Enough About Us and the Booming Nothing

I.

We became so poor
We started to boil the cotton balls
Then we had nothing to block our ears
From the howling of our bellies, the
Cries fanning the burning bellows
Of those empty hollows.

‘This is just how it is,’ they told us
When we first arrived.
‘This is a poor place, don’t come here.’
But we had no choice
It was here or death.
At least here we are only starving.
Starving but not dead.

Not even a goat will eat from these pastures
And there is no shit even for the flies
And a great booming silence echoes
Off the nothing, or maybe it is only that our
Ears have gone to seed without soil.

We try to speak if possible
And only of matters of the heart
Or dreams, or spirits, ethereal planes,
Planetary matters and philosophy.
We thought once about eating our books
But once they are eaten you can never eat them again
Whereas, if un-eaten, they can be reread
Infinitely, which is like food.
So we ate the furniture instead.
Comfort knows no place here.

The mice have all run away with their love-affairs
And the foxes run wild on the road
Stealing our momentary glances,
Taking with them the possibility of spring.

We built a hut once totally out of hairpins.
We asked for rain and sacrificed the pin hut
To some fake gods we made up.
They took the pins gladly
But we never got any rain.

In the afternoons we dip our feet
Into the mouth of the dry river delta
Dreaming of silt, thousands of pounds
Of raw draining water, water that builds
Islands, water that tempts a thirsty mouth,
Water that moves like women who once washed
Their husband’s linen shirts in it…

Sometimes the dry air, dusty, sun-beamed, in waves,
Reminds us of the way water felt.
But enough about us.

part II coming soon, or maybe never...

Spelunking

At first the cave was an appealing even romantic symbol of introspection. Underground I thought maybe I could hear the heartbeat of the earth or some such hippie bullshit but after about 10 minutes, 3 hours, days, weeks, months of spending time in there, in that 20 ft. by 8 ft. geo-thermal, concrete, catacomb I realized that not only is it chilly, the air close and wet but that even the minutest sound reverberates off the domed ceiling and comes backs to you changed - in unearthly waves.

'I will be alone,' I thought naively, 'with time to think!'

Instead I realized that while tending to my daily cheese duties (brushing, washing, rubbing,schlepping, rack-cleaning, staring off into space (concrete though it is)) that I breathed more shallow, abstained from making any loud or even subtle noise, tried to hide from the cave whilst inside the cave! What doom did I think awaited me at the end of that dead-end tunnel?

I became to dislike the cave. Complained to myself when I had to perform my cheese duties down in there. The romance slowly waned.

But yesterday, oh glorious yesterday! I decided that instead of pretending to the cave that I was not there I would make myself known. I was going to sing in the cave.
Singing for me is often the one truly blissful part of my day. I forget everything when I sing, I go into a trance, sometimes I close my eyes, sometimes tears come out without my intention, I sink into a realm pure vibration, harmony, soul (and apparently total cheesiness, puns not formerly intended)...this is why it has always been so hard for me to sing in front of people. It is the closest thing I can relate to a religious experience.

But singing in the cave...this is beyond religious. It is like stepping into an ocean of tragic harmony. Concrete-reverb-doomed melodies pour around you like a swarm of cluster flies. No matter how hard you try to sing a happy note, it always boomerangs back half-flatted, warbling like the unluckiest of loons. It is awesome. I never liked happy songs in major keys anyway. I can sing all the songs nobody wants to hear, the songs of regret, the dirges of the heart, the songs that make you want to jump into a river and drown.

The first song I ever sang down there was Leadbelly's "Goodnight Irene." The cheese liked that one so much that I now use it as the fail safe encore. I once had a long-term resident spider but I think I sang it to death or maybe inhaled it whilst preparing for a long high note. When at my greatest loss for new haunting melodies I revert to humming "Greensleeves" or some distant memory of Stravinsky, Debussy or Shostakovitch. The most fitting songs though, always seem to be that of religious demeanor or inquiry or those of the most vile and uncomely human behavior...I guess those things go hand in hand.

The point is that I do not so much loathe the advent of working in the cave anymore rather, I can't wait to haunt and be haunted down there, especially when the lights suddenly fail and the whole veil of reality is temporarily lifted.

Thunderstorm Desire

I. window mesmerizes

Outside a man builds a fire
as a storm wind breaks the calm
of the spring trees, the silk in the window
blowing like a dream in an undertow.

Like waiting for a lover I sit by the open window
thunder sounding like the opening of a familiar door
rain stinging through the screen paints the inner glass pane
and all is obscured, the hollow sound of it on the tin roof

reminds me of the wine I’ve been waiting for,
the desire for an open window on a winter night
for hair to splay in small ringlets about my face, any face,
quivering, like sleeping eyelids, in a sudden breeze.

Smoke and dust beaten down into the road
a velvet hat falls from its nail on the wall
I think of how I loved you once;
a hot night in July, asking to stop,
not wanting to miss even one golden streak
of electric summer lightning.
Only now the birches and poplars obscure the sky
and the solemn black dancers in the branches
distract me.

II. distraction

Some days I can’t see the road and I imagine instead
a great veranda looking out onto some Tolstoy-esque
meadow, a dell of rare trees, an orchard fenced by willow gates
where my only daily tasks were to play over and over the Moonlight Sonata,
and to kiss the neck of my nurse-maid, fan myself at noon
on a bench with a bowl of cherries and cream beginning to curdle in the heat.

III. coming to

May! you and I are older now…how can you still deny the death of March?
Languid you may be, steeped in fluid dreams of thunderstorms and dandelions
but a heavy delirium weighs upon us, intoxicated in your fragrant memory,

(Hiding in fields of tall grass, gathering night crawlers at midnight with a full moon,forging the river, slippery rocks underfoot, holding a breath forever)

And sunken into breathless stupor the wind dies.
Nothing having landed where it ought to lay
we wrap out hearts in wax-paper and pretend
we are not missing.

Explanations

Due to my lack of programming savvy I have created this blog in lieu of my other supposedly more fancy blog which I can hopefully switch over to someday when they put everything in laymens terms. For now this is it. A mix of poetry, my daily misguided explorations and boring lists of what I have done on any given day at the goat farm I work at.

Why I should Move to New York City

This sucks
Everyone is comparing their penis size
And licking each others assholes
And making sure small sections
Of their nipples are showing
And all I get is this white page
Like a filthy widow in a blizzard.

A spider in a cave collecting dew.

I wanted to grab all those close cropped crotches
But I was too worried about them seeing
The little hairs around my nipples.
I could pluck them out,
But I like them actually.
Some things you gotta keep for yourself
Even if they embarrass you,
Like ugly boyfriends or alcoholic mothers or abusive stepfathers or dead uncles or pedophilic priests (shiny hats and scarves).

Neat little packages dressed up as bombs.

Nothing is real here or there
I should be listening to music
But a lousy dream burst my eardrums
When I was napping.

Fiddleheads unraveling like sloths¾
Vogue dancers in peach sleeves.

Starting the fire on an April evening
The dog asleep in a plastic box
Nuzzling with the ottoman.

So there are trees!
Their song is hushed and watery like
A diving-bell Wurlitzer
Tres mujeres en las piazzas del agua oscuro
Pretending to be trees!

Leading me there, my mother scrapes together
Two mandibles, teeth rattling, baby bones, bones of the future.
Will she make me wear them again?
I am so overgrown.
I even drink neat whiskey, wear bras when necessary,
Refill the butter dishes of memory.

The fabric of memory is threadbare
and embroidery a necessary tool for remembering.
Might as well make it gold thread,
That old symbol always shiny.

Please, do not throw salt in my hair
I just finished picking out all the memories
Of paper cuts and broken wine glasses.

I have moved so far
you read me poems over the phone.
The breakwater of your voice
Reassuring and commemorative.
Candles help.

I broke her favorite wine flute,
Pastel, frosted, painted
She promised that she didn’t mind,
It was one of a kind, but she didn’t care.
Still I tried to glue it back together.
Futile child-games, misconceptions of the dying-games
Played by grown-ups and their consumptive livers.
She still can’t watch certain movies with me.
“Cali, this is weird…”

Ah the movies, the gills through which
Life can be filtered, ruined and sieved out
To its finest polluted particulates.
Ash in the jet stream, beers on the porch swing
And nobody here has ever heard of Tarkovsky.