The Metaphysics of Breakfast: Coffee and Milk

Coffee belongs to earth,

It is first a tree,

then a nut,

then roasted,
over the bodies of more trees.

Finally, it is ground,

into dirt.

And smells like earth, and leather, and musk.

Milk belongs to the sky.

It comes from a beast,

painted with images of impressionist clouds.

It is pulled down and down and down,

hitting pails of metal,

like rain on a roof.

It has no scent,

unless sour.

It is white like the sky and cream

shifts through it like sylphs.

When coffee meets milk.

Poured so slowly,

it is a great conception.

White meeting black

Bold finding sweetness

Swirling together in cups,

which are memories embodied.

And together they soften, and

make bearable the passage,

of earth meeting sky.

Reality Check

I need a reality check,

    a list of what is real,
    and where it is placed.
A diagnostic for life,
    these moments
    their coordinates in space/time

the air temperature and pressure,
the phase of the moon
the dimensions of a 5 bedroom town home.
the velocity of muscles reaching for jam.
the decibel level of a bus at 7:44 am
the parameters for programming alarm clock

What is the length of space between here
    and where I am going?
How long will it take to get there when caring
    1K + 85K + dreams?
Will I have enough liters of fuel to get there,
    if I don’t calculate in every variable?

What do we do with ‘matter out of place’
Do we right it and call it good.
Give it the blessing and go to sleep
Is it forever out of place,
calculable but always in a different place
moved for the moment and knowing
energy can never be created or destroyed

only transferred (perpetual motion)
And hair brushed once will have to brushed again
and muscles stretched, toned, torn,
will have to be worked again, and again, and again
until the heat death of this body in
two thousand seventy something.

[November 2011]

The Day Patriarchy Won for a Moment

I think she grew tired of her scales.
One day in space
they tipped to one side,
and we lost our way.

Of course a day in heaven
is a millennium for Us
(space/time is like that)
The moment they tipped
in one direction
was about a 6000 year process.

I think she is just picking up
her scales again.
Chains singing vibrations,
a string of holy harmonics
throughout time and space.

It was such a calamity;
that cosmic consternation.
Sagittarius shot her a glare,
and Leo let out a great roar.
Aries, Taurus, and Capricorn
fell to their knees.

We all were touched
by the shifting of a starry muscle.

Oh the heavens shook that day,
when Virgo faltered,
and Libra tumbled out of balance.
How that shaped our world,
they will never know.

The Verb: to Write

What is a myth

but a creation story told at slant;
a skewed eye speaking through its iris;
all the spectral colors of a rainbow
dancing through a space/time matrix
colliding with a web of well formed
malleable, plastic, electric rope mass
we call a brain.

What is a story
but a tale told over fire;
a groove carved into the earth;
an archetype with a thousand faces;
a goat track that everyone can follow
but is fully traveled by those who really know
the words by head and heart and hoof.

What are words
but A,E,I,O,U,
(and some days Y)
strung together with consonants
fastened with punctuation
meant to pierce the skin
and vibrate the flesh.

What is a plot
but catabasis or anabasis;
a series of descents, accents,
and single points
on paper and on air and on the lips of time,
written on the horizon of space;
an old woman with her old dog
wrapped in an old blanket speaking
I feel that’s all I have to say
               for now.

[2011]

Breakfast With Inanna

for those I miss

I sat with Inanna one morning,
and she bled red and black on to the table cloth.
I told her not to worry about it,
                ruined now from her trails.
And she said with a nail-gouged tongue
                clear as the sky
“What is there to worry about?”

Shamed, naked, I poured her more coffee.
“I called you to ask a question…
how do you live with your sister so far away?”

Her eyes burned bight as the sun
and she set her mug down,
                leaving a ring of brown.
Removed her crown and lapis earrings
                she cracked her knuckles
And with the surest and simplest of motions
She ripped out my heart.

She set it upon the table,
                more red, more brown, more black
and it still beats there
                this is a power of all Goddesses
                              to continue the human heart
Pumping away as if it has been there forever

I gasped. I flailed. I spilt coffee and blood.

I hurt and it was unbearable.
It was all hot tears and violent jack-knifing of limbs
I could see only Inanna,
I could see only Ereškigal.
I could feel only that space where she use to be.

“There.
That is how you live with your sister not next to you.
You breathe with shallow breaths.
Your limps will grasp at empty air to find her.
Your ears will only hear the blood
                that use to be where she was.
That is how you will live.”

I fell backward
                on to the floor, the earth.
Attempts were made to grasp at life
                my fingers holding only dirt

“And you will only be still until she puts your there 

Right under your fingernails; her dirt
Right through that space she made in your heart;
her hook; her nail; her spike.”

And finally I stopped
                it all stopped.
“Silence is your sister; is my sister.
She is a far away as we chose.”

[2011]

STEVE

Steve has arrived… of sorts. 

I feel the most confident I have been about this story in a while. Yes, I sent it into Palooka: The journal of Underdog Excellence but while re-reading Steve a week ago (and catching several spelling errors and grammatical infractions) I decided to go through it once again. So yes, it’s a few hundred words longer, and feels more polished. Of course I could work on it some more but what artist doesn’t feel that way about their creations. 

So in this light I really want to resubmit my work to Palooka but seeing how the dead line is about 3 days away… I don’t know. I think I’ll just take my chances. 

That being said, I’ve run a small amount of hard copies (cover page and everything) of Steve. I want to sell them for $5.00 each cause the print shop isn’t free. I know five bucks can seem like a lot for 30 some pages of fiction writing but here’s my reasoning for charging.

A)     A) I’m hella broke. No the profit on the books won’t account for much other than covering the cost of printing.

B)      B) I need to get my name out there and I want to be taken seriously. In our economy, if a monetary value is attributed it is worth something. So there is that fun piece.

C)      That’s basically it.

Shoot me an e-mail or text or call me it you want a copy. I would love to share my work with you and in turn help spread your creative works as well.

How the North Wind Lost

The north wind came into town one day just before the autumnal equinox. A Shepard boy leading the flock out of the pens into the crisping pasture saw her come down the road in a small chariot pulled by two woolly goats; their hard and ridged horns were adorned with bells of silver.

The Sheppard boy heard the bells and the clip-chopping of hooves from some distance down the road. It was from there that he could see the shadowy figure traveling its way down the road. He thought it queer that someone would be coming down the path so early in the morning. The mountain passes would have been more than cold at night by this time in the year and the next place of refuge was at least a day’s walk from his stables and pens.

But there she came, all billowing and with snapping fabrics. She traveled at a brisk pace, the goats tromping gallantly on the gravel path. The sound of the silver bells rang clear above the gentle breeze which moved tall grasses and over the clapping of hooves which roughed the rocked ground. The boy stood there, transfixed. Even a few sheep with their black and white faces, lifted their heads to see what the strange sound was. Certainly travelers and tradesmen used the mountain passes but none were ever decked in bells like these goats were. They rang high and clear, like metal over a lake.

The boy looked up from his tending to see the goat duo striding down the trail and witnessed the women all wrapped in heavy, dull colored cloaks. A conical hat sat atop her head and was strapped securely beneath her chin. The wind she brought with her threatened to pull it from her head at any minute; its point stretched out behind her along with the ends of her shawls. The fabric whipped and sapped in the space behind her causing consternation in the young boy.

He had heard stories of her from all the grandmothers and grandfathers. These were children’s tales of course and were told every year as the sunlight waned and the best apples became ripe. Oh to hear to hear the tales of The North Wind in the air surly meant that autumn had arrived and the time of winter squashes, sweet apples, and the best preserving spices---cinnamon, cloves, allspice, and nutmeg--- would be added to every dish imaginable certainly was upon them. The shaggy goats were a commonality in all tales. Once he had been told it was a team of horses with long tusks whose whinnies and bays were said to sound like the winter winds crashing against panes of glass. But this was told by a passer-by who was given shelter for the night and was clearly from other parts of the world. His accent was thick and muddy and was hard to understand. But the man worked for his stay and in the orchard the boy was picking apples along side the him. He got most of the story right except for the sled was pulled by horses instead of the usual goats.