A Preview from Auto-Immune Heresy

Crystal clear deciduous dreams
where a body uprooted taps
back into the rhizome
Up on the fronds new wings
take flight by attempting
first to fall but find wind
Caught in the bark a beetle
nestles mandibles ever deeper
tunnels and lays the grub

Hum along the chestnut cache
buried where roots gape,
dirt piles with the years.
It's memory that's held in the decay
leaves nothing behind and unturned
sleep remembers a simple moment
Movement, the woodpecker's red crest
staggers to its rhythm. It finds
the beetle hidden, almost.

A swallowed breath hangs
where the beaver decided not to cut:
custodial intelligence is gently exercised.

Excitement builds to a fever pitch
Where the fox spreads its tidings
A party, soon to occur.

Hilarity is a generalized state.
It's happenstance and coincidence
that illusion of unexpected crossings.
Expect less. Open to more.
Scream when it feels right
Not because there's a reason
but maybe there's that, too.

A joy in noise
Half-friend crossed in the staircase in-out, up-down
Goes by the name Harriet, kissed
once at 3am a night of such
intensity--what was that band
they always put on? Silver-something?
LCD Soundsystem, that's it.
"Oh, you're not staying for the party?"

Collective understanding develops when I
take it upon myself to voice disagreement.
Similarly: healing is an accumulation of balance
harmony, weight anchored poured molten down
one leg and the other.

Hydration hatchet job
piss yellows then browns
is it the beets
or is it that work gets in the way?
The eyes get too much
when I forget to blink
the neon flickers flash
bulb and to us the nerves
wrecked by artifice, laughable
to be back here after a w/e
of wonder, what the fuck
is this all there is, here

of course inward the truth
remains potent, cogent portents
carried upon the wing of a storm
ice falls from the sheet metal roof
wind howls and so I wake up alone
again, my
oh my lover's left for the city.

Apprehend total war
in the neatly packaged dehydrated cheese bites
for sale at the health food store
Where people learn to replace massmarket chips
with ones that come in different plastic.
Instead of waves they crackle
the bag reseals
the asterisk means organic
and I suppose that's a start.

Infinitesimal regression
Industrialism won't loosten its grip
until it's consumed itself to death.
Nothing makes me laugh
when I glimpse through
How am I (lucky enough)
to feel safe in the silence?

She imagines her father
fears nuclear war, maybe
and that's why he stocks
food for winter. As if
there's only one way for supply
chains to collapse.

What speaks vibration tuned
up down the spine its joy
tears well but don't flow here
the freezers wheeze too loud
entirely probable mistakes mean
money comes in when you
Move beyond the absurd need to Do

Wait for it--keep waiting.

What if nothing is still the answer?
Assailed by doubts, here's a reminder:
sitting quietly your friend needs help
gentleness shared, comford attained for a time.
What is ease, how can effortlessness be?

Nothing nowhere nohow
Merely floating, the rock breaking
the pond's surface tension
sinking the primeval dark
embrace where shadow is honest
Night song the holy dark
Sacrament invented, made up
of those intuitions and traditions
pieced together where
the burrowhole makes itself seen.

Options? Far fewer than you might
expect. Some are true but few
and far between come from
the honest calling. Heartache
melds pain and joy. Know this:
Pragmatics are worth getting settled.

So she laughed at the stars again
like Unju taught her once.
"That's Fomalhaut", they'd say, pointing.
"Remember that name and you'll never
ever be alone." After all this,
the star remains, never condescending,
considered.

And she expected nothing, or less.
Learned at 22 that planning too far
ahead, further than the next season
or so, ultimately leads to ruin. Harriet's
hand struggles with the clay the
pottery wheel in an attempt to subdue
the shape rather than collaborate with
its desire to take form. I'm just
as impatient as I was
back then there, huh? Of course
the difference is recognition. A body
a clay pot, is most potent in its
emptiness.
Does she ever spare a though
to the depths of the soul?
She claims to sleep at night
unperturbed (by the subtle self)

Consider the locust
swarming, vulpine, initiatic.
I wonder whether she wonders
how many doors she hasn't opened
questioned, knocked up some other
tree, leaves you wondering
how old will she be
when she wakes up to her soul?

Sunlight on the breath. Calm, a high-pitched
silence re-emerges as the mechanical
whirr overheats and halts. First, relief
then a sigh as the diaphragm heaves
up in response to engine failure.
No time to sit quietly at the
now useless controls. There are 12
more acres to be tilled by lunch.
Dry throat, and the nearest tap's
back at home, the bottle on hand's
long empty. So a quenched thirst
needs a fixed engine, and the
engine asks a caring hand not
afraid to rack up the scars
left by hot iron. All this, for
an ear of corn or two.
Father's father told stories of
when corn was maize.

Distill the anxious mind
time is an alembic
through which the fumes focus.
Napping through the winter
solstice to honour the dark
descent's renewal moving into
light the axis shifts
back

general hilarity as cacao hits the blood
stream of joy, sugar
high, teeter the edge of
inflamed gut brain barrier
and so flatulence ensues
worth every bite, but
glad to be recalibrating
soon enough, later, tomorrow

Theobromine's addictive enough
on its own, and more
with the fats, sugars
from cane, especially.

Your friend is the shared super
organism we all are. Joke's on
the skeptics attending the party
unaware of the fête
all within them

The child knows it is a stone
bouldering at play, playing at
remembering dust of star to
rock, compact, crawling
with moss over quick centuries.

AUTO-IMMUNE HERESY IS AVAILABLE NOW

I wrote out of a need to speak. To give voice to an experience that has been mine, and is infinitely larger than me. I am speaking about sickness. Long-lived, recurrent, and entangled with the entire 21st century into which I was born. 8 years of writing about 20 years of chronic illness. This book project is a means of re-narrativizing my life.

Purchase Auto-Immune Heresy

A version of this poem was published in 2022 in FONT

Stay tuned for more upcoming launch information.