treeforms :: geometric propositions

either green or beet red mild veinlets

bringing to the leaf across a whole network of branches

geometric propositions

each leaflet differs

but the purpose and the tactics

the canvas kid

follows

at the corner of which branching street

and how

hasn’t led me anywhere farther

than this recycle bin I am curled up in it in a fetal posture

feeling dizzy

blinded so many lines of censored letters written from jail

that don’t reach you

our bigger granules all stuck to the vent of our escape route

shadow slivers from the chandelier

etch out an eucalyptus on the wall and

a precise explanation is presented here about what

drew me to abstract geometry

how a flying bedsheet with its corners clamped down

showed me the swerves of unseen surface

treeforms :: newborn

though I had come to the hospital to see the newborn, I stepped back to

the night of two friction lovers working for one birth

not sweating like eraser and paper

effacing nothing rather uniting

into a fading moan

now newly grounded, screaming

with an antic of self-announcement

I thought of the bumblebee too. some of them

that have only A mother

A queen

from families that don’t resemble trees

that climb up the ladder in a monolithic vertical

to a bowl of blue honey

and that might excite the thought of a tree’s family

few ounces on the workline of birds on their smudgy designs

how far can they spread the tree’s semen ?

don’t know. perhaps I thought about time too

expired calendars

Rumi cutting out the lighthouses from it

to decorate our bathroom walls

with an otherwise baptizing thought that something might momentarily drown me in the

tub hearing which the newly circumcized

cries out a few more lumps

treeforms :: this line

the poppy flower

this line was written on

has salwar leaves underneath, that

are dried, rolled, embrittled and

mixed with tobacco, filled back

into white slender stalks

and vaporized..

the bark

this line was written on

got blasted open by

a lonely naked caucasian tree-nymph

now a practicing dermatologist..

the aeral roots

this line was hanging from

served as playbars for fig wasps

hung and swung from it

like paired eyes

braiding two views – taut but estranged

finally snapping..

the swirling vines

that weave this line

crawling up my spine

faster than a

yellow lizard

to the epicenter of ache..

the stem

this line was written on

were made to bow to its

sub by the wind

that’s when they found the scribblings

a bird had left behind in her nest

the branch

this line was written on

broke from harmonic resonance

the line now hanging around the tailor’s neck

what to measure..

the green leaf

that held this line

was dried, rolled, crushed, mashed

in shreds in heat

a latex transformation

and back comes

paper.

treeforms :: seven pillars of wisdom

all were covered linestyles with this new foliage that rekindled tree’s structure resketched on palm heartline falling out of headline

all have been introduced just this bough hangs inverted like a distraught arm hand of a missing locus quiet of a stylo a hand that pressed moist rice a while back human breasts later that night

everyone is finished from where the brown stamens hang like monkeytail is the yellow center of Amaltaas fluffy white flakes of its own cotton its own boughs found in the lexicon while looking for another word where a red speck arrives now

that house across is empty peek into the family room , the open book a darkness sliding down the stairs marking things under the rug

two white men strolling their black shadows follow a history of slavery

from the olive nails of a juniper is born an juniper a borning consciousness with people sticking to it like sticky hands that pierce the branches pulling out short stories from empty nests birdcalls and their acoustic source

a full-mast blue slowly moving into the bottle into the collective psychology of sailors members of a deforested civilization finally collecting the purpose of cycling seeds

treeforms :: the touch of language

I didn’t touch the language. it would have scorched my hands. the sweet sap of bamboo

shoots would have hardended to stone. the birdmeat inside would grill all night.

an immaculate lukewarm pitcher comes out of the hearth in the morning. orangish.

fitting the curves of your waist. you’d be cajoled.

instead, like earth transgressing through the worm I come

out like language, like dirt

an earthen language

molested demerited in a potter’s hand

as if his annexed woman

his property of dough

there are no lines of innocence on my face, you had said

well, I’ve always avoided this naivete, the face value of linearity

broken down the ant-lines on the wall from

here to childhood

crumpled embodiment of pajamas and blouses

on the clothesline

more clouds collecting charge near the grand assembly

staring at their fluttering ghosts of clouded pajamas

the washerman’s donkey walks into the rainbow

treeforms :: not about a tree

no more talk about a tree

and does it mean I’ll talk about the earth

I am not so much of a clayman

people do talk a lot about trees these days

so when you say you won’t mention tree again

the presumption is you’ll talk

about people

no more

Haimanti wore all her bangles to the marriage reception

now unwearing them she remembers the pair dad presented

those two carats from long ago laid right in front

of the drawer she picked out the rest from

two carats that had escaped

unwearing the selected, Haimanti thinks of the ones

not worn tonight, not something to

talk

when all’s cast out of the tree

all’s stripped

all that lay shamelessly opened out to us

left out leaved out of a mind

that is not the tree’s, an eye without

an iris, no lashes to protect the desire to see, to think

about

acceptance comes

from staying as close to the bark as self

as a tree but then I said no more talk about it

nor tell indeterminate tales that Haimanti wasn’t ready for

neither did it

a tree

treeforms :: blind canary

twelve supple stalks swerving inside the window frame

make up the brains of a gold-plated landscape

whose flesh & blood weigh down on

these late afternoon writings

a motion

in syncopation with the structures we see

and granular sound of pouring grains

something somewhere

perhaps sand pouring

keeping us uninformed

calling upon the absent leaves to a planchet

when the kissing is over I would like to write

something get me some fresh ink

will you

Jonathan’s wife came to say lightning struck

a poplar in their backyard

blinding a canary that bombed on their panes

it needs your help now, move the water close

to it and grains

it sings at the wrong hour taking pollen for spring

cotton for candy

help her with the hour-hand

and hearing-aid

explain how we wrote the lyrics