Category: earthling

what even is

this place at this time

maybe it’s a story about being a body in this world
in an age of destruction on the verge of
remembering her collective life
despite the current bluster
i cannot be alone
in having have felt it creeping all of mine
while regularly and inexplicably injured
by the force worked so aggressively to stifle
that still, small voice that has always been
all i ever wanted to hear until nodding
in response to this thing
David Wagoner wrote, which I paraphrase
regularly in my thoughts
as Here is the place where you are,
and you must treat it like
a powerful stranger.
so here we go again––


Hello, strange stranger, you are
all of us now, and i can’t keep from
dreaming some possible arrival
even here
even now

to present yourself

ideas for an educational panel of inquiry

Here’s a talk i am going to give
in theory anyway called
teach like an animal
& its genesis is in understanding
that i failed in my intention
of becoming someone who
knew things well enough
to tell them with authority
the more i look the more
convinced i become that
there is a lie at the center
of the whole idea of knowing
and it is congenital with the myth
of the preeminence of self, and
i want my panel to include
shapeshifting nature &
the pride of ancestors refusing
to be erased, whose voices echo
in the shimmering electric currents
coursing though the cells which
make my body of my mother’s
and the mothers before her.

I grew up reading a single
line about an all-knowing God
on loop, and even this God
said only i am that i am
in response to demands for
explanation but knew how to
show up–for the stutterers
and the dispossessed, the wretched
and the women, who consistently
challenged the important somebodies
when asked for announcements, when
asked to show face, who turned to sashay
away revealing only the back parts
in graceful admonishment of the
asking mouth’s presumption
of being filled in a single
gulp of word and then
done.

phalanx

in flight

Hello, i
am still here
flying through sky
into riverbed, into body in river
in bed into ocean ––either way
disinclined to make points, only pointing,
ever to erosion and becoming and I tend
to erode the best intentions of anyone who tries
to name me as a fixed point & sometimes when
i take this skin shirt out for air i am reminded
to dress in layers after going into places
where so many are so eager to use
their ready points as points
of contact when these
only make me bleed
& then I am back
to being current––
again

sensing

of our dendritic sensibilities

what sort of creature is this
i
?
bound to the dark
fascia of time & energy
in the image of a constant
unfolding possibility
and why does she still
hear so many here
claiming intelligence
as a thing to be grown
outside the source
code of genetic material
that makes the material
of our bodies essential
and essentially made
of stuff so similar to
what still grows in the soil
or flies, or swims, to be
fished, felled, uprooted
to death by agendas
of progress fueled
by forgetting our bodies
already know unchecked
growth as cancer
& we know where its
progress inevitably
ends & know that
with treatment in
time we can reverse
these growths we can
prevent we can protect
the living if we will––

yes but

questions of direction

how do i go?

only by revelation
only behind a veil
only through a glass, darkly
only by messenger
only dream vision
only the back parts,
sashaying away
with a wink
reminding
not to forget

not
to forget
is there anyone
who will remember?

turn it over
and turn it again
for everything is in it
this is how you teach
a stone to talk you listen
to the river that smoothed
it
& hold

one response

to the question of how one is being

Now i riverbed, now ocean &
either way am disinclined to point,
tending to erode those points
aimed to find me taking
this skin shirt out for air.

i learn to dress in layers for those
places where everyone seems
eager to use their ready points
& these only make me bleed so
now i am back to being current
again to answer that question
re: the I that I seem, being @
the end of am. I can only say:
I am currently.

Maybe you know this way
& why we never lack for
company, streaming as we
do through here, hearing
communions all day long.

patterns

within given systems

Sometimes it makes more sense to rebuff balance. Now, for example, I prefer to stay inside the unfolding, never-arriving spiral flight around an ever-renewing lost and found where it is brimming with tactile tongues in four dimensions.

But with no room for such admissions in standard parlance, one carries on. Nodding when the next one repeats the inevitable and expected line. Yes, balance. One of many agreements in a given day: pay no attention to the elephant, the peeking tusks, the tongues.

mud & muck

on being embodied

it is not enough
to tell you i think
by way of begging
some acknowledgement
of being for doing this
would mean sidling up
to Descartes who despite
apparent cognitive prowess
managed to decide it was
appropriate to electrocute
dogs who he thought did
not think enough to feel
maybe it was their eyes
the naked love of them
that scared him into
such denial &
despite my best efforts
toward intelligence i tend
to love like a dog
prone to run
with sweet baby Jane’s
moonlit bodies stomping
muddy prints in the surf
at the shore in the light
of the moon
that excess
our all

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