And You See How An Animal Dies

dug into the soil of gold and silt, broke the nails she could never have. work and coffee. no work,
no work. no coffee.

his map, inaccurate, his compass, misguided. pyrite and buffalo chips. buffalo shit. the bald
white men drive carts, the buffalo roam, and the women, the women, the women take their
hats off at the shore. ducks are on every menu. candles and napkins included, free of charge.

his map, scrunched, wet, buried somewhere in san diego. misguiding again. misguiding again.
she's just a friend, she's somebody's boyfriend. she's somebody's best friend, she's somebody's.
somebody's, somebody's. she's somebody's somebody's. her corset never fit, he never saw it on her.

honor your guise, guys move in on movies, like zombies to a flame: they'll never feel the blue,
the darkest hurt, blue like a lighter, blue like the crossed father's daughter at four in the morning.

honor your guise, wise or holy, he than thou, she said, she said, said she, she said, holier than thou
she said, shed, she did, she did shed, so many shedding. chameleons and rings, babies and things
that honor their hearts, like limousines and how the liars depart. same as the next, honor the guise, no, the heart. liar by earlobe listening, earlobe piercing, unwise, he said trusting, never lies lies. honorable guise.

half of one: dinner and a fiery lamp, no magic yet.
one: skee ball and a mouse, dinner and a movie, carnations carnations.
two: buried treasure, a death cab and sea foam riding her outfit, a guise.
three: colors, colors, colors in air. colors, colors, colors in air. touching -Japanese showing.
four: buffalo roaming. hiking rain, flowing shore of wealthy duckling. cold, cold outing.
five: missing mostly. crafting his history, her story, laughing, a movie. touching, touching.

-and when there are dreams collapsing like a lung
breathing on a single side of your body, struggling
to swim to the top. ghostly avenues. ghostly lovers
loving in curtain lighting, the house was small. her
breasts were round, his chest inhaled, his chest in-
hailed like clumps of ice. cold were his shoulders.
he found a way to warm them, but she had been
buried in the weather of it all. the weather of it all.

Music to My Ears

Grazia, severo, moderazione, fis,
ebollimento, l'istesso, subito, su,
rigoroso, riposo, nervoso, dis,
cadenza, caloroso, mestamente,
loure.

Clay

I am clay.
Hard clay.
I am
leaning
clay.
I am clay,
leaning
away.
You dug
a whole.
I am clay.
I am

unfilled,

hard, leaning

clay.

You're a Boomerang, You'll See

I woke up, looked out our roomwide windows and saw a white fog rolling down Berkeley Hills. I opened the door to my Arctic kitchen and poured a bowl of Honey Bunches of Oates. When I returned to the room it began to rain outside. Berton had canceled our jog. I figured. Rain muddies trails in the hills. I turned on my computer, grabbed my note pad and wrote down some ideas for an upcoming essay. I'm torn between Joyce and Eliot. I told myself that I'd probably write about how both discuss the concept of a separate "universe," one that doesn't belong to their characters in their poems and tales. Shan turned on the Cleveland v. Orlando basketball game and I watched some before making lunch. After eating I grabbed my bag and caught a bus to ZeeZee Copy. There's an upcoming Roll 'n Shoot tournament that I have to make copies for. I walked over to Tully's coffee and spoke with Mark, the manager and he promised that Tully's would donate free coffee coupons to the event. I'll visit Cafe Milano tomorrow. Free Speech Cafe let me post a flier for the event on their poster board. I called my Mother, read David Sedaris' "Man Walks into Bar Car," then left. It rained the entire time I was out, but it wasn't bad. Berkeley rain generally crashes down on people, collapsing on your shoulders like water balloons, but today the rain was more like a heavy mist.
Before I left Free Speech Cafe, I looked out over the glade next to the Valley Life Sciences Building on Berkeley's campus. The air was white and damp. I could have close my eyes and thought that it was snowing.
You won't leave my mind no matter how hard I try to push you out.
I returned home and began rereading my personal essay for my Creative Writing, Racism Course. I'm writing about the topic of race in the family. I'm reminded of Michigan, 2006. What now seems like ages ago.
Ramen and a chicken sandwich for dinner. Chai at this very moment. I think I'll begin my Sonnet that's due Thursday.

Make War

Our love is dead but without limit,
like the surface of the moon,
or the land between here and the mountains.
Well it is not these hiding places that have kept us innocent,
but the way you taught me to just let it all go by.

And so we've learned to be as faithless,
stand behind bulletproof glass,
exchanging our affections through a drawer.
And it was always horribly convenient,
and happening too fast.
You should count your change before you're even out the door.

Well yes, you should,
but please...

Return, return to the person that you were.
And I will do the same,
Cause it's too hard to belong to someone who is gone.
My compass spins,
The wilderness remains.

But once too often, I've retreated into the depths of my despair.
I built a barricade to block you on the road.
But standing there with all of my possessions
piled higher than a house,
I felt closer to you than you ever would have known.

So let each tiny acts of charity
be common ground on which to build
a monument to commemorate our times. And though you say you've found another
who will surely speed you on your way.
Don't let the forest grow over that path you came there by.
But you will, so...

So hurry up and run to the one that you love.
And blind him with your kindness.
And he'll make war, oh war,
On who you were before.
And he'll claim all that has spoiled in your heart.

Now I tell myself I've mended under these patches of blue sky.
There's still a few holes that let in a little rain.
And so it's crying on my shingles.
My floorboards moan under my feet.
The refrigerator's whining,
so I've got reason to complain.

But I am not gonna bless you with such compliments,
some degrading psalm of praise,
like the kind that converted you to me so long ago.
Because the truth is that gossip is as good as gospel in this town.
You can save face but you won't ever save your soul.
And that's a fact.

So hurry up and run,
to the one that you love.
And tie him up in your likeness,
and he'll become, become,
oh, the prisoner I was.
And know all that has spoiled your heart.

He'll know all that has spoiled in your heart.

So hurry up and run,
to the one that you love,
and blind him with your kindness,
and he'll make war, oh war,
on who you were before,
and claim all that has spoiled in your heart.
Yeah, he'll claim all that has spoiled in your heart.

-Conor Oberst

Overbaked Ovenbaker

Ode to pale tongues and the two sliding
across from one another accomplish. You're
a dish only warm by
now, and you're not
relished, nor do you comply,
nor do you aspire unknowingly. I can
only look at the cold plate for so long before I send it back and forget
about it's indistinct smell: soapy
bubble pear and shampoo. Food,
food, food is all
you are and do. The oven alarm's bound to whistle,
and when it does, maybe then the lemon
cake baked in forgiveness won't taste like bitter
lemon, but like the sourness of spoiled cherries.

Content with suspicion rather
than your childish vernacular poisons
the well of wishful thinking; only that rock
container never held enough
fluid to know
it was holding anything worth lost dimes
and nickels,
flipped from faithfully fattened
thumbs. Forgiveness overflows bountifully
out of other wells like water from a geyser, when
yours is dryer than dry,
wider than wide,
and dyed in prior thoughts
like friends letting friends
stumble into a car drunk.
A kiss is a kiss is a kiss is a kiss is a kiss is a kiss
and yes, oh yes, hiss like
the scent of rusty
lusting ruse. Meanwhile I'll look
under a matured yew to find
ingredients. I'm sure
there's a recipe in the bark
wood. The core,
surprisingly damp inside.
I look around anxiously
when I know better. And I know I know better
than this: "it needs more time."

Wild is the Wind

Wind. What do we know about it? Where is it from? Where is it going? Some love it, it's gentle with them- carries coolnes on hot days, fuels the cold night's fire. Others hate it, it ruins their hair, its howl causes terror. It's everywhere and in everything, with everyone and with no one... I want to be everywhere and with everyone, but at the same time love solitude. I don't understand myself, let alone anyone else; it's difficult to think of yourself as wind, it's a struggle with the irreparable and reveling in carelessness. It's a thousand "why's?" It's a million wishes and aspirations. A lover called me "Wind." From that moment I knew my name. When you understand your true name, it gets easier-

-Sasha Belyaeva
(excerpt from Brenda Hillman's "Piece's of Air in the Epic")

Five and Seven, Three and Thirty-One, and a Red Calculator in My Brain

In seven minutes, I am away
from the only thing that could
make me smile at the moment.
I decided to come and it was
poor. I decided to invite and
it was poor also. I'll have you
know that I'm going to burn
everything because it's a
lot better than staring at
false hope, hearing a joking
voice, playful and hollow,
talking from a mouth
I've never known. Grow
grow and grow a garden
plant tomatoes and secret
pollen. Bury your nose.
Bury your nose and I'll
cover my eyes and ears
and pretend that you're
not here.

We Fight to Stay Alive

...just say you'll entertain the possibility.

Hearst Mining

I've tried to place you aside, yet when I adventure onto something undiscovered, I want to show you. The walls rose with inlaid brown bricks and the arches in subtle gray-green hue. There were lanterns dangling from the retrofitted all- dove-white stain-glassed ceiling. And, as you know, I climbed the stairs to the second and third floor until I couldn't climb any higher. I walked to the wooden window frames, their latches tightened, and I lifted my body to the inner ledge to look around at the world of students walking to their classes. There was the pond, the clock tower, Evans, and bike-riders. I then sat down below the sill, pulled out "Say Uncle," and read to myself.

I could have fallen asleep their on that chilly hard floor.

Patience

"Patience is
wider than one
once envisioned,
with ribbons
of rivers
and distant
ranges and
tasks undertaken
and finished
with modest
relish by
natives in their
native dress.
Who would
have guessed
it possible
that waiting
is sustainable--
a place with
its own harvests.
Or that in
time's fullness
the diamonds
of patience
couldn't be
distinguished
from the genuine
in brilliance
or hardness."

-K. Ryan

Dubliners

As he sat there, living over his life and evoking alternately the two images in which he now conceived her, he realized that she was dead, that she had ceased to exist, that she had become a memory. He began to feel ill at ease. He asked himself what else could he have done. He could not have carried on a comedy of deception with her; he could not have lived with her openly. He had done what seemed to him best. How was he to blame? Now that she was gone he understood how lonely her life must have been, sitting night after night alone in that room. his life would be lonely too until he, too, died, ceased to exist, became a memory -if anyone remembered him.

-Joyce, "A Painful Case"

I Shouldn't Write at Night

Reminder:
Firstly. Sleep more and don't dream about the woman you wish you could have.
Secondly. Warm the blankets before slipping underneath them. I don't know, find a way.
Thirdly. Don't stare at a bright screen prior to falling asleep. Nightmares ensue.
Fourthly. Make sure to use the restroom before shutting your eyes.
Fifthly. Don't write because it won't make any damn bit of sense.
Sixthly. Don't watch anything scary right before you go to bed.
Seventh. No over-drinking. Of any fluid the more I think about it.
Eighth. Close closet door. Double check.
Ninth. Brush teeth. This should be higher on the list.

Godawful Green Beans

Virescent stench. Virescent wrench in the bottom of my favorite shirt. She screams at the top of her lungs; well she screams at the drinking fountain, but does so with the tops of her lungs. I wonder if they're gooey. Her lungs I mean. Saliva, unsmooth and tasteless always poses a challenge to a jogger on a cold morning in where there are clouds, like San Francisco Bay. Their cloudy-soft texture acts like a neighbor I used to adore. But that was in Southern California. Things are different back there. I deserted her sandy embraces like I deserted my soul at a bus stop with seven different numbers; two numbers sided together. This meant that there were six different lines (bus lines or bus routes). And I chose thirty-one.

Walking

Damn, Kingpin Donuts smells so good...
I think I'll walk by more than one time.