Exchanging voices

I said:

The hardest thing is to start with a blossom, a roadmap, a partial face appearing red and illegal.I leap and barely land on you. Afraid my tongue will be caught in amber, I do not trust me to let go. All along, it's been about water, how it steadies us, how our buoyancy is pliable in all angles. We did not account for drought.Even though it rains, my body is occluded and cataracted. You are floodgate and waterfall. When the water vaporizes, how will we see each other without bending light, always bendable light?

You said:

Damp skinflash is a granite you writhe in, unknowably near. Swinging your lapses beneath me, star-dry, we flinch, soporific even, this music of erosion. You have spent thousands of years crested in lavender and corduroy, untouched, carved from basalt. A before-ness, plural and storm-scented, builds its walls from algal ponds, joining you to earth. But thought and its cell-strands, white winesap on your curling tongue. Even this precipitation shrugs, chooses its life. Sawtooth and jacaranda. With only seconds left, I am searching, amorous, spherical, avalanching inward, making purgatories glow with my breath.

in prose chunks

I was interested to see it this way. . .I'm not sure what I think. . .

The hardest thing is to start with a blossom, a roadmap, a partial face appearing red and illegal.I leap and barely land on you. Afraid my tongue will be caught in amber, I do not trust me to let go. All along, it's been about water, how it steadies us, how our buoyancy is pliable in all angles. We did not account for drought.Even though it rains, my body is occluded and cataracted. You are floodgate and waterfall.
When the water vaporizes, how will we see each other without bending light, always bendable light?

translation:

Damp skinflash is a granite you writhe in, unknowably near. Swinging your lapses beneath me, star-dry, we flinch, soporific even, this music of erosion. You have spent thousands of years crested in lavender and corduroy, untouched, carved from basalt. A before-ness, plural and storm-scented, builds its walls from algal ponds, joining you to earth. But thought and its cell-strands, white winesap on your curling tongue. Even this precipitation shrugs, chooses its life. Sawtooth and jacaranda. With only seconds left, I am searching, amorous, spherical, avalanching inward, making purgatories glow with my breath.

Response

The hardest thing is to start with a blossom, a roadmap, a partial face appearing red and illegal. Damp skinflash is a granite you writhe in, unknowably near.

I leap and barely land on you. Swinging your lapses beneath me, star-dry, we flinch, soporific even, this music of erosion.

Afraid my tongue will be caught in amber, I do not trust me to let go. You have spent thousands of years crested in lavender and corduroy, untouched, carved from basalt.

All along, it's been about water, how it steadies us, how our buoyancy is pliable in all angles. A before-ness, plural and storm-scented, builds its walls from algal ponds, joining you to earth.

We did not account for drought. But thought and its cell-strands, white winesap on your curling tongue.

Even though it rains, my body is occluded and cataracted. Even this precipitation shrugs, chooses its life.

You are floodgate and waterfall. Sawtooth and jacaranda.

When the water vaporizes, how will we see each other without bending light, always bendable light? With only seconds left, I am searching, amorous, spherical, avalanching inward, making purgatories glow with my breath.

For translation

The hardest thing is to start with a blossom, a roadmap, a partial face appearing red and illegal. I leap and barely land on you. Afraid my tongue will be caught in amber, I do not trust me to let go. All along, it's been about water, how it steadies us, how our boyancy is pliable in all angles. We did not account for drought. Even though it rains, my body is occluded and cataracted. You are floodgate and waterfall. When the water vaporizes, how will we see each other without bending light, always bendable light?

Answers

Do you keep a tiger as a pet, stripes made of sky and highway, and how do you feed him if his teeth are walking through every room?

It seems the sharpest surfaces desire prey, a crushing expanse. It's all I can fathom, what you might call tripping across fire-ready thresholds-- I am new to myself each time.

In the light of empty bowls, how do you trace destination back to source when every wall is mirrored?

I fill them with the bow-shaped petals of stars, the ones furthest from sleep. They creep into me as a lattice. I am climbing, climbing to the convex eye, whose motion is all I need to echo there.

Why are stairways green when you conjugate irises, flooding them with larvae and rice?

Endings, like winters, begin with fuschia vistas. I bring my decay in satchels, and if they can feed off sightlessness, a proliferant body, my thoughts will spawn, crystallize (upward as curve) a film of dew-sky, and I will rise from the startling waters, floating among ice-laden floes.

How many times did you say "yes" when you ambled through the winter, cringing like a peacock in full bloom?

It could have been snow or rain, no answer yet to form, though it would have required an unbearable temperature, and I can only name one Fahrenheit, strutting, as she did, as you did, not drowsing-- either way, a novial gold, numberless.

The heat is there, even under monuments and aftershock. How do you draw it from the water, as if through a straw, as if it is part of your skeleton?

Can I count the heats I have lost, pulled up through me as if, as if-- here, an inversion of silence? Joints consoled through words, tongues like movable thorns. The bedrock shifts into our "awake." This is my permanence.

I heard someone laugh as he buried my decorated scalp. How do you get there without breaking in three?

The way thunder's dimensions separate you from him, adorns you with a sentience, a titanium of river, white as the first bone formed & split. The way lightning swims down to earth, eel-like, its tooth glistening against your breast.

Are you a satellite, sweet with crevices, happening to arrive?

More a meteor, as opaque as you've dreamed, skies diving in, burrowing as I flash across blue spruces, skyscrapers, that steady mine-light travelling the ore of my blood-- the forest's murmur you also drink.

You are there, among visionless water and shore. How do you see past autumn, so much reflection of maple and release?

It is possible to breathe again, as fir tree bark stripped from its oil-faded climate. If I am Pompeii, my ash lining orbitals, a peopled clay sees through its obsidian outline, and I am resolved, leaning, leaning . . .

What does it take to wrap you in planets, hold you in twisted gravity, delineate the source of this vibration?

To know, compress me in the ember-wet dawn, print your lotus fragrances, dry-leafed pages on wavelengths scripted in sand-- for I cannot tell where gravities amass, if not in the graspless geographies of sound.

Your turn

Do you keep a tiger as a pet, stripes made of sky and highway, and how do you feed him if his teeth are walking through every room?

In the light of empty bowls, how do you trace destination back to source when every wall is mirrored?

Why are stairways green when you conjugate irises, flooding them with larvae and rice?

How many times did you say "yes" when you ambled through the winter, cringing like a peacock in full bloom?

The heat is there, even under monuments and aftershock. How do you draw it from the water, as if through a straw, as if it is part of your skeleton?

I heard someone laugh as he burried my decorated scalp. How do you get there without breaking in three?

Are you a satellite, sweet with crevices, happening to arrive?

You are there, among visionless water and shore. How do you see past autumn, so much reflection of maple and release?

What does it take to wrap you in planets, hold you in twisted gravity, delineate the source of this vibration?

A draft of answers

How does a city grease its windows (stares) if across a continent we assume dual weathers?
Weather like a sphinx tells me how brown to howl, how far to cast rectangular sounds, how long to wait for the ripe sadness. Winter trickles in from the other side of the lake, however soft.

Where does song instigate childhood, and should the means be difficult, would you spill after, into it? Statue, plastic carnations smelling of water. This is my branch, my cleansing. Out of key. Even now, the basement is a brown recluse, dangling from his thread.

Are crosswinds from the mouth of a crowned katydid, she, you-- pacing in peril, horizoning a sea? My mother's knees are fat like oranges. She dives without splash, seaweed in her eyebrow. I keep falling out of her, head first, the cleanest way to arrive.

The rink of sky is pumice. How many rings have you forged from it, how long have you worn them? Around his neck, a cord. The sky erased. My fingers swollen towers and lamp posts. Rings only in the sinkhole of gutters, dustdevil in your wake.

Did you in Portland submerge, and by what pretext, under finish-line tears, ancestral as his (our) bottoming voice? Scraping salt-crystals from my hair, I was gathered and planted, cinched and tied in procession to the gallows. Tears and sweat were too close, too symbolic in their wetness. Decorated and ushered through.

Albumen, sulfur, peonies, peonies, why does it echo, bleach us to crystal? This is the the surface we thump through, palpitate by, play into like commands. Red rover, send over over. Skipping stones are flat and anxious, even as we fly.

I climb some dissected place where stones are entrances, how, how do you approach silence after these plates, skin-wells, ivories crumble? I am in trees, not stones. Even from the roots, it is a spreading, curving bark and knotted vertebrae. How can I be light and molecule. Opening out of tantara but through the branches. Branching syntax.

If lines in your hand trace trajectories, do they turn liquid in foglight (run parallel to an elsewhere)? I held him here into everywhere, dropped him but still threaded through fingers like cat's cradle. I trace you through the spaces, the fibers of locking strings and barracades. A levy is holding tight.

Were we to condense, jar loose, the octagonal and continguous dew, what prayer might you make from the phoenix's name? Always here in october windshift. Give me mountain and apple core. Give me serious lips and bread between teeth. Give me open and green, but on fire and carrying fast.

Words, gardens

How does a city grease its windows (stares) if across a continent we assume dual weathers?

Where does song instigate childhood, and should the means be difficult, would you spill after, into it?

Are crosswinds from the mouth of a crowned katydid, she, you-- pacing in peril, horizoning a sea?

The rink of sky is pumice. How many rings have you forged from it, how long have you worn them?

Did you in Portland submerge, and by what pretext, under finish-line tears, ancestral as his (our) bottoming voice?

Albumen, sulfur, peonies, peonies, why does it echo, bleach us to crystal?

I climb some dissected place where stones are entrances, how, how do you approach silence after these plates, skin-wells, ivories crumble?

If lines in your hand trace trajectories, do they turn liquid in foglight (run parallel to an elsewhere)?

Were we to condense, jar loose, the octagonal and continguous dew, what prayer might you make from the phoenix's name?

yet another possibility

sleeve trodden ablutionary
ocean underwhelming your ruin
blandly alive in your hair

conifer & east orange mirage
in descent ascent
calamity against white fin

pick some electric entanglement
to dwell on: hubcap unexpected shrub-wisp
of flower name it for

your speaking tongue but hiding calyx
spaced & from your body
because it already happened once

ask yourself commensurately
if the blacktop is how you remember it
what's lacking pistil sigmata filament

fireshadow without foreplay
when you say hurry
Mojave curative venous & anthropic

this firefly scrim stars all
into you revives
the ablated wreckage shared ashes

forehead open glowing burn
Athenic arrow skimming
bent curve of earlobe

euthanizing soft woods
puddles spoken planks
residual trance carved coagulus

yellow-white bride born
guessing you & I meres of one another
you and I abberant as

bitter cactus tongues

another draft

all nouns of the world be
sleeve trodden
or ablutionary ocean underwhelming
your ruin bland oats alive in your hair

conifer & east orange mirage bring this
vehicular moment caught
in descent ascent
calamity against white fin

pick some electric entanglement
to dwell on: hubcap unexpected shrub-wisp
of flower name it for
your speaking tongue but hiding calyx

spaced & from your body
because it already happened once
ask yourself commensurately
if the blacktop is how you remember it

what's lacking pistil sigmata filament
fireshadow without foreplay
when you say hurry
Mojave curative venous & anthropic

this firefly scrim stars all
into you like a kickback and ride
the ablated wreckage we share ash
forehead open glowing burn

Athenic arrow skimming
bent into curve of earlobe
euthanizing soft woods
puddles spoken planks

residual trance carved coagulus
yellow-white bride born
guessing you & I meres of one another
you and I abberant

bitter cactus tongues
in garden in sounding siren

all nouns of the world be sleeve
trodden way into this snapclasp
ocean underwhelming your ruin
bland oats alive in your hair

conifer & east orange mirage
bought the intersecting moment, flayed
caught in ascent descent evenly over
tendrils, calamity against white fin

spaced & from your body
because it already happened once
ask yourself commensurately
if the blacktop is how you remember it

pick some electric entanglement
to dwell on: hubcap unexpected shrub wisp
of flower name it for
your speaking tongue but hiding calyx

what's lacking pistil sigmata filament
blackest fireshadow when you say "hurry, hurry"
Mojave curative venous & anthropic
rectangular system of circles in waves

this firefly scrim stars all
into you like a kickback and ride
the ablated wreckage we share ash
forehead open and glowing, the burn

clasped around you Athenic arrow
bent the curve of your earlobe blends
seuthanizing the soft woods
become puddles of speaking planks

residual trance carved coagulus
yellow bride yellow whites
guessing you & I meres of one another

of others you and I are action
bitter cactus tongues
in the garden in the sounding siren

for #4

all nouns of the world be sleeve
ocean underwhelming you this ruin of
conifer & east orange mirage

caught in ascent descent evenly
overspaced & from your body
ask yourself commensurately

pick some electric entanglement
of flower name it for
what's lacking

pistil sigmata filament
Mojave curative venous & anthropic
this firefly scrim of stars all

the ablated wreckage we share ash
clasped into you Athenic arrows
euthanizing the soft woods

residual as trance substantiation
carved coagulus
guessing you & I meres

of one another
bitter cactus
catalyst of tongues

3.

Interludes

Glances in
oxides windfall
peripheral haze zenith
swabbing you blind
like living room

crosstype catacomb
feasts I am splintering
you in tow paperveined
in the most common
shrug lead me wet-

ways starting from
ash beige clover
fingertips moving
morningsilent lead
to yours alternation

a scythe cowled by
knee and navel under
coral carapace censuring
your breath somehow
we travel mirrors

swim the horizon
brittle morpheme
shift becomes
euphoric taut
something like a window

accumulating you in breeze
but made of grass
wisteria coarse seedlings
commas give way letting
emptiness this found

light shutter close

more funnel than eye

interweave 3

Glance of body in
oxides windfall

peripheral haze zenith
swabbing you blind

like living room
crosstype catacomb

feasts I am splintering
you in tow paperveined

in the most common
shrug lead me wet-

ways starting from
ash beige clover

fingertips moving
morningsilent lead

to yours alternation
a scythe cowled by

knee and navel under
coral carapace censuring

your breath somehow
we travel mirrors

swim the horizon
brittle morpheme

shifts becomes
euphoric taut

something like a window
accumulating you in breeze

but made of grass
wisteria coarse seedlings

commas give way letting
emptiness this found

light shutter close
more funnel now than eye

seedling, for interweave #3

Glance of body in
peripheral haze, zenith and warrior
like a living room
feast. I am splintering
in the most common
ways, starting from
my fingertips and moving
to yours. Alternation
of knee and navel under
your breath. Somehow
when we swim, the horizon
shifts and becomes
something like a window,
but made of grass
and seedlings. If only
the comma would give way, letting
light in, letting
the shutter close more like a funnel,
like an eye.

Helixes

1.

against the image of goldenrod
i apply my dereliction to you

untying knots of fountainspray
backward dunes

unraveling after we read
the gaping verb muscular node

asterisk a planet if
and this "if" of splendor

sinks back into its vertebrae
where we crimp

burgeoning gardenias singular
helix of whitewash and ice give me

sacrificial arteries your eyelashes
brimming with winter

slender sores of the finite
these were blood and bark

slanting gouged labeled
yellow bruise as "dying"

peels climbing interruption
the purest blank

speck of tongue sparkling
as consciously

on my cheek in shame
and what we do--

ever-filtered gallows
you and i parabolic

artificial mappings of
copper-plated skies

2.

face down

blithely you thrust
category: container blue
lid to the serene sepulcher

door threshold hearth
twirled instant of
two breaths not mingling but

sideways shattering
i cannot launder silence
chapped gashed leaping

cryptic flung at dusk
fire in place of who
leaves them for you

as if perfect and kindled?
glittering in nitrous looms
every chair every table is not

abutting clay-red burn here
you are quartz and softer
incinerated by some wall

wound up, through

opal hook of space
fingers contort with
traffic but to get there

enzymes resound in light
printing blandness streets
leaking their pulses whir

pathways puddles
some outer beam resisting
hovering as wave and particle

what happens is
not happening fourteen fathoms down
say until

concentric seams between these
garbled currencies
sew themselves reflexive ponds

creek-worn against violet
dangling in vermilion charred
you hissing the not-blood of “I am”

as we evolve, it evolves

blithely you thrust
category: container blue
lid to the serene sepulcher

door threshold hearth
twirled instant of
two breaths not mingling but

sideways shattering
i cannot launder silence
chapped gashed

leaping crypts at dusk
what is the fire place?
who leaves them for you

as if perfect and kindled?
glittering in nitrous looms
every chair every table is not

abutting clay-red burn here
you are quartz and softer
incinerated by some wall

<--maybe end here?--- or put " * * * ", or number?>

opal hook of space
fingers contort with
traffic but to get there

enzymes resound in light
printing blandness streets
leaking their pulses whir

pathways puddles
some outer beam resisting
hovering as wave and particle

what happens is
not happening fourteen fathoms down
say until

concentric seams between these
garbled currencies
sew themselves reflexive ponds

creek-worn against violet
dangling in vermilion charred
you hissing the not-blood of “I am”

Interweave 3?

blithely you thrust
category: container blue
lid to the serene sepulcher
door threshold hearth
twirled instant of
two breaths not mingling but
sideways shattering
i cannot launder silence
chapped gashed
leaping crypts at dusk
what is the fire place?
who leaves them for you
as if perfect and kindled?
glittering in nitrous looms
every chair every table is not
abutting clay-red burn here
you are quartz and softer
incinerated by some wall
opal hook of space
fingers hemoglobin move
like traffic but to get there

torn pipelines blast
your enzymes
resound in my light
printing blandness hearts
triple bypass main street closed
leaking their pulses to whir
pathways to puddles
some outer beam resisting
hovering as a wave and a particle
what happens is
not happening fourteen fathoms down
picture me saying this until
concentric seams between these
garbled currencies
sew themselves reflexive pond
becomes creek and thread
where words thrash against
a violet siege
turns vermilion to black
back to you hissing
the not-blood of “I am person”

for interweave #2

blithely you thirst
for the serene sepulchre
twirled instant of
sideways shattering
chapped as silence is
leaps its crypts of dusk
leaves them for you
glittering in nitrous looms
hygienist's chair
abutting clay-red burn here
you are quartz but softer
incinerated by dust
opal hook of space
fingers pried loose
torn pipelines thought
resounds in lights
printing blindness hearts
leaking their pulses to whir
some outer cry denial resisting
what happens is
not happening fourteen fathoms down
concentric seams between these
garbled currencies
where words desist where they
thrash against placement
a brook of violet
turns vermilion to black
and blackness a reflex
resists in you the I
as us and "person" carbon
you, chemically preening
lubricant hisses the not-blood
hers yours-- progeny of I--
diminishment conforms to
conspires in

interweave #1

how does this strike you? changed "asterisk become" to "asterisk as", "goldenshower" to "goldenrod" and moved "helix" down to the next line

-- now i can't see which is better-- asterisk become or as--- i could go either way

--------------------------------------------------------------------

against the image of goldenrod
i apply my dereliction to you

untying knots of fountainspray
backward dunes

unraveling after we read
the gaping verb muscular node

asterisk as a planet if
and this "if" of splendor

sinks back into its vertebrae
where we crimp

burgeoning gardenias singular
helix of whitewash and ice give me

sacrificial arteries your eyelashes
brimming with winter

slender sores of the finite
these were blood and bark

slanting gouged labeled
yellow bruise as "dying"

peels climbing interruption
the purest blank

speck of tongue sparkling
as consciously

on my cheek in shame
and what we do--

ever-filtered gallows
you and i parabolic

artificial mappings of
copper-plated skies

autumnal :: choleric

astound me. seeding
a presence. in order

to break, intercise
each layer. fear

counted like. cards
fallen from hands

this. the most
careful story

(yours)(mine):
blown-flat. pile of

moth wings & ash--
stay away. he said

and it isn't even
time. wait for

autumn. brown-out
eyes. amethyst. ripped

fluttering and it
isn't even night

held. holding us
at arms distance

hollowed. where
we crease

I stole

a poem from your blog and spliced it-- hope you don't mind. I chose this one especially for its opportunity to interject. The poem itself feels conflicted, like it can't make up its mind (especially now with my interjections). While this could be looked as a bad thing, I quite like it. It seems accurate. Check it and wreck it :) I'm such a dork.

astound me. with
sangria-purple. seeding
a presence. in order

to break, to intercise
each layer of fear—
cowering tower. of milk

counted like. cards
fallen from hands
the most. careful story

(yours)(mine):
blown-flat. pile of
moth wings & ash--

stay away. he said
and it isn't even
time for apples. wait for

autumn. brown-out
eyelids flutter.
it isn't night but the hold

A revision of punctuation

against the image of goldenshower
i apply my dereliction to you

untying knots of fountainspray
backward dunes

unraveling after we read
the gaping verb muscular node

asterisk become a planet if
and this "if" of splendor

sinks back into its vertebrae
where we crimp

burgeoning gardenias singular helix
of whitewash and ice give me

sacrificial arteries your eyelashes
brimming with winter

slender sores of the finite
these were blood and bark

slanting gouged labeled
yellow bruise as "dying"

peels climbing interruption
the purest blank

speck of tongue sparkling
as consciously

on my cheek in shame
and what we do--

ever-filtered gallows
you and i parabolic

artificial mappings of
copper-plated skies