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david zeltzer
realtime blog

wind blows pioneer 10

5/30/2019

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blow wind transit diaphine venus
her grin is measured lights out 
​stars leap clouds to view the ghosts

of seven samurai in new haven
where butterflies gather and grass
is teeming with neural nets
learning how to make deep fog
to hide me from the planets


i hold in my mouth the tiny 
meteor fragment of aldebaran 
exhausted follower of women 
careens through saturn's 
brilliant rings my lover dreams
her breasts float up like smoke
bloom starry flowers


dead I travel lifetimes
never see the empty
space you made with all the dancing river tongues
and endless strokes caressing dawn’s
abandoned grasp of light or radio
dead I travel



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the sun shrouded

5/29/2019

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the sun shrouded with muscle
in a time so small it lies forgotten
among songs and stones in my pocket

it was dark so flowers ungrew into seeds
and salamanders became wind
you were a song once too​

i heard you on youtube
but forgot the connection
and my pocket grew quiet 


there is no air down there
my mouth fills with warm tea
my fingers reach across the planet

children in bright costumes 
grow from dark seeds
hidden in air

airplanes fly across the page
violated by my pen
with loud booms floating like

language we spoke at birth
before we were kissed
and held up to the light
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i once jumped

1/22/2019

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i once jumped out of an airplane.
yeah, i was with others who all thought
the air would save us, even though it had no
eyes and hands to hold us tight and close,
loving each of us who dared to trust the
ropes and cloth that could have been laundered
and folded neatly by some woman who 
​never watched television or ate pizza.


i asked many times but no one told me 
about the little dog inside me who fell out the window.
we barked and howled, but not all the way down.
there was no siren, no alarm bell, only the
grassy hills and an arrow on the ground pointing at something.
i don’t remember anymore at what, just like the 
professor down in front trying to explain something.

i was wearing a white jumpsuit, and i
made sure to use the outhouse often enough
so that the jumpsuit wouldn’t change colors at the sudden
mad moment when i let go of the strut 
and saw the wing get smaller and smaller. 
the wind nearly blew off my glasses.
i now know why paratroopers in the movies yell “geronimo!”
when they jump — so no one hears the little dogs bark. 

i think i saw a white flower when i got done with
falling. i looked around to make sure i wasn’t on fire. 
later i heard tall grasses tell their adventure stories. 
it was so long ago the trees don’t remember 
how many times i looked carefully at the dirt
when i practiced dying. 


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i captured an asteroid

1/22/2019

1 Comment

 
i captured an asteroid cold
as a lilac’s garden
so cold a woman's flower
has no scent

careen a rocket among children
preening with their eyelids
the bright stars
sinking deeper in
the sad mud of this nation

i wander and rocks stop lying
tailless crystals burrow
in the flaming sand
and disappear like me

who leaps
over cars and trucks
and spray-paints a poem on
spain, france or chile

a poem thin as someone flying
in a hole in the ground
with a child's wing
​
a poem i stole from
a lilac petal
​floating cold and lonely
among the stars
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wandering in oaxaca

1/19/2019

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wandering in oaxaca a photograph
of yosemite lies crumpled in the pocket of a nurse
who wraps the wind around her mamacita’s neck.

the nurse warms the wind so it won’t remind her of the sea, or 
the time when horses were some other animal
changing slowly into long-lost

street musicians who cry and holler at the hollow sky
until all the couples tie themselves in knots,
ancient and silent, lost men and women 

coated with oil that seeps from a symphony
in the park, before it was written on all the leaves, 
fill a cup, smear it

​on a telescope lens and see 
an asteroid aiming carefully at
a wet and glistening shell in the sand.
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brother in the water

12/19/2018

1 Comment

 
no one sees the hungry 
hardwired angel naked
children see the petals
no one says goodbye

children bought you 
every ocean dream 
and no one sees the petals 
please say goodbye 

long ago the words command
​the sand the bones the water
the children

laugh
​
lie
forget your name
and bring you
peaceful canyon dreams


mother’s drumming bones 
no one says the blood
every ocean 
fallen with the petals says goodbye
​

no one sees 
the baby
no one laughs
no one says goodbye


— san jose
    february 2015
1 Comment

brick

12/19/2018

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i put my ear to the brick
and hear no crashing waves
only birdsong overwhelming the piazza
with avian thunder


confusing the wayward tower
shrouded with scaffolding
of unhurried tourists
cold and wondering

what is the pain of lifebreath
hurrying through veins
of viper eyes relaxed and reading
omens of night without stars

poison at the mountain top
streams rocks watered-out campfires 
a cool breeze through the trees
befuddled and snoozing


the murderous hands
slice crusty loaves of bread
and never give hunger
a second chance


​— oakland
   november 2018

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i once jumped

12/19/2018

0 Comments

 
i once jumped out of an airplane.
​yeah, i was with others who all thought

the air would save us, even though it had no
eyes and hands to hold us tight and close,
loving each of us who dared to trust the
ropes and cloth that could have been laundered
and folded neatly by some woman who 
never watched television or ate pizza.

i asked many times but no one told me 
about the little dog inside me who fell out the window.
we barked and howled, but not all the way down.
there was no siren, no alarm bell, only the
grassy hills and an arrow on the ground pointing at something.
i don’t remember anymore at what, just like the 
professor down in front trying to explain something.

i was wearing a white jumpsuit, and i
made sure to use the outhouse often enough
so that the jumpsuit wouldn’t change colors at the sudden
mad moment when i let go of the strut 
and saw the wing get smaller and smaller. 
the wind nearly blew off my glasses.
i now know why paratroopers in the movies yell “geronimo!”
when they jump — so no one hears the little dogs bark. 

i think i saw a white flower when i got done with
falling. i looked around to make sure i wasn’t on fire. 
later i heard tall grasses tell their adventure stories. 
it was so long ago the trees don’t remember 
many times i looked carefully at the dirt
when i practiced dying. 


— oakland
    july 2017
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the moon

3/30/2018

0 Comments

 
the only way the moon can rise


the only way the moon can rise
is to take a shot just before
the major finishes his briefing,
and remembers his little daughter
has no time to purge
wily arcturus.

the moon rises, alright, like
the free jazz ringtone
improvised by your smartphone
when someone in the whitehouse wasn’t looking.
or did i really mean to say “white horse”?
i guess i wasn’t looking either.
the sample returned but no one was home.

you could have caught it with a flying net,
but every seven years it’s in maintenance
or on a snowy field. the paint on the snow has ripples.
they used 3D printing to make snow fall faster and cheaper.
still, there’s no money for moonlight.


                    — oakland
                         july 2017



except when full


except when full i put
moonlight in a bottle
on the kitchen counter
near the crumbs and unwashed
butter knife moonlight dribbles

down the bottle and
i scoop the light in plastic
bags closed with twist ties
and throw them in a drawer
so i can read next
power failure

soft moonlight beams
murmur my name
in the drawer
and think i’m dead

but i sleep instead
and light falls flat
on the dish you
feel the particles

try to remember but they
sit there expressionless and
motionless and never talk
and don't know their name

and go for a walk
once a day if
someone calls them
from the door


                    — oakland
                         march 2018
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thundercloud lilies

1/23/2018

0 Comments

 
thunderclouds
blossom breathless
​float like water in water 

thunderclouds on the living room floor
empty stars
on a huge ruined airdrome

technology clouds
sleep in a monastery
who will hear the wind?

 



             -- oakland
                 january 2018 here to edit.
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