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CLAM POINT PRESS 2013

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CHOKING ON A

REDWOOD

FREE POEMSBY

MITCH MANNING

ALL RIGHTS

UN-RESERVED

PLEASE SEAT YOURSELF

CLAM POINT PRESS 2013

Thanks to:

CA Conrad, Audromar, Brother Nicholas, Jared Stanley, Megan Berner, Muffy Brandt, Jen Hofer, Telegraph Hill, Delores Park Lady in the Bike Pants, Pot Holder, Bob Wills + His Texas Playboys, Too Much Coffee Man, HHDL, KevRen05, Malibu Beach + LS Smith (aka the Kook) for rewilding.

Eating Mochi in Cathedral Grove

Brook beds blocked with fallen red woods,old growth condo complexes for bugs and fish.

I can see the center of my heart:salted chestnut wrapped in rice paste.

Japanese sailors, Okayama factory workers, thank youfor coming together to form this perfect convergence

of cool, dark, warm and salty, where light falls on fern,tree trunk and the forest whispers sempervirens.

Arrowhead Marsh

oasis inside Bay Area people growth

a plover’s pointed toes are pronged like a flag making a declarationsome kind of eco-annoucement

the distilled thoughtof our own imaginings

airport, track homes,trojan horse shipping port cranesencircle us

heavy mercury saturatesbut the marsh emanates ataraxiapleased with its dank sogginess

this poem is composed on the armrest of an emergency exit

this poem is now an emergency

all of us are suffering quietlyin our anonymous vehiclessequestered from each other

the nature of that is radical

the sun is our fast reminderthat we can still see the carved up highwayour motors roll over

my friends, listen

turkey vultures are up on the hill’s edgecan we still relate to their hungry call?

stitch a hooked beak on your flagrun it up a carved polelet it speak out there in the mud

Windshield Heat

There’s a rest stop on this super highwaysomewhere to sit and watch the cedar trees angle their ironed needles down

A stroll is a tree walk is a meditationin memory’s tangled garden

The moon carves an S into the river bankwhere the crabs forage for food+ make perfect spheres of sand

In a forest park, a spirit bearIn an empty field, a magi

Unravel your spiritual rolodex

Examine a blade of grass, a land deed,a crow tattoo

Carve yourself out of that hole you dug

Staring at the Gradient of the Sky

make magic

seek no answers

unwrap tidiness

distract yourself

from what you’re doing

bind your energy

to no boundary

there is no index of blood

no thought catalog of dreams

open a locked box

pour out the sand

you are being born

on one side of the world

alone on an island

Erasure: Jen Hofer’s Al-Mutanabbi Street Shroud

I see 2 avenues opening up

legibility implies a viewer! ! listen, try to listen

! + mourn for what you do not see

words are rubble ! open wounds

what is truly home?! !

I am here! ! but I remember there

! how do we map! the body untouched! ! ! ! !an exchange of indecipherable messages

! delicate thread connect us

cross the bridge as ! a ghost out of the text

we are always marked by sense

violence silence presence absence

when books burn! do we ingest them through air?

there is a world! ! + the person is in it

Body Politics at the Horchata Machine

If I missed my plane to Dallas

Would you meet me in Memphis

And have breakfast with the King

At a Shoney’s Endless Buffet?

It’s a free-spirit free-market world

Munching on a snack planet

Our freedom is a cold glass

Of aguas frescas on Valencia

Where the lights turn from lime

To orange to pineapple mango

My love is brewed and imported

And these chips are so crunchy

Golden Thread

Imagine a pixel,digital blot,a button holdingthe world together

ὀμφαλόςthe nurtured center,reach insideto find who we were

before we blurredinto hologramhallucination —

Our navelknotted fleshis origin,

its sticky middle holding backour spilling insides

Graffiti Wall in the Sand

( ( The ancient world was in my reach( ( from my rooming house on Venice Beach( ( ( - Jonathan Richman

it’s snowing in Bostonand sun soaks the Pacific

nothing feels congruent except the simultaneity of everything

world is textand tools will read itsail, pen, tire, song, drill, hook

there are mountains in the sand+ sand is buried in the mountains

we carry places we’ve knownreal + imaginarylike ghosts inside our human machines

ask a dog to speakask a flea to dancethey can + they do

nothing is reducedit all comes from the same substance:

atomic construction

a penny is a penguin isa penis is a potato

when we eat spend piss swimwe collide with who we are

perpetual presenceconstant constancy

the world liveson our shoulders

+ we are buriedup to our necks

in our own unknowing