the embrace - mark doty

Often, I will drive to work in the morning, while my brain is still waking and my emotions residing on the surface of my skin, a song will come on the radio compelling me to well up. I am that emotional. This poem achieves the same amount of effusiveness without the assistance of hypnogogia or fatigue.


The Embrace

You weren't well or really ill yet either;
just a little tired, your handsomeness
tinged by grief or anticipation, which brought
to your face a thoughtful, deepening grace.

I didn't for a moment doubt you were dead.
I knew that to be true still, even in the dream.
You'd been out--at work maybe?--
having a good day, almost energetic.

We seemed to be moving from some old house
where we'd lived, boxes everywhere, things
in disarray: that was the story of my dream,
but even asleep I was shocked out of the narrative

by your face, the physical fact of your face:
inches from mine, smooth-shaven, loving, alert.
Why so difficult, remembering the actual look
of you? Without a photograph, without strain?

So when I saw your unguarded, reliable face,
your unmistakable gaze opening all the warmth
and clarity of you--warm brown tea--we held
each other for the time the dream allowed.

Bless you. You came back, so I could see you
once more, plainly, so I could rest against you
without thinking this happiness lessened anything,
without thinking you were alive again.

barking, barking, barking

See-line woman
Empty his pockets
And wreck his days
Make him love her
And she’ll fly away

- Nina Simone

infinity doesn’t have a vanishing
point like i originally thought it’s more like a wall
that starts at the floor, at the bottom of
my feet, the tip
of my toes and then shoots
up super-fast like lighting or a superhero
past my face taking a little oxygen with it
on its way to never coming back down, leaving
me a little blind and breathless.
it feels like an impossibly stubborn
wreath of seaweed wrapped around the ankle
of a version of myself who’s a crappier swimmer, snorkeling
he will naturally begin to panic “calm down, me,
please. it is only seaweed. perhaps if you let yourself sink
a little, it may loosen its maddening grip, then
you can just float to the top, me.”
but all i hear underwater is the sizzle of fire-coral,
the swishing of sharktail and my eyeballs turning the face
of my goggles white-white

collide

worlds don’t collide the way we think they do most of the time

they are right on top of each other parallel not the way lines

are parallel the way things can be palimpsested the specks of dust

on a window pane and the blurry objects behind it, but the pane

dust and blur are all the same it may be the way dyslexics see

the phonebook or a dictionary text just bleeding in, on, around,

[more prepositions] each other bleed of each other, even the way

memories are stored a matrix of pathways in the brain that intersect

and re-intersect in bolts of blue recognition and epiphany

the worlds are so much more and so much less than what we perceive

for instance: space is like time, a constructed illusion relative

and irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, something omniscient would

say we are in all possible worlds, which is impossible impossible

to understand we are too small to realize everything is within

fall out (a work in progress)

I've been sitting on this poem for a few weeks now. I'm trying to get into the habit of writing longer pieces. I figured phases and variations might be a way to do that. This poem, so far, is in four parts. Help me revise!

fall out

*
nuked i

I have an irrational fear
of being too close
to working microwaves.
After just being
set usually into the next
room I run or further
enough away to not
hear the disturbing hum
of particle excitement.

I pushed inside you, one
night when we were both so lit
and our feelings sat on top
our skins. You were telling me
how scared you were I’d leave
you in a confessional
tone. You went
on to say you loved me.
I agreed I loved you as
I agreed to love you back.

Water tends unattended
to evaporate. Microwaved
molecules break apart
from each other reconfiguring
onto the walls of the appliance’s
insulated shell. Inside
the mug there might only
be trace amounts. White residue:
from minerals of the tap.

*
nuked ii

when you mouth a name into his
ear that is your own, does it take
his breath away? does it move
you too? or is it a gesture: the finger
moving into the button just pushed?

there is a vacuum
of air caused by the boom
of a hydrogen bomb. sound can’t travel
where there is none
so at the face of the combusting shell
you won’t hear the bang
turn you into pink mist.

though you’ll notice ticking
mistaking warning
for a pulse.

*
nicked i

It cut right, a tiny
lesion on the surface
of epidermis, below
the lip and a carmine
bead transformed
the mouth into an eye
which wept red.

On the pink
skin the nicked lip
quickened the blood
coming, a red
ball leaking air in
reverse, as it bled.
Therein, it did not quit.

I filled with not
the fear I would
scar, that moment I
would have thought, instead
I dreaded as it thinned (not
thickened) it would never
end and I would bleed to death.

*
nicked ii

the spot splat pink
clinking on the blank
white rim around
the basin. suddenly less
dark red ink than it was
when it left my lips,
a factory of polka-dotted tears
of toilet paper.

the fogginess was lifting
off the mirror.

lizard

[This is a poem I read for To Have and To Hold. It underwent a number of changes even up to five minutes prior to reciting it. Like any of any poet's poems, it's still a work in progress, but I am honored to have been approached to write specifically for this event and that a version of lizard contributed to the event's success.]

neuroscientists call it our reptilian brain, sitting inside
of our cortex it is smaller and primitive a croc
scaly, slithery, leather-skinned lounging lizard-like,
keeping time and moving us dancers rely on it, they
call on its memory it is the mother of our kinesthetic impulses
steps to a rhythm, our flight and fall, the beat of our heart or tapping
of our foot, the tick-tock of our souls the metronome to
the movement of ourselves within ourselves without it
we cannot avoid injury or win at boxing matches walk into our lover’s arms
or down an aisle to an andante tempo of a promenade
it is infallible if only we would listen closer to the sussurus
hissing between its forked tongue into our ears
from inside the inside of our head to the rest of the brain
this lizard computes in alternating numbers, say zeros and ones
but the dancer and musician knows it thinks differently, unlike a robot
but in soaring lines perhaps flashing colors or a story about itself

there is a hot rock, it crashed from a planet that resembles the Russian tundra
and it is in the center of a desert now California is a Gila monster
who spends its respite summer idling hot—hot and cold-blooded,
it needs the rock to stay alive the rock is the right parts cool and warm for now
California wants to move from off of the rock and into danger
a Katrina or a tsunami it wants to shatter itself orgasm is the best way
to put it precipitate into the Ocean and from the foam rise
like a fiery bird California wants to birth and mother itself
into a better Gila from broken pieces become better, better because it was broken
but the rock is committed to its own inertia growing colder into the winter
the lizard will die if it does not move off of the rock
in the delirium of heat the Gila dreams itself a dissociative disorder

California is an angel its disparate parts the parts of that angel
she is fractured but all there there is a golden halo and a lake of tears,
from both sadness and joy, beneath it
there are dry patches of land that is its body and the valleys
of green that carve it out there is a heart, a stomach, a brain and a reptile-brain
there are shoulder-blades that slice into the sky like a bird with fire for feathers
and a faulty heel that will some day crumble into the whispering Ocean
like the crack of thunder the angel, California, will beat
its wings to the music only she can hear—the BPM of birth, love, rebirth,
the heartbeat of a monster, the unshakeable imperfection of the cerebellum
deeply submerged beneath a riverbed—flying out toward space, screaming
at the stars ‘move out of the way’ a bat out of hell imitating a banshee,
she is a serpent with cotton-like wings, thunderously battering the air around her
applauding the break the break of a state into an island

to have and to hold

[from facebook]

Host:	RAWdance
Type:	Music/arts - Performance
Network:	Global

Date:	12 July 2009
Time:	14:00 - 16:00
Location:	Union Square Park
Town/City:	San Francisco, CA

Email:

raw@rawdance.org

When did love become a threat?

Mixing displays of public affection with visceral, athletic dancing, RAWdance reminds that you can never tell anyone who to love or how to love. The company will be joined by poets Robert Andrew Perez & Cristobal McKinney.

Chuin Phang & Andrew Ng, contributors to Do the Love Thing, will be on-site to take pictures for the web photography project featuring images of couples and families who believe in spreading the message of love, tolerance, and marriage equality. Check out dothelovething.org and come with your loved ones ready to take part.

Sunday, July 12th
Two shows : 2pm & 3pm
Union Square Park, SF

Performed by: Alexis Miller, Chad Dawson, Diana Broker, Dudley Flores, Gretchen Garnett, Jessica Stephenson, Laura Sharp, Mayuko Ayabe, Nikki Pinchott, Ryan T. Smith, Sonja Dale & Wendy Rein.

www.rawdance.org

origami

I am meeting
the corners of the square
sheet making
on a diagonal
a valley

now I’m closer
and steps ahead

flat, fat right
triangle and invisible
almost at times so thin
a syllable in epic
the width of string

now valley opening
lips whispering fire

vapor of our under-the-breath
confessions creased into
an ear, a letter penned
in vanishing ink
a page forgetting turning
bright white, light
was beaming beneath it

the edges line up
so imperfectly

it’s a piece of paper
meant for disappearing
acts not writing.