identity attempt III

wrote this standing on a mountain top (surprise, surprise). suspect it needs something more somewhere. suggestions, diatribes, and/or musings welcome and appreciated.

this morning, as we slid
into the sun, the mountains
cared enough to climb
above the clouds, and then
they were islands,
floating black and heavy,
precise as oil drops
against that taut white--

there is a point
at which the sea
and the sky are the same thing;

we are all
strange fish in one body
or another.

I wrote this when I was high

I wrote this when I was high. It has no title.

3/11/09-EDIT FROM 3/15/09
The car was as fast as he was high
on the blanketing
pavement.

Jetting along the roads of purple moonlight and green shadows,
her profile was regal and her eyes squinty but her pierced visage was beautiful
in an essential way of curvy venus
shape and brain
high on the barometer.

We careened carelessly
in the smoky
night that fogged the windshield and my eyes.
the car and my legs the us and the it; ya know, ya know
--he said.

He went on and on in elliptical
eloquence yammering on the velvet underground
and how excellent their lou reed john cale
sound was, ya know, ya know
--he said.

She was confusing
like a hieroglyphic and was just as ancient and antique
as they were are but I found
her knew her never knew her
under a purple phosphorescent black lite moon
and through the windows they

saw us,
reflected. Who
are you? they asked, mouthed lipless lamenting.
Why
are you here in our lands? they asked limbless gesturing.
LEAVE THIS LAND!
they shouted

and we dashed with Craig our
driver but he was not our driver to you he was the other one
it is Jack and Kaylee and Craig
and just that no dileniations
between the Kaylee and Jack
and Kaylee and Jack and Craig
but it is all okay? right?

and the car swerves fast like strokes in a van gogh and the madness
is there in the arcing of the cars arching along alive
abandoned alleyways where days
die homeless never getting to see tomorrow's awful
sunrise.

I wrote this poem to read at the Loeb. It's based on this piece by Agnes Martin. I hope everyone's having a good break.

Some Tricks I Can Do with Squares

Hundreds of square geese

flying in tight formation.

A huddled group of prostitutes

on the grid of Omaha streets.

A sad square careworn

map of my most desperate fears

as they exist on the fields

and farmlands of my mind.

The fracture eye of a honeybee,

therein reflected a hundred ginger lilies.

A thousand of the lived-in

boxes of Hooverville,

cardboard apostles of desperation.

My first memory is a visit

to the stonebreaker's house. The hills

outside of town, square and neatly

arrayed. The son steps softly,

shows me their hammers.

Sledges for the reassembly

of boulders into rubble.