Moleskine Drafts

“Didn’t really drop that way
My beats were too evil”
(M.I.A.)


Cricket worship
after the paths
fireflies bleating
in summer
breaks, summary
lineages, a roof
over the river
blown husks of earth
prosceniums
fast potions
insufferable

*

As rainclouds bunch
at the edge of
mountain outlines,
a recurring mist
pulls the green
from the ground

Rain pulled down
after the day’s
cement has dried
wearing future eyes

*

Automated writing
finds a measure of limits
from dusk to East
warring factions after
lunch, memorable rice
& chicken in tomato

*

The glide of the bigger
birds that spread in
circles or loops of
flight, better shapes

What does
poetry matter, when
do records carry our
sound beyond forfeit?

*

The sweetness of air
moments before the
rain swells the leaves
to flutter resorts

*

The sky is a
ceiling of branches
at the corner
of the road into
town, two ancient
trees whose arms
fan out in a ribbed
pattern above us
so the sky is only
leaves and limbs

*

Wind plays the branches
chills the limbs / white
& blue through the gaps
afterward calm a steady
fissure, forest-wide
pensamiento, elongated
minutes, what songs
step into my head
the word “concientización”

*

The birds seem black
with an electric coat
of blue, the wind now
bleeds my script onto
the page when I run
after a loose pamphlet
moving across pine
needles, the trunks are
a city and the birds
wear clouds trailing
above, single fixation
the trees I listen to

*

The diligence of these lines
(though I thought to
write “lies,” almost)
these mountains to the
south wearing white
puffs in the early
morning, who by noon
wore a dark hood
from which the lines
of rain could be glimpsed
drawn into the earth
or pulling rain into
the clouds, forward
& backward goes the
loop, as the closing
guitar on “Dominoes”
makes beautiful sense
both ways at once

*

This is practice in
sociology, the passing
from day to minutes,
squalor and ignorance
because of historical
and material conditions
a dry landscape whose
reddish clay is stuffed
with rocks and settled
archipelagos of lava


(May 2008)