Suzanne takes you down
To her place by the river
You can hear the boats go by
You can spend the night forever

Suzanne takes you down
To her place by the river
You can hear the boats go by
You can spend the night forever
by Lorine Niedecker, Wisconsin poet
Keen and lovely man moved as in a dance
to be considerate in lighted, glass-walled
almost outdoor office. Business Continue reading →
My favorite part of the day today
in the break room at work, mid Friday
among the light of the February sun
was Micah standing there with the flowers.
Many elements in my microcosmic corner of the universe have aligned such that the past 72 hours of my life have been a splendid pause of poetic experience. A pause because the heat of midwestern July and the lack of paid occupation allow for a comfortable lethargy, a slow motion of a still scene. Continue reading →
I wish this was a jungle for you. I wish, with each sentence passing before your eyes, you felt as if you were cleaving tropical branches, evading layered leaves, parting brush underfoot, following the sound of falling water, perspiring from every pore, gaining valiant speed, hurdling natural obstacles, running to the rhythm of your own savage heart. I wish, for your sake, that you felt truly like the animal that you are, acquiring abrasions on your skin as a testament to your expedition. I wish I could conjure a foreign landscape, a terrain for you to uncover, feel, make your own. I wish these words could elicit the dilation of your pupils, lengthen your limbs, climb your cliffs for you.
They cannot. I cannot.
What I learned lately is that life is a mastering of topography and currently I am a prairie – untouched, un-bended by breezes. I am
flat
bland
monotonous
straight
dull
content.
Forest branches, proving to be ineffective rungs, have already severed my vessels. Hot blood red and everywhere. Mountain air has left me light-headed, comatose, thin. I have toppled into wasted valleys and been carried along by unstopping streams, flushed into oceans much too vast, those oceans now tucked securely in my pockets, those glaciers melting and trickling down my temperate thighs. I have trekked my way home through swampy, leech-infested marshes, hanging my head heavy and low the whole way, dragging with me my own languid limbs. I have knocked on Atmosphere’s door, asked if I really belong here on Earth.
I have arrived at a meadow.
Yes, studio apartment, solitude, a letting go, a candle and cigarette lit, belly full of food, I am roughly the most joyful person on this planet. A stretch of meadow before and inside me, a buzzing of bees, a budding of flowers, a space to run and roam and roll on steady stable sturdy sassy soil. I am the bliss beneath my blisters.