It's not like I promised you a poem

But I did, and I did not keep it, because I put the poem into pictures. Here you have it before you and beneath "ME."

Brother Hope, I shall ------- you so that we may be at peace

this is the last week of our lives...

...in two thousand and five. no it's not. stop universalizing your suffering, you silly rabbit.

it is the first week of my lives, in two thousand and five, in which my camera is two hundred and fifty miles away from me.

so images will be made with words, have you not heard?

[Upon the Museum for the American Indian]

There is a hole at the top, a Sacred
Hoop for dreams to jump through, or more likely
the light of Sun and Men that washes out
humanity’s world like an oyster. It cries out
that it was ours before it was yours or mine,
and this is the form of the dome, the cupola
that molds roundly the noises that reach it.
It is a perfect nave of wooden tone, being carved
by children spinning happily on the stairs, or
by the footsteps of people sanding the grain
of its heart into smoothness. It is like a film,
a gritty dust falling into eyes, and it is always
in the air, between the words and the smells
that inhabit their cathedral.
From the balconies above one can
imagine a great toss of their own bodies
like great smiling gargoyles
thrown from the dizzying heights into
the life of falling, which glows
like a fire. It is amber, a warm interior, and
it is inviting. It is the children who are
laughing, while behind them the hands of
experience are ready to catch them,
hands that are dirtied with silence.

trouble on the turkey trail

Triple, double, turkey trouble. A day condensed into some htmldrops. Dripping from the ceiling of containment. Trickling down to the road to encounter, far from perdition. In the morning they shall be frost and we shall shiver, happily, at the memory they suggest.

Little River Haircutters, Barbershop of Barbers

a stern portrait of brothers

ironic icon of trash

the reclusive, elusive Rosie

welcome, human, to the chipmunk's lair

For some reason this website captivated my attention. As my "sister" says, I can have so many cups of coffee and still fall asleep.

http://www.lookalikes-susanscott.co.uk/

And now, some spontaneous [w]o[rds]n[pictur]es!

[Upon the absence of Rosie in my pictures]

Rosie cannot be photographed for as a pup
she had a buzzing burden strung ‘round her neck,
a shock-charged collar to keep her in her place.
Now she lives with us in a big backyard and
basement, a life free of invisible fences,
but she hides from all reminders of her suffering,
and she wisely fears my camera and hides.

arriva d -o avia, n-a natureza



a luz en baixo



a camara no ar



o eu na escuridade

thanks be given

thanks, given!

tiny verses

[here there]

Here we were there
where we was at
war with words.

[moving along]

Traveling narcissism always
embarks upon its own journey
towards another.

[snow is gone]

Why, it melted when
the world was free
from freezing.

for the first snow, some visions of the fall

and now, the first snow captured in a moment of narcissism:

For all who are traveling

[Driving home]

Here we are somewhere,
the streetlights seem.
They are planted in a row
firmly on the pavement.
From one end of the road
to the ending far-off lights,
the antipodes of moving stars
are one-by-one and are
going and going.
In a car like a
cat-in-a-box
where from time to time
the windows fog with sighs,
somewhere is somewhere. Gone.
The streets are tied in knots
overhead as if to catch
the world in its web or
more likely ask perhaps:
have the highways fallen
from the sky?
Let us then speak of the
future but please let’s
forget the past.
It is behind this behind that
and above below and
beyond us.
Like the highways to heaven
that fall and become the
demon road, the route of silver.
We shall forget them. Why,
we can run our fingernails across
the blacktop all along the
way out of this little town.
Maybe hope to dig some words
out of the ground or
scrape up hope at a time.
It’s been paved by man but
the winter is a-coming and
soon it shall fill with drops of water
so it may freeze then crack,
loudly as no one listens.
It leads to truth and this it
promises in the dim horizon.

(eduardo ramos)

I went for a walk tonight

Hello, migratory winged word listener! You've followed your nose, which always knows where to find these little stories like mousetraps!

I went for a walk tonight, for a second time this day, in the rain again. I became wet a second time, willingly, as I walked again this night, and I will again. And again. And it rained well and I wandered into circles. The leaves were slapped all around me by drops of rain, sharply against their skins. Some raindrops came down upon me, and my hood grew their echo into a thump in my ears. Up and down the Chapel Hill, until in the end I ended up at home again. I found upon a cat, a fat black and white cat. He saw my light and thought it was the light of his holy cat-god. The poor kitty leapt out of his soul! The poor cat jumped right back into his bones! There, there, kitty, kitty! The white speck at the tip of his tail followed his flight into the bushes. I never saw him again tonight. I may never will see him yesterday. I could always see him never. Fat cat, with the black and the white! What would nature say about your fur, dragging so close to the earth, your belly? I could not see you, for you left not a trace, and my memory you held in your mouth like a spent and tired little mouse.

lending, borrowing

Some things are so delightful they must be shared. Another thing
left here to be found by those who want it

Amy's words [re]arranged by Me

father for the first time said child will resist me
he had in her yard in Indiana, from Mississippi
a poet performing gleefully tonight, they are disguised 
as dirges leaking out over sleep
on the spot for your dream remember
the rhyming with leaves and walking of the 
cold owl thinking his scrambled shriek
swoops to their low, the poem bullet 
has no word inside it, and the leaves of us 
between, of, and, still screaming.

My words [re]moved by Amy:

Losing My Place And Finding It

The only time I dance,
spinning, mind-footing palindromes
by the tail, bewildered
to the brim, brusquely
pouring the not-small
into the loyal, sucking out hunger,
half-struggling for a gang
of willingness & many, many years,
I bless forgotten apples,
play little poems unvoiced.
Lost when it is over,
eternity performed,
overindulgence, but
I have slurped up
communal shoeshine & memory,
with a possible side
of the abyss, a twitch,
souls of the departed falling
from bodies awash with common
wonderful, nerves & fine dust
rising off the sidewalk as dirges
that swoop and rhyme with leaves.
Dear Body: The bullet coming our way
has no word inside it--so dance!

misleadership and intellectual intercourse

GringoCarioca says:

Wikipedia is fundamentally unreliable

de-joaquinality says:

anything is

GringoCarioca says:

I prefer a "system" of checks and balances, even if also unreliable . . . it is more reliable than the alternative

de-joaquinality says:

wikipedia is checks and balances

GringoCarioca says:

Wikipedia IS capitalist-borgeouis ideology at its best

GringoCarioca says:

"everybody" is an academic

GringoCarioca says:

"everybody" has power

GringoCarioca says:

ha ha ha . . . I'm not fooled

de-joaquinality says:

knock-knock

GringoCarioca says:

go away

de-joaquinality says:

knock-knock...

GringoCarioca says:

get out!

de-joaquinality says:

knock-knock

GringoCarioca says:

I have a gun

de-joaquinality says:

will you let a man tell a joke?

de-joaquinality says:

knock-knock

GringoCarioca says:

who is it?

de-joaquinality says:

banana

GringoCarioca says:

banana who?

de-joaquinality says:

knock-knock

GringoCarioca says:

what do you want you mudda . . .

de-joaquinality says:

knock-knock

de-joaquinality says:

let the man tell his joke!

de-joaquinality says:

knock-knock

GringoCarioca says:

WHO IS MUDDAFUCKIN there?

de-joaquinality says:

banana

GringoCarioca says:

banana who goddammit!

de-joaquinality says:

knock-knock

de-joaquinality says:

trust me, it's almost there

de-joaquinality says:

knock-knock

GringoCarioca says:

GringoCarioca says:

who cares?

de-joaquinality says:

knock-knock

GringoCarioca says:

who's there?

de-joaquinality says:

orange

GringoCarioca says:

orange who?

de-joaquinality says:

orange you glad I didn't say banana?

You have just sent a Nudge!

GringoCarioca says:

de-joaquinality winks:

Play "Laugh"

GringoCarioca says:

bye-bye you anarchist you . . .

de-joaquinality says:

tears of laughter

de-joaquinality says:

I assume...

GringoCarioca says:

sweet dreams . . . oh wait, you already are dreaming!

de-joaquinality says:

I ass you me

de-joaquinality says:

lemme ass you this:

GringoCarioca says:

go wikipedia the word"dream" and change everything to signify "waking"

de-joaquinality says:

ok

GringoCarioca says:

with that in mind . . .

GringoCarioca says:

good night

GringoCarioca says:

de-joaquinality says:

lave lun lin lalaland

responses to neil and marco

To Neil

the Star is not too far
when a Car. a rocking
Perch is Vessel.
Tree it. the
black Yard Torch is trotting.

scritch scratch the Earth
touch back.
relative Knick Knack to
be exact. great big
Ball of All. we on it
we in it. but most of all
within It.

To Marco

abstract you don't go back
the mystery of history
try try know not why
thinking is to failing is to
replicate of love and hate
makes sense hence you hectic
wrecked it freedom free
falling far from here
foregone. unliked unloved so I
did live below above when
all of a sudden is expected
resurrected living
dead

at as nails pace

This is a micronarrative I originally wrote for my friend Amy. I told it to Marco later, and since he liked it, I will leave it here and see who finds it.

The snails I knew

The snails I knew were on the mountain of Amiudal. This is where my father was born and where my aunts and uncles have homes today. My uncle Leo had a front yard with shrubberies and flowers. The snails would crawl up from the garden, onto the window ledges. There we would catch them, and put them on a flower pot to see their art of movement. Some years later, Leo got tired of mowing the lawn, so he filled it with stone and painted it green like cartoon grass. He is a very odd man, but loves me like a son. I still remember walking in on his bear-like naps, after an afternoon of chasing snails, to find him collapsed on the bed, clothed, as if he'd been shot by some great gun of sleep.

The night out

The night began innocently. Like children we sat on a balcony five floors up from the earth. I contemplated the moonlight refracted in a puff of smoke, a little poof that mixed with the warmth of breath to color the sky with its cloudiness. The time came to roam, and to the streets we skipped like kids in an outdoor candy shop. On Mallette Street we stopped, down by the building site, amongst the old houses on the hill. We entered one and it was filled with the noises of people, the rumble of celebration.

I spoke with a lady who said she collected skeletons, and she asked me about the best I’d ever found. I answered a dolphin, no, a porpoise. She asked me if it was purple. I said a porpoise would never turn purple unless it held its breath on purpose. Soon she dismissed me for being a fool and I wandered back into the forest.

There were some trees behind the house, and they reminded me of nighttime woodland. Men would walk behind the house, towards the trees, to “go on vacation” as one would say to me. It was nature’s call. They’d emerge from the darkness, from the wood, and I greeted them one by one, saying welcome, magical forest man. Welcome to my land. Some of them laughed but others walked right past me and into the other night. Some of them laughed and disappeared into the festive house where the bathroom was occupied most of the time.

I noticed a beautiful bar with beautiful faces behind the counter. Bottles opened up, forgotten, emptied of their essence. Some were given new life, filled with water from the tap; others cast upon the floor, their bellies up towards the ceiling. Then everybody went away, and left it all in sad abandon. And I too went away, discarded.

I wandered back towards the street, away from the place I’d been thrown away, towards the same old street, away from where I’d not been kept. And as I did so my thoughts spun in many circles like some reinvented wheel. When I found that I’d returned to home, as I came down from the hills, as I discarded myself and became content in silence.

see us see c-ville: the fotchpak revisited

Matt and Marco and myself had a wonderful time in Charlottesville. And we don't even know Charlotte. But if the city is any indication, she is a great gal. Amy and Arantxa showed us a good time and provided us shelter. Paddy provided us performance. What magic! The following is an edit of The fotchpak. Hope it is pleasing.

[the fotchpak]

It was noon and the scallywunches were dillying through a large, brambled meadow of wheapnipples. Treading about griplessly, dwindling their cares around the smell of snipplecrag and horseshoes, they went about the day with reckless wheatabix.

By evening their foppledunks had sweened the entire skyface of allballama, and little was left for their steps to callhollow like the living and the dead. They sweetened the sweating sun with the shipless abandon of a wanton fotchpack, and fro and fro they snithered and swithered, crushing up against the reeds.

Soon the stormbrown consumed the gistings of the day and came down fleetering and fluttering from the hills. It was floon time on the break of slein, and the ballyhollows were saddened by the pollywigged silence of the children.