We moved to the city blocks To cut back the wild just enough, We trimmed it back, killed all its lively-like stuff. We moved to utopia and cut it into squares, We sucked down its rivers; Molded the mountains into mall stairs. We cut the valleys and hills into yours and mine, We raked down… Continue reading On civility
Tag: poems
On the here and now
I am the river and you are the bed.do not be fooled you do not cushion my currents, you are just jagged rocks pinching the nerve in my spine.I tell the doctors and the vertebrae that I am all curves and cut veins from pressure, the heavy weight of woman sitting on my chest and pushing down… Continue reading On the here and now
On summer and the waking hours
mornings awake i found myself writing letters in the air, under my breath telling my secrets to the ghosts from last year.waiting for sunlight i’d pass the missing hours,pointing to the ceiling and with my fingerdrawing skylines and inescapable towers. this time last year I was sleeping in Kusadasi,and the year before that it was Venice.Back… Continue reading On summer and the waking hours
on the weight of salt
out there on the muggy shores of the dead sea,I felt the ground shake and move beneath me. out there in black mud and heavy air,salt dissolved and itched and tangled my hair. I went there to be moved and out in the desert,Pangaea herself seemed to tremble with hurt. With purpose I fled to… Continue reading on the weight of salt
On balance
If my head were to Open down the middle From the pressure implied by Lover and loved and the books I haven’t finished, If I were to open and spill I wonder What kinds of things undigested, undiminished, Would scatter and tumble out: the jokes i forgot to tell you tangled in my memories of… Continue reading On balance
I and the Robot
me with all my pulpy parts, and you stand there so shiny and sterile. feelings feel like how dirty feels, and the robot, algorithms, cogs turning wheels. I go with guts that bleed so messy, its risks are cut crisp, it’s the precision that gets me. while i flail in broad and fluttered strokes, the… Continue reading I and the Robot
on windsheilds
we sit in metal traps:we feel safe,having guarded ourselves with vinyl and glass. to keep the forests alive,we set fire to the yellow fieldsand every summer instead of warmthit’s just heat the fire yields.we feel safe in metal trapsspeeding along behind plates of glass,lying to ourselves with safety straps.
on comforts
Maybe we gofrom things like candy to things like brandyBecause our youth is like the sugar in them both:First sweet and often sought,then fermented,just sweet rot.
on the royal jordanian, new york to amman
the plane lands in fields arid and emptyred in the south, and everywhere dusty, and the dead sea holds its breath, bellows under Pangaea’s plates,welcomes me home again. with every landing my stomach braced,dusty nostalgia revisited,my silly hope misplaced: the fields forget me, and I forget to forgive it,assuming always that my land also sought… Continue reading on the royal jordanian, new york to amman
on rainy mornings
Or when the sprinklers come on at night,What of the snails that trudge into walkways?sliding sludgy, retracting in fright all to bask in the drippy droplets or noisily, crunchily catch in my shoe, or sometimes.. sometimes even safely make it back across, all the way home dragginga nature trail of slimy snail snots
Garbanzo Bae 