Joanna Oz

Joanna Oz Apr 2015

chirp-i-derp chickadee!
flee across the sea with me to seek foreign fantasies,
we won't need anything but our hands our feet our lips reaching.
kick the dust up and make a ruckus,
we were born to spit fire.
funny thing, desire, always takes you into the inferno,
burning the whole, cleanse and resew the form from hollowness.
in all of this we are but sand in the wind,
minuscule molecules floating on the whims of something much greater.
so I plan on claiming myself, and naming myself
captain.
I plan to trust my intuition to bring all my wildest dreams to fruition.
because what is life worth if I concede to to bow and serve the scemes of men who believe they deserve to hold power over me - HA!
as if anyone could mold me hold me fold me up into cookie-cutter slots.
I spit on you!
catch me if you can, big brother,
you might take my body but you'll never touch my soul,
she's already soaring through saturn's rings,
slinging sapphires round to isis and winking at the moon,
being rewoven through the mother's loom,
knit back into the cosmic womb.
now begin again.

Joanna Oz Apr 2015

alchemy

sun sizzle pop-rock hopscotch round the rowdy block of troubled spots,
and iron-lock your dirt-soaked sock to a gumdrop your friend forgot the last time you stopped to watch the lilies bloom
in slow motion loop-de-loos.
sinking smooth waterloos,
darling just look at you! beaming with gooey honey dripping sooloos -
woohoo baby!
the lazy river bends her neck to spend extra time with the water bed,
so shed your excuses and wear your heart on the tippy-top of your head,
if it falls, mend it by sending ends of threads spinning fractal patterns round the edge,
crafting a hand-patched garden to bake batches of laughter from.
latching your fingers, pull and tug those weeds into soot underfoot tearing remnants of long lost looks your lover took and shook off your balcony in a hazy dream.
alchemy your bones to seeds
and feed them with tears of gold sweet memories.
reading poetry from socrates thumb
won't translate the sacred humming running through your chest,
only you can sing the refrain of broken hymns and lift the soul from the rims of the black hole pit.
the universe lives in you, don't forget.

stream of consciousness poem

Joanna Oz Apr 2015

Manifesto pt 2 {or "Love Letter"}

I want to ***** a monument for extensionality,
and hand out pamphlets about revolutionary love
on the corner of the street.
I want to prescribe laughter and meditation
as cure-all medicine,
whisper thank-yous to the sun
and dance with the trees waving at me.
I want to hug sunflower giants,
remind the river of the power in her peaceful energy,
and tell her I like the way she's molded the clay bed beneath my feet.
I want to dissolve through dew-soaked grass
into the endless layers of earth below me.
I want to be broken apart, fossilized,
and pressed into crystalline form by the heat & heaviness of the universe.
I want to evaporate and rain onto a rolling hill,
form a stream of consciousness that feeds a babbling brook,
and giggle at tadpoles just finding their feet.
I want to caress cliff-sides
and press my toes up to greet mountain peaks.
I want to wiggle my soul alongside the jellyfish in the open sea
floating though golden sunbeams,
ascending current of galactic daydreams
bubbling up to the break surface,
gasping salty air into hungry lungs flushed with new purpose.

Joanna Oz Apr 2015

i thought this was done.

lulled into a false sense
of pure and final release
i let my resentment assemble silently
under a sea of single malt whiskey
and layers of unfinished poetry soaked
ink bleeding blackened tar
to suffocate the forgotten and blind my hands
to the universe hidden in your worm hole.

sand crusted eyes
blinking wildly to **** and clean
shake the dust
bleach the dirt
wash and preen.
my long lost darling
i wonder what evil is lurking
round the razor sharp corners
of the looping maze that's
spinning from my center manically.
maybe if i burry pandora's box
she will no longer haunt my heart
or whisper in my ear
when i lie with lovers in the dark.

the accidental spark of anger
burning at the mention of your name
sets wildfires raging over woods and sea
massacring entire ecosystems in flame.
the only way out is to call a flood, but -
i've drowned myself too many times to keep this up.

Joanna Oz Mar 2015

Manifesto pt 1 {or "I AM"}

I am learning how to use breath as a bridge
between the processes I can and cannot control.
I am suspended between automated habit and conscious intent
on a trapeze of purpose and accident.
I am training my impulsive heart
to sit in tranquility instead of running away,
to be patient and discerning rather than hasty and indulgent.
I am rebuilding my visceral canals
so light can permeate my bloodstream.
I am rerouting my neuronal highways
so the path from A to D stops skipping over the sights held at B and C
and everything else in between.
I am repaving the roads
so thoughts stop getting stuck in potholes
revving their engines fuming exhaust over the sky.
I am reminding myself to be gentle,
to reach for understanding before frustration,
to take my perceptions with a grain of salt
and a second {and third, and fourth} look after I've stepped back.
I am regrowing the recognition of truth and positivity
amongst thorny storm clouds,
re-establishing the detection of poison-laden sweets and crowds.
I am slow in learning, but quick to try again -
recurrently re-working, re-claiming, and reminding.
I am in a continuous cycle of dismantling and transformation -
never who I was a minute ago,
and not yet who I will become in the moments to follow.
I am tiptoeing the tightrope of letting go
and embracing possibility,
delicately dancing along the divide of singularity
and infinite expansion of being,
flirting with disaster and divinity,
and dining with my ego-death.

My city is under constant reconstruction,
but the scaffolding doesn't shroud the sculptures soaring through the sky.

Joanna Oz Mar 2015

cigarette romance

baby i crave rose-petaled
cigarette romance,
let the smoke rise from my lungs
and curl through your canals
caress you in dark alleys and
lead your lips to embrace hushed defeat
reflected in the moon-lit puddles at your feet.

baby i desire the electric plume
of your poisonous touch,
every meeting of our skin causes volcanoes to erupt
spewing lava from my eyes but
my phoenix feathers will keep us
from plummeting asunder.

baby i get lost in the technicolor
pictures playing in slow-motion-reverse,
where sugar coats the screen
from the edges inward, building mountains of
sticky residue for my memories to fossilize into.

baby i chase after loud-mouthed contradictions
with pupils the size of dimes,
i fall in love with vagabonds
and flippant lost causes
who commit heartfelt crimes.

baby i'll track down every demon in you
and take them all out to lunch,
i'll piece together your black hole tar soul
collage of a universe waiting to burst forth,
and i'll hold onto the remnants of whispered secrets
until my museum of you turns back into a live exhibit.

Joanna Oz Mar 2015

that feeling

there's a certain feeling
that creeps up
through the hairline fissures
in your brittle bones,
on frigid hollow nights
at the bewitching hour,
when silent stillness descends
a muted film of
forgotten bittersweet memories
over the darkness.

and honey-yellow street lamps
cast ghostly shadows on the sidewalks, who
hold your hand in solidarity
as you trudge through
empty space,
and the dampened humming of the buzz saw
never really fades,
playing tricks on the music in your ears
spinning haunting discordant loops over
sullen sugar-coated melodies.

it's as if you've stepped through a portal
of time and space
where there is no singular destination
but transportation to the
eternal place
in you
where that feeling has lived
every time
it has arisen in the past,
where that feeling will return
in all the visits to come.

and the place is familiar
so you settle into the bed of nails
comfortably,
breathe in the sharp sting of ragged pain,
and float through the museum
of recycled thoughts
on angry waves.
reluctant transparency
plays its hide-and-seek game, and
you re-learn the methodology
of picking up the particles
and packing them
into steel cages
into cardboard boxes
into dusty attics
into black hole space ships -
sending them into the void.

the mundane madness
in the
mystic mirage of memorializing mourning.