“I find it easy to admire in trees what depresses me in people.”
— Marge Piercy, last two lines of “The Doughty Oaks” from The Moon Is Always Female
ART PEOPLE, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, March 2021
Spring finds us haunted. A seasonal feeling after witnessing winter’s passing, but it’s acute this year. Blue skies expanding. Nests of birds explode in sound. Time is the fulcrum. I love you fills the past, present, future. Now weightless, light cracks through early morning clouds. I thought about the scam of resurrection. Some never fully accept death as loss, permanence unchanged. They believe death can be cheated. The obvious irony is you’ll suffer from wanting what is not possible. Time is the fulcrum. Flexing, palming, sucking off temporal attention.
Through the eyes of a non-believer, the sharpened edge of dilution, I miss you.
My stride is for life, a far place. —William Stafford, Run Before Dawn
South Dakota, March 2021
The first thing to know is everyone but you, and a few precious others, will move on. Push that reactionary and perceived disrespect to a corner in your heart you’ve saved for petty grievances. Forgive them, eventually, for they simply did not know your joy. You’ll be better served, in these early days, to center your scattered energy by paying attention to the way your days and weeks advance as you begin to revise your life. This or that part of your previous life is no longer applicable but you’ll still find yourself performing the phantom shapes of a visceral routine. The memories you form in this emerging now will feel like new bones growing, indescribable aches. When you notice you’re no longer performing for the past, breathe. In that space of awareness, allow laughter and evocations of pleasure to strengthen you. Remember, most of all, to praise the mutual life you were able to create together.
Repeat.
Repeat.
The next number of infinite steps is to continue gathering the integrity of love.
“but i am running into a new year and i beg what i love and i leave to forgive me”
— Lucille Clifton, from I am Running Into a New Year
“your dream is my nightmare,” (trans. google) Berlin 25 Oct 2019
Always, an airplane in the sky. Our big, beautiful world is dying. We string colored lights in windows. This time of year requires letting go of what cannot be undone. The freeway flows forward, always. Birds sing in tune with worn out brakes of city buses. Today I will laugh. Where does the grotesque fall away and where is the real? Knees. Ribs. Pelvis. Hips a spacial reference to another’s manipulation. My body woke me in the middle of the night. I wasn’t sure if it was fair to tell you this truth. I disassociate enough to protect my sensibilities and made myself small to accommodate your vision of a world that owed you. I kept my mouth shut for fear of casting a shadow on your carefully carved out spotlight. I need new vocabulary to describe this headstrong ritual. Joy and excitement is replicable but they won’t be to scale. Yesterday I watched a woman kiss pigeons. Gently and respectfully, she kissed the bravest on their greedy beaks. In a sea of bread crumbs and feathers, she shared her love with those who surrounded her. Come back into it. My body won’t relax. I pick up the slack. Evening’s receiving light follows me home.
But where I come from withdrawal is easy to forgive. — William Stafford
Rupprecht Geiger, Zu Licht und Schatten (trans. To Light and Shadow), acrylic on plastic foil, 40 x 35 cm, 1972
She said she loved me
she loved me
loved me
it became an anthem
a melodic hook
stacked like clouds
fists tucked
ready for a fight
bent over or
how horizons form
don’t believe me
study the moon
and sun’s partnership
a story of graceful friction
literally magnificent light
now wild from abandon
AN ARMY OF LOVERS SHALL NOT FAIL – title on cover of The Lesbian Tide, Apr. 1973
Road to the Ranch, 1964, Georgia O’Keeffe
this feeling of war is different from other war feelings I’ve had.
it is a conscious scan of knowing where the exits are located.
it is a wanting of quiet and stillness
inside all this (up)loaded aggression.
it is a particular kind of collaborated knowing.
bodies bend closer in fantasies without violence.
a genre of collected mundane details:
dishes in the sink
airport air thick with fancy perfume
the memory of water.
I study nothing, obviously.
I like that space
in between.
crowded spaces. public spaces.
being ignored in isolation.
strictly speaking, we think we know
what is happening
because we study history.
if we believe we are more manipulated today,
do we fulfill our own prophesies?
In three years and just shy of three months I intentionally curated one hundred hours of aesthetic meditation. For six thousand minutes, I listened and watched the ocean perform. The consistency of each unique breaking wave reminding me that this, too, is living. That doing the same thing over and over for no purpose other than feeling pleasure is the goddamn point. Time worth its exchange in salty kisses. I’ve written how empty landscapes are familiar, safe. Home. Blank page, empty horizon. Now, neither scare me.
31 August 2018
I respect the crash and appreciate the ability to pull back into myself. It is energy in motion. To swell. To release. To be seen. To be heard. To be so elegantly agitated. To retreat. To join. To rise. To start again. Already good enough.
Home is here—and out there. I wish to never lose my quiet roar.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
title is Dorothy Allison’s Two or Three Things I Know for Sure (1995)
Rochester, New York, Nathan Lyons, 1978, gelatin silver print
I want a revolution as reckless as cowboys with broken backs.
Throwing restraint to the western winds, a favorable direction,
& towards that edge where darkness is shaped into possibility,
I wait familiar in shy quiet impatient.
I want a revolution as prolific as chants for collective safety.
Born from burn scars so large you can see it from a distant
universe, a reminder we will never be in control so long as
money motivates our hustle for pretentious liberation.
I want a revolution as tender as loving in present tense.
An immediacy that respects our inherited kinetic energies.
Until then, I’ll gather productive & discover curious tensions
sensual as thunder replying to lightening’s transfiguring danger.
In protest and in wealth, I want a revolution that gives as much as it takes.
“writing…is a process of relying on immediate pervasive feelings, not an escape from them…” — William Stafford, Writing the Australian Crawl. pg. 88
I’M HERE FOR LUCK. Louis Wain (1926)
I haven’t found a way to say I love you that isn’t complicated, so I practice loving you every day. Sounds of terrorized children broke through all those hours of visual noise. Hope is a map. A place to begin.
The distance of decades doesn’t always make things quieter. Calendars are more form than function. I learned early and repeatedly that love must be earned, and value is measured by others. An intimacy of detachment.
Addicted to seeking approval is one way of saying yes unconditionally. Instead, imagine a private collection of silent hymns. These days, I take care to mend memories as a way to create acceptance. A public chorus swelled.
Broken into speculative practices, writing things down reinforces pleasure and importance in tandem. Together, through famine and fortune, what stands out is love. An oxygen where sacrifice is not born from competition.
“When someone tells us something, we don’t know how many versions they have tried out inside before the one we hear.” — William Stafford, You Must Revise Your Life
Paul Jenkins (American, 1923-2012), Phenomena Winds Meet West, 1976-78. Acrylic on canvas, 70.5 x 127 cm
It was nothing but ordinary how the day started. The sun crept above the horizon like any weekday likes to unfold. Yesterday a seismic shift happened — two degrees right to the center. Trees noticed the ambient vibrations immediately, then the birds. No one noticed the subtle ways computer grids had wiped clean negative balances and dropped zeros while spinning out complex equations for how to love beyond reflex.
It took seventeen years for scientists to confirm the shift occurred. Pundits had convinced the public that such a change could not occur simply because they had no imagination to the contrary. Scattered conversations slowly and remotely extended what had been idle reservations around the basics of grace as understood as time. It was a dramatic revolution. Men were not brave. We found their excuses strapped to the back of westbound bus seats.
We considered multiple ways to drown ourselves in the meanings of what we had known and what was now. Immediate and sharp like a broken tooth, we rejected regressive poetic frames. In some places, it became fashionable to sell boredom while others practiced local rituals that buried light. By all accounts, we now live immoral lives. Only the youngest birds have yet to learn not to take from the most fragmented rumors to make their shelters.
“But your pleasure understands mine.”
— Clarice Lispector, The Sharing Of Loaves
Betsy Eby (American, b. 1967), Rise, 2017. Encaustic on canvas over panel, 35 x 48 in.
at 39,000 feet clouds rose like mountains
fading to dark as the blushing sun set
then black as the thinnest winter ice
we learned to turn our wheels into those slick black icy slides
when done correctly, such surrendering was active evidence of a survivor’s effort
in spring, we planted rosemary to remember our deepest buried beliefs
we harvested fresh-picked bundles and revised our most shadowed secrets
like wanting nothing but distant empty horizons and bodies that do not betray
we sculpted altered thoughts and declared them working dreams
trusting that our shared wishes for a braver future were coming true
“And is is strange how experiences blend and enhance each other.” — William Stafford
22.10.2017 Berlin
It is not that what I know today is necessarily different from what I knew yesterday, or that I have replaced prior knowledge with a brand new extended spectrum of understanding. It is more subtle than a transaction, more gracefully defined as complexity. This feels like transformation. A shift.
Love fits into this equation as a multiplier. The critical variables that come next are a matter of routine, a particular and conscious genre. A ritual.
Tatiana Gorunov, SELF-SABOTAGE, acrylic & ink on panelWe found each other in an unwrapped state, a simple & delicate discovery. Inhabited defenses had worn thin from surviving years as compounded days. We did not dare admit how deeply we believed our working poor bodies had betrayed us. So we let touch carve its own messages. We found mutual influence in those scripts.
Weary from earning credits to fund a future not designed for us, we took respite from all that manufactured exclusion. We hustled accordingly. In reciprocated seduction, a feedback loop was internalized as a request: have we earned this?
Decades of surrender to such indulgent, as in generous, voices now finds a meditated willingness to forsake finding definitive answers from exposition. Today’s passing landscapes & their formidable distances no longer automatically produce the same fears. Illusions whose progression had previously enjoyed blending into a chorus of learned temptations. As new rituals envelope our evolving existences, like being witness to twilight’s ease, our time together has become dedicated privilege.
These shadowed elements, mostly past & some future, are their own repressed celebrations. It’s been a pleasure to give when so many took. We are tender & brave every damn day.
It’s familiar. A disguise as common as the East Bay Bridge wrapped in a nest of clouds. We learn early to reinforce reductionist tendencies into a path of least resistance. They deny rules have been written down. We witness endless unrequited anticipations.
Promises of love remain unfulfilled. Your acts of caring were abusive. An informant, linguistically speaking, is the expert of a community. When I tell you the sun broke the clouds, spread them, cracked them open I want you to believe me.
We harvested each other. Consent became an avalanche. Absorbing your urges felt like being wanted. It was a match. A pattern. Magnificent corruptions of circumstances. I woke up afraid and believed I was loved.
These edges are sharp yet relaxed as confidence.
My hand holds your fist. Repetition an arc.
Self-care is self-defense.
Isn’t history just repetition and accumulation of power and influence? This is about understanding why you feel so wronged. Don’t you know it takes the Sun and the Moon to make the tides? It’s also true that roaring cats don’t purr. In this specific instance, it is either roar or purr. There is no both.
Cities showed up 6-figures deep. A people’s definition of amazing. Folks are asking if this is another revolution for a problem with no name. Pre-conditions find themselves in dispute along with feeling safe, not comfortable, but safe. You do not have my permission to share this. Pussy is on sale.
Today we celebrate 44 years of codified privacy and personal (white) choice. An axis of origin. To be fair, there’s no standard agreement on how many simultaneous wars we are fighting. Drama should be reserved for love. The noise, the roaring noise, has been the most reliable of our tensions. Hair-triggering sensitivities. Isn’t it ironic?
Let’s hold each other with a tenderness we never earned.
I humbly confess I have no strategic solutions, today.
Tomorrow does not exist within our current embrace.
Messages were slow to be received.
Communications were tangled passing through enemy lines.
All arbitrary and always binding, like paper hearts.
Solicitous profit tied up with bright strings of gratitude.
This time of year pulls tension to the height of joy.
Shadows flash, sparkle even.
Conscientiously objecting is expression beyond fragility of emotion.
There’s a masculine way to do this or something more powerful.
Place bets on queerly stacked decks as panic breeds discos.
All this, and more unsaid, guides us like the promise of beginner’s luck.
Glory bound towards trust towards you towards truth.
Come back. Let’s fight.
If you are a private poet, then your vocabulary is limited by your obsessions.
— Richard Hugo, The Triggering Town
hedonism (the ethical position that pleasure is the ultimate goal and greatest good, and should be the central aim of all decisions made) by genis carreras
It’s a fact. Cycles sync. It is October, 2016. The word pussy is in our mouths again. Full and heavy bodied, it’s paired with a specific violence as naturalized as an inherited ownership tone. This is the fetishized frequency of law and order.
*** you’ve got to stack it so it’s stable – Low, No Comprende ***
So this is what whiplash from a mass capture of imagination feels like. A forced common image. Pussy, for now, functions as an ironic partisan anchor, while still maintaining its gendered significations.
What is the whole of this historical objectification of our parts? Patriarchal logic argues that this violence of disassociation is necessary and even desired. This detachment is inherent in our economic theories, consumer-based language, and mass-produced representations.
We learn, repeatedly, there are far more serious and urgent issues to concern ourselves with than ritualized gender-based violence. We are dismissed. We are told to question less and obey more.
*** underneath this hood you kiss, I tick like bomb – Perfume Genius, Hood***
We perform this idealized creed through a perpetual liturgy of demure expressions in a culture that protects mobs of high-volume denials. This contemporary shrill masculinity is socially recycled into discourses that tap into an idolization of individual perspective. For most, this illusion only creates isolation.
Manipulating the dark side of vulnerability isn’t a new strategy to win elections, or maintain control. What feels different this Presidential election cycle is the dredge of cultural material to mine and the hypervoyeurism that has been produced. Public and private boundaries are as unstable as our contemporary understanding of when virtual becomes reality.
As we bare witness to the misogyny that rages beneath all our sacred institutions, may the soundtrack to this ride to November include Magnet by Bikini Kill.
I’m keeping this advice on a loop: I’ve got the love that’s strong and not weak.
Christian Furr, That My Heart Should Explode with Tenderness (from the Juissance series), 2015 Inkjet with hand painting in acrylic with diamond dust on linen
Experts have named our environment “rape culture”
fueled by an economy that exports & imports incertitude.
Funny how even the state’s gospel won’t accept no,
even with a sovereign request,
another way fringed borders bleed reciprocity
thick as oil as war as water.
Desire can transform anything.
Corporeal physics as vim and vigor,
like soft kisses melting hard intentions.
It’s why embodiment alludes enlightenment
& landscapes matter when our eyes close.
Horizons become their own grounding binary.
Pressure is a gilded warning signal.
Jouissance its own casual experience.
How deeply our metaphors inform us
as angels, as deviants, as complicit.
Love is in here somewhere, or should be.
Summer, by academic and capitalist time, is over. The light, the light, the light shows phenomenal nominal change.
There are silences bestowed and silences unbecoming. We are taught we are broken: mind, body, spirit. This evangelical conservative belief that the future is not yours is an organized robbery of imagination and self-determination.
Conceptually, we must collectively conceive our own destinies.
just because they know your name doesn’t mean they know where you came – cat power
a first-class meal, august 13, 2016 7:48pm
I rediscovered grace through curated understandings
some spoken, explicit, but most often held in breath
in glances and in rhythmic exchange of metaphors.
A particularly classed communion.
Quiet clung to the lake’s edges
marred only by wandering hymns and mornings with thunder.
I thought about all those places that made us,
an acceptance of motion as hard-luck blessings and raptured devotion.
This is the tenuous nature of belief.
In effort, a maintenance of fallibility,
oh holy day: in haste, but with love.
__________________________________________
in haste, but with love – Raymond Carver’s closing in an unpublished letter to Bob Adelman December 13, 1987
The mountains found solitude,
spooning each other to hold their gaze
while hills white from not-yet-risen clouds
lay in contrast to the Bay warming blue.
Grateful for forgiveness and forgetting
time as construct, a gravitational force
wrapped around desire, momentum, abundance.
Absence has pulled your energy elsewhere,
away from me.
Every day we show our stories by waking
under cloudless skies as nests of nests
of birds clamor and inspire the cat,
a product of us: neglect and minimal care
unencumbered with material fancies.
All this, and things undiscovered,
guide our personal rhythms (fulcrums/hips)
like how our body’s most graceful state is to be at ease
not unlike that summer we moved across country
with every possession we assumed we would need.
“We need, each of us, to begin the awesome, difficult work of love: loving ourselves so that we become able to love others without fear so that we can become able enough to enlarge the circle of our trust and our common striving for a safe, sunny afternoon near to flowering trees and under a very blue sky.” – June Jordan
August 7, 2015
The truth?
I knew a long time ago.
I shouldn’t deny that I don’t practice conscious love. I do.
All those times when I said no.
All those times I said yes.
All those times worth was mine to know.
July 12, 2015 (photo by Atlee)
“Use the power of man. Use the word. Fuck. The word is love.” – Kim Gordon
some where over Oklahoma, February 2016
Overhead, the backyards had pools and trampolines.
A land of only oxbow lakes.
A land where delayed gratification is a religion.
A land where there is no sympathy for the devil.
Come prepared.
Always dress your best
for the world may end.
Nikki McClureThe days hum, a frequency (consistent).
Flashbacks are low-grade returns.
There is seduction in being loved
and always something you can learn
from an interruption.
A moment when clarity
finds you knowing.
This time of year the radiator sings at night. The gray mornings are carbon copies of Cleveland’s skies. Those years full of bravado that only darkness holds or youth demands. To the east, the pastel light spins out into easter yellows, baby blues, and softened ripe peaches.
I watched him dip his boots into the fountain, one at a time, muddied from the urban forest he was paid to curate.
When we talk about the work be explicit.
Do you care
enough?
We all have somewhere to be
someone to hold (ourselves mostly)
accountable for what happens today.
our days have been brighter
an optics, a behavior, of being awake
12-31-15 5:48pm
this year’s declarations:
* occupying neutrality is poetic nuance *
* embody love as deep as it can go *
* shame has subjective exchange rates *
* judge listening and justice as actions *
* what feels good and safe is happiness *
* it is ok to change your mind, to leave, to quit, to cry *
* apologies and forgiveness are patterns of endless appreciations *
