10/16/24

wired cicadas drowsy and glazed into the lamps

electricity moved in ways which had sound

insects piled into fingers

blood and semen pooled 

lying still 

noise exited 

the room had become a vacuum 

devoid of matter

falling without resistance

South

The water droplet that is the opening of the tunnel

The ocean tipped under the sun and slowly sank further and further away

Like opening a glowing furnace the vessel glowed red to gold

I think we relate through our geography

Mountain tunnels and electrical towers strung peak to peak

Shadows in the trees form words

Netted rock walls

A group of silver trees

A smudged building streaked with the color of the sky

Stained!

The salt pushes against my skin that is

like a tightly woven cloth

Bloated and bleeding sweat

Stained 

Too many times too many 

On the top of my lip and under my eyes 

I couldn't possibly breathe 

A wish

So small I'm sewn onto you

But I'm swelling 

I worry

Burrowed beneath the ground I stand on

Hollowing any solidity 

Between my feet and the earth's core

You lie waiting

Grinding your teeth 

Blisters in your ears

The sun has never looked closer

Yet you are stuck at the center of the world 

The voices taste sweeter eating sliced oranges

Grey patina silk

Touched without a choice

I grew teeth and hair and

Inherited a cyst the size of an orange

nEverlasting

Narcissistic and vain

Better than being lame

Ring a round o' roses a pocket full of posers

Wring my fucking neck

Stitch my two brows together

Embalm me before I die

You'll still fall fast asleep

Float

It was a net made of strings from my heart

How do you hold my whole body and suspend it?

Are you still missing the skin on your pinky and fourth finger?

Or did skin grow over me?

I only smoked cigarettes to keep you alive

Of course it burned a hole through those strings

So now I've fallen through and use it as a blanket 

It is love

Greeted by a lacking 

Doomed to only hearing 

footsteps against the ceiling and a longing to recognize 

The window pane shivering 

the heat 

the wind

your eyes

wait for the sun to pass the irises 

because there is something abrupt

kept to watch the dark waver along cement piles

I was looking for another word for expectations

Being with you feels like a wire fence

I can't keep my eyes closed

because I get nauseous from watching the dark masses bombard into each other,

hearing the noise sucked from the air with an indiscernible force,

amassing into a derangement that would unwind me.

Alternate

But the loneliness is a longer one

And i think about this riding the bus to you

How the ellipse grows

As the gravity pulls all of us down and I expect it to end in a broken release

But there isn't one and we float in a suspension that deceptively feels like we're still falling 

My fault

I didn't realize until now that it was unconditional and it is my fault that my veins are now pumping through my skin pulling away suddenly pulsating on the floor like vines 

I will not survive

The steel cutting 

vocal chords soft 

finger pads on leather drum

palm open for nickels

the sky is still light

No title

When I’m with you my thoughts are longer

And more beautiful 

Not broken 

I need to shower

Coaxed up into the night

By light and sound drummed down

Magnets buried in the electric field 

Thirst for a spark, a cling

Parched

A walk through the wet grass, sparkling

Exposed and vulnerable in the openness

unreliable

like the light of the moon

Partial

Or half hidden

But in the moments

That are darkest 

Pitched in black

She seems

Most useful

the pond froze in summer

and autumn was blue

Feel to understand 

Feel with understanding

How do you feel

Like understanding

What does it feel like

Like standing under feelings

Submergence

The way the light shown made air look like underwater

But then the leaves cried—and water can only fall in the air

So we cried beneath the water

Where tears cannot fall

I looked into the sky and saw a formation of clouds that overwhelmed me with a longing as if I used to be a bird

Pull me into existence 

So I can be useful

How to find use in An emptiness

The happy person that I am with you feels like an exoskeleton that has shed off of me, a somewhat translucent foggy frame, and I look at it like a memory as an amorphous pale sack that knows nobody

If I hold you will I feel whole

Memory transmissions

She wrung out the fabric of the universe

To wipe her memory

Of corrupt feelings

And viral strains 

Have you tried running with water in your hands? I can’t hold myself, I’ll slip through

You said you were left

shattered in pieces

but what about the water

dropped in a splash so quick

unseen

and no where near a river or sea

To be filled with emptiness

Emptiness began to feel very filling

I watched the person that I thought I always had swept away from his grasp by rapids of turbid consciousness. I see what’s left is a shell in a drained basin, waiting for its old inhabitant to be brought by a current that may never return.

There is no significance in human life

There is no significance in human life

Death and rebirth is just a displacement of atoms

We never cease existing

Dont be afraid to die

Lose yourself in the universe

Your consciousness will not survive

Korean grandma - the darkness was deafening except the oscillating fan that felt so threatening

You grabbed the chain around my throat

In a fist

In your sleep

So to keep me from drifting away

I learned how to love from my grandma

In rituals—

red licorice and a black and white cookie hiding in Japanese enamel

ham and cheese sandwiches with apple juice from a glass bottle  

playing the Beatles and Frank

Aveeno and biting our toes

vanilla ice cream in a cone

giving change to strangers

and for some reason you told us to rub our finger under our nose when we washed our faces with soap

and you would only ever take baths

you would let us sleep in your bed while you wrote numbers on the pull out couch 

and you wouldn’t say much

and you would fan the sushi rice for hours

sour and speckled with sesame seeds

sitting on the smoothest wooden floor

she only knew how to take baths

I’ve never tasted any ice cream similar

how painful her life must have been

to lose her mom

and have babies with a play boy

who would marry some other girl

why did you hate your daughter?

there is something I don’t understand

it feels severed

Chinese grandma

Tong-pain

Suy-water

Sung sik ma? Sik juk?

4 aspirin 9am 1pm

The opposite of ignorance is not about what you know, but how curious you are

I never spoke with grandma but could feel her devotion to peace

And she could not speak to me except for “thank you lea”

To have nothing but still have gratitude 

I do not want to have anything 

Blankets

3 waiting for 4

To go into black world bombarded constantly with noises falling into you

and falling out

never catching

Please don’t come

I am unreliable in the way life knows death

Her bones like an expandable drying rack

collapsed

perhaps in pieces

a breath before

the shirt hung

rungs protruding

setting the shape of the cloth

drying with wretched stiffness

you don't want that on your body

because your body's stiff enough

immobile bones scattered but somehow set in whole form by organic fabric wrapped around tight reflecting your scattered thoughts as one

the shirt hung

bones protruding

scattered thoughts

dying with wretched stiffness

the breath you woke up with

the shirt hung

clean threads saturated with water

falling down along the weave