I opened my eyes
And looked up at the rain,
And it dripped in my head
And flowed into my brain,
And all that I hear as I lie in my bed
Is the slishity-slosh of the rain in my head.

I step very softly,
I walk very slow,
I can't do a handstand--
I might overflow,
So pardon the wild crazy thing I just said--
I'm just not the same since there's rain in my head.

I want the children to stay silhouetted against the sun,
doing handstands, throwing their heads down and kicking
the cloudy, blue water.

They are silly children
with no fear of the fall and slipping shirts
that expose their human bellies.

They are spending time upside down
before the ground is lava and before they have to
check the sidewalks for cracks,
before they are tricked
into believing there is a secret underneath their feet
and they are greedy, greedy,
always looking down with limp arms and hunched shoulders.

They throw themselves over the ground
again and again. Not understanding
that their arms are too weak to keep their legs wading
against the current of gravity as
it pulses down on the Earth.

Or maybe they do know
and they are only trying to do handstands,
looking for a new perspective, a different world,
not the one they are stuck with.
They could be searching everywhere
for an alternative before they have to balance
on two feet and face the fear
that will rake in moments of their lives.

They already know that fear
but maybe trying anyways is what makes all the difference.
Perhaps everyone should go home right now
and designate handstand stations
in their living rooms,
throw open the windows,
and let the sunlight in
because it really is getting warmer
or maybe we're all just getting
used to the cold.

The conversation tumbles out in ribbons and fall leaves,
In stories we all tell ourselves that nobody believes,
Walk with wolves in their wolf clothes, costume suits and ties,
Watching it all end with deaf ears and hourglass eyes,
As the chips turn to ashes, we fall where we please,
On grey dashboard tables, on broken church knees,
Vulnerabilities remain hidden behind a digital disguise,
Where everything that ever happened happened to be lies,
Our feet are getting older now, we tiptoe a safer route,
Drunk on expensive alcohol, nothing new to write about,
I was always left or leaving, maybe I’m already gone,
And I want to talk about it, but you turn the TV on,
So I stare out the window, and I wait it all away,
Repeating softly to myself, We’re all okay, we’re all okay.

I do a handstand
so that my feet dangle in space
It feels as if I am holding on
like grasping the memory of you
The stars pull me outward
but I hold on

I do a handstand
head over heels for you
Love can not be explained
like the gravity of this world

It pulls me back to you
I let it

You watch the little one teeter,
precarious, fifteen feet above
the mat on the chalked beam
with white tape wrapped around
her wrist and the cracked webbing
between her thumb and forefinger.
You watch.

Her fingers tight against themselves
she reaches left arm out and bends
to grab the structure wrapped in taut
leather and sanded down into a smooth,
uniform surface, the likes of which are
stacked in warehouses in central Pennsylvania
or southern Iowa or west Texas and shipped
to community centers and middle school
gymnasiums for use in competitions with face paint
and streamers and yelling parents donning
appropriate colors and shouting cheers in unison.

You watch her shift her weight from left
leg to left arm and kick up to handstand.
You see her look of concentration and you
see when her eyes open wide with surprise
and you see her balance shift backwards
and you see her overcompensate
and you see her back bend to the side
in a way it's not supposed to go.
You watch her fold in half and fall hard
onto the bright blue mat
in a cloud of chalk dust and you watch
her face full of disgust and disappointment
and white tears and sour looks.

You run to her, laying on the ground in a
small pile. You push competition officials
to the side and hurdle trainers and instructors
to get to her, to hold her in your arms and to
hear her crying and whispering softly,
"I'm so sorry."
"I'm so sorry."
"I'm so sorry."

You put your lips on her forehead
and you put your lips on her temple
and you hold her against your chest
and your eyes start to quiver
and you grip her tighter
and you tell her that she's perfect
and you tell her that she's doing
all she can do, and that everyone
makes mistakes and everyone falls
down once in a while, but the part of
life that's most important is to get up,
get up, get up, get up.

She repeats,
"I'm so sorry."
"I'm so sorry."
"I'm so sorry."

You hold her and the two of you
rock together and the room falls
silent and you are the only two
there, you are the only two who
matter in that moment, and if
she could just listen, if she could just
hear you, she would know and she
would believe and she would realize
that all she can do is be who she is
and get up and try again and that
every day is a new day and that
every moment is a new moment.

But she can only sit in your arms and cry
and whisper apologies to nobody and
everybody, apologies that seem out of place
in the first round of the junior varsity
gymnastics tournament in the fourth
of five divisions in a nothing town on a cold
Saturday afternoon in March when she's
got a scholarship to Berkeley in the fall
and an award for increasing student
engagement and a clarinet concert the next
day and a family who loves her.

You lift her up onto your arm like
you did when she was small and you
carry her to the car to raucous applause
and admiration for the little girl who did
it all and will continue to do it all.

She wipes the tears from her face and
looks up at you through hurt and furrowed
brow.

"Ice cream?" You ask and she smiles.
"Yes please." She looks down.
"Chin up." You lift her face towards the sun.
"Okay." She opens her eyes with wonder.

I once knew a girl,
back when my posture was good,
we wore matching shirts,
jeans and shoes.
She kept her hair long,
to hide jealous shoulders.

All the loud voices
didn't have a thing to say.
They didn't resonate,
hammering on doors,
denting ear drums,
enunciating mispronunciations.

I played football in times square,
passing glances and stairs,
had rock climbing races
to higher elevations.
My badly tuned feet couldn't run,
ankle bones off key.

There's a saltwater film
frosting my eyelashes,
clinging to my tongue,
holding down my yells
to the quiet machines
that toss boiled eggs in the air.

Up to their knees
in the dark left behind by streetlights,
they rolled up their pants for wading.
They lingered in docking terminals,
standing still,
becoming dust collectors.

Somehow we're all just wanderers,
citing passages we herd
in front of us like mountain goats.
Ambling across empty intersections,
walking in handstand through cul de sacs,
picking up litter from busy streets.

Books for readers wear little letters,
use big words with four syllables.
They showed me how to fence with trains,
ride red wagons down hills,
win marmalade coated cricket matches.
I never judged the typos to be out of place

(I accepted the bits they forgot to erase)

the people look like flowers at last, and i guess
what matters most is how well you walk through the fire*
worth the palette, and the eyes - it's the beef tongue honesty
as cited in the poem of the same name -
never mind the 1930s poem -
i too wish i could have written the 1980s
(Poland) - but the communist years
are marred and budding in China while
people bemoan the two years under Martial
Law - and queues, endless queues for
provisions, and stamps for rationed food,
and shops filled with empty shelves or
white vinegar (a childhood friend's mother
was rumoured to have committed suicide
by drinking white vinegar) -
in all honesty i guess before the borders opened
and products started pouring in we could
have claimed a happy childhood,
but for us back then it was the call of the wild -
and the fact that we were together as kids,
even though the steel plant was being undermined
for profit and people were either forced to
leave to somewhere else in the country or
abroad - a thriving beehive of a town reduced to
what became know as the pensioner town -
supermarkets sprouted like churches, the city
centre once a trading hot spot was now the bank
square - nothing but banks; growing up i used to
travel for summer holidays - a fit child i became
hooked on the coca cola dream - between 16 and 17
i lost 30 kilograms on my bike back home, doing
50 kilometres a day - once the fat kid at the back
of the class, now the pomegranate munching hippy -
but that didn't matter: aged 21... god... jealousy
is so horrible, it transcends the healthy competitive
streak of sports and capitalism - now, each waking
hour i wait for the evening so i can numb the pain
riddling my brain - it's like being perpetually nibbled
on my an electric chair - and i can't do anything about
the sizzling of blood on this organic sponge -
headphones sometimes provide an equilibrium
and i jack-in and the pain is reduced - but try talking
to someone when you can't hear them - god, jealousy
is so horrible - i remember times when i'd go with
the guy to Reagent's Park mosque and sit there on
the minimalist floor and just absorb this grand
poly-chromatic social experiment - born into a monochromatic
culture i was fond of the diversity - but times have
changed for the worse, and i'm proof of it -
as i already mentioned the other great schism (not
in religion but) in medicine - what insanity overcomes
them treating physical damage with metaphysical
promises of a chemical imbalance? they treat the brain
as some ******* chicken soup - thankfully i was well
aware of everything - but that's beside the point,
why i survived i attribute to what happened to Sisyphus -
i'm not going to be as bombastic as the original version
depicts Sisyphus, son of Atlas (both of them the boulder
men) - well, i don't see Sisyphus as an absurd hero
like Camus - i very much see him akin to Loki (the trickster),
but it's not about that - for me Sisyphus had a near-death
experience, and was condemned by the gods to
that boulder of his and the ***** and the rolling back
and forth as punishment for that Sisyphus had no insight
from his near-death experience - he didn't become a poet,
and he certainly didn't become a philosopher -
nor a ***, rebellious in the sense that what Sisyphus
did do is return to business as usual - he had no insight
into death, he didn't befriend it, he didn't akin to
Marcel Proust or Tristan Tzara gain "a new way of seeing";
not many people have near-death experiences in all
honesty - and from the myth as stated, few can return
with insight - most come back with cliches, the unimaginative
white light at the end of the tunnel -
Sisyphus was condemned to the boulder for his lack
of inspiration - then again, any madman talking about
the next world with promises is doing a handstand while
attempting to outperform someone running the hundred
metres - circus Olympics - what's keeping me motivated
is what others would call the Cartesian extension -
my brain can't craft a fluid cognitive narrative with ease
as it once was able to do - these are snippets of what reminds
me of the ease that the brain once hosted -
which contradictory if Descartes was about -
a thinking thing is un-extended - if that were true
he wouldn't have out-poured his thinking onto a blank
page - matter extends but does not think - unless of course
you get into a debate about god (i don't see the point
ascribing atheism all the perks - i'm also referring to an
impersonal entity, not a personal entity that might require
praying five times a day for personal gains and repressed
grievances - you know, god of the airy fairy and the casual
phrasing of the word that is usually censored by
Jews - g- -d - which i find as absurd as western censorship
of oath words). so coming back to this Descartes point,
it's true that physical corruption (damage) would qualify
me as a non-thinking entity, pure matter, and therefore
purely extending onto this digital pixel white -
but the counter argument is... there's a distinction between
thought and narrative - and given the casual standard
of philosophy is more akin to narration than abstraction
of either 2 + 2       in mathematics, or μ + ω
in phonetic encoding or whether ω could be encoded
to a more aesthetically pleasing macron-omicron (ō) -
because if we're going to follow Descartes prescription
(they are like doctors, those philosophers, or that's
how i treat them, every key idea they regurgitate out
from their predecessors - a priori - and is new
and challenging i treat it like i'd treat a prescription from
a doctor - Heidegger, for example, prescribed me
the equivalent of sleeping pills for my insomnia) we
don't have to necessarily accept it as the gold standard,
holy, a sword in a stone - but i'm not going to fall
for the rigidity of their vocabulary, the part where using
imagery would refer to a monkey pushing cubes
through a canvas of squares to the other side of something -
or that great table tennis match of philosophical
narration - how did something, nothing, everything,
anything are categorised as pronouns akin to
i, you, me, he etc. - i don't like their concentration on
either nothing or the basic self - that always bothered me -
but i guess it adds to the fluidity of language -
now i'm lost in my own labyrinth - and there's
the Minotaur on my heels breathing pungent hot-snot
from his snout - which can only mean one thing -
a trap to get into fixations and the stability of words
as one-dimensional, non-deviating from a unitary meaning,
rigidity of the non-existence of synonyms -
basically burning the Thesaurus Rex - which also means
no oil for cooking or butter for bread, or anti-ageing
creams - if ever anyone wanted one-dimensional
words, rigid language, a stability of some sort,
safe ~chemistry experiments read from a primer and
never new, black is black, white is white -
well... but i guess there's a preference for such an
approach to language, rather than the antonym of
such use of it, with negations in politics, in jurisprudence,
lies and corruptions, nuances, games and injured
hearts;
            Sisyphus ibin Atlas was punished because after
a near-death experience he didn't come back with
any insight - he just returned to his day job, and didn't
gamble on something beautiful - however
scrambled eggs it looked like.

Oil
Exhaust
Handstand theatre
In the back of a van
Underground avenue
Has the scent of
Stale black licorice
Melted into the sidewalk
The familiar odor of traffic
Is a pedestrian substitute
For the Old World charm
This renovated place
Paved over
Long
Ago

I was going to write a poem

   about how I stood on the corner after
   work, gripping a squishy handlebar with
   my left hand and holding K’s flip phone
   in the other.

My stomach flip-flopped across JFK blvd, down 20th street, and to that little alleyway where I stood alone for a while.

An old lady stared at me...

   did I trigger a happy memory of her
   youth,
   or was she just smirking at the beads of
   sweat on my forehead and disintegrating
   soles of my ballet flats?
   My black dress slouched over my body
   like I was going to a  funeral.

And even though my acro class was yesterday, I still felt upside down. There’s no way I could stay in a handstand that long, but I would’ve done it if it gave me a different explanation for why I was so sick.

Inside of me were those cropping rainbow scribbles that I used to make on Paint, you know, the ones that seemed like they could create a picture but ended up turning into shaking lines?

I could feel the lack of your presence, I could FEEL your not being there. As the minutes passed and I kept standing and waiting my face drooped and it was hard not to cry right there on the spot.

It was just past lunchtime but there was still a steady flow of businessmen filling the sidewalk.
   They glanced at me but I just looked
   away because they were my father's age
   and gave me familiar half-smiles.

I said that I was going to write a poem because I didn't have enough energy to do anything but list words,
but I guess this just turned into a ******
one.

It makes me smile
When nothing else can
I'll do anything for it
Jump a building
Do a handstand
Sing my ABC's
I'll be the queen of comedy
So that I may hear its music
It builds friendships
Breaks barriers
It's so special
Yet so common
Laughter

If your going to cry do a handstand
so your tears don't fall
look in the mirror and make a silly face
so that you laugh instead
Grab a peice of paper and write something good about you on it so next time you can read it

So I said
Continue
I'm scared of mistakes
This is me
Everyone I know
Has me figured out
Except I
Julie Delpy
Spirit-animal
Soul of ****
In the ***** of her holiness
Whole
I pride in the mystery of mischief
I can hold my breath
As I hold your hand
I can handstand in the face of death
I can die laughing at myself
Who am I?
You have me figured out
Why not tell me what you see?

Well, there.
I found it, shins
I found,
a huge place in the back of the head and locked in bed, maybe id
can only pinch with the residue residing
Swelling and spilling, the only true bad Smile.
The stem ringing and squealing
Swelling, kneeling
Afterwords, left and sizzle stigmad
Talk to your kids a lot. please!
Because handstand pushups only make
The thing competitive with no
Relatable taste
And movement from the vital stops
Which attracts the secret cops.
They're city veins.
Swollen, stolen.

Well, there.
I found it, shins
I found,
a huge place in the back of the head and locked in bed, maybe id
can only pinch with the residue residing
Swelling and spilling, the only true bad Smile.
The stem ringing and squealing
Swelling, kneeling
Afterwords, left and sizzle stigmad
Talk to your kids a lot. please!
Because handstand pushups only make
The thing competitive with no
Relatable taste
And movement from the vital stops
Which attracts the secret cops.
They're city veins.
Swollen, stolen.

Me and the guys were cool and cruising,
in my mate Robin's new car.

The cops had slapped a defect notice on it,
and so it was decided we wouldn't venture far.

With Robin at the wheel and I alongside in front,
we headed via back-roads out to an old dirt track.

There was Dale and Steve and Joe and Andy,
and they were all squashed up in the back.

Six teenage boys intent on adventure,
when we finally found dirt road to suit.

I can't recall whose idea it was but Joe and Andy,
were encouraged to climb out onto the boot.

Robin kicked the throttle the car springing off its mark,
fish tailing and raising clouds of dust as it sped upon its way.

I could hear the sound of Joe and Andy screaming,
but I couldn't make out what they were trying to say.

Now some way down the road yells and laughter,
still coming from the guys riding out on the back.

Robin saw the road had been washed away,
a two foot ravine cutting right across the track.

Robin reacted swiftly and stomped hard upon the brake,
I expected to see a cloud of dust but clear as day instead,

Was the startled face of Andy as he did a springing handstand,
from the hood to a perfect landing twenty yards ahead.

Now Joe was a considerably bigger guy,
and depressed indent of roof gave me several tips.

Until Joe slid out onto the windscreen,
giving a human impression of a daytime partial eclipse.

Two thoughts forever are stuck with me ever since that day,
would we have laughed so hard if Robin missed timed the pedal,

But the other one that really haunts and  plagues my mind,
Could Andy's stunt have won him an Olympic gold medal.

the *** machine has begun to breathe on her own.  father ***** a brown bruise into mother’s half of my cigarette.  I could be doing a handstand in a prison yard or watching as my cell is turned upside down.  brother uncurls a finger from his made fist so deliberately I know he means it to be a hard-on.  I crush my eyes with my eyes and try to remember the name my son gave to the loose tooth we hung together from a doorknob.  was my son told me the puppets need our hair.

the demon ***** a child in the dream of yours where it first appeared  

the mother gets less and less attention for being born

the baby uncrosses its eyes

at a lone ******, I lose hours to the handstand
the occupiers
of my city
worship

proof a mosquito in the gravedigger’s ear

A soul lost makes a good man
Perpetual motion breeds success
Tossing & turning into a handstand
***** to **** but at least I **** less

Never claimed to be your superman
But old Clark has nothing on me
I write for you and my back bends
I've got the touch, I can make you see

You never thought I could
And I never blamed you
The coulds & shoulds & woulds
Blinded you to the truth

So put your faith in my light
As I flick my Bic over a puddle of gasoline
Try & try & try as I might
Off your thoughts, I can't wean you

With the new me and the old you
We can do things we have never before
So hold my hand now, embracing all that's true
And by the end, you'll be asking for more
And more
And more

you're a galaxy personified
i know what i mean.
you're trying to make it all work
your mind is like a dream.

one of the dreams that turns
to nightmares,
because it makes you want to ignore
the fact that i can be here and there.

(i swear. i'll be good.
i say it a million times,
but i mean it --
it just gets lost in the rhymes).

i'll be standing on the sidelines,
pom poms in my hand
you're making me so proud
i could maybe do a handstand.

a window and door will open
and you'll walk inside,
just like your light, my love,
you'll be enveloped by the sunshine.

When I fall to pices, what if I didn't wanna get back up again? Lay somewhere in the middle wherever it begins and wherever it ends? Never stand again real tall,quite contempt to crawl. It doesn't matter if I'm this side or that side of the wall. If I break a smile I could do a handstand, so my mouths the right way...staying awake at night so I could sleep all day. What if I didn't want to move on? What if this is right where I belong? Listen to sad songs and do no wrong, this life's ***** it's taking too long.

Christmas is not going to perform
for me again this year.  Not going to send me to the five and dime for
shreds of tinfoil or hooks of candy.

Song sung blue over the white
and drifting snow.  I remain
dans la grotte.  Why?  You might
ask.  Tomorrow the Wise Men
start their slouch
toward Bethlehem,
unencumbered by gifts.

Joy is not running through
me.  Starlite, star bright,
I wish you would come
home tonight.

Far away you send sorrow.
I package it in used boxes.
I will sit for twelve days and
twelve nights.  Alone.

I will *******
another Christmas and
count to forty.  It's what
I do.  I am blistered with
the wait.  

When you come home I
will handstand myself
with joy.  It's been the
journey of my life to wait
for you. My face to the
Star, again.

Next Christmas I will celebrate
you.  Home from afar,
I will wrap myself in your
name.  You will open me.  

Please.

Caroline Shank

immune from snake bites
boil vinegar to rid stink      
do handstand, skunks

I recall a day in Summer
Many years ago
When my life was about handstands
Done in a row
Fingers stretched out
Pressing the ground
My legs went upwards
Splaying about
Dresses floating
Catching the wind
Pigtails all dangling
Needles and pins
Staying steady
Was hard to begin
But eventually mastered
The handstand thing.


Love Mary ***

can you even begin to grasp
the primitive nature of roman numerals?
      to have to share both
letters as "concepts"
                conjugated with numbers?
     a 6 would become a b,
                      sharpened mind you,
                    a 7 would become Γ standing
in a mirror...
                 2 that was actually any S
also in a mirror... later sharpened into a Z,
then hidden in either caron-like-halo
above it in the form of Š...
                                                    or ß...
ah... ****...
         concerning the extraction point of focus,
what is philosophy:
                     immediately some
claim it's an:                     art of thinking...
to me "philosophy" is:
                            a dualism / anti-Hegel
reiteration, host and parasite comparison,
              a morality with a narrative...
               there's the θought,
                            and there's the: ought i?
philosophy is such a tedious word...
             lover of "wisdom" versus:
               lover of applying the concept
of ensō (ooh ooh, ki-chu! /
                          kí chú)
                                           to a súdokū...
    or as the concession states
the narrative for man...
            you either paint... or you think.
calculus with roman numerals...
                 beck...
                        no, i mean beck's,
i.e. bremen...
                         trust the french
         to serve up diacritical usage as worth
an amputee...
                       germans are custard chemists
and english are shrapnel...
                                  or a nail bomb...
i've been looking for this jewish
formula all my life...
              to see it unravel in speaking
english,
                    what do you call an implosion
of Δ?              Y...
                               i.e. γ, god / gamma -
                           which is copernicus
doing a handstand with Λ...
                                                  a labrador
angel...               nicknamed Lucy...
                                       or as some would
like to call it: zee eckestein... or schtein...
             or even: ekkeschtein... shoosh!
    schtein-ffffRein-franken... danke...
                                **** me with all this
sharpening of "edges"...
                         more like keeping vectors
and: if we're not living in a time
when belzeebub re-emerged to peer with his
pixel eyes back at us...
              then i must have ******
off aleister crowley in his chamber of sleep
that's his grave...
               pass the torch mate,
we're going to visit haunted burroughs
   and fascist ezra,
                    and then we're going to
ohio... for a milkshake...
                                       which is probably
why i hold dear the geometry of YMCA...
  no, wait: YHWH (vowel catcher on one side,
laughter on the other)...
            and then... pin-point honing device (Y)
coupled with: do that squiggly line
            sine cosine (i.e. worm)....
                  beyond that: off my rockers,
or as some technical geeks would like to say:
ex... ponential...
                                  trig says: drool me out
a tangent graph...
         by now you can jesus christ almighty
all you want...
                                   i'm knocking
on a skull with bobby McDylan
                         gagging for a cliche's worth
of Hamlet with the question:
                                  you deaf, or is he death?
and to think...
        i read the last remains of pop Kant,
                    to produce...                     this.

[boy musics]

we’re counting cigarettes on the roof of a closed *** shop in Ohio when I tell you my father is gay. it’s too late for crow and all the deer have been hit. you have just read me three poems by your dead sister, the third of which she called dead sister. a vacuum is running below us. you ask me if I’ve ever wanted to see her handwriting. it’s nothing like yours but maybe one day.

~

[tube feeding]

the boy who in the middle of performing a handstand finds god just as she’s creating the oceans after being overtaken by a herd of ghosts

~

[in a cornfield a trombone case full of ****]

we buried a god in Ohio today with a ouija board and a map. pain is a different god altogether. smaller mouth. no belongings. I remember becoming a dog with more clarity than being assaulted on a bus during a rash of housefires. sister says that from here on out television is the devil’s paint and bends herself into translating her mother’s poems for grief, the doomed sycophant of language.