May 6th, 2015

Dollars and Cents, Radiohead, 2001

there was something in his smile
like the thrill of seeing letters
together that never go together

like a q next to a t
and a z squeezing
between

do not hesitate

hestiation leads to stale bread

and saltless lips

close in
you are a gazelle who hunts

draw your hooved feet to your breast
and arch your back

you have lost their sharp teeth
before and haven't you
regretted the loss of the loss of blood?

you need the comfort of their
clutch

and you know, you wild gazelle
with twigs in your hair,

it is not even the animal you want
but the pain it brings

and this pain is a long sigh of wind
against the curtains at night

it is a rhythmic twitch in the wrist.

May 5th, 2015

Angeline PJ Harvey, 1998

How It Feels to Be A Thing

 
The hoods of your eyes cloaked me and I could not see 
the silk rope as it came to me like a lost thing, unremembered

having already bound my hands, you poured the tea and began
a dialogue between yourself and your hand 

Shall we you said to your hand hurt her? We shall said your hand
and then you let it hover over my face, but never let it fall.

And I waited for a long time for your hand to hit
and while I waited the night grew darker and then

I remember only disappearing and watching a cpoy of myself,
far below, sit and wait as I drifted up like smoke  

to the empty bowl of night that had collected all the 
ones before me, and we spirits, swimming about, 

looked down on the burning buildings and the tulip 
trees blooming and thought about the space between 

things and how the space between your hand and our
faces was full of a thousand wars and a million words

as swollen as seed pods. 

March 14th, 2015

 Summertime Springtime,  Hunter G. K. Thompson

yesterday's coffee in a pot
and the bubbles move together
and then apart like the pangea

something has broken off and
been reformed, but I can still
see how the pieces would have
fit.

I really should just fall in love
again - I am very bad at making
only one cup of coffee.

February 8th, 2015

Song for A Blue Guitar, Red House Painters, 1996

In the dream I sent him a letter
from the driveway which somehow
elicited a noise complaint from the neighbors

And I realized there were two "I's",
the "I" I was speaking from
and the "I" I was speaking to.

I don't know what this means,
nor who "he" was, but there were
many people in the dream I do
not see anymore, and I woke
to a sadness I am outgrowing.

I am drinking and drinking
the coffee to swallow the lump
in my throat

and trying to remember the specific
texture to the walls of this life I have
built, and why it is here that I am,
and why that is good.

God, you are my God. I banish
fear in your name in the dark

and speak to you in whispers of a
little girl. I swear, in spite of it all,
last night I felt your hand on my cheek