afterthought

5th floor, reactor 4, fukushima daichi

yes i'm sitting up now

reading about fukushima

watching the world split

like an atom and then

the inevitably collapse

in an afterthought

of what went wrong

plate tektonics

continental shelves

pressurized drilling

beautiful new weapons

into the ionsphere

like blown plutonium

into lung tissue

i need to ask because

i have an imagination:

do they really think

they can get away with it

this silent but deadly

manipulation of

universal chaos?

Snowflake - 50 Words for Snow - by Kate Bush

Save our mother earth, save our children!




I was born in a cloud...
Now I am falling.
I want you to catch me.
Look up and you'll see me.
You know you can hear me.
The world is so loud. Keep falling. I'll find you.
We're over a forest.
There's millions of snowflakes.
We're dancing.
The world is so loud. Keep falling and I'll find you.
I am ice and dust. I am sky.
I can see horses wading through snowdrifts.
My broken hearts, my fabulous dances.
My fleeting song, fleeting.
The world is so loud. Keep falling. I'll find you.
My broken heart, my fabulous dances.
My fleeting song.
My twist and shout.

I am ice and dust and light. I am sky and here.
I can hear people.
I think you are near me now.
The world is so loud. Keep falling. I'll find you.
We're over a forest.
It's midnight at Christmas.
The world is so loud. Keep falling. I'll find you.
I think I can see you.
There's your long, white neck.
The world is so loud. Keep falling. I'll find you.
Now I am falling.
Look up and you'll see me.
The world is so loud. Keep falling. I'll find you.
In a moment or two.
I'll be with you.
The world is so loud. Keep falling. I'll find you.
Be ready to catch
The world is so loud. Keep falling. I'll find you.

stuff in boxes

i don't know where anything is

but i can't think about it

because the chaos that's around me

begins to tap tap tap at my head

until i'm crazy

my house is filled with boxes

a melange of documents

perfume bottles and birthday cards

vitamin pills carved gods

novels and japa malas

a scarf i bought on a whim

last year at a thrift shop

or the dvd of a concert i saw

in 2004

god help me if i need to find

my passeport or tax return

or the vitamin d because 

my levels are low

or the gold-flecked scarf

to tie around my throat

because it's cold

chaos has entered my house

and taken over my stuff

and not just in my house

but in my head

and not just in my head

but in my body

an extension of this illness

no less painful than

my right trapezius
nor less nauseating
than my vertigo

no i can't go there

i just leave it alone

the piles of garbage

the dust and the boxes

and the knowledge that

inside are the precious objects

of my life before chaos

new politics

photo by John Boyd (1865-1941)

let me be what i am

a fragment

changing ions

gross matter

and something indefatigable

i log in

to comment

on politics

i'm not in the back rooms

puffing cubans

i'm flying over icebergs

i brush against daisies

warble in maples

sit stonefaced

animal vegetable mineral

i've been all of it

on the rock and roll summit

of sisyphus

i stumble and get up

i do not merge with anything now

i touch i yield i move on

blackout: stop censorship

battered

battered back again

to my previous pain levels

right arm throbs to the wrist

big muscle across my shoulder

grips and burns

rotator cuff in front

burns into my breast

and it's constant

i'm still fighting

for pain meds

fighting after

15 years

explaining

what my disease is

to family, friends

and doctors alike

when will they

get it?

i can't stretch it out

eat it out

walk it out

accupuncture it out

meditate it out

or psychoanalyze it out

nothing works but opioids

and when it's

this bad

i can't think at all

i can't know

what to do

what not to do

the sickness

the nausea

the vertigo

the pain spreads

throughout my body

if they don't

give me

what i need

i won't be 

able to

stay here

what will it take

to stop the battering

not by pain

but by doctors?

if i only had a glove

i could give them

let them put it on

and feel what i feel

they would treat me

in a heart beat

my fear of pain

i survived the ghost of pain

at midnight

making the transition

from one medication to the next

overcoming the nonsense

i had told myself

fear of pain is my motivation

for everything

fear of more pain than i have

suicide-making pain

that suffocates my reason

because i've become

animal pure mammal

licking its wounds in the brush

under cover of darkness

hypervigilant and alive

ready to flee or fight

the human in me survived

to try something new and untried

and now i have less pain

less pain and some clarity

about what drives me