Richmond Tire Fire
[Richmond Tire Fire]
From the long, sleepy corridor of Belvidere,
I look out and see a grey-black basilisk
roiling into the sky, traversing its sooty form
from west to east, an ever-rejuvenating bulk.
The light is shrouded around me.
Few eyes follow the adder’s path.
I pull over, throw on my bag
and grip a bottle of water.
Drivers on Leigh appear not to notice
anything more than their automated maps
broadcasting from phones clasped by claw-like fingers.
They pass in gleaming cars with expressions confused —
as curious about my attention as I am of their lack.
(Are they blind?)
More and more, people trod toward the Leviathan’s origin —
entranced — its mouth affixed to a turquoise building,
tongue flashing so fast it looks like one
continuous mess of flickering, airborne lava.
Men in caps run about its maw
seen only as silhouettes dragging
along a lengthy canvas worm
(their best defense).
We sit on a graffiti-adorned retaining wall.
Highway travelers slow but only one has stopped.
(Some must go. Some must watch.)
We make eye and verbal contact.
We capture the scene with mobile device and mind.
They snake deflates.
The crowd peaceful near the barking
backyard dog who scolds our stupidity.
We are the dumbest creatures on the planet.
We trickle and fade and forget
after a mere moment’s passing.
The hazard lights glow against adjacent buildings
in the distance, a veritable rainbow shown in the cast
of man-directed water to combat the mistakes
made by man-directed madness
of cinderblock and rubber turned to cinder and fume.
Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. Dusk to dusk.
We pace about at breakneck speeds,
only to sputter, dim, and die again —
taking all the naysayers along with us.
Ad astra per alas porci.
The viper puffs into an hombre cloud.
A single beam of light takes shape in its fog,
roving in sanguine supervision but seeing nothing.
[02/18/2020]
Florida Findings
Florida Findings
I smell the sand.
I see the sand.
But I do not taste
its brine. It exists mixed
in with the ash and dirt,
leaves and twigs. On the forefront
of this surface is the pockmarks
of rain pellets that fell as we
chuckled and wept and slept.
The rustling I hear
undulates. Its crescendoes
punctuated by aviary chatter and evidenced
by the workings of swaying shadows.
In the shade we discover
the wetness and the cold. Beneath
the sunlight is revealed the crystalline
dimensions of it all. Sparkle and fade.
Even some of the disconnected leaves
are green
although trampled. Even the chill can exist
in the light.
I can furrow my face
at these perceived chaotic churnings
or I can delight. There’s always choice,
although I often refuse to give
myself the space to make the more useful one.
I wonder if these disinterred
roots still grow. Yellowish, mottled, and broken,
do they flail their fractal hairs
to amble toward somewhere more
secure in order to try again for fruit?
Above it all, when viewed without
distraction, is peacefulness,
is lush lingering
limbs that protect or provide
portent.
_____________________
February 7, 2020
Florida Earthskills Gathering
The Power of Poetry (workshop)
w/ Eric Lewis & Olivia Verhoye
Spontaneous Prose (7 minutes)
Spontaneous Prose (7 minutes)
I’m favoring the sounds
of “F” this morning,
because FUCK this.
Feverous in my fecund mind,
my heart following the form.
Were it different — I wish —
I suppose what I grieve would not
be lost. But it is, for now.
Maybe it must.
I scour the insides of my skull
with a hot spoon, culling the meat
from the bone, searching for favor
but finding none — internally regarding
my externalities as pretentious
and sanctimonious.
But maybe it’s me?
Does god know? Does the some-
or everything we call “god”
even have some faculty of knowing
that in any way resembles what we endure?
Or does god simply exist and experience and change?
Octavia Butler says that “God is Change.”
Is my raucous resistance to this relational revolution
an indication of separation from my own
true divinity, that which i displace
with my thoughts and run-amok emotions?
We’ll see.
—————
February 7, 2020
Florida Earthskills Gathering
The Power of Poetry workshop
w/ Eric Lewis & Olivia Verhoye
Spontaneous Prose
SPONTANEOUS PROSE
Blue-lit morning. Golden eyes sparkle — never fading — even in the brightness of dawn. Silken and dewey, you writhe.
We knock heads. Face of my face. Understandings between embraces — the entire contiguous organism open, receptive, transmitting electromagnetic connectivity and transmuting pain into presence and joy. Undertow of emotions, sweeping the anxiety out and out until it washes into a billion diamond smiles.
Breaker of breakers. United and untied. Fancifully verbose yet precise — not a word wasted in this stillsuit of eternity.
Breath of my breath. I inhale your exhales — perfect in time, imperfect situation made pure. Whole. Unanimous pleasure. Guidance of intertwined fingers. Goddess of all that I am and will grow to be.
Regal.
With the morning’s digital clangor, I arise — rinse the night’s perspiration from my skin only to to fall back again. 400 threads. 4 million years. My soul, you are divine, infinite, correspondant even in formology. Your brilliance beyond measure, beyond expectation.
In you I find ever-present rest and equanimity.
Te adoro.
August 8, 2016
I AM YOU.
I AM (the human that will find) YOU.
I am carving the words you spoke
On the carcass of my mind.
They’re the seeds from which
Will spring forth a new one
A new divine. In between
Those words and moments past
Have crept in the soliloquies
Of my disengagement, my sorrow,
My self-made sadness
Stitched around me like
A cacophonous sarcophagus
Carved by my own fears.
In this I see the pain is the way.
The path through which I will encompass
All Understanding. No longer resisting
Or pretending otherwise. Not through masks
Or basks in my own lakes of misery.
I grow this new one because the old
Is discarded. It was never me anyway,
Just a tool by which I perceive
From time to time — to calculate and groove.
I am its author, not I it.
The junctions are branded at the joints
Of my body: my spirit — my eyes, my mouth, my throat.
Sometimes I crack misshapen
I regrow. Golden ore adhering the pieces
Stronger, brighter, sparkling.
And in all of this, the lesson is to TRUST.
To trust love, the knowing, the all-knower:
The conscious all-watching mind that is not a mind
But encompasses all minds.
Not “God," but I and You and Her and THEY.
Frequent flowerings such as these
Will be my new garden upon which I’ll nourish
And feed not just my own life and form, but those
Ones around me. How sorrowful it is to forget
The truth, to live in opposition
To slake your thirst in misunderstanding
And inner hatred.
But how sweet the nectar that pours
Forth and is there always.
When the resistance is mended, and the path
Which has always seemed uncertain
Is clear and cleaned
And full of unspeakable joy on either side
Of those crystalline daggers,
Aimed straight for the heart.
Tarot, tarot on the table
I think I’m weak but I am able.
The signs conform and confirm the wonder
I knew is beneath these bones, and groans.
They’re not on loan, but always
Right around the road.
I comfort myself with a trek down the tightrope,
Having grown too old for blanket and bottle,
Not in cancerous morsels that taste of deaths
And bleating screams.
I am Tathagata, the ruler of my own
World, inceptor of inceptors.
Guardian without guard.
My chariot awaits my hands to the reins.
It is poised and ready.
The horses fed and watered.
Bristling with jittering excitement,
Muscles twitching, not tense.
I once feared their billowing nostrils,
The hot breath on the back of my neck
As anxiety, but that was a misunderstanding.
In sum,
I am you.
Poem: Unforgivable Deceit
Unforgivable Deceit
The sin of ultimate
destructive power
[oh how it seems and seams]
is disbelieving
one's own
ability to be
#loved.
(2016)
Poem: Woefully Human (Without Woe)
Woefully Human (Without Woe)
Woe is he who is not woe,
For all others shall bring
Their burden of disbelief and suspicion
To the sepulcher of his sorrow.
Woe is she who is not woe,
For her smile will alight
The angers of the sleeping
Sardonic armies of unknowing
Malcontents, encumbered
Like pincushions of daggers.
(2016)
Poem: The Anatomy of Daughters
The Anatomy of Daughters
Breath too human to the smell.
Complaints too momentary to consider.
Alternating cereal scoops: hand and spoon.
Inconsistent dress; ill-suited for all weather;
Bright, happy, and free.
Roundness in the face brings pause ...
The mystery and masque of living.
Golden starshine through a hundred thousand strands
Growing longer from the source,
Prone to the tangle, the break, the fall.
Strength in each vulnerability.
Being in every new death.
Hope in all disaster.
###
Poem: TO EDDIE, ON THE OCCASION OF YOUR DEATH (ALBIET A SELF-INFLICTED ONE)
I.
When I met
you, you were pissing
in flower planters
and getting choke-
slammed to the ground
by a man who by name was likewise
misplaced.
You were arrested,
more times than I know,
but when I saw it for
myself, I held onto your things
for the night, as police officers
made jokes at your
expense,
and at our expense.
But you never let them
get the better of you,
when they frisked you,
emptying your pockets of coins.
“Great,” you said.
“Now I’m broke again.”
You wrestled a dragon of corn mash
and grain and wheat,
mostly allowing it to
fly right through you
and breathe fire into your veins.
It let you borrow its wings, but
they were wings of chainmail,
and weighted to the pavement.
Yesterday, the weight was too
great. It still sat on your
chest even long after the
dragon wandered off and
waited for you to find it
again behind a grocer’s glass
door.
Instead, you searched
for another door.
Behind it also lurked fire,
but out of your mouth
it would breathe.
II.
So, I sit typing today
After taking a failed bike ride—
I turned around when
I could only think of you.
It was my mom
who told me
that one of the travelers
had committed himself.
Somehow I knew
without a doubt
that it was your name
I’d be hearing next,
the reason for the tears in my big brother’s eyes.
They’re calling it a drunken mistake,
said you upturned
a whole house
just to find the locker’s
key. Fired a few rounds but
lost one in the chamber.
The neighbors said,
“No, can’t help.”
You decided to help yourself,
And found the round.
Poetry: Social Change
Social Change
Twitter turned you
Into an asshole —
Oh how you've strayed
From the wall
And ran in full embrace,
Laughing at many
Usually because you were
Not the first one there.
At least you were
The first to scoff --
To take a bat to the feeder.
And now, bullshit like this
Can contain meaning:
"#2012: #totes #trending #hard
#yolo -- #ItsReallyAnnoying #WonderHow
#thissummer #RaiseYourHandIf #socialgood
#giveup #fairtrade #chocolate (#lent)
#ThreeWordsToLiveBy: #occupy #swag #winning."
#I'mProudToSay #IDontKnowWhy
—@MARCELOASHERQ
06.09.2012