May 29th, 2017 § § permalink
to hide and reveal, to cover the moon with
a dime. to tuck, and conceal.
think: ragdoll
think: flesh and clothes
red nails and testosterone
you’re the ghost of a dream
more moon than a set sun
and soon: bound, twisting
in satellite.
zoom out: a steady glow
beat to a summer’s night.
May 2nd, 2014 § § permalink
Do you want a fucking
meaning nugget?
Here,
Here is your meaning nugget.
Godammit,
G. Stein is a
sweet lady
who kicked the top off that shit
Unexpected items in a list—
that’s poetry!!
I don’t give a shit what it means it’s cool.
April 16th, 2014 § § permalink
Here’s another old one, when I spelled my name like the “e” was just eaten. Clearly a perfectionist and escapist from the start.
The mirror has a reflection
I prefer to play perfection
Mirrors come in small, medium and large
Oh how I love to go on the other side
by Alli Axel, 1997
April 16th, 2014 § § permalink
I just found this poem in my old email. From September, 2007.
The Land of Heartbreak
Dear—
I am writing from a place
Of heart break.
A thousand beats away
I lie to you
Between sheets of golden grass
Wrestling with my heart’s infidelity
As blades bend beneath my weight.
A river runs between (us?)
Separating Routine from
Discovery.
The tumbling waters drown
My apology.
At the bottom, graying with decay,
Waits a young heart.
Watery beats count
One, two, three,
Then—still.
This is the land of heartbreak.
(This heart’s on fire).
February 2nd, 2014 § § permalink

every leaving
reminds me
i’ll be coming back.
it’s pain
enough not to go.
January 31st, 2014 § § permalink
This is my love story—the pit of truth I cannot swallow.
Who is she? Something green, something deeply
old in a yawning body.
She stretches to life: reading until her heart bleeds, emptying herself on the page, heartily dreaming,
moments with meaning.
Moments—where the people and street respawn, she sees herself
from above. She hungers for understanding, connection, expression, honesty.
To know and to be known, comfortably, via page.
She is opening: seeing life as so much
without the romance and fancy, and,
anticipating the invite to share it all,
she will. Significance waits inside her: anything that once held meaning is another layer of her loveliness.
She is lovely. Lovely. Wise and wonderful.
She is a creator: thought, love, stories, relationships,
of creations real and imagined. She rises to the challenge:
passion, loyalty, dedication, motivation, grace.
I will sleep well tonight simply knowing who she is.
January 28th, 2014 § § permalink
by Gabe Moses
Forget the images you’ve learned to attach
To words like cock and clit,
Chest and breasts.
Break those words open
Like a paramedic cracking ribs
To pump blood through a failing heart.
Push your hands inside.
Get them messy.
Scratch new definitions on the bones.
Get rid of the old words altogether.
Make up new words.
Call it a click or a ditto.
Call it the sound he makes
When you brush your hand against it through his jeans,
When you can hear his heart knocking on the back of his teeth
And every cell in his body is breathing.
Make the arch of her back a language
Name the hollows of each of her vertebrae
When they catch pools of sweat
Like rainwater in a row of paper cups
Align your teeth with this alphabet of her spine
So every word is weighted with the salt of her.
When you peel layers of clothing from his skin
Do not act as though you are changing dressings on a trauma patient
Even though it’s highly likely that you are.
Do not ask if she’s “had the surgery.”
Do not tell him that the needlepoint bruises on his thighs look like they hurt
If you are being offered a body
That has already been laid upon an altar of surgical steel
A sacrifice to whatever gods govern bodies
That come with some assembly required
Whatever you do,
Do not say that the carefully sculpted landscape
Bordered by rocky ridges of scar tissue
Looks almost natural.
If she offers you breastbone
Aching to carve soft fruit from its branches
Though there may be more tissue in the lining of her bra
Than the flesh that rises to meet itLet her ripen in your hands.
Imagine if she’d lost those swells to cancer,
Diabetes,
A car accident instead of an accident of genetics
Would you think of her as less a woman then?
Then think of her as no less one now.
If he offers you a thumb-sized sprout of muscle
Reaching toward you when you kiss him
Like it wants to go deep enough inside you
To scratch his name on the bottom of your heart
Hold it as if it can-
In your hand, in your mouth
Inside the nest of your pelvic bones.
Though his skin may hardly do more than brush yours,
You will feel him deeper than you think.
Realize that bodies are only a fraction of who we are
They’re just oddly-shaped vessels for hearts
And honestly, they can barely contain us
We strain at their seams with every breath we take
We are all pulse and sweat,
Tissue and nerve ending
We are programmed to grope and fumble until we get it right.
Bodies have been learning each other forever.
It’s what bodies do.
They are grab bags of parts
And half the fun is figuring out
All the different ways we can fit them together;
All the different uses for hipbones and hands,
Tongues and teeth;
All the ways to car-crash our bodies beautiful.
But we could never forget how to use our hearts
Even if we tried.
That’s the important part.
Don’t worry about the bodies.
They’ve got this.
December 16th, 2013 § § permalink
Intro
This is a quiet book
with shaking words—
a quivering finger
pressed to lips.
This story lies in the spaces
between a newly compounded word—
a silent space
of white walls and grass.
We forget that our story
is bound in the child’s eye—
a life insisted on by
pure and hushed discovery
and a wicked underbelly of dirt.
I.
Simon is no less than a figment of our imagination
An invisible arm.
We imagine him singing because it is
Pleasanter than his cut out tongue.
Simon says nothing but
He tells us it is why he
Not like apples—
The worms.
Earthworms eat dirt
Silkworms spin souls
Appleworms give Simon the wiggins.
Simon we say all creatures is alright.
Non. He shakes his head persistently.
Non.
Pause.
Perhaps.
II.
Today Simon found a mermaid.
He gives us a scale we say it’s a fishes
He gives us a hairs we say thread
He gives us a shell we say pooey clams spit
He stamps and throws fists and steams.
We go a looking for the nudie mermaid.
III.
Simon asked if we are
a family.
We say perhaps.
IV.
Simon asked why bodies drive with heat
We look and holds him
To bring us closer
V.
there be green and brown and empty space
Simon is imagining grasses from bottom to top
Like an ant looks towards tips
All he is seeing is a world of grasses and skies
Looks, us
Tell me what is wrong he asks
He searches us canyoned eyes
Guesses him not find the answer
Tell me
Up us, straddles a pile of bones
Elephant tomb, horseback
Kicks with stirruped feet
heels and waves yeehaw giddyup
He is imagining
He fills
we hollow
We hollowly tear at the grass.
VI.
Simon is covering ears:
IT IS TOO LOUD. S.
Yes yes but without them quotes books is silent.
Secretly: in your head they reads as whispers.
He drops the covers
and kisses a finger shh
VII.
We watch as Simon watches the sand.
He siphons a single grain on his tip and looks
Yes and humanity is etched upon it we say
We ladle the sand in our main
We want this to be humanity while weighing it in the hand
We mechanically break our fingers like water the sand slips
We let it
and the grains explode when they land on the ebbing wave some up some out
They sift like debris after the explosion
Humanity is just a try to not go under
we remember saying it proudly
Simon brushes the dry sand off his knees
A fish is heard swimming.
VIII.
What to say about Simon?
We try to say quiet wickedness
We say,
sweet.
like strawberries.
Kindergarten is full of strawberries.
IX.
Simon is rattling like a penny on a train track
His body shakes by the word
Something is cold and electric inside him
On an I-beam he stares down a rushing freedom
And a life of mornings.
XI.
Simon says he is in love
This is how he says it:
I AM IN LOVE. S.
We ask with who?
GREEN. S.
Our eyes meet:
I HEAR THE GRASS GROWING.
S.
XII.
Turning across
Simon raises him head and hands
Sungrazed chin dirt bumped knees, the horizon
Beneath we hear the metallicness of it all.
It wasn’t a fall per se but a magnet of praise
XIII.
Simon is always forgetting the difference
Between teeth and scars
XIV.
PERHAPS I AM INTERESTED IN FRAGMENTS. S.
We say where you learn teh talk like that boy.
XV.
who believes in souls and characters?
and characters with souls?
I’ve looked and seen
both
bathing in a drawn eye
and in your eye
(us three, we three)
Simon, and me,
and you
three parts to one ratio
clunking like wood
rattling fingers with pens
I’ve found you both
I’ve found you both.
XVI.
God we remember and it shows
Breaths caught in clamped faces
Simon knocks on our head
Asking us.
The memory is tasting like rice.
Simon is wrapped by the guitar
His faces noting brightness
And the chords warm us cheekses
Like sundropped petals in raise
We’re the lonely face that looks away
From the music
To the past while
Simon is warming on.
XVII.
Dem eyes playing guitar
Pluck and raise Simon’s strings
Us, and we are noted
and rising forward
Them notes sound
of southern roses
Tune us
Prune us
us is blooming
by Alexandra Axel