User Profile

bleak and lingering

dnf

is there redemptive value in hating yourself? probably not but dude can fuckin write

Sâkipakawi-pîsim

Night by day, day by night
all things awaken
on the white stars of midnight.
Amid the deepest green,
the quaking leaves, spruce boughs
green willow and damp moss
we make our altar
and give our naked selves.

Moon, moon
Nôhkom
in my hands I see his face,
carved from pipestone,
fireweed in his eyes,
his mouth canyon flowers,
pink petals opening and falling
like drops of unsung rain
over my flesh, and moon

moon in my hands
he is hard earth, a high cliff wall
I climb and descend
into secret kivas
leaving corndust and prayers,
burn marks etched by my fingers.

iya, iya
his buds sing to my lips,
Nôhkom
his buds are singing, calling
the horses home.

Drive, part 3

For the first leg of the trip (and even after that)
Christine wears cheap shoes from Vancouver's
Chinatown. The thin black soles barely cover
her feet but she'll never throw them out
now that she's left for good. She's come
to see the country as it is, massive
and strange. In Alberta the beef cattle
blink their caramel eyes and moan
as oil pumps fuck the earth, slowly, easily.
Cowboys exist! A tractor stops to let
us pass. The driver tips his cowboy hat
and we are farmers' wives, instantly.
Who could be lonely here? Not
us on this prairie, mostly empty, mostly flat.

The Flowers of St. Francis

I will bring you the flowers of St. Francis.
Hummingbirds send word of his miracles,
men gather in huts to sing and drink milky soup with sage.
The stupid one teaches lessons through slapstick:
barbarians wrap his body in sheets,
fling him like skip rope until St. Francis intervenes.
Children who pull wings off flies, poke out lizards' eyes,
men and women who don't give a shit if you come.
The flowers of St. Francis make us all like that,
so dumb and bodily and pure.

"Oh, life is so confused! And then stories like this one come like a bolt of lightning out of the blue and turn the picture we have of others on its head. Perhaps that is why people hang on so desperately to their stubborn little truths, because who knows, if everything was put together, as in this case, people would fall apart. It is the brutal truth that what we know about other people can be contained in an insultingly small package."

'Oh no, Archibald, no,' whispered Samad, melancholic. 'You don't believe that. You must live life with the full knowledge that your actions will remain. We are creatures of consequence, Archibald,' he said, gesturing to the church walls. 'They knew it. My great-grandfather knew it. Some day our children will know it.'

"Perhaps so many journals had piled up in the lighthouse because on some level most came, in time, to recognize the futility of language."