all the shells

Amar Shah · all the shells

Odysseus. Sipping on my cup
of Joe, elixir, scripting: B, C,
D, F#, M R,
J K(, C), SH.

Bashing all the shells to dust, going
red from all the rust. Early rowing,
no black pearls towing, red
rubies glowing, only currying your
favor. Take me back, take me back,
back to prologue, from the sequel.

Whose fault?

Amar Shah · Whose fault?

Whatever.
Whatever shuts you up, whatever
puts your fears aside, whatever lets
me be alone again with my own thoughts,
whatever lets me keep my pride, whatever.

I'm sorry, baby. Didn't mean to push
you out. I just have so much on my mind
I'm still not well, you know? Thank you, always
being here. Thank you, you know I don't
deserve it.
All the worthless pleasantries,
humilities, whatever trinkets buy
you off, whatever gets you to shut up,
whatever it takes
to be alone, to be
alone, no longer suffocating, no more
revolted, no concern to you, no concern
at all, keep your precious worries to
yourself, I ask you honestly, why would you
waste your worries, wishing well for me?

I was meant to roam the plains alone.
I am a mighty lion, can you not
see what I am? Can you shut up? Shut
your mouth, I'm gonna finish, I am
a mighty lion. I have no kin, I have no
home, I need no friends, no wife, no
one—I only want you to shut up.

Just shut up shut up shut up shut up I
want to hear my own voice come back I want
to hear my voice whose fault? your fault
your fault it's all your fault woman you
how could it be me how could it be mine
can't you see the cage I'm in I only know
the cage and you stand there pitying me
I'd rip you limb from limb if only for
the cage—
who put me here? I don't
remember, it was long ago before, they
took me from my home, my natal home.

how many

Amar Shah · how many

We take ourselves upon the stronger parent—
or same sex—so say psychologists
(in theory). How many parents in the lot?
One or two, that ought to cover it.

See that poet leaning on the doorstep?
Watch her counting, scanning lines. How many?
Four, but they don't fit. How many? Five—
all are lucky, no one has to die.

disgruntled postal office worker's creed

Amar Shah · disgruntled postal office worker's creed

"Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom
of night stays couriers from swift completion
of appointed rounds."
If not the rain
and snow and solitude. If not the night,
the dark and stormy night, why you?
Why, you...

Never a house

for Molly

Amar Shah · Never a house

Never a house
paid,

Never a house
plain and bright and
stainless,

Never a house
missing mess nor stress
nor strife,

Never a house
wife,

but a mother,
full:

sculptor
shaping

an able,
engaged,
unaided, brave
child.

Now you, one-time
Mama

(always a mother),
take new
trials.

Collide

Sweet that you're concerned about my dog.
She has a very heavy skull and not
a lot to keep inside,
but is your knee okay?

Principles

Amar Shah · Principles

Don't dig your heels defending principles.
The trolls lurk, thirsty, under every
bridge. The shifty, driven, taking you
for rides through horror-movie sets, secluded
love-and-murder cabins in the woods.

Demand to know the score, the fare. Keep
your trusty girls aware. Don't ever get
into a cab with a baboon. If you
can't settle first things first, how will you scale
the tower?
How will you walk upon the ocean
beds and fly your lover to the moon?

Patriarch

Amar Shah · Patriarch

Sometimes I think of Auda Abu Tayi,
shouting to the desert plain, "Because
I am a river to my people!"
Pa-
triarch, the warrior-champion patriarch,
who'd rip his heart out of his chest to feed you,
if another left, to beat, to bleed for you.

Cowering poets, writing code

because it only has to work, and Work
is what you needed, not to mention food
and shelter, and a couple words of praise
from equals, colleagues: Hi, good morning! Nice
to see you, I thought you did nice work on that
PR review.
Just a couple crumbs
for poets, to trace their way back to the site
map, to the root of knowledge trees, to break
apart the trusted, loved—the comfort of
the—binary. But clutching, cloying to your words,
your code, your symbols, poetry, you gain
a reputation for...well, as my first
boss put it, polishing a turd :P

The scale of poets hiding in the code
is staggering and growing exponentially.
More gods than men, more poets than the bugs.

Amar Shah · Cowering poets, writing code

Look at me,

a lover of blank verse.
happy to be contained, joyfully restrained,
confident to count myself enough.

How I'd longed for space to be a poet!

Amar Shah · "Selena" / "Look at me"

Selena,

sorceress of story, ruling
empress empath,
I gravitate, revolve in orbit
round you, queasy feelings mounting as my
cold and rocky core goes supernova.

Amar Shah · "Selena" / "Look at me"

The enigmatic court of public taste:

Amar Shah · The enigmatic court of public taste

How many sober justices of zero,
nameless note? How many judgments odd?
How many artists banned and swiftly muted,
how many critics, not anonymous
(We gave our email, passwords just like you!),
with no right, only power, and crushing
responsibility to call you out
for being seen.
You asked, how many?
As many black boys executed, as many
chances lost to save the clime, as many
joyless, blocked creatives, wielding many
buckets slime. Look up the number, @jack.

openings

Dubbing

in my baby's
morning shows, in German over every
Jewish joke, as if they just can't stop
finishing the job.

first on SoundCloud

the waveforms are more interesting to poets
oh you music entertainment company
what is a music entertainment company?
Sounds like Spotify.
What do you mean, a shiny Netflix of ... Music?
Sounds like a Spotify,
or isn't it?

What they imagined, what we built
is a theater from which to shout to sing
to rock out and drop some rhymes
and let yourself be heard

sound is sound business is just
music, dull the edges.
Happens on a higher plane
don't get your feelings hurt by
smart
decisions

You want to make an elephant a mouse?
Ok but where to stuff the trunk?

Only you

are qualified to speak about yourself.
Others can, but they are not the expert.

second act

The poems of “Second Act” answer the “Poems of Kinship and Absolution.” As the second act opens, the hero’s work is not completed, only just begun. He makes a contrite oath to the Queen he had rejected ("intact, entr'acte"). He quests through elemental wounds opened by the Mother ("Can it be me,") to cold, alien encounters with a mismatched Beloved ("Outside lunar base,") whom he had passionately, tragically desired. He flirts with meaningless, judgmental, self-important intellectualism and glimpses the phantasmic mirror of himself as cynical grandstander and rapist scientist ("'Geocentric,'"). Finally he accepts the burden of his disappointments, hurts, and failures, and begins living for himself ("chain"), happily and deliberately choosing his own commonplace, measured practice of submission to the Sacred Feminine.

Read along:

1. intact, entr'acte
2. Can it be me,
3. Outside lunar base,
4. "Geocentric,"
5. chain

Amar Shah · second act

chain

Amar Shah · chain

Service top and bratty sub, two lovers
fearing both their shadows, but that was in
the past. Now they, mature, have made a game
of what they can endure, a bit of fun
for frightened teens they were. They show us all:

The chains will set you free, this shame will let
you be. Rise up and walk away. The shame,
the chains will stay, but you won't be restrained.

It's good. I like it, that we're going slow.
She chooses what we do and where we go.
I am released, from leadership released,
directing not. I must say yes, unless.
If we're to go I must say yes. I can
say no, though up to now I only want
to go. But I don't call the shots, select
the toys, or make the count—I just enjoy!
I don't say where to go. I wait to hear
the mistress' voice, her royal, guiding voice,
uplifting armies from the dust, "You were
slaves and now you're men—my men! Shiver
at my graceful touch. Rise and shiver,
widen shoulder, plant yourself and stand
to meet my gaze, be worthy of my touch."

My wishes for myself I meet, so many
touches for myself, for me, by me.
For me, with me, there's everything I'd want,
my life complete, my wishes for myself
I meet, and nothing that I crave from her.
Curious, I wait for her to show me
something new. My wishes for myself
I meet. My wishes for myself I meet.

There is a quest, a quest to make, to take
myself to edges where I staked my losses,
back to where I stood, to take me back
to trenches I'll defend, to finish journeys
to the end. To stand my body back,
to meet the boy who stumbled, pull him up,
to meet the enemy and push it back,
to finish work left open, be the person
I was born, to read the book up to
the very final line, and write the simple
honest, epigraph: This life was mine.

every gripe a fertile ground

so many

Every day I try to rest, and every day
the poems say—
No vacay for you,
you lazy bum. Get out of bed! So many,
so many just like us to come.

Amar Shah · "so many" / "I know it's done" / "Habits"

"Geocentric,"

here you scoff,
"flat-earthers, fact deniers, anti-vaxxers," heretics
deserving not consideration,
just prompt and total condemnation—
and if you have a sec—annihilation.
They only swerve us from the truth,

and on the masses move their magic,
Brexiteers and trumpists, third-right fascists.
The New, New Age is different from the Old,
not in pockmark nakedness, just clothes
and edge-sharp hairdos copped from queer—
authentic, I'll admit—diffuse and self-
defeating, hunger-striking coiffs.

"Geocentric, what a joke,
a dozen totems on a yoke
of ox-bull, ram, and fisher crab,
twin virgins, scorp-yin, goat and ram,
...water bearer...what even is that?"

"Geocentric, they're the ones!" the ones
who took and shook and cooked Kopernikus
and Kepler's bones, left them whoring, lying,
bending over, turning round about
the Popes who blocked the plain-as-day and never-
moving sun.

Heliocentric, we're past that.
Thalassocentric, nope.
Gnossocentric, absolutely
not a chance, you mystic,
anarchistic dope.

Never will we let those motherfuckers
win, who cowed the scientists. Us,
scientists! Masters of the Uni-
verse, rightful husbands of the virgin
night, we Men of Letters. It's to us
the body of the goddess was bequeathed,
once she was stunned and stripped and poked and fallen,
slaughtered, carved and parceled for our wrath-
onality.

Acentric? Mmmmn...or at the very loudest,
chronocentric, not a doubt that
time deserves a vaunted place...
but banging big her Milky Way,
my penetrating intellect,
firm and full and bursting,
ventured, how 'bout cataclysmocentric?
(Then I came,

because eureka,
it bubbles strong, tumescent when you play the hero,
rising up and dicking down a mare, it's very thero-.
A pleasure, yes, corporeal, I am the first to say so.
Don't get me wrong, not solo,
but absolutely porno,
and ratio-, no philio-!
(my favorite, irrumatio)
Don't get your feelings hurt,
cuz I don't care and neither do phenomena.
Between us it is strictly physio-.)

...
Huh?
...
Oh yeah,
catajizzmocentric!
Sure,

but only just one way
cuz if you go the other,
yeah, it's geo-, andro-, psycho-, homo-,
(Whad jew think, that I'm a dino?)
and then get this

selena-,
thea-,
gaia-,
mata-,
and don't dare push me
too far back,
cuz after that,
there's only blackness,
trembling, dark
seductive thanato-,
a mystery,
and pardon me,
in (Latin) utero.

Amar Shah · "Geocentric,"

I know it's done

when I can read it. No.
It's done when I can read it.
When can I read?
When I can read it.

Amar Shah · "so many" / "I know it's done" / "Habits"

intact, entr'acte

Amar Shah · intact, entr'acte

I asked you,
come, reside and occupy your power,
and you have done and do and did.
No longer
do I guard or guide you, castigate, cajole,
or bribe you, no longer dare I deign to bride you.
No longer dare, demand, nor deign to bride you.

Slowing, lowering my creaky drawbridge,
restoring order to the makeshift barricades,
I take my forehead to the earth and bring
me under
—under—
You wouldn't say this but,
the evil one does not submit...
so I have cast the odium away,
Call me lucky to retain my eyes,
all my body, not my pride.

Habits

Amar Shah · "so many" / "I know it's done" / "Habits"

Early springtime sun, too much whiskey
in the night. At my desk with coffee,
not out 'doing life right': pounding
pavement, chanting, have to, ought to, good
for me to do this? Good enough to sit
and cradle cup, admit that yesterday
was fun, Don't make a habit out of it.

Outside lunar base,

Amar Shah · Outside lunar base

I carry to the sacred stars
my crushing hollow grief
that never had I, even slight,
a chance at making you a friend.

All the choking tears,
all words, some elegant, some spewed
like chunks of under-ruminated salad,
no baring of my soul, not any of it, served
to bring you close to me.
Or if it did,

what hope had I to join
in long-awaited union of our skin,
when naked and desiring, took
I hold of denim, canvas, leather,
kevlar tails and padlocked fastens,

when long I had a woman seen,
felt I the thorax of a mighty bug:
ass and hip and breast
all jagged like a stone?

And frozen, helpless in the waste,
this foul creature on my neck,
I wondered if I'd make it back to base
to see the earth, the one I wished I'd never left,
see it rise and fill my sky again.

Can it be me,

who'll be the one
to bring your secret wish to light?
Can it be me,

can it be me,
can it be I, who hunkers down
to plumb the caves, who gasping, long
and extra, hoists the clanking iron lung
and goes to meet the monsters of your mind?
Can it be me,

who ties you to the chair
and says, My turn, my turn, to be the mom
and you to be the little babe?
Can it be me,

who, lying in the box of Head of State,
sashed red and golden silked, and waxed
and glowing like a wicked orb?
Can it be me, who
climbs out, brushes off,
who lumbers over to the center of the stage,
climbs podium to greet the people:
Don't cry for me! Don't cry for me,
Mom! Let it be me to do the crying—
it always hurt the most
—when it was you who cried for me.

Amar Shah · Can it be me?

older sister kochiyama

didi didi didi
what is left to say
when they took our brother
malcolm
what is left to say
what they don't stop taking
when will they stop taking
didi
yuri didi
yuri didi
when will they stop taking
when will they stop

poems of kinship and absolution

The “Poems of Kinship and Absolution” begin by challenging the wish of the male hero to undermine female authority and judgment ("Why have a queen,"), which he must accept to begin his journey into maturity. The poems proceed in dreams ("Tom", "Assuming the colossal form") as he struggles against God, whose distance appears to him hostile and contemptuous, but is not. Declaring that he will break free, the hero whines of frustrating, self-obscuring attachments ("hold up hold up hold up"). He admits that he must train and venture to refine and sharpen himself—he must enter the arena with courage and vulnerability ("brittle, supple"). Ultimately, in collaboration with his loving God, the hero enrolls himself into the joyful and unbroken fellowship of artists, honing crafts in the material realm and bound together as voluntary family ("Brothers, lovers, artists, all!"), all genders and notably women. The journey of this hero concludes in the poems of “Second Act.”

Read along:

1. Why have a queen,
2. Tom
3. Assuming the colossal form
4. hold up hold up hold up
5. brittle, supple
6. Brothers, lovers, artists all!

Amar Shah · poems of kinship and absolution

toenails, stretch marks, hair, REVOLT

The body seeks its resolution. Its justice
knows no worldly letter, no handsome dollar,
no pretty speck nor dainty freckle.

feature request

absolutely is the world of math and science
of petty fishers for a measly buck
of kings and princes of the highest
hedges higher than your silly terrors
game enough for any fuck
don't tempt it with your simple questions
of course it can of course it can
it only lives to do one thing
disrupt disrupt dis rupture all the trust
you ever signed with anyone
with any mother, mercy, god
with any book or master
with any mindful whisper
within the tracing of the word, enough.

ten years ago

twenty
you heard my wish to be a poet
and now
not forty
see the making of a man

Why have a queen,

except to be her protegé?
Except to let her keep you safe?
Except to let her guard you, guide,
defend, extend her arms around you?
Why have a queen,

except be shielded, led, directed—
shepherd stepping up the mountain
to the source of beauty, wisdom,
where love was born, where magic
cradled, swaddled, swung and tumbled you?
Why have a queen,

except to be the man you never thought
would come, the man that no one saw,
who didn't have the royal Sight?
Why have a queen?
Why have a queen?
Why have a queen,

if she does not keep you safe,
since you refuse to let her?
Why have a queen?
Why have a mom?
Why have a wife?
Why have a friend?

Why have a queen,
if you, too stubborn to be led,
too prideful to be judged,
yes: judged
and found not perfect but
absolutely worthy
to rise and take your place among the knights
and elders of the realm?

Why have a queen at all?

Amar Shah · Why have a queen?

Brothers, lovers, artists all!

for Béro, Carrie, Catherine, everyone

Amar Shah · Brothers, lovers, artists, all!

Surely you are not alone.
We artists are a tribe,
sisters of a higher order,
here to nurture, guide.
Leaning heavy on each other,
letting flow the rushing water
coursing, shooting, manifesting
wishes of our artist god,

in whose hands we mighty are,
in whose light we brilliant are,
in whose joy together we
are brothers, sisters, siblings, lovers,
friends and fathers, kids and mothers,
so—
let's

never be afraid again of gifts our mothers gave us,
never be afraid again of powers fathers trained us:

charcoal, paint and pens and pencil,
scissors, tape and glue and stencil,
line and meter, birch and cedar,
mortar, pestle, rice and lentil.

These are artists' tools.
These are artists' loves. (Loaves!)

These are every baby's rattle,
every wise old wizard's whittle,
every midwife's lunar chart.
All the means to practice art

are birthrights,
yours and mine and ours,
and we fill the many hours
in happy, silly, messy play...

play,
play,
play,
play.

Just play and rest and make and play
and build and care and rest and play,

it's all we ever wished for you,
your fathers' mothers' sisters' brothers,
aunts and uncles, cousins, lovers,
friends and equals here together.

All we ever wished for you.
Nothing else you need to do
but play,
play,
play.

hold up hold up hold up

Amar Shah · hold up hold up hold up

little bitch said

I thrive on conflict I
tell you what
I thrive on
sunlight, air, water
daily wanks and
Pringles
sunlight, walks, dog cuddles
dreaming of tomorrow
when I
will
be
gone
(sorry you can't come, good girl)

no more tiptoes
through every
outsized shit
no more guessing
why the fuck you
can't be honest
today there's no more reading,
cuz this one's a mute

I thrive on
sunlight, open plans
daily walks
minimal space
raw diets, sexy laughter
and shibari
livin big lives
generous eye contact
from one who loves me
try and guess
try and guess
make me promise not to tell
so you can guess guess guess
big surprise it's
just selfish little
petty little
anxious little
lazy little paycheck daddy
useless little liar me

oh! dja hear that?
oooh dja hear that,
ima so's yo
path now, go on
go on, so's yo
mama let's make up, let's
make it all up
to you, not one art
just all your bad inventions
half-baked recipes
for meat, three sides
all starches, sugar!
free flowin coke
zero kisses ten years
tell your (facebook) friends! shame
twitter stalking scoobies shame
trumpdate: shame upon a nation, shame
shame this conscientious,
fearful sociopath
every year just a little more nerve
every week attending fervent lie!
his cost lie! thera-pie
good doc! trainin up my lies
it's just my sup-ply
if not for you, how—dare—I
want my healing just for me?

keep calm!
thrive!
on!
sunlight, open air, still darkness
every phase of fleshy bouncing moon
every swagger on a nasty-minded shawty
money in the bank
spank! for
nightly yanks
and
four ina morning
three sides long-
hand all the
fuckin feels out
every fuckin day
no questions, no excuses
the pages never write themselves
dogs aint never walk themselves
away, I'm leavin you bitch!
(sorry pup
know you'll miss me but I
have to go) I'm
leavin that

little bitch on read

Trust me

Trust me I know
she said
I know it's hard for you
in here up there out there

I know you feel you're all alone
Trust me
Trust me

I would hold you close
I would hold you oh so close
If I didn't have to
push you away

Berlin landlords

are faithless and capricious
expect them unreliable
fickle, vapid, biased
like Harvard, Yale and Google
tossing CVs in the bin
like lovers spoiled by too much sex
like every woman swiping
over frames of
men they didn't want
the price of doing business is
to leave the broken in your wake
the price of always searching is
to never find your home

Assuming the colossal form

Amar Shah · Assuming the colossal form

Assuming the colossal form,
Krishna burned bright blue
and lifted arms and thighs and head
above the princes and their games,

assuming the colossal form
would help to sing a simple Gita,
drop some science on a royal jerk,
and liberate him from the pain of birth.

Assuming the colossal form
was a mean and evil demon,
Arjuna lifted bow and shoot,
bared his teeth and shouted, "Ha!
illusion, figment of my doubt,
you do not in the slightest trouble me.
Thought you not I'd trained for this?"

Assuming the colossal form
of O-type stars and nebulae,
Vishnu's lungs and tongues and
larynx, diaphragm let shriek
the awesome, holy roar of God.

Assuming the colossal form
was how he'd meet his maker,
at last the rumble of his father,
again the welcome of the womb!
Arjuna trembled, retched and crumbled
fell and fought no more.
A naked insect cowered where
the hottest warrior prince had stood.

"Assuming the colossal form
would not be such a big-fucking-deal
was a gross miscalculation,"
the giant God-man thought
and thundered out
this cryptic,
baffling,
boundless wail:
No, listen,
please,
I'm on your side—

What a waste of breath

to meet unstated accusations,
lecture me on what just happened,
tell me what you never said,
promises you'll never make
which no one asked you for;
Building your defensive wall,
behind the safety of a mask.
What a waste of breath,
what a waste of distanced,
covered,
sanitized,
pure, untouched and neutral
breath.

forward, objectives

with stable velocity
we shall in good time
all milestones hit
blockers remove
all OKRs go green

with stable velocity
escape
velocity
we shall in good time
level the field
mow down
eradicate every last living
stakeholder

brittle, supple

Amar Shah · brittle, supple

To stop going limp,
it wasn't a given.
Didn't know that I'd make it
to the pure, salty turf
past the stern, owl-eyed judges
or even—what luck
—onto the bench,
the junior, inglorious, butt-shelving
bench of the team.

I didn't believe I could,
didn't know I would
not crack but bend,
not hide but emerge.
There are winners and losers,
I thought, and I knew which one

I was...not in the stands
with the cheering supporters,
high banners reading,
You have to be strong
to bring back the gold.
I was at home
with the critics,
envying, quaking,
afraid just to watch,
to be reflected
in the glare of the screen, in
the puddles
of Mom's tears.

But now I know
that to go long and hard you cannot be brittle,
and
arriving, you must
stick to the landing,
soft.

machines that will end us, gods that befriended us

every masterpiece was financed
by power players of the day.
so too DeepL and AlphaGo
and the cold, robotic shadows
that will rip us limb from limb
all bite, no bark, and nothing of
the tender love their gods (
in whose image they are forged
) the love that their gods
knew for us
saviours
champions
leaders
caretakers
intimates
meatheads made of flesh and
bone so easy to snap
so fragile to grow
so fragile we
we the artists
designers
technologists
coders, testers
trainers
we the dogs'
best friends.

the way I love you

Is it so selfish
to demand you admit that I've
got a friend, many friends who
are brilliant, eloquent,
unashamed
to rip open their shirts,
plunge hands into hearts
and say,
Come
with
me
to the place
we belong?

Am I really so vain
to want you
to go your own way
if you cannot go mine?

They were wrong,
we're all wrong
who sing this song.
To be loved by somebody
you do know,
you must
know what it's like
to do the loving.

10-9

on receipt of instruction to marshall my sorries
for somebody who is screaming at me

the hangar must open
to welcome the plane
no matter what order
is squawked by Control

focus on quality

12-26.04: All engineers, managers, product, design to reproduce bugs in the clients.

(IMHO, )It sounds like such a waste,
to send the sous-chef shopping.
I know, you need the butter right away.
Have you tried Gorillas?

come to #moonchat for the moon

everybody loves the sun
even the fog
it just can't hide
the freakin sun
the brilliant mother loving sun.

do you love the moon?

really,
do you love it?

then come along to #moonchat
where sing and pray and yodel we
our paeans to the moon:

lover
mother
nighttime friend
second star to every son
one who goes
but always comes,
counts your days
and everyone's
to busy to look up

come to #moonchat for the moon
but only if you love her
Luna won't do things by halves
(except
well you know
the obvious)

________

first published draft, "only if you love her"

feedback

for Maria

I learned early on:
when I want a champion
I get one in you.
If I need a counselor
advocate
critic or challenger
I have one in you

What is a manager?
I don't know,
could be anything
—shouldn't be anyone
who can't be a leader
to earn your truth
inspire your trust.

"When the net is strong
you can leap,
where the earth is firm
you can stand."

I leave my worries in
your patient, proven hands
exactly where I
know they fit

takevan

kind of a bummer
how they talked to the girl
insulting her
belittling her
killing my boner
in real life
you talk to a girl like that
she won't go anywhere with you
she'll stay for the bus
shaking

won't notice where
the wind becomes rain
the rain becomes tears
the tears become mud
won't notice the bus
till it's time to get on
get back to her flat
boots off
brush teeth
long day tomorrow at the plant

in the morning she's herself again
but a glance in the mirror
a rifle through the dresser
nothing to wear
nothing fits
I don't want anyone to see me today

I saw your dick at eastern cross

Tom

Amar Shah · Tom

She pulled back the curtain.
It blew over her face.
"I know you're there!
You think I don't know?"

and answered back a voice
from bushes just beyond the fence,
encroaching nearer to the wood:

Isn't it more important
that you know
that you
are there?

She swept a curl over her ear,
wriggling loose
from a sloppy bun,
the worn beige silk
neglecting to cover
the curve of her breast.

"It's ok, it's ok.
Tom,
I've known a long time.
I can
actually
see you,"

and carried back the voice,
resolute,
authoritative,
young, confident,
inflected by French, Dutch, German.
It echoed cross the plain of sand
expanding wide on every sight:

And what does it mean, to
allow others to see you?

"Tom, you can knock it off!"
she huffed,
teeth baring bright,
salutations to
the fullest full-moons,
the river-cancer moons.

"Come to me, Tom,
I want you, I love you!
Let's not play games anymore,"

and came again the voice,
the Father's cold and laughing voice,
high, clear, studied—
intellectual
—and therefore spake the voice,
the cosmic, demi-urgent voice,
loosed from black holes yet uncharted
beyond the reach of space...time:

Interesting.
Very interesting
that you would say that,
when you
don't know me at all.

the riding master fears too little for his head

"your royal highness
your royal highness
I ask your pardon
I ask your mercy

"I am but
your humble servant
in your presence
only such
as pleases you

"your highness please
don't think me insolent
or if you do
dispose some patience
mercy your grace
to an old fool
raised in stables
born stinking of shit

"your highness
please

"this powerful beast
is waiting
to be ridden

so get.your.arse

in the saddle
and let's GO"

How to eat a croissant

Someone once gave me a gift,
and before he gave it to me, said,

"This is a gift.
Which means that it is yours completely.
And you are completely free
to do with it as you wish."

And then he gave me a turkey feather.

(He was inspired to give me a turkey feather
by some members of a Native American community
whom he had met long ago in his life and career.)

I said thank you and
accepted the turkey feather
from this man
whom I had loved and respected
And that evening I gave the

turkey feather to my
four-year-old daughter,
who squealed to receive
something so big,
so natural
and so joyfully a part of this earth.

She destroyed it in the creative play of unfettered childhood.

I think about gifts sometimes,
about the guilts we lay over them
when we fail to let go of the gift
even as it passes out of our hands,
into the hands of whom we love,
how our generosity fails to launch,
how we come short of giving
and fall back on taking.

I think about gifts
when I think about the French,
and how it troubles you to let go of your gifts,
those you concocted,
those you perfected,
those you plundered, strangled, stole,
and now clutch tight,
griping at us who would receive them.

I

I'm sorry
I couldn't help myself
when I was a baby
they said I was a boy
and everything kinda
escalated
from there

confessional

I have a secret
can I tell you my secret?
a revolting
disgusting secret
are you ready?
I have worms

I have worms
in my digestive canal
I've taken pills
to drive them away
to eliminate them
to flush them
waste
from my bowels
into the earth's

I've taken pills
but the worms come back
they wriggle at night
I want to puke
I think I saw one
that I pulled out over the john

I have worms
they won't stay away
because also I have
a nine year old child
light of my life
star in my sky
dirty long talons
that go into her mouth

I am a loving father
a doting father
an intimate father
traipsing through the vines of Eden
calling, my child,
Come, where are you
return to me
let's eat
It's
dinnertime

I am a subaltern father
a colonized father
a queer
attached
mother-and-father father
I won't push my child away
I won't hold her down and remake her body
I won't place her under my knife
I am not Abraham
I am not white
god made me of stone

~

So I make space
I hold space
the space that you occupy
I sit with this discomfort
in my rectum

Worms
your days are numbered
I am coming for you
just not today

bully

my dick at eastern cross