COPYWRITTEN POEM

 

It’s Discount nite at the sauna
Im rolling old skin and dirt off

 

my thighs, shins, shoulders,

chest, palms, cheeks, heels

 

arch & sink. It can take more than 500 years

to form two centimeters of healthy topsoil

 

I rub mine off

Men stare

 

We inhabit a crucial ecosystem

nonetheless

 

Plowing And Tilling Soil Is Like Bulldozing

A Human City: if you think of the planet

 

as one giant emergent super-organism

then soil is akin to the “skin” of the earth

 

I love that analogy but it fails

to account for the conversion

 

of skin into “luxury” item

Skin as most extractable

 

resource. Skin as landscape

replenishing itself with less

 

and less success

To preserve its

 

softness always

flay the snake

 

a live

I force myself

 

to molt I drag my nails thru the slick of me and collect

In America there were Monuments everywhere. I watched the sun play at their feet

 

I watched it go down too I just didnt get pics

Just trust me on this one

 

Oxygen is the ‘ash’

that spools from stars

 

All the water on earth

just fell from the sky

 

I live on the coast so I get to touch it

anytime I want to. On the shore I thought did it hurt

 

when you fell from heaven and

I treat you like this. The harbour

 

is frothing

My feet up on her

 

wet hearth. I reach for my charm

Wrap each finger around it petting

 

those perfect keys. The “average person” touches their phone

2,600 times a day. I don’t think I could touch another person

 

that much if I had my whole life

Although lately I am making attempts

 

to attend to my body the way I would attend to

a screen

 

It only takes four minutes

for a person’s vital signs to mimic another’s

 

provided they are “really” in love

Over two thirds of people report feeling

 

“phantom vibrations” from their inactive mobile devices

To be fair on the West Coast we’re expecting

 

“the big one” any second now although apparently

it is not the movement of the earth but the collapse

 

of man-made structures on its surface

that causes the most fatalities

 

My phone died while I was trying to take

pictures of wet spider webs this morning

 

The universe can be so direct sometimes

Fine I'll keep my awe to myself

 

They still have pennies in America

I sat by the Hudson and thought about breaking

 

a dollar into a hundred pieces. Wealth increases

visually. Earth reduced to a vault & me still pining

 

for a patch of dirt to practice growing in

I take the scenic route and crave

 

omniscience. Fruit

ripens on the ledge—

 

Something godly happens

when care lapses

 

into surveillance  

Unlike animals

 

plants can’t migrate when they are threatened

The mice in the experiments reach a tipping point

 

and instinctual behaviour is lost

Unlike animals plants can’t party

 

when they are threatened
In New York I had a bad dream

 

about remaining gentle

It was a relief to continue

 

My phone gets filthy

The holes fill up with dirt and I finally get to suck it out

​

​