“Clarity is of no importance because nobody listens and nobody knows what you mean no matter what you mean, nor how clearly you mean what you mean. But if you have vitality enough of knowing enough of what you mean, somebody and sometime and sometimes a great many will have to realize that you know what you mean and so they will agree that you mean what you know, what you know you mean, which is as near as anybody can come to understanding anyone.”

- Gertrude Stein

sum 'er

got that smother
sensation
& everything i touch
feels dirty cos it’s

all too hot. even

with bare feet i
can’t breathe. my
jeans suffocate
calves & thighs &

i am ready for my skin
to split open like
a hot vine tomato

too ripe, not picked
soon enough to keep
this heat from
tearing me open. or

me tearing me
open, just to
strip down after i’ve
stripped down to
last layers & still got
that squalid sweat sense

of fraying at all my dry
ends & ready to
catch fire.

burning bright

when the need to write
burns in your fingertips
instead of its usual tingle

& you pull up an empty window
& just go for it like you’re chasing
in a hard sprint after some wild thing
because the keys are always
too many seconds behind
your thoughts & over & over again
feeling the tail slip between your fingertips

so you collapse & catch your breath &
settle for describing the feeling
of a warm tailtip with the dirt-matted fur
in three colors & the residue that it left
on your fingers

because you wouldn't even
know what to do with that tiger
if you caught it
besides let it eat you because
you’re always letting tigers eat you,
regardless of whether or not
you’re still hanging on

you just want some sensation
a visceral mess of teeth & claws
mangling you into a red gullet

a craw for you to stick in
& describe & feel alive in &
get devoured so you can really
be one with the dirt & grass & trees
that you’re always too busy
telling to just stop
& be.

exorcises

these poems
are ghosts

head-hauntings
i have to stop
& exorcise
just to function

unpossessed,
like a normal
person & not
a writer

not some
brainpriest
splashing
holy water along
inner walls

repeatedly, all
hours of the day
just to keep
the spirits
of words from
physically
harming me

from breaking
all my inside
furniture,
from scaring
too many
visitors away.

morning

some days, like today, i feel electric beyond the ends of my fingers and toes. i get that internal resonance with everything around me and feel, for a moment, in tune with life. when the inner discordant wah-wah-wah of being just a little sharp or a little flat disappears and i get to just be, and being is good.

woke up an hour early today, long before my alarm. surprisingly, because i didn’t fall asleep last night until nearly 3 a.m., and i couldn’t go back to sleep. so, i took a nice long shower, took my time getting ready. put on some music and read a few good poems. makes me want to get up a bit early every morning. stop the rush and get inspired. any day started with poetry is a good day. any day when you’re not torn from the cocoon of your bed before you’ve metamorphosed enough to face a new day, is a good day.

feels like when i get a few moments to just get in tune with the day, the little irritations i normally face are given a proper proportion and thus become more easily disposed. i am not generally a morning person, but more and more lately i can find the appeal in it. which, fittingly, is the same appeal i find in the nighttime… people are still sleeping, and it’s quiet enough to think and do things, for myself, without interruption. navigating my way through the stillness that nestles around, and cups, inspiration. and i find my motivations and my reasons easier to reach.

i suppose i just prefer quiet before the day begins, or in general, as preparation for creating anything. it reminds me of that beautiful Ralph Waldo Emerson quote:

"What I must do is all that concerns me, not what people think. This rule,equally arduous in actual and intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."

it turns out that morning is a good time to get a good grasp on my independent solitude, and have it last me through the day.