Music Literature Poem

Petite feuille
Sur le vent fier
Sans arbre
Pour l'adorer

Watching You

watch you take a shot, pace, collect fragments of intermixed sentences in a heap

wave goodbye and get scared for you

watch you rattle out confessions of abuse
like a snake twisting off skin
--you're the skin--

hear how strong you are how strong
you are how strong

you are
straightening your bow tie buttoning your shirt

get ready for work and think of you

hold the room together while it spins around you

watch you reach to crawl, crumple, fall

Petite Poésie

Un bateau n'est pas la Mer--
Ne confondez pas l'un pour l'autre.

Si vous êtes Baleine,
Ne coupez pas vos palmes

Et les hissez dans les airs.

Polaris

I believe it like you believe in God.

I can't explain--
I understand now.


If I disbelieve in this
I am lost.




What do we choose--
my fixed mark--
for navigation. A statement solid for living taking
the form of a question, pivotal










Polaris










around which
the sky eddies
we learned this
that speed is




relative. Without you the Earth outruns me.
Together,


although it's only on wind that I'm dancing,
I'm dancing,

at full speed in speed with believe.

nothing to say

the same old boring predictable tired trite repetitive exhaustive redundant expected mundane trending things to say (in monotone)

the weather is good the weather is bad how about that weather it's 80 degrees it's 62 and sunny it's supposed to rain it's supposed to shine there's a storm coming some clouds roll in the marine layer burned off and then it was sunny

the padres the chargers the mariners the seahawks the sounders the blazers the timbers the lakers the angels the dodgers

the Democrats the Republicans the Senate the House the President and Congress a filibuster a bill gun control birth control border patrol police on patrol gun safety safe sex high wages low wages 1 percent 99 percent global warming global poverty globalization ukraine crimea russia the phillipines canada mexico racism progressivism nihilism optimism pessimism sadism satanism environmentalism libertarianism liberalism leftism rightism centralism cynicism

I slept well but my back hurts I eat well but my stomach hurts I exercise but I feel fat I'm depressed but everything's good work was slow work was fast work was hard my boss is a hard ass my boss is an idiot my customers were mean my customers were nice my sales were up my sales were down we had a sale and work was busy

mom is good dad is bad sister's good brother's bad uncle's sick aunt is pregnant grandma's working grandpa died the cat ate grass and the dog threw up the baby sat up and the roses bloomed

up the road camp Pendleton boomed the tide was out just after noon I was off today I walked the shore all these I thought but nothing more

Northwest

When I think about how much of my adult life is

long walks home from work



tired over bridges, crossing streets to make connections

but forgoing the crowded bus



for today’s air



along a street that is a ridge overlooking the bay

closer to the pines



or now up hills past defunct storefronts

from this city through the ocean to a place where I only sleep



hardly

waking up late, rushing to wait, running to sit

wondering outward at so many different, complicated patterns of land



it seems like all my thoughts happened then except one

which is looking out a car window



emerald embedded in a foothill’s fold



none of my friends would believe the beauty on the fast highway

licking a tempo stripe after stripe after stripe



the wet metal taste of rivers



potato salad fed to me by a strange mother

a recipe I’ll always be trying to recreate



I only cry because I can’t paint.




I sit up desperate at night.




How green it was.





The iron smell.






Trumpeting








mountains.









How cold










and gray












the sky














and

















sea.


Epistle 2

Friend,

I realized it today, and I think you, more than anyone, will understand. From the ship, rather than being surrounded by water like I am on land, I am surrounded by land like it is water-- finally perceived as a whole, moving in swells, developing events of pine and mist. It was particular pines and mist that startled me with the realization which is the impetus for this letter.

I have been too long without the acceptance of the forest. Acceptance: it strikes you, perhaps, as a peculiar word to use. Let me explain. The forest is a whole thing, tall, taller than a man, and deep, deeper than a mind. It is a smell and a sight, a sound, a dressing for mangled skin, the flavor of irons in the earth. It being infinitely vast in its Zeno's paradox of scale, the only relationship a man can have with it is to be accepted into it, like sugar into tea. Such a relationship does not make floral sugar but sweet tea.

Something about being absorbed into the forest is necessary, restorative, vital. My room in the village afforded me easy access to the shelter of trees and the nutritive aroma of the soil. It is not so where I live now. I am sick for the forest. I am desperate to be small and in awe. I am brittle without the opportunity to banish my ego and be the air in the lungs of the trees, inhaled and absorbed by them, put to good use, and made indistinguishable from the mist.

The city, too, is beautiful, but it falls apart when you touch it. When I touch the earth, I am the thing falling apart. And falling apart is such a comfort.

Your Friend,