The loss is cumulative. Every time I miss you another muscle aches. There is a yoga pose for those who can't move.

...and so began, the legend of Pai Mei's Five-Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique.

THE BRIDE: What praytell, is a five-point palm - exploding heart technique?

BILL: Quite simply, the deadliest blow in all of the martial arts. He hits you with his fingertips, at ten different pressure points on your body. And then, he lets you walk away. But once you've taken five steps, your heart explodes inside your body, and you fall to the floor dead.

...

Purgatory

I will meet you in purgatory with the other
outcasts, bare-faced and oblivious.
I will meet you in the elevator
stuck on the eleventh floor with a bouquet
of white roses and a silver pocket watch.

There we will discuss the effects of claustrophobia.
We will try on each other's shoes.
We will place our fingertips in wire sockets
and scream like the dead.

But we will not be dead. In limbo the words
we dread to utter suspend like flashing numbers.
We will invade the space. Make ourselves room.

Come to answer for the times we sort-of sinned,
kind-of helped, perhaps guessed the right answer.

You will argue you had little to work with. Show them
stained hands. I will assert my soul was switched

at birth. The light will guide us. Eyes closed, knees broken- we will
continue to rise. Betray our disguise.
The fires, my friend, will not touch you.

-- Priscila Uppal

God give us love in the time that we have

(fragile sound, a bobby pin falling in the back and embarrassed girl
whispering as she bent for it, shhh. Even the bar is held still
unflickering)

nobody knows what the newborn holds
but his mama says he'll walk on water
and wander back home
slept through Christmas,
slept like a bucket of snow

tomcat girl in a rattled cage
sold my soul and I laid her down
wristwatch time slowing as she goes to sleep
there was no moon

…
(more time spent between songs tuning
his guitar than I've ever seen
at a show before, but it's
not I'm-a-rock-star, just Chinese song
tu-ning)

…
cigarette ash on the windowsill
the street by the beach,
the places we used to go
hundred years, hundred more

someday we may see a woman king
sword in hand
barefoot at night on the road,
fireworks blooming above in the sky
much too high to see the empty
road at happy hour gleam and
resonate

if I leave before you,
darling don't you waste me in the ground
I lay smiling like our sleeping children
eyes wide open

(all words Iron & Wine)

...

krankheit ist wohl der letzte grund des ganzen schopferdrangs gewesen;
erschaffend konnte ich genesen, erschaffend wurde ich gesund

III

That north burnt country ran me down
to the city, mordant as it is, the whole
terror of nights with yourself and what
will happen, animus, loose like that, sweeps
you to embrace its urban meter,
the caustic piss of streets,
you surrender your heart to a numb symmetry
of procedures, you study the metaphysics of
corporate instructions and not just,
besieged by now, the ragged, serrated theories
of dreams walking by, banked in sleep

that wild waiting at traffic lights off
the end of the world, where nothing is simple,
nothing, in the city there is no simple love
or simple fidelity, the heart is slippery,
the body convulsive with disguises
abandonments, everything is emptied,
wrappers, coffee cups, shop windows, cigarette
ends, lungs, ribs, eyes, love,
the exquisite rush of nothing,
the damaged horizon of skyscraping walls,
nights insomniac with pinholes of light

-- Dionne Brand
from Thirsty


all these letters to you are me me me oh god I am my mother

(Scott has some of the answer but it's too neat, tidy, removed. This is messy.)

Eight more weeks:
Museen Koeln
Muschis Modezimmer (for O Mondieu!)

A Boat About A Poem

All the men I've ever loved are living

with me suddenly. This one has your mouth,

lush drag of lip, that one your olive skin.

And this your sidelong look, and that

your throat, your laugh, your hand.

And you--deep V of hair, light

crises of your eyes, the way

you settle me.



The rain racks barricades

around the house.

It nails us in. We're soldiers

at a border post,

cradled in air, in metal, in leaf.

It's raining inside too, cascading

down the steps of stairs.

I rain. So do you.



There's nothing to do.

I strap and unstrap my shoes.

Fill up the sinks and empty them,

shower, wash the clothes.

I know nothing about boats,

their congress with the sea and wind.

Nothing about taut line.

Nothing of poetry.

~From Nelson
& the Huruburu Bird by Mairead Byrne. Another interview here. Her Blog.

(thank you)

...

Sandra Kantanen's Black Landscapes were in my dreams this morning. Ingmar Alge reminds me of Helena's landscapes.