mookii's world (revisited)

Gathering Family and Other Employments: Poetry

Handmade book, hand transfered text and images (2004)

Israel Residency: Poetry, 2005

Sonnet 1

A bouncy bound towards arms around one more,
chronicled and measured in rank; one more
stripped of numberless innocence in love.
An admitted long shot trial turned trance,
delirious in sonance like sung bowl:
my fingers wet about the rim and filled
with charge like constant first kiss; engorged blood
electric in fast flow. My descent was
like gravity, current of urgency
drowning me in cascading waterfall
pleasure devoid of resistance to the
pull of fleshy awe. I had known nothing
like that tether before and found myself
engrossed; the heart and mind, blissfully blind.

Sonnet 2

The cleft was the clean callous comfort of
distance. I telephoned it in and felt
unleashed, no confrontation to confront,
and the brunt of the blow left only for
you to absorb. The space between replaced
resolve, courage was in serious lack,
but then again I was unaccustomed
to the production of such scarring wounds,
my own soul a map of rocky terrain;
a surface in rough elevation, but
our break was just a beginning and our
past and present seem defined by stages
of separation, and our endurance
a frequent thematic reoccurrence.

Sonnet 3

When the years blundered by, and I, eye to
eye, with a familiar unwrapped package,
my lies and lust emerged and blurred in haste
and salivation and invitation
became a mind masturbation and I
plunged to a renewed taste and appetite
for new addictions uncovered like no
other, promptly smothered in self-doubt, and
defined behaviors forbidden beneath
and above covers; new manners that left
us distant like stars, bright and burning with
arms-reach yearning, oscillating day by
day, and broken behaviors built a sky
fallen in full heaps, rubble at our feet.

Soupy Speaks: Vol. 1

...So a day in and out and then bright and early, chalk blue on the horizon drive to the store. Short staffed perhaps or a slight bought of anti-ambition flu, our warm blanket now wet. F.O. sings the grey-haired pastry blues, ringing in the morning to a snail's pace. Is that dirty water? Is that a safe somewhere screaming? Is that another eight hours of my life in the bulging hour-glass Buddha belly?!?

Israel Residency: Siblings (Part 1 of 2) cont.

Graphite, paint, ink transfer, thread on paper (2005).

Israel Residency: Siblings (Part 1 of 2)

Graphite, paint, ink transfer, thread on paper (2005).

Israel Residency: Poetry, 2005

Sleeplessness Across An Ocean

A night of sleeplessness
like an ocean at my back
and the coldest desert
night to date chilling
the smooth concrete and plaster walls,
wind beating backs of
window blinds, their wheezing
frames a ruckus rattling,
and the ornery kitchen
refrigerator in rhythmic moan,
requiring a blow to metal ribs.
I spun relentlessly in bed with
the beloved blanket I bore
nothing more than a swung door
for the brisk, parched air;
small succor
despite the attachment—
languid in wide-eyed exhaustion.

A night of sleeplessness
and ocean-deep in loss,
and her bottled hand
becomes companion on
the night the newborn
of a sibling’s friend
lay, ventilated and tubed,
the mother on watch
for birthing her husband’s
son dressed in impending death
and that sibling, aloof and apathetic,
more a past than present;
the night a friend’s young cousin
unburdened her life
in despair, her hung head silenced
and sorrowful memory left
to four page gift for a mother
come home to one less daughter.

A night of sleeplessness
with an ocean to ocean-
bled sea between;
her early hour body aged
and chained to langsyne
and mine in ache and much
too awake, witness to a sky
upon her early morning call
as white as Midwest winter,
desert sand blown high,
mixing with clouds
hiding a jagged horizon
like drift snow buoyant
with unwavering wind
I’ve felt on afternoons
standing in open field,
arms spread wide,
nearly blown away.