Rebellion

I think the most rebellious thing one can do is somersault down hills, large hills, preferably with a polluted river at the bottom so that one can swim across it and climb the hills on the other side all oily and soaking wet. It is best to do this rebellious act in the presence of no one.

Longer Hands

"I broke my Islets of Langerhans when I was one day old.
They snapped in a thousand and one places.
Who knew you could break your Islets of Langerhans?
And at one day old, no less!"

These are the sorts of fabrications I make,
the fabrics I weave (with really neat geometric Navajo-style patterns!)
over the huge net that falls now
upon so many. Nobody
is asked to think that they are legitimate,
but they're (a hell! of) a lot more real
than some of those space blankets
that float around in the spider's web.

That spider is boring, and its
web needs no sticky substances --
it traps us in our own aimlessness carelessness thoughtlessness restlessness
and all of the other lessnesses we find in our pockets
along with our short hands.

An Evening

            It tasted like somebody had put the one great-land-piece and another great-land-piece in a cup, mixed it with some of the sea and made it hot. It also tasted like nuts, and it tasted like the birth of Jesus. It tasted like dancing, too, the prettiest dancing and the bounciest made-sounds from a man of the east. It tasted a little bit like my house back home. It tasted like a lot of things, and I liked it.

            We talked about our friends while we drank it, friends we had before and that we might still have. We talked about time more than anything else. (But when is anybody not talking about time?)

            What we talked about held much weight, but what held more weight was her face as I looked at it (and perhaps my face as she looked at it). It was dark, stern, but welcoming. Its shape comes from a land just west of the land that the bouncy made-sounds that the land-and-sea-drink tasted like came from. And the shape of my face comes from a land nearby, but a darker land where faces are lighter. We are both cut off from those lands, she by several years and I by many.

            We laughed together. (I may have even giggled.) We laughed, but I do not think that it was because of funniness. I think the laughing was because of niceness. Everything was so nice. (What could I do but laugh?)

            I thought about kissing her face, it was so nice, but then I thought that I did not need to do that. Maybe I could have kissed a part of her face that most people would not kiss. Not her lips, but the tip of her nose or right between her eyes or maybe half-way between her left ear and the middle of her cheek (near the jaw-bone). Anyway, I did not kiss her face, which was fine.

            We talked about trees, too, puffy tress. How at some point in time we thought to bring what was outside inside when we are jolly. It sure is lovely. (But who thought of it?)

            We talked until our land-and-sea-drinks were all gone, and then we kept talking for a while. We kept talking about our friends and our blood-people, who we both love so much.

            We held more and more weight with our words, and more and even more weight with our faces, with the looks on our faces. Much time had passed and much had been held – words, laughing, niceness, kiss-thoughts, cups full of land-and-sea-drink, empty cups – all of them so weighty.

            I did not want to go, but after some time I had this thought that I had to go. And so I went. For the last small stretch of time we spoke no words, and it was only faces. I swung the door on its hinges and asked her to feel more niceness in the following time, which was night-time.

Painted Face

Painted face, painted face,

"A lady must always have a painted face."

Don't ever let them see your tainted grace,

and never, for heaven's sake, give them your name to praise,

Painted Face.

Once I hear a man thinking out loud about a sexual fantasy he had where there was a woman, a painter, and she was using her body as the canvas, all of its parts, every surface. Why he spoke about it in public, I don't know. That generally is not acceptable.

Painted face, painted face,

not crazy but obsessed beyond all reason;

to do anything else would be high treason,

and never, for heaven's sake, appear to graze,

Painted Face.

when i feel the best

when i take off my vest

and snow starts falling on and in my chest

: that's when i feel the best.

when beasts are next to me,

i run with them, i'm childish, and i'm free

: that's when i find the key.

"okay," i hear you say,

"but you will do nothing if you just play"

: and so i run away.

Ambitions

Today's to-do list:

pick up eggs, milk, wine
drop kids off at school
conquer Albania
call my sister
relax a little with a good book
find true love
discover America
organize for potluck next week
eat Stonehenge
get computer fixed
get car fixed
pick up kids from school
go fox hunting in outer space
cook dinner
eat dinner
eat Mt. Rushmore
try not to drink too much
make friends with a large hippopotamus
call Linda (she's going through a lot right now)
purchase twigs
go through re-birthing ceremony
try not to drink too much
buy gift for Drew
conquer Europe on the back of a jolly tapir
go to bed

Sonnet

These are the longest shadows in the world;
one tree outreaches everything, extends
for miles and miles, around the whole earth curled,
its backwards lightness all around me bends
and light from light its backwards lightness rends
all round and round the globe it casts, it tears,
not knowing any means or any ends,
just light and backwards light and frigid airs.
But deep within dark houses, we have pears
and apples that we eat (only knowing
dark and backwards darkness) in our chairs,
knowing nothing of the outside glowing:
If we would step outside and cast our own
shadows, then we would be no more alone.

At Home

A mouse tells me these things
about the universe, like

"Everything's made of wheat thins,"
      "The thinnest wheat thins ever," and
"Miniscule ghosts inhabit your heart,"
      "(They inhabit everything else, too)":      .

What good is it, Mickey, to
tell me about the universe
if these facts
shatter my entire universe,
anyway?

Comforts

Pipe tobacco and peppermint tea,
two little comforts from two little leaves,
the only things I ever will need.

Song

      Only silent as it gets:
through pillows, you're swimming.
      Only softly down it sets
from daybreak till dimming:
            Blanket on the ground.

      Only silent as it gets:
marshmallows, and you're falling.
      The child the ground below forgets
till mother is calling:
            Chocolate in your mouth.

      Silent, silent, and it's dark;
dark orange lights cake.
      Sleeping is a meadowlark
from now till daybreak:
            Listen to its sound,
            never flying south,
            listen to the sound.

Toast

What do you like to put on your toast?
Usually butter and jam, but sometimes I like to put cream cheese on it.
Oh. I like piss on my toast.

Sitting at a Desk

And then I am left
feeling like this:

With footskin slapping scratchy asphalt
and icy air flowing through mouth, throat, lungs
and giddy, squirmy stomach fluttering
and every stringy muscle stretching, squishing,
my body running in the dark;


With mind elsewhere upward pondering
and soul falling out of my body
and body bare, barely existing
and heart abstract, disintegrating
my self entire flying through outer space;


With mind elsewhere upward falling out of my body
and soul existing
and body bare, barely disintegrating
and heart abstract pondering,
my self entire flying through outer space;


With footskin flowing through mouth, throat, lungs
and icy air fluttering
and giddy, squirmy stomach stretching, squishing
and every stringy muscle slapping scratchy asphalt,
my body running in the dark.


Not done.

Joking

"The meaning of life is far from us
        as we grow in the soil,"
               says my friend, whose
                       middle name is Joy.
She may be joking,
        but she's not really joking.

Soup Unsatisfying

                    Flashy starving love
            is thin soup, soup unthickened,
                            or thickened with grains of salt.
 I will launch it from my
            post-American mouth
                                        and love everything that
                                                                it is not.

Corncob Corncob

Corncob, Corncob, glowing bright,
won't you be my friend tomorrow,
and won't you bring me thirty cats
or at least a thousand mice?

Corncob, Corncob, flying high,
won't you please wear my cravat,
and won't you sing me songs about
Barack Obama and his kids?

Corncob, Corncob, watergun,
won't you kernel agriculture,
and won't you field water run
and soybean meal to pass the time?

Evening on the Peninsula

The Kitsap kids, happy and frozen,
poke tubes of tenticles on the side of the dock
and don't
think about
the nature of Nordic lands,
from which Plsb was uprooted.
They brought it here and used scotch tape
to attach it to the rest of the peninsula;
I don't find their actions sound, although
I do love the results.

86 trillion boats
(give or take 85.99999999999 boats)
float upon the waters. They are surrounded by:
       trees
       fishes
       more boats
       babies
       scotch tape
       duct tape
       masking tape
       glue
       pastries
       antique goods,
and, of course,
the Kitsap kids, happy and soaking wet.

James Porter at 25 Years, Part 1

This year all
of the fruit
got too ripe
to eat.

On the Rise of Civilizations

Men of old had their vision:
to build a complexity in which
a thousand, ten thousand, ten million men
can reap the benefits of one another;

to abandon the wilderness, with its
meager portions and threat of starvation,
and find a flooding river valley in which to
compile men and knowledge and goods (and bads);

to be more efficient, not
relying on fickle animals and gathered plants,
but packing energy into tiny spaces,
to feed ten million men with little soil.

And so
they set to work.

We found the largest seeds,
we took the tallest grasses,
leaves were cast out in favor
of hearty kernels of protein, oil, sugars;

planting, planting, planting, planting,
and then reaping, reaping, reaping,
finding the juiciest, sweetest fruit,
and putting it back in the soil,

(from whence it came)

Repeating, repeating the process
for thousands of generations until
the seeds and the fruits, themselves
coming from fertile land, allow us to live in a fertile culture extending for thousands upon thousands upon more thousands of years.

The humble oat;
the noble, fortifying nuts -- almond, cashew, walnut;
the friendly green seed of the pumpkin and
the cheerful seed of the bright sunflower;
the fruit of the elegant grapevine and
the small, sweet, lovely cherry:

All the seeds sown by mankind
have come down to this:
my granola snack.

James Porter at 25 Years, Part 4

Stand on a ladder
and pluck those
plump bodies from
the hundred arms.
Later, we'll make a
batch of ice cream
out of them.

In Zip's

In a restaurant called Zzzzzzz-
zzzzz, one hundred rabbits, instead of
hopping, are walking in like men.

Watch out for Father Joseph, young one,
it's pink to the extreme;
Don't think the edibles are miniscule.

Exploding liquid blows up my  mouth,
and I wait upon the many guys,
the many pots upon Father Zip.

Matt devours hoops.

Variations on a Proverb

Physical labor makes the body strong
       and the mind sharp.
Physical body makes the mind strong
       and the labor sharp.
Sharp mind makes the body physical
       and the labor strong.
Strong labor makes the mind physical
       and the body sharp.
Physical mind makes the sharp labor
       and the strong body.
The sharp, strong, and physical mind
       makes the body labor.
The body strong makes mind physical,
       and the labor sharp.
Physical the body makes strong the labor
       and mind sharp.
The body and mind, the labor
       makes sharp, physical, strong.
Sharp body, physical labor, and strong mind
       makes the The.
Labor the strong body and sharp mind,
       makes the physical.
The physical makes the strong body labor,
       and sharp mind.
Physical labor makes the body strong
       and the mind sharp.

James Porter at 25 Years, Part 7

Ma used to tell me,
"There are things
like huge aphids
that you just
can't understand."

They Say Things

What's that one figure of speech (or figure of peach, as they say)
for when you are totally starting over?
Going back to square one (or pear one, as they say)?
Yeah, that's it -- square one. Though I'm not sure
why it's a square.
You're right, it seems more like you'd start with
a more organic shape.
Right, like a lump.

Lump one! (or one plum, as they say.)
That sounds kind of dumb.
True, but a square? I mean,
a square is a clean-cut, refined shape,
not like the very beginnings of something.
You're right; it really ought to be
called lump one.
Or at least something like that --
maybe just "the lumps."
Like, "We're going to have to go back
to the lumps?"
We're really at the lumps right now (as they say).

I Only Can Wonder

I only can wonder
at the dwelling-place of thunder,
where molecules of spreading blue
run all asunder --
where man was meant to stay forever under,
but has put something -- a clue --

A massive metal thing
of wires, glass, mechanical wing --
a rather clunky, too-large bird.
But it can bring
a man from California to Beijing,
yes, it can move a crowd -- a herd --

But even in sky's day,
where man is clean, apart from clay,
there is some unseen curtain
-- and that's okay.
For Brothers Wright and pilots of today
and tomorrow can not know -- for certain.

Corneal Ulcer

There is a city in my eye,
says the ophthalmologist,
with a thriving nightlife.
But the partygoers are
actually bacteria, and
the city is called Ulcer, WA.

Walking to School

See the paper bag boy, walking to
the place where sponges are squeezed and unsqueezed.
See how he is not so neat (his cowlick is ten feet tall),
see his bones grow exponentially.

Into Travestyland and Candyland he goes a-walking,
breathing toad-thoughts and frog-discoveries,
thinking frog-thoughts and discovering toads,
that paper bag boy.

Marvel, mourn for the other boys, whose mother makes them
ride a dinosaur to school, makes them
buy 100 boulders for 100 rotten dollars,
that they are to eat for lunch, no questions asked.

See the paper bag boy, walking to.

Biggs, OR

The man in Biggs, he works at a gas station,
a lone proclaimer of every vagabond tortoise.
His bigs are many,
his loves are dear.
His love is a deer.

The blood, he sings, a pop song into the pig's night,
a stop sign for every last blinking toad-friend
to hear. To sleep,
to sleep, perchance
to dream. Ham get.

The blood, he's a river, he's the man in Biggs,
the home-pickled watchdog of nature's buddies,
between the small,
between the big,
between the Biggs.

Face Exploration

I saw upon his mouth a hot dearth,
a cold birth, the troll's earth,
quivering like the lips of
a child whose lips are quivering.

I saw inside his eyes a great twig,
a late pig, a date or fig,
punching things until the retinas fall
into pits of aching children.

I saw up his nostrils a cool hat,
a fool's math, a tooled bath,
climbing ever upward into the exploits
of the grumpier guys.

James Porter at 25 Years, Part 3

The green ones go.
The red ones run.
The blue ones blaze.
Fruit.

A Shrub

A shrub speaks to me, recites poetry to me; beautiful words:
"Men got where pristine Philistinism,
whom then-was." I also think the shrub is cute and moral,
like the Book of Great Things that
every baby is born reading.

The shrub rebuts himself, says words of logical stress:
"I could apprehend you, but I'm finished
with all of that;" I don't understand him, for he is
too complex for me to understand.
His words climb desks.

Notes on a Scene

Underneath the stage, I listen to the actors,
but their voices are muffins.
Muffin batter spills out of their mouths
as they try to speak.

Before me, I saw mountains and fourteen suns.
They were chilly like ice,
glazed link the icing over the cupcakes on stage.
It's still in front of me.

An electric bee, crucified, lies down on my left,
and next to it a circle.
Their wooden friends are worried about them;
The box watches them.

A cat and a crowd are busy like bees around me,
and the turtle, red, sits behind.
A bear and a bearcat interact also,
here underneath the stage.

To Explode a Dream

Hello sir, what's that you have?
Why, it is a
dream-exploder. I use it
to explode dreams.
How does one go about getting
a dream-exploder?
You must make it yourself.
Out of what?
Oh, you know, all manners of things:
marshmallows, beans, bones,
nails. Even swords.
Okay. I shall
make one.

Sonnet 155

It does was then, like universal beef
That men untimely like to dumpling bread.
And lest that got blood tassels, iffy reef,
We didn't were not over-jumbled head.
Unless by under trousers-bearing done,
Fair maids does was that wasn't buying greens,
My dolphins, wolves, or picked up ruffle one.
Get here, or child and please explain the beans,
E'er men, pant get beside poor puddle, wash
My evil was that multitude of boots.
Get here, for during metaphysic squash,
By grumpy ever-preening brown and roots.
You lumpy stockings hasn't if they been,
Besides, let's didn't laser tag again.

Sitting on a Huge Tuft

Sitting on a huge tuft, I look at things:

Big River is blue paint on the left and shimmery black rock on the right.
I look at it.
A cloud is a huge crown, another cloud is a pelican.
I look at them.
A tiny pig emerges from Big River.
I look at it.
The ground puffs into green flames beneath me.
I look at it.
Dinosaurs hover over the water.
I look at them.
Smaller dinosaurs have a corporate meeting on the other side of Big River.
I look at them.
The sharpest desk in the world appears on the rocks.
I look at it.
Houses ride a water slide down into Big River.
I look at them.
Huge buttocks flutter in the wind.
I look at them.
My kneecaps are removed by the tiny pig.
I look at it.

The tiny pig returns to Big River.
I look at them, together.