shriven

on love

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 22:47:00 -0400

if we are to shun that love,
why not this? where does
the deadening stop, the
cold fence end?
are not the fields and
wildflowers thronging sunwards
too many for our feet
to know? do not the grains
bending wind-blown stalks
all fall to the same ground?

farewell address to the future

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 02:44:41 -0400

goodbye future i am stepping
down and this will have to suffice
vis a vis our communication

you can’t muster the effort
to reply to even one email
or stop the ice caps’ melting

you still ignore the refugees
the torrents and bleached trees
like so many bodiless teeth

the coffee mugs collecting
on your desk are cold and moldy
and let me tell you this future

ruin doesn’t leave footsteps in the sand
only dunes on dunes on dunes

Freedom, NH.

Mon, 31 Dec 2012 21:21:41 -0500

Freedom, NH.

Snows like this catch you funny, like a blade of grass pushing through the city sidewalk where it...

Mon, 31 Dec 2012 21:17:17 -0500

Snows like this catch you funny, like a blade of grass pushing through the city sidewalk where it shouldn’t—maybe you expected it, maybe you didn’t, but there it is, minding nobody’s business but its own. They drive a wedge between you and the world that exists past the end of your nose, between your heartbeat and your breath. It doesn’t matter whether you knew the snow was coming, or have or haven’t ever seen this type of snow; here it is, and here you are in it, small like the pile of rocks half-buried in a snowdrift down past the shed. From the hill, you see the mountains, flattened into silhouettes, grey forms magnified by some trick of the light as it filters through miles of falling snow.

Photo

Thu, 27 Dec 2012 19:01:22 -0500

History

Wed, 26 Dec 2012 01:08:57 -0500

They salt the soil to spite the rain.
Only on paper is the site’s name
held, the memory of a people.

Their teeth sleep here, white, like
seeds inside pomegranate skulls,
skin red and tough and not yet

overripe, an invitation to remain wed
and buried in all the ancient strata,
the shields’ iron story unto the earth.

Dream: 9/3/12

Wed, 26 Dec 2012 00:46:35 -0500

Man in bearskin bear suit, face uncovered, on the side of the road, lined with dry high altitude golden grass and dry sparse reddish pines, a ridge perhaps, hitting a beehive at the end of a bent-over branch, and the bees are falling into a container he is holding in his other hand. “Get in there!” Looks at us in the car briefly. I notice his face isn’t protected. He is covered, except his face, in bees now.

I saw a beautiful person in the bookstore today. Dark eye eyeliner on and around her eyes, like...

Fri, 21 Dec 2012 02:35:00 -0500

I saw a beautiful person in the bookstore today. Dark eye eyeliner on and around her eyes, like small bruises. Black, but not heavy. Light. Like skin.

She was my age, maybe, but seemed more put together. Perhaps the makeup. Or the effects of the afterimage.

In line one person behind her, I waited. When she was done and stood a bodylength away to my left, I thought she was waiting for the woman behind her. But she wasn’t.

Maybe her standing there afterward meant something. Maybe her expression, hanging before my eyes like a retinal flare, was a reflection of the same pause, the same instant sense of recognition. Maybe I didn’t stop to look long enough.

I wanted to follow her and ask her number. But that couldn’t happen, not now.

Funny, the things a relationship brings. The sense of lost destiny, even when I never had the courage to follow it in the first place.

Photo

Fri, 26 Oct 2012 02:11:37 -0400

sand – fragment

Fri, 26 Oct 2012 02:04:35 -0400

always sand
in these parts
the camel driver says
he laughs in white
eyes lazy with heat
but without which no trail
singes the dunes
a line of imagined fire

sand says the other
we would not live but for
as a boat without the river
reeds without the river

Kochininako and the Witches

Sun, 21 Oct 2012 22:31:49 -0400

She drew the black bath of creation,
before hummingbird, or the western wind.
She spun the stars from crystals white and blue
as sunrise. She started their rotation.

The deer belong to her, and the sagebrush.
This valley is her valley, her road is
this road. Her footprints line the shoulder
where stricken animals wait for her kiss.

But the witches come, white like the poison
they bring to her with the promise of bliss,
and, forgetting the desert in a haze,
stumbling, numb, along the highway one night,

she drags a dead, half-glistening infant
still joined by the cord between her legs.

The Evergreen woods in Olympia, Washington.

Mon, 15 Oct 2012 02:57:59 -0400

The Evergreen woods in Olympia, Washington.

Notes and Komment

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 02:07:11 -0400

Mornings are cold again. Reed Lake reflects the branches of bigleaf maple against the waking sky, and gives us pause. We all know the rain is coming, that the three days of grey that visited President John Kroger’s inaugural manger came not bearing gifts, but warnings.

Already, the fifth week of classes has ended, leaving but two more before Fall Break. Time, we think, is a burning log. Gone quickly, it throws off enough heat to sustain us, leaving ashes on the floor, ashes which must be either ignored or dealt with. Most of us are too busy during the year to find a use for it, so it collects in buckets near our doors, waiting for attention, catching our eye when we leave in the morning and when we return from the street-lit gloom.

When the grey of the accumulating ashes is reflected in the sky, the rain will come, and the inaugural prophecy will be realized. Kroger will receive his baptism with the rest of the freshmen, despite his tacit refusal to write Hum papers with them, and the college will enter its hundred-and-first year.

Dream:

Sun, 02 Sep 2012 03:51:50 -0400

Scouting for resources; build tower in Argentina. Attempt to lower part of land at potential site with video game terrain tool bar. Build at another site; infiltrating enemy base necessary. Enemy based attack just as I arrive, blue lights bobbing on the tips of approaching weapons outside. Must quickly run to flying craft shaped like hang glider / fly. Fly to gas station in sky. Alex needs cigarettes.

Photo

Fri, 03 Aug 2012 15:04:00 -0400

waiting

Thu, 02 Aug 2012 21:00:00 -0400

somewhere, a window is open.
by the time you realize you know this
because the rain is clear in the air outside,
you are taken by the sound of her breath.

inches from the wall, she faces the room,
and you only incidentally, in her sleep
nothing more than an obstacle sharing the bed,
something to keep her from rolling onto the floor.

in quiet, she wears nothing so well,
and just looking at her you know
her skin would be hot, were you to touch it, but don’t,
only a kiss hoping she’ll wake up, but knowing she won’t.

Dageurreotype – for Alex

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 22:46:13 -0400

You walk through my door bleary-eyed, carrying
your soap and shampoo before you in a basket,
the lantern of a man seeking honest men.

The light of this sun is not enough to see by,
too often is it dimmed through the iron
slit windows of our room. You say you

came here for confirmation, but I catch you watching
water stains creep across the sky and know you came
only to try to see. Light filters through your camera and

glasses onto a stiff silver sheet. With these lenses
you receive the world: man in gas mask invites
apocalypse, jacketed girl stands at edge of cliff,

tree hanging from bridge burns like votive candle.
I hope that you see through the lie that dreams,
like hopeless ducks, die before they hit the reeds,

that yours does not already carry lead in its breast,
the arc of its fall predetermined, remaining only
to be captured in the photograph of a squinting boy.

the new mountain

Sat, 07 Jul 2012 13:12:00 -0400

the new mountain is part fire now
as the old mountain was part tree

you see the new mountain leaping
over the corpse of the old mountain
you feel the hot wind blow down

the lawn is dry
the car is ready
your feet on the concrete step
do not move

you are not ready to welcome
the new mountain into your life

but accept it as the sun
accepts the earth day after day

chain – fragment

Thu, 05 Jul 2012 20:45:47 -0400

my chain is a love wolfed to a dove
bleeding black gums on its fetters
and the hisses it snarls eat at the iron
until rust falls in clumps with the feathers

Photo

Tue, 26 Jun 2012 18:12:00 -0400