Undisturbed Cities

Was there blood?

sdunicorn@gmail.com (electric pulse) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:01:00 +0000

How many times
Was there blood?
I am like the Earth
Hot liquid
Beneath a solid crust
Pumping magma
Crystal blood
Awake, rotating.
Dormant, rotating.
Transforming fears
Into things of beauty
Trying to wake up
Trying to sleep
Trying to get it right
Holding clay in one hand,
Water in the other
Hurtling ghostly liquids into solid dreams.

Jupiter Dreams

sdunicorn@gmail.com (electric pulse) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 17:21:00 +0000

As I lay in bed half-asleep I whispered the words los ángeles. It sounded exotic that way. I pictured a girl sitting at a desk in Taiwan with a map spread out in front of her. Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Barbara. Nothing English about them, but there they were in the U.S.A. Who were these saints and angels? Anyone that I knew? Ciudad de los Santos? Trailblazers who made their way up the western coast, building missions and naming them after beloved saints. An invisible past of people I do not know anymore, and they do not know us. A disconnect.

Was a relative of mine among them? Where was he buried?

My grandparents were born in Los Angeles, as were my parents, as was I. I am 27 years old. College-educated. No home, no job, no income. I badly want to work, want to make a difference. I want to return to the city I am from and where my family is from. I play music, I sing, I write, I draw. I close my eyes and see fantastic images of swirling colors and strange creatures looking at me. Shapes and colors blend together, moving as fast as light. But I can keep up with them. And at night these shapes and colors transform into dreams. Antedeluvian dreams filled with animals and people bringing alligators into my childhood room. I am a warrior fighting them off, fighting demons in my sleep.

Is there a place for me here, in this city of dreams and saints and angels? Where what we imagine becomes what we consume and what we are. Where the people downtown mutter threats to each other, and where it is a little too easy to jump out of windows. Where the streets could be cleaner, the cement more colorful. I’d like to take a million paint brushes to this city. Let’s paint everything the brightness of our dreams. Los Angeles’ angels are hanging in the spaces and trying to materialize, if only we would let them. But the demons are there too, and we must fight them off all together. We must understand there is no evil. Just confusion.

There is so much more to this world than what we see, what we hear, what we touch and what we speak. Maybe it is my fate to be lost among all the in-between.

Monday, October 6, 2008 7:19a.m.

sdunicorn@gmail.com (electric pulse) — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 18:50:00 +0000

How can I explain? I’ve had my chakras spun, but that’s not what I mean to say. It’s more like this; when our feet touched in bed, I used to pull them away. Now I push them in closer.

(A short something taken from a longer something of undetermined length, width, height, depth, publication/birth day.)

There Are People Out There Who Know These Things

sdunicorn@gmail.com (electric pulse) — Mon, 12 May 2008 04:39:00 +0000

I’m hearing voices in my head of the voices I am reading. How conversations are imagined and acted out. I forget where I am. Was it in a dream?

I am happy to say that I have unwrapped the gift of patience. Patience is what enabled me to keep you around until you turned the shoulder adobe.

You stand and we go. You follow and I know.

The curse of orange the orange moping around the patio. Peppermint, that’s the only line? Ring the round, then, glass the coat. Give the tops to the pratorn, the pautern, the part. Pat the linens, stroak the jackets, empty the ovaries, don the pillows and the curtains! For we are to entertain the wall-fairies of the blue and purple. The green and yellow, and the red, will vie for top places. Circle the socket, paddle the moar, rub the rock until it shines. Shine the boy, shoe the shine. Trinkets can’t be nuggets. No no.

And do you know, buffalo? No I don’t, loose goose.

Stack the vintage, martin the williams, shock the shirleys, iron the duffodils. Nip that oyster in the bud. Problems are for hermits, like houses are for crabs. Spot the harpsichord in the pageant and win a thousand yams. Best not to rule the buggy noiter-toiter, in case she goes down the spin-hole. Please police in the cabbage folio, the elevator is macarooni. She simplifies the meaning by backscratching the commandment in the loophole. The acrobatics of the equation will inform you of their intent to levitate. The gymnasium will cooperate to the fullest extent of the law, while the placard reflects the whitest whites. The black will absorb, and the grays will begin to think about the evils of their ways. The team will squeak the floors, rubber the air, and hem the audience with their sideways scowls. The hamster wheel will stop at lights out. The hand will encircle the arm with the pink sleeve, and the waves will crush the rocking horse, but not before the rocking house goes tippy toppy tover the little plastic limp. The parachute dived to the bottom of the cup only to find the best part was taken. Damn the principles, and moron the secondaries. I’ve had enough of this for the seventh lack of a parting. Don’t powderpoint that thing at me. Why in the devil didn’t I erase that potpourri from the dustboard? The smell of a fire, patched from the sky, with moon around the sides, a little extra cream, and no dishes. Why’s a line enough for a hat, but a nickel ain’t gonna bounce the ball back? In the land of poles and fish, what a world is this?--my last gasp is the strangest.

Is the output in the car? What about the problematic? I see the gentrification right here, in the future optional holder. The seats aren’t merry-go-round, I ain’t gonna lie. I did what she said, and the teacher reached her collar and chewed the cordoned film off the nook. Price told the damp, I hammed and pearled the moist, raked the tertiary, milled the hummus right off that thing. See how my vague blindness toasts the pulley. Plots are stuck together along the borders, but the patchwork is there. One way goes that, another goes the other.

Along the day placed the pillar, a basket full of pleasants. Say, did you forget to garnish the relative minor? Sometimes they stick in the pot. Yes. Banish the nuptials, I think it’s going to pain the rains to hear it. Good thing they sat all the way through the intentions. Informed quarantines host the pizzazz, really tailor the kin to the pint of mini. Speaking blade, blown the miss is hippie down to the south gulf bowl. Miss hurry will meet the tincture in the developing broth, capsized for two, and usher the unherded into the lip. Numb the needle before piercing. Forget the precision and split roast the rest of the dough. Flutters mistake bison for pike. In the wild, maybe at best we could tell each other what to do. The folds in there sweeten my blood. Suck and fritter, abjure the compasses. Only things you extraordinarily know. Sunrise to numbset, loon bites the dark.

Three piled below the aquamarine is a laminator. You gut the penumbra and copy the yacht, remembering to jump the millipede. Returnable cartons for the lovesick, but only if the coded verisimilitude confounds the tilted lilies. I remember back when I was knee socks, and grass hit the shorts with a thoomp. Polka was never it, and the frizz disappeared when the water was in enough. Water, water. If you mix it, it gets smelly. Put the others away, they are no longer needed. Be careful of the company, as the itch tends to grow when thought of. Left cheek, kiln eye pollen, out of my way. If you don’t like it, meditate. I wouldn’t even mushroom your rotting log if you grouted my cracking smile with the sentry’s scarf.

The rhythms in the sock are like ribbons on the water. The ceramic clink likes the glass for my ears to sing. Continuous, for if you stop, the elements stop. All cannot be paused without giving too much force to future motion. Caesura spectrum to the prism beholder: divide the background wish with the straight line screw and twist, putting the insert in between. Plus all the other, lamb chop, cushioning and standing one in, or else.

Not all of it, a flat version, really, but it’s a start. Who wouldn’t indulge in some keeping back. My gravity is not what it used to be. Why don’t you proportionalize the acceleration and summarize the incubation. Pedal to the medal, I on the surprise. Horse bats plunk crowded batons. Etch copper and lime tardies. If the shakes, let them grasp and hold on, take and keep on.

And so Alex walked along the river in the town where the Vs ran out. Expect him to have at most eight of those strings he’s carrying, and the shoes to match. The trees are almost in bloom and the green is all around. It’s a bit blurry but he’ll make it through, among the vines, swinging.

Hand Chop

sdunicorn@gmail.com (electric pulse) — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 20:19:00 +0000

If we met at a party
and you tried to shake my hand
only to find it missing
And upon asking me what happened
I was to say that when I was thirteen years old
I cut it off
And if you were to ask why I did that
and I said I didn’t know
I just did
I just wanted to
(destroy)
Would you believe that I’m a different person now
Would you see the hand I once had
and the reasons
Would you touch the air where my hand would be
Or would you see the interrupted limb
and let it interrupt your thoughts
and use it to back out of this
sphere around me?

I know what you would do.
I’d shimmer and you’d shine.

Structure/process--the reasons why

sdunicorn@gmail.com (electric pulse) — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 11:55:00 +0000

They say write what you know. What I know is this: I don't know much. I might even say I don't know anything. That's impossible, though. I know falseness. I know structures.

I am not the down-and-dirty type. I'd rather be comfortable on my square of rug. I'd rather not risk a limb. I'd rather get away from the vomit and the stench. I'd rather not claw at the ceiling. I've had enough out-of-body experiences.

What I know is this: I'd rather let inspiration pass through my eyelids and turn into sleep. I'd rather ignore plot, conflict, resolution.
I'd rather sleep.

But if I sit still, on my square of rug, someone will corner me. Someone will put a glass jar over me. They will bring their face close to mine and whimper in my ear, seeking salvation or just release. So I will tap on the jar, tap on it so that it rings out, put my ear up to it to feel the vibration, pen what I feel along the surface.

I know this: If I build a brick wall around myself, I will lose my mind inside the mortar. There will be nothing to hear. If I don't write, my journal will remain empty. Reminders of the past will become a burden. The blank pages a weight, thoughts an anchor. Sourness will overcome, wrinkling my eyes and mouth.

I know this; the kinds of structures we build determine what we see and hear. Glass, brick, air. I tap and tap, listening, feeling, inhaling.

They aren't delusions of grandeur if they haven't been proven false.

sdunicorn@gmail.com (electric pulse) — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 09:11:00 +0000

--Magic they
give form to blurry thoughts.

I see the red palm glow.
I fold up like a jet's wing
and leave permanence to the wind.

I exist here and that is no delusion.

Bukowski

sdunicorn@gmail.com (electric pulse) — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 18:44:00 +0000

If Bukowski is one of the great
American poets,
what does that say about
our troubles?

Maybe it was Los Angeles that did him in.
"There's a city here, I swear," (is what I wrote
the last time I was here.)
Some won't believe it, but
it does get cold at night,
it does get lonely.
For all the people here, there
are even more walls,
and even more ways to get
stuck in them.

San Pedro could have been better for him--
working class port--
his deathplace, his homeplace,
his southerly corner
in this southwesterly cornered-off state.

Faces fall off

sdunicorn@gmail.com (electric pulse) — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 00:51:00 +0000

We were sitting in the car
and I was thinking about his
muscles.
Not arm or jaw, but the muscles
above his bones and
underneath
his skin,
the muscles that are out of reach.

And as I was thinking
his face began to fall off,
and the muscles underneath
that speak in a code I try so hard
to understand
were shown,
serendipitously,

and I felt better we were going there together.

On the Internet,

sdunicorn@gmail.com (electric pulse) — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 06:29:00 +0000

this nouveau bouncing around the universe, testing the limits of patience so even the blood rushing in your veins takes a little longer and moves a little smoother down the arterial walls. The fluid motion suggests that there is an end somewhere that becomes scattershots of light and sound that give no hint to their direction, no matter what small wave of your hand you make. The effects are hardly visible for they take place inside the mind and body of whoever or whatever received it. And they are long gone, long buried, long forgotten. Only if you’re lucky will you find out and will they remember. Most likely it will be assimilated into some previously started construction of memories and associations, and will add like another slop on a mud goo sand castle, and perhaps drip down to the bottom or maybe even stay tilted at some impossible angle at the top and come to look like brown lace. It is true that these thoughts resemble piles of shit, but that is just the circular nature of Nature, and what are now our thoughts were once plants and are now electricity and will probably turn into plastic. So we have these lacy castles in our heads that we take pieces from and throw at each other with our words, but most of the time the globs miss their targets and fall forgotten or are simply reabsorbed into the other fantastic pre-existing structures without acknowledgement of where they came from. But emitting and absorbing are our Nature, the basic basics, and so I emit for your absorption that if I were to knock on some pane of glass separating us that you could not ignore me, that something would get through, and that logic and order work for some aspects of our lives but are very inappropriate for others, that digging, even in sand, is messy.

Life of Birds

sdunicorn@gmail.com (electric pulse) — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 06:30:00 +0000

When the conversation turned to talent the daughter turned her head away. Talent ran in her family. The grandmother had a knack for soup-making. The mother had a knack for dressmaking. The daughter styled hair and wore her grandmother’s and mother’s old dresses.

The grandmother made menudo once a year. She froze tripe and thawed it overnight in the kitchen sink. When the mother and daughter woke up on menudo morning they would gag and eat everything but the tripe.

“Is there anything you are talented at?” he had asked the daughter.

“I don’t believe in talent, only knacks and hard work,” the daughter said. Take her mother—her mother was a piecesmaker, not a dressmaker. It was not about the whole but the way everything fit together. Soup was really vegetables and broth and seasoning. Dresses were really skirts and cuts and sleeves and buttons and holes and thread. Haircuts were really a million tinies obeying scissors. And the way that soup and dresses and haircuts even came about in the first place was because of impulses.

“We have all these impulses,” the daughter said, “and they can become misguided and relabeled and split into general different directions. It could be as simple as love and work, but this impulse to create leads to songs and words and pictures and soup and dresses and haircuts. But they are not an accident, not a distraction, although they are distracting. They’re another pulse, another thread that emanates from us like a kite-tail or an electrical cord that we plug in to the megastructure of people and time.”

“A lot of things that we do are often mistaken for God’s will,” he said.

“Or nature’s accidents. But you don’t have to eat the tripe. That’s the thing. It's not the whole, so you don’t have to eat the tripe.”

Health Care

sdunicorn@gmail.com (electric pulse) — Mon, 14 May 2007 06:49:00 +0000

As part of our nation’s plan to provide affordable, accessible health care for all, we are going back to grassroots tactics. We suggest that more people take their health care into their own hands. For instance, in case of accident or dismemberment, we strongly encourage those involved to be resourceful in the aftermath. If a pedestrian is hit by a car and they can still walk afterwards, it is advisable to knock on the doors of all the surrounding houses and ask if there are any retired doctors who wouldn’t mind taking a look at them. If the person cannot walk, it is advised that they get a ride to the nearest hospital, either by taxi, bus, or car. Please avoid calling the ambulance service in these situations, or you will be heavily penalized.

Popular opinion has long mandated that people avoid performing minor surgeries on themselves and others. That old-fashioned idea has run its course, and we are now recommending that minor surgeries for external cuts, gashes, and wounds be carried out in a well-lit room, preferably quiet, with properly sterilized sewing needles and thread and any other tools you may find useful. We recommend you be patient but persistent. The speechwriter, for example, just attempted to remove some glass shards that became embedded in his or her arm. The speechwriter lit a match, waved a needle through its flame, went into the bathroom and poked at the arm through blurred vision. This removed most of the glass pieces, but there are still some small ones that the speechwriter will patiently and persistently poke at throughout the writing of this speech.

In case of births we are now implementing a system whereby the pregnant person must reserve a hospital room no later than two months before the delivery date. Should the baby want to be born earlier than the delivery date, we recommend ingesting heavy drugs (available at the post office) to delay labor. If those do not work, we are in the process of building an emergency birth center only an hour’s drive away. Should most of the delivery date pass with no birth, we recommend inducing labor in our facilities. Try not to wait until too late in the day as the paperwork required to reserve a birth room for more than 24 hours is quite mountainous.

For aches and pains we suggest ignoring them as much as possible and hoping that they go away. Hope is as strong a medicine as medicine, in some cases. If hope does not work, we also suggest laughter, smiles, and hugs.

For more serious cases please continue using red tape, hoops, large bills, and chains attached to desks.

It is advised to wear a helmet at all times.

Our new slogan, “The body can do it, the mind can do it, you can do it,” is aimed to remind people of the resiliency of the human body. Medicine has only been practiced for the last 5,000 or so years, while people have been around for much longer. If we embrace this natural approach and let the body take care of itself, or take care of itself with a little help from you and your neighbors, we are confident that people’s health everywhere will improve.

Sonnet 4.5

sdunicorn@gmail.com (electric pulse) — Fri, 11 May 2007 05:29:00 +0000

When in the mirror a newborn face I see
I put not onefold faith in those shining eyes.
In columns three have I built my legacy:
World’s work and love’s labors stacked to sloppy highs;
One with false starts, one with savory losses--
When womb asleep and heart laced unfettered.
The patina of these two outglosses
The third, whose unmarked brightness is tethered
To abdomen, then to ancestral past,
Housing ghosted fragments of yesterday,
Part but apart, it’s him he must make last,
As I must bid self-love beckon my stay.
Posterity passes life’s energy,
But threefold lives my memory and me.

Some Metal

sdunicorn@gmail.com (electric pulse) — Wed, 09 May 2007 06:17:00 +0000

I. Bed

Some metal
prevents my bending.
Not as comfortable as my own heart beating.
Not as strange as my own lips clenching.

II. Floor

Metal in a plastic bag
next to the bedside
shifts inside the green plastic house
when I kick it.

III. House

Plaster walls bulge with
no metal reinforcements to prevent the swelling
or the downward cracks
with ants trailing out.
The metal is all outside:
The appliances, the tables, the shower doors, the beds
are all shaking and falling apart,
dropping pieces for me to pick up
and hand over to the next in line.

Mirrored

sdunicorn@gmail.com (electric pulse) — Mon, 07 May 2007 06:35:00 +0000

The reversion is my norm
The asymmetrical reversed asymmetrically
Shadow play foolery
Mosquito neck apparent
Eye contact indirect
Conversation diluted due to
Words and faces backward
Some meaning lost

What is there is enough

My Grandmother's Words

sdunicorn@gmail.com (electric pulse) — Thu, 03 May 2007 19:35:00 +0000

Over the phone my grandmother asked if I had any boyfriends.

"No," I said. "I've just been dating."

"That's good. Concentrate on yourself. I remember one night when my friend and I were taking the trolley from West L.A. to East L.A. Going through all the neighborhoods. It was always fun to do that. There were the whites, then the Russians, then the Mexicans. Everyone went to where their language was, you know. I told my friend how I was tired of dating these alcoholics. I don't want to clean up anyone's vomit! I said. We had to take two or three trolleys to get to East L.A. We were going to a dinner. And that's where I met Joe. He had come back from the war and was living at his aunt's house so he could go to college. His aunt was a mean old thing and didn't approve of him going to school. So she wouldn't let him in the house. He had to stay in the garage. After we started dating, and I knew he was going to call me the Saturday after we met, I asked him why doesn't he get an apartment of his own. I told him he was going to catch pneumonia in that garage. Eventually he did get his own place. On 8^th and Slauson. He had twelve cousins who all lived in East L.A. The oldest cousin was a boxer. As he got older he got punchy, from getting hit so much. He wasn't right in the head. He had a good pension and would ride around in a limousine. He would take all the cousins shopping and buy clothes for them. The same shirt in twelve sizes. Later on, though, he killed his neighbor. He shot his neighbor and the neighbor died, and then the cousin was put away. He tried to attack Joe once, too. Joe was taking psychology classes at college, and his cousin began to suspect that Joe knew things about him because of the classes. So one day the cousin got into Joe's apartment when he was out, and he sat there waiting for him. When Joe got home, though, he was able to talk the cousin out of doing anything to him. You would have liked your grandfather."

East Los Angeles. 1940s. 8^th and Slauson. I would have liked my grandfather. My grandfather died of lung cancer, but not just any kind of lung cancer. It was certified government lung cancer. He was exposed to radiation during the war--exposed on purpose, for testing reasons. My grandmother was left to raise six daughters. She didn't bring her babies to family gatherings where the boxer cousin was.

Though unrelated by blood, my father is like my maternal grandfather. They are alike because they are linked through my mother. And I am my grandmother on that trolley, declaring to refuse to date any drunks, declaring to refuse anything less than a wonderful man.

Once we are immersed in a thing, it becomes us, and we become it. It's not that we like it, it's that it becomes all we know. If you are walking down a street, and there is a cool wind, and there are people and cars and objects that you must dodge, that is all you know. My grandfather was shot in the back of his head during the war. The bullet did not penetrate the skin. It bounced off, leaving an indentation that my mother used to feel with her fingers. When you feel something like that, in that moment, how can you know anything else?

Fickle Castle

sdunicorn@gmail.com (electric pulse) — Wed, 02 May 2007 20:04:00 +0000

From my bedroom window there is a view of a palace. Every night as I get under the covers of my bed, I look at the palace. It is bathed in a yellowy light, and usually there is fog or mist moving around it. The other night, as I was getting under the covers on top of my bed, I looked out my window to look at the glowing palace. It wasn't there. I looked closer. I thought maybe the fog was too thick. It covered up the palace. But there was no yellow glowing fog where the palace should be. I thought maybe the lights were out. I looked even closer and all I saw were very dark green trees, dark sky, dark houses, and a no-palace hole where the palace is supposed to be.

I do not know where the palace went that night. Perhaps it was camouflaged. Perhaps it was lifted up by the fog. It upset my nightly routine, and may have even disturbed my dreams. I do not recall. Here is the change: Every night as I get undercover in my bed, I lean far to the left and look out the window, hoping to catch a glimpse of the castle but I know it may have better things to do.

sdunicorn@gmail.com (electric pulse) — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 17:36:00 +0000

testing...