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typewriter poem no. 2
Untitled for now
typed in red on a French Hermes baby by Rūta Marija Kuzmickas 
shot on film by Vilija Kuzmickas -
ça va ?
03302024
Il pleut à Paris aujourd’hui and my mind is sleepy with songs well-worn like the sock threads thinning at the palms of my feet. I will listen to rhetorical melodies for now: the strutting heels of girls in love or girls in the midst of scheming an escape, the scrape of bicycle wheels on pavement, the chaos of overlapping language that surrounds me like a breeze. Winter is mean and dark, rain is sinister when endless, unrelenting. I live in the same clothes, without too much complaint, and though my shoes are tearing open at the seams, the rooms and halls in which they tread are luminous and storied, the city streets narrow and unpredictable. I climb the carpeted stairs up to the sixth floor, breathless and alive, again without having counted the number of steps.
Théâtre national de l’Opéra-Comique 
a Parisian apartment in the 7th arrondissement -
fragment 005
06252023
You look, how do you say, triste, when sunlight does not ask for permission to climb into the bathwater with me, the same expression as the someone who once told me I was lucky to draw a warm bath of my own free will. Free will, a hindrance not unlike the mousetrap in your kitchen cupboard. I will scrub my sentences clean to the letter. I will strip them bare, put them in the therapy, teach them to be expensive, and see them off to school. I will sew them into my sleeves, one by one, and instruct them to practice attachment in theory. I will memorize nothing, save the fog, I will understand nothing, I will require no responses. Speak to me when I speak to you, gorgeous.
Your teeth are in my coffee. If you should like them back, I promise not to drink. Twelve little midnights in a row your caricature falls into my dream, the way the bath-time sunlight once-did. Twelve little midnights in a row I wake up covered in imaginary. Disaster is embarrassment colored by hand, set in a great big room of silence, and photographed. The quiet ones ruin the party. The quiet ones are always photographed.
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poem 004
02212023
sans indentationsThe blindness of the sunlight on that day
never abandons me. Mirrored by the hearth
reflected in your own two ember eyes.
Ask me something good.
Answer a question with a question.
An eye for an eye,
A touch for a touch.
Hard heat of summer in the park that day
still simmers me from time to time. Sweaty
and a little drunk inside my coat of maxims.
Confess to me a lie.
Counter it with something sweet, be sharp.
A word for a word,
A silence for a silence.
Light is only beautiful at certain times of day.
The promise of the light returning is what cuts.
Erase your work and now you
haven’t done the math, now
have you.
you haven’t done the math
now have you haven’t you done the math haven’t you
done the math now have you done the math now have you haven’tdone the math now have you you
you haven’t done the math now have you
The promise of the light returning is what cuts certain times of day light is only beautiful in silence word for word countered by confession sweet and sharp lie a little drunk inside my coat of maxims sweaty in the hard heat shimmering from time to time summer in the park that day a touch for a touch she has an eye for that she answers questions with questions riddle me this why are the mirrors of your eyes like embers in the hearth of summer blind like sunlight blind as love is true you haven’t done the math you haven’t done the math now have you
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poem 003
Aubade for future longing in typewriter, watercolor, fountain pen
02172023
after midnight -
fragment 002
02142023
it’s about love if you wish it to beat the end of a dream
(this isn’t a dream, it’s
a row of dreams)
please refrain
from speaking
or unnecessary
movement (these
legs of mine sea
legs no longer)
and tie the elbows
of your heart together
(together forever)
in a knot of sweet
reverence, devoted
to rescue the self
from the strict temple
of the mind (unless
it keeps you alive,
unless it keeps you,
alive) and follow
the little stones
follow the little stones
I’ve left for you
(
portal somewhere close, portal somewhere immediate, portal to tenderness,
portal to flow -
fragment 001
01302023
wherever you go, there you are
to know how cold it is outside
is obvious, no news to me,
no news the sudden vocal
cords of small machines,
dishwasher, echoes from
the laundry room
Once emptied
of thoughts, I am
a liar, I am elated,
triangulating
the many paths
of longing
without footsteps
without retrospect
When my eyes
ar e yes that trace
figure eights
through blank
air without love
when tinfoil eyes
when empty
when explicit
Excuse me.
I have not slept
in days. Please
carry on.
You will want to know,
of course, the answers,
provided there are
answers that you will
accept, and they will be
obvious to the degree
of yesterday’s weather
forecast, and the way
I look at you when
(stars in your eyes)
the way time stares
when it’s running out
fast, and you tell me
there is time, but there’s
no time, there’s only
the idea that one can be forgiven
for dust
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poem 002
airplane half-poem
I am not the first
to write a poem
at high altitude,
comfortable, numb,
indelicately phased
by holy dances
licking the roof
of an airplane’s mouth
like electric eel disco,
magnificent rainbows
of loneliness, so far
above the water,
so far from either point
of home. I am not the first
to write a poem
in the scheduled dark,
half-clever, widowed by
my one true nature,
weak for all things
delicately phrased
and far far too
expensive
02202023
02212023 -
poem 001
On the train in Tokyo
though we are not strangers
though time was given to us
once before not twice I’ll fold
my eyelids down and out
down, away from you, sway
side to side, drunk-like, left
hand in place of someone else
‘s journey home tonight
held on to silver, balance
silver as steel rail is
the car is full of glass
the car is full of ghosts
more mirrors than Versailles
to dance me side to side
to side the next stop is
no more existential thoughts
no more pretty things
for ravens me and you
shiny objects narrow pockets
doors close soon after
the melody ends they wrote
no more staring down
the wall without a pencil
did you know that maps
lie pathologically
rock paper scissors
you belong to me
the most logical
thing in the world
rock paper scissors
you belonged to me
paper folded letter-less
rock paper 가지마
I saw you in the hairline
of some tall Italian
in glasses gaze down
나를 잊지마
they say what is said
don’t they, no more
transparencies
only spectacles only
oil lamps no wishes only
fables on the greatest
mystery of all
the way it flickers
when someone has
someone left opened
the train car window
the ghosts speak French
they know it all
though it seems unfair
comment I cannot tell
why it would matter why
although we are far from
strangers from now on
tell me why the heart
leaves evidence
San Francisco left its
morning’s heavy fog
into my line of sight
eyes swept dry
with information
I listen for the melody
I cannot know
if we are strangers
when your eyes well up
I cannot tell
if you are standing
next to me
01222023
COLLECT ON DELIVERY
stray moth No. 27
COLLECT ON DELIVERY 