A BLACK SPRING


what determines a state of openness or

an onset of opaque weather, indelible and

lightfast? the mountains across the bay

disappear and your resistant surfaces

become reflective in a way embarassing

as they say, embarazada: you give birth

to anything because there is nothing.

double chocolate as in more
than one, with walnuts. a
break between "writing" to
write. the sun drenched sky
gets low and grey. one must
be implacable yet flexible.
fashion today's koan out of
toothpaste and cookie dough
ice cream. desire cooks the
small details. distractions.

She dredges up old boats, barkentines, canoes, longboats
vessels with rigging. There is no more new. A lot of

nakedness around here lately, though; it shuffles and
goes everyday under the radar, sightlines we anesthetize

(a surface thing). It's a surface thing, scraped dishes
broadband links and a book of Indian Vegetarian Cookery

But there's always searching past tenses hope to dredge
up ripostes and flaming tonics, revolutionary cat hats

flarfing or flailing because the sky is too thin and there
is no tether no flattering munchkin, no certainty, I mean

nothing certain.

Paradisia is the barkentine, Domestic.
And we, in the longboats row and row.

I enjoyed a double chocolate chunk cookie today, but the truth is, I only ate it in the interest of numbing myself. Really.

Now that's a shame, and a waste of a good cookie.

just behind all the fine and open spaces you imagine linger words that won't stop, a secret with in fact few moments of punctuation instead there are moving pictures that illustrate the preciousness of details lost. and you set off again into the forest or standing upon the proscenium of today's pain or glory expound to someone you know or someone long dead, how it all happened, what it is, how it will be, and why you deserve to be.

unfortunately it all comes with a price, pain or loneliness or just plain fear and then there are the dishes and remember to drink your water or you will dry up like the contents of a shucked oyster on salt. so you set off in search of the greatness that might make a day bearable or if necessary numb yourself to what you think is unbearable even if in fact there are glorious mornings like today that you spend despite yourself working in a room with little light and only imagined company.

better you think to wander through someone else's story and why not. so off you go through luscious territories not yours and therefore acceptable, drawn in detail or in terror of someone else's demons even though you think these are your own and eventually you think why not make friends with your demons, wash and bathe them, hang them out to dry, and they will accompany you out into the day even at work where in a room full of workers, and pouring over the forced verbosity of a thousand tests, you struggle to stay awake; a demon can be your amanuensis you can explain to it over and over how it will be and why you should be and it will always listen.

a violence

done to one

self; yet

making nothing

of it is an

esthesia: willing

a gap in perception

for as long as it takes

to get through the day

lingers afterwards

in an inability

to cry