the human fur is burnt

I wanted the fire to rise off of its keeper and spit up its fury onto the cliffs
of their shoulders.  I wanted their trance-like curiosity to make the shape
of gray smoke and puff up the sacs of their lungs while they choked on
the swamp of their voyeurism.

I’m the magic and the mundane, naked and dishonest, I am knife and bladed
spine.  I hold the attention of the virtuous and empty.  I break the will and block
the path of the sovereign.  I suck up the soft earth, pulling in  the meat of seal,
shellfish, and sheep.

I spear the crowd.  Their heavy eyes close—hypnotic coil, dance, dark, dense,
food for fire is the oil of hair—the human fur is burnt.

It crumbles like an antique September snow.

for ReadWritePoem Prompt #90

Together, with the palms of my hands and the intelligent moon, we drew the outlines of horses in the dirt and watched them balloon up and grow skin and muscle.  We cut them with knives to be convinced of their possession of blood.  Then we ate our conjured horses.  It was savagery in its purest form.  Grow your food, I tell my moon, bleed you food, my moon tells me.  The pores in the palms of my hands sprouted flowers that fell over limp towards the ground to get tangled in the teeth of the horse skull.  The black and white petals swept over a puddle of fresh mucus that had leaked from its nose when it fought us and our knives.  The sound of our grinding teeth could be heard for miles.  the sounds of our savergy can be heard thousands of years into the future and the past.

The bone i found  is from the lower half of her body.  It’s covered in dust.  I wash it clean.  I add it to a large bowl of other bones. Some from her body, some from other bodies.  Some bones are teeth.  Some bones and fake bones, stolen bones from the hips of museum dinosaurs, some are from the jaws of mermaids and large fish.  I arrange the bones together.  Fusing fish with fawn, dinosaur with deer, human with hyena.   I smear my sweat on the monster.  I wait for it to produce heat.  I listen for the cracking sound of new bone growing.  I hide and reemerge.  I find it healthy and fat, dripping and organic, I find it alive and large, animal and plastic.  My science awake and conscious with its own beating heart.  Bone breeds a baby.

mime twin

we gave the earth a worn down feeling like being rubbed all over with the cream of the apocalypse.  We tarred and feathered the surfaces of the lakes and oceans.  the water boiled underneath its new skin.  my twin is a mime, silent, and owner of conjoined twin dogs.  with her soundless mouth she tells me we need to leave and get to higher ground because the water, angry in its encrustation is becoming hot and she can tell the difference between the natural heat of the earth and the fire of a vengeful element tossed out of balance.  i abandoned my tar and feathers and told my mime twin to leave her dogs.   she mouthed, “the wind will eat them” and i told her, “no, the wind will feed them” then we left for higher ground.  When we reached higher ground we saw the ocean below us burst out of its feathery tar crust, look around for its captor, make violent waves in confusion, then settle back down flat and peaceful and cool and liquid.  and on the beach the wind that had been bullied by the waves was carrying on its current small beads of the juice of pear into the mouths of the dogs.  my mime twin mouthed to me, “the wind is eating them” and i said, “no, the wind is feeding them”.

For ReadWritePoem Prompt #89

another project is nearing completion.  much to be excited about.  may take several weeks to a few months to finish.  must put all my energy into it.  hope you check it out.  will post it here when it’s done.

We’ve been looking for ways out of this dark hole.
Together we clawed at the earth until our fingers bled.
I left a tooth in the dirt after biting into it.
I want to leave this underground dampness.
I want to experience the surgery of the surface of the earth
And not watch myself get poked by bladed worm after bladed worm
And the moles, and blind snakes killing ants and drying the crumbles around them
I want the stars in the sky the fall into me
Slice up the seedbed and cut raw
Diamonds do damage when the rags tied around them start to weigh them down
We’ve been gnawing and clawing again.
At the roots of trees.
Sucking their oxygen until leaves die of starvation
And the tree dies.
And the roots uproot after whipping me with their vengeance
I was greedy and it stung
However long we’ve been bruised and bloody down here is of no importance
I want the game to cycle
I want the land to flip over
The rabbits will eat the fruits of inverted trees
I want the land to come to me this time.
I’m not going to it.
We’ll make a stain on the process of things.
Advert our attentions from the proposed laws
And the willingness of the buried and the dead and the helpless and sick
Will grow downward into the sweat of the rocks.

I think obsessively.  About harmful things.  Long spiny things full of metal and salt.  I wish I’d stop thinking.  I’d wish the long windows of the earth would close to me and nothing would leak in for me to considerer.  But surely the clouds with clowns strapped to their moist tops riding them like cattle would pass through the glass and I’d ponder the unreal and psychotic blues of the pearl curled around the grain of sand.  I’ve been in love with my mind for six whole weeks now.  I don’t love anything else but my mind.  I like the way it bends towards substance and playful feet.  I like the way it stretches into my stomach because it’s hungry and my mind is smart enough to know where the food is, even if it’s chewed up and mixed with acid.  My mind doesn’t care.  It like food in a dull pooling wasteland.  My mind takes a bath in the rut.  It rots next to the rotting things.  I wish to know your clan.  Your hand that wipes the curls away like ropes on a thin line on the forward.  I love your beam, your lightning stream.  I can’t regress.  I can’t always forgive the un-loyal.  They went away to bite at the ankles of false love that hung like a loose bandage over their loneliness.  I hate the way I cleansed their wounds and they repaid me by not listening to the beating drum of health.  I beat my own drum.  I carried a collapsed soul on my back for six weeks.  I cleaned its teeth.  I buried it underground.  I told a story.  I folded the pavement.  Hard sediment melted in my hot hands when the heat came to me and frayed at the edges of everything I touched.  My mind molds the blanket of this earth and I saw around the corner two spools of thread.  I tied it to my thumb and ate a ripe banana while a rose petal tickled me between my toes.

I smelled the apocalypse coming and I ran like a rat with pearl in her mouth.  I smelled the apocalypse coming and I ran like a rat with copper in her mouth.  I smelled the fire coming and I ran like a rat with wire through her tongue.  My elephant waits for me next to the door marked july in red.  My elephant waits for me to open the bunker door marked july in red ink.  I am a rat with pearl in her mouth.  I open the door.  I shove in the fat of my elephant then I take the rest of her body and throw it in after the fat and I know I will stitch her up when I close the door marked july in red.  I smelled the apocalypse coming and I ran like a rat with metal in her mouth.  I’ve got metal in my mouth.  I sleep in the fat of my elephant.  I am warm.  I smell the dust and fire in the air.  I wait.  I gnaw at my elephant.  she gnaws at me.  we bake and boil.  we steam.  I’d love a story right now.  I’d love a spoonful of milk.  I’d love a river.  I’d love a terribly long joke.

wired science video with anne wojcicki and linda avey

new york times slideshow with photos by Patrick Gries