j_b collaborative

[J]

to walk alone at night
with the manifestations of the earth's dream
by your side
to sink with each step
as the silver
crystalizes,
galvanizes around your shins,
femurs,
fingernails
the weight pulls you down from the center of your
head, under your eyes.
to sigh softly in your unsoft state
to reach out and have your hand held
by the nothing and the spirit.

[B]

I
Subsidize easily
golden rectangle even,
compartmentalized to non-specific. I
wish to measure you (spiritually)
the circumference of the moon,
yellow cheshire grin
little teeth in my shoulder: slowly digging in.
weight of sand in palms (red & black exotic)
wait for tide to come upon us,
wash these hands we hold (holy, the spirit) of
nothing.

The street will not have you

You don't know what to think
That is why you are asleep

Myself,
I cannot sleep
But know exactly what I
Dreamt of

Blue Flower Sunday
On vinyl, that's why
I love you
Nothing
Seems to bring you down

Not the
Stains in our house
3 red chocolate
Boxes for consolation
Apologizing again
How I'd ask you not to

(Hypothetically)
When it rains like this
And you are a child again
Is your boat
Carved of bone
or folded paper?

The way it comes down,
You would be surprised
At paper's bravery
and prowess in water




Tell me whatever
You're comfortable telling

Tonight Has Opened My Eyes
to untold dimensions
What's potent
About a
Secret

Some teeth, no balls
Too much shit
Cluttering the
Bookshelf
The Anti-books
Analog wristed, half-chewed
Keep time with your
Big toe
A steady rhythm quiets
The baby downstairs

Until you have given everyone
On the street a kiss
On the cheek,
The street will not
Have you

And so be it

part of the sickness

my head feels like two heads

heavy,
i sway like ocean weight
buoying

someone
described his
eyes as "buoyant"

i, i
questioned the wording



it's part of the sickness

when everything else
is pouring out of me
why not songs?

words too,
and damn, i'm vocal
my new years resolution
is to shut
the fuck up

right after this line,
i swear
one more
take and
i can
hit this

high note

untime

Untime
My hands are
Inaccurate sundials
As a measure of
Comfort
I want to die
Jaywalking
Street coffin:
Remembered as a dent
in a European import
Driven by an
Immigrant
Memorialized in
Pressure washed
Asphalt
Patched with
Melted tires

I am tired.

Turn

I have seen the way
Water makes flat
Your hair
In that spot
That gentle
Curve
Between your shoulder blades
Where the sun
Smoothes every morning
As you turn
Your face from the window

I have heard you
Quavering, sing
Mellow and soothing
Smokey and hushed
A song for
Remembering
On green sheets
Wrinkled and ruined
Humming in
My ear

I have felt your
Breathe in
Quicker and softer
Brushed hair
From my
Forehead
Picked you from
Between my
Teeth
Made soft your
Blurry eyes
With heat

Gripped you in
My mold
Twisted between
Your delicate ribs
As you turn
Delighting
Slow between my
Fingers

We’ve wrung
Each other’s tears
Coaxed
Out in smiles
Dried by dry lips
Beeswaxed and cracked
Promising
Promises

Rubbed tender
Our sorest
Remembrances
Smoothed out the
Wrinkles in water
Nibbled at our
Hanging free flesh
As we fold
Together
Into the mystic

my sleep body

See-saw my weight

Like the alcoholic

Volume content

Makes corks

Stain chartreuse

Smudges on the

Edge of the bathtub, like

Maroon coffee cup

Full

Of coffee

Vanilla candle

Melting on the

Edge of the bathtub, like

My hands

Melting on the

Piano teeth

March me upstairs. You can’t see nearly as many stars from your observatory as you can in my hometown. We could drive to the top of Figueroa Mountain; you could watch the moon rise over the peaks there. I don’t think UFO sightings are funny. Well, they are funny, but not “ha-ha” funny. You either have had the experience or not. It’s scarier when everyone else is seeing the same thing.

Both fuming, coughing

Exhaust

You tied yourself to

The bed

(for warmth)

The mirror reflects

A rainbow

On the pillowcase

At the right time of day

I lay

Facedown

On top of your body

(for warmth)

The mirror reflects

A rainbow on

Your hips

My knees fold over

Your knees

My nose

Melting on the

Edge of your

Ear, like

My hands

Melting over your

Skinny wrists

Please, stop apologizing. That is the point anyway, isn’t it? Do what you have to do. Thank you, thank you, thank you…I remember clearly, there were four of us, in this tree. There were three or more separate lights. They would move in erratic, slightly geometric patterns, then swoop down real close to the horizon line, then zoom way up and away nearly out of sight before coming back. One was changing color like a psychedelic LED in the sky. All of the sudden they disappeared together.

My sleep body

Is much heavier

Than my

Bone vessel

Residual weight

When waking

Sometimes, I’m pulled

Down

Stone in

Water, like

My hands

Melting on the

Edge of the bathtub

Without without

"i am not afraid to not know what i am afraid of"



"How can it not be poetry?"
Why, I never!
A gesture,
Pause



Longer pause




"How I Am Not What
I Have Been"
in movement
with emotion
without

Without without
The sound whistles
out of your
Chemistry
Bodily rhythm comma
Beautiful source (no comma)

Pause

How to talk about it
without without
Talking about it
Does it have a
Sound
Where is its
Place
Do you feel it when you
Sleep

Writing in water
Makes ink float
Cloudy like
Water smoke

Bodies in water
Float in bodies of water
Stroke
Gentle, with the tongue
Tipping on your
Fingers
And counting there, too

New words make
We knew, have
Held
Can hear
Have been
Still dream of
Bodies in water
With emotion
without

Praise for Richie Lee

Praise for Richie Lee

Marbled, Hope sings

“Louise Louise” sweet

Animals on earth

Praise for the morning

Candle-lit yellow

Matches

Your yawning tooth slanted

Peace

Prickle, pierce, pair

Soothing warm water

With flame

Pluming half-light seizing

Sizing shadows extending air

Catches breath as you

Catch your death of cold

Makes hands to shake

Makes smiles fake, flaking

Plaster coated plain clothes

Officer

In the office, in the air

I sing along

Please don’t turn

Your eyes away

Just close your eyes

And see

Marbled morning

Smoothing

Praise for

Richie Lee and for

Contributing

Half-time swinging

Close your eyes

Louise

Sliding

In time

O.G. Red Dog

Rights?

Fortnights in mud

Beggars wager, swagger

Trip

Red land taken by force

From Red Dog’s Indian Ancestors

Iroquoi, Sioux, Mosquito

(he’s the chief of each)

With no family left

No pure blood left unspilled

Spoiled by quotas and commissioners

Paid to play

Number by colors.

Some hues are not desirable

In an American painting

We royally prefer:

Green-green-gray

Fleshy-white-pink

Navy-blue-bruised-violet

Collar-starched-opal

Blood-soaked-desert-beige

Whitewashed.

Keep your

Tear trailed dirt shade

Boot stomped patterned red

Black on black ski mask cut out

Away from our

Glossy magazine spread

Eagle balding.

-----

O.G. Red Dog

Informed me of his

U.N. issued raincoat

With ID, two hundred

And the tape was amazing!

He had walked all of Frisco

Every neighborhood,

Telling everybody

Speaks nine languages

All the time recording,

He didn’t break a window

And resting in my driveway

Listening back,

The pigs took the vet downtown

Without hearing

How he’d just returned from his station

How the tape recorder belonged to United Nations

How he had received his duster

In service to his

Land of the free.

Watch the crowd thinning

From gas guzzling vultures

Trained to kill and leave

Decomposition

To the least composed.

a wave

I met a wave last night
Face on
Confronted her
Ambivalent swelling
In the dark
Among more gentle forces
Rolling in the fog:

Dammed trappings
Aural flow, canyons
Melting
Ice trays sliding,
Scolding displays
(of affection)
Turbines churning, continuously
Recycled
Scum greening
Silt lines in
Swimming pools
Every season
Baptized cool, dripping
In drought

The wave passed
But not before
I felt the current
Roll me
Like a marble
In a game
Of chance,
Split me
In two
And send me swimming
In opposite directions





-----

bar scene

The slob puts down his drink
For just a second
To pull taut the string between
His teeth and the young lady’s brain
And whispers into his whisky.

An important man,
Masked, but recognizably important nonetheless
Has come to deliver a message,
But it is soon understood this important man
Has no mother tongue.

Wildly gesturing: Long winters, stampede,
A great weight, a hiding place—
The barman’s coattails light up!
He shrugs his jacket to the floor,
It comes alive, personified

In a panicking fury, furled and rearing
“Just fine, just fine,” murmurs the young lady.
Says, “Second hand smoke, I’m blowing it,
I’m blowing it.”
The stage light yawns,
Low and blue on the slob, now at the microphone

He once more puts down his whiskey
And whispers, slow, finely drawn out
Carving tactile shapes with his vowels,
Interpreting the important masked man’s story.
But the flames are licking the bar,
And those who have not already fled
Never noticed any of the above.

gold leaf hype + nonsense poem

there's a really sweet write up about my new single on deepsees tumblr, he reviews a lot of really cool hard to find music from all over the internet.


---

Jaws of way which ridge is risen
Isn’t amorphous, bent back steel
Zither threw shapes mapped quiet
Leaner, brittle pond
Inkspot pillowcase annexed now now
Now oil, wick, tallow

Two shoes moon, through
Tissue crinkles grinning mad and
Phosphor-cloud loop wiring
For you or only once, come
Come from square waves
Being stayed winking dawn moves
Nine lives to love,
Worms on the loom, loom looming
Upon an eastern waltz in the background
Cherry pit gravestone rolling
Grey, anon.

Hark and sing laughing stream
Barely coaxed wax part breaking
Render storm salmon in wood grain fashion
Hell bent lettering soothe say you
Fallen on should solder ringing
Unclean opal for molar marks
Long and long wicked fruit
Straw handed window fog text
Nested almond crescent sun
Pooling like lips gather silences
In shoestring tethers
Smoke, perforations made
Curved.

Brilliant white mesh reflection
Remarked, struck with
Vibrations—held breath in jest/ingest
Cello water bathing the hours free
From ticking seconds match
Strike sharp, white and black keys meander
Holy one two ambiguous
Repose, engraved glass
Surfacing here eye tilt eerily
Yawn. Hovering hanging
Sewing a ladder wry strung,
Warm earth swallowing sung
Hidden den, done then Mother,
Dark wine, young will stalk phrases and skip
Merrily open out over our
Placements.
Shiver bit quell the mold
Knuckles drawn melt gracefully in
Age, moment’s trick
Sagely yellow
Know/No.

times when

in times when there is no
one to tell you how to do it
you may have to make
a big decision

and i won't waste another breath
on what i want to see
delivered

before you begged and left
your stead to keep a hand
severed
and how often you led your friends
to believe nonsense

but they won't waste another breath
on what they want to see
delivered

pearls

in time
your pearls shall become
your swine
red wine
still recalls a certain
summer night
july
brings so many visions
to my eyes
that i
had tried to push aside
that i
knew i couldn't hide

in time
the sun
will rise
over the valley
in time
the sun
will rise

in time
your pearls shall become
your swine
you're mine
in a vision that i have
some nights
divine
arc of a shoulder
as you look behind
in time
your pearls could
own you

marking time

a beating of the most quiet
and unconscious drum
is slowed and quickened by
heavy waking hands
weighted with rings of water
and half-remembered thoughts
re-imagined and re-remembered
and frozen into holy ores to pass down
to smaller fingers.

skin to ore & ore to skin,
the drumming does not end
as it did not begin
(marking time
marking time
marking time
two three four
stop.)













-----

recollection of tenting

recollection of
tenting: termites &
endless ginger ale in
a two-star motel
as Clinton was defamed
and dethroned

while traveling
on an endless flight
to san francisco
after one week of
not getting stoned

over a dark sea
lit by another ocean
of flickering T.V.s
each tuned to a
different memory

under a spell
of haunted melody:
Mahler's "adagietto"
hits harder
with the elevation

waiting to brace
for landings
and for these damned
T.V.s to turn themselves
off

seagulls vs. real gulls

a man once told me
there's no such thing as "seagulls."
i told him,
"believe what you want to believe."
"what's that flying above you?"
"what do you actually value?"
"where did you get your name?"
it was given to you by a man
and a seagull's just the same.

shattered diamond

shattered diamond
bloody knuckles
baby blue is breaking
milky grey half-dry concrete
mix with sand and fall
a little softer next week
rinse and repeat until
you feel lighter on your feet

capice?

whimper

our wires crossed
and i was lost in the current
a heavy vault of sadness for a heart
now i wander through the deep
o, how i have made peace now with the dark
when i saw the sun glitt'ring
before i lost that spark
i found hell hounds always whimper
never bark

blues are my blues

it ain't got nothin' to do with you
my blues are my blues,
and i can't choose, no i can't choose
when i feel so down

they say that only time can heal
so why bring me down, man, with your jive?
if i want to feel sorry, i'll feel sorry
all night

and it ain't got nothin' to do with you
my blues are my blues,
and i can't choose, no i can't choose
when i feel so down

you say my blues make you worry
well thank you, but i'm doing just fine
and if i want to feel sorry, well
i feel sorry all of the time

and it ain't got nothin' to do with you
my blues are my blues ooh ooh ooh
and i can't choose, no i can't choose
when i feel so down

it ain't got nothin' to do with you
ooh baby don't come around
ooh baby don't come around