Grey Skin Of Age

In that cup is the best tea
don't drink it
And in fact only have a memory
To know it
doesn't mean it's not the best tea
walk further into blind future/eyes will go
And be happy, have that memory
... fell in love again,
And painted you so
That I could see my vision
Until I could see no more
These flowers
These green spaces floating
Against the rain grey sky
My grey skin of age

Like a Lie

Like a lie in the rain
Not there but the rhythm
Is upon my window again
And I wonder where you are
And if you see the same

Rye Grandmothers


Hallucinations, Recollections, and Illusions in Childhood

No. 1037,

Rye Ergot and Witches

The object study for this experiment is a typical grouping of residential and transient Americans in the target age range necessary for the psychological implementation of memory.  Each subject has no knowledge of the test and targets were retrieved under the guise of an advertisement to attend a theatre screening of experimental films. The subjects were gathered within 100 to 135 feet of the transmitter.  For the purpose of the experiment Hallucinations will be defined as false perceptions in the absence of sensory stimulation, dependent on two processes: (1) the recollection of stored information and (2) its false interpretation as an extrinsic experience entering through sensory inputs.

Today we ask:  is it from God? Is it from the Devil?  Or is it from the bread we eat?  The  College of Engineering would like to welcome you here today, this series is about the machines that make our civilization run, and the ingenuity that has created them. By the mid 1970’s evidence was offered that the Salem witch trials followed an outbreak of rye ergot.  Ergot is a fungus blight that forms hallucinogenic drugs in bread.  Its victims can appear bewitched when they’re actually stoned.  As such, many symptoms of the plague are similar to childhood.  Current technology allows a modification of the natural method ergot touches external reality by the transmission of  physical and chemical event surroundings into electrical and chemical sequences at the sensory receptor level. The brains of the subjects are not in touch with the environmental reality but with its symbolic code transmitted by and stored within neural pathways.
Ergot thrives in a cold winter followed by a wet spring.  The children of ergot might suffer paranoia and hallucinations, twitches and spasms, cardiovascular trouble, and stillborn children should they be allowed to marry under current laws.  Ergot also seriously weakens the immune system and can lead to nasal bleeding and seizure.  The implanted childhood of  these memories will not seem to be preserved as single items but as inter-related collections of events, like the pearls on a string, and by pulling any pearl we have access to the whole series in perfect order or can cause the string to unravel like the mind of a donkey encountering a mouthful of  peanut butter.
Diving for these pearls in the history of weather, we see diets dominated by the hallucinogenic wafer of ergot rye.  As the medieval Friar Henley reported during his stay at the Paris hospital in the spring of 1347, on the eve of the Black Death, “Thus, excitation with leeches of a point may produce a series of related visionary experiences with differing specifics, as was the case in the peasants observed. The following phenomena have been investigated in the peasantry: (1) illusions (visual, auditory, labyrinthine, memory or déjà vu, sensation of remoteness or unreality),  (2:) emotions (loneliness, fear, sadness), and (3) psychical hallucinations (vivid memory or a dream as complex as life experience itself.)”
The most common feature in the study of the present group was the sensation, that the words, ideas, or situation they are in right now is similar to a previous experience. There is no new perception, only the interpretation of a novel input as one already known and familiar. There is no anxiety or fear in the perception of these illusions, and the apparent effect is one of interested surprise with a rather pleasant, amusing quality which makes the subjects more alert and communicative.  Like spontaneous memories, the induced recollections bring back the emotions felt at the time of an original experience, suggesting that neural mechanisms keep an integrated record of the past, including all the sensory inputs and also the emotional significance of events.
So now we’re left to wonder just how we cope with the diseases and mental processes we don’t understand, like today.   I read our kinship with those old ergot suffers in something Kipling never wrote:
                                                 I have eaten your bread and it tasted of cake.  I have drunk your water,  the wine of your lake.  The deaths ye died I have watched besides,  as words  led illusions of mine.



lately the asphalt

lately the asphalt at the round
was repaired with a fill-in

the new stuff is still wet
it sticks but doesn't stick
and has a little give when pressed

Last night's insomnia reading

Insomnia reading....

§81

Maiden in the mor lay,
In the mor lay,
Sevenyst fulle
Sevenist fulle.
Maiden in the mor lay,
In the mor lay,
Sevenistes fulle ant a day.

Welle was hire mete:
Wat was hire mete?
The primerole ant the,
The primerole ant the,
Welle was hire mete:
Wat was hire mete?
The primerole ant the violet.

Welle was hire dryng:
Wat was hire dryng?
The chelde water of the,
The chelde water of the,
Welle was hire dryng:
What was hire dryng?
The chelde water of the welle spring.

Welle was hire bour:
Wat was hire bour?
The red rose an te,
The red rose an te,
Welle was hire bour:
Wat was hire bour?
The rede rose an te lilie flour.

                    §82

   Lulley, lulley, lully, lulley,
   The fawcon hath born my mak away.

He bare hym up, he bare him down,
He bare hym into an orchard brown.

In that orchard ther was an hall,
That was hanged with purpill and pall.

And in that hall ther was a bede,
Hit was hangid with gold so rede.

And yn that bed ther lythe a knyght,
His wowndes bledyng day and nyght.

By that bedes side ther kneleth a may,
And she wepeth both nyght and day.
And by that bedes side ther stondith a ston,
"Corpus Christi" wretyn theron.


                    §83

Of on that is so fayr and bright,
   Velud maris stella,
Brighter than the dayis light,
   Parens et puella,
Ic crie to thee, thou se to me;
Levedy, preye thi sone for me,
   Tam pia,
That ic mote come to thee,
   Maria.

Levedi, flour of alle thing,
   Rosa sine spina,
Thu bere Jhesu hevene king,
   Gratia divina;
Of alle thu berst the pris,
Levedi, quene of parays,
   Electa,
Mayde, milde Moder,
   Es effecta.

Of kare, consell thou ert best,
   Felix fecundata;
Of alle wery thou ert rest,
   Mater honorata;
Bisek him with milde mod
That for ous alle sad is blod
   In cruce,
That we moten komen til him
   In luce.

Al this world was forlore
   Eva peccatrice,
Tyl our Lord was ybore
   De te genitrice:
With Ave it went away
Thuster nyth and comet the day
   Salutis,
The welle springet hut of thee
   Virtutis.

Wel he wot he is thi sone,
   Ventre quem portasti;
He wyl nout werne thee thi bone,
   Parvum quem lactasti.
So hende and so god he his
He havet brout ous to blis
   Superni,
That haves hidut the foule put
   Inferni.

The Weight

 The Weight

What is it with the child abused and grown
that they keep heart and thought 'lone
was it the mother dead or the dead alive
looking backwards at the torture fingers
that held violent sway upon everything
Maybe its everything or maybe
If I hurt my children that way
The way you hurt us
I could see dying that way
I could see living that way
alone in a fifth-wheel trailer in the woods, head
laying back on a blue blanket, head laying back
in heroin and alcohol, and finally the heart stopped,
finally her heart stopped. 
My mother's heart stopped, Olympia to the west.
Invisible Olympia of Indian jazz porn junkies,
dying in the woods. Maybe it was just n=1,
I never inquired as to your friends.
I hear I'm resili-  I hear
reviled . I'm still here, but I'm not.
The distance between here and there closes,
the healthy mystic would use this magic to let it go
Its hard to let go of your hands
hold up your hands, let them go
see your fingers? they don't.
I remember crying as a child in fear
everyday that you were alive
I remember crying as a man that you were not
everyday that it occurs to me you were gone
was there something I didn't say
maybe another line of rephrased cliche 
like maybe it was better this way
my mother in death healed of all her pain
released from a North America that kills Indigenous 
women from the beginning,
like DL's sister CC, remember her,
raped, naked, and dying in a field
off the reservation, all for a night of dancing,
the way the police blamed her
you'd think she flaunted some sacred law
instead of a new pair of boots
criminal boots
because their little white dicks get hard
The worse pain is to write these things
and now part of my pain is swept away
in a world of White Supremacy that says
blood quantum and skin color
as if that's what hit me in the face
it was you, and I got it, I got that same hatred
from the same place, it hit me that way
when part of me believes you would have
anyway because that is what I must be
something small, to be hit,
because you were drinking and some 
mad asshole shit on your scene.
Confessions, the light is on,
a confession, you're gone.
Twenty-one years gone and its Saturday
night all over again, a temporal transfer
back to that place, ah how to write a poetry
of intersection in a world of White Supremacy,
an underlying reason why my voice
is already spent.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kefitzat_Haderech

We Are Three Percent Nitrogen By Mass (Sunday)

What do I do when my love never fades
For you? For you I only have memory.
The smile of one kind face in the days of
Only one kind face. Why does love not fade?
Why can love not ease itself from today?
Why can we not lift our thinking out of
Our heads and maybe even compost it…
I would worry about the nitrogen,
Likely. I’m sure my thoughts are of released
Nitrogen, that is just more evidence
Of a recent decomposition. 

There is no another. Thoughts invaded
Now array themselves into new arrays.
There is now absence,

one has gone away.

Three Poems from 2009 and 2010

Watching

We burned in
The war of Falls,
All around us,
Angels dropping
like flies;

I love what is still
All night, falling
In a walk through
All the
broken
years of us
In polar distances of
The quiet
Lunch sounds
we make out of
difficult conversations,
talking a round desire.

Lessons drift into your soft muscle,
Eyes lost on the wooden beach,
Curvature and bubble shapes, mucus turning
you from pink to brown.

The war of Falls,
These broken wingless
Words, bridges
Left decaying in brown rust
slowly straying over old green paint
as the new constructions rise.
Only the curious will wonder
Why we were, and they will become
something few and rare.
Armless, dark eyes, brittle
flowers reduced to pigment
and videography.

I remember you even as I see you,
room, and moment,
alone, illuminated
runes, and evening shadows
covered in a yellow sodium
of memory,
just an elbow
on a green
cabinet, your eyes
backlight,
we never touched.

We burned.


War Runs Across My Life

This digital world
lingers
and does not bring
us closer together.

I only see
my self with the help
of telescopes.
Every love song
reminds me of sadness,
every sad song
reminds me of a plastic
radion. When will this end?

We are torn apart,
slightly separated
by the presence
of conflict, bombs,
some scholar might say
the sweep
of world events;
yet it is back
to the feelings
of distance, the desolation

that you are
not here and may not
be, that causes
an unspoken anguish
I can share with no one.

And they say this digital world
brings us closer together,
"they", hmmm, who? who?
And yet when we talk,
I at night
and you
in the morning,
message by message,
it is only the distance
that is illuminated,
a trembling, quail distance.

I see these threads
unwinding finally,
back to a river in Vietnam,
a bear, a mountain,
drinking cold
too close to the mouth.
Sunlight breaks the horizon
water desert, brown
sand coming out of
your brown hair.

Our Close Distance

When will I come home
And see that lamp in
Your flickering room?

What will you do, home
From the war? Sunlight
And summer ore, or
Bus stop and creeping
Mourning through the night before?
What will you do,
Bandaged in your skin?

I will drink lampwax
And leave terracotta dust,
My faith and wonder withering in
Shadows on couches and grass arenas;
Until a semblance of my substance
Emerges, resembling enough,
Just enough encaustic dust,
So you may trust your memory,
Unlock the door, and let me in
from this close distance.

Sonnet #1

I dissolved in this minstrelsy: your blood
Beautiful smell falls within thoughts of us;
Tea’s pass in winds of opportunity.
These inklings of orphan lines before your
Clay skin drapery, adorned with snakes
Where no earth is passing beneath me, just
Unrequited looks over lunch and hair.
If I could only speak the eye musing
Heard in your voice: warm light filters my gaze
Into you: river grey eyes, drowning stars!
How many of these tea ceremonies
Have ended with your head coming down on
Nothing but your own shoulder! My dear friend:
Is love bound to ending silence? Harm? Care?

Drumlight


Drumlight
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5sRphng8mE

What are Drumlights? http://www.polarityrecords.com/vintage-drum-kits-1920s-and-30s.html

The Plural They, My Children,
They are the most beautiful creatures,
moving at the speed of their growth,
and perhaps it is just my voice
missing them,
it puts their memory
before me,

pure imagination
running rampant
as the hour of bedlam closes.
Some frog
Tree creature
and another
that is perhaps a dangling scarecrow
...with a crow problem.

They move
in what appears to be a dance.
They are
the most beautiful creatures.
They appear
unappear like translucent ninjas.
They have
fooled me with invisibility amulets again!
They love

to dance victoriously upon
the vanquished foe that am I.


Transubstantiation


We were everywhere, sent from here, sent to there, left to fade after the war.
What did you do, coming home from the wake? Did you lay down in the sun, asleep in the eel grass, creeping toward a mourning of that night, a pregnant future, dry light driftwood on a beach under the darkness of a new moon?
We drink hurricane lanterns inside your pink wax, touching each others terracotta dust, glitter and disco feeling the soft inside of cracker lips lumbering towards the west with a change of substance.
I begged that you trust your memory, unlocking the door to let me in from our close distance.
I came like a dwelling wound, eyes removed by the lamp in your iridescent space, I came home from the war, bandaged in your skin.