like the time i walked a mile
to her house with no shoes on
she was waiting with a bowl of cold water
the pavement was wet with heat
twenty nine **** cigarettes on the teenage balcony
trying to hit the neighbors house with spit
or ash because they
never really liked us, distractedly stroking the dog’s back in
every crosslegged seventeen year old
too hot to breathe sticking minute
the bathtub is overflowing because
i’m talking on the phone
ghosts slip on the stairs
i’m needlessly concerned with everything, with
victory, drooling blood all over the bathroom
i get in trouble for the things i do with my boyfriend
in the 35 thousand dollar swimming pool
and in the foyer of the two million dollar home
that i’ve been ******* around in since 1995
distractedly mouthing words every crosslegged
fourteen year old minute, we are both
licking our lips
looking at all the cars in the driveway i’m
somewhat tired of gentle eye makeup remover
the classic morning lens flare in the guest bedroom
artifacts gathering light instead of dust, it’s all
growing white through the glass blocks, carefully installed
wary of “architectural importance”
(the cars in the driveway are all
just people looking)
i’m pooling in this glass
and all over the walls like a thrown egg
i can’t help but kneel here
and keep my face turned up,
licking up sweat, waiting for the fever to break
when the tornado comes we’re pressed
together in the safe room
where the house is the most dark
if you look outside, you can see owls
and where the turtles were buried
the swimming pool
the gasping fingers clenching
the high water pressure-
do you know what i’m talking about?

Rich, red raspberries in your palm,
rolled there from a damp paper towel as you sit
crosslegged on hardwood floor,
perfect posture,
head leaned against the lowest of the barres in the studio.
Your shoulder blades shift and
your collarbones gleam with perspiration.
Down the wall, another girl savors every drop of an orange.
Through the wall we hear an instructor yelling
and slipping into strings of Spanish curses.
You lean your head on to my shoulder wearing a new shade of lip stain: raspberry romance.
I bite into my bell pepper like an apple and
try not to breathe too loud.

---


the Man
sat crosslegged
on a mat of
green reeds

the woman
gulped and
wept as she
broke the
beautiful bottle
and poured out the
oil of spikenard
(worth a year's wages)
onto the head
of the Man

grumbling from
the thief as he
saw the chance
for his fortune
running
down
the
beard
of
the
Man
he
valued
less
than
dust

but i set
these words
down in
rememberance
of this deed

for her

she valued Him
more than
her most prized
possession

more than her
own temple of flesh
she had perfumed

and so
she
prepared
the
Man
for
leaving
His
own.



in DEATH


soulsurvivor
(C) 8/17/2015

There were people in every room
Inthe hallway
In the street
There was no where safe
No escape
No secret harbour
Nothing
Eventually he found an alleyway
Wonderfully empty
Until he noticed the human canvas
Sitting crosslegged in the corner
That's the day he painted his first masterpiece
Thats the day that he met me

she sits on the floor
crosslegged
trying to calm
her mind
as she cannot decide
whether she really
is a poet
or just imagining
to be a poet

if it were left up to me
this whole poem could be worshiping
the shiny puddle of silver light the stars stained
onto your heaving collarbone when
we made love & connected souls first
under the third eye pyramid tapestry then
on a rough bed of flat canyon orange dirt
in summertime georgia

but it's not & can't ever be
because people don't know you
like i do for example they aren't aware
that you dance with a summer breeze
like the lighthearted yellow butterfly
i can never catch in a net or
that you're the reason
i became a writer to begin with

they probably aren't prone
to remember the october morning
you found me huddled just before dawn
in a half-lit safeway parking lot
burning my clothes & yellow wooden pencils for fuel
chewing the pink bubblegum erasers or when
you said i have a beautiful pristine voice &
i melted giddy into your wet violet
hair as the wind whipped it
i was around nine & in the third grade
so i sat patiently crosslegged & camouflaged
a lizard with my tongue out savoring
that moment like an unexpected
rainshower in the pre-puberty desert
listening to the rhythms of your salty blood
pump waves of breath out of your lungs

& they still don't know about
later on when i was walking home
shoulder bones barreled against the long fog
you picked me up again in the
immaculate rust wagon your brother left the keys in
you bought me firewood at a gas station got me
happy drunk on hot kisses & so paranoid ******
listening to thin lizzy on tape in your garage
you laughed hyena hard
when i asked you to marry me
that starless purple night on your daddy's farm
& so did he but he never really said no
& neither did your eyes they just glistened
like they were floating in olive oil as
you ascended the stairs to your bedroom alone
covered in magic enormous light

Washing Kai in the sauna,
The kerosene lantern set on a box
      outside the ground-level window,
Lights up the edge of the iron stove and the
      washtub down on the slab  
Steaming air and crackle of waterdrops
      brushed by on the pile of rocks on top
He stands in warm water
Soap all over the smooth of his thigh and stomach
      “Gary don’t soap my hair!”
      —his eye-sting fear—
      the soapy hand feeling
      through and around the globes and curves of his body  
      up in the crotch,
And washing-tickling out the *******, little ****,
      his ***** curving up and getting hard
      as I pull back skin and try to wash it
Laughing and jumping, flinging arms around,
      I squat all naked too,
                                          is this our body?

Sweating and panting in the stove-steam hot-stone  
      cedar-planking wooden bucket water-splashing  
      kerosene lantern-flicker wind-in-the-pines-out
      sierra forest ridges night—
Masa comes in, letting fresh cool air  
      sweep down from the door  
      a deep sweet breath
And she tips him over gripping neatly, one knee down
      her hair falling hiding one whole side of
      shoulder, breast, and belly,  
Washes deftly Kai’s head-hair
      as he gets mad and yells—
The body of my lady, the winding valley spine,
      the space between the thighs I reach through,
      cup her curving ***** arch and hold it from behind,  
      a soapy tickle                a hand of grail
The gates of Awe
That open back a turning double-mirror world of  
      wombs in wombs, in rings,
      that start in music,
                                          is this our body?

The hidden place of seed
The veins net flow across the ribs, that gathers  
      milk and peaks up in a ******—fits
      our mouth—
The ******* milk from this our body sends through  
      jolts of light; the son, the father,
      sharing mother’s joy
That brings a softness to the flower of the awesome  
      open curling lotus gate I cup and kiss
As Kai laughs at his mother’s breast he now is weaned  
      from, we
      wash each other,
                                          this our body

Kai’s little ******* up close to his groin,
      the seed still tucked away, that moved from us to him  
In flows that lifted with the same joys forces
      as his nursing Masa later,
      playing with her breast,
Or me within her,
Or him emerging,
                                          this is our body:

Clean, and rinsed, and sweating more, we stretch  
      out on the redwood benches hearts all beating  
Quiet to the simmer of the stove,
      the scent of cedar
And then turn over,
      murmuring gossip of the grasses,
      talking firewood,
Wondering how Gen’s napping, how to bring him in  
      soon wash him too—
These boys who love their mother
      who loves men, who passes on
      her sons to other women;

The cloud across the sky. The windy pines.  
      the trickle gurgle in the swampy meadow

      this is our body.

Fire inside and boiling water on the stove
We sigh and slide ourselves down from the benches  
      wrap the babies, step outside,

black night & all the stars.

Pour cold water on the back and thighs
Go in the house—stand steaming by the center fire  
Kai scampers on the sheepskin
Gen standing hanging on and shouting,

“Bao! bao! bao! bao! bao!”

This is our body. Drawn up crosslegged by the flames  
      drinking icy water
      hugging babies, kissing bellies,

Laughing on the Great Earth  

Come out from the bath.
Gary Snyder, “The Bath” from Turtle

The colors grow dim with the night
And the light of day will fade.
Sitting crosslegged on a stump
I bid my farewell with a wave.

My palm is hollow for yours;
There's a stump by my side.
My partner, how you wandered –
You wavered into a lie.

How I wish I could revive
The connection we shared, my dear,
And how, you'd never wave goodbye–
For you promised to stay near.

True hacks and phonies all around, speaking through their ivory horns of pure disgust and wallowing in incompetence, ******* and kissing and mishandling their newborn children which they name in propriety and for the pearls of God that allow them to **** and **** well. I will blast them all to the deepest of hell for there they belong with me and they will be outrightly ****** by the sojourning sheiks that give their sufferers a razor-tipped ******* that they know they deserve. Where is your relatable, so enjoyable, three or four piece family TV meal that you so deeply craved after a long day at work? It is gone gone gone and now you are subject to your deepest incongruities with yourself, how dare you be such a bother and how dare you believe in your ability to inspire. If you are not feeling this frustration of never ceaselessly being able to grasp at the story that lies within the easel of the juices of your soul, then you are not- and never will be- worth anything more than some broken throbbing piece of genitalia that seethes and suckles at the broken fallacies of pure love and distraught youth. You do not know and you will never know, and if you dare you will never truly make progress for you are a vacuous, insufferable, erratic dame that is not a good piece of skin so much as you are the perfect tool for everyone: a loudspeaker stripped naked and bare for all the world to ****; a true contributor, unlike your deepest and most esteemed of peers. Aww, how does that feel? How does it feel to finally implode from your own vicarious and hollow attempts at wisdom and knowledge? What’s left to be learned has been learned, don’t you understand? Don’t you get it? Don’t you think it’s time to stop digging your ***** ***** nails into that rusted cloud of old hope and forgiveness? Everyone has left, and that is what we must deal with. You must be some mongrel to sit down like an unrepentant dog. Cross-legged and all.

A vinyl record makes the rounds, dust attached loose to the needle, imperceptibly
breaking
off
making
short
homes
for each
molecule
in each
black
groove.
Your hurricane breath will send them subatomic-
Superdomeward on your next mad quest
to convince your girlfriend that you are neat&clean.;

You sit crosslegged, Buddha on the brain,
corporation on the docket.
Which
one
do
you
dream
of?
And more importantly,
which
one
should
you
dream
for?
The twenty in your pocket will get you one-fifth of a silver ring
or five turkey sandwiches.
“You can’t have your cake and eat it too”—it wasn’t Buddha who said that, but
it’s Buddha’s smiling voice in which you hear it now, between your ears.
“What the **** does that mean, Buddha?” you sigh, and there is no answer.

You move, and move, and you keep on moving. You leave a little molecule
on the subway, and on the bar, and on the sidewalk without feeling it, losing them to
short
homes
vulnerable.
The hurricane breath or the sunshine or the invisible rubber glove of
Buddha, or Carl Solomon, or Walter Cronkite or God or whoever does the universe’s spring cleaning
will send them subatomic-Superdomeward
and you’ll never even know you missed them.

Your girlfriend thinks it’s realcool you have a record player,
but it’s a little dusty, she says.
You touch her lower back and smile. You get eye-level with the needle,
and you blow.

crosslegged on a bed. i’ve caught myself capable of great thoughts in this position, but today it’s my place to heal. i can feel a pressure, almost like the fist of a hand against my lower chest... right where my rib cage ends and my vulnerable spot begins. where my emotions spread first. i tighten up in my attempt to best protect it. and breathe as my thoughts reach it. “a waste.”
a fear
a lie
i hear daily.  but no matter how it stings I’ll listen. so I can/it can heal. our darkest corners need comfort too.

When it was all over, we sat in the San Gabriel
and washed ourselves like crocodiles.
We had lived in a world of sweat.

We joked as an old tire floated by
that it wouldn’t be long until we spotted
the rest of the car.

We watched the ants at their little work,
their little loads, and
being good, we did not interrupt them.
A big dumb foot lands in your way
you drop a leaf from your mandibles
and you can’t bear to pick it up again.

I had to become something to carry us.
Something strong. Something stone.
I crouched under my task and the sun beat upon me,
until I was small, like they were.

I was splitting firewood with
a dull, cheap axe. You spun
beneath an umbrella and asked me
to join you. I wanted to ask,
is life better when the hand you hold
holds yours back.

I wanted to look up and see you spinning,
but could not lift my gaze from the ground.

Cold front. Warm front.
Mercury in retrograde.
If I knew the words once to say it
I do not know them now.

I wished I could hear the birds
like you did. I wanted evidence but also
wanted song. You sat crosslegged
while I looked in the manual.
The red breast you took to mean “heart”
I took to mean “dying”
so I sketched his little face in soundless rictus.
while you closed your eyes entirely and listened.

I carried the wood behind you while
you shone a flashlight ahead.
You whistled a little birdsong.
I dreamed that I could spin you forever and never get tired.

I close my eyes and feel the sun come untucked from the clouds,
bleeding blood orange through my eyelids.

No one really knows you and I the way we know our footsteps,
coming home across wood floors late at night.

The way we used to sit on windowsills,
or crosslegged across from one another on your bed.

Our arms sank into the crevices of one another,
I wanted to feel the weight of you to crush me,
if only just to feel the peace of the street.

spiral days running around more spiral days
we sit crosslegged, barefoot in that circle to
carefree blaze and look to each other to
find our own happy place
lost in that intensity haze
all of us so good in our blissful laze

don't start counting these numbered summer days

cause we're still basking in the sun
we're still holding onto our gun
we still don't need no one
in our blissful laze, in those spiral days,
yeah we're still clinging to our
shading ways, those pretty shading
ways we used to count the lemon streaks
in each other's hair
to fight the summer sun against the spring's in heated compare

those pretty shading ways i got a call and a compliment in
and if this was a door then yes i'm gonna go in

good, they're finally meeting
that squint in your eyes is agreeing to the greeting
yes say aye to aye, eye to eye, eyes to eyes
God, it's lovely, yes, it's a lovely surprise

and you look so hard at me before you finally say
i love the way i love the way
your eyes droop
like a palm that could form a fruit

you're weird, you know
yes i know, yes i know

don't you worry you say
i love the shimmer i love the glow

and your eyes are perfect mirrors
color pouring    all the sourness clear if there was any
all the sweetness clear if there was any
all the bitterness clear if there was any
and when i looked at you back with that face you knew what i knew
and so thank you

Some hours later, night having fallen over Lisboa, It was Clara who sat in the loveseat while Ta'ra was asleep. Simon kept graveyard hours, partly from work, partly from an ingrained watchfulness that only ever left him in the small hours before dawn. So it was a usual occurrence for the two woman to sleep and wake and find him still active and awake, cooking or writing or at work, sometimes just staring aimlessly at the skyline of the Almafa. Clara was speaking of her loves and loyalties to him, no guitar for her though. Her gifts were the brush and her voice, both of which had always held a power over men. Her life had been one of passions only half felt, half lived, an object to be possessed by those she enraptured with a whisper in the ear or a sketch on a napkin.
"You speak of passion with such...disdain. As if it's something one could do without and be better off..." He looked up at her from the tile floor of the balcony where he was sitting crosslegged like some aesthetic. She smiled her full, rich smile down at him and then turned away, knowing this was a man she had tried to conquer, and failed. She had known he couldn't be swayed the way most were the first night in Tangier while waiting for the ferry. It had been her intention to barter passage from him for what most men think of as passion. Instead he brought them both to his apartment here as roommates, gotten papers for them, helped them start a life that wasn't that of a hunted thing. "Passion is a weakness that brings us away from ourselves, and presents us to someone else's lusts and wants and needs. In the end, we give all we have, and are emptied of life," she whispered, more to herself than Simon. He sighed as one who isn't sure whether he should speak or not. "You say that, and yet I'm attracted to that word, its implications, its many meanings to us. What you think of as passion is so different from what I think of it as, or Ta'ra for that matter." Clara gave a sharp ha! as response, as if she could divine something we mortals were ignorant of. "Isn't that what you two share," he asked, "passionate love? For eachothers' bodies? Your souls? I hear the two of you, envy it sometimes you know. I haven't been lost within someone completely like that in a very long time." Turning back and staring at him hard before speaking, she slowly and precisely told him that he would never understand what that really was between the two women, because he was a man.

two sheets of paper--eighteen digits total

the first on blank printers paper
torn in a vaguely state like shape
kentucky maybe
pencil lines describing nine numbers
scrawled
that paper dropped in my lap
as i sat on the floor
crosslegged
drawing in hand
confusion in mind
a sly smile and shuffling feet under baggy jeans
carry the boy away

the second on lined paper
torn by shaking hands from philosophy notes
nine numbers copied with a borrowed pink pen
and a name below.
that paper placed on my desk
with a hasty whispered sentence
a kind of reverse suicide note
a hope at life he wanted to share with me
with someone he thought cared about his epiphany
his oversized sweatshirt and damp eyes
follow his flashing soul out of the classroom

.
Soft is the caul of breaths that seethe,
Loosed in the ears knowing
And light is held as a knife is sheathed,
Hard at the breaks reckoning.

Ebbing crawls in old cradles outset,
Clutched promises engulfing,
Death is a toll which gathers at sunset,
Ending seeps seaward in chills.

Listen for moon as it sails into lime,
Digging lost trails for journey,
Smell the salts as the sands run time,
Boarding penny barks turning.

Black birds soon flutter at drips window,
When dark winds cry crosslegged,
Lightless wings whisper— lit knowings,
Wraiths tapping three score and ten.
.

Why did not you
cross the black river
and remained innocent?
Unhealed, failed inside, broken and honest?

You won the race,
the space, the heaven.
Moving away to the farthest blackness.
Your god sits crosslegged, clotting.

Brown hands on white shoulders, boneless
move in circle. Deportation
of words opens the green wounds.
Birds carry the snow on the wings.

I was confused, wanted to love
my broken vowels, for absolute you and me.
The baby face pops up again
in my perfection, speechless.

it's still dark out
but i'm awake
sitting crosslegged on my bed
tears painting my cheeks
freeing love i couldn't hold
i cradle the elephant you gave me in my arms
rubbing it's head with my thumb
dim lamp light reflects in it's eyes
and lone tears drip onto it's fur
i wish you were here
so i could hold you here instead
but its three am
and you're sound asleep
i'm waiting for the sun to rise

she sits on the floor
crosslegged
trying to calm
her mind
as her thoughts
repeatedly return
to the window
a window
battered
by the storms of life - her life
a window
nearly closed
with the gap
slowly but steadily
getting narrower and narrower
soon it will be too narrow
for her soul
to slip through
into a better and happier world
all she needs to do
is to get up
and open the window

will she?