human geography

Tectonic plates
the tremor, the residual
heat the struggle of two
wanting to move.

Where will they take us, she thinks
there is only so much room to move
so much water to displace and cities
to sink, where will we go and will it stop?

She presses her hand to the floor
in the apartment in the small living room
and imagines she can feel the heat from below
the neighbours breathing, cycling oxygen and carbon dioxide
the blood and mineral stores
just like the core of the earth
small flecks of iron propelling blood
to trap oxygen to push carbon to ensure that breath
continues; that a hand might be warm to the touch
or a cheek, her cheek, as she places it against the wood
floors, listening to hear someone breathe down below

When they make love, she can hear them
bodies grinding against bodies, bones
hot under the pressure, the tremor of
everything that has come before and she thinks
it’s the weight of history that pushes the plates
so they are both loving and wearing away at
the core of what keeps this whole thing together
the whole hot heart of the earth in there
keeping everything together, just waiting
for the day when it can finally let go
let all the plates slide home and all the cities sink,
taking all the lovers with them, a new sea
of oxygen and carbon, the way bones in the ground
keep giving long after extinction. 

dot jot poetry or the things i have thought today

there is a whole universe that i hold between the full moon of my arms reaching together over my head and when my fingers touch each lightly, there is energy; i can feel the roots take place

i fall in love with shapes and curves and it is easy for me to love because it is easy for me to imagine

i love you i love you i love you i love you

i am a tree falling forward i am nearing cement i have rooted my back foot and i will stay in place for years to come

it is okay if i fall out i can get back into form i can 

a mother carries so many things inside of here i understand the name mother nature; the natural mother

as it comes

this great silence of morning is what i cherish the most, the softening of the sky, the ease with which light fulfills expectation, the closest to silence i can get. and though i love the night, we are often at odds. there are many shadows and when the windows are darkened with the exhaustion of having taken so many steps, it makes me worry and i get tired and i get static; i can hardly move. but in the morning there is still a chance, you can see it in the dawning lights of all the other apartments in the back alley - the first cup of coffee being brewed in my kitchen is another first cup of coffee in the kitchen down below across the alley. i can't see the sunrise from my kitchen but i can see the aftermath, the long-reaching streaks of pink and diluted purples; even the chill in the sky is nothing but residue, a calmness to jump from. if i said i wanted to stay here forever, i would be lying because it would turn, as all things do, and the hours come regardless of movement. the earth keeps on spinning so that everything moves, even if i stay still, even if i hold my breath. but i appreciate the mornings, for the idea that all things can be good.

on the other side of the window

With rain still visible
the glass wet as a tear-stained face

sunlight pooling in puddles, a gesture -
There are rainbows There are rainbows

and then returning to the cushioned seats,
Picking up the conversation where it left off.

The slow drip of the faucet
in the re-modeled bathroom.  

the root of being

For the sake of weight I move and I address force with reason
I can lift           I can carry      move steel as one      be synonymous
this is the language my body speaks, an ancient tongue of survival, instinct       
I make use; I am taut and poised                                    an arch of light shooting
its way through the limbs of trees carving a trail between      dust motes and dandelions
the expulsion              the exposure                                      the sun                        light is here you can see it by its absence; this energy is gravity’s sister, a familiar face in a crowded room. Steel and dust, both catch the light and dissect space leaving the body as an outline
a compact collection of molecules vying for attention  I am under steel I am under dust and I can breathe, I exhale                                     this is root, rooted
to the being and this is how I run. 

Monarch Butterflies Use the Earth's Magnetic Field

“But tonight we are merely adorned/with the instruments of our deaths.”

                        -Christopher Dewdney

i.            

         

I was a bird, I had wings. Somewhere in the dark folds between the drum of red where light knew no place a body other than this one belonged to me more significantly and moved as I moved so I knew no separation from my limbs, I could not have known any part of my body without knowing the whole, my wingspan so breathtaking it moved grass to bow at my feet; I could take up space and fill it, I could cut air to be smaller, more compact, to move past me and move on; I could fly I had the body of a bird, bones light and full of air, so easy to carry, so easy to crush.

ii.

                  

I can remember when we were just kids that one summer we looked up and the sky that had been so blue was suddenly black and it took us a few minutes before we realized what was happening: it was the migration of the monarchs turning the sky from blue to black in seconds and you and I stood so still, listening to the hum of a million wings beating.

iii.

                

I once read that monarch butterflies suffer losses during hibernation because hungry birds pick through them, looking for those with the least amount of poison but in the process kill those they reject.

iv.

                 

The earth’s magnetic field is preparing to flip, as it is supposed to every few hundred thousand years, as in, it is now long overdue, it’s been almost eight hundred thousand years and no flip but it is beginning to weaken and shift, solar winds are cracking the barriers and animals who use the field for navigation, butterflies, bees, and fish, they will be confused, on the Earth lost, no idea which direction is home.

Except birds, who have hope, who are prepared with back-up systems that use stars and landmarks, including roads and power lines, to find their way and so, we are bringing the birds home. 

Periphery

I am ill-suited for this; I am not of these times of these and the kind
of like two things I am not and then am not. Have I found my voice
this shadow that trails behind me that flickers in the lights of the bedroom
does it sleep – voice, do you sleep? You are so strange. What sleep

Can take me from this what symphony of form that deludes reality
is anything but this. I do not sleep. I tremble the sheets when I clatter to bed
when I fold my feet and tuck my knees: I have a chest full of warm blood and raw
bones crude form that bleaches under scrutiny so weak it is deserted dirt and when

Do you think the rains will come back do you think this drought will expire will I speak in perfect form again I have no voice. Ill-suited and raw as a perfectly skinned peach

Who will take the first bite and swallow down into the magnificent black hollow
where the rot occurs where the sinking of wastes is ordinary and extraordinary is relief
the weight I have dropped, how it hangs from my crooked limbs thin as thumbtacks
what skin here

I am tired but I do not sleep I am tired and not of these places I cannot be, what grandmother mother, do you have to say to me? 

when i think of coming home

It is like this a clenched fist that stinks of love between the fingers
god the warm breast of a mother where a head can rest for just a while
a little while; my body hung out like a skyline naked in expectation
and another body sleeps and another body sleeps and another body

And I want to call back crawl back home but she’s naked too
and the trees are naked and what direction is home if it isn't down that road 

And back to the city with the kind of horizon that keeps factories closer than lovers
that keeps the colours of winter even in the summer, and we came home here
we found another place with that brown linoleum that tiny basement those tiny men
with their big beards and red eyes, how I laugh laugh laugh now the kind of men I could crush

but didn’t I anyway, with my thirteen with my fifteen with my nineteen

clenched jaw like a steeled fist take back what was taken that long highway that short bridge
that lifts out of here that can be walked over that we rode our bikes over and everyone said
we looked like sisters and we biked for hours and I thought, my muscles are exhausted how long
have we been biking how long until we get home this road from one city to the next

Men slapping up against the sides like waves up against dead fish on the shore – they call it
Steel City and the smoke makes it hard to breathe and the smoke fills the small basements
and when they gun their motors, it kicks dirt and dust and I feel that engine between my legs

I hit that ground running and I run hard and I breathe hard and I see you there too like you see me there too so like you you’re angry shaking me wanting me to take any other road than that road
you know it so well shaking me so angry but I am so tired you know we’ve been biking for hours

we can stop, sit on the shore, there are rocks we can skip stones
put our feet in the water just sit still and count the waves
our bikes in the sun, black steel full of heat. 

where i have kept you.

When I loved you, I loved you I held you it was warm and there you were
so expecting of a beginning that you hadn’t even closed your mouth; the steam
from the coffee rose up to my lips but I kissed you I kissed you instead and I took
your hand to lay it upon the different parts of my body you loved I wanted you
to touch. I had you had the shape of a woman, the softness of geography and the way
rocks can be made smooth. I loved you, in the full space of your mouth where I put my breath
and left it there for you to hold, filling all the black that black space with everything I could
pull from my lungs everything I could exhale, you so full of me you could hardly imagine space

Now I know all things about you, what the inside of your mouth tastes like, what the inside
of your body tastes like and then still, I know nothing of the what is left in the end, except
for shadows except for
what we did not say and, how do we say it? 

after the fall

And because it is fall, darkness will shadow the northwest;
and because it is late in this century,
darkness will be in the air you breathe.
And because you are human, darkness
has come from your hand,
your mouth,
and it thickens around your heart
like fat around a liver: you will never
know enough.
For you are alive”

-Jan Zwicky

What light? It is easiest to ask this question at dawn in the late fall
when the sun does not come in until after seven and I sit with the kitchen
dark at my side and the hallway dark at my side and there is light
nowhere.

Just a few days ago, a man jumped from space and broke the sound barrier.

Imagine the light. What would the ground feel like after that, or
being in love or being at all? Imagine the exhaustion. The need
to no longer be part of life. 1100 km an hour rushing towards
what he had left behind. Imagine being the heart of space and earth
for a few moments the core of heat in iced air plummeting
to the ground just to feel once again that there is solid dirt under
your feet and know you have touched earth in a way that you cannot touch
space but you have touched space in the same breath as having touched
earth. Is love better after that or weaker, diluted like sunlight keeping asphalt
on a long highway passing a truck stop between fields of starved grass:
do we keep driving because there is still gas in the tank because we are
facing forward because there is really too much space between us
and the turn-off

Or do we hit the brakes and let the tires spin for a split second a split
second of contemplating death just to feel that close to something just to
get that copper taste in the mouth get saliva at the back of the teeth and clutch
your thighs with sweaty palms knowing that this is what you wanted all along

Is it the same thing, plummeting through light and sound breaking
sound barriers every time you open your mouth hoping against hope thin as a windshield
that it might be the same? 

the river back home

And when I started out running, I took the only possible route
the route through the maples, heavy now as they are with colour
carrying their burdens delicately and sometimes losing, a leaf
here and there fluttering to the ground like a secret sigh so tired -
this route because it reminds me of the ravine behind our houses
where our parents said not to play without supervision

where the river stood at the bottom
 with wide open arms, ready to catch and carry where
dirt rock leaf padded our noises while we giggled rolled down the side when
the ground was there without hesitation I took the leap
and the ground was there       there was no such thing
 as hesitation

The path here is a lie lies straight and curved and flat but
I can hear the sirens of the city in here they seem
more frantic, wailing, all the trees pulling       inward hugging           their branches to the ground
as if these bright colours these reds and yellows are a scream a bullet
shot in the sky and then blood spilling, the blood of god
shaped to the vein of a leaf, fallen loose and now curled, a fist on the ground
that my foot crushes underneath. I exhale

Counting my rhythm to stop from breathing too hard to stop from
thinking about sirens and even when I was a kid, fish were dead on the banks
of that river.

We’d smell it long before we’d stumble upon it and I
was always shocked, would stutter in my step and then lower myself to look
into such a naked eye I was uncomfortable with the staring but sad because
this was all that was left, something half-picked clean by birds and flies
dead on the bank and the river just rushing past in a hurried commute to get to
bigger things and what if the ocean wasn’t enough that big huge gulp
swallowing again and again to get that lump out of the back
of my throat: even in blue skies even here
there are fish dead on the banks and the river wasn’t always waiting but was sometimes
swollen and brown with the mud of erosion

            
            And when we’d climb home we would run
            up the hill and reach for young trees to take their thin branches
            so slender like a pianist’s hand hardly there to hold on to
            and sometimes the branches the roots would slip, the let go the
            cannot hold on anymore, and we’d fall against the banks heaving
            breath like an insult a bone cracking somewhere deep inside
            the shell of fear being hacked so the cracks showed just a bit more

                       

            And the willows weep near the river their roots
            tearing up concrete looking for more space, not knowing that kind of thirst
           can never be quenched

Not knowing that the concrete is a lie lies straight curved and flat, twisting like a path
snaking through the woods, long and thin as a lie you started when you were young and now
can’t get out of.

My Space; Yours

“He thought of all living species that train their young in the art of survival...yet man, whose tool of survival is the mind, does not merely fail to teach a child to think, but devotes the child’s education to the purpose of destroying his brain, of convincing him that thought is futile and evil, before he has started to think.”

            -Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

How to educate the future. How does one educate the future. This is what I am in the business of. I need to be prepared so that they may be prepared. Analyze and criticize. Create open spaces for them to grow in. The concept of spaces. Public Space. Private Space. The Universe. Our place in space. The merging of spaces. The private to the public. The public to the private. What are our rights as humans? What rights have we lost as being humans? The deserved and the undeserved. Identify yourself until your identity disappears and then you will belong to a new space. The uncreated space. The order of the order. The cycle has not left you. You have left the cycle. There is suddenly a you here and it is born. It cannot be unborn but you can. Do not ever become reborn. If I can educate you, what does it mean? What special privileges am I, as a teacher, given? Where should I go? What should I do? There is this whole world to show you but it is changing. I cannot show you it. I cannot show you the world. I can equip you. The finding of space. Of Spaces. We are of spaces. Of blank pages, of silences waiting to be filled or left alone. Loneliness is not the worst thing that can happen. Words that leave room for discussion create space. Words that are rude or unsatisfying create space. The space between you, and I; the evolution that left us isolated. It is loneliest at the top, so they say. The space of saying and what is not being said. The Milky Way. The galaxies. The stars that are dead before we know it. The dirt that gives space for roots to grow. The growing of. The rising up. The up and of. The onward. The empty space of windows. Windows that are created to give us more space. To Reconnect. To look into and out of but not through. If one opens a window, one creates space and noise; one creates senses but not instinct; one is given words but no real movement; if one opens a window one is taking action but doing nothing; unless one leaps. Unless the fall is great. Always there is space. There are rooms in houses just filled with spaces. Beds filled with spaces. There is so much space here and so much using up of space and changing of space and isolating of space and exploring of space that it might be likely we are overwhelmed. What is the fit in here? What is the of and the doing? What of it? Resistance is futile. We will live because it is in our instinct to do so and so, and so then, it is the possibility of education to fulfill your instinct to live and live well. I am not sure yet what this means. 

I. The River Will Come Home, My Love

The river will

go to rooted trees and feed them relief from heat, clean air,
take winding paths and flush them full it’s a mouthful

take fish to the surface, swell with the heat of movement, carry on carry river

take away muddied shores with dead fish, cool your hot bare feet, shake thin flat rocks from the back, cool the mud.

sound like   the volume turned up too loud on static TV where the static is

white
sound hypnosis                       it is on repeat always moving

new ancient, sounds like bees and the city tuned out when the city is background noise, breath over and over and over

in the heat 

come home

is birds, is the soft voice of space and the taking up of space, is the wet wind, is the footsteps of earth, is the heavy hand that erodes calmly, is a white road in winter when you loved it best when it carried herons like feather-dusting snow, now left

exhausted, the river comes home, is large; yet
you may float and may not even float
but may soar: the river carries/air carries, what is a fish but a bird of the water?

You think the ocean has millions of undiscovered species, you could be one of them as the river steps so could you, one step to the ocean where light pushed water

to land, where rivers meet open mouths with thunder and still

the river -

my love

around the bend.