In The Pen's Dance

[en-marmonnement]

Rattle of Rebirth

I can feel the doors closing, and the turning of the key, and the clenching fist of prosperity as it desperately moves towards the future and buries but another dream. under ground where life will again grow, and laugh in rose and white colored flowers, shaking from their bellies with the wind. These are the makings of the heart. and sometimes I'm not sure that looking beyond is what moves or culminates the peace inside of me, and I wonder how many people notice what it means to melt into formlessness like honey wax, but the wick of the candle knows, for its sole purpose is to know and to deliver exactly that. Ecstasy, aroma, or memory, and it plummets along with the residue when it's over....Do you know what silence does? Nothing and everything, but it all depends on the weight you give the noise. And I cry about life but not about it being over, but because I miss so much the drastic melodies that sent my heart swimming through the storms and the cymbLs and how they crash together and land in my hands. And my mind, and o what a beautiful mesmerizing thing, wasting not one second on what time doesn't muster. but when I hear the kick and pound of the drum I know it to return again, and I feel it in the world. And in the sore eyes of my wandering companion who sent for me like the gold light, like bees to the hive & the playful meanderings of the heartbroken, of society and her mesmerizing, wandering eye. How it bends for no one but all, and the mirror that is my soul, that holds the treasure-less wonders and ecstasy that I've licked off like white dust and sewn together memories and shook myself like an angry weeping child to be who I am now, laying it all out on the black table that love and labor built for me, with love hands and love spirit, but feast not on what you're witnessing, for it is Earth's to hold and let go, and bravery is a meek thing to a bee. 

[en-marmonnement]

And She's Buying the Stairway

Does a songbird sing in reason or rhyme? Does it hum in modality to our way of life, or turn on its joy like an architect renders worship to the Sistine, like scent to swine, does it expel the makings of time, it's tale but a trajectory of pain and unforeseeable triumph, it's voice now a recital of it's wanderings, a lion woes not its prey. For what is a blessing but a leap of uncertainty? An encounter with destiny, who wears the cloak of surrender. Even in the rain there is light, traveling past our wicked eyes, praising every drop like a person praises sanity who reads not the manual, like a being in its true mechanics, swallowed by its nature, yet the bird flies still against the wind, with dark feathers that catch the color of the sun, in blues and mauves at a certain height, and resists the urge to fly above it. Would they fan a golden flame? Had desire melted their memory of land?

[en-marmonnement]

The Waging

Revelry, Like a steady cavalry And in the waging, We mold ourselves In the rituals of forgiveness And slain memories Shed our battered elements Like old helmets rusting

___________________

In guarding freedom, Slain is the heart of personal gain.

_________________

Like blues and greens And the shaded dark between them Assembling our sight with the reason of distinction But it’s all a part of the landscape Penetrating our lenses With the horizon of desire We piece together smiles, And the finer things That christen our memory And make love a blistering cold Averting the madness of pain Of the blinded life.

______________

If friends were only in plain sight, I might swallow the shaded darkness For the dread of never again remembering The love of a friend Or a kindred heart

_______________

And where do our tears go? Do they crush the banks of heaven? Or the shores, Or the swells of the ocean?

_______________________

Immerse me in the wound of rebirth That are the valves of my heart My pumping fists and fingers And the oceans hold emotion So how could they feel so far?

______________

How could their salt forget to flavor my lips? And coat my striding limbs with sand Of not marching towards the same burning breast, Melting towards the same gilded core.

__________________

A tragedy would it be That the sword’s blade blind our view Of the open ocean, The ocean-it holds hope in our hands Lost between the mind And the sliver cutting edge. Heavy are the shoulders of delusion.

________________

We mold ourselves In the ritual of forgiveness- What shame has buried in our bones Deep beyond the wounds of shaded darkness Or the blisters of trampled generations Escaping, Rebuilding pores.

_________________

It is the tip of the blade, It is the point That measures the weight of the world. The oceans and our hopes, Blooded hands, It is the point From which the sum of everything Is pierced and bleeds the sun.

___________________

It is the point that blades the heart to form And copes the vivacious core Like the heavens were behind its force And the hells hidden deep beneath our bones, Under shaky hands and slain memories Beneath Athena and her lustful whispers, But I a cloud guarding forgiveness As if it were shared in the taste of bitter wine.

[en-marmonnement]

Ivory Towers

What part of this body, this translation 

Does succumb most to the commands,

Directions, forces gliding and colliding

Like the pounce of a lion to its prey,

Guarding the stage

With ivory walls that open up

To welcome or revolt.

 _______________

And form to ward off fornication  

With the world inside

And the makings of dust-

Walls that fall from their roots in time

Only then we won’t grow another pair,

 _________________________

And all this love,

And hateful air that seeps through my teeth

Will return to its dance in the ether

My blood to the bottomless ocean

Where coral breed and retreat

Back into their white mothering hole

 _____________________

Only they don’t lose their color,

But reemerge when the threat is gone

And the snakes of the sea go on swallowing

With commands and primal guidance

Like nature,

Like the empress that puts on the gown.

 ____________________

Silk with brilliant turquoise-colored

Sheen and gold, and ocean-like teals,

Dragons draped in pink roses-

Their blossoming too had come from within,

From the fury of their fiery destruction

And her blood that meets the skin to breathe again. 

[en-marmonnement]

Beneath the Lines

I remember walking the lands, Sands sliding over the soft edges Of what my stride concealed as callous- But a longing to glide above Sort of how your fingers Trace the lines of your palm. Or like ancestries, spanning heavens Winking under blistering feet, Or the money slot on a washing machine

___________________

Waiting for my memory To finish tumbling like smoky pines, Aerating my mind You know, The way you trace the lines,

______________

Defining its tidy integrity. And there’s something in each of us, That devotes its capacity to our being, And change, To the swells of the heart, Our threshold, Our truths, the maintenance, The all.

____________

And beneath those lines, an impulse To sense and serve again, Cut the boundaries of the now And let my skin wrinkle over To when sand was what colored my soles And made my stride a brief surrender.

________________

But I’m watching as the sheer and rouge Chiffon-flowered blouse Begs for me to breathe in it, To open it up, And expel the nouns and sounds of my maker Over again.

_________________

I took the seas into my hands And cried at their dying. Silence poured, and I came to life Like a rose at a wake, Like a palm that announces my name. In the sweat and lines it makes To suffice the memory of me, Or a speaker awaiting the noise or announcement Du chœur des anges,

________________

And beneath those lines is still a sense To survive, and serve, and serve again. 

[en-marmonnement]

Love's Forgotten Snow

Dare to be bare with me In bundles of DNA Wiring up everything Like indecision, impossibility, Or evening lurking And lift your skin to graze the sun

________

Abused is the body whose chest lies burdened Under brisk attire Under gazes like threads

that sew up a you So unruly

___________

I intended to tear at the ties, And rip off this unwanted garment Sever what skin may have formed to contort it, Conform to it, Taste its secrets And divulge them under my own breath, My own succulence

___________

I intended to change Des notions préconçues d'hier Like an eraser to a blank sheet, Blank- but still concave, Like the words that never leave the page Or the lines that crawl upon my face And divide yours up Into moveable squares in my memory

____________

Dare to be bare with me Chest and contents ablaze, exposed Like fallen lumber I have found my place under the golden globe Like a frame near a yellow window

______________

We dreamers, we are moonlit, Like the face of forgotten snow Deepening and lodging in The cold of warmth recalling To execute its aim.

________________

Throwing handfuls at my furry companion, Like he had hands, Hands that cared enough to carry me here To this place of forgotten snow.

Where I’m bathing my burdens In sun quenched shoulders Like symphonies and verses Passing through my pores.

_________

I’ve found my place in layers of unwanted garments. Under this stump that’s fit for limbs hanging off, Or sleeping, or diving into forgotten snow Like it held an ocean underneath.

__________

Et je peux voir le monde à partir d'ici And shudder that I might return- To the threads, the frames, the gazes, The places I’d sewn to dress up my bones. Might the sun return too? To quench my heavy shoulders In love’s forgotten snow?

[en-marmonnement]

'Rapture' continued

Stewing over the misery

Like red meat,

But as soon as it hits your lips

You can taste the pain of existence

You tremble -

That the fears of life are inside.

And there is quite possibly

No way of getting out.

____________

Only getting past

Like stew seeping through

The pores of my bones and insides

To the porous rock from which I return.

I melt, not for my desires

But for my enemies.

For they too are in me

Like the fears that clutch my tongue

Or the love that rests beyond my bones

In a place where I truly reside.

___________________

For if my soul is not the supplier

Of this merciful love,

Where shall I return this dust?

Or the frayed hope that dances me to sleep

Through the hearts of the holy-

Caressing, turning pink

Like the torn old red sheets

That frame my bed.

_____________

How can I deny its reach?

When cherishing its sentiments

I am surrounded

In the bellowing wind,

The raucous shore

Or the arms of a friend,

Holding tightly my weeping shoulders,

Or my heart that seeps below the ground.

____________________________

I could bury my fears there.

Submerge them in yesterday's ignorance,

But the world is made of water

And carbon,

And even the dead return,

Speaking to us of courage

And forgiveness

Through the language of love

__________

[en-marmonnement]

The Impossible Triangle

I believe in the breeze,

And it send me back a postcard

For all the tiny letters

I send to it

And novels unread.

____________

To the fairness of the air

That tranquilizes me,

That mocks my very name

And stamps me with a mark,

A message.

And I to read it back to the world,

Interpret it-

Like the Earth embraces me.

_______________

The wind is but a skeptic

Who believes-

Who writes her own mystery

In the light of reason.

We are like seasons.

____________

What's stopping me

From the feasting off

Of its ingredients?

__________

So long has been

The cold brewing.

My bones have long forgotten the taste

Or the smell of sorrow

Erased the sense of numbness

For a staple charity

Or the shrewd mask of regret.

__________________

Like the changing of turning hair

From autumn rose

To a dark so true and devouring.

Our wishes drizzled like bleach

Or conscious boxes locking in

What mercy was remembered

By our visions.

The spaciousness of love-

Does it too depart

With the rusting of old bones?

Or the leaves, crunching under souls?

__________________

But which is more empty?

Beseeching all its pain-

But a vessel of life, light, beauty, mystery,

Catching flies like death in distraction.

[en-marmonnement]

But I believe there is a way

To get home from here-

From the displaced array

Of buds and limbs,

And I believe that I am it.

[en-marmonnement]

The Tremble of Vigor

I could do it,you know-

Fumbling over falsehoods.

I could hover atop the sky

Bow to your buckled knees,

And rest like an eagle on a white flag.

_____________

I could, but I won't do it.

I've played all my pawns-

A witness to the shift of agility,

The tremble of vigor

Missing your parts.

_________________________

Like shame longing for the dust it came from.

Calling out blind,

Begging for tears

As eyes avert from the tongue.

Why torture?

When the wind is sent

To dance like an echo,

The trees sent to bury their breeze.

_____________

And they whisper to me sweetly-

In songs and roars,

And gusts of frozen symbols

Blended together in trembles of vigor

But where is their origin?

________________

If I were a cloud in your sky,

I might cry for your eyes.

I might weep -drown alongside

Beneath the beams of light,

Scorching memory.

_____________

Buried in blankets of names-

Surrounded in hardness

Like I woke up in a coffin,

And I can't quite recall

The letters or language.

______________

But the face of love remains

Like family, or a lover,

A flame rekindled, warmth regained -To wake

From a place so nightmarish.

And find in my chest, a freeing breath.

____________

But I'm lucky to have a bed,

And he who tucks me in,

A blessed friend-

A face to cradle mine,

A specter of spirit to help light the night.

__________

[en-marmonnement]

Innisfree Poetry reading 12/4/15 -up close and personal. What a crew! Amazing presence and literary talent..O Wong May

[en-marmonnement]

Innisfree poetry reading in Boulder with Third Man Records/Third Man Books

[en-marmonnement]

Dust on the Glass

So many sights to witness

On the road between a mission

And a pilgrimage.

Where passion is a relic, a saintly emblem

For swimming through boiling seas.

Only perhaps to reach an island,

Or else swim back.

 _________________

I stood barefoot

And filled up water bottles

Like Mother Teresa,

Ou une fée sur son épaule.

But which side was I on?

Which corner catching tears?

_____________

We ground them up

Into pink pixie dust

And sold off their secrets,

Like a powerful for sorcery,

But the show is free

And so is the now.

 ___________________

We've borrowed what we're bankrupt on,

Like a pretty blonde pop star

Dressed in white.

Sold our loans on coal and carbon,

And still we think we own her. _______________________

But she's really in our dreams,

Tantalizing hopes and demons

So that we might see them,

And seek perhaps, to explore.

Which side was I on? If any at all.

_______________

They praised us like we had the water,

As if we hadn't made our wait in line

But we're just products of design,

We're just on the opportune

Like plastic bags in a cotton field.

___________

And I'm just a'kin to him.

I'm just posing with his fluid flask,

And making friends with them

As if it were my only task,

To complete it as it pleases the party.

____________

I stood barefoot,

And made my mold.

J'ai prévu un jour avec la nuit,

The pieces and piles

Of broken time

We'd used to hold

Our place in line

 ________________

So careful not to splash,

The wardrobe or their painted masks,

Assigned at the entry,

Delicately made from morsels

That come apart with a crooked eye.

_____________

La lune a grandi glacial et noble

Sur nos os poreux,

Turning our blood

From blue to violet,

Slowing the churning ocean,

Sealing in a seismic motion,

A  revelry to recall.

 ____________________

Frosting our tips white

Like icy blades of winter grass,

Or crystallized glass

On a secret beach,

Melting under warm feet like lightening.

___________

I smelt summer in her laugh,

An ease in our adventures

That almost called for a drive,

A stroll through our memories,

Where between the fog 

And the cold clearing,

I feel his arms.

_____________

Rain comes in so many forms

Just like the beloved,

Kissing dust to unearth gold

Like love in the crevice of lust

Like his lips that hold my tongue.

__________

Retiring a tired train

With even exchange

And ice on our eager wheels.

It takes a snow storm

And a small town

To slow us down.

______________

But I'll pass on the mex-italian,

And pose again at the murals

With buffalos and feather braids

Or the Shore art store

Where they've made all their waves.

 ___________________

And seized a royal crest with death,

Returning nothing to bestow

Like products of the old and borrowed,

Like plastic in a cotton field

Rain pours in so many forms.

 ____________________

It shares the scent

Of life wasted and regained,

Empty restaurants with keen technique

Like a leak in a water bottle.

Love, and tradition

With no holes to spit it to,

And there's only one rest stop.

______________

Only one way to claim our names,

To be who we are

Comme Mére Teresa

Or a fairy on her arm.

We've got to pause

To pour what we're bankrupt on

And begging for.

____________________

Love is that

Which holds our mold

And stands against 

All the ways that we aren't,

Receding back

A jumbled narrative

Into the slow, churning ocean

Like demons in the deep.

    “O Ye, all ye that walk in Willowwood,

That walk with hollow faces burning white;

What fathom-depth of soul-struck widowhood,

What long, what longer hours, one lifelong night,

Ere ye again, who so in vain have wooed

Your last hope lost, who so in vain invite

Your lips to that their unforgotten food,

Ere ye, ere ye again shall see the light!” -Dante Gabriel Rossetti

[en-marmonnement]

Days Away

A sad few

Days away from you.

I can smell cigarettes

From the next room,

But I'm glad we chose smoking.

______________________

No One pays any mind 

To what you do

As long as it ain't harmful.

They'll charge you

Just to sleep through the night.

_________________

I drove for miles

With an eager mind,

Bruised my spine unraveling blame

Riddles of shame

And I, the gift inside.

__________________

We only want to fortify

We only want to recognize. our names,

Bundles of DNA

Like knots awaiting the unwind,

Branches to  climb and collapse.

_____________

A sad few days,

But sorrow is too long a train.

Too much wear on the rails,

And not enough lube.

I can smell cigarettes in the next room.

 _______________

And a familiar bark,

Echoing in my heart.

It's breakfast at the Super Inn

As the interstate rises,

And canines watch for trouble.

___________________

Growling at the sound of deviance,

Shaking the walls with anger,

As if it might take me,

But No Ones knocking at the door,

And he just blew our cover.

________________

My voice quakes to quiet him.

I can't even speak their language!

What do I have to offer?

________________

I listen while their pitches change

And chain them to the day.

Together like a colony,

And The road is their home,

But they drive alone.

 _______________________

It wakes us like a drone,

Like a swift scent of time.

That we belong in this stall

With rose-covered walls,

And dogs calling us out to play.

________________

We pay mind

To sleepy eyes

But wonder not of their origin,

And thoughts blink into matter

Like fruit on the vine.

____________

They asked that I send the bill.

A brief encounter with cheese,

And green margaritas,

But it's not a meal

Without proper company.

_____________

You've got to make the hike

To taste the pains,

And drive to places unknown.

______________

Drive through plains

Where they bake meringue

Dry up like weeds,

And take you down in a tumble,

In a fall that feels kind.

___________

Dry up like adobe homes

And rummage through dashboards

Through hopes abandoned,

Like vultures in eagle's nests,

But our dreams are not dead yet.

______________

"Could we turn this into gold?"

A sad few

Days away from you.

_____________

But here comes a knock at the door,

At least my guard dog hears it,

And he too believes

In the wings of defiance

As windows to the divine.

[en-marmonnement]

Modest Mouse performing "Dance Hall" @ FFF Fest 2014 -Austin, TX :)

[en-marmonnement]

A beauty to behold

Trees Wrapped in Gold.

Whispering,

Like the curse of the lonely.

Dancing under roaring skies.

_____________

I'm checking both sides.

Turning the corner

Of life and Scott Carpenter Park.

As my headphones blasts "The Girl".

Autumn winds compete

For the sound of my heart.

_____________

But it's keeping

To the beating of the world.

Like a harvest of fallen seeds

Or a locket capturing faces

To embrace each other.

_______

And my stumbling tracks have lapsed

Into a ride,

Into the tide

Towards a beautiful distraction.

A shrine of some kind

A queen to behold,

A holy mother wrapped in gold.

_________

But how do we demand still

The riches of her world?

Prosperity,

But a harvest of inherency.

A spawn of hope and love.

Do the green of the summer leaves

Depart from the heart?

___________

It's painted on our bodies,

In the cycles of each breath,

And our pedaling feet.

Like crimson fall

Dressing her neck.

___________

Trickling up the bark of a tree,

Weeping away from it's color

To meet the frozen tears of winter.

Hiking towards the sky like the Nile,

To kiss the sun once more.

_________

We hold our tongues,

Our broken language

Over that which does not commence.

Over the rays that light our eyes awake,

And the wishes that dress our minds.

They paint our bodies,

And wrap us in gold.

________________

[en-marmonnement]

The fleeting, The twinkle in your eye

The fleeting, the fleeting,

The twinkle in your eye.

A crystal sky to peek into.

A majesty of the stars,

And what a night they had in store.

__________

We thought it best to see together,

The things we hungered for,

Making meals of all the parts

That ate at us.

Dissolved, and shaped,

Fire to figure to form.

 _______________

We’d made a house

Of all the morsels,

And launched it into flight.

Following the butt-end of a tornado,

Landing on a mountainside.

 ______________

Did we even realize?

The sun had come

And turned our storms to love.

Puddles of motion,

We traced with touch,

And vows, and voltage.

 ______________

I’d promised to ride along,

As it died

And beat again.

And kissed us with flaming desire,

Lips like a flower,

Growing only to mimic its love.

 _______________

Eyes like a dream you wished not to leave,

But in the meeting

You’re reminded of the fleeting.

The fleeting.

The passerby of time.

 _____________

Except now,

It’s not so saddening,

The riveting substance.

The touch, the vow, the taste.

Recalled and called again.

Grasping in the den,

At the hand of grieving

Where the lions roar.

 _______________

And echo down the elder chain,

To the spine of the Americas.

Sweating like a neck to a knife,

Porous and dripping down the Andes’

Who shook with our bodies.

______________

Breathing like magnets to affection,

Direction.

Laughing at the tragedies

We’d learn to buy up,

And store to fend off cold.

 _______________

I’d wondered if the peaks,

Had reached these heights before.

But we were only travelers,

Tossing our lows,

And watching them explode.

 ______________

Like globes filled with confetti.

Or a million rockets taking off.

Ils avaient tous été perdus.

Beyond the pull of the moon.

Maybe reaching Neptune,

And forming another ring.

 ______________

Must have come from some place familiar,

The cry of creation.

Like a prayer entering hearts

Teaching us how to breathe underwater.

Like gravity that guides you us gold,

Or to the twinkle in your eye.

 ___________

I feel it in my gut,

Craving the taste of tiers,

The flaming lips of the sun.

__ ____ ___ ______

My eyes just wish to watch them dance,

But mouth and breath configure,

And fulfill their awarded mission,

Embraced by inhibition,

You return to me a smile.

Saying, “Kindness is free,

And it cost more to frown.”

 ______________

As is the intimate,

Pausing to anticipate

The twinkle in your eye,

The stars that dive across your night,

Brightening your face like crystal skies.

 __________________

It takes a moment to care,

And forever to recall why.

Eternally, we dance beside

The fleeting, the fleeting,

The twinkle in your eye.

 ____________

If love were a battle,

And time the gaping wound,

If mind the jagged-edge,

I'd rekindle every word shed

In the flame of my enemy.

A cut like that would surely draw blood.

_____________

But we would charge tragedy

To stitch the wound,

And sue for retribution.

____________

And I’d journey each time

To the twinkle of our eye,

To the lion’s den.

Grasping at the hand of the grieving,

Losing hold at the sake

Of finding another break

In the rock.

 _____________

We got a little banged up,

And my strongest muscle

Taking the brunt of the beating.

I’m three years into one night at Riot.

I'm shaking at the cage of confusion,

And peeking into crystal skies.

 _____________

I’m floating with the unknowns.

To toss down the lows,

Laugh at the tragedies,

And grow....

Only to mimic the kiss of the sun.