poornamadah poornamidam

That is whole, This is whole

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Wasted Germs

“I feel like I’ve been fighting Bowser for fucking four years.

It’s time to save the damn princess already!”

M U S T

B U S T

His ways were appealing and I knew they’d overcome once I learned. I claim not to have learned, but this itchy skin’s finally finding seams. I want to further far far away with none but portable shelter, a sheaf, perhaps some flame, and a bowl to fill with compassion. Feed on none but compassion and knowledge, which when true is compassion anyway.

Wallowing here like a pig is not a choice. Resting eyelids – resting any body when not time isn’t a choice. The choice must only be to shed all that prevents me from knowing and behaving in truth. home isn’t here yet – it calls from that vast land on an appropriated map (perhaps. who knows home until it’s reached)

FUCK these CONFINES this bed does not SERVE

it does not SERVE to wake to an alarm and look at premediated prescription pages

it does not SERVE to strike any sort of balance

And I have the means this time around to renounce.

Today I cannot settle and the reigns shannot be drawn. Today is buzzing from inner-outs and needs in energy discover. Every day is this, this need to expand into Brahman conscious STRIKING past all chains and weird misfigurations! ILLUSION!

craziness

keeping secret all but my tent and the locks of my hair on dirt ground. Fire. Not going in the name of colonialism. Not going as a means to oppress but hoping to shed all these associations – to shed my very skin itself and every attached history and label, to shake out from this dried up husk!! EMERGED! There are no consequences to finding bliss! THE CONSEQUENCE IS ONLY IN REMAINING HERE, fighting Bowser until I die of bored tears. Remaining. Still. Stagnant. A waste of a rebirth and meaningless use of energy. Doing nothing but inserting trace minerals, toxins of sham or at the very best breaking relatively even. But not absorbing for others.

None of this can I say is for others, nay-

this is false. my practices and these learnings are. And they prepare me to travel forth if I am patient. I will dedicate the next 3 months, sure, to study and preparation and loss (which is gain).

And then I’ll go.

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Recurring, Revamping, Relapsing

I have much else to say and observe. Things about poetry. About the billions of sounds leaves make underneath the plod of my feet, about their melding colors and about the way I saw a pile of yellow ones overflowing a Boston trashcan today [A safety liability?]. I have things to say about tingles. Air. The tiny hairs inside my nostrils that shiver because of leaves, because of far off fires. I have things to say about light waves and the taste of oxygen. Doctors. Men with crutches and cups and women with ponchos who flap their lips at cars and how it must feel when they drive past. I have things to say, always. Things to write.

I keep waiting for this to end so I can write them, do them, be them. The trick is writing, doing, and being in the midst of all of this. During. I am going to try it. I’m going to try to be happy with the way things are. I am going to rearrange my mind and my energy and my time and life so that I am. God help me.

 

[Me, writing this. Nov. 13, 2008]

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Leland Blue

There once was a boy

who wore a hat whene’er he was working

who made drinks one by one.

He’d snatch the ticket, which grumbled up from the machine, and hang it loosely

casual

between two slates of metal.

He’d grind the carrots – separating them juice from pulp from soul and spraying their last stingy hurrahs over upside-down glasses resting on rubber mats.

He’d blend the mangoes.

He’d steam the milk

taking care, when a gallon emptied, to crush the container and rinse it with the steamer,

tip just inside the lip of the bottle

dribbling hot water all through and rinsing of remnant and future stench.

saving future trash collectors from rot bath –

one less un-rinsed gallon of old milk to worry for.

 

This boy wore his hat to work like told

and for every ten drinks he made

he made one for himself, too.

a bubbly concoction just tinged with a reminder of fruit

to offset the taste of bitter fermentation (that never was fully masked).

 

With every ten drinks, there’d emerge a guffaw

or a burst of affection

To kiss a waitress on the cheek

To proclaim worldly excellence

To tell a girl she was beautiful or to remark on her efficiency.

 

So when the hat came off,

he’d look younger and be dressed in colors

and a bemused smile would plaster one half of his face

(for you see, he’d had an uneven grin

laying just below the flare of mismatched nostrils.)

A grin who half of which always seemed to be rather a grimace instead.

But the hat disappeared into his bag

and traded for the helmet to a bicycle, which he’d clutch in his hands

or place next to him on a wooden booth

as his hands busied lifting a clear golden glass to his lips

or a bottle.

With every sip first he’d sure up with his words

and spit them out

then fumble for them, wanting to shove them back where they’d been born from.

 

He’d speak of pretty girls,

the ones he admired for their looks and sweet demeanors.

He’d pine for interesting boys,

the ones he wished he was himself.

The girls he wanted. The boys he wanted to be.

And he never said an unkind word for anybody.

 

But the way half his face froze to a grimace

and how he was so eager to sip through his day –

he never accepted when his hand on a woman’s knee was encouraged.

“It won’t be good,” he’d concede, or

“I’d rather drink alone tonight.”

 

He’ll drink alone, and crawl deep in to the wrinkles made on one side of his mouth,

the incurable downturn of his lips on the right side

he’ll curl up like a frog or a fetus and let the crescent of his forlorn forced dimple caress him like a hammock

feeling held in some sadness

and taking some sick comfort there, sweetly in the dark.

his hands in paint and his hat nowhere to be found.

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Hip Hop Needs More Women

KRS ONE: “I am not just saying this because you [a woman] are asking the question, this is my real answer: More women. More women. Not just emcees or b-girls, but women taking control of hip-hop. Let me be culturally-specific- hip-hop’s women should teach hip-hop’s men how to speak to them. Because when we learn how to speak to you, we can learn how to speak to the whole business world. It’s not just about respecting you…it is…but it’s deeper than just respecting another human being. Everytime you degrade a person, you degrade yourself, because you are standing next to that person. You can’t diss a person, and not diss yourself…I should say ’she’s a queen.’ And what does that make me? A king. So now at the end of the day, what’s missing in hip-hop? Knowledge of self, that should only come from women. I know that sounds feminist, but that’s real talk.

[Check it: feminism is real talk.]

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Ode To An Artichoke

The artichoke

of delicate heart

erect

in its battle-dress, builds

its minimal cupola,

keeps

stark

in its scallop of scales.

Around it,

demoniac vegetables

bristle their thicknesses,

devise

tendrils and belfries,

the bulb’s agitations,

while under the subsoil

the carrot

sleeps sound in its

rusty moustaches.

Runner and filaments

bleach in the vineyards,

whereon rise the vines.

The sedulous cabbage

arranges its petticoats;

oregano

sweetens a world;

and the artichoke

dulcetly there in a gardenplot,

armed for a skirmish,

goes proud

in its pomegranate

burnishes.

Till, on a day,

each by the other,

the artichoke moves to its dream

of a marketplace

in the big willow

hoppers:

a battle formation.

Most warlike

of defilades-

with men

in the market stalls,

white shirts

in the soup-greens,

artichoke field marshals,

close-order conclaves,

commands, detonations,

and voices,

a crashing of crate staves.

 

And

Maria

come

down

with her hamper

to

make trial

of an artichoke:

she reflects, she examines,

she candles them up to the light like an egg,

never flinching,

she bargains,

she tumbles her prize

in a market bag

among shoes and a

cabbage head,

a bottle

of vinegar; is back

in her kitchen.

The artichoke drowns in a pot.

 

So you have it:

a vegetable, armed,

a profession

(call it an artichoke)

whose end

is millennial.

We taste of that sweetness,

dismembering scale after scale.

We eat of a halcyon paste:

it is green at the artichoke heart.

– Pablo Neruda.

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Thoughts.

I haven’t felt like writing these days past. Or creating anything of significance, besides a mound of stretched faces full of wrinkles and squints squeezed and rolled between my palms. And that was a fleeting want last night, banished by the realization that art costs money. And I don’t really “get” money enough to know whether I’m able to spend it on clay these days.

Grays.

I’m finding things out slowly, unraveling, winding out like yarn in the way Kant postulated was grounds for this universe. I’m finding that I hold myself back. I’m finding that I’m often balanced on some plane between reality and imagination and unclear on what’s worthy of belief.

A friend wrote me a letter this week. In which he informed me that I’m going to miss out on a lot of love in life because I don’t give myself over. But I do give myself, just in doses. I am honest and I am real. He criticized that I don’t give out love fully. and it’s true –

Until recently I hadn’t come across anyone I’d be willing to do that for [and scare me shitless now the possibility is there]

Anyway, I haven’t felt like writing much. I didn’t know what I’d have to write about

maybe

the ghosts of leaves that smear in auburn shadows on the sidewalk, pressed there first by a breeze then by some moisture which clung them to the stone. Ground in again by the soles of who knows how many shoes and eventually disintegrated into these magick autumn specter’s.

Or I could write about the mystery fruit that hangs from the tree on Prospect street-

baby lychee Christmas ornaments, round pink spindles tender to the touch and velveteen. I can’t resist picking one every time I walk by – so barely clinging to the branch that it nearly volunteers to drop into my hand and the sound it makes is a quiet rip of firm balmy meat as I tear it in half and observe the peach color and moisture innards.

Or what of the woman I saw two days ago, as I sat outside Cafe Luna in bright fall.

Two children with her, one about 4 and the other I’d guess around 2. The younger was climbing on a chair and he fell straight over it, onto the concrete below. She yelled his name and rushed to help him up from the ground. He starts to cry. Standing him upright, a bright red smear of blood blossomed onto his forehead. The woman SCREAMED. She picked up the child and put him into the carriage, needing to go. Telling the other child to follow, she began running with the carriage in one direction, it was clear she had no destination she just needed to move. Another woman chased after her and told her there was a fire house just across the street.

I am sitting here, thinking this is the last thing I want to witness right now. I can’t handle this right now. I’m pushing it to the periphery of my thoughts as everyone around me rubbernecks agape.

The woman runs back towards me, the firehouse to my rear. She is shouting continuously and nonsensically. She is sobbing. I look at the hurt child in the carriage and it is plain as day to me that he is fine. He’s cut his forehead and his cheeks are stained with tears, but he is fine. She runs into traffic with both children. Someone shouts that they’ll be hit by a car. Over in the firehouse, she SHRIEKS at the top of her lungs that she needs help she SHRIEKS and SHRIEKS and her crazed desperation reverberates off the open garage walls all around us. I close my eyes and turn it all off.

It’s this kind of emotional self-protection that I’m not sure I should be engaging in.

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[under a cushioned sandal on my feet]

A cherry crushed on the sidewalk

and a chorus of Spanish in the background.

Its flesh softly flattening under the ball of my sandal,

Emitting a sound like the rare puff, or POP of a small

bubblegum bubble

-wilting- but thicker.

Popping like a bubble full of marshmallow fluff and crisp

spring

salad

mix.

At the orange line in Chinatown,

every language but English being uttered around me.

Not for lack of English-speakers but perhaps

the English-speakers stay silenced.

Non-sociable.

Anyway, the cherry POPPED

under my sandal and gave way to a subdued explosion.

That deep, mauve-ish moody color

a melody

rich treachery and indulgence spreading out beneath it in a heavy ink cloud of nectar,

swilling with the July rain.

A stem, strong and capped,

reaching, angle-stretching forth –

Standing strong like a sword above the speared carnage of the body of the bleeding fruit.

A crimson cadaver.

Fresh. Flesh.

Sweetening and saddening its cool, sopping and indifferent basement of cement.

Spanish floating all around

– song for this romantic war scene.

A gloried, sorrowed death.

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Blotchy Spots

I’ve got a strange sweat starting and my insides are cheese. Processed white pasteurized American cheese, the forced chemical kind that never comes in a wheel. Never full circle – too many skipped steps.

My face isn’t my face. There’s a clog in the bathroom sink. I don’t want to wear makeup don’t want to wear makeup today I want to keep the flaws, cradle, and hold them gently but I have a feeling I won’t have the strength. Today.

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Happy Equinox itsmagick.

e-qui-nox [ee-kwuh-noks]

– noun

1. the time when the sun crosses the plane of the earth’s equator, making night and day of approximately equal length all over the earth and occurring about March 21 (vernal equinox or spring equinox) and September 22 (autumnal equinox).

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