I'd show you some flourish if I could touch you.

Grow wildflowers from your pores with my fingers,

Water them with the dew of my kisses.

"A dying culture destroys everything it touches.
Language is one of the first things to go.
Nobody really communicates with words any more. Words have
lost their ability to shock and make love.
Language prevents communication.
CARS LOVE SHELL
How can I say
'I love you'
after hearing:
CARS LOVE SHELL
Does anyone understand what I mean?"
-Jerry Rubin

the last time I saw you

The last time I saw you
I was consciously cold.
I wore neutral colors
And a scarf so long it could double as a noose.

East River Pier, July

Watching the East River ferry pull away from the dock and sputter like the heavy breathing of a morbidly obese man, I fathom my options for escape being just as absurd. Futile and pork-belly slow. What a silly thought- the river between Brooklyn and Manhattan tastes like the gravy sealed in tupperware at the back of our fridge- forgotten from last Thanksgiving, or the Thanksgiving before that. [curdled, separated, seeped into the plastic that dutifully holds it despite low wages and an unfriendly work environment. we have to throw the whole thing out. no power scrubbing worthy/useful/possible]

Ghosts of dizziness and an orchestrated disconnect

The difference between being dizzy because of something you've done and something that is done unto you. The curious possibility that lies mischievously behind every dizzy spell that suggests that it is in fact something that you have done that has caused the dizziness, although it is certainly easy to imagine it as having emanated from some outside form.

Dizziness happens/finds its home in the mind, the head space- most aware of the God-air/wind-blanket that surrounds it, caresses it, sways it left and right to say yes and k(no)w.

K(no)w- the stability or the lack thereof provided by the feet; toes gripping the earth. Misteps and trippage is a physical problem- a misconnection between two solid forms- a misconnection of to(s) and fro(m)s. It exists/occurs apart from dizziness- the mind problem, though sometimes happens simultaneously or in conjunction with it. When this happens, you may feel and appear quite out of sorts- severely discombobulated, detached. Normally, when one experiences dizziness of the mind, one can overcompensate with the grounded stability of the foot (hence the term "sure-footedness".) The same may take place in the reverse hypothetical situation. You lose your footing, stumble about- but fear not! for you still have your mind, you assure yourself that it is "just" your body acting out of turn. But when they occur together, perhaps true grace can be found in funneling/harnessing the two in an orchestrated disconnect- a stylistic fall, a glide directed with awareness. This, we might call flying.

[GHOSTS]

the tickle that leads to a hiccup and the anticipation of the next one.

doors closing and opening or opening and closing or doors stuck somewhere between in an ongoing fluctuation between these two points

arrival and departure, the moment of being aware of going or of having left as well as the moment directly proceeding that first step and the few varied breaths that immediately follow.

crowded spaces - preferably public ones. you are most likely to witness ghostlyhood in the moment in which you realize the divergence between your physical and cerebral locations; the moment in which you unconsciously acknowledge that you can think thoughts that no one in your direct proximity can hear as well as the non-voice, or rather non-verbal, aspect of internal self in which you question or doubt the truth of this mental privacy. The consideration of the possibility that somewhere someone is listening or can at least perceive or tap into these 'private' thoughts from some indeterminable distance. The imagining of one's thoughts (especially those which seem to manifest outside of intention/choice) as transmittable- of creating a kind of mass or wave or graspable or perceivable separateness of thinghood outside of oneself, of floating or flying or wafting or melting or diffusing into the universe of some other space where you are not- or your thoughts as some vaporous substance- radio static - separate from you and still yet a part of you only insofar as the narration that you have perceived via human logic - thinking that proclaims authoritatively that one is connected to that which has emanated from within oneself that the umbilical cord is never, nor can ever be, severed.

symbolic narrative as a filter of perception may be just as tangible and 'real' as ones own feet. are they still your feet if you have lost them to frostbite or had them taken from you - a roadside bomb, a madman with a bloody fetish- or took them from yourself- sharpened flint or a dull steak knife in a camping trip gone sour, or a desperate desire for otherdom of the furry or crystal or pinewood variety? replacement? are they still 'yours' once an otherness enters their former position, fulfills their former function, purely on account of a history of having-once-been of you? (once the black sheep of the family has been made vulnerable to (or sold for) slaughter- do we refer to him still as a member of their tribe? does the local obituary list them as his survivors?)

curation of the self

* real wood vs. particle board and the generally age and weather-worn

*nature vs. nurture. nurture as an element of or revolving/evolving out of nature.

*visible invisibilities and Kafka's friendly ghost

*the political correctness of political incorrectness-turned-kitsch

*poetry (of both the sucky and non-sucky varieties)

*comfort and coddling as a form of survival-huntress-warriorship

*masculinization of feminine magic/witchery

*the orchestration of non-structure; the painterly composition of chaos

*trust in the inevitability of deterioration and revolution/evolution; deterioration as a active dance/movement/action providing evidence of life