Banyan leaves reach for light

Banyan leaves reach for light
in my body. I won’t let them

have my eyes, ears.
Something won’t let me

just say this life is wonderful.

The banyan leaves left the night
after a train ride through Wyoming.

I could wish things
into being—his hips—I could

ride a train through that valley.

Something won’t let me sing
this life is the only thing.

Something! Have my eyes, ears!
Banyan leaves through Wyoming, reach, reach!

Light, what will remain of my body, talks

Light, what will remain of my body, talks
about You. It keeps saying,

learn each other–Today
I asked a stranger

if she was like me, did she
speak into a tape recorder

love-notes to herself to keep
from diving, driving, into

the shale-pain of road.
When she answered, Yes–

Light, the earth, let me
live on the ground again.

conversation something said / through me it knows you

something said, something said, something said.

I’m hearing you and trying to imagine you as a light-body as I am a light-body.

If I was to describe this in terms of video games, I’m on a new level, but I don’t know the rules.

Any second, a light-body will show up eating berries and tell me the password.

Something in me misses the something I missed when missing you.

I want to break into the your room and feel God between us.

Somewhere, I’d say, somewhere, I lost the ability to do this:

And I’m back on the floor, trying to catch things.

But you’re already a light, you said.

Did you know I had a guardian angel once? I said.

I wrote her name on a piece of paper, but then forgot it.

That’s because angels, by nature, don’t have names, you said.

I’m her now, I think.

The next level, the key to it? you said, is talking to yourself again, like this. Like you’re God.

Did I just think this?

Look, I’m talking directly to you now.

There’s a mountain somewhere that holds itself under the sea.

And now I’m spinning in a field, calling to that mountain.

Now I’m under my own light, thinking its your light.

It’s your light.

The mountain under the sea has a body like God.

And now the light-beings want to take me there, I just have to close my eyes.

Now I’m wishing you were with me.

That I was with me.

There’s a mountain under the sea and I’m understood by it.

In the dark, we can speak to things easier, like stones.

Tornadoes have a love for things like I never had a love for things.

And through me, it knows you. Through me, it can say the world tasted like you.

something said something said something said

Imagine our light as bodies.

They already are, you said.

Oh.

Are you listening to me? you said. You look distant.

Don’t laugh, I said, but I was that mountain, the light-beings brought me back into this body.

Birds

Laugh-Against-Stone,

I have nothing to give;

birds call Your secret

Holy wind–teach me to sing

God into me

Ways in Which One Might Come to Feel Their Body is Foreign

* Sleep less than 4 hours for 4 consecutive nights

* drink caffeine or alcohol, or both, more than usual

* read Philosophy, then text about it

* have dreams where you’re reading a poem that makes you cry and envious because it’s brilliant, then have someone in the dream say “but you wrote it” then wake up, staring at a blank paper, trying desperately to recall the words/images

* see spots floating in the air, and wonder if it’s your eyesight, or knots

* analyze how, exactly, knots would be made up of matter, and what kind, so as to appear to your eyes only, then try to figure the change in eyesight in order to perceive the E.T. knots.

* write a 9 page paper on the analysis of the use of every. single. word. someone uses. Then try to write. Then throw yourself against a tree.

* discuss love

* discuss love with yourself

* hear the sound of your voice on a tape recorder

* sleep less than 4 hours.

* dream a figure or monster the size of a pencil, and just as tall, tells you that “friends” are illusions. But that cake is delicious.

* repeat.

Wake

This morning I woke up, not wanting to get out of bed. I turned again and again into more thoughts of myself. But, instead of lamenting having to get up, suddenly, I thought, but I am up, and the day is my loved one, waiting for me to say “goodmorning.” I honestly believe we are all here, each moment, for a reason. And perhaps we are needed even more so when we are feeling down. For feeling down, or that weight, could be the Universe pulling you toward a moment so needing you that the anticipation of your arrival is a weight, a sadness but not a sadness. You feel confused, unwanted, but you’re just the opposite. Because you’re being woken up into a Newer-Importance. The-Next-Level of being human–and all changes are painful.

A friend once told me that the way she slowly left the stage of desperate, was to finally admit that she didn’t want to not want to not be. Maybe she couldn’t move beyond the dark, but at least she could admit the dark wasn’t her home…

And I dreamed, last night, of poems not yet written. This is the second night that’s happened. And though I try as hard as I can to wake and remember, it must not be Meant for me yet. It’s a foreign poem as all written things are that are not written by me. And yet it’s still very much mine. As is anything and everything for everyone in the Universe, both past and present. Both pain and joy. Cruelty and tenderness.

Glimpse what is almost-born. To remind.

And so I wrote this. And now I’ll be late for work.

Wake

not into this world, a hidden one. Where

are my thoughts anymore, my body? Birds

call for food, I’ll give my eyes.

Gypsy, you need a robe, or

a road–cut the body

open–not into this world, a hidden one.

On the Farm

Last night was my last night in Texas. I leave for New York this morning. So, I went out to my step-grandparent’s farm to shoot some photos and take in more of my roots.

This is Jerry’s cabbage patch. He was very excited about it. “I like to have something green growing in the winter-time,” he said. “You just put a little salt on ‘em and boil ‘em, and they’re good.” Sharon said “Shannon, don’t listen to him. They aren’t good!” But they sure are pretty in the sunset.

This is Jerry’s horse, Hot Rod. Him and King, the other horse, were out licking the salt-block when we drove up. I haven’t been around horses in years. Seeing as I used to spend my every waking-moment with horses, it’s a bit of a sore-spot for me, not being able to ride again. But I stood there and felt every ounce of my first child-hood love.

This tree seems mystical to me. It’s out in the middle of a bunch of cotton fields. Sharon said “That tree is where settlers used to conduct church services, right there underneath. When Jerry and I first got married, it used to be twice as big.” “Now it’s all rotted out,” said Jerry. “It used to have another tree beside it, but it fell years ago.”

Sunset through mesquite trees. Mesquite shows up in my writing a lot. Last night I realized just how much I love it.

Last remnants of the cotton-field after harvest.

Texas, Thanks

Home for Thanksgiving, went out to shoot color and things I can’t see out East. The sunshine has it in for me, like the sky, when I’m hanging out the car window, whistling to a blue tune.

Calm. I am calm here, unlike the bustle of New York. So I stole these images to take back with me.

There’s a ghost here, can you see him?

She and the Other Address Her Sickness, Her Own and Otherwise

Her Address–

Not only was the not only present, I was not my only self, but the self that only had just begun to be herself–and that’s when the not only present had itself become itself.

They will say, I hate to admit it, but I liked her writing better before she got sick.

But the honesty!

No one wants that, and the potholes, the god-feared look of “having”

one wants to wish their lives lasted long enough to drink again

and again, you asked if I looked up, hooked my leg on a fence-post, saw skies

more alarmed at having been a sky

and not one of us, or my eyelash–no, I have looked

only for things in pockets, such as your watch, or a canary-feather

left over when on New Years so many things had children, minutes

apart—lovers lost their case-by-case arguments, dropped to see

whose kiss they were laughing into– what other ladybugs might be living

in so-and-so’s teeth. I told myself to call you

but friend, undo yourself and then get back to me.

Reflection of Other–

Understand, nothing she understood was mistaken for taking
the understanding from your hands, but understandably,
so-and-so was quite upset at what she understood, mistakenly.

Her Letter–

To answer your question, no I never learned about perrineals.

Though my bay window may, if I’m lucky, hold a thousand each spring in its eye-socket,

Lord, you should have seen the underthings they’ve got–perinnials–

root-toes two metres long, I swear it! Yours, S–

The Other Questions–

Did she write most days, or, when feeling ill, did she want other things, say

cantelope in the sunshine–did Otherthings take note of her

exact choice of words–mathematics?

I heard numbers–as lovers– occupied her bay window– ants on a biscuit, jammed

with honey and other hack-eyed-creature-curated

-sweetness.–Well, back when so-and-so took a hobby breaking into hives, I suppose that’s possible–

 

suppose mathematics and hive-construction go hand-in-hand, tortoise and mouse, that sorta thing.

On the Corner, Remembering Her Walk–

Perennials? No, not in this shop, love. Take yourself
down to the corner, I have a friend there named so-and-so.
Mad about things like that. Catch her
stone-like at the bay window most days,
equations teetering in her hands, like so–

Her Address, pt. II–

Before the sickness was sick of itself, her self was sick of the itself it became in herself–and it was itself only when most like a self that was herself, sick.

Reflection of Other II

Before she got sick, she stuck things in her blue jeans–

pockets filled with letters from them, or so-and-so,

a phone bill from the time minutes belonged to an ex,

before the plane-ness of mornings left its handle of jack

on the corner as a reminder that soon, Nothing had itself hooked

to the back of her head like lamp-things, but dark.

When she got sick, Nothing crept itself inside her to quit–

not a monastery–her body– but can it be? she asked,

can the wholeness of everything be under the weather and into my

pockets–underness and overness understood

by a solar system that’s ready for its nonchildren, red-dwarf by red-dwarf,

can hospitals be belligerent, drunk, piss themselves before they love themselves and give all to God?

Her Address, pt III–

2) in a list like this, I’d say the only thing, mind you, that minds itself into a whirl is a friend who took herself too seriously, called the opposite its counterpart
and I, well, she called me crazy and understandably, for I

snipped up her favorite clothes because I wanted to,

and the slumber party was boring,

and in moments such as those, hidden, taking a secret like that tastes like steel,

shot up like angel-joy, through the circular of girl-wholeness.

That dress, well, I wanted it. But instead, cut holes in it.

Laugh about that now, angel-gods, woman-god, watch

I’ll tear myself into that memory and be done with it. If I could warn every girlfriend now–

how land-hurt their body can be by me–myself a grounded plane–sick

understand this: under the lichen-hold–a man I owned once, but swallowed.

The Other Reflects Upon Reflection of Her–

You’ll be tempted, I’m sure, to categorize her symptoms, like boxes of glow-worms–
and shouldn’t we all stand here, tempted to catch her outing herself out–
land-hold-under-things—what Dr really knows the mind,
but to punch-hole charts, you’ll be tempted, boxed glow-worm, you are.

Further from Other–

Noted: alleluias in the morning–

Perennials in the bay window, scathing

at the site of the canary, held between

her mouth–understand–her mouth

carried sailors to God and back again

though her body wore itself into thin

paper–might as well called home,

as in a horse’s eye-bone, coal

twisted round an underness, pissed

it couldn’t glimpse into itself

before learning the mathematics of hungry.

it might have been fun to kill androids for a living.

Well, hallelujah, I wrote something new! But more importantly, I didn’t eat any dirt on the way to the library this afternoon. Imagine my dismay at the lack of this impulse. On the one hand, I’m glad that I didn’t eat dirt, but on the other, where is life heading when my impulse to eat dirt goes and spends its winters in Mexico.

I was reading over some old essays today, jealous of my past-self for being able to conjure up the images and words that now dance, locked in their Word Document cages, stripping for me like I was a paying customer. Eat dirt, I want to say. But at least they are alive and well, witnessing to pretend masses about the world’s potential for the strange and unlikely.

I was thinking about killing an android. Is there anything like killing an android? Is there anything like being an android? Meaning, consciously, is there anything like being like one?

In a video game, of course. I was never one to kill androids or aliens. But for once, perhaps I should try it.

I have friends who do it.

I have friends who are so depressed that all they want to do is lie in bed and kill androids. Or aliens. Or whatever they make video games out of these days.

In high school, I think I contemplated video games in my head for fun. As if my life was a video game. I never played.

Except Sonic the Hedgehog, who was blue, if I remember correctly.

If I had started taking a serious interest in video games, I may have never continued to pursue poetry.

Does one pursue anything? Like a coat-tail, perhaps it pursues the human-mind, whatever “it” is.

If I let myself tell myself to keep at it, I’ll end up sitting at the computer for hours, trying to create safe spaces for words / this could be a video game attitude. It is likely I would have been very good at killing androids.

Instead, I am pursuing words which, to be honest, is quite difficult. Sometimes, I have to get out my special sweater which my mother wore in the 80’s, just so I can trick myself into thinking that I have magical powers.

When the sweater fails, I tell myself that God has plans for me. I think they call this “notions of grandeur”

And when these notions stop leaving notes on the front doorstep, or in the pine tree on the path to the library, I want to throw myself in the grass like a child. Like I did, once, when I was 5 at McDonald’s, and my mother pretended to leave me there.

She actually just drove through the drive through, to trick me into thinking she left.

Perhaps poetry is in the drive-through.

When this happens, I start believing that I should have taken up biochemistry or video games.

Of course, now that I am reading my old essays, the past-me is laughing hysterically and saying

Shannon, you’re a real idiot sometimes.

But still, I think it might have been fun to kill androids for a living.

Depression aside, the drama alone would be worth it.

And think of the opportunities for online gaming communities.

I imagine it now,

whole identities with scales and other such ammo.

Or, as a biochemist, I could use gaming to de-stress from matching DNA strips. Thinking, secretly, to myself that the murderer must have had fun in the brief-moment of invincibility, wondering how someone could not wonder what the body sounds like while breaking.

As it is, I sit at a desk, most days, trying to make the imagination give me a child or two before I mutilate it into a poem.

Dramatic or depressed? No one knows. The androids, unlike humans, never tell their secrets before they are killed.