FOREST HONOR STODDARD

"The typist lived in a kind of limbo, hovering between heaven & hell." C.L, The Hour of the Star

tiny brimfilled winejar

just colors to design us in

someone's exploding

across the lake

  catastrophe bangs echo

are we in a rough neighborhood

I feel like a tough place, sometimes

on the lake in a dark wet breeze,

    Do you think we do things on purpose that are harder & worse for us?

it's raining on me, on my books

  my winejar has turned into a kalimotxo jar

it's raining around that good lighter

 and on The Hour of the Star

   and on The Blue Notebooks

Forest Honor Bali

  at the cabin we wear our

cut off cardigan sleeves

  as legwarmers

over our jeans

     they end up looking like

  festival wear

      burning the forest down

       with all the lights & smoke & vibrations

I have smoke face

mouth, ears, nostrils all smoke

smoke in my eyes

do clouds get thinner when they rain?

is it just

  I  L  L  U  Z  H  U  N  N  N  N

trying to be a poet in the rain

  trying to use a notebook in the forest?

           Climb a boulder

           Drop a laptop in a lake

  attend poets diversity college

   and get one for free

     if you graduate

20 saved messages

what do I do here
in the shake skizm
in this roundabout way
I decide things
like the colors to find
me
I want burnt orange, ultramarine
ultra ultra ultra
ultimate
a cloud of silence, halo of silence
hello peace, wrap around my brain peace
storm soft me peace, storm brain me please
give me a tough little Rain
I want them wet tufts
I wanna get all puffed out
shook off, sealskin
evapoheart
dissolvelungs
jump your bridge, how did I miss you?
wasn't I always a knot obvious?
how was I missed? & how long will I keep
them all
till the sky breaks across my swarmy head?
I spose

TOday

Luckily I got something new at christmastime, a new dress with dragonfly print & it hasn't come off since, can't. When you go to bed dressed you wake up so. Easily, with layered tights & socks kicked off beneath the soiled pink wool & soiled down & soiled 500-thread-counts. Never to sleep without someone in the proximity, but keeping a dog as a wall between he & me. Everymorning waking up before dawn, yawning wondering, whose fingers are these? whose knee haphazardly pushed in the crook? 

The colors of my hands, royal blue chips, the copper, puce, cadet blue. The cardigan accused of being 'mustard' when mustard just isn't olive. The forest green. I crocheted a shoelace; they thought I was out of it. The neon baby stuff I have around me, the notion that honey in my espresso is what's for me. I am learning to devour a little. An omelet here, a slice of green pepper/jalapeno there. The cans all aligned on my perfect big table. I want to write about the internet, because it is finally immanent. I think that could be somehow even boringer than this all.

things we talked about

eyes, colors, nausea, autumn, showers, blood, being Irish, come, stubble, being Turkish, being Canadian, lying, misuse, anxiety, border collies, language, love, fear, drinks, smoking, hands, feet, newness, comfort, guilt

just a couple of times

being for the afternoon

The reorganization of dream clothes, the inevitable circle the rainbow display can make. The inevitable dismay can make. My impossible love. 

We walked along the muddy path, making erosion all the more knowable. The dogs in their short legs, prancing, or raging, or lumbering along, and our hands holding to stop feet from eroding down the slippery slope. Across a log across a creek, "the confluence, the confluence!" The brambles in my gray tights, o favorite gray tights, and a hole and arunning up and down. The freezing such running water makes in air surrounding. Muddy boots, laced up with mud, socks, pulled up to knees by mud. The muddy man riding through on his muddy bike, the lightfooted dog leaping over muddy flows. I looked around, and there, in the sun, freckles & eyes of tiger and soft midsections. The colors, and the colors. You & I in reverse symmetric eternal rainbow closet organization style. Thanks for the dreams, brains.

brilliants

It's the next day, a next door and the clang from it. Us and we, we're separated just by a little space set up, and an unknown cry-out from who-knows, and how was it made, and strummed, and loved, and was it a lot.

O, your little face of different colors. Your little eyes of colored glasses made from suns, planets. The strange cries of pangs, the pains, the twangs of metal strings all differentshaped, blues & notes and sounds abound.