love, don’t make me a vessel
don’t make me your vessel, love/
you filled me, i filled you
we drank from each other/
you poured me out
i’m empty/
yet you ferment in me/
i know no peace, no piece
only drunken, unquenched thirst/
i need water
i search for |a| spring
I could not live in any of the worlds offered to me…the world of my parents, the world of war, the world of politics. I had to create a world of my own, like a climate, a country, an atmosphere in which I could breathe, reign, and recreate myself… That, I believe, is the reason for every work of art. The artist is the only one who knows that the world is a subjective creation, that there is a choice to be made, a selection of elements. It is a materialization, an incarnation of his inner world.
Anais Nin
Here she stopped and, closing her eyes, took a deep breath of the flower-scented air of the broad expanse around her.
It was dearer to her than her kin, better than a lover, wiser than a book.
[For a moment] she rediscovered the purpose of her life.
She was here on earth to grasp the meaning of its wild enchantment and to call each thing by its right name …
Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago
As soon as you are really alone you are with [the] God[head].
Thomas Merton
a man who knew my father befriended me
causing me to question the nature of my reality,
my history, its validity,
my possibly-false memories
— all, viewed through the lens
of the person
who had a vested interest in
indoctrinating me,
who preferred my naïveté,
under the guise of protectivity,
one question,
she begged,
so, do, or did, you love her?
*see title
such an artist,
[con, vincere]
he
[thinks he]
Continue reading “nah.”The First Time I Saw Joy Harjo
Chicago 2017
long, midnight, blue-black hair,
unmistakably hers,
melding into her pitch black jacket
an uninterrupted flowing river of velvet
she, a radiant silhouette,
like the haloed total solar eclipse that would occur later that year, in August
her regal face remains unseen, sustaining the mystery
then she rises like a sun to speak, and i am in her orbit
her first words: “i feel The Lake so very present in me.”
her voice ancient with the Earth in her throat
later,
my glisteny eyes meet her glisteny eyes,
i memorize her face, and her hands tattooed in black ink
she is dignity embodied, i think
she inscribes a protocol for me
in my book of hers, made from trees,
i give her a cord necklace
suspending glass vials of seeds
watermelon, corn, clover and milkweed from my garden in these forced-treaty lands, an onion field once, a portage between two rivers
a reciprocity for her words that seeded me, collaterally,
her poetry an eternal spring
watering my thoughts and words
i want to be worthy of the drink
wildly akimbo,
i miss or graze the
easy target who arrogantly loaded my guns
it was always better to
conceal carry
my own spells
and sharpshoot
with a silencer on my tongue:
fail, fail, fall
and patiently
watch the death notices
Continue reading “audio: reading a dream[t] poem: “dynamic rib””this poem was inspired by and derived from a dream that occurred
during the 03:00 hour on February 15, 2023
this poem is inspired and directly derived from a dream i woke up from/with
on February 15, 2023
and is an experiment of raw dreaming dialogue and internal dreaming monologue to express the dreamt experience in poetic format using minimal metaphoric phrasing and language
a familiar woman sitting on the couch
in your house asks me
how many hours do you have to yourself
i am perplexed: “all of them”
they’re all my hours.
the roof begins leaking
the one you fixed last year
the one i was reading under while she asked me about my hours
i noticed when the book
suddenly became smattered with rain drops
water drops or raindrops, what’s the difference
the book was a Rugrats coloring book
i don’t know what page i was on
but Angelica was waiting to be colored-in and one of the boys was saying “mommy” in a speech bubble
it must’ve been a thought bubble because the Rugrats, except for Angelica, are not verbal
My dog, Woody, wakes up and wants breakfast – not just breakfast, but a very expensive kibble prepared with gravy and a quarter cup of warmed pumpkin (his dinner is more elaborate – it’s offered like a buffet plate or poke bowl). He eats, goes outside to do his business and investigate a little, comes back inside, and stops and sits on the rug to think, “Where is my baby?”
He goes around the house on a search for it, and comes back with a flying squirrel toy, ready to play. He bumps the laptop off my thighs several times to engage me, and we play. Later, he lets me know he’d like to go outside; we head to the basement, but he doesn’t want to wear his coat – he knows dogs don’t wear coats, and he hides behind the full clotheslines; we come to an agreement, and he permits me to put the coat on him.
We walk, but I don’t want to go to the park, so we walk through the neighborhoods; but when Woody gets to an arterial street which borders the park, he stops, looks, then looks at me, and pulls, to suggest that we should turn south right there and go to the park – because he’s actually in the mood for the park.
When we finally arrive home after our very long walk, i dry his paws and legs one by one and also his undercarriage; he kisses my face in an annoyed gratitude; then, he lets me know he wants to be close – he has two comfy dog beds and my son’s vacant bed, but he wants to be near – and climbs into a deep club chair made for one – onto my lap – he weighs 65 lbs.
Continue reading “Sentience & the exclusive velveteening of pets and familiar animals”somebody, quick!
pinch me,
call me,
talk to me,
see me,
kiss me,
curse me,
feed me,
bathe me,
fuck me,
flip me off,
for god’s sake
I can’t tell
if I survived
that last
collision
Continue reading “bardo”what are the questions,
are they also the answers /
i’m so very tattered,
i’m well beyond worn/
i find i’m in jeopardy
of ne’er having been born //
September 2026 Addendum
Poet Nayyirah Waheed is back on Instagram -- and She is rightfully, and again calling out poet Rupi Kaur for anti-Blackness and Black erasure, and of the appropriation/theft of Her foundational insta-poetic style and of the blueprint of Her self-published, groundbreaking, first book of poetry: "Salt"
[ The Lethal Salinity of The Truth ] 2017
Her words are not for me
not about me
Her words are not for me
not about me
Repeat
am i, allowed
To float Her words aloud
To sink them in my mind
To lap them from the page
i accidentally swallow,
then gulp Her Salt words/
like when the surf breaks
and surprises an exhilarated,
Great Lakes girl
with a mouthful of seawater
in her first swim in the Ocean
Her words were not meant for me
Her words were not meant for me
Repeat
but
they quenched,
and drowned me,
anyway.
it’s mid evening
east of The Lake
and the night is dawning
like a second morning
the Full Moon’s light
in a clearer sky
gleams through the generous panes
of this blessed, old green house
February’s Snow Moon is glowing
in a familiar dance with her beloved Earth//
Sun, their invisible chaperone, is voyeur to their touchless, perfect tango
a family of four deer
mother and children, i think/
are gleaners here tonight
while i consume their Moon play
silent and sitting in the dark, i admire:
coat, tallow, hooves and warm flow of blood
is all that’s between them
and this howling wind and frozen ground
let me mimic their resilience, their integrity
i’ve been so weak, so broken this winter
a fractioned shadow, i am disintegrating, disappearing / my light given or grifted away
