FOUND: HUGHES

Anonanonanon.

sometimes a ditch full of
magnificent, cold water
is a slow motion
dissecting experiment
on speech and
action; full of
anecdotes.

TED.

they took me to
where I saw
the deer all colors from white through
every brown to black
and curious pheasants
with tails like rockets.
and I played records full
of anecdotes:
look after yourself
and write.
love; over
the great park.


Dear Pumpkin.
if this doesn’t reach you
i have no great news; only
everything is in the same expression
as you left it. every
thing is warn out from trying to
hear you.
Did I hear you?
or was it the
cracking of a locust in Palestine
as he does nothing but
HOWL about the lightness
of your fingers. then
he goes frighteningly beserk
like a whip cracking,
GROWLING enrage.


TELL ME SECRETS.

Spring
froze in silence ---
four inches of ice
but, no snow.

Silence
its coat over its
arm teaches
perfect freedom.

Freedom,
absurd, exquisite
possession.

Possession,
composes letters in
an intricate geometry of
lights and shades in the
modest emerging of
morning.

Morning,
the clamor of
the world
tell me: How is
life?

Life,
“light and shades”
When I come out there
I expect
love.

duh-duh-duhuhuhuhuh

1. This must be the place -talking heads
2. one armed scissor- at.the.drive.in.
3.Exodus Damage- john vaderslice
4. Dancing in the dark. - Bruce S
5.blue monday - the cure

Love me till my heart stops.
Love me till I'm dead.
-talking heads-

also, today I think Ted Hughes is pretty cool. Ross and I are working on a poster for his english class. It's all about how Ted liked to write about the world. or something. The thing is Ross is pretty impressive when it comes to these things. I am proud of him.


Lovesong

He loved her and she loved him.
His kisses sucked out her whole past and future or tried to
He had no other appetite
She bit him she gnawed him she sucked
She wanted him complete inside her
Safe and sure forever and ever
Their little cries fluttered into the curtains

Her eyes wanted nothing to get away
Her looks nailed down his hands his wrists his elbows
He gripped her hard so that life
Should not drag her from that moment
He wanted all future to cease
He wanted to topple with his arms round her
Off that moment's brink and into nothing
Or everlasting or whatever there was

Her embrace was an immense press
To print him into her bones
His smiles were the garrets of a fairy palace
Where the real world would never come
Her smiles were spider bites
So he would lie still till she felt hungry
His words were occupying armies
Her laughs were an assassin's attempts
His looks were bullets daggers of revenge
His glances were ghosts in the corner with horrible secrets
His whispers were whips and jackboots
Her kisses were lawyers steadily writing
His caresses were the last hooks of a castaway
Her love-tricks were the grinding of locks
And their deep cries crawled over the floors
Like an animal dragging a great trap
His promises were the surgeon's gag
Her promises took the top off his skull
She would get a brooch made of it
His vows pulled out all her sinews
He showed her how to make a love-knot
Her vows put his eyes in formalin
At the back of her secret drawer
Their screams stuck in the wall

Their heads fell apart into sleep like the two halves
Of a lopped melon, but love is hard to stop

In their entwined sleep they exchanged arms and legs
In their dreams their brains took each other hostage

In the morning they wore each other's face

Ted Hughes

the loss of something in parts

I talked to Grandma today. She might lose her hand. But, then I told her that there are some things that we can manage to lose.

Her hands
wash away
the effects of bad dreams
or too much chocolate.
they clean out
the closets
and stuff the turkey.
they hug
before they kiss
wounded skin after a war with
the pavement.
she'd kiss
and make it better.
her hands
never forgot the
feeling of the dew droplets
that hold conferences
on that rose petal
right above the
thorn
on a sunday morning
before church
before her hands would kneel
together in prayer
and give their rites
and blessings to
the grand
daughter
who stopped believing
a long time ago
in conferences of faith
in heaven
or hell
in rest days.
but never stopped being
scared of
wounds
and monsters
under beds, or
of stuffing turkeys
with filling and getting
her hands dirty
with soil
as they dig deep into the
earth
to give birth to something
to make it grow.

Now, I have a song in my head...

Singing:
Hey smilin' strange
You're lookin' happily deranged
Could you settle to shoot me?
Or have you picked your target yet?

Hey Sandy
Don't you talk back,
Hey Sandy

Four feet away
End of speech, it's the end of the day
We was only funnin'
But guiltily I thought you had it comin'

Hey Sandy
Don't you talk back,
Hey Sandy

post temp file. so as not to erase. deleting is a bad habit.

Manila tells me her truth in a garlic smelling kitchen. I like her truth; It’s a story of the time she fell in love with me. Well, I fell in love with her too. I was telling this to you in our light filled kitchen when London phoned. He told you stories of wars and fighting. Well, you’d have to leave soon. You were leaving Manila to write stories for London.

The Bamboo plant listens to our conversations. He holds them together in his leafy palm. He rubs then together. He makes energy in the form of friction. I watch him while you talk about going down south and the excitement of actually getting to report on something of real value. I question this notion of “real value.”
Really. Real. I say. Really valuable.
Really. You say, This is real life shit.
Oh, and Manila’s not real like I’m not real or these chairs or this kitchen.
You’ve gone all crazy again.
The plant needs watering. I say. I get out the watering can. I fill it up and empty it out.

The next morning, you tell me all about the ethics of good journalism. I tell you how I don’t think it’s a good profession for lovers. I see all of the passion pour out of you; you were hungry for me once.
Now, your notebooks are arranged in separate colonies on the floor. Your hands are colonizers; they fearlessly seize foreign territories and collapse empires.

yes!

opening, you open
to say yes
and then no
like it was so easy
at first
to give, and give,
and give.

closing, you close
when you say no please
later, thanks. and then
no, again
like it was so easy to say yes
and kiss from head to toe
and know that
yeses are wonderful but
maybes are better.
they’re non- adult.
they’re youthful in their
indecision.

half closing, half opening you wait
like you’re on a narrow street, cobble stone or brick
you’re holding a red umbrella
red for no for waiting for me
all over you.
but, you wait for the
yellow taxi with the black lettering
with the license plate
that records all wrongdoings of running
stop lights, fender benders.

half closing, you like the rain
and it’s fresh, free, lonely
yeses are wonderful when
raindrops whisper them
on eyelashes, tops of heads,
or the red skin of umbrellas.
half opening, you like the street
and it’s wet and coming alive
like you all over me that time
some time ago when you
saw the moon begin to rise
from my bedroom window.
light or shadow? which do you like better
you don’t choose
and it’s my job to make these
decisions. to say
yes, yes, yes!
I choose Light!

closing, you say
maybe, the moon’s rising
and I’m hungry for you.
but, the yeses, yes, please, etceteras
get lost in the magnetics of
the bed, the moon, the maybes of
everything you mean to say
but don’t.

opening, you open to say
yes all over me
you say it, but
nothing happens.
your yes disperses into the
horizons of our bodies: Our atlases of decisions
of whether to breathe in or out
of whether to kiss, caress or sleep
in the vague moonlight.
of whether to say yes, yes, yes or NO! or
maybe, because we’re scared
of losing something by
choosing yes, or no.
Maybe, you choose maybe.
The moon sinks into the light
Maybe, nothing dies.

thoughts, tonic and gin

Ross said something this morning that seemed to make sense. This was before coffee which might explain some things regarding content and meaning.

He said:

I am back in Manila.

The celebrity section in the newspaper reads like the obituaries.

I miss mom.
It's like that Skybombers lyric:
"If you wanna be the one darling don't pretend."

Think about "Time to pretend" (MGMT)

I am up. I am up.

And, there's a volcano in the middle of the pacific that's getting rid of her anger from where it was once contained to an area that's a little less hospitable.
I feel sorry for this anger. She's going to be disassembled and dismantled. She'll evaporate and condense into liquid heat. She's got the time to pretend. She'll pretend to be a cloud, water, heat... anything but anger. Because, no one likes anger... time to pretend!

We'll live under the city.
no one will find us.
we'll hide.
hide with me.
there's no pretending
when you're hiding.
unless hiding is like pretending?
and, I'm up
Good morning, come on, come on,
time for the city,
looking pretty.

The day the air smelled like dead something
my mom told me all about you and how you believed that the Montok
monster was real.
so what if it's hiding under your bed
so what if it just wants to hold you
and rub its scaly hands all over your
warm body.

little scrapes on soft
body. cold on warmth
she told me all about you.
the air was heavy with
water and smoke and
the trees formed a canopy of leaves
yellow, brown from the sun.
yes, I hear the wind
she tells me your secrets
she says your stories
in little tones with hushed "OHHS" and outstanding
"YES, DARLING. PLEASE YESES!!"

and then,
there's the truth.
she says your story
I hear her through the roof
of greens
yellows

But, I don't remember it
anymore.
I see you.
I see you closing in, opening up
screaming for more
more of me
less of you.

what?
"yes darling. Please yes!"
... you say
yes darling
please yes.
YES PLEASE.