grandmothers

my grandmother is dead. my father no longer has a mother. her death opened up for me a whole new path of knowledge: her life through her enormous collection of photos. her death opened her house up to me and with that all the tucked away boxes in each colour-themed room. her death showed me a new way of knowing her life. boxes and albums full of black and white smapshots of her most free years. her drinking a coke in the passenger seat of a beautiful old car. her dressed in the most elegant clothes, her in her mother's vast iris gardens. my grandmother waiting for a train. her as a girl turning to a woman, her without the harness that family brought. freedom. they are snapshots of possibility. each one its own what-if.
burried in a pale blue pinstriped suit, a simple band of gold on her finger which once played the electric organ. I hardly recall this. she sang often in her youth. she had recordings but I never got to hear them. her hair was soft in th coffin. I know this though I did not touch it. and most fantastic of all, on her mouth was a grin, very subtle, but I swear it was a grin, she was pleased with what she saw in the transition.

her skin always looked as thin as parchment to me. and it was the softest skin. thin loose delicate. once a friend of mine came to visit her with me and could not stop raving about the softness of my grandmother's skin.

Another Death:
my mother's mother died two days ago,
only a month after my other grandmother died.
i am not processing it
i am feeling inept
i took the day off of work yesterday after i found out
and slept and slept,
i had intended to think but
i slept instead
i dreamt that i was driving by my grandmother's house
in pontiac michigan
and having memories of things that never happened,
visits to her that i never made,
then i was suddenly in a submarine deep underwater
watching a scuba diver swim with a dolphin
in the murkiest greengrey water
and i heard a report on the radio that
a supertoxic poison had just been dropped in the ocean and all
life would cease
instantly the diver stopped moving and began to sink
the dolphin just dissapeared,
i watched the motionless diver sinking
and felt a shudder thinking of how cold it would be at the bottom of the sea
how cold it would be if he woke with too little oxygen to make it back up,
i felt this horrible solitude as i imagined his lonely plummet,
but i was only an observer, watching the sinking of the flesh. the turning out of the light and the end of life. the lonliness of it. the simple truth that we all die alone. all of the alliances and marriages of life are meaningless in the face of the inevitable and eternal. life is spent warring against what is inevitable: solitude.
one is never really ready for the news that a soul has left a body, no matter how long the death has been pending. all of the worldly things are abandoned. the body, most personal of all our posessions, even it remains here, no longer familiar to the soul. a remnant, a fossil, a ruin. The huge heavy dirty body remains as the soul soars. my dad keeps saying that no one else knew him so well, his childhood is gone, now that both of his parents are gone. it makes me think of how I will feel without my parents, losing my essential link to humanity, but perhaps gaining a new knowledge, as an orphan like so many ohetrs adrift. parentless. a new perception of the world. nothing is lost without creating a new gain. everythig has its opposite. for my mother the death of her mother is a message, that she must be generous and loving like her own mother so that she can be with her again. for her it is a reminder. for me, something else. An opening of a series of questions. A beginning. seeing my parents as pillars suspended, foundationless. held up by nothing. who are we when our roots no longer flourish? when they begin to decay, does that signal the beginnig of our own ending? when our roots change to soil, who are we? is this a signal for us to up the ante? get moving, pick up the pace and make sure we are doing what we need to do , a subtle hounding? what are we when the family members that connected us to humanity shrivel among rocks and worms? what remains? memory, fiction? the beings we imagine ourselves to be, the tribes and cults we choose, rock music, pop culture?

when you spill coffee on the page and wipe it away, something remains. a stain. the page remembers.

number I and number II

reading your own history can be unsettling.
frog sound– like a sturdy arrow springing from it’s bow
the silence here is engulfing
eradicating-unsettling
it comes with the immaculate darkness and flings itself over the place like net
to trap those souls wanting lucid flight or tryst.
It captures all the mysteriousness of night, leaves things safe and dull.
The night still opens for me, rich plum, wine coloured, archaic mistress,
capable assassin, now it opens more like a wound than a door,
more like a sore oozing
a thing unable to heal,
split, warm with infection,
i might never have seen this wound for what it was had i not been free
to twist the sapphire knobs of a door so great and lovely (like the monstrous ones at the Forbidden City.)
Once i was so powerful, i commanded the violet clouds
i was the most popular consort of the languorous and the voluptuous things of night
Now, my mythology yellows under the safe, singular shellac of time
words once ripe, with potency,
now leap from the tongue with an impotent grandiose motion
ASHES
DUST
the future is curling up and i am stuck inside of the yellowing pages
RESIN
AMBER
The leaves fragrant and crisp
once eager to whisper to me have been slaughtered
the pocks in the road have been filled
the night here wickedly cruelly open and not mine
they speak of death where once i heard nurturing words

Where can i recover what has been lost?
you held a child captive.
you lied through h those hollow snake teeth.
i jumped through hoops blazing with fire
i waited

II.
understand, i am your doppleganger
i tread differently, but i follow the path you shaved
you hold me down
pounding-pressing, still
13 silver nails into each arm
tarnished things
i look at the ceiling, other nails
with less essential purpose, surrender
nails made of plainer stuff
push through the facade
and tremble down, i push too.
i am lying again in the low-cut grasses of memory
plain sparrows sing orchestral themes.
they want to keep me here
down. still.
but i am ceaseless
i pound, like an ocean
i push like an earthworm
a covetous serpent,
your desire’s child
unpleasant daughter.

a prince and two paupers

We were as beggars or tramps before him. Coats threadbare and souls gushing, ever-ready to perform any humiliating feat to catch his eye and induce the fluttering thrill brought only by gaining his fleeting attention. He the pompous indifferent aristocrat, such heavy velvet royalty to us. We played Anais and Henry, devoted to the untouchable, chill of our June. He simultaneously inspired and tormented us. It was intoxication, wasn’t it? We would give up everything for a glimpse, a sidelong look at his riches and loveliness. And then it would fall, like the snow, or be given, like a gift: he’d lower his eyes to us, those honey lids, heavy-drowsy. In turn, it seemed, one then the other, he’d flatter us with some affection. Turn us on one another, remind us that ours was a struggle. No, ours was a war. It was as if he had to remind us that only one of us could hold him. That only one side could triumph. And we both had colored flags to plant in the soil, and separate political agendas. Do you remember? Those times he’d give us everything? Unexpectedly. His focus, his kisses, his cock. We’d spend our savings, all that we had hoarded in the long-cold months, we’d forget that we had to eat for the rest of the summer and blow our wad on one night, trying, aching, working to thrill him. No thought of the future. Pawning all precious things to keep up the momentum. All the ardour and adoration we could summon to keep ourselves there, like amber-trapped mosquitoes in the liquid gold of that gaze. But it was not made to last. Not for either us. We’d run back to one another like injured children, lamenting the cruelty of our heartless guardian. Licking one another’s wounds. Knowing that his attention was something to get free of, like an addiction, we’d plan to stop. You claimed that it was us not him, but I wouldn’t hear you. We suffered the lack, you said, we were diseased, greedy beasts wanting to cage him. You knew somehow that it was our own perversion. But even your wisdom seemed to elude you, your resolve eroded with the potency of our competition.When the chance came we never failed to take it. The pain was as unforgettable as the bliss. The licking of one another’s wounds, a crystalline comfort too attractive to forgo. When he was ours, those brief moments, we were elated, wanted to climb the top of the garbage-dump turned ski hill in this dingy town and scream out. Jump to our deaths, cut out our hearts, anything to try to articulate the profound sweetness of it. We could not get free of his nets, struggling as we did to cut them, using teeth and daggers. But they, invisible, powerful, they seemed to magically regenerate themselves with the struggle. Now, I can say that I believe that he was unaware of the power he held over us. Now that he is the point at which our two different lines converge, I wonder if you still feel as I do, the attraction/repulsion sensation he creates. While I love him like my own brother, now that the fire has diminished and distance and life have severed our ties. I still despise his condescension and his easy success. His life always charmed, simple, free. Unconnected from certain depths of misery and struggle that you and I know so well. I wonder if it is like this for you, or if you still await the limited affection like a dog. We were beggars in those days, starved canines. I am not ashamed of it, it was a moment in history, the emotions of that time are still impressed on my soul and I can recapture them with only a moment’s backtrack into memory. I know what drove us to it. I wonder how it can all be so clear, so ready. His distance made him so desirable but our closeness made things intolerable, impossible. You were the one who struck me with the ax, the wound that still gushes as if it were inflicted a minute before, rather than a decade. You, my brother-beggar, fellow dog, my partner in desire are the one I regret losing. Our object is just an object now he is beautiful and elusive but he is, after all, just a man. Somehow smaller and less polished ten years later. Things seem clear now. He was no prince, god, angel, just a distracted, emotionally withdrawn lover. Just a selfish painter trying to suck inspiration from our hollows. And since I am being honest and feeling such brilliant clarity, I have to wonder if we used him to torture one another. If he was a distraction. A patsy. If our objectification of him became the focus because we were terrified of the potential we had to damage one another.

living in a hostile city

My new computer finally arrived in town and I was able to access the files locked on the hard drive so roughly removed from the dead corpse of my older ibook…

I watched the videos I took of snowy rice fields and the Niigata Station in the rain at night with the pachinko parlor's neon glimmering on the wet pavement.

Video of sleeping students and salary men in the gloomy light of the evening train, the rush of people running to catch thier train as the final boarding bell is ringing.

Boys reading comic porn at the Lawson's outside the station and the train sliding through spring fields green with small hopeful rice plants…

I realized how much of my time was spent in transit,
getting there sucked away my hours….

It isn't much different here, except that the getting there is all active, driving among psychopathic idiots and aggressive drunks is no fun at all.
DETROIT IS AN AWFUL PLACE TO DRIVE !!
People in this area think that driving is their birthright, (and maybe it is) but the arrogance with which they navigate the pocked interstates is astounding. I find myself saying “what are you doing?” or “wow! He really just did that” out loud as I drive, way too often! Each journey exposes some jack-ass maverick who slides in and out of lanes cutting off every other driver in his/her path, and talking on his/her cell phone. It is actually really scary, one must drive so defensively here that any negligence could result in an awful accident. Not the best scenario for a girl with staring eyes…
Detroit driving requires more concentration than meditation.

It makes me miss the passive travel of train.

My dreams were a hodgepodge,
Nothing coherent to write, but I wish there were,
I'd sleep all the time if I could have forest-dwelling,
mythical being dreams every night.
I guess that is why I can't.

strange forest guardian

dreamt of a gorgeous creature half man, half ram strange being with leathery skin and huge spiraling horns, wooly curls and thundering voice. Bathing in the woods in the oddest light, greenish and gloomy. Finding lovely blue and green raw silk robes at the side of the water, left by whom? Hiding my real clothes from the creatures of the forest. Feeling my heart straining in my chest pushing at the cage of ribs, wanting free so that it could dash itself on the walls spilling blood and lust everywhere. I asked the creature what his name was but he said that he had no name because he ran with the creatures of the forest and they had not use for names, he asked me to give him a name, my mind flooded with ideas all names beginning with vowels, I tried to think of some thing beautiful, but then i told him that he should be called Caleb, such a pretty under-the-stars-at-night kind of name, a shepherd's name. I went to bed at 5pm yesterday trying to fall back into the same dream with the same strangewise beast, but I got only a dream of a gypsy boy in a shitty car. I always worry when dreams are better than life, when the adventures we can have while asleep seem more alluring than the events that make up the quickly passing days.