Returning Birds

This is not a dirge-- no, it's only indignation.
An angel made of earthbound protein,
a living kite with glands straight from the Song of Songs,
singular in air, without number in the hand,
its tissues tied into a common knot
of place and time, as in an Aristotelian drama
unfolding to the wings' applause,
falls down and lies beside a stone,
which in its own archaic, simpleminded way
sees life as a chain of failed attempts.

this one makes me think of you, colleen:

We were in the Safeway parking lot. I couldn’t find my cigarettes.
You said Hurry up! but I was worried there would be a holdup
and we would be stuck in a hostage situation, hiding behind
the frozen meats, with nothing to smoke for hours.
You said Don’t be silly,
so I followed you into the store.
We were thumping the melons when I heard somebody say Nobody move!
I leaned over and whispered in your ear I told you so.

it's not like a tree where the roots have to end somewhere,
it's more like a song on a policeman's radio,
how we rolled up the carpet so we could dance, and the days
were bright red, and everytime we kissed there was another apple
to slice into pieces.

An article at Poetry Foundation .org, When Yellow Ribbons and Flag Waving Aren't Enough, is as nonpolitical as you can get when speaking of war these days, but it has a strength that makes politics sounds silly in the end. An ex soldier's take on recent war poetry, eloquent and worth the read.

I was standing
on a northern corner.

Moonlit winter clouds the color of the desperation of wolves.

Proof
of Your existence? There is nothing
but.

Someone spoke to me last night,
told me the truth. Just a few words,
but I recognized it.

We find out the heart only by dismantling what
the heart knows. By redefining the morning,
we find a morning that comes just after darkness.
We can break through a marriage into a marriage.
By insisting on love we spoil it, get beyond
affection and wade mouth-deep into love.
We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars.
But going back toward childhood will not help.
...
Love is not enough. We die and are put in the earth forever.
We should insist while there is still time. We must
eat through the wilderness of her sweet body already
in our bed to reach the body within that body.

little lonely nights

on the bright side, i may have a paying job soon- but no one hold their breath...

the numbers
...I want to close my eyes and find a quiet field in fog, a few sheep moving towards a
fence.
I want to count them, I want them to end. I don't want to wonder
how many people are sitting in restaurants about to close down,
which of them will wander the sidewalks all night
while the pies revolve in the refrigerated dark.

An all-night barbeque. A dance on the courthouse lawn.
The radio aches a little tune that tells the story of what the night
is thinking. It's thinking of love.
It's thinking of stabbing us to death
and leaving our bodies in a dumpster.
That's a nice touch, stains in the night, whiskey and kisses for everyone.

I'm tired, I want to rest now.
I want to kiss the body of my lover, the one mouth, the simple name
without a shadow. Let me go. How many prayers
are there tonight, how many of us must stay awake and listen?

the numbers
How many nights have I lain here like this, feverish with plans,
with fears, with the last sentence someone spoke, still trying to finish
finish
a conversation already over? How many nights were wasted
in not sleeping,how many in sleep-- I don't know
how many hungers there are, how much radiance or salt, how many times
the world breaks apart, disintegrates to nothing and starts up again
in the course of an ordinary hour. I don't know how God can bear
seeing everything at once: the falling bodies, the monuments and the
burnings,
the lovers pacing the floors of how many locked hearts.
...

Love is apart from all things.
Desire and excitement are nothing beside it.
It is not the body that finds love.
What leads us there is the body.
What is not love provokes it.
What is not love quenches it.
Love lays hold of everything we know.
The passions which are called love
also change everything to a newness
at first. Passion is clearly the path
but it does not bring us to love.
It opens the castle of our spirit
so that we might find the love which is
a mystery hidden there.

Love is one of many great fires.
Passion is a fire made of many woods,
each of which give off its special odor
so we can know the many kinds
that are not love. Passion is the paper
and the twigs that kindle the flames
but cannot sustain them. Desire perishes
because it tries to be love.
Love is eaten away by appetite.
Love does not last, but it is different
from the passions that do not last.
Love lasts by not lasting.
Isiah said each man walks in his own fire
for his sins. Love allows us to walk
in the sweet music of our particular heart.

We're shooting the scene where I swallow your heart and you make me
spit it up again. I swallow your heart and it crawls
right out of my mouth.
You swallow my heart and flee, but I want it back now, baby. I want it back.
Lying on the sofa with my eyes closed, I didn't want to see it this way,
everything eating everything in the end.

Look at the light through the windowpane. That means it's noon, that means we're inconsolable.
Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.
These, our bodies, possessed by light.
Tell me we'll never get used to it.

prmk design from spring that i still love,
i still cannot believe i allowed my entire drawer to be trashed.
i am the worst mother.

hahaa, i like it that size...

goodnight texas....
my happiest wishes to an eastern coast

can this please be my wedding ring? ohh it's gorgeous, and she's got these really great sculptural rings on her site too- she calls them 'moving cage rings'. simply fantastic...
marianne anderson .co.uk

Big Bend

tomato season!