The Thing About

The Thing About

The thing about
saying the thing
about any thing

is it obscures.
All sense-making
does, except

those examples
I will exclude
here. Ignore

what you do
not need, sure,
to embrace

the singled-out
thing about
the thing.

The eye gets
grabbed when
it looks, gets

fondled, felt up,
falls in love
with one facet,

one sparkly patch
from the oceanic
fields of things

that exist, that
were formed
before you saw

them, long before
your eyes were
born. The birches

on one street,
knock-kneed
and ridged

as unpeeled
carrots, or the
funny foliage

before that
freeway exit,
high ends and

vines folded over
the center, like
fingers raised

in praise of
heavy metal,
a fist with horns,

a tailless Y in
sign language.
The thing about

attentiveness--
the more you
notice, the more

you look, and the
more you look
the more you

will have to
overlook, as you
have already.

Audio: With Love

This week, I had the itch to record some audio. So here's "With Love" for you, a poem I wrote last fall.

A while ago, I looked myself up at Klout, which supposedly measures your social media influence. It points out who you interact with most via social media, and mentions topics that you are supposedly influential about. It used to say that I was influential about "neurosis," "wine," "helium," and "mattress." Somewhat true (well, not the helium bit), I suppose, though I'm quite happy that the currently listed topics are a little more aligned with my actual interests (the site now mentions that I'm allegedly influential about "spoken word," "authors," "disorders," and still, "helium").

Some of my poems definitely have a neurotic tone to them. I don't know if it's necessarily a bad thing--I like to think that while they might sound a bit strange/obsessive, they are also playful and giddy (Woody Allen meets Peewee Herman). Is neurotic always negative, do you think? How would you characterize your writing voice?

Hope you enjoy the (very neurotic!) "With Love."
With Love by The Storialist

We Look for Migration

We Look for Migration

For months now,
I notice what seem

to be to leaves floating
and flapping in the air

over the freeway, above
my windshield and car.

Butterflies. Buttery
yellow and orange,

mottled brown.
I see them and drive

beneath them,
their small, fervent

thrashing. Winged
things always look

like they are leaving.
Above the butterflies,

clusters of black birds.
For months, I’ve read

the scattered tea leaves
of their flight as departure.

Where we look for
migration, we will see

migration. If we anticipate
what we think we know

is coming, we won’t be
as startled by what it

brings, the evening where
the afternoon once was.

Analytical Distance

Analytical Distance

Step back to see
what you thought you were seeing
clearly. Amidst
is a mist. Fetch the edges instead
of the center,
the yellowing silver maple, the ends
of its leaves
serrated like paper snowflakes,
the gray sky
behind all of this, and us, the year
and decade
we belong to. The century and those
adjacent to it.
The hemisphere, and the planet.
To learn more,
put your life on a table. Take your
hands away,
let it clatter against the table until
it stills. It will,
and then you can look. Crawl around.
Install yourself
in a high corner, between the ceiling
and the wall
where a waiting room television goes
and watch.
The first thing you feel. Notice it,
and walk
through it, backward, pointing out
what you have
been trying to tell yourself for years.
Keep moving
with the surety of a student tour guide
coaxing anxious
families through a college campus,
Here is the library
and the dining hall, and next, the best
dorm, the biggest
and most popular, evening quiet hours
gently enforced
and, of course, a real sense of community.

Experiments in Text: This Unearthly Pace