DIRTY PROJECTIONS

This is poetry and other bullshit by: Matthew Roskowski BUY MY BOOK OF POETRY, 'POEMS TO EAT FLOWERS WITH' My Other Blog Talk To Me

[dirtyprojections]

K,

 I am rooted in the Northwoods in the bone of a mountain.  Red pines, lakes no larger than seagulls, lakes much larger than seagulls, black bears, blueberries, theaters of oak & deep deep shadows falling into everything, dancing in full nights to Brian Eno and Elton John emitting somewhere in the limpid wood / in the ways we talk and the ways we wish we could. Somewhere in the afternoon I woke awake to you breathing like a flower dreaming & I miss you or I miss what I make of you or I miss what I’ve MADE INTO YOU--a mighty fine catch / and this is the poem where I gut it, this is the hole where I rut it / this is the place in my hands that holds water when clasped / where I drown it.

 M.

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short travel log (iceland / June 18)

day 1

The light here is unrelenting / 24 hours. It is 330am and sleep is impossible, or improbable at least. Reykjavik is fine. I don't know anything about cities. They are built around constant human activity and I do not understand human activity. I brought a camera to take photos but I do not understand why because I hate taking photos. Lola is sleeping with 1 arm across my chest. The road signs are alien(ating). I cannot wholly participate in the symbolic realm here. In the upstairs apartment the neighbor is snoring with Icelandic affectations --mostly a slur of vowels. Tomorrow we head out into the country to ride donkeys / catch trout / hike with Viking ghosts. Farewell. day 3

We are now out into the wilds of Western Iceland. One night on a lake with many K's and vowels in a gorge where I caught a trout with an enviable orange belly. Our host's husband, whose name i do not know, fileted it in front of me, all the while speaking to me in Icelandic-not a word of which I understood, though his excitement and his wife's loose translation led me to believe that this was an unusually sizeable trout for this lake. When we got into the trout 's belly we saw that (she) was full of eggs--fertile, fecund. We fed her body (or what was left) back to the lake. Tonight I cooked it for K and Lola with spices i had to trust by smell, as my alienation from signs (labels) persists. Upon Lola's first bite, her body delighted and shook in bliss, with the trout, with the sea outside, with everything and everyone. The immensity of my love for her is why gods existence is completely irrelevant. Tonight at midnight, low tide, I will walk to the sea islands and lie down in the wilds, happy to know nothing, to be in awe of everything, amen.

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hello, do you people still exist?

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K. is in the garden pulling weeds. I am at the typewriter doing the same.

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November 13th, an excerpt of a larger work

The great ribcage of night is descending upon me.

                                                                                  I, such a tiny little star.                                                                                 Such an odd little jewel.

I broke my head trying to Love you with all the pulp I could muster.  Ughhhhhh. Such weird sounds we utter.

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wild          hair,                             seal’s chirping                                  in a                             seal-ish way,          

Joanne,     J.,                    I realized just now              I’ve nothing to say.   well hey, okay.

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today i learned that figs bloom on the inside, & that is something worth aspiring to, i think

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7/22

Somewhere, Elkk’s Pond with two ‘K’s’, there are cats all over, each spatially aligned suggesting some sort of complicit understanding of territory and how it is divided. One rubs against the invisible threshold of a neighboring Calico and is met with bitter repose, the insulted cat not willing to part its blissful supine position, nestled snugly between shoots of Russian sage & tall red pines. One catches a trout with its claws and holds it up to the others which elicits a grand applause. This is a weird place, thought L, slowly processing the strange commune of felines she stumbled into. This is not a place where humans belong, thought L, noticing then that all the cats were sitting on their rears facing her, their stares turning into eels which slowly slithered toward her and took up residence in her eyes. The eels liked it there in her eyes and threatened to never leave, to always be black eels pouring into and out through her eyes. One cat said to the others something only cats understand and the others responded in equally cat like voices and then they all dispersed, equally, cordially, single file back into the mountain, back into a fossil bone, back into the dark amber gook from pine cones which is the sticky consistency of dream-stuff. L. sat still watching the eels slither into and out of her eyes without wondering why.

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7/19

driving south out of Bayfield towards a big half moon / cello quartet on the radio swelling like a blizzard / missing my wife, my child, everyone, anyone, whomever

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I remember seven years old / when sparklers were fucking awesome / and now how I’m twenty-six / and cry after sex.

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6/18

We went for a walk and found A meditating in the forest (no joke) having taken a couple hits of acid doing God’s work trying to figure out what’s happened and what will happen simultaneously trying to avoid anything happening trying to melt into the moment a bird flies over his shoulder and he doesn’t notice / he is in it / he is eating the day / no blues not here he shoes them away / depending on who tells the story there was a faint halo of sundust floating a childs smile above his head or he had weaved a crown of cocoons and wore it around his Anglo skull when we came in like dinosaurs stomping eating leaves shitting eggs each having our own little trip each humming radiohead a deer passed by and winked it knows a secret that we don’t but we pretend we do and wink back but still nature doesn’t make sense to us / still we eat ourselves alive and make jazz music and clip our nails precisely and shave our armpits (like, what the fuck / why?) and have sex for pleasure and have sex for pain and get high and get by and always wonder why why why why why why why but A. sat there Buddha on a lichen sun spilled rock depending on who is telling the story hummingbirds carry tiny threads weaving a robe o’ light round him and round him we apologetically break his silence with our dinosaur shrieks to let him know it’s just us / we just want his attention for him to love uslike he does his mother / such greedy little shits for admittance we picked flowers out of the air for him we danced around an invisible fire for him we caught trout with teeth from a crying creek and fed them to him we combed his hair with a comb carved from raccoon bone we laughed and laughed and laughed and tried never to be alone

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6/8

(I can hardly make an oyster sing)(I am just now coming to terms with my mediocrity)(At knitting)(At poetry)(At fishing)(Love making)(Masturbation, even)(Oh! So it goes so it goes so it goes!)

[dirtyprojections]

6/1

Half-way to Toronto A passes me lavender cigarettes / nods her head with a sort of reverence reserved for the dead Around us there are millions of tiny creeks Each with sacred names Each with the smell of / cinnamon & lilac Each growing inside ourselves whirring with the tenderness of chrysanthemums L talks about how the names of flowers are often superior aesthetically than the flowers they refer to He is referring mostly to chrysanthemums, which he hates Out of my window seagrass pillages the horizon & the clouds are all / there / holding on to themselves for dear life / wailing in their mothertongue /

              ‘eeeeeeeeeeeeooooooeooeoeooohoeoeooooooooo              eooeooooooooeeeeehhhhhoooooooooooooohhhhh              if we are alone in the universe, that’s fine,               it means nothing, really! eooeoeoeoeohooe’

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To the northwood, the northwoods birch in ascending columns, what with bluegill, wet with jasmine trout, Jeeps with their heads cut off, so fecund so human

 waysliding dirt road feet cold but it was summer but it was hardly worth a moan A. made us huddle for a spliff & we thanked him with tickles to which he protested but we were in the north the north the north near seraphim near dream again near the riverbed full of happy snakes with smiles for teeth hehee E. was lost but we found him E. got lost but he found him E. was lost and he cried but we found him in a gutter happy full wide like if god was on our side, if god had a side, if god, sorry, what god? Which god? God? Hehe. To the north the north the north,

                         To the north the north the north.

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I want to die in a creek with trout / these hurt poems blooming from my mouths.

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alec

I woke asleep against the birch boughs an ant crossed my leg and dissolved into lavender a dull throb of camaraderie vibrated across the glacier A. lit a spliff & we sort of grew into nature

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I touched a flower today and it blew away into dust / and it blew away into dust / and it blew away into dust / and it blew away into dust / and it blew away into dust /

I woke up with K’s pregnant belly pressed against me, life against life against life, and it blew away into dust / and it blew away into dust / and it blew away into dust / and it blew away into dust / and it blew away into dust / and it blew away into dust / and it blew away into dust / and it blew away into dust / and it blew away into dust / and it blew away into dust / and it blew away into dust / and it blew away into dust / and it blew away into dust / and it blew away into dust / and it blew away into dust / and it blew away into dust / and it blew away into dust / and it blew away into dust / and it blew away into dust / and it blew away into dust / and it blew away into dust / and it blew away into dust / and it blew away into dust / and it blew away into dust / and it blew away into dust / and it blew away into dust / and it blew away into dust