tonight
parrot
called from culled palm
fallen fronds-
cold
Cold creeps into street stones
as warm bones watch
ice encrust
a puddle of must,
gut flood, grime.
Ghosts.
Time lives
inside field mice underfoot,
in dessicant grain
and freesia in January.
I find an absence of malice in hail,
even as it wounds tiny paws,
dampens bran,
can find no
death thought
in the blooms it breaks.
Cold steeps in deep ruts
found around my torso
dirt rinses the sun
and stuns glasses.
Still no spite
in mighty wind,
in altered weather.
Ghosts,
our legacy
have left that to us.
Anda!
Existe uma distância entre o mero cheiro do mesmo e o mar.
Anda!
Há uma distância
entre o seu mero cheiro e o mar resplandecente.
Temos de começar a caminhar em direcção ao mar.
Vamos sair desta pequena sala
e ir para o topo de uma colina.
Depois desceremos numa rua tortuosa e desolada.
Taunhado por gaivotas,
vamos começar a nossa viagem
até ao limite aguado desta nova terra.
____________________________
Come on!
There is a distance between the mere smell of it and the sea.
Come on!
There is a distance
between its mere smell and the glistening sea.
We have to start walking towards the sea.
Let's leave this little room
and go to the top of a hill.
Then we will descend on a crooked and desolate street.
Taunted by seagulls,
we will begin our journey
to the watery edge of this new land
uma semente irá ensinar-lhe a ver
a seed will teach you about seeing
Garden one
1
I planted black spruce seedlings, found in lonely places, into small patches.
They've managed, these young trees, to live in peace, sustain themselves, each other.
Yet cooperative systems decline.
What is it to be resolute even in your end?
These trees teach me distances, the distillation of desire, multiple finalities.
2
Gather up the vines.
Dance to death.
3
Spent flowers
A broken lid of stars
drop around us on the way home
They cannot stay forever in the sky.
When we die it will be like this, I say.
4
I saw a peony of glass,
pollinated by flames.
5
In Japan, the humble mallow is hallowed.
6
Swim in in an old river, shower, rest.
____________
Garden two
1
fertile centers
on the edges of iron, stone, light
might outlast us.
In Barra, a kiln, a peat clamp
where coils of clay
from children's play
stay buried near their graves.
Still seeding, these salty grasses,
a girl's greening pets.
____________________
Garden Three
I reckon occupation
is recyclable.
woman on their right side
men on their left
our terminal bruxism,
a barrage of teeth and bone
that will make soil and stone.
Or, if you want, place us back into the sea.
We seed flowers there too.
___________________________
"remembering who we are
then beyond into forgetting
into infinite evocative nothing"
- archeologist on Barra
from a viewed video, 10 Jan 2023
machair (mack car) fertility, and shelter
1
Cuthbert
up to his neck
in a spring
and the acolyte
of Tadao,
under
the waterfall,
both cold,
told themselves
desire had fled.
Instead,
Cuthbert
licked dry by otters,
and the acolyte,
his skin
dog nuzzled,
were puzzled to find
their bodies aware.
There are ways
one remains insoluble.
2
In Carpaccio's 1495 painting,
Cormorants Hunting in the Lagoon,
two fish lie gutted in a boat.
Lilies on the edge,
birds among men,
then the sense of tide,
and sun.
3
A reindeer's hide,
with hooves, brings meat.
Seated hearthside, we sing songs,
transport color.
Underground round
how much is buried
down there
other questions lurking
in cracked corners
inside structures
shale bracelet
Pan flanged vessel
understanding
fugou
you try to understand what
is so small
so
then
this surprise
a simple cooking vessel
and then Romans
elephants
tribal tin
pythean
wide
countering
insularity
1/5 of iron age population
in britain
not from europe
total depth
of diversity?
grain production
axes
portable cleanliness
of artifacts
stone
quern
coin
axe
spider
spider
void
too many too much
a circularity
Dec 4, 1:38 PM (3 days ago) | |||
|
1
Drawn to one life and not another
2
Seascape shaping the morning mind -
kinds of blue,
and raptors
3
Aspects of vegetation -
gutter weed,
seeds of alyssum
stonecrop
freesia buds peering into the cold
4
Ryokan
Dōgen
or
Kamo-no-Chomei
it's clear
they wouldn't sneer
at my American mind
5
Robert Adamson
Juno Gemes
rare birds
in love
6
An aspect of animal
shivering rat in the rain
learning it should pain me
7
Husband comes in dreams again
lets me go
so I know
hurting
there's love still
in nothing
8
Eggs and peas
pleasing
winter breakfast
new life and green
1
her mother died 7 times
2
lizard in a plastic pot
got help getting out
3
swift
swift
swallow
always, always gulls
4
cloud cover
sun
plants up here
have begun to
rebloom
soon
the cyclamen
5
no you are not like us
more loess
less
talk
6
I have been thinking
days without drinking
these have made me
this
7
will there be a record
of the women
children
dogs
who did this
lived
where
some have begun
the erasure again
when
does it end?
2
Slate grey underneath and over dove's white slant.
Cant of slightly darkening clouds
resolves into cumuli.
Linear pink thinks it's sun, but fooled,
blanches.
Branches of upper cloud have caught
by a heavy bird, a shadow pelican, that
washes darker aloft , and disappears.
Storms are greening the pohutukawas.
Nearby dogs howl into the wind.
Dad said grasses lasted longer tempered by fire.
Strong winds like fires consume things,
rip and tear until there's nothing whole there.
This is where I stop for a moment,
to watch as a small bird blown into
a small tree frees itself
just as two gulls swoop to snatch it.
Monocultures -
fish
eggs
cereals
fruit.
Historically,
monocrops are
cyclically
ascendant,
grown not
to feed you,
or for the poor,
but for more power.
It is possible
the idea of one
dominant food
has inherently
destructed
too many
cultures
to count.
You read
we feed millions now
on
12 species of plants
5 species of animals.
insipid
forgotten
in the craft of
but not jejune
or yes, perhaps
I wanted watery and weak, washed out
reading
insubstantial
rather than
strong
because
all along
I knew
layers
need to leak through
remember east light
at
eight in the morning
an over awning of light
not bright still moonlit north
goes forth into day
as payne's grey
and hansa
This week I have tried to give myself the gift of time without doing, time to strengthen those things and thoughts not yet ready to leave me.
It's a challenge to think without a stated purpose. Daydreaming streams. Letting go of the inner prose and watching new words slip through the brain's net. This a nexus I need.
If I want a sense of forward, I can return to learning languages. I literally need them to store more, as I seek or retrieve new words
_____________________________________________
The morning fog has helped me understand land.
I fret over garden growth, giving plants places to thrive. I've got to get more clay pots, breathable skin for new beginnings.
_________________________________________________
Some days I move from desk to terrace like a sonambulist, other days I stay with words like a hungry hunting bird.
The next step is to let my life leak into more of my fiction.
_____________________________________________________________________________
Rosemary leaves spotted yellow
tell all in plangency
as in too a harp of dark woad
disappearing
into the sea
near you
is a niche and cranny fortune
your love of
salt air may save save you
as the trees burn.
I kept the bedroom light on
a few extra hours
because of the lizard in the kitchen
not the
centipede in the sala
or the spider in the studio
I will not kill them
_______________________________________________
they are birds heard
but not seen
swift
gull
jay
and
away to the west
a kestrel
its wings released from the fog
____________________________________________________
wildlife in gaia -
the binturong bundled,
with introductions of
mongoose
genet
infertile polecats
eyes asleep
know now
the blows that
broke the boughs
that brought them here
________________________________________________________________
Every new life brought in draws attention.
The purpling rosemary requires nursing, calm, a shadow to recover in. I wash dirt and mould from its boughs and branches. I disinfect cuts, clear webs and egg sacs, pluck, caress, water gently. Overnight I see the maroon needles lifting at their roots to green. This is the work of hours, of love and shadows.
I don't know if the maple will survive the winter. I've trimmed and transplanted it into clay, added better soil, cooed over a single new shoot. I've read maple messages from Murcia and California. These have made me optimistic. I am going to ensure this tiny acer, bald and twiggy, has her chance to thrive.
Roots of scalded pohutukawa seek the surface after too many small waterings. Anxiety does grow, you know, and here a tree has caught my nerve and swerved upward to accept it. Now the work of mulch and stones! The need to leave the tree alone!
The mint on the terrace is a wayward child, dropping leaves like stolen buns, preferring the independence of clear water to damp soil. I lesson it as it lessons me. We each prepare to let the other go. Yet I know mint would love it here if we gave each other a chance.
days without words
or with too many
I long for
one word, a brush of color, a small sung note
the sweet rightness of one
------------------------------------------------------------
one hundred refusals
nothing chocolate about rejection
_________________________________________
minhas vizinhas -
Portuguese women
who in
middle-age
have become
tree trunks with shoes
their bared neccessities
give me the blues
they grunt uphill
dodder down steep stairs
bags full of meat and gossip
_______________________________________
play fugues and arias
sip tea
1
In her envy of space, light,
lies
an absence of gratitude.
2
She mocks my towels
for lack of
luxury.
3
He left a half year silence,
returned,
now half concerned
he'd hurt her.
He had.
4
They
told her to grow up.
She grew them out of
her life.
5
We are hyphenating ourselves to death.
6
There are many senhora and senhoras
but very few samas here.
7
Yesterday,
this visitor,
a weevil that
destroys palms,
landed on my terrace.
With no qualms,
I handed her back to the sky.
Would I have
been so kind
if had known?
I spend hours
massaging my brain
with pictures of outdoor tables.
I want something
simple and durable, a spare design.
I know now that 6 people
need at least 135cms,
but 150, 200 cms are best.
In tests,
the strongest table material is iron,
heavy against the wind,
though wood and steel might do.
You don't want aluminum or plastic, which can easily fly,
at eight stories high, and so become deadly.
I thought about what cannot be left out without protection,
must be covered from the rain and salt air.
Dirt too, from the subway site below,
blights everything up here with ochre dust.
But principally, after days of looking,
I realise I must consider time,
which wisely suggests
that I have patience,
wait.This is the sound after rain -
the burr sanded smooth,
the pounding
that hides my confusion.
Then, when it stops,
the placing of directions,
none of them easily understood.
I fell and skinned my knee like a child.
Old men without teeth laugh
and speak about me
in three languages.
They have lived
their lives placing dirt and stone before bone.
They are easily understood.
I am warned to be silent here, wear rings, speak little.
Southeast,
grey lays between
trees, hills
smudged cold underneath
while white strides
skyward and
west
where
a red lit liminal
heads
true
north, radiant, into brilliance
1
Foot-in-Boot (cat)
blood on the floor (cats)
surrounded by
touch, too much touch
(wolves)
2
babysitting political opposition
when the hit men come (dogs)*
you must run with the children
3
babysitting when men (bears)*
again and again
ask for you
4
I'm laughing
because
girls like me (chicks)
weren't supposed to know
about the absurd
*Stalin's dogs
*peo (fart) bears
What were their names?
Your legacy even then
held an omen of
mutual forgetfulness.
You loved others.
I wasn't first or last.
I knew that.
I can't remember their names.
I got lost, so lost
took rash advice
left myself
came back angry
empty.
I can't cut anymore
said the doctor
after this, it's all coming out.
I closed up shop,
cried for so many things
but none of them helped.
I stopped crying. Just stopped.
Then, solitary,
I began to move
through the world.
That worked, is working
more than anything else.
I cannot remember their names.
And that's such a joy.
1
A vontade de viver
Eu vou viver
Eu próprio irei viver
Eu mesmo viverei
Eu vivo sozinho
Eu vivo para a vontade de viver
Viverei se tiver a vontade?
2
Aqui estão as suas mentiras
pessoas honestas que você é
aqui está o meu silêncio
o meu silêncio é alto
o seu silêncio mais alto
agora
neste silêncio
estamos ambos a dizer a verdade
3
Ontem à noite o meu lagarto Ryu
correr de um lado para o outro na sala
pés minúsculos ao contrário de um rato
protector da minha casa
nas horas escuras
ainda com a sua patrulha
não consegui dormir até ao amanhecer
esta manhã ela está escondida
Estou sozinho com as aves
1
The will to live
I will live
I will live myself
I'll live myself
I live alone
I live for the will to live
I will live if I have the will?
2
Here are your lies
honest people you are
here is my silence
my silence is loud
your silence louder
now
in this silence
we are both telling the truth
3
Last night my lizard Ryu
running around the room
tiny feet unlike a mouse
protector of my home
in the dark hours
still with his patrol
I couldn't sleep until dawn
this morning she's hiding
I am alone with the birds
remember
1
the severed foot
the river snag
the sierra shale
remember
2
intangibles
the two men
who were going to rob you
interrupted by
the gun
in the garden
shots fired randomly
breaking glass, damaging brick
recent
3
a carpet of dead cockroaches (clean)
broken plumbing (fixed flow)
roof tiles lifting in the rain (mortared)
recent
4
renters (spent not saved)
whine, wrangle
assume
resist fairness (more is never enough)
recent
5
assume
you need
someone or thing
bring the wrong thing
to your heart's
equation
present
6
a gift
an introduction
and all that
remains
7
to remember
recently
present
is what remains
in the brain
`
last night
a delight
friends
excellent
art
and places
where living
has been embraced
afterward
I walk an incline
down to the metro
past teens teasing one another
enter a cave of a station
with tired clerks and backpackers
at trinidade
I change
to the yellow line
find
I'll wait for the bus
because my bones
ache from hours of Porto walking
my Gaia neighborhood's dark, dark
stepping carefully through debris
finding street lamps blinding the final meters
shielding my eyes from them
the neighbors I've asked to stay away laugh loudly
as they
come closer
returning too
from a night out
I enter the lift
the laughing neighbors
shift their gaiety to rooms below me
I remain happy in our distance
happy they are happy
and I am happy too
you find those you
have meaning with
you find
a quiet darkness and a brightness
that both unblind you
make you open and generous
when you are with friends
1
stratocumulus
nimbostratus
sun's begun
to break through
2
follow the sea
look north
but it's possible to
look south
follow the sea up
to Irwell's mouth,
the Mersey,
or find it
higher
springing
from
Deerplay Moor
3
clear mind takes time
4
west
Bootes
Arcturus
south
Mirfak
and Perseus
east
Jupiter
north
Lynx
5
thoughts coming and going:
The anxiety I feel in groups of people will be tested tonight.
I've sat long enough to see the sky blanch, and brighten to blue,
watch a tree I see everyday sway in slight wind.
The less I have, the more I see.
Empty space, grace,
my small towels drying quickly.
I love being alone, no songs, just the wind.
1
falling asleep
dreaming of the Taklamakan
While most researchers agree on makan being the Persian word for "place", etymology of Takla is less clear. The word may be an Uyghur borrowing of the Persian tark, "to leave alone/out/behind, relinquish, abandon" + makan.[1][2] Another plausible explanation suggests it is derived from Turki taqlar makan, describing "the place of ruins".[3][4] Chinese scholars Wang Guowei and Huang Wenbi linked the name to the Tocharians, a historical people of the Tarim Basin, making the meaning of "Taklamakan" similar to "Tocharistan".[5] According to Uyghur scholar Turdi Mettursun Kara, the name Taklamakan comes from the expression Terk-i Mekan. The name is first mentioned as Terk-i Makan (ترك مكان / trk mkan) in the book called Tevarih-i Muskiyun, which was written in 1867 in the Hotan Prefecture of Xinjiang.[6]
In folk etymology, it is said to mean "Place of No Return" or "get in and you'll never get out".[7][8][9][10]
1
rain changes direction and intensity
yesterday furious
last night
drops thick and humming like locusts
this morning
the rain awake
remembers something, forgets something else
creating
rounds of wet sounds
wailing up and quieting down for hours
2
tiny lizard tangled in my hair
found near the bed, dead.
Placed him outside - a wide, wet funeral
3
my homeostasis
less
and less
until blessed with
loss or balance
4
my incomplete portrait -
(age-related )
increased risk of wet leaks*
or absorbing too much of life**
5
gulls flying in rain
again
and again
staying in
for two days
testing the terrace's wind -
though dirt blown,
nothing's flown away
6
the repitition of language
in numbers
on paper
in sound
7
what wake my life
will leave behind
is blindly just this,
moving toward
nothing,
but an hour
and an our
that awaits us all
*macular degeneration
** hereditary hemochromatosis (HFE-related), elevated creatinine levels
Little shelter
on this roof
for an old dog
The wind that surrounds
the roof
goes through the dog
makes daily sounds
birdish
accompaniments
to her wobbly processional
The four months I've lived here, the dog herself has never uttered a sound.
I coax her close, stroke her bony nose, give treats.
Tonight, stumbling into
my hands I stand her,
feel her warmth, under
fur the color of a thin fire.
A gull up here is
clearly immature.
All eyes,
cries come
from a big-boned beak.
I seek proof of
his lineage.
Pink legged,
he walks around this ledge eight stories up
as if he owned the place.
I almost believe him,
though swifts race by, unimpressed.
He and I have guessed wrong,
hold misplaced assumptions.
My bold friend,
know
less fish now
so studies show
herring gull numbers too are low.
erasing my own history
power in that -
a legacy that doesn't outlast
my memory
or
let go of the outcome
this unequal teeter
between
wealth and bad teeth
between who is
telling your story
I am not impressed by power.
My high school gives the wrong graduation date.
My gallery has the wrong year and
what place on earth I was born to.
I cannot erase their mistakes.
They can insist upon these.
But
they cannot erase my grandmother's knees
or the piece of swamp in my heart.
They cannot erase the muskrat, beaver kit, surprised stoat, motes of fresh water between
me and the present.
I could.
I could wipe it all away and stay here without it.
If I so chose.
Degrees of truth
Memory is not truth
Observe
Choose
Feed
Lose
hungry ghosts
stories
without end
Introduced
Araucaria heterophylla
Araucaria da ilha de Norfolk
Norfolk Island pine, an ancient tree
conical conifer not a true pine
dined on by dinosaurs
(Jurassic to Cretaceous)
It is a wood made into bowls and crucifixes
Introduced
Ailanthus altissisima
Tree of Heaven, Chinese sumac
(can be confused with black walnut)
In Portugal it has an invasive score of 20
Allelopathic,
limiting the growth of other species,
it is a medicinal plant used in folk remedies
(diarrhea, asthma, cramps, epilepsy, fast heart rate, gonorrhea)
It remains unsupported by western medicine
Planted in city wastelands, it tolerates pollution, breaks down cement for its lime.
Also
Ipomea indica
glória da manhã
is a laxative and headache remedy used in Mesoamerica and Asia,
that flushes hillsides, ruins gardens, loves old stone walls.
left behind
Galinsoga Parviflora is an ugly plant, leggy and awkward.
("Fresh leaves and juice of GP have been used in folk medicine throughout the world to treat dermatological disorders including eczema, lichen, and non-healing and/or bleeding wounds.")
left behind
Datura is beautiful, helpful but deadly. I confuse with brugmansia, the angel´s trumpet, and also toxic.
continuing
Who or what shoe brought broom here, another useful but dangerous weed?
It is not uncommon for survivors of abuse to favor the peripatetic.
Do they find peace in roaming the world?
Are they freed physically from the weight and entanglement of site-specific memory?
I am fascinated by stones, their geologic nightmares and dreams.
I imagine streams of stones, also survivors, flushed from melting glaciers.
Where are they now, those souls, those stones?
Erratic behaviors.
Clocha an fhile
poet's stones
Damaged souls seek each other,
build refuges
in stony rooks and nooks.
Their rock-worn poems?
In runes.
Deep inside, pain
never goes away.
Boys are burning on sofas
or hitting their heads
in shallow watery quarries.
Small girls open like broken blossoms -
one killed herself because of you,
I'm certain of it.
Tigers are increasing in Nepal.
Flame colored,
one swims a river,
strikes grass gatherers,
kills a mother, brother, daughter.
Still
wondering if killing
is in our bones.
Will a man
ever
begin
to turn upon himself
from within,
try to rinse out sins
like a child's
blood spotted cloth,
or become a moth aflame,
find a waterborne accident?
I was thinking about these deaths and injuries this morning.
I realized I don't wish
human predators dead,
but burning,
sinking,
terrorizing dreams
instead.
1
An Iberian
(wall lizard)
roams between the studio and terrace.
2
reads Camus
opens
my world again
3
Augusthaze wrapping
sounds of
children
playing
3
This bird in air or
another there
on the terrace
where an old gold dog
flanks like bamboo
lives out her thin life
4
Blessed
by fog
and sleep -
rest!
5
Leaves
collect
water from the night air
eight stories up
6
Beyond the rail
white
and possibilities
7
Shouting last night
same fight
husband and wife have
anywhere
wages are stolen
8
more cool weather
happy for my nest
the dead girl with the head
of a finch in her mouth
a cave for the Karelian
a forest child
with the soul bird
what voice
heard by a bird
to lose its head
to a dead girl
in a cave
https://www.audubon.org/news/whats-weird-mouths-these-finch-chicks
though long ago
kept me awake
last night.
His mistakes
remind me of my own.
it is
to hold
past wrongs
so tightly.
Those betrayals,
even what inspired them,
have left us.
we're old
those cold and
terrible
things we did -
words, deeds
sources of past pain
why not let them go?
nothing grew as I expected
the lavender and mint expanded
but the sage
flew away like a white-winged bird
Avocado seeds calcified
brittle boned, algic
basil seedlings rooted quickly in water
grew sturdy as trees
These
familiar plants
here
in altered seasons,
longer than the north
I am
beginning to sense
how little I know about how or
why things things grow
I observe sorrel leaves closing at dusk
to meet me opening mid-morning
So many plants under the earth
yet to grow
hidden like ghosts
inside, waterlogged, bent
he sent this poem
which
offered
me
a sister's eyeye
close
and loved
but he,
I
imagined
e
y
1
A sooty gull
A weathered hull
An empty beach
Dusk
2
Deep heat seeps
into everything marine,
as if even
the sea wants to burn
itself pure again.
3
I lay in bed unable to write,
a cool damp towel upon my chest.
Here above the water
I've sprinkled dry plant soil with cinnamon,
see it caught in the finest nets.
Poor thirsty spiders!
4
I go out
onto
the terrace
into
the grey evening air
where,
stooping,
I scrape dry soil
from the roof's
rain troughs,
hope.
I pass
ninety days
in an ango,
enclosed
within my rainy season's soul
as hydrangea open blue cold in the heat.
Then again
I spend nine hours,
a novena,
reciting
Maria plena
to understand kindness.
It's the dry season now,
in Japan and Portugal,
full of fires
and pilgrimage.
Later, in autumn, I may ask to join Segaki
or an All Souls feast.
Offering food,
I understand ghosts want to see me eat, meet me in my body,
observe, regret, rant.
Afterward, ghosts retreat.
I try to step back, but can't.
I remember the cold blue blooms in rain- soaked June,
Too soon they dry and die.
During my novena
I pick milkweed bursting like stars for the dead
as
Molded sugar bones melt into early clouds of snow.
The ghosts met here will come again, or send others,
when another season turns.
No matter how much I pray,
the dead never stay away,
remain hungry.
“When there is something to be done,
employ your body.
It is hard, yet simpler
than using someone else,
and being obliged.
When you need to go somewhere
use your feet.
This too is hard, but not as hard
as worrying about horse and saddle,
ox and cart.
Now, I divide my body
and I give it twofold purpose.
My hands are my servants,
my legs my carriage.
This suits me well.”
Excerpt From
Hojoki: Visions of a Torn World (Rock Spring Collection of Japanese Literature)
Chomei, Kamo no
This material may be protected by copyright.
Dividing the days
peace
a place to listen
“A place of beauty
has no owner.
So there is nothing
to spoil the pleasure.”
Excerpt From
Hojoki: Visions of a Torn World (Rock Spring Collection of Japanese Literature)
Chomei, Kamo no
This material may be protected by copyright.
A beautiful prayer too or a poem, the lyrics of the birds
words without end
live within
and cannot be erased
or stolen
overtime isn't paid anymore
afterhours get pitted and patched
no match for sore muscles
receipts unable to be issued
tissue or water to cleanse
reserved for who?
not you, or you
bowing - to bend, to kneel
is sending unheard
wordless offering from
those least able to afford it
the rich usually switch it all off
as if
receiving prayers depended on them
unacknowledged who?
I think you know it's not you
it never was
because what you wanted and what you are
represent the scars that scare them
Lifting the light wardrobe up.The inside pine emptiness, waiting for washed and folded, hung clothes.
The mind at ease, pleased with openness.
Discarded cardboard now brought to the bin, nudged in between an old wicker basket, grey plastic bags of kitchen waste.
I follow the taste of cold wine, after giving gifts of salt and bread, into a conversation, and out of an end to conversation.
Rising, passing the pine wardrobe, the bin. Leaning in to listen to the elevator's descent.
Bent-stemmed red gerbera, geraniums are outside. I walk through sand, see a man standing, looking up. Laundry is drying at open windows. Too much is stuffed into another bin. A broken sack of used clothes spills onto the street.
At night, I sneak recyclables into the trash, study catalogs, order online. This night I watch the sky slide blue to black.
Back and forth, between the old and the new, fly owls, and scurry mice. Fish test the depths of fresh water mixed with salt.
At sunrise, you recall the smell of old pine, and an old man, alone on his rooftop, tossing bread to gulls.
Bear’s breeches
As telhas de terraço não são boas em locais
As telhas do terraço subiram em sítios.
As telhas do terraço subiram de tenda e as suas juntas racharam.
Isto não é bom para o 7º andar nem para mim. Tentei uma pequena reparação, mas não está a funcionar. Há também um pequeno buraco a ser remendado no exterior. Pode ajudar-me a arranjá-los pela associação do condomínio, por favor? Não quero que os pequenos problemas se tornem grandes, e caros para a associação.
One mentha cervina has become seven. These are puzzling plants, endangered yet strangely prolific, native to watery places in dry Alentejo. They can grow even underwater in winter. This history means they'll remain outside, on the roof terrace, in the rain.
I imagine the air, circling mentha cervina in December, an aroma of strong spearmint tea flooding the wet wind.
I could make images from the mind
there are so many there
piles of them lying to be sorted
like a resale shop's back room
instead
I'm led to tear up what's been made
a concertina reassembles, divides
is scrubbed of too much paper
too little thought
what lies beneath a failed book?
Look. Too much of everything.
Understanding the beginning to
end
then this in-between
I've seen
where nets met light, earth
Say women gave birth
to mending,
to sending messages
in fish and clay
when woven meant
receiving thoughts
sent by shuttle, awl and stylus
when fire consecrated words on urns and plates
or foraging sticks
struck by lightening
turned branches into thoughts
acacia
boddhi
oak
ash
gave tongue lashings
grew needy
whining pines
seeded
shopping lists in hollow balls
from the first,
writing, reading
was as round as
beginning to end
It's a merlin up here
clearing the sky
I'm thankful for her,
for the present,
where no gull's eyes
stare expectantly
at the old arthritic dog.
"The antidote to perfectionism is repair."
Repairing room, the mind.
A kind of sanatorium where the words I want to write down pull me up before I drown.
Not always, not in every situation.
No perfection in thought.
There ought to be but isn't much you can do about that, but repair is one of them.
After rejection, clean up the blood, flood your body with love, knit together, stronger.
The longer you wait for the right moment, the more you delay your happiness.
I'm not about optimistic forgiveness. I believe in humanity's recidivism.
But our actual individual strength? Restorative.
Despite the odds.
sketches -
language sticks
(to)
Jacob's ladders
(where)
I find rapas in the window
(round)
the corner
(from)
the lengths I will go
to find
those
words
like fireflies
burned
(into)
memories
(of)
19 and two
you listen to their names
as you would a list
of
plants,
but refuse to write them down.
I don't want to remember, to look for them,
and find nothing.
Eight, ten years old -
school the nursery where we grow things,
and gardeners.
I did not sleep well.
I pot and prune, take cuttings.
The sea is still blue.
The ancient dog walks across her terrace
and forgets why she came to greet me,
turns, retreats.
A honeybee wanders among my flowers, high
in the sky, looking for sweetness.
In the dream,
you watch the house
of two stories
(up, down, yours, ours)
empty.
He
doesn't linger,
not once,
not even a glance.
You above
it all,
as only an eye,
want to cry out,
turn back everything -
the words, the lost kisses.
He's left the ring,
the thing that was his,
that was ours,
on the stairs.
plants coming home
some I know
but so many are strangers
(strange to the stranger) -
primrose, mallow found in fallow farmland, roadside,
around old home plots, ruins
clots of cala, marguerites,
clover, vetch, bindweed
living with
these
unknown
seeds and flowers
new knowledge
in the soil
says
what grows
will root
inside me
densidades
mentais potenciais
duplamente
isoladas
com potencial para
proporcionar equivalências,
potência
iluminação
que seja equivalente
ou igual
à original,
agora esquecida,
procurada,
ansiada por
doubly isolated
potential mental densities
with the potential
to provide equivalences,
potency.
enlightenment
that is equivalent
or equal to
the original,
now forgotten,
sought after,
longed for
As burned,
bombed
holes,
these
boles
hold
two metres of
language,
a bird,
a fish.
At four
in the morning
such
trunks,
sunk into earth,
war,
appear
as
open doors
to another side.
Dark woods!
There is
more in
these
trees
than
what,
in
sunlight,
could be
bylines:
main valve
ground wire
spliced,
glued to
p trap
a wago
pedestal
pressure
kess
water
less electric
on liberation
language of
It's late April.
I sight a swallow
clearly blue
against a bright sky
and failing sun.
Such relief really,to see this hungry bird,
chirping and sputtering
far softer sounds than gulls.
No one can come for the lights.
It's easy, I'm told, and
emboldened, clamp wires, cover them.
Switching to on, a pop, the singular note of a swallow, divorced from song,
carries along an arc of light.
Frightened, I switch everything off.
Think.
On the internet, I listen, follow as instructed,
check, change.
Oh, my sister says, you didn't know?
No.
Learning as I go.
That electric arc seemed iridescent blue, to grow a tail,
and the sound grew wings too.
After corrections,
I understand separations,
follow a welcome silence into the kitchen light,
now functioning,
and out into dusk.
The swallow I had sighted,
flying too high,
has stopped to rest on the terrace.
We're eyeing one another when
she suddenly lifts,
descends
into the shadows of the trees below.
I'm without rest .
The new refrigerator is as battered as I am.
The plumbing limps along
spilling through my neighbor's ceiling or onto my floor.
More importantly
a lie just will not quit giving away
pieces of itself,
such as
badly injured tiles
or
a deep sewage hole full of debri.
You can see the roach eggs
under the knawed chipwood sink,
hear 200 euro doors slammed
as your neighbors
behind much cheaper portals
find leaks and sorrow.
Next, he gallantly said,
I'll take a stand,
demand to speak with
o senhor seguros instead.
depois de
a mulher idosa que vivia num ninho
caiu ao chão há cerca de dois anos
durante a primeira vaga
antes da guerra
ou poderia dizer
então
o seu mundo acabou.
after
the old woman living in a nest
fell to the ground about two years ago
during the first wave
before the war
or you could say
then
her world ended.
that horizon
slipping in and out about 5 kilometres
from here
under
cloud kinds
altocumuli
stratus
or straight lined ghost trails
has now settled
become a muffling haze
skinning trees
as the wind's rise
calls
eye's attention
to
vision songs
along a
glinting trail to the sea
It's the deep night scurry,
the serpentine course round and through rooms
that admits you're here.
Mice on the screen, boxes, and ribbons.
The sound of a small fountain.
Hair, and air purifiers.
It's possible to be allergic to love.
Cat like you
kidnapped from the streets,
meets space.
Sent into orbit, where
someone measured your
slowing heart
and
returning to earth,
cut you apart.
Endurance found
remarkably intact
dead dogs
a cat
Mrs. Chippy
it's a bit nippy
where you are
under the ice
Lviv-born Roxelana
(the Ruthenian )
was a foreigner
remembered in Maripol and Mecca.
Red hair, poetry, a kiss,
she was always much more than this.
I wonder what Mihrimah
Roxelana's only daughter
thought -
her mother bought a slave
then a Sultan, free.
She herself must marry at 16.
Mihrimah told by her mother -
outlive your brothers,
never erasing this -
the red hair, the kiss.
the sign -, used to join words to indicate that they have a combined meaning or that they are linked in the grammar of a sentence (as in pick-me-up, rock-forming ), to indicate the division of a word at the end of a line, or to indicate a missing or implied element (as in short- and long-term ).
Hyphenated
Table of Contents
Introduction
nematode
writing quiet
clepsydra
nets
an unfinished account of
new moon projections
reel dream
ta-ke-ya-bu-ya-ke-ta
scrimshaw
record of passages (river)
barbe à papa
well water
third teen
less than, out of or into
the thrush resurrectionist
the spongy moth despaired
the yellow dog (Carpaccio)
the yellow dog (Goya)
peony
float
water tableau
wrote
memento avium
the fisher queen
web
talking stone
trash bird
the psalm
a season’s sleeping tent
rice field underwater
shunt
allotment
beringia
the tree, the turning pine
bridge
Epilogue