Sunday, 9:11 a.m.

if the night,

then the morning, a brightening sea

now, believe night into what is lost

then hope to lose sight of it

if morning dawns,

then the white sails of our eyes, a brightening

Sunday, 12:00 a.m.

Drifting shadowcloud of a minutehand

rolls over wood fibers, startles my sight

into the first object bought in a country

not my own, but stayed for years

in this clock.

Can it show the ticking of a year,

of years coming lately back?

The hand of a minute now

absorbs this country.

How a minute hand carries

with it no shadow at all.

Community is too syllabic for us to remember.

Our memory helps us forget within the word what we share after

and then our sense of belonging at first

a book on a roof

now

only the wind reads

it

the pages know when

turns

perhaps a name

whitewashed, open, turning over

a history

not mine, its, ours

in the wake of some quake

will we stay the sunset

or sail the sunrise?

when i break a word open it is to keep from being alone

though there is no home in one word alone

a little summer comes late too early

what ear hears

to the ground

cherries are lanterning

what word seeds itself

if neither bird nor soil wants it?

what language grows

ripe above ground

less silence

for the speaking, only

mid of some night

i blur back on words i

thought(s) were mine to raise

sometimes, the plot of community

from unnatural page comes unnatural ringing forth

to love my machinery without wanting it to be a part of

june spoon poem 1

Hey, let's tame the tundra.

We'll have a flicker of a find

trying to time our absence out there.

But, where will we signal a wick to flicker forth all our debris?

Let's be occupants of our own boat.

Look! There's the print of our hearts and a nail sailing in the snow!

How did that get into the room?

I don't know, but if our hands are certain, we can spell our names onto the bed of a board

and hang it on that single tree over there.

I think they will continue to signal themselves in the world.

I hope they can help alter the skies.

mayday poem 3

here, seasons are weathered into one day

what is cloud is fog is cloud

and can clog the light

but light is what we count of day

and day is time that is fall and also springs

mayday poem 2

i'm listening to what you are saying, can't you hear me?

but, i read your hands before i hear any words

sometimes, your hands move so slowly

so i might begin to speak with your eyes

i think that when i near your mouth i begin to hear it speaking sounds

strange to think that we depend on sounds which come from so cavernous a place in the body

causing us to distrust our eyes and hands which are ever in our sight

mayday poem 1

a voice wails outside an oral culture

when the second syllable came to my ear, i had already forgotten my name

as eyes stitch together the forgettings

words are called into naming --

for a short life

8:18am

my heart beats from wind that is a quake, an escape fire

stilled with stories, warring, we are becoming book objects

storytellers too dead to speak a word less a daguerreotype of what isn't there

9pm

if i swallow even one apple seed

i will grow into a tree

the world has never seen

8:57am

dear words, are we on speaking ground again?

dear language, i used you wrong (wronged you) again today

dear ghost, i love you for not being here, but present

12:46pm

pat me on the back for my exit,

but i'm still on leave

or some of me is still

8:33am

we no longer have to die to live in the past

and how our ghosts compete

to haunt one past

9:09am

an early mosquito circles, confused in its search for blood

a bee outside hovers, four stories too high

a sun, rare in warmth, whispering

10:23am

wine sap, sequoiadendron

tap root, root snap

winesapsequoiadendron

10:45am

how to listen to a windthrown hand?

each day cuts a new notch into my palm

we are far from wood

10:05am

i think about how we bump and graze past others in one city

i think about how we fall into and out of line in another city

all are ghosts, but (ever)present, moving with guidance, and then past, without apology

11:20am

dear sun, i walk as if i am trying to spend all of my limbs

"wake up! here is blue!"

lately it has been hard to walk a way back into human, i need you too, sun

10:58am

body, you know when day is done, but my mind knows better

body, you play house with time while my mind reads the sunset as it would the sunrise

we spend a lot of time reading the sky together

11:11am

clouds are ghosts of a (moving the) sky i thought i knew

my little patch of blue, slowly being compromised

still, the rain can't get started, and it's too exhausting to be known

10:15pm

leaves were talking while we wrote

i am trying to pre-serve language as sound before language can be preserved as words, erased

leaves are always talking as we write

9:53am

sitting in home, home is a thereness i tiptoe through

careful, not to touch, not to disturb

even ghosts leave prints behind

8:25am

dear mirah, if california drifts past japan one day, know that an earthquake unsettled us and i'm just passing through

dear adam, if you see an atlantic avenue ghost train running, know that i'm aboard for a transcontinental journey of passing through

dear karen, if you find me wandering in the ether of seoul and san francisco, know that i need a hand if i'm going to pass through you

9:33am

it seems the ghosts i knew have superimposed themselves onto you and you and you

let's use our keen sense of memory to haunt side by side

my real family, together we will learn to tend to our ghosts

4:45pm

sunlight (dear, time) clocks in (i miss(ed) my being in you) from window (to window)

a pigeon lands, (What time?) sights pulled over to the (blue skies!) fire escape

cooing (i am tired (yawns) of trying to fit myself in you (in her)), it watches seagulls on rooftops below

9am

the fallen palm leaves in my backyard were full of hidden black widows

i dreamt about a blue and red spider, making me a fake superhero painlessly

trees line a few blocks of a long street that isn't mine, bowing away from apartment buildings, filling with limelight

10:10pm

ghost, i see you. now, go.

ghost, i in you. now, let's go.

ghost i am past in you. now, let go.

12:25pm

i dreamed myself into a mirror and when she recognized me i told her to wake up

please be patient because my mind is a controlled burn of an alarm clock

i know i have to give you my ghosts

11:00pm

even the fewest of friends ask you to tend to them

so i have to learn to love shaving my legs

just as i've grown to love washing my dishes

9:53pm

spineshift, slight crack in clock

clickchime, floor(wall ceil)ing snipwrist

sounds of settled ghosts or ghosts settling around me

7:20pm

she would cut my hair wordlessly into a thick horizon across my back leaving me with a quiet and unimpressive sunset

i was born a year later than expected on the day gold was discovered at sutter's creek which a korean ajeuma tells me is my symbol during a saju reading one year ago on my birthday

now another she cuts away only what is needed to unlock my waves "your hair grows normally" she explains and i want to call her mother

10:10am

the jonathan apple tree in my childhood backyard uprooted itself from the weight of a grafted wine sap branch offering too many apples

this happened several years ago. but, only my family knows. and i wonder how many

people will know when the voluminous general sherman sequoia tree uproots itself

an urban seed planting is a blind re-rooting

hands, rustle up through topsoil

whisper yourselves to sunlight

a fiery fog too late for its own morning

blue patching, sun punching but still, unrecorded mindphotos

a panoramic woodcut graphs a sky of time into a window opening

a few fingers felled

for a day is (of) light foliage

ever greening at the tips

rivery of veins are blood mined for

narratives of time, speak me through

a current caught, nicked

white bird stirrings no shadows attached

my heart beats an open fish mouth o for breath

outside of fire escape, i live, rephotographing in my ghost culture

by the eighth count of breath in bed i always forget to make it past

shots of blood to my heart how i wish i could see

walking down the woods of my will become day

community is a homeless word

do people really belong with other groups, other people, or do they merely just join them? if the latter, there is something organized, something militaristic about belonging to a community that leaves me well, unsettled. sometimes i wonder if i just imagine community that i still don't really know what togetherness is between humans who are otherwise strangers. sometimes i think that everyday community borders on opening a door for someone or listening to a homeless person talk about what troubles them, but i'd like to believe it's something deeper, richer, and far more fulfilling than that--a kind of connection with no expectations but a knowing that if in a moment of true crisis you could expect so and so to pull you through. i'd like to think of community as a kind of ever-suspended selfless love that hovers over us and maybe strengthens us a little throughout the day even just by thinking about its presence. all i know is that i keep searching for it for some reason. i don't even know what it is really, but i just keep looking because i feel compelled to do so. the strange thing is that when i find myself looking that's when i feel alone. generally, i don't feel lonely in the world or in my life except for these moments. maybe it's because i'm searching outside myself and it reminds me that i have no home in that sense. perhaps my idea of belonging has been forever changed from my years spent in korea. i knew there that i was never accepted, but i was needed and used in a very practical way that at many times felt loving because it was so human. i don't know that i feel that here and i think i want to; that is, i think that's what i'm searching for when i go on daily walks toward a home of anywhere. i spoke with a friend of mine who tells me he has been reclusive from people, not the world, for months now. there is vibrancy and positivity in his voice and i can hear how collected, calm, and kind he is with himself. it is difficult to be at peace with a peaceable life in a city. cities are invisible and they always have been, but they struggle against their own invisibility. the work we love and love to do is ghostly and must continue to be worked at. he held community in his voice. the munus in community is a gift we are always seeking to give to others.

the book is a history in our hands that we have put in the other suitcase

having a blog for writing that is without all the bells and whistles is seemingly antiquated, it seems. this is strange for me to think about when a blog is essentially a bell and a whistle of a novelty itself, and yet it also rings of an antiquated form that is essentially the chapbook (minus the paper, of course). it's the calling (or drawing) of a public into well, a public arena. for me, writing online is both daunting and curious, frightening and unfettered. i am not sure that i will be completely at ease with the act (or action), and i equally think that's probably for the best. i started this blog up years ago with no real intention other than to join the ever-present and ever-pressing social crowd that has since grown so crowded on the internet; a strange growth that no one can ever manage to see but can instead feel. but i've never been able to keep up a daily blog entry, not because i have nothing to say, but because i don't want to say or carve out an idea over the internet. i approach writing online in much the same way that i journal-- not often enough to be consistent and overly cognitive and/or prosaic in the unfolding. of course, more playfulness makes its way into whatever blog entries i do write than would ever enter a journal entry, but i am more guarded with my blog entries, partly because i know that they can instantly enter a public space of no space, and partly because of the writer in me who is worried that someone will extract lines from my split-second thoughts, and yes, steal them. i'll admit that this idea of stealing words online is a bit ridiculous, but not without validity. when i choose to publish a post, i am in effect opting to give up (or share?) some of my privacy with unknowable others. this is a great thing unto itself, but what i am haunted by is that choice and why i choose to make it when i do. after a talk in berkeley at u.press bookstore on the technology of the book, i think about how there was once no clear division or label between the role of the writer as author, as editor, and publisher (printer), and book distributor, and how this unified role has now been transferred or given over to the internet for things like blogs to establish themselves through. authors in the past had no control or rights over their published work, and maybe, to some extent, that was perfectly fine-- to relinquish the role of author to some other unseen uncontrollable public group or space. thoughts of kathy acker here. thoughts of a child recognizing its own image in a mirror. there is a strange safekeeping with writing and posting things online that exceeds momentary self-satisfaction in putting yourself "out there." i think that this safekeeping resides with the fact that we all seem to have at our fingertips a virtual, limitless storage space that is the no space of technological ether. it reflects the capacity of the human mind, but provides us with a illusory glimpse at being able to go beyond our human capacity (since we apparently can only access a low percentage of the brain). i think it just gives us hope that we can come close to transcending our human selves. there are days when i wonder if that day is the day that a massive earthquake might strike san francisco, or if a fire might break out in my apartment building during one of my long daily walks, or if something should just happen to me in general, and then i breathe a sigh of relief, thinking about the fact that a good portion of my writing is in the safe hands of nothingness, safe from earthquakes, fires, and my own mortality. i even sent out my recent manuscript to several close friends and writers to share, yes, but also as a kind of will, if you will. in many ways, it really just makes me feel braver.

on the bart ride back to the city, a middle-aged man in a suit with two stuffed briefcases sat opposite me. i was reading maggie nelson's "bluets" and was thinking about bluet #154 and #155 on how red is the color that most humans are drawn to as a child, but then they later mature into loving blue more and how logical that is since blue is abundantly everywhere. the man with the suitcases began a kind of usual fidgeting through his pockets and in one easily accessible pocket on the suitcases that evolved into a full-on frantic unraveling of a search for a book. what was so interesting about this entire bart ride of a situation was how most people on our bart car most likely never thought anything of this man's presence (myself included) until he began to act with such animated gestures and profanity that it was impossible not to notice, much less watch him completely lose his marbles over a book. he was in utter disbelief that he had put his book in another suspect suitcase, and openly voiced this to the bart car full of people as if we knew where it was or had taken it from his suitcase as a kind of joke. during momentary periods of rest between searching and researching and finally yes, actually unpacking all of his personals from one of the suitcases, setting these items in the bart aisle as if unaware of any passengers around him or who might need to get by, the man seemed to notice that i was reading a book of my own. don't ask me why, but i felt his eyes burning into me with hatred and jealousy that i had remembered my book. little did he know, but i had 3 other books in my bags, too, and part of me nearly felt obligated to offer him one. then again, one of the books was on the technology of the book, and i felt that an unwise book to offer him. so, i stayed silent, clutching my bag a little closer to me, whispering to jabes and howe inside to remain calm. after the man's arduous battle with his own memory and his suitcases, he just sort of sat still, but would continue to peer over and longingly down at his suitcases, without touching them, hoping they would give up the ghost and just say where this book of his was. as all of this was going on, part of me was annoyed by this man's reaction to a lost book when there is so much going on in the world, but then i thought about how incredible it was that a book can still mean so much in the world we do live in today that its absence could produce such an amazing response. i have never grown into blue very well despite all its abundance. ever since i saw a mime paint a bright red 5 on a blue ball when i was a little girl, i have the strongest of feelings for red which go beyond color.

and now the waves unfold

how strange to hear arguments in my mind (a broken ribbon of wind) and sense them as being the most audible thing in a theater. the silence of a film casts our bodily functions into the spotlight. a digestive peep or squeal barely audible but high in pitch is cast out amidst such dark human sea and somehow understood by cave bellowing hunger pains that are deeper and further away. we speak our intestinal sounds as anchors and ports, ports and buoys to one another. we remember how we have been passing each other gradually, but only able to drift or float past one another to a certain unnameable distance.

i see a pan of foliage, my eye, foliage huntress, i spying and hiding in foliage. a thorn was always a stem. a stem was always a stalk.

i wanted to know beyond the blotches of new shapes and worlds that the light splotches cut and afforded my eye. but then i felt my eye wandering inward away from sight and i trusted what i didn't recognize because when it moved, panning into a brilliant light streak, it reminded me of being. when i thought i saw a galaxy of clouds expanding into a universe of night sky as snow clumps on a car's back seat window i forgot for a moment that a tree rings of a truer map of the body, its history a folded whisper. after that, i didn't want to know beyond my eye.

mocking birds perched on the same branch, surely a sigh of relief was heaved from our breast as we recognized there was no theme, there were no characters, there was no narrative unfolding. And to think that this absence had been unfolding around us all along.

communing with community

somewhere between fisherman's wharf and rebecca solnit is where my wandering and wandering imagination strolls into these days. the betwixt is less ghostly when you actively smile into a stranger's face. aside from being a super smeller, i listen to the way people who i don't know (yet) but would be embracing during an earthquake read my hands more, and i giggle over pedestrians' street corner complaints voiced into a phone or to a friend standing with them. it's one long exhale that i breathe in, a street sweeper of emotive outbursts or leakage. not waste or wasted. not want or wanted. sometimes, i feel like a tree being decorated all year long, ornamented, branches dangling with emotions of others; caught because my arms were just extended. little, tinseled looks flash from me, and it's here's looking at you, kid because i (that is) (am) you, is looking into your eyes, and we always were. we are that connected. so, that's a walk (yes, unto itself) i take daily. i essay, jaunt, trot, saunter, gallop, stroll, divert, meander through the yous' (that is, me) daily profanity that is also spun into a conversation, a narrative, a confession, a plea. a we is conceived (though rare perceived) in our passerby love. a couple of months ago, i thought i was one of the few ghosts in this city grappling with what it means to be a ghost, to embrace it. san francisco is the only city i've lived in where i feel the city with all of its structure in buildings emitting whispers (or sometimes screams) of history and culture living around me, supporting me in a way that is parental. our passerby love. not take or taken. give and given. fisherman's wharf swarms with the unreal, the ghostly. sometimes, i get excited flitting through all of these ghostial remains that are people rolling like movie scenes before my peripheral vision in any direction around me. this ghostly plane of places has become a kind of portal for me. i can go there and be instantly transported to the ghost i was in korea. here, all direction of walking is lost or has no place (in this no-place of sorts) as it is in asia. this cultural misconnection of mine (that does not exist in word) feels like home in its familiarity of disconnection and displacement. here, (or there) no one person speaks the same language; in fact, language is obsolete. everyone just wants, no, longs to wander, gaping upward or into corners, forgetting pedestrian safety, wanting to touch, to gaze, to wonder, to be everywhere in such nowhereness. being amidst that throng of pulsating ghostial terrain there also exists the ether of a slowness that is often neglected. the chaos gives time to allow early spring blossom scents to supersize themselves inside that ol factory of a nose of yours (mine). that is a small moment in capturing, i know, but it builds during our walk. during a stroll out onto pier 39, i was layered with sunlight that was almost a gutted salmon in coloring against a nimbostratus sky, and i met in such ether a tourist who asked me to take her picture with coit tower in the background and to get part of the wooden rail of the pier, too. she was from daegu, korea. we spoke in part korean, part english, each practicing words we thought we knew would surely connect a conversation together. but, when she (maggie) told me that she chose me to take her picture because of the look on my face, and when i told maggie that i stopped because of kindness in her voice, i knew that we had already conversed long before any words tried to effectively fall from our memory. words come from remembering or memory. they sometimes seem automatic, spontaneous, but we are speaking long before them with most people. they are the most reliable port in the storm. and they are pleasing to the ear and aesthetically pleasing to the eye, too. words come from memory. gestures, sounds, tones, things that we automatically feel but cannot voice without words are how we truly begin communication. we are made ghostly by words. we are most at home with others (ourselves) when we embrace our animals selves. to shake hands with the animal self of another without using words is small capturing, but it will build during our walk together.