ceci n'est pas panique

occasionally I find myself combatting a vampire —

an invidious, two-tongued, honey-tongued, languid, loving vampire —

whose drawl slips into my veins 

to swirl in mini rings until

chaos

feeds my heart 

and my body compresses 

evading the sneaky caresses of  

pure panic 

bumping up against

liquid envy. 

I cave, 

but the lips are paper thin.

I would much rather 

rest 

in the pause:

Cloudland

After having walked miles with the Night
to let the dew soak into her pores, 
her secret small self 
peeked out of her misty sleepiness,
reaching with little hands 
to try and catch the memory wisps,
those sneaky little swirls in the Cloudland
that mix the shells of her old asides
with the now-feelings of 
periwinkle, cadet blue, 
a little bit of almond and razzmatazz, 
perhaps even a dash of mauvelous --
the small one that was fearful smiles 
and wiggles into the warm thought-space 
of these now-feelings, 
cupping the bright ribbons
shot through with 
happy bursts of surprise kisses, 
the threads of a new paisley pattern,
something beautiful like Sylvia Plath;
"This is the evening's entertainment,"
she remembers her mom whispering,
so she burrows into the quiet, cool darkness
of the fog illuminated by a single streetlamp
and reads the messages 
in the strings of random letters 
on the postcards
she found littered on the ground.

blur

in the violet cotton dress,

I watched you fly around the corner,

blurring as you disappeared

into the North End maze,

or perhaps a West Village side street,

maybe Greenwhich Ave where

I shared a Bisteca

with oyster mushrooms

and a semi-froid mousse

with 4 strawberries --

perfect for splitting.

four white walls outlining

a home but not,

I pushed up against a moment

of resistance repeatedly jamming

a key into a hole

that refused to transform

into an Alice lock --

I looked for the potion

but couldn’t discover the fantasy

crossing his lips like a whisper,

the ghosts of the beautiful, silken lies

I so loved to believe,

and despite the unreality,

was again caught in his spider web

until my breath was squeezed right out

and I was left gasping

for the promise,

only the shell of my body left,

the insides sucked dry --

repeated patterns of false hope.

It's like snow, really

Open a moment in which
the possible becomes the intangible,
the defiant...
find the adventure that lurks
in the mirror like a semi-tragedy,
or a dark comedy, 
or a genre outside of genre,
a green space, an unreality.

Sink into the plush orange cushions
and unravel - eventually I'm sure you'll
be able to sew the threads back together
and know that the seams will be straight,
it just takes a few tries, sometimes a few more
than you were anticipating when you 
first drew the design and mapped your plan.

Give me such contentment -
let's rehearse, so it's possible
(one, uno, un, eins) - 
dear, self, no more wars,
especially with the sprinkling system 
disseminating information 
to the four or five corners of confusion. 

A man named Flusser once wrote,
"It is obvious that both types of reading involve time
– but is it the ‘same’ time?” 
What is the time in which our bodies do and don't fit?
If I have 8 mosquito bites, but they are like images,
should I read them along lines instead and
pretend they don't itch?

It's like trying to publish snow -
it will eventually and finally morph
and slip through your fingers,
until next year. 

Whisper (is it all gone?)

I love like I...

This is real, you Paris lovers...

This is the test and, in fact, nothing could color my energy...

Wait, scroll down,
I found a typo in my other brain
"and those who imitate convention...conversation...?
live in the parentheses,"
that's not right
(I just nervous laughed)
rather,
"My heart is lined with libraries,
or the rows of books they contain,"
I suppose that's closer...
is it (im)possible that all of it is gone?

I am worried that
I will be boiled down to a whisper
if the meaning is not recovered,
but the most useless helpline 
is the one most tightly wound,
and I cannot just tweet
my personal experience, can I?

From his lips effortlessly dropped,
"Just don't make my heart hurt,"
but he only called on the screen of a weekend,
and what is more dedicated than a text?
Perhaps the real life occurrence of one. 

I can only say with certainty, "life is random."

Unintelligble

She slipped her left arm
behind her back,
legs splayed in a prison push up,
and rather than collapsing,
breathed into the strength of her body and pushed,
the body that breathes as one
with the trees, with the animals,
the body bound to the earth
by forces
that cannot be reckoned with
no matter how often she flies
in her dreams,
released from the fear
of having chosen wrongly.

Having lived for so long
in a collective rush of energy, intimacy, intensity, fatigue,
the circles of repetition to and from, 

the over-warm subway
filled with the impatient clucking and crowing
of hens and cocks
jammed in a too-small space,
the smell of being lodged in the small of someone's back...

Well, it's a wonder to wake up
under a cream chenille bedspread
to the silence of soft rain
interrupted only
by a single rush of a nearby car,
a soon-to-be-quieted crying baby, 

two cats galavanting
to the familiar pitter patter
that is not often repeated
in the warmth of outdoor corridors
where an earthquake
is more likely
than a thunderstorm.

She rests and relishes
the expansion of her space and 
the lackadaisical intentionality of 

going about one's day in no rush at all,
for where does a person really need to be 
so quickly that it's worth the risk of ignoring?

It would seem
that to be a tree
is the same
as acknowledging
the inherent beauty
in a living being
that sings with energy,
even if the language is unintelligible to our ears
that really hear so very little.

Words on Words on Words

I walked past a shop basement 

barricaded by the NYPD,

where 3 policemen 

and their singular suspect shot one another

in the supposed safety of the West Village,

just around the corner from my first home

on Bleecker and Christopher streets. 

Descending into madness, 

I stand in the swirling remnants

of whispered nothings that seem so very much.

"I'm not thinking,"

and overhead an automated man asking the train 

to "stand up for what's right," 

while the pregnant

woman is kept standing,

hoping today of all days

in the sea of clammy humanity 

someone might cut her a break.

"I'm gonna let it shine,"

and someone threatened to throw

him off the train as another man

talked around and over - 

"move over, move over,

I know you can hear me" -

a young blond man

whose headphones 

and consequent deafness

were apparently très displeasing.

"oh my god, a lot" and 

"when you gonna take it off,"

and a plea, "let me out," 

an angry admonition to "hold on tight,"

I like to be immersed in words on words on words,

"you don't know why, don't say you don't know why,

of course you know why, I cried, and you didn't even care"

circles and circles and circles,

there's nothing like not taking a cab

and sitting in a puddle of human exclamations,

excretions, pore numbing dirt, and intense temperaments

Switch to the 6 to discover the next round

of stuck, not-even-close to whispers

that will be lost to the stifled air.