeking out the return to familiar sounds embedded in a mythology, discovery of self in relation to the rest of some sort of weird eternity

i mean to use tighter terms we all have the song the artist the one album that we all know like we know our mother's laugh and i think it is important to spend time in the space those creations forged inside of us 

we've been listening and bracing ourselves for all kinds of vibration since our wombunity and goddamnit why aren't more people afraid of being damned to silence id rather get put deep in the ground then give up the good waves

when i was young my mom and my dad drove around a lot and my dad was particular about what we would listen to on the long drives i wonder still if he wanted to teach me about history and mythology and the poetics of the faintest nationalism or maybe just pride i don't know but the synthesis of the american landscape with The Band's Second Album The Brown Album The Band is to me a most substantial thing 

"history is", according to Suzan-Lori Parks "time that won't quit" well music that wont quit is music that sits outside of history--perhaps entirely founded on and lauding history by means of its own miraculous existence--but that manages to render context irrelevant

john cage invented "dream" "in a landscape" in 1948 it is an abyss of sustained movement existing all in a stream of nerves who cares about history when your skin can glow with infinite notation the destiny of the human ear is quite well known

i sorta feel guilty i waste a lot of time listening to music maybe it is unproductive to just hear all damn day and not do my homework because i am too busy branding my brain with madonna maybe i am just a lousy hedonist who doesn't tend to the life of the mind in the right ways but experiencing sensation that exists only inside of me is productive

its always shining on the inside it makes me smolder i think some people think it is lonely to burn with secrets but i just call it radiation

sometimes when i felt sad in high school i would play a song on my computer that would purposefully make me cry but i don't do that kind of thing anymore i would lay in my bed under all my covers with my purple walkman and writhe and soak my pillowcase in tears or sweat or cum the only way i learned anything about myself was from iTunes or cds (when i listened to my Shania Twain cassette tape in the 3rd grade i wasn't really learning anything about myself except that i am sucker for fake string arrangements or maybe it just reminded me of a better music ala rag mama rag that had already crystalized itself in my mind as perfectly pure as part of something bigger)

the genesis of all those myths is still happening in my ears always and my own myths are still surfacing in menacing synthesizers noise that is clean and precise harmonies that, due to strict combinations of vibrations, will forever tear me apart cause thats how i was made

made to be a radiant mess with a clenched jaw made to be tense made to wait made to dig a thief or believe in anything

its all just guts and shadows anyway

image is tired it is tiresome to be seeing its not like you can turn off your ears i guess i maybe just contradicted myself but doesn't it feel like a nice thing that you hear what you hear without trying aint no blinks for the sonic man cant turn that shit off even if you try typing it out makes it sound scary actually and yet what feels more right than the sound of breath escaping screaming softly to its fellow elements: "i feel so free"

variantation

wasn't anything like our tongues tied together
frostbitten and festering--pain too silent to note
I would swear that killing lizards was harder
but I guess it's hard to pulverize by way
of an accident, not unlike the way I
popped your blood vessels one by one
you're a lazy doctor, lazy with your incisions
but effective in your field of polar depth
doesn't it remind anyone of a double vision
lost on himself it makes me, think of the first time
you made me scream
first and foremost your understanding of
language is absurd, but there are
loads of other reasons we can't be together
adamantine thoughts start to taste acrid after a while
it was easy at first to dump you into an iron maiden
but just like a botched root canal, your eyes
bloody out their sockets fasten themselves to my skull
didn't my tears make any difference to you
killing people with cruelty can't be as simple
as you would have me believe
as we forgive those who trespass against us
cover me in mud and I lift my chin
up to the bodies celestial that rain over me
not unlike the drops of spiteful blood
that coat my lungs
coughing you up like a bad time

5/4--The Best Lunch

Waiting for J and tequila sunrises. Sun is shining, life is getting sweeter all the time. Summer continues to lift its chin up to me and I feel so free and powerful.
My hands are opening and I am beginning wherever I can--today I believe in blessings.

the Furies of light surround
when I say to them: hurry before my fever
falls apart, they take to my body
to fuel all the good and the noble
to live with sincerity is a service
to die with stones is true wealth
as it is, my mouth stuffed with petals
I cannot breathe for waking joy

5/1/12

twelve mornings are floral
twelve are crystal
twelve are sore
and nine are weary

to sear is to serve
quick lines like a knife
pittsburgh style
rare like lapis
in a pool of lime light
underneath a band of copper

New Work

memory that is soft still

baby girl you gonna keep bein blue on this crystal day and for all ever days
give me some of that paint slapped on my nose in the gentlest way
flannel wool and soft cotton metal shards fucking everywhere glowing like glass
the night spliced before amazing rotations and sage smoke on a couch in the middle of cement
warm cold new old kisses flow like the beautiful bullshit gin against one hundred pounds of blue plastic
blue like the dots and works in the sky
tears drip from our favorite trees and even though our eyes are wet our hearts are on fire
melting everywhere like the chocolate in your belly
brother you don't need to turn me away but oh boy I will reject your noise
cackle at the vapid ooze behind your horrible eyeballs
you two were the worst it ever got and it didn't even matter not for one second
checking on art was the name of the game dancing with wings and new faces
show me some love and I'll open up my glitter lung and we can eat up the joys of dawn and friendship
in an olive juice cocktail from the grocery store up the street
that blue sky was better than sex better than gravel crunching under tires on any road
was it better than the paint in my pores on my eyelids in my veins
better than the crooked stripe of oxidized sea foam between your eyes
it didn't get much better than being the object and product of a quest
wasn't so bad in fact wasn't anything better because we got it
got the love got it everywhere in every word in every sound in portable light
a souvenir courtesy of Fern Gully
I got filled with so much light from a silver cup of water and a palate of primaries
I got filled with purple beams and gold light so light we floated up to regions unknown
did so much kindling up there in ancient skies
hey Gwendolyn--we real cool too
cool like the blue shimmers of our wrists wrists that shook the night away from anything foundational
yeah we didn't worry about much except having a good time
melting pants got tenuous but we laughed that away lickety split
just as lickety as all the mouths I sucked dry
caught on film damn right
blue shirt boy gonna remember that the rest of his honeysuckle life
blue like the plaster on the sides of my face
dots stuck underneath the warm and safe magic of 6:00 brush
you didn't have to fix a single thing
a perfect coming as you are through my body to rest on my soft skin
soft as a memory as the liquid gold dissolving my hands and the bridge of my nose
I believe in blessings I believe in the violation of blessings
cruel fingers making wicked the greatest manna that lived inside
watching you watching your tools crumble in the claws of hags

liquid cart; i'm so glad you were born in my home; violation; you got a face with a view

Idumea

the words to my favorite Sacred Harp song:

And am I born to die?
To lay this body down!
And must my trembling spirit fly
Into a world unknown
A land of deepest shade
Unpierced by human thought
The dreary regions of the dead
Where all things are forgot
Soon as from earth I go
What will become of me?
Eternal happiness or woe
Must then my portion be!
Waked by the trumpet of sound
I from my grave shall rise
And see the Judge with glory crowned
And see the flaming skies

lonely notes

to bristle with the multiple possibilities of morning
empty that mourning cavern from its hole
and treasure the veins in any surface crease
covered in creases I wake with a sigh

sung at starbucks

I'm at the backdoor at the backdoor at the backdoor
I'm going nowhere going nowhere going nowhere
I can't hold on too can't hold on too can't hold on too
I'm really teething really teething feel me breathing

bell rang sink drain dumb brain sweet kane

forceps and sight have left me dry
hold me high high or nigh
knit me tighter than I cry

suffer short shrift

swallow clutters tired bellyache sore lacquer wallow mellow mud
floral language
will sunlight speechless throat hungry drips burning sin sensation
repression image faraway blues precision simplicity hard conquer
remote battles
trembling tremors
still weight
circular holiness
band of strangers following up a vein quivering
all their might by sadness fell and done with empty satchels
glass has split fractured by triangles and the lens of the eye now aimless and turbulent
swimming in chapped skins distant and in other words alone
twelve men around a beating mind shift their gloves from hand to hand
irritated by foul wit
and smoldered fingers
ravens or crows are all that live in black fits
pits where diamonds crack and long to be melted into fine pastes
baggage whither mine or yours ore yours split seams and definition
now all true flew from a leaf deathly pale and brittle
most things are spindly as elastic and unfocused as day
fearing ultimatums that can truly bring surrender
only wheels have anything to fear at all