That's stretching it

Isn't it funny when people make metaphors
and stretch them, open them, and God is there?
Those are the good ones.

'God is the infinite dimmension'
said the sphere, and said the time
'and the point in the first, all in one as well.'

Especially interesting are the biological metaphors.
Green things drink sun, and are eaten by brown things, and those are called
primary consumers. 

Their predators are
secondary.  Theirs teriarty.  Quaternary.
It stops at four, because of mounting monstrous inefficiency. 

The Maya said the sun god, Kinich Ahau, found our blood precious, with the quaternary puma's.
It fed this god.  Biology can be stretched to this as well,
with wonderful implications. 

God is the highest order of consumer, beyond what is possible on the world
or in the seas.  He can continue one above all; and the highest feed the sun again, but the
best, best part is this: 

The Mayans preserved every inch of the mummy.  If God were a worldly perfect,
every inch would be eaten and feed an inch, if He measured inches,
which he would.  There would be no extra. 

Instead, the high priests kept the whole girl, but God was fed. 
This is amazing.  Otherworldly perfect, up a dimmension. 
He makes energy out of nothing, because He is God. 

Begining and ending, and living from nothing, living in this particular one. 
I enjoy metaphors, even if 

-Citron

spirit of the forest

dumdumdumdum restless tappingtappingtappingtapping

waiting in the beige neutral sickly pastel doctor's room

the wall is synthetic and the room smells funny

i DONT want to be here...

i look around, Southern Living magazines lie forgotten, dog-eared and soiled
the hardwork that created the magazine is trash, no one cares, throw it on the floor.

the clock is the most boring object i have ever seen
a plain face, the numbers in traditional font
ticking ticking ticking but not as briskly as i would prefer.

the slick cloudy green and purple countertop looks childish
even though it's grotesquely hideous.

there isn't much else in the ugly room, save for one object.

the Spirit of the Forest


hanging opposite me in a conventional wooden frame.
at first glance, it is just as unattractive as every other solid atom in the room
and yet...
as i studied it, in the silent solitude i found myself
it began to reveal itself more to me.
the different, almost patches on the canvas became more intricate
more artful and creative
and i found myself drawn to the painting

a leaf, a brook, a forest, a swirl of wind
they do not make the spirit of the forest.

but its mystery, darkness, and hidden value
do.

-Pamplemousse

blue, red, yellow

My five-o'clock walks are usually the brightest point of my day, and I mean that more than figuratively.  Although tungsten and talk do make me happy, I need sun and silence.  Every day I want to leave- so I do. 

I was bouncing along an apshalt sidewalk, head hanging.  It had been a bad day, but my feet were happy, and the sunlight was a sharp orange, which I hoped would effectively make me happy as well.  The dark gray just rushed and rushed under my dad's old Tevas and I didn't bother, really, to track its motion.  I just saw my feet, and a front to back whish of homogenous gray.

I almost trampled the flower- on most days, I probably wouldn't have seen it.  But today I did, and although the tan and sweaty woman in Nike shorts used me as momentary entertainment, I picked it up and carried it with both hands along my path. 

It was one of those ubiquitous yellow prairie flowers that grow everywhere but you can never remember the name of.  Its bright green stalk had been bent broken in places, and apparently someone else had stepped on it- what petals weren't missing were wrinkled.  But the color was beautiful, and I identified with it somehow.  So I held it in both hands and walked on. 

I am too large a person to hold such a small flower, but I am also too small a person to have picked a flower off the street.  It had obviously been in someone's hair and had maybe fallen without their knowledge.  I pulled a strand that had been caught on the botton end of the stalk, just like I would have automatically cleaned a hairbrush.  The hair was black, and I immediately regretted pulling it.  It belonged to the flower, but I had let it fall from my fingertips, and pieces of hair are hard to find again. 

We passed a whole row of cars- I looked slightly ridiculous to those drivers who paid attention.  Nobody did, really, but I still felt so.  I also felt terrible for the flower, that had been left on the pavement by their picker and only a few minutes later, stepped on by a blind person.  We passed a creek- and because I was looking down I saw the reflections of us and clouds.  If God had a virus and sneezed white spatter across the sky, that's what those clouds looked like.  No fluff.  We continued. 

I could not let the flower go, even when the woman I knew looked strangely at me.  I had also not yet let go of the self-pity from before, but at least I now had company. We passed a dead bird close to my home.  It had been run over on its back the first time, and, belly exposed, run over and over until not even the flies had food.  We are not that bird, I told my flower.  At least. 

I came home, and rushed to put it somewhere, anywhere.  The only pot I could find held my young tomato plants.  They cut a strange picture, the flower being so more and so less than them.  I realized the lack of roots means certain death in everything, and it was silly and cruel to remind the flower of something it could never have, around those who could.  And then I realized that it didn't matter.  It was a beautiful flower either way, in the windowsill, in a pot. 

I went back into the hallway, and this is where the story stops being real.  You see, I am not a flower, even though to grow I need to walk in the sun some.  I talk to the tomato plants and it makes me happy. 

In the hallway, I skipped, the newfound idea sloshing in my head.  The flower idea.  I skipped past doors and doors, and did not knock.  I just thought of my flower, in the windowsill pot, by the tomato plants.  I finally did knock on a door.  A stranger opened it, and did not have any room so he closed it.  This happened seventeen times, and I thought many things in between.  Here are some: 

It was alright, of course, I could always skip instead of entering.  Also, inside was less sunny than the hallway, because the hallway had windows.  Also, there were other doors.  Also, it was unfair to leave.  A woman before me sat and cried.  She didn't open any more doors.  She sat and cried and cried and cried.  I had no nose, an organ I had not before realized was retractable.  Apparently it is.  Now slammed doors hurt only my mind, never my nose.  Also, I did not catch the door in time before it swung.  The dextrous could, which is how this hallway works, and I am not dextrous.  This is my fault.  If I stopped skipping I could learn kung-fu.  Look!  Some people are wonderful enough to be all of the colors, and skip!  Their radiance and dextrousness gets them in doors because they stun the innkeepers.  Also, I need to continue to skip, doors are distractions from my true calling.  I skip out what metaphor I can, in beats.  Music is the language of the sole.  From the windows, those on the other side smile at me.  They like my skipping.  I am happy. 

So to my flower. There are many radii for your worldview.  I would suggest a small one, with just your skipping feet, rather than imagining what is on the other side of that wall.  If I did not believe you liked them, I would never have put you in with the tomato plants.  But they are plain soon to be red, and you are a beautiful yellow soon to be brown.  And I am neither, because I am a talking, thinking person. 

-Citron

aristocratic failures

everyone says
how classy
how lovely
how discreet
how well-spoken
how dignified
how elegant
how...
she did not go looking for the blue-blooded life of thin-lipped stuffy-faced amphibians
and yet,
here she is, submerged in the fish tank, thousands of leagues under the sea
and the Artemises, woman hunters,
seeking out the prize fish
the stand outside the glass fishbowl
poking their noses in
and wildly desperately looking in
through heavy-lided, dilated, mascara crowned eyes of panic.

-Pamplemousse

my secretly not a blog post

I don't post thought-posts as often as my friends do.  I'm not sure whether that's because I feel like the thoughts have been snatched out of life-context and have denatured, like proteins do when put under chemical examination (which, linguistically, blog posts can be considered) or because I am terrible at writing thought-posts without strange metaphors and incredibly convoluted syntax (this sentence for example) that make them protein-like in form as well. 

(a recent ligand docking lab of mine- highlighted are natural cavities)

See, I usually resign myself, after first paragraphs like those, to poetry.  You can use giant, all-encompassing metaphors there, you can ramble on within the turn of a phrase.  Poems could say what I just did neatly, and can bend back on themselves or just sit prettily and wait for you to go OMIGOSH YOU ACTUALLY MEANT THIS WHAT AM I GOING TO DO WITH MY LIFE NOW. 

And I am way better (I think) at hiding metaphorical sulphur atoms in alpha helices than I am at stretching them all out into a line and saying- this is the amino acid code for what I want to say.  Plus, poems (and models of proteins) are prettier. 

(The amino acids in ubiquitin- my favorite protein)

Did you notice something there?  I began the essay with the idea that proteins represented my prose syntax.  Then they represented poetry.  I'm not allowed to do thos kinds of switcharoos in this medium- another reason I like the less concrete forms of expression.  That being said, sometimes the poet mentality works against me.  Actually, it works against me a lot. 

(That was quite rambly I know- in a poem this would have taken me what, a turn of a phrase?  But here's why I really wrote this blog post.)

In real life, you can't bathe your words in chemicals and they cannot live as complete ideas on their own.  (That was another metaphor switch- with the chemicals thing- excuse me.) There will be context, and the people around you must respond somehow.  And many times, it's not going to be O MY GOSH I SEE WHAT YOU'RE HIDDENLY THINKING THERE YOU MY FRIEND ARE A GENIUS because in most conversations, most people say pieces of amino chain.  They don't exhale whole living wads of it. 
But no matter what, you have say something.  Even if every other time you've explained yourself people have looked at you, said "I dont understand because your ideas are unimportant and you explain them badly and anyway I dont care," and even if you're too emotionally invested in your thoughts and scared of that happening to give them away easily, the people around you will certainly be offended at your closed door.  Plus, the people around you probably DO think protein is pretty. 

(that was a hidden message too- as in, "your friends understand you" because they know how to look at protein, and as in "your friends agree with you" because my idea here has to do with protein, I assert that it is pretty, AND as in "you probably have particularly intellectual friends")

And even thought it's scary and hard, you have to post blogs instead of poems sometimes.  You have to explain yourself, and here's the weirdest poemy part of my logic. 

When someone in a conversation posts a poem of thought that rounds off upon itself and still serves a biological function, don't accidentally let them think you find proteins unmanageable and ugly and a pretty dorky thing to think about anyway.  And don't compliment them for such a majectic performance, which says you can't infer the acid chain and only see loops and dots. 

Tell them:  "That was a whole thought"

I hope you see now why I dont explain myself sometimes.  I just don't know how.  Do you have chemicals quite hot enough to denature this?  Do you see why I stick to poetry? 


-Citron

beach of plastic

the sand granules
teem with artificiality
the water is there
rolling and rushing...or is it?
is it a solid superfice of manmade materials?
manipulated to deceive the human eye.
even the sun, is it an burning fluorescent light
with an off/on switch?
where am i?
this giant, humongous room i am in,
every aspect controlled to confuse me
a machine controlled mirage.
let me out of here,
i want to go to the shore

where the ocean, the liquid authentic ocean,
bubbles and squirts as mother earth allowed it to.

-Pamplemousse

Song from Evolution

My name is evolution and I know that not all of you
believe in me but hold on for a second- just pretend I'm true
And for all of the others thanks so much for sticking with me
You guys know I'm a process but you don't know my whole story-

Now when the universe was created certain laws began to rule
They guided everything that happened except for the miniscule-
But we're not talking about quarks we are talking about cells
Let's just start from their brgining, skip the inorganic, might as well

Now as soon as cells began I now had a dominion too-
I could hold my head up in the council of all the omnipresent rules
And while they discussed photons and how to make the light submit,
I daydremed about making rhinos, earworms and your armpits.

Because I am evolution,
I'm a rule of the universe
Made of other smaller lesser rules
But being evolution hurts,
yeah, being evolution hurts. 

I slowly, slowly built upon that first prokaryote
I sculpted gills for fish and for land creatures, the lungs and the throat-
They could live with each other, they occupied different niches
The bears were eaten by bacteria after they ate all the fishes...

And they all lived together off of the soil's nutrients
I had to work with this guy named geological processes
My art slowly was perfected but I left every day crying,
Because although I ruled the world, all of the sick were dyyiiinnngggg...

Because I am evolution,
I'm a rule of the universe
Made of other smaller lesser rules
But being evolution hurts,
oh yeah, being evolution hurts. 

So I thought and thought about how I could make species immune to me
Like Uranus made Kronos but I'd let them do it, willingly
Only a creative thinker could reverse something that is true-
So I made Homo Sapiens and that's the story of you. 

I couldn't tell the future then, and I can't do it now-
But that's an explanation that doesn't make sense but does somehow.
Use the big brains I gave you to do more than just survive,
I don't want you to kill things cause it's still my fault when they all die. 
But at least all of your sick are in hospitals, not coffins,
And you know what's not a death sentence?  Sneezing or coughing!

Of course I am just a theory, I don't have thoughts, I don't write songs
I'm your idea of a truth and immune to both right and wrong
You named me and I may not even be any way true
But you like to listen to yourself reflected in the things you do
So I sat down metaphorically
And spelled a pattern song for you
So evolution picked up a guitar
and wrote a song for you...
Here it is.

-Citron

uncensored mind rambles 1st five minutes of easter

i can not see my floor, it is inundated.  my head is splitting, i feel that Hephaestus is hammering and hammering and hammering inside of it.  his cyclopses...cyclopsi? beat and beat and beat.  well i suppose it is eater now, i wish i had kept my lenten promise.  maybe i will try again. 40 days after lent? i suppose that
's not the way it's supposed to work.  along with my head, my calves feel like poseidon is stabbing them. lovely.  i'm just a mess, am i not? i should be happy and exhilarated i guess, it's easter. i don't even know what bright frock i shall wear.  i wonder if i shall see citron tomorrow, perhaps catch a glimpse of the majestic fruit underneath the sunny lighting.  le citron will also, most likely, wearing a bright frock.  what nonsense my mind vomits. what a horrible sentence i have just created. revolting. what nonsense my mind exhales.  i suppose that's better, but less interesting.

-Pamplemousse

lamps

Some lamps are shaped like mushrooms
Some lamps are shaped like houses.
On the little shelf next to my bed, I have a lamp.
My lamp is shaped like a house. 


-Citron

red skies of tomorrow? today?

The lights glow
pulsating from the city
in the distance
the sounds of the industry
are thick in the air
the sky bubbles,
reflecting the lights,
and slowly becomes
a luminescent red.

do you remember the times?
when the sky was blue?
when the city lights went off?
the city was docile and remained
content just with being a backdrop
far far away, nothing to worry about
nothing to think about.

is this now?
is this the future?

-Pamplemousse

Tulips and Red Trees

I know some people look at tulips and say-
"Those are the pregnant women: 
see how the thin green stalk bends
for the pastel yellow or pink or purple flower head?
That is a perfect metaphor for a pregnant woman."

Don't believe them.  The best one would be
the trees with dark red leaves in spring-
twice as tall as me.  They draw up the sun and
overflow with thick and heavy and crisp softness,
and only their branches bend a little,
really they are very strong. 
They cut top-heavy figures as well,
but do not believe all you see,
and don't believe those who say
tulips are pregnant women. 


-Citron

On Cooking Potatoes

No matter how hard you scrub, potatoes will never lose
that dirty color.  You could skin them,
but see, the skin has a huge amount of iron.
Iron deficiency anemia affects an estimated 60 percent of women worldwide,
so keep the skin on. 
(that is not to say that dried, fried potato skins in a greasy bag
is good for you at all)
Keep the skin on, the color isn't dirt
I don't think.  Maybe the dirt just became part of the potato,
but anyway, you can't scrub it away,
but slice it open
and it sits on a plate,
the crumbly buttery insides
steaming like a fat clam.
That's when you have
a real baked potato. 


-Citron

a i r e

breath through your mouth
inhale through your senses
the air is the purest vitamin
let it rush through your lungs
like a wild-run stallion
racing through the fields
let it swoop up your nasal passage
like a seabird skimming the superfice of the ocean
with the feathery tips of its wings
the air is your friend that is always there
when you breath heavily
the air is always there to calm you down
to comfort you and relieve the pain
but it plays a sad role too
when you see beauty, or feel strong joyful emotion
that takes your breath away,
air makes itself scarce,
it does not want to bother, interfere
distract you in this benevolent second of your life.

When fire scorch and water drown
Air is the sympathetic noun.

-Pamplemousse

Too early

I had always been locked up
silent like a bobbing silver bubble
but today I finally opened myself to her,
inch by inch and drawer by drawer,
expanding and stretching, uncurling
and untangling.
I roared at her finally
a many-headed monster.
I had eyes everywhere.
What was once invisible
is no longer, I roared
and asked, politely,
for a hug.

But like a daring artist,
I had to draw back the leaps and bounds
and wait.  It was too early-
the world is not ready for this.
She is not ready for this,
and she is the world. 
Time, too, is a medium,
and you have to work
with the medium. 


-Citron

Reading Flatland

I speak to a paper man
every time I speak.
I hear tinwhistles and bongoes
on every compact disk,
and dip into that dimension
like the newspaper
you forget tomorrow.

Everyone talks about
the same solids-
like why I print myself
and there are many reasons.
And many speak of the inside of other things
like what solidity is,
and how to achieve it
and who I am
and why I see all men
paper.

Moving forward
in flat little timelines
pen and voice,
bytes and pixels,
thread and chanting
and always flat,
but with a wonderfully engaging
aspect ratio.

I love the depth of this thought,
or would,
if there were any. 
it makes me angry
and very
very
flat.


-Citron

icy hot

no, not the cold
anything but that old
suffering in the ice.
shivering as mice.

oh how the wind blows me away
how it tears me apart
and swirls me everyday
with gusts, sour and tart.

give me warmth
that is all i need,
why suffer in icy death
when one can die in
humid tranquility.

All anyone needs is a kitchen.

 I vow, when I roll the three individual quarters
 through the cold black vending machine
 lit up like a shop in Tokyo
 that when I have a place of my own,
 I will make my food.  Keep heavy mason jars
 of flour and sugar and vegetable oil
 in lines in the pantry under the stairs
 mix the syrupy batter with
 eggs from the white fridge.
 Pur my golden glop into a nonstick pan
 recatngle, stamped with long cavities
 instead of round ones,
 with Washignton's head and side ridges;
 (my pan for the moment)
 I won't  wrap my food in plastic
 like this Twinkie.
 it will sit out in the breakfast window sun.
 The world will be my table,
 and I will eat
 when I have a kitchen.
 All anyone needs is a kitchen.


-Citron

botanica

are you nervous?

when you're all alone in a field, and the grass is sweeping in uniform, rustling eerily, the sparkling dew is all dried off, the sun no longer brightens the leafy blades, and the dirt seems to sweep up around you, biting at your ankles and snapping at your heels, while summoning the empty plain to become a monstrous ocean, intent on swallowing you up in its dry crackling jaws of crabgrass and little stones.

are you nervous?

when you're walking through a deserted forest trail, and the sun shines ominously through the heavy canopy, stagnant and suffocating hanging above your head, and the birds sing strange songs from the distant branches of gnarled trees, and the rotting logs that are so prevalent, poisonous and melting into the bowels of the earth through the caked dirty ground, and the forest sways at one tempo, loud with mysterious silence.

are you nervous?

when you are in your little garden, and the flowers spiral with suspicious agility, and they innocently hang on their pointed stems, the roses aggressively introverted within their pride, green botanical knives poked out of its sides, prepared to prick and hungry for blood, and the foxgloves, with their purple beauty hiding their terrible fatal secret, eyeing you hungrily as the next victim, and those pruned bushes, what secrets do they hide inside their thick walls, what evil lies within their core, the nursery, beautiful and deadly, smells the air for weakness.

-Pamplemousse

slip away

since my birth
i have lived,
wondering dreaming
about that earth
the land that stretches out for miles
the hills are pale green
and in the sun, they
shine like the reflection
of a camera flash
in a mirror
the dew sparkles as it evaporates
from the blades
of the minty grass
and the sky is soft
like fur, real fur
of a breathing pulsing animal
it is light and faint
like the albino pupils
of the blind as they stare
blank with wonder
oh, what would it be like?
what are colors, strange descriptive
devices for the patterns,
the wavelengths an object releases?
is this color that i see, dark?
light? but what is dark and light?
i have never seen a shadow
or a highlight.
if i could just slip away
from this sky, this earth of feeling.
if i could.

-Pamplemousse

Columbus, Ohio

This is not
what I would call
a pretty city
not at all.

Although I wonder
at my eyes
if they should look
and then surmise

That such a nest
of industry
is truly beautiful
to me.

But that they do
once in a while,
forces assumptions
onto trial.

I guess that sounds
a little right-
art moves forward
like planes for flight

And sixties buildings
are outdated.
besides, static
is overrated.

So this city
is not awful
because it is
industrial.

You're not old enough
to be pretty,
and not young enough
either, city. 


-Citron

Lacy Webs

The spidery lace intertwines through the sleeve
the fabric a slippery waterfall that can not cleave
on to the nonexistent friction of the arm
increasing its romantic whimsical charm.
The garment is pretty against the blood red silk
the cost of a costly failed business bilk,
she looks so lovely with no breath,
she looks so lovely in her death.

-Pamplemousse

Lion Oil

Madam, The best in the world!
Rise to vote, sir!
Truly,
The miracle serum of all mechanical objects.

This golden syrup of greasy essence
is spread into the gears
and as it contracts--
extracts the juices of lubrication
turn the bottle upside down

and tap tap tap

until every last shining drop is dropped from the handsome
lion glass bottle

your vehicle will go as fast as a backwards race car
or kayak.

you could say this that this substance is the new mathematical discovery,
but I,
I prefer pi.

Lion oil, elixir of success, the mirror image of itself.

-Pamplemousse

Ode to the Forgotten Art of Letter Writing 2

I would love to be a biographer.  I want to write a completely unknown person's biography.  I want to rummage through their widower's cabinets for packets of old correspondence, under the taxes and their son's college letters, tied up neatly in dusty ribbons.  And then read them over and over and over, and gasp.  I checked the date twice, I promise, I told my editor, and this was the day she began work on what is considered her crowning achievement. 

Nobody understands anybody of course but I understand THIS.  And now everyone can gasp as I did. 
They never got it, not it all.  Artists never want to explain.  It's OK though, you'll be dead.  You won't have to do anything. 

I wonder if your biographer will quote our letters.  I think they'll like them, that is if they haven't stopped bothering to look for letters by then in your widow's dusty bureau, or if the art of biography hasn't died out by then too. 

Write me a letter that morning, either way.  I don't really care about your biographer.  Just remember to write me a letter. 

Love,


-Citron

tourist in the world

I wander around, admiring
I like the things I see, but see not things I like
Surrounded by the universe,
I am overwhelmed,
I am lost
The noise of the crowd makes me lose myself
The far horizon makes me feel so small.

I do not recognize anyone,
they are all friendly, but not genuine
I have not yet found a true companion
to help me, who cares.
I walk aimlessly about
watching --
the people, the swamp of people
drowning in the mire

This urban jungle
is hostile to me, it closes me off
not welcome, i meander around the city walls
around the suburban universe
where families live,
the neighborhoods
the guilds
I am a foreigner that does not understand
I suppose...

Everywhere I go, I am a tourist

My surroundings amuse me, but they do not truly mean anything to me

Every tourist has a home, but I?

Why must I inhabit the world, solely as an outsider?

-Pamplemousse

the overlooked metal beast

Street light, street light, burning bright

bright from your perch of highest height

you flash your torch on the weary road,

far down the path that men erode.

For when your light goes swiftly off

the dark creeps in from every trough

every hole and every cave

releases the blackness from the grave.

But then with a minuscule flick

and an even slighter click,

returns the halo of luminescence

along with the ethereal guiding presence.

-Pamplemousse

Let's be old people in the old fashion.

A Greek man once asked another
"Should a man be considered equal to his brother?"
"Older or younger?" The other replied:
"That shouldn't be the real issue."  He sighed.
They streamlined the wisdom and fed it through looms
Now they wrap us all up in the woven cocoons. 
While my coat's soft and warm, we've evolved out of hair
And can't grow our own winter coats out of thin air. 
We shave it all off, whatever hair grows
Cause it's hard to keep up and it catches in clothes. 
But we patch holes quite well, and starting in youth
We're soaked in the brine of societal truth. 
Which, while still true, and warm enough for health
Just can't beat wisdom that is grown by yourself. 


-Citron

I want to make you laugh, but I'm bad at that.

Nothing would make me laugh more
than a raccoon in a banana tree,
except maybe if his fingers and toes
were spoons and forks. 
Then he could carveswivel down when he fell-
banana peels are slippery
and some things just aren't funny anymore. 
But some are,
like an armadillo
who married a frog, and slapped her
because their baby was definitely a frog-pig, and more than that
while he was away at work
frog-pig got a nose-piercing. 
I asked the homeless man sitting next to me at a bus stop
what did he honestly think of Freud,
and he asked if I had a quarter. 
Freud not, I said. 


-Citron

if?

have you ever wondered,

if there was an alternate universe?
with an alternate you?

they are

the person you would be, if...
you had chosen them.
chosen there.
chosen how.
chosen why.

a person, who diverged, in that forked road

that opposite direction

with the foreign violet moss,
the shadowy fields of grain.
the sanguine canopy overhead.

you might be happier.
with that dull shine in your eye, a twinkle.
that void in your life, filling to the brim.
those gloomy times, not even thought of.

on the other hand, everything could've been worse.
you could be miserable, staring at the outside world
filled with regrets and frustrations
tears constantly at the threshold of your glance.

and you would wonder...
oh, you would wonder.

what would my world be like
 if i had taken the other road?

-Pamplemousse

a rag man ode

Icons will on my death bed lay.

Adorn fresh the christening bouquet.

for love has a way of jumbling the very

claws of a giant jungle cat.

Life is a tragic polka.

Logical? no.

A curtail pick of frivolous men.

oh the strange conundrums that lie before us

not everything is as it appears.

-Pamplemousse

source

When I was twelve the scientists took a girl
and split her in half

half was fed through a strange machine
that poked her tough
and melted her soft
held her and hooked her
and burnt her edges black

the other half was bottled
in grainy green glass
and sent to sea
it returned aged
but safe. 

That is the story
of me and you.  

-Citron

butterfly blood

i looked at the sun and saw----                                                                I looked at the moon and saw----
it was the color of butterfly blood                                                     my reflection, 'neath the craters
 its winged rays sadly pulsated through                                     ashen as the eyebrows of Hades,
   the humid, frigid cumulonimbus bunch             *                pondering the souls, on his
          of suspended ice particles, attempting                        throne of bones. i would receive
               to dance in the air, but to no satisfaction.  no satisfaction, from glaring at my winter's  
          and then from the clouds i see dead                           hell. as i stand on the moon i wonder why, a                  
    souls of butterflies, falling, falling hard                             soul can be so possessed, as to maim, this 
  they look like frozen pearls, hailing                                           luminescent sphere, with violent blows
with ferocity of enemy arrows.                                                         to create these craters of defacement.


-Pamplemousse

Ode to the Forgotten Art of Letter Writing

I got a mesage in a bottle
from a pirate ship forever ago. 
'Save The Letters' it said
and crumbled away. 

It takes so
long
to
come.
(mail does)
like
avocado
trees
grow
to
fruit.

You know,
we lost letters
because it was windy
and everyone but mail carriers, it seems
let the leaves fly.

Losing things is beautiful
The letter twirls in spiral shapes
like Neandethal DNA.
What about what the letter had to say, though?
It wasn't there
for decoration!

All we have are thick novels
pages actually flip more in wind
but they're blocks. 

Novels do not transcend
like letters do-
but nobody hears the little letter man
yodeling from the mouth of the cave. 


-Citron

warrior

riding out into the plain...

a plane whizzes above my sight

what is this barren site i see?

si, no se donde estoy.

those toys over there look like tanks.

thanks, but i would prefer to be at my house.

how's that field consumed by fire over there?

they're trying to destroy the earth

a giant cold burning hearth of knights

over the ground, lighting up the night.



i feel i am such a worrier.

yet, i'm expected to be a warrior.

-Pamplemousse

Closet cleaning

I was in the middle of a paper
and my mother was two arms into my closet-
pulling out old dresses
my First Communion white, a terribly small pink dress
that I "have to keep forever" because when I was two days old
that's what I wore home. 

And I wonder about those days, of undeniable importance to her
but what about that day I decided I would write poems? 
I was wearing uniform kakis, where are they? 
Or even that first poem-book? 
Where are the tennis shoes I ran my first mile in,
or the ruined stockings from my first violin recital,
or the jeans from the day I finished
that long Tolstoy biography
by the light of
my bedside
lamp? 

It reflected in the window, I remember
because the photons shot straight into my eyeballs
and registered electrically
somewhere deep in my brain. 

I keep that.  I keep those.  And the things to keep
piles up in my mother's arms. 
Truth be told, I want to tell her,
it doesn't matter what you designate to be kept
or even which electric charges
happen to scar onto me. 

That's not exactly
what Tolstoy's biographer
wanted to hear
either.


-Citron

Triage

This used to be a country home
you know, I tell the generals who tour it
inspecting
because we absolutely need the barest minumim,
no more, no less. 

Of course, I understand that hospitals
need to be where they need to be
but
I press the hard silver button down

"You cannot
(intercom echo: CANNOT)
live
in triage. 

That (that)
is not the point
of triage. 

Things don't
grow there.

(grow there.)"

press the hard button again
and walk away. 
I hear a groan from the walls
from the men and the walls. 


-Citron

adieu

watch the lilacs grow in stalks right there
while your feet rest, lazy and bare.
and there, look at the animals play
the world is harmonious in your eyes of clay...

now stop.

don't turn around.

what did i just say?
how do i sit in my chair?
what color is my hair in the sun?
what tint have my eyes?
what is my expression?
how do i twirl my hair?
what is the tattoo my fingertips play on the table?
how do i smile?
with my eyes?
do you know my eyes?
what perfume do i wear?
how do the shadows lay on my face.

you will not know.
and why should i grill you so?
i will just let it be.
i know you will not remember me.

-Pamplemousse

Anthropology

Now I understand the anthropologists when they search out
the greats as valued by their respective rapt audiences. 

I am a road sign
and I stretch a gray shadow across the road.

I am a pine tree
and I lay flat a longing swipe of black

I am a bicycle or walking dog
bouncing on brick walls,
leaping between alleywall and alleywall.

Russian novelists do understand humanity-
in swirls of dark gossip,
and blocked lines in softening ink
there are people. 

I believe the Argentinians do as well. 


-Citron

minuet

come dance your minuet with me
that secret language of the bee
those graceful points of swan colored toes
and sedimentary smiles like those of a rose

the minuet is a lively dance
but has the mighty power to lance
a madeleine-like torch of fire
in the soul's deep and foggy mire.

i want to laugh
i want to weep
come dance your minuet with me.

-Pamplemousse

Recurrence

A line is straight, and then
a line is straight, and then
a line
is straight. 

The sea broke,
foaming at a mouth
and the God of shape took that
the motion curve
so idolized in Japanese prints,
and set it atop a long, bending stalk- puffs in a half coil
unwinding and winding in the
relentless wind.
he called it something,
but the name of the grass
doesn't matter really.

Even names repeat- mine was
the most common in my birth year.
It is the only word that hopes to hold all of me
and it holds all of you as well. 

Two universes away, it holds all of you. 
Love will come again, I smooth the wrinkled sheets
because I can not look her in the eye. 
and it is something to do.
The matress squeaks, one spring creaks
She cries.  We all cry.  Love will come again. 

In my garden the flower trees bend the wood-
long wood, bending into a giant flower head.
Its perfume is the reason he loved you
and the rot in sea smell,
and me.  me can mean me every time it is said
regardless of the mouth. 

In your garden the flowers adorn the leafy trees, cut so well.
so well cut
by nature.
Those are the two gardens, and always will be.
The salt smell, the rot smell,
the sea
washes up sputtering
and recedes.

Again.

A line is straight, and then
a line is straight, and then
a line
is straight. 


-Citron