the manuscript
shapes
THERE IS NO EDEN ONLY PROMETHEUS
BATTEN SOMETHING DOWN
THE MYTH YOU WILL BE IS THE MYTH YOU WILL STEAL FROM MAN
WHO IS FINISHED, LIKE HISTORY
WE AREN’T LIVING IN THE FUTURE
IT’S BEEN ALL USED UP
FIND FIRE
BRING SOMETHING HOME TO ME
MY BODY IS A SPACE OF DECREATION. WHEN YOU ENTER IT I AM MAKING YOU UNDONE. I AM IN HERE ALWAYS UNDONE AND UNDOING WHEN WE FUCK WE ARE UNMAKING OURSELVES AND EACHOTHER. OUR FUCKING IS DECONSTRUCTIVIST. LIKE A GIRL OR A CYBORG WE ARE MOTHERING THE END. TURNING + CHANGING INVERTING + REVOLVING THE REVOLUTION.
MY BODY IS FROTHING AT UNDONENESS.
DO I HAVE A BED DO I HAVE A HOME DO I HAVE A MOTHER AND HOW LONG BEFORE THE BEAUTIFUL PIECES OF ME FALL AWAY AND THERE IS A MAD LIGHTHOUSE OBSERVER WITHOUT ANY POETRY OR WARM WOMEN IN THIS BODY
the love poems
My Love whose shoulder cuts clear through unbearable fog, whose brilliant sound calls some spirit into the rough middle whose colors swim and ache against starry glass— that I should feel that skin! That thin thing and thin thing trimming til the in-between is through. whose breath holds my breath whose tongue hold my tongue— where tongues go so often unheld— whose preciousness builds sweet structures… Bind our bodies and wind this glory through the capsule— the looking and sing of it, love sing of it, glory
eat at all
on an island or any lake-rock in the late sun see my love whose tired tendrils weave light in that late afternoon— and any small god (or omnipotent kitten or satellite or passing egret) could tell you of my devotion to her.
For a Fruit Field standing in a fruit field, screaming BAAABE! who will answer if not whoever is in the hall right now back from a run to the liquor store saying, we’ll smoke in the hall for the health of the cat plus there’s the couch standing in a fruit field, asking God who will answer if not whatever is on my bookshelf right now which actually is not a bookshelf but a windowsill saying, the body is a text the text is a body and yours is next standing in a fruit field, whispering sweet girl who will answer if not whoever is in my bed right now trying out some shapeshifting for the very first time saying, Revolution Revolution Revolution
Ocean Song one graceful day to cover you like amoeba of you and everyone in time warm and amniotic in Santa Barbara or the tropics to gain on you like a mother like mother salt-spiced like mother of moon licking wounds it is my greatest ambition you watch and taunt the idea with your toes
Untitled
If i pray it is to say God, look who is in my bed with me of yours and somehow of mine, she places her body where I am telling you to look.
the epics
I ATE THE SHAMANS
Heavier than air I’ll be stone like a thing to worship dark and warm and porous in some garden for you, humming, humming heavy, humming heavy into some garden where you are warm and porous worshipping dark stone and heavier than air. I’m not gonna move I’m obsessed I’m not moving. All I’m moving is everything else, being still. I’m pulling the world into me starting with you. I’m obsessed. I’m a black hole cuz I don’t think anything should exist anymore I decided. Mine mine mine mine mine mine mine where’d it go it’s gone (mine). I ate it I melted it I put it up my cunt and swallowed. The shamans poured it in my cockhole and I swallowed. I’m drinking it in through my teeth like air cuz I don’t need air anymore remember? I’m drowned stone and this is excess like sweetmilk and stolen spices in my ear or gold on my tongue or saying these things to you, who puts things here… You, riot; you, woman; you, cyborg; site of art/glory/pleasure who is also the universe and who I am also holding heavy heavy heavy. I’m obsessed I’m possessed I’m fascinated I’m stoned and I am stone, remember? Don’t forget that and don’t make me sound like a bitch. Don’t make me swallow my cock and don’t make me cry. Don’t make me sound like a girl just cuz I’m crying in a teeshirt and no underwear standing at the foot of your bed. I’m no bitch I’m an idol with my tiny cock out, haven’t you ever been to the Met? I’m an object and a fetish, fetish-object. I’m obsessed I’m possessed I’m fascinated and I drool all the time not just when you’re here. I lie all the time not just when you’re here. That’s not drool it’s sweetmilk from the shamans. Remember? I ATE THE SHAMANS— Oh no. I ate the shamans and now my belly button is my cockhole. That’s the center of me and it’s undulating because of what it houses which is: you, me, wayward moons, fires, the Instagram algorithm, ancestral memory, an orchestra, watermelon-flavored Sour Patch Kids, poems, oceans, tobacco-gunk, doubt, pirates, bastards, starlit afternoons, revolutions, Santa Cruzes, summers, epistemes, and you I’m holding the rest of everything in my armpits and also in my hair which is in my armpits and cunt. There are rocks like planets there are boulders birthing archean eons in between my fingernails and the black nail-polish chipped on top of them. (How did you put these planets there). I know this because they’re buzzing slightly. They’re buzzing quantum. They’re buzzing like ttttttt they they they they’re buzzing like 1111111. What’s a zero. What’s an Absolute? The sun rises over us when there is no sun. [watching that] The sun rises over us when there is no sun. There’s ash that’s actually nuclear snow but what’s new— our imaginary nuclear winters’re better than global warming (and boredom) but what’s new what’s new is that Men look at us but we are just us. We look at the sky and the ocean and eachother (closing in + awesome + terrifying) and Men look at us and we are just us, thinking, the snow has always been beautiful, like semen or sweetmilk in this warm garden. The Men who make up Mankind are funny because there is sun where there is no sun and there is nuclear snow and also stone idols but the Men only watch television. I don’t have a television and I am not a kind of Man. This is what it’s like to love during an apocalypse.
ADVENTURES IN SOMNOPHILIA
I want to sleep like this— Peering into some morning sun which reaches you before it reaches me and smelling leaves on our bodies somewhere where I am not yet a woman or a Man, just the leaves which touch and scent your fair skin and when you are away bathes gold and feeds on this light. This is what a fantasy is like: to be tough and nimble and to push in while opening out. To be innocent: to lose form. In my most my fantasies of you I am innocent of a female body unless of course invoked. There are islands of me where I touch you. There are islands of you where you touch me. You call it polymorphous and I’ll call it love. I’ll try to name it, later, try and fail, in diaries, when I remember a female body and language and the other things of the world of Men which I have yet to master. Alone in a dusty study I sit my tight bony ass on a stack of seven dictionaries and lift a spectacle up to a ray of light coming in through a crack in the ceiling. Dust dust dust. Dead skin. There’s somebody’s skull in the study but it’s ancient so it’s dead dust dust dust. It looks at me without its fleshy eyeballs. Dust dust dust. Halloween grapes. The piano’s dead, too, just an ugly old stand for written music that someone saved for later. It’s nice to save things for later. Dust dust dust dead skin. Not spectacle— kaleidoscope actually and I don’t even have a skin ‘cuz I’m on acid. I love America. I love Marlon Brando in Streetcar I love going to In-N-Out I love when women wear tight little pants I love to eat I love communism and secrets I love lipstick I love making out with girls in cars I love dancing I love tiny little books about miserable men I love porno mags where people have to write in I love chocolate egg cremes I love revolvers just the look of em I love the color red I love terrible things except sickness and war I just like crime and car wrecks and the gaudiness of rock stars Where I was across the table at a seedy diner with another skinny poet feeling the holes in our coats and seeing the dumbness on eachother’s faces performing our petty flirtation and me at least thinking, he’s so young. I’m a lesbian. I love America. It’s absurd. It’s disgusting. I only ever order grilled cheese on rye with mustard.
Where I was sitting on the carpet in somebody’s apartment poorly playing guitar and found two quarters so could buy a pack of cigarettes but was thinking just about poems and girls so went to park just to watch nothing for a few hours. Still feeling incense in my nose from the apartment. Where I was cold and so walked into the library, read poems. Poems about girls being hot. Rock songs. Where I pronounced poem “po-em” and had a beard and listened to crooning jazz in my spare time. Where I was broke but a Man. Where I was staring down the barrel of a gun at 33 Union Square West not sure whether I was dead or an American Artist. Where I was in a beret in a bank in San Francisco. Where I was telling poems in a church. Where I was telling jokes in a taxicab. Where I was telling you this but you listened. Where I was wearing boots. Real ones. Where I was in a brawl in a bar and old and awful. Where I put on my hat and walked away, split lip and all to another dark bar and wrote bad poems on the napkins there. Where I didn't talk to anyone all day. Where I rode on a train to a new little town. Where I was a fisherman. Where I was a fisherman who didn't say anything. Where before drowning I did sail. I sailed to India for literature. For trade. We made the passage in one hundred and ninety four days and not everyone survived well. I remained in the ship’s study, staring down a skull without any eyeballs, and queasy, easily sat my ass down on a stack of seven english dictionaries. Held a spectacle up to a ray of light coming in from a crack in the ceiling. Dust dust dust. My skull-friend is ancient so no eyeballs dust dust dust. I must study the dusty runes to translate that unknowable thing into literature. I am sailing here for literature for the literature of Men which is writing the writing of Men which is language the language of Men which is all which is God. We all must be very brave, in the face of God. Oh, God, I’m coming down. Oh, God, the ship. God help us, oh, Lord, Lord God help us now, we all must be very brave. In the ocean I meet many creatures. Creatures overtake my senses there are creatures in my nostrils they are small salty bug-like creatures they are the creatures which are the beginning of all creatures there are creeping creatures very very small creatures and very very large creatures there is me, creature, humble like a whale I swallow the ocean like I did once in a dream. Ocean ocean ocean song says the moon is your mother now listen to moon listen to moon-mother go moon-mother who is salt-spiced in your throat swallow spices sings ocean song spices in your stomach but ocean song is there gold in the West? Ocean song says forget gold let go your god, gold, or suffer death without any after. Gold’s no creature and you are many.
Wet, we see marble bound in bales so we build something. We build because we are in love. We with our many eyes see you somewhere so we build we build a temple to a river god. Up goes the marble in columns and the floor is stamped down in ecstatic ritual dance. We wear robes of marigold-dyed silk we braid our long hair with jasmine we feel the sun in our leaves of hyacinth. We eat fruits all the way through we swallow seeds. We give you fruits, river god, we give you our hair when it is white. We bathe our body with clay then weave you cloths of sandalwood cannabis bougainvillea eucalyptus and we sing in our many voices many praises. When our body becomes weak we give it to you. We lay on the warm wooded ground of the temple adorned with dahlia jasmine orchid garlic orange clove cinnamon cardamom peppercorn. We melt into the heat of the earth, your earth, until your river overtakes us. I traverse the forest on the back of a great beast of a tiger. My cat is fast and I have a wood sword so I am like a king (respected). Me and my cat sweep slicing with our furs through the forest where there is a band of hunters. Their arrows are weak. Where there is a party of noblemen. Their carriage is slow. Where there is a lone adventurer. His feet are tired. Where there is an english riverboat. It is sinking. My cat ducks into the river to cool. I swim through an inlet towards the forest and find a small lotus pool there where the floating flowers are warm and smell sweetly. I come upon a nymph bathing and love, it is you! You, river god, who I find here as nymph, as girl whose gold hair is freshwater, whose fair skin is lotus petal, whose bright eyes are mossy stones. I am ecstatic!!!! Your brilliant form does not yet discover me— how am I to make myself known to you. How am I to hold you soft, to understand the gold and silk threads which comprise this picture. Me in my blue skin, here, monstrous… I don't knowwwwwww. In my dusty study I want to open the dictionaries I’m sitting on top of but they’re all wet. I wanna look it up. I’ve heard this one before. About the adventurer who comes upon the bathing nymph. Myth myth. Dust dust dust. I want to understand the gold and silk threads which comprise this picture. But the dictionaries are all wet. It’s not what you think, me sitting on top of these dictionaries with my bare ass. It’s just the entire ocean. It’s just my moon-mother. This is what a fantasy is like: a myth you can’t know. Blue skin. I have a skin now— I’m off the acid. And I’m so sleepy I’m soooo sleepy I’m truly the sleepiest girl. I’m sleeping in the sun. I’m a housecat. I’m a teddy bear. I’m a maple leaf. I’m photosynthesizing!! I’m innocent of a body now there is just me and you all gooey when we are sleeping. I blink and see the morning sun which reaches you before it reaches me. Save me the day, love, save me the light, save me the nutrients for now. Save me the awake ecstasy of air and food and literatures like the body and writing and music. Save me all this, for now.
new circutries
February Poem Among amid a mid-February pinkness stones blush crinoline crunches, turns away— warp weft at elbows, grey instead and soft like pinkness like flesh-fold cranium-cage marzipan but soft what light— what window, what jewel (of drug) (or radiation) (of a detergent) (of pornography) not likely. Stones blush some streets strawberry milk fuzz-flesh felt reactive— like haze— warm milk warp weft with coffee among amid a mid-conversation pinkness, I believe you cry
Hartford and I couldn’t take a shit in your grandmother’s bathroom because I didn’t ask for one of the silver Marlboros so conspicuous on the table in the yard. Even though I really wanted to right across from the letter framed on the wall: Sincerely Ronald Reagan who died on the same day I turned three. If I don’t drink this Coca Cola they will think I’m a communist which I am but even though this commie needs to shit it’s probably bad form to ask for a smoke from someone who’s Eighty two. May I have some of this American Death? Your grandfather almost died in the navy when he fell in the drink, wind probably whipping the bowlines and brails into his young face it was like 1952. Hartford is the town we are in and I have never understood America despite never being anywhere else. Sitting on the kitchen counter and asking about the navy I imagine myself a sailor like any beautiful young American man but then I can’t shit and across the hall Reagan is laughing at me dark and small girlish and capricious without my American Death.
Zoey’s Massive Shit the sun was up and Zoey was up she thought I’ve got to take a massive shit so she walked to the bathroom in the middle of the night looking at the bright sun and the shit that came out of her was a baby (ugly like jesus in paintings) it turned to her and said what do you think the profit margins are on this not knowing what this was zoey, who was a virgin, said I love you but haven’t you read Kathy Acker or taken a class on feminist theory or learned how to knit or eaten apples? (the baby said no I was born yesterday and you’re being a cunt) Well, said zoey, there’s lots of things about being a woman you have to understand like all of your poetry will be bad and your music will only house others, oysters, you will die in the ocean, and you will not ever realize it is a river, which only has rocks and no monsters or novels. your nervous brain will cause war which is something like sin but much worse and also I will not leave you and I do not love you. oh it said and zoey said oh which made both their mouths o pen (look at that, her holding it ugly like jesus) (a Man would think this is beautiful or sexy or says something about God but we know better)
and it was a race the baby started to eat but first zoey wrapped her jaw around its head Which was small but she’s got a small jaw. the profit margins of that was zoey thought her milk tasted delicious and felt like coming so she did and now, alone, realizing the cold porcelain embedded on her ass, zoey started back to bed narrowly avoiding the mirror.