Gedanken Eines Glueckskindes

Johanni has been at it again and its got some hard questions for you to sit down and answer.  Saddle up.  Check it out.

sine, curves

i was a giant there

but with shoes that didn’t fit.  walking the river

the man running his hands through his hair for the

last time. i was sitting on the clothes line singing

the songs that only lovers hear because

they wake up later than everyone else

roll over

kiss

bite lip

like sticking your

tongue into the end of a d battery like we

used to do to see who was the better boy of us.

the city is flat so people are leaves rolling

along on their bicycles tumbling forward in

orchard light eyes still buzzing with summer’s

honey be— do rae mi follow the thought

of you: it reminds me of the feathers laying in

these paths i take, of the way people

close their eyes while saying something

they really mean; maybe

part of us can’t bare to see

when love pours out of the holes

in our bodies like sap rising at

spring’s light in a coy smile, or from

the hand tracing the lines

of our face like for the first time

every time

is new

the way we rise in ourselves to

greet one another like the day

welling out of the earth’s heart

A Good Year Wrought

There is a place where the tantrum of

The 10,000 Moments and

The 10,000 Things collide.  

There is a home there,

one we’ve always known

not by its simple jointing (no nails) or

rough hewn cedar joists,

but by the feeling inside of it. 

It’s the place where the noises

are already filled with silence; it’s where,

even when everyone’s gone, we leave

the lights on anyways, because

every path that crosses once,

crosses twice. 

Standing at the End of the World

toes, brandung, fluster,

the way he breathed so deeply next to me,

as if to hold his name for another time,

as if to summon all that he was before this here, the shore

of himself, and

let it all soar low over him

like a gull belly over water, like

breath over skin. Then,

walking under clouds coming out of

themselves and talking about

children and how we used to be older

than we are now.  The great rush of life

sometimes feels acute--- the burning moment

of eye contact, the lapping water folding onto itself

like milk, or blood,

shadows of the birds on our eyes; roll over,

easy one, the smell of wet trees is upon you,

the sleep near the sky you’ve been dreaming of, the

dreams there that will return you back to this

soft loam of twilight where airplane tails

scratch the surface of a sky so well polished by the

sun.  Throw rocks as far as you can

into the dark to see if something sparks; play

in the branches, call yourself the quiet one

who takes his shoes off at every entry.  Show

yourself this at your own door:

be your own ritual tonight, and

retire early to the prayer weaving itself

around the back of your neck where

all the little hairs are still standing up

from being at the end

of the world.  

2014 Tastes

Here are the albums that I listened to the most this year, broken down into two tiers of most-listened-to/awesome-ness. How things have changed... Enjoyage!

Tier I:

The War on Drugs-- Lost in the Dream

Spoon-- They Want My Soul
Blood Orange-- Cupid Deluxe

The Antlers-- Familiars and Hospice

Simon and Garfunkel-- Old Friends

Grouper-- Ruins
Van Morrison-- Astral Weeks
The National-- Trouble Will Find Me
The Weather Station-- All of It Was Mine and What Am I Going To Do With Everything I Know
Leonard Cohen-- Songs of Leonard Cohen
Wilco -- Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost is Born

Destroyer-- Kaputt
Kanye West-- Yeezus
Neil Young-- After the Goldrush

Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young-- Deja Vu
Drake-- Nothing Was The Same
Bill Callahan-- Dream River

Tier II: 
Cat Stevens-- Greatest Hits
Earl Sweatshirt-- Doris

Neutral Milk Hotel-- In An Aeroplane Over the Sea

Frank Ocean-- Channel Orange

The Anatomy of Frank-- Pangea

Hundred Waters-- The Moon Rang Like a Bell

Recently...

wondering what the best album ever is

Bike Porn Round II

Remember this this?

Remember this:

Can't Put it Down

This is so, so beautiful.  She made it in southwest Portugal.  Crickets and the microwave, too.

"ABSOLUTELY"

there and back

Prayer Yen

Only
when the wind rattles the tree
do seeds fall
hair tumbles, shoulders;
leaves, the road--
roll, catch, and they break like
glass underfoot.  It is fall.  I say to myself
that it is okay to wait
for what to do with the rest of today
indoors, watch bread in the oven womb
swelling and sunflower seeds pop
from the crust
I only wanted to see
if I could do it,
face it.

The streets are fairly tales only when
roving their nipping air; I
see their too many breaths
sticking against the windows that I
peer into--
their afternoons and the hot water
for tea or coffee with
animal frequency, shriveled
orange peels curling
into themselves like
frightened worms and
"the cake has been served
and did you like it?"
Trying to fit in but the key
in the door always in the door a
sore tooth turning and turning and
from in there the rain runs itself
sideways into the mouth of an
earth one would never see.
The leaves might as well be licked
down for good.

In Navajo mythology,
rain is the sun's sperm.
These days, there's no dance
for birth, regeneration, death,
until there's true fear under our feet--
the snake in the dream bites
two eagles making love in free fall
don't make it
maybe
our wind couldn't
catch them.

They used to look at the sky
and see Gods.

What do we see?

What it Takes to Build a Car

he doesn't eat breakfast and
he is losing his hair,
he bets on soccer matches during the breaks and
he became terrified of having children and death at age twelve,
he wears a t-shirt that reads "blaze kush" and
he has 14 siblings,
he wants to become chief and
he likes his beer cold,
he wakes up at 3:30 every morning to get here on time and
he laughs deep from within his big belly,
he spent four years in prison for brutalizing a police officer and
he promises her that she is the girl of his dreams on the phone,
he still lives at his parents place and
he stopped drinking but not smoking,
he walks with a bit of a limp and
he has a tongue piercing,
he lowers his head and does the work all while he is learning
to fit in.

September

they have been

naming this

season after

the man i see

picking the apples

at the crown of my

family tree; naming

it with the

quivering hand

of those who have

spent whole

afternoons of their

childhood staring

into the sun,

and now see

a small black hole

boring into

everything they

hold in their

sight (those who know

there is no going

back).  that man bites

into the crisp

apples of this my

tree and crunches

them deliberately like

rocks--- they were

made for him and him

only.  That man

wears slacks with a

tear along the

left leg from a dog

that caught him

stealing apples from

another tree.

the waters are churning. 

the waters are coiling as if

someone had just

left them so
how to enter them?  
and

because they didnt ask for
names when we

applied for this

world, how to

go about introducing oneself

to the lights falling

and fading all around,

those burning

out to a certain

stillness i see

in the black dots on

the eyes of those leaving

the water right

in front of me