"francoise", if in Paris...

i am a walking contradiction…here I am impatiently waiting for Spring to arrive and yet all I can think about is the North and its cruel cold beauty…how does one feel homesick for a place that is not their home…my thoughts tonight…

High in the Arctic, if you stand long enough

a cloud will find you, drift onto you

until you can taste it

all wet on your face, your lips-

I’ve sat in a cloud

at the top of the earth

if there such a place,

my hands invisible to my own eyes,

and felt the ground beneath me

hunted, barren,

echoing words from the leaves

of open books, mountain wind turning pages

and the clack of stray rocks

kicked by some wild creature

padding along the crispness of the underlying permafrost-

slowly, the mist takes every sense

and pushes you from any common thought-

there is a moment when you lose the company of yourself,

the hollow left behind fills with the sudden swell

of a nearby moon,

painted between earth and stars-

as the clouds curl away, release the blindfold,

a blaze of fireweed ribbons the landscape

and you fall and rise without moving,

through valleys

across the tundra

in the lavender shadows of mountains

and you become every living, breathing thing

that surrounds you.

francine:

baby spider, crawl

i dreamed last night

your piano playing legs

striking my pillow

my hand right there

at your tips, a skyline

a seashore, pearly sand

where you hear the ocean

climbing on driftwood, my fingers

their prints read like sheet music,

a treasure map

and i feel you

down to my toes

a wave, a symphony-

when I wake, there you are

perched on my lip

with your silky web

around my tongue

thewayoftheworld:

Fran, sometimes I believe there is poetry in your every breath.

 you’re a lovely man

Yesterday

I walked about silent statues

and touched their wet hands,

islands of clouds circling our heads

I would not look down

when the rain made mirrors on the ground-

I stood, back-arched,

marbled like a human sculpture

and gazed upward to the heavens,

that they would catch me in my wonder

and drop a rainbow at my feet.

thewayoftheworld:

I really don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about.

 but strangely, I do

thewayoftheworld:

An apocalypse. A flood. A comet. An asteroid. Aliens. Zombies. War. Pestilence. Famine. Books. Movies. And other forms of entertainment all create popular end of the world stories. And they enter into, and through our senses and we bring them to life. We carry them ingrained within us.  Their shadows walk with us, just two steps behind, out of our field of vision. Maybe it is to remind us that what we have should be appreciated. Cherished, even. It could be a whole lot worse.

francine:

Behind paper cabin walls

I am on the floor, on my belly,

arm lost beneath the floorboards

feeling the head of a nail pushing up into my hipbone

and the grit of the floor scraping against my cheek-

my conscience,

huddled somewhere in a corner of the room, disapproves

while my fingers stretch, skim at some forgotten thing

I was determined to find-

never mind that it was buried two centuries ago

away from murderous hands,

it is here now, in my palm-

dangerously coming to life in my imaginary world.

thewayoftheworld:

Powerful imagery. Everytime I read this poem (I keep coming back to it), and peel back the layers, I see something different.

francine:

hey you  :)

I kept altering it…somehow it wasn’t conveying what I wanted… but i remember you saying how a single word can change a whole mood…and with that one word, it seemed to do just that.

btw…there is a true story behind this

thewayoftheworld:

I figured there was. The imagery is so vivid and stark to me. It starts with a seeming calmness and soon becomes ominous. I wouldn’t want to know the true story behind this, as it might not survive my fervent imagination.

"In the beautiful half-light of 1934"

measart:

The air was a splendid pink the color of red mullet

And the forest when I prepared to enter it

Began with a tree with cigarette paper leaves

Because I was waiting for you

And if you come for a walk with me

No matter where

Your mouth is the incredible all-spice

From which the blue wheel diffuse and broken endlessly sets out and rises

Turning pale in the rut

All the marvels hurried to meet me

A squirrel had come to press its white belly against my heart

I don’t know how he made himself do it

But the earth was filled with reflections deeper than those in water

As if metal had finally shaken off its shell

And you lying on the frightening ocean of precious gems

Were turning

Naked

In a huge sun of fireworks

I saw you slowly evolving from the radiolarians

Even the shells of the sea urchins I was there

Wait a minute I wasn’t there any more

I had raised my head because the living jewel box of white velvet had left me

And I was sad

The sky between the leaves was shining haggard and hard like a dragonfly

I was going to shut my eyes

When two wooden booms which had suddenly swung apart came crashing down

Without a sound

Like the two center leaves of an immense lily-of-the-valley

Of a flower capable of containing the whole night

I was where you see me now

In the set-all-the-bells-a-ringing perfume

Before they could return as they do each day to fickle life

I just had time to place my lips

On your glass thighs

“I dream I see you endlessly superimposed upon yourself”

You’re sitting on the high coral stool

In front of your mirror always in its first quarter

Two fingers on the water wing of your comb

And at the same time

You’re returning from a journey you’re lingering the last one left in the grotto

Streaming with lightning

You don’t recognize me

You’re stretched out on the bed you wake up or you fall asleep

You wake up where you went to sleep or somewhere else

You’re naked the elderberry ball bounces again

A thousand elderberry balls hum above you

So light that at each instant you’re unaware of them

Your breath your blood saved from the crazy juggling of the air

You cross the street the cars hurled at you are nothing but their shadows

And as a

Little girl

Caught in a bellows of sparkles

You jump rope

Long enough so that the one green butterfly which haunts the peaks of Asia

Can appear at the top of the invisible stairway

I caress everything that was you

In everything that’s yet to be you

I hear the melodious hissing

Of your limitless limbs

The one serpent in all the trees

Your arms at whose center the crystal of the compass rose turns

My living fountain of Shivas

Andre Breton

just back from the hospital - my father is doing well following all the radiation..only time will tell now

spent the morning in Flambourough…at a friend’s farm….it was very wet and cold but working my heart and lungs out there felt so completely vital…nothing like feeling your blood travel through your body…i actually have a blush to my face… the stress of work has slid off my skin in only a matter of a few days…but thanks to that stress for without it, i could never appreciate the decompression i am feeling now…

…it’s not that I am peaceful or happy or normal or perfect …i just feel clean…for the first time in my life

love-

I’m leaning over your shoulder as you write,

climbing at the early evening

its sun dropping from the window,

and I watch your breeze

your cure

your believing heart,

the quiet of your scars on paper-

when you are done, let’s walk,

burn the road with our feet for a few miles

then come home-

you can write some more

and we can laugh and be playful

about working lines of poetry,

about the language of storms,

about sex-

let’s read what you’ve written

and become all smooth and polished

in each other’s arms