a Pit of Undulating Heart-Shaped Lights, Searching with My Tongue, Pocket Crumbs

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a pit of undulating heart-shaped lights
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over the looming horizon of last year 
we crept up to the craggy edges of great heights 
discussing whether the confessional impulse 
in instagram poetics was necessarily purgative-depressive
versus an aesthetics of transgressive self-
pleasure ('sapiosexual masturbation on rollerskates') 
versus another plausible symptom of our nation's ambient 
herd psychosis ('a warning about ||||||||')
this point surfaced: where does the urge
to write love poems addressed to a specific other comes from
and does that urge change if we can be certain that the poem 
will never be read by that specific other
like if we *know* they'll never *ever* read it
and does the nature of our confessional impulse within love poems 
then change if we learn that there is no other at all - *zero others* - beyond
the confessional screen: like, if we are writing poems for the drawer?

through our descent into the sparse foliage of the hillside a diamond dew 
pervades and forms heart-shaped points of light at the edge of every shadow 
and outline, glistening both sides of your jawline with strange brilliance. 
as we pass from oak to fell street it feels as if we are threading through two words 
inside of a longer ribboned cartographic phrase, that makes me think of the distinction
between moments of chosen *grace* and unchosen *gravity*, which is how certain 
writers of trauma describe reacting to triggers in ways that later feel shameful,
tilting downwards into a spray of oaky gradients sprawling across this massive 
color-coded map that our feet wash over in near silence like the steps of two ants 
across the scrimshaw page.

*i feel like if you have to explain it, then...* ends up being 
the beginning or halting preamble 
of an unwanted feeling of obligation 
to explain *it* to myself which reminds me of the 3am magic 
of victor pelevin, that erstwhile psychedelic buddhist 
who i hope is still off hunting werewolves 
in central russia or scraping the ontology 
of childhood off the steppe or in a lhasa monastery or wherever 
such unknowable ontologies are to be found today. it's still alchemy 
when any cartographic phrase can fully block, distort or otherwise jam 
the grid-signals of the distributed corporate surveillance state, 
as the thickening shivers of all these ambient gemstones grows luscious 
on your jaws and slowly form a pit of undulating heart-shaped light 
that gets mirrored between our two faces, suspended and waiting.





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searching with my tongue
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the poem lay like a blind
stone at the bottom of this glass
of milk that i lifted to my face
glugging
*
i put the glass down empty
searching with my tongue
for the rime of pale milkfat
between my inner mouth
& the endless sky; a curved bright membrane
like the blue speck in an astronaut’s helmet,
protecting the cosmic void’s last uncollapsed wave-forms
from the annihilating abduction of her observation:
even the voidiest void itself will curdle under direct eye contact this intense.
*
i don’t, no, i don’t, i don’t want to talk about it
are those serifs, she asks, looking at my doodles
the page was so peppered as to resemble an omen
i’m no omen expert, she says. but... well...
my mind is a zillion miles away, a zillion galaxies of awayness
probably searching with my tongue into the wounded-
attachment folded plateaux of my 
other brain where the phrases "i don't know", "i am sorry," 
& "can you please help me?"
are just beginning to find purchase, to take 
root (but is it enough, can i *actually* heal, grow, change?) 
are you okay, she asks, peering into my face 
and i’m stuck in yet another fugue pit 
inside of yet another fugue pit, infinitely nested, 
perhaps feeling infinitely petulant, like why should i even need
or want to emote *anything* to *anyone* right now
and the remnant of an overheard conversation being 
tossed slowly between two airport security guards
drifts back to me: *i had to explain to him why i can't 
help him, like man, i’m off the clock, just because 
i’m wearing a uniform don't mean i work for you
 in this moment, like really, you need to realize.*

my face wants a day off, too much overtime 
clocked being stuck to this way-too-anxious skull
i imagine taking my face to a dog park 
but for faces, a face park, and all the faces 
are floating above that grimy bench 
next to the overly chlorinated water feature 
going ooooo ahhhhhhhhhh blubblubblub
you can’t talk to me right now if i don’t want to talk 
to you right now, and that’s the young part, 
the young protector, fight or flight, stamp my foot, loudly 
enunciate the word *abscond*, *needaminute*, *goodbye*
and then i leave to go walking through the panthered night
the world dipped in a bright varnish over
and over. the panthered night lays on a thick coating of this varnish 
until every object resembles me and i resemble every object
every polished artifact in the world’s curio case collecting fine dust 
amidst this heap of discarded fantasies, this pile of limp, worn-out masks, dead time, trash spillage, cringe and cringe and cringe...                                             ...and cringe

*there’s too much mess in the world already* or 
*if you are attracted to feminine chaos
then you might need to be the one to bring 
the masculine structure into the relationship*
but why can’t it be both people with all our nerves bared, 
exchanging energy, a little give-and-take, a little gulf-without-engulf?
and still i write down these little self-inflicted wounds 
with strikethroughs, i’m sneezing into a ketchup-stained 
napkin *are you bleeding?* and there’s a camera by the coffin
for all the virtual mourners the throngs of faces in the zoom. 
i can see that someone’s ai assistant has joined and is 
taking notes, transcribing the halting eulogies & mournful 
chatter like a spirit transmitting the text to the ghost of the deceased
*i can feel a lot of god on this zoom* says the woman who doesn’t 
seem to recognize that the ai assistant is not in fact a human friend 
or human family member.





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pocket crumbs
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it’s been a set of long years since 
i carried slices of toast in my pocket
wrapped in paper towels for later
but guess what? i’m still finding crumbs.
*
the dog park is where we overhear 
the argument about de-extinction
the ethics of depriving the last living 
wooly mammoth of its legitimate
status as an endling or the strangeness 
of bringing back an entire make and model of creatures
from the fossil record solely to open a franchise of 
neanderthal-themed burger restaurants 
with charbroiled mammoth sliders & fries 
served in cardboard sleeves via a drive thru window.
*
i reckon there’s no desire for theology in the morning mammoth enthusiasts, 
just the chore of surplus embodiment, another system wrapped in soft tissue.
no divine grace for the spark of all living beings; the mammoth 
itself has become just another engineering problem
much like the problem of belief itself in our era, when faith 
becomes synonymous with the irrational;
for example, a problem of engineering 
compulsive obedience responses at scale, 
for example, a problem of orienting the oversaturated 
masses to invasive performances of rote affinity.
to be clear, it’s not that i’m an enemy of convenience, per se – 
far be it for me to knock that which i have absolutely
zero desire to try. it’s simply hard for me to want 
to unsee certain flittings at the shadow-edged garden
covered over in pale pellicles of light, the bright footsteps 
that my body can feel our daily spirits leaving behind us in the world,
the profound iridescence that marks our trace, 
not in our flesh or in our abstract mind, 
but in the souls of others. or else perhaps 
there’s simply a certain hollow prosody 
left in how here the morning air, kissed by the diesel 
exhaust fumes from the highway, 
caresses and palps at my cheek, still sore from 
the night's bruxist clenching & looping, 
still sore from discussing the two personalities 
of robert’s ex-wife: *she’d flip a switch 
and the next thing you know she’s walking 
into traffic, chasing cars, a slight lilt 
in her voice, a dead-eyed grimace: i learned to recognize the oncoming 
engulfment of dissociation the way sailors can feel a storm coming
on a clear day, a twinge, a premonition: because, because, because.*

this man robert is an exception 
to many rules, we embrace, we trade descriptions 
of how it feels to walk on eggshells, to always be
at fault, that feeling of crossing over from behavioral 
conditioning to that swedish syndrome of perverse complicity: 
*romance is tricky,* says robert, thick in his worsted suit and silk twill,
pinching a fish sandwich towards his pucked swollen lips: *because most people 
have little to no control over how they connect with other bodies, the style through which 
they activate their primal desires.* what am i even doing here? my brain flips 
on a certain expansive patter of weariness, a weariness-patter of prolix maneuvering 
and outmaneuvering, of endless waves of shame
the reaction-loop of no-win scenarios and fallen grace
that contains all the other loops: to notice
or acknowledge problematic or unmanaged 
negative control-behavior or unmanaged anger 
flare-ups without triggering the negative behavior or the flare-ups, 
without *setting them off*, without *ripping out old stitches* throttling the two poles 
of a persona in one body who are for sure aware of each other, 
a puppetspasm with no puppeteer, a spooky conundrum... stale feelings, 
laid bare now, curled and peeling like loose paint. laced with the toxic lead ache of 
yet another repetition, 
yet another and-here-we-go-again.
yet another, and
yet another.

the theology of the mammoth enthusiasts is a theology 
of molecular affect, steel cages 
and rational boredom, a universe 
of finite dimensions and known or knowable quantities,
a universe where desire has also become 
an engineering problem full of the triggers and salves 
of authentic relating, scar tissue that has begun to resemble
an eternally incomplete jigsaw puzzle. 
it’s been a set of long years since i carried slices of toast in my pocket
but guess what? i’m still finding crumbs.