1. |
Eau Dormante
05:45
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|
A scrap of paper, carefully folded
goes quiet at one edge. That’s where we meet,
that’s where we talk and touch.
When there’s a night-storm split
she’s the edge there made
and that’s hard to explain
so I say: Sugar, I want to understand you.
How do you mean?
The violence is easy once you’ve been handled.
But you’ll find me, perhaps, unattractive:
I’ve become an eau dormante.
The lip forever splits, to even think of it:
talking dryly to the humps.
I don’t care about revenge, I just leave them
with their friends. It’s not forgiveness.
It’s how I mean.
It’s the downward motion of the land of afternoon.
We won’t care about revenge, we’ll just leave them
with their friends. It’s not forgiveness.
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2. |
Pedagogy
09:24
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Pedagogy
I don’t know enough the names of the trees.
And there’s not enough time to learn everything.
A boy beat by a woman beat by men.
A girl stood nose to the wall by a grandfather.
Where did it all begin? It’s a hole in the yard.
I subsist on sunlit wooden floorboards
in an empty Sunday bar. Worried into the glass
what am I to say? Live on almost nothing.
Visit what you feel on no one.
Occasional unwashed attention
is not love.
Kindness hides in a quiet one
with books and maybe a frown,
and a special outfit worn just for you.
Of course, you’re anxious about being horrible.
We’re all anxious about being horrible.
A reach to the wrist, a laugh, they will sting.
Tell each other. Tell each other. Tell each other.
Then sleep with the weight of suffering gone
quiet and warm against you.
Don’t worry the wounds of the mouth,
They are singing.
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3. |
Brothers Who Don't Fight
06:08
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4. |
Reflex of Purpose
02:33
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|
This life can be a wooden cupboard
upended in an asphalt lot. Yellow flowered
contact paper loosed, forgotten, and windstruck.
This life can be sunlit hills turned onto
their angry sides away from you
and the teeth you bare, away from you
and the face you make.
How do I get this life to your life?
How do you get your life to mine?
This life can be a dog in a cage in a river flood.
Afterward, no reflex of purpose, afterward
no need for food, afterward no time for a nice chat,
afterward, no sense of the body.
Where are you and when are you coming here?
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5. |
Baldwin's Silk Scarves
07:54
|
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|
Long have I measured my love for others
by a violent plan of action in their defense.
They’ve bent back his fingers.
They’re teasing her sad face in public.
The nice ones tell her she reads too much.
The nice ones smile and talk over.
I dream knockdowns. The breaking of eyes
on the subway. I dream knockdowns.
A quiet femoral stab.
What more valuable gift, I’ve learned, than safety.
What more valuable gift, I’ve learned, than don’t worry.
What more valuable gift, I’ve learned, than safety.
What more valuable gift, I’ve learned, than anger
put to a loving use.
I have confessed this to James Baldwin only.
A talking of rage and slow suffocation,
a talking of France, drinks and good sentences.
Articulate menace and being yourself.
The weapon of what you decide you are worth.
The importance of work and his lovely silk scarves
The importance of words and his lovely silk scarves.
Oh, how I love him.
What more valuable gift, I’ve learned, than safety.
What more valuable gift, I’ve learned, than don’t worry.
What more valuable gift, I’ve learned, than books.
What more valuable gift, I’ve learned, than anger
put to a loving use.
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6. |
Posthemorrhagic
09:41
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Is it cheating if we just drink tea
and feel nervous in a city park aching for trees,
if our aging hearts are silent when they leap
and no one notices the way your throat turns blue?
Is it love for the stomach thus to ache
like the week his mother fed him only cake
as she smoked and spoke of the horror men make,
curled her hair and prepared to leave him for one?
Is it happiness to be posthemorrhagic
and be willing to give up on all of it,
to lessen what you need from those that you love
to nothing, oh, to nothing?
If you could calm the hive of the collar and hands for her,
If you could unswell her saddened tongue with listening,
If you could worry a pocket stone smooth for her to carry,
If you could be the body and mind that get her tumult of anger,
Why wouldn’t you?
Is it enough to laugh only near the edge of the sea
and otherwise protect the mouth from splitting its seams?
It’s a quiet, nearly unspoken poetry
that’s like fighting, but not to win. Just fighting.
Is it beauty to listen to your body break through its center,
and thereafter to talk and to love only from great distances?
If you could break his mouth so full of entitlement and laughter,
If you could abandon the family sick and begin whatever comes after,
If you could secure a love for her, conversation and then a chapter,
If you could sit in silence, safely near deep water,
Why wouldn’t you?
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ever/never records New York, New York
Record label located in NYC. Specializing in music for adults.
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