[overlapping]

thoughts were not overlapping
just light ending,
looping back around,
the world a swirl of freed fireworks.

the self not overlapping.
the self completely contrary.

the world never seen by me,
it has been busy looping,
being something other that it seemed,
and so content, outsmarting.

and every digit i count on
not mine but a sculptor's,
a stand in.
more powerful.

living is so common,
given to me and to you, denied
to another we never knew
but forgot and grieved

without a gift.
life, it's just like you to say
i am nothing true,
i taste like a doll or a meal.

this is a moment.
who cares if it's not, or if it's now.
they say something,
to have it despite them.

[i opened the door]

i opened the door
and in with me came a soft moth,
clinging secretly,
along for a ride through the night.

a secret pulse
latched to my spring jacket,
delicately camouflaged
as the dusk is.

it part of me,
it hidden from me,
it part of me,
it hidden from me.

until it let go from me,
and i could feel it --
the flutter and the flight
lifting as if from me, outside of me.

a soft self,
its silent exclamation of freedom,
flight mastering its volume ,
suspended in the blue of nightfall.

[be gentle, don't tell me]

be gentle, don't tell me
that five is too many,
that forgetting's not helping,
my heart is this empty.

it was supposed to be dark here,
a place to dream,
to skulk into and make places,
witness the rumor of my future.

your eyes were fall's long shadow.
bar stools may be better than bed --
depends on the company, we said,
there in the center of it all.

shadowing my darkness,
your tenderness a pale test.
your heart there save mine
from direct sunlight.

while the broken are mending
they are still broken.
and so we played together,
sometimes with the idea of us.

of course i was no good for you,
you were so good for me,
so good to me,
a grand man on a blue horizon.

unlike the oracle,
in a blank trance in between
i loved the lick of raindrops
forgot the weight of water on you.

for matthew.

[we are what was]

the blue haze of her,
a silver cool shower
from her wrists and ears and neck,
chime in wake of her walk.

her easy smile,

cheeks like

a smoothed bed

fitted with flannel.

she's someone's daughter,
someone's mother,
someone's gran,
living these many lives at once.

all of her
became the world she walks,
the conduit of time and creation,
her bravery seems reckless.

i try her softness on,
the way she hums along,
another way to breathe,
and to be.


[about this poem]
this poem was inspired by a woman i saw walking down the street in our old neighborhood. a lot of older folks live in the area, and are not always as at ease with the speed and tone of city life. the woman i saw seemed really satisfied with the world around her, which made me think of her as taking a tour of the world she orchestrated into being.

shapeless destination

i'm catching you a little later than planned today; i hope your monday was a good one.

mine started off slow, but ended with some exciting news -- one of my poems has been accepted in Welter, the university of baltimore's literary magazine! i'm not yet sure of the print date, but i'm very proud.

here's a new, short poem:
[shapeless destination]

rare to keep its sheen,
love's dimensions bend
until it's stronger.
we know,
we can feel it through our hands --
our beginning's over --
but its residue on every day,
that path of smoke,
that leads us closer
to some shapeless destination.

about this poem:
speaking of lit magazines, this poem was originally written as a response to a prompt, the word "beginnings," provided by a lit magazine. i missed the call for submissions deadline, so i'm working on extending it into a poem about love. the poem takes place once the narrator is past her initial understanding of love, and learning slowly about what she doesn't understand. and, since that information never comes to us in a convenient package, her impressions will be kaleidescopic...

there is room for you

there is room for you
filled now with sun's rays and sighs,
no doors to stop them.

our lives are big, our things are small,
there is room for you.
we sit only in small chairs, eat from small plates --

we're hungry, but waiting chokes the air.
it is big but you would be small.
you would fit, there is room for you.

our home is small,
even your small body
would roll quickly across it

through the open space.
you would be the biggest thing here,
except our smiles.

there is room for you,
and a life that fits
whoever you are, and will be.

about this poem:
ray and i are trying to become parents, and having setbacks. today is the day of a big test, so just a little poem of love and positivity. enjoy, and thanks for all of your good wishes!

new poem + a schedule

i've missed you! i've been on the road, and unfortunately out of touch.

i'm so new to blogging, but this already seems to be my pattern. i know no one likes being left hanging, so i'll ask for your forgiveness, and finally set some rules for myself.

look for posts every monday and wednesday from now on. if there's some change to my schedule, i'll be sure to let you know!

i've been working on new pieces. give this one a read, and let me know what you think...

[cavities, potholes]
our self-restraint
wears away the roads,
day's beginning and end
form cavities, potholes.

without work, then what?
if not this way, then how?
axed the inside animal,
made reality felt by remote.

a world wild without impulse,
arranged in its vase every gory pulse,
our vague strains a crime
against ourselves or the world.

what are we?
we may risk knowing by feel
those first seconds in the dark closet,
with so few defenses.

routine is unity, or war for space.
to fit together without violence
in cars, on trains, in lines
on freeways fast to our trance.

about this poem:
only recently, i stopped working a commercial-type writing job and started writing poetry full time. my first few months without routine were really difficult, and i had to work to find a comfortable definition of what a productive day outside the office could be. watching commuters driving home one day, i expanded on the feeling and tried to answer the question, "what does a routine do for us, or how does it fail us?"

clip it

the poet robert hass (a bay area poet and professor at uc berkeley) uses the term "clippings" when referring to his shorter poems. i'm going to lift the term, and hope he finds it flattering :)

i've just started to notice a very casual creative cycle every month.

most of the month i spend my time writing writing writing. if i'm lucky, at the end of every month i find myself with lots of  things to edit, polish and send away to contests and literary journals.

most pieces need more work, and aren't shown to anyone at all. i work on them when i can handle the disappointment of looking at them and working through the kinks. sometimes, the way to fix those kinks in a poem comes out of nowhere, and sometimes it feels calculated (using the thesaurus, referring to other poems).

then there are clippings like these, which i will use as jumping-off points to make a longer poem some day.

without further ado, here are three of february's clippings!
b*

[the enjoyer]
let me know something like joy,
to be anonymously joined,
to be seen by you,
my thoughts like your prize!

about this clipping: my reaction to the comment sections of many websites.
***************************
[the town square]
seniors from school and of life may
take this town yet, the square
it's full of their blue, their neon pink hair.

about this clipping: come to castro valley, and see for yourself.
****************************
[super natural]
ducks bobbing in the full tub of sharp glitter
connect me to the horizon of houses there.

about this clipping: written at the beach in alameda, on the same day i wrote the poem [membrane or mechanism].

typos and tidepools

last week, me and ray turned 36.

we were born 6 days apart so sometimes we celebrate with a little getaway. this year, we went to the tide pools in cambria, near san luis obispo. it's a beautiful area, one i've never really explored, and we enjoyed it pretty completely without accomplishing much more than eating and walking.

one day, we went to lunch and sat down right next to ray's cousin and her husband (and their friends), who are from sonoma county. quelle coincidence!

they were vacationing too, so we walked around downtown SLO together, revisiting a few favorite haunts from their college days, including a wall decorated with gum. so much old, grey gum! it was totally great. we were just in time to see a group of kids and their teachers chew some and add it to the wall as they passed through.

between a wall and a sticky place

every morning we walked around the tidepools near our hotel. one day it was windy and freezing, the next it was warm and summery. here's a poem about the windy day -- just a quick little ditty:

[a wilderness of waves on the long horizon]

a wilderness of waves on the long horizon,
endless agitation stirs endless agitation,
nature's spells spun together
form disorder's worn face --

all lunar perversion,
all wind and coercion,
erosion an echo
digging depths for the wind,

tissue my body at the edge of the world.

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

i could not navigate the tidepools gracefully. i was so awkward at it that the snoozing sea lions 20 feet away didn't seem threatened at all by my presence. ray of course was stealth and at one with nature, didn't wake them for obvious reasons. at least i was wearing a big grey coat, so i probably just looked like one of them. i guess, just another way to be at one with nature?

witness the similarity:

me on rocks (vertical) ...

sea lions on rocks (horizontal)