some days

my email drafts hide gems
polishing wolf skulls
making sense from code
zettelkästen
reminding myself of the girl
the woman I once
will be

never mind. again.

my email drafts hide
gems
polished attempts at
skulls and bones
make sense through
coded writing -- memory
undone. the girl
the woman I once
was will be

I think. again.

my mail box hides the other
selfs
the writer poet
polished stones and
gleaming bones
they help me see the sense
in code in writing
for I am
and
will be
now.

No one asked about this.

All scientists require an alter ego spouting poetry, if they cannot manage to do so implicitly. Neal Stephenson says something to this effect in Anathem, comparing mystics and poets, where the later are willing to find a beautiful analogy and then let it go. So much of both is fleeting.

The two passions nourish each other, increasing the power of language and vision. General practitioners are sometimes poets; it makes things easier to bear. Science - in its more theoretical incarnations - deals merely with the death and transformation (amputation, transmutation) of ideas, still, the pain.

I thin that few are good enough to do one to the exclusion of the other. I think that the Internet is the place for rough drafts as well as precise labyrinths. I think it beneficial to shed my mother's tongue for this.

English is the Latin of this century, leading the polyphony. Lingua franca, beehive dance, pheromone leading from Changsha to Cambridge to Christchurch and back, it incorporates levels of depth: Concept has complex grammatical honours and swinish Anglo-Saxon roots. Therefore English, and for the distance it provides.

Because I like maps and clocks and computers and soft things and breathing, I combine.
Because it calms me I sing.

Oodles of destruction.

I want
the skull of a wolf
neatly sobered by ants
silky to touch
the structure exemplary of
elegance
timeless
huge dark eyes that my fingers
fit in, wholly,
a forehead to bring my cheek to
teeth that would remind me
of yours.

I want
elongated machinery
action at a distance
sensing
the consistent analogy of
tasting
obviously
over the complacent ocean that
provides, needless,
reason for doubt so I
salivate over cold metal
futures.

We is Exceptional

We is exceptional
Exceptional and weird
And I wonder yet I wander
(and I wander but I wonder)
How exceptional is weird?

Green tea is good for you,
And grapefruit makes you slim
But exceptional, exceptional
The cinnamon has been.

Green is the wonder fruit
Yet beautiful is whim
Why exceptional exceptional
Our early days may seem.

(to be sung, in rows)

Back to back

The mute girl, lost girl, the tall one with the grape eyes, in turning, a tearing, she looks.
The famous one, the elegant - swan, striding, flapping, stretching an overlong neck.
The lonely wife, the lovely knife,
Blood
Or tomatoes in the sink.
Remember!

Transit

Doves under the railway bridge, speaking of my grandmother and bombs. Sounds in the night, talking of teenager wishes. Someone else in my dreams, yelling until I wake up crying. Things are unreal, in transit.

Mundane, to look at you, your unbreaking solid there, established confidence, your scent. Grounding the distance, my romantic irony.

Homecoming

The yellow stones in lantern light distract my train of sight. Another voice, another room, my mother's face, my father's scent, the air is sick at night. I walk the halls, a clouded step, my baggage hesitant. Bear with me please, show me your voice and never reprimand.
My lady sees imprisonment, where I see only light.
My lord, he cannot feel but loss, yet we found it right.

Good night.