the secret word is all in layers
winding like a shroud, or like these water-bearing clouds,
and all the way out to the cocoon of bare nothing
that we shelter from, beneath their rumbling rich buzz of air.
when i extend my bare leg,
and point my bare white foot to the earth, toes folding down to meet,
i touch directly to the mystery of life that clings to it, like mildew, like thought to these bodies,
and nesting within that old fire, a white lodestone like the full moon.
no force in the universe can stop it.
this secret is the only one that holds from the soul
to the black that exhales forever, out there, until there is no more air.
this secret.

"Take my love, take my land
Take me where I cannot stand
I don't care, I'm still free
You can't take the sky from me

Take me out to the black
Tell them I ain't coming back
Burn the land and boil the sea
You can't take the sky from me

There's no place I can be
Since I found Serenity
But you can't take the sky from me..."

-joss whedon, 'ballad of serenity'

there is a man

this is the story i tell myself:
the best lie, the secret that is like hoping,
something like dreaming, like truth
like at the bottom of the ocean,
where the sand makes snake-trails across the seabed.
if you dive down, first filling your lungs with air,
when you brush the sand away,
what hides beneath?

have you heard the cedar waxwing?
a songless bird with voracious appetite
a bird that cannot sing, or speak,
so how is anyone to know?

why the brown old city, ruled by the chaff-men and their straw wives?
why only the dinosaur coelacanth,
why the blackened brick buildings,

why filthy gum, ground into the mica, frozen in concrete,
why thin nylon, held together with machine-chained stitches?

i seem to recall that
i have seen cormorants and have ground cochineal
i walked the cool blue water's edge, collected caracoles,
i stood painted in carnelian, onyx and mussel-shell purple
but here they call it 6,6 dibromo-indigo

Prophetic Dreams Obtain

All the way at the top of the hill,
the wrecked car is curled up
like a maimed cat
Leading to it in a trail, your blood is represented by
cardboard discs in deepening shades of gray
Was it meant to be?
The talking dog told me otherwise,
but gods in dog-guise tell lies,
of this there is proof
yet, the turtles who scrape and paddle
in every bucket of lake-water
are a mute warning with each lap against the rim
some are leaf-brown
and crowned with crenellations
and others have green shells, painted with
candy-apple dabbles
Apples and turtles and pomegranate and palm oil
are offerings to Changó
who also accepts the blood of birds.
But I am always fleeing:
when will I stop and fight?

The Good Compass

Getting lost in the white woods
Is as natural as sleep
The TV’s speech about injured animals
Spaying pigs, pregnant chameleons, sick old pit-bulls with trembling legs,
Hear me!
It spreads like black pigment into white gouache
And the hobbled dray-horse pulls a wagonload of
Raw and weeping wood, fragrant,
Along the rutted snow-road

The long walk
Along these ruts
Where my eye picks out houses in the landscape
And my own maps appear amid the scrawls
Where I aim my camera at the stars
As dawn’s blinking, yawning light
Crowns a ginko tree
Of gold so bright it heals a little
Of the cut I gave myself getting out of bed

But despite the earliness of the hour
We make it back to the road
Past houses full of doors
Past driveways full of sneaky hollows
Past trees with deep roots and shaky branches
Reaching up to tickle the belly of the clouds
Past church-bells of wind caught in the icicles
Past snags of lambswool stuck up on the sharp blue sky
Rich smell of lanolin and sap and snow
This pause is a cool liminal violet:
Hush.
There is a moment, here, of peace,
There is comfort in a good sense of direction

Wow

So I'm all better now, but jeez. I don't think I've ever been that sick, since I've been a grown-up person, at least. I'm still not 100% - the head is still throbby and I moving kind of slowly - but I'm back at work and while that's depressing, it's also nice that I'm not dead, as I devoutly wished on Monday afternoon, for instance. The flu, kids. Get your shots.

i am having illness

dude, it sucks to be sick. i've been having stabbing pain in my left side for two days, and last night those were joined by muscle aches, chills and fever. so i have an emergency appointment with herr doktor goldberg this afternoon. as you may know, i harbor a deep fear of doctors, which i usually try to overlook. but since this is now officially the sickest i've ever felt without having a hangover or a bad cold, i am now beginning to be disticntly ill-at-ease.

Signs of the Apocalypse: III
Crispin "the Thin Man" Glover and Courtney "Who?" Peldon on a Halloween Date

Some people worry about bird flu (like me) and some people get all bent out of shape about liver cancer and accidental enucleation with a careless umbrella (me, me) but what really ought to get us thinking about the ultimate and soon-to-arrive fin of the monde is the fact that these people (morons) actually make more money than we do. Yep. Jesus is on his way. It's almost over, for which we may be (are) profoundly grateful.

...Now I have to go back to wearing black and worrying about stuff, instead of the 'working' that I would prefer to be doing if any of my agencies had any kizzash, or if I had any real talent. But don't cry for me, bloggies. It's almost over.

and then we'remageddonouttahere!

Peace. Forever.

Sweet.

Hawkinses and Bartels 

hawkinses II 

hawkinses 

the cheshire, menage a trois 

rick james, bitch 

the darkness of memory 

not the sort of thing you would expect to find in the front window of a nursing home, but there it is... 

east st. louis 

...jesus