miles and miles and miles

The spirit must be exorcised
else it become plump and resigned
to being loved

and the spirit is circularly interrogated

the modern age may be defined by reflections that sound like proclamations and proclamations which sound like reflections and cursory circular responses that submerge and hold meaning under
else there is no truth and it’s all been a come on…

comes one.
waiting for god, the circulatory lover
who courses through and warms
every part.

for god jumps out of a moving car and lives
for god braces your crooked leg
what do these mean, they are funny, but they conjure an image of loving

it is a common misconception that love is there from the start — no, what’s there is prairie grass for miles and miles and miles.

The war on

curled in the corner, the war on terror
almost touched me, through bars of light
in that square, the portrait of a scalding
dust set to salt like snow
another scene:
Nothing, a concrete floor
torture is heavy, but made
hard to see, in a naked pile
our vomiting screams
I called out dad!
I’m closest to terror
When I remember

the desert face

the desert face may call
any simpering one, flush
and grip it in burn
no more than an hour passed

to find it then wilted, or —
those smart will have to hide…
or, they wait as long
as they can
but they will drink on one another
and still die

some things cannot be carried
some will be left behind

would you believe it
the brutal face is the generous face
coming, to be brought out by other hands
some way

 

thank you

i thought many things
about what it would be:
you arrived

what animal would you remind me of
would i kiss you
would you fill me

you told me you needed me
i rocked you, i cleaned you

you are not in my dreams
you did not come here for me
and yet
your pacifier has slipped from your mouth
i am there to engage you
i am bringing you with me

thank you because
i expect nothing

in me you are a secret
this phenom under a lyric wresting
profound to me and only a few we know
but once to words the words will live as they are meant

you is no matter of fact
scared to be holding on and out of control
i laugh big tears
the outside is asking for you to be
from a tense head, i must admit
you are meant to be expressed
what will contraction sound
born from me and pushed through my mind

 

i have to let me be
delivered without plan
squeezed through my palms
gross strain in the shoulders, in the back
storm-dropped fronds
what i’ve learned is

phenomenon

my life is returning to me
through the sensation of turning corners
in different cities in different stages of light
innocuous sites untethered from why

i find, i am living through peripheral people
watching high, knowing them without any of it
being true
finding my self at an old job,
but the furniture has moved
all configurations tried
another girl in my eyes

june comes closer
but my head is down, i am carving through the past
a finger on the network
without why

i’m just trying
to read about the future, in fact
it was an article about
the end of the world,
but she contorts my vision back
a tick, a latitude
registering each synapse
the will to fire

 

ELIZA

1. the identification of key words,

widening, thinning, effacement, sweep, contraction, transition

2. the discovery of minimal context,

She can’t remember going through it. She can’t remember pain, blood, or mucous. She has nothing to say and, further, she had no problems. After I was born, she was happy and nothing more.

I think this could have to do with being a rape survivor, but I don’t know. I may tie too much to her rape because she ties nothing to it. She describes it too as a moment she moved on from, or, she does not remember grieving. Or, she has never grieved. She does not make much of it.

She does not make much of it. I fill what I perceive to be the voids of her depression with explanations, rationalizations, analyses, and interpretations. My goal is to tell her what is missing. I am programmed like this.

I sunk into those depressions with my form. From far away, we form a composite whole. As my smallest parts vibrate, coerce, and produce, I fidget with her. My fears are for her.

In the doctor’s office, I begin to panic if I am left alone for too long. I fearfully spread my legs. I sweat, and in the past, I pass out. I cannot stand being out of control of my body. My mind tries to go away.

3. the choice of appropriate transformations,

It will be all my own, and there is not much further I can go than that.

4. generation of responses in the absence of keywords, and

Characterized by the willful positioning of one’s feelings into a subdermal form. This pattern is in a language that some other programmers will understand. Results in daily periods of high-frequency anxiety, worthlessness, and “nothingness.” Prior periods of sexual confusion, followed by sexual malaise. Codependency. Criticism.

5. the provision of an ending capacity for ELIZA “scripts”.

I have no control. The program ends.

zoe

for now, you are more fish than me
your belly full of liquid
i breathe it, i eat it
and you swallow it

i hear it, and you hear it
muffled and meaningless to you, underwater
but you’ll stick to my translation
you have no one else to listen to

will you want to keep yourself? or, will that come later
when desire inherits your head
taken with the theme of living

aren’t you frightened?
i am afraid to fall asleep
to the darkness you are feeling
kicking at the soft cell of me
hands gripped tight and wondering,
without wondering
what time it is

there is a hope in this project that makes
a contradiction of me
asking to keep something i promised to borrow

but the cat appears, and she seems
much more content to let love go on without reserve
in its extraordinary coordination with impossibility

 

 

way out

i want to always have a way out
i’ve twisted out the grasp of a nurse
lied to get my place, my way
to be fed
resorted to methods in quiet
instead of saying what i wanted

you asked me to talk about this in the dream i had again last night:
i laid in place on your poolside bed. you walked by, on your way out. you said “i’ll see you later, okay?” and it was saccharine, it meant: you’re still mine and i’ll be back to get it. i said okay instead of saying no, which was what i felt but i let myself go to you to get away from someone else who said: you’re still mine and i’ll be back to get it. in the end, you didn’t like my disappearance and you tried to make my world unloved…a retaliation that said much of you as it did of me

this is where i get my shortness of breath
when i cannot escape
airplanes, arguments, politics, and my cervix
when i am backed into a corner and i am willing to be coarse in the mouth
to try anything to twist out of your hands
in what i am willing to give
in how i prefer to hide
in how my cowardice moves
as long as i am alright
because i can do what i will not say
i cannot say what i will do