SANTA FE

The sky

today is a blank
page puncuated

by birds

TRY NOT TO KILL ANYTHING WITH YOUR FACE: AN INSTRUCTION MANUAL

by kari edwards and Chris Martin


Let's do all and anything that comes

Just sever certain things and send

~

Take it form, there

Open and discard content

Return lines to their previous breath

Slip in unnoticed sleep

Wind and release

Hover over for truth

Puncture with tooth

Peel and calibrate to nude lengths

Leap across backwards

Say yes, eyes open

~
on a rise or around a rose

on a flat

around a crowd that is one

spread that across the universe with solar winds

that is still one

~

This is still ore

Will move

“My heart still loves,

will break”

There is nothing

bleak about the shore, its tide,

restored, the breaching birds

spearing their tongues to salt

such as we would

much as we woo the unpalatable

sea, see

what lives its small

time diving among the tide’s

hours This is ours

This is all
ties and glue

blues and small eyes

shoestring and what plies

its steps through sand and

thousands of other forms.

Let’s bother Let’s throb

these lines in our breast, in

our best impression of sea, its wet

impression of sun

setting against the shore

This ore is still, will move

more soon, so on

~
take a visual field

any field

record every detail

shades movements
taste budding hopes supposed thoughts
frizzed atoms fraught molecule periodic table sum calculations
parcel post and particle paradigms found in the cracks and crevasses

then take a step and do it again

~

take as tether the line

rapt as gallows rope

open eyes, yes say

yet this is where you must pause



pull the strings until weft

slowly, solely

you must paw at the fabric

until it splits

light the pieces

melt

~

An Action
(may be performed wherever there are windows)

Throw chair through

window. Sit

on chair. Give

reading of new

poems by current

Poet Laureate.

~

take a deep breath

turn the sky in to a bite-size ball

swallow

imagine all the filth of time

the screams from war

blood shed particles

lost memories from genocide

exhaust, fumes, vapors and particles
from every motor, coal furnace, and nuclear reactor

the bones that have been crushed in machines by machines

all the hate and violence caused by fear times one million and fifty-five

isolation and madness in the upper atmosphere

each an every cry from the last of a kind

greed and the road paved with good intentions

take a deep breath

swallow

~

Open the closest closet and remove all the clothes

~

Look into the eye of a fish

See yourself

Go backwards

~

there is a hum in the air

the air is the hum

do you know the tune?

~

stand on a white piece of paper

become the paper

have some one place the paper out side

leave instruction for anyone to find the you that was on the paper,

or find the paper

~

in a large room place your voice next to the blank space

~

when it is time to do something

remember there are at least twenty-four options

~

get young black teenagers

put their pants on backwards

sell a million records

~

buy a car

commercial

take it off

the air

~

Lunge

~

remember the end is only the beginning

connect all every movies ever made including home movies
to create a endless loop
sit down to watch them
don’t forget to make enough popcorn to last

~

count out each second that you have lived

~

Live each second

that before

you had only

the time

to count

~

read a boot

shoot a gum

run a rake

bake a pier

wear a squirt

build a horse

~

Cement

Clock

Savage

Pencil

~

house

body

light

~

the path of a rain storm is a uniform pattern of rain drops that record the conception of storm from the beginning to the end of it. each raindrop contains specks of the universe that are scattered from point A to point B. once these particles descend and land they begin another journey into the soil to become a part of a planet, that is a source of food and so on.

now picture each particle’s journey as a traceable element in time with pluses and minuses in each direction, zero being the present. each particle leaving its own slight colored echo of where it’s been and where it’s going.

~

Pour your

hate into

a vial.

Smash it

over and

over again.

~

Think of how
animals kill

things using
only their faces

Try not to
kill anything

with your face

~

If I think of it now
it has happened already . . . .

if I see it, it is not longer that

~

Take a year in your hand—
it’s small, rumbles

like an antique
boxcar in a shoebox

diorama. Dare to
squeeze it. Drum

your fingers in that pleasing
way that fingers do.

Let go of the year. Let
your eyes go after it.

~

Take a drum
to an antique

car show. Shower
it with fingers.

Let a set of eyes
say yes to the year

of our lord, please,
go easy into that

Good Friday.

OF THE MIDDLE OF

The snow comes late / the train come late / A cone of light

delivers us, right / on time to ourselves / This is not a love letter

It is a fragment of the / treatise on the / reversibility of the

glove / When was the last time you were truly / inexplicably

gloved? / Some call it looking / at the moon through

the word / When it happened I was as / far from words

as air / is / from chemistry / The first one that

returned seemed to / be I / then IF / but it was and would always

be OF / This is not a love letter / This is that

which is in continual / reprisal, it is / the middle of the

middle of the middle / of the middle of / the beginning

LUGGING FLOWERS INTO THE FUTURE

Sleep is a story / we tell to ourselves / the streets yellow

with swollen leaves, your face / somewhere in mine, orange

gone suddenly / sensual / Thank god you

were there to rescue intelligence / to revel in the inequality

of silences / and now I’m bursting / naps

itching joy / Eno at the bar, birthday / girls lugging

flowers into the future / without a map / I’m suddenly so New

Wave looking / at you from the bar buying us / drinks

as you grin that / scared intelligence, that could it / be we

are already / kissing grin / Just yesterday I was so

sure silence / didn’t exist / now it’s bursting

TURNING AVIAN

One posits a containment / mania / this little decoy we / tug

inside the shatters / of us fringing the world / I guess

it is sexual, a low drag / with unperceived frequencies

The green lobes / of the out-the-window / tree steeped

with yellow jellyfish flowers—we are / enmeshed in nuisances

Where is all that incommensurable / hope? You forgot it

in people / and found it there again, again / turning avian

Her tongue in my mouth / our faces pressed by the rush

of air pushed forward by the D train / we were busy

not taking / I wanted someone menacing / to approach me so

I could perplex / them with rhyme / I remembered words

of mine from the mouth / of a madman—come

home: this is / the loveliest rhyme

THE FUCK ARE BUTTERFLIES

Truth is desire / there, I said it / as if the cost of admitting

something was something / geographic, like a tiny / blinking bug

made of ideas a spy / adhered to you / All knowledge brings up

new problems / All knowledge brings up is new

problems, but that’s exactly / what we are / desiring, there

I said something adhesive / a body that always

thought it was the consequence / of an image / And finally, here

we are coincident / trysting in a flare / of flesh / You

called while I was riding / the F for the first / time in weeks, too

dark to make out / the graffiti / I wrote my name on

a beige building wall / and it became a thing again / I say there

are butterflies / in my stomach / You say what

the fuck are butterflies / doing in your stomach?

A SLOW, SLOW POUNCE

Alex swears / I transmuted / The woman on the 2 used

a magnifying / glass to read the police / blotter, naps

of afro jutting from / her hat / A woman may extend

to the tip of the / feather in her / hat, or further / a bullet’s

wet anchor / I was studying rhythm / a slow, slow

pounce or drag / the way a flame disappears / in the tube

of a shaft of sun / the tip wet / magnifying afros

A woman used a piece of glass to read the police her hat / a slow, slow bullet

disappearing in the tube / Alex swears I’m wearing my Dead

Ringers surgery socks / swears I’m singing My Pistol

in Your Mouth Blues / an orange light / blinking on Bleeker

blotter / further / feather / anchor / as certainly I grow

sick at placing myself, at replacing / myself in the scenes

NO SMALL ASSAILANT OF MIRROR-LIGHT

It is the first day in October and how I burden the apartment

with sneezes lemons from the bodega exploding with seed

Someone set a pagoda on fire on the edge of

the lake, my nose still running, Once I Had an Earthquake

in my ears It is the first with sneezes how I burden

the edge of the apartment with earthquake with

whisper-talk, how humans make caricatures of air of

the reanimated now She lied when she swore she wouldn’t read

the moon any longer, no small assailant of mirror-light

In my ears the edge of whisper-talk of mirror-light

Then I is heterogeneous electric with broken ghosts

Don’t use words Don’t use words Don’t use words

* * * * *

Getting drunk keeps cornering the brain and in that we punctuated

happening but you are the one bereft of intelligence, thank

god I never wanted Wednesday to end never wanted

the separations to endure The church tolls the time I sneeze

The neighbors take Silence their dog, out for a walk

When we confide we do not confine incipience a flooding that adds

imperceptibly to deluge a surface that glues itself to the surfeit

I want to sleep in the sleep that you sleep as ferociously

one must drive on to tenderness Repetition is desire

I sneeze with sun a cool wind on my arms, half-grown wrist wisps

from recent surgery, my pelvis not long closed and in the deep

stiletto branches I’m always touching double-jointed

women, imperfect vision Silence insists on so much noise

A YEAR IN THE LIFE OF GOING TO THE MOVIES

for ben


I wanted to leave a testament to the real to things

verily happening above truth Punching voices

to always go sincere to always go sincere in the blur

And it is already changing beneath the vast

shadows of drunkards in uneasy amaze People are more

interesting than poems but we need them

to understand them Terror is only another kind of error

There is too much choice, but there is never enough

choosing a flock that perforates the sky into arrows

but what is an arrow if it moves? This is a year

in the life of going to the movies a current of fortuitous noise

Is there a part of me that is a part of history? It is unimportant

A PHENOMENOLOGY OF NUCLEAR HANDS

In yellow pants the newspaper Courtney reads, the sky the color

of mine We sweat to dissipate the sure empire of knowledge

as the night cigarettes have made my eyes heavy

These daily nuptials braiding air to bone or lost amidst

the agony of suspended flesh The television puts forth its phenomenology

of nuclear hands I want to kiss you while the phone rings

but you are the one calling Punching voices braiding the ends

to celebrate the middle, the already changing romance

bereft of intelligence and in that we punctuated the sighs with air

Manning our nation’s boredom murder, comedy

getting drunk keeps happening in words

Outwardly, the pressures tricking us into flight Heroic weaknesses

cornering the brain which was itself a version of blank

I CARE ABOUT MOVIES

It’s afternoon and I look at digital equivalents of music, look

insane because my eyes are bagged and my hair is stringy

like an Aztec sun I can’t stop desiring women with children their eyes

forceful no, seriously forceful of course I’m afraid

of women I’m afraid of men too, the day thrown to pieces

symphonic goading a word—cognac tempering the air

a cognate lurking insidious a country in my skull

She is a sleeping thing warm like a machine or a broom

among brooms The world persists machinic I want you

to find its little blots its unclinical wefts, I want

to bed in the unknowing your fingers become I care about the movies

* * * * *

It is said the last woman who tattoos you is your wife

To be a self is to be a sudden cipher interpellated by faces

a tattoo that moves A man’s expensive shoes invade me

ballistic earrings quiver around the soft circle of a neck

this false peace a pantomime of not falling

I want to locate a no stillness this false peace

Topographies of rumor jutting in the streets

The one about the country without torture, torture so

plain it seeps into a garland of irises islands of nail

clippings caught in the leaves coincidences all

that matters that matter inebriated, tenebrous

We awed so much that tending to life put us to sleep

JOY, A BRAILLE

There is nothing light about being, nothing heavy either

a heaving ether peppered by noise I am not one who thinks

the disordered part disorders the whole I do not even believe

in it reggae punctuates the street I wish for birds

Johnny Cash in the street then ambulances mediating

joy a Braille of slumping shadows rides away

Who are you gonna ride with boy? I’m gonna test the gray balloon

brains of my enemies no I’m gonna trim my beard

gonna breed sulfur in a flummoxing smog, train

it to believe in the shapes I make breathing

Order is not peace it is death and we can’t get

enough of it Rather to intimate to overlap to happen

again to already know now again A phone on the street woke

me up the next morning then I heard it as a directive—change

your mind

THE ORIGINS OF A SCAR

There is an immense rain and nothing is saluting nobody

My father’s ankles were shined bare and I reasoned it

had something to do with going to work It was feared

I would become knock-kneed, but I was frightened more by the prospect

of war Our substitute teacher, who was also the soda jerk

had to have his friend’s brains removed from his ear by surgery

The night we first bombed Iraq, I had just returned from scuba diving

class, having been informed repeatedly of the myriad

ways I might die Our babysitter drank perfume until she

died Though the rain stopped, the news kept “pouring in”

When my finger was crushed by the weight of the canon I refused to scream

SIMPLE, RIDICULOUS

There is such action here the yard we can’t decide

is front or back a black fly chasing my breath

Courtney tentative on the harmonica The leaves dip and twist

frantically modern though their shadows show them up

The bees are out-buzzed by the hummingbirds

at the feeder, where ants go steadily to be drowned, now

Courtney reads The Known World as wrens fill in

and neither of us feels the least bit ironic about it

We live amidst the machines of our thought, a geometry

of sleeplessness forged by quiet, unnamed desires

I pay my ear to the simple, ridiculous happinesses

a plane blanketing the air, a bee scissoring through, aghast

at the plural these interloping ghosts overlapping

truth in the unique startle at the jackhammer’s

bony knock, a woodpecker (I swear) looking on, or

it is just as well nowhere, wanting the things to thing

for us, wanting to see so as only to settle into a blinding

OF HUMAN TORSOS

It was Saturday, cicadas

like expiring / mechanisms hidden

in the leaves

I was thinking about literalness

feeling literal and cloudlike

simultaneously and what imbecile

says a cloud isn’t literal?

I was thinking about human torsos, those lighting

cigarettes and those huge

female torsos coming / in from the sea

If you drew a diagonal from my hipbone to my penis

and bisected it, you would find there a scar

doing nothing, like a thick iron

worm the size of one of my fingers, dead

I have really long fingers

But I was happy to see my neighbors, Caribbean, walking

to church, happy to

drink coffee in my underwear

and stare out the window, a tiny

spider on the screen

rotating like it was connected

to a joystick

A KIND OF SHADOW KNOWLEDGE

There is such action here

The yard we can’t decide

is front or back

a black fly chasing my breath

Courtney tentative on the harmonica


The leaves dip and twist

frantically modern

though their shadows show

them up

The bees are out-buzzed


by the hummingbirds

at the feeder, where ants go steadily

to be drowned, now

Courtney reads The Known World

as wrens fill in


and neither of us feels

the least bit

ironic about it


* * * * *


We live amidst the machines

of our thought, a geometry

of sleeplessness forged

by quiet, unnamed desires

I pay my ear


to the simple, ridiculous

happinesses

a plane blanketing

the air, a bee

scissoring through, aghast


at the plural

way these interloping

ghosts overlap—there is either

truth in the unique startle

at the jackhammer’s


bony knock, a woodpecker

(I swear) looking on, or

it is just as well

nowhere, a patently human

selfishness that wants


the things to thing

for us, wants

to see so as only

to settle into a false

and blinding peace


* * * * *

There are disturbing

tides, the unkind

kind, giving only

the heaviness of rage, a mouth

heaving waters whose unwanted


wash wears us

to bone and one

is not simply become

wet, but

also dry, white


As such each

must leap from its otherwise

inert, must locate

some tacit

activity in the switch


We have eyes and so we

watch, fingers and so

we catch, we parade idiotically

until one

feels need of stampede


* * * * *

When fixing my hernia

the technicians shaved

a strange hairless rectangle

into my heavily-tangled pelvis

and painted it yellow


This is why you must trust me

because, just maybe, the abstractions

I put forth are born

from a kind of shadow knowledge

and though I’m not trying


to fix you, just maybe, it would seem equally

outrageous to think

there’s nothing terribly

wrong with either of us

BEING OF

Of course there

are answers

in the trees, why else

would they be

there? The shapes are

answers, color

is an answer, a hummingbird

makes an answer of

noise, of speed, glass

answers slowly, the air is

a reminder

of an answer said so

early that it needs

to be

repeated now and now

again, the leaves

answer with green applause

the spaces say

please and that is also

an answer, I

try so hard to exact

things and am so

densely removed

from them, but every once

in a while I see fit

as they say, to absorb

a weightless answer, an answer without

volume, because

light is there! And all of

the sudden I am

perforated with it

and give

off a small answer of

my own, but let's

not be content

with that, let's

touch each

other and go on

stupid and wait without

the sense of our

waiting and soon

enough we can return to

our entanglements, if

only to return from there

to air, to

being of.

THIS FALSE PEACE

Is it redundant to admit the perpetual

flux of being knocks
me the fuck out?

The birds so goddamn awful
in their big goddamn sky

This is a bomb
made of thought thought
when one is trying not

to think
the vowels valves
obscenely

the thrusts abbreviated
only to reappear invisibly

to reappear changed

*****

I wake thinking
atrocious, atrocious

horses moving diagonal
in the shadow

of a plane

Now the tragedy is anatomical, except

I’m no longer a good transducer
of tragedy, so I go

hungry waiting
for others

An image of your torso
in my faded red tank-top

A cat in the backyard
nursing alertly

*****

We awe even
at the airport

terminal’s chaotic banality

Quite often it is
the coincidence that crashes

quiet, quiet

crash

Heat lightning
A page secreting
a receipt left by one loved

Her color was the current
world gaping

I never learned to separate
people from principles

*****

To be a self is to be a sudden

cipher interpellated by faces

a tattoo that moves

A man’s expensive shoes invade me

ballistic earrings quiver

around the soft circle of a neck

this false peace

a pantomime of not

falling

I want to locate a no

stillness

this false peace

IN A FORCE VOICE

No one seeks peril and yet
there it is, there is

peril in admiring the trees

*****

To say this is real and follows
as I do is not

to say the teeth allow
the tail existence

Treasures drift by sightless but the windows

snag on our eyes
Songs snag
and our eyes are wet with it

The gusts of ghosts trouble
us toward thinking and writing

is always a ghost game

(When Spicer said poetry
is “a machine for catching
ghosts,” he also said, “sex”)

*****

The flowers, the flowers—what
would it mean to be a bee?

To speak in swerves in
a force voice?

words make things name

One tongue travels near
the other and the whole
picture unravels

into movement—this
is not love, but it is

dancing

this is all
gossip about being

this is all

paronomasia and miasma
shaking the entirety in turn
tuning flux

and flaring at the imperceptible
fringes of collision

A HUMAN VELOCITY

Sure I was a molecule
accumulating talk

I came to this wanting
to say something

small about being
with you

an awkwardness beneath gasoline
each weird hospitality flung
into the mouth of a passing bird

I woke refurbishing The Kite Wars
a rabbit, a snake
Korean Dogwood blooming

in my ears
the man loves art because
he is an egoist

in my ears
he is an egoist

Today is something thrown and awaiting

purchase

*****

I was out interviewing clouds, amassing
the notes of a sky pornographer

as patches of the city subnormalized

by fear of fear

like a reef bleaching closed
I took to the streets
looking for a human velocity

thinking of disequilibrium

feeling heavy in the abundance
of summer light

of—this is my favorite name so

far

*****

This is insect speed and we
must be legendary in our hush
corpuses thrumming open

as a patina of grief
corrodes unnoticed in a background
of yesterday’s teeth

This girl is determined to hold onto the geometry

of her love

the newspaper reads tiny coffin moves
scientists to tears
and my extravagances gather

This is deep speed or a dynamism
of the middle

prone

to disappearance
A speed slowed to time outside

culture

in the slick of the thing music