from "River of the Inside"
What does it mean to be without
a history murmuring Sound some
thing faintly like water. The main
problem is “legacy contamination”
what’s left from the bad, old days will
not spare you the embarrassment of
revealing who got the words to come
together sometimes those things,
come back to bite us, this nocturnal
body, the colonial state stripp’d of all
its skin, that upper spirit diverted
through interior pipes to a new treat-
ment “But maybe
if they didn’t treat us like
monsters we wouldn’t be
monsters” lodged in a normal
body and living a reason-
able existence the baptized drown
naked in
You may be quite sure you know when you’re
coming together, merging cells of different here
below I don’t know what I’d do turned into
“matter.” Too many lost names.
Too many rules
to extend this ‘ex-tended’ thing I’d trip on
the dirt in the yard. Better find a bearing
even under unusual methods of grafting the
gaps in previous mapping some-where-
along-the-way descriptions of homes,
foods, and customs – these dreams of water
make the Source as through glass, through
trees, through interweaving a tribe which
has been recognized in one of these
manners it all stands still, may not be out of
the picture the clock runs countless
everyday interactions you can’t seem to hold
a transient assortment of plants will
propagate by division, just another stop-
frame in consciousness take away this
Columbus has a punctum– the broad valley now THE VOICE THAT IS So much coming through every hour How do we discover where home ain’t no one wanted to be an inventor a cult- a process steering us snow fall in I try to keep the scene destroy promises made to a very ancient animal you Do you want to And so it goes:
routes little orphans, beaten
dogs, the dead who can see it
is always to see more than one
sees this autobiography of
expansive sensations keeps
you safe, immaterial but part-
trap held my intense Fire
flaming as long as
inflammation lasts abiding
you may be lost, you’ll find
every night its own
phenomenal expression I
can’t explain
occupied by the huge city speeding
in coolness already lost beside the
hole in the sphere oh, I feel
h e e r e e z e
ritual carries people through touch
and sound who absorbs it all calling
crises the easy information
mountains and waters have been
becoming what we once knew and
have forgotten
we actually live in the basement
as the fern bent to the window
let us bring the application still
nearer home coming through
the river we look deeply into not
a single, desirable attribute won’t
give you back the moments you
miss all cholerine matter down
to a bore ash bitstaff purity of air
a child humming the woods
chirpsies cries to singaloo
sweecheriode comin’ fore
to carry me
Oh, a band of there
fleet woods Don’t Stop
Thinkin' about
to morrow a wild
field behind it
ivated wilderness as a blood clot
I speak in other interfaces you
cried forming a logic, all product
away from the things
that shine You and I
both know I have thee
not, and yet I see thee
still too heavy to hold
that old man beats back the question
is too much weather attached or
unattached to the gold watch to ask
0
not in words and form learned by
rote, a two-edged weapon coming
out of thy mouth to
the Duwamish, the turning
point between innocence
and commercial impulses
are to be found elsewhere
burned all to keep you just
say what it is that you want
can talk to in your king-
sized River-root: as even
under high drifts, those
fierce wind-grappled cuts
I’d go without river delta
and tidal estuaries
snaking south
a rough trail connecting
the ocean your love
prolonged
go to the river?
I know this spot, so deep
and green with fifteen
longhouses found with a
drawn sword between them
a Fred Meyer, a buffet,
apartment parking fatal
confusion dropping marked
chips of wood into the
stream which flows free
treasure through the
integrity of the state lacking
in a plant may not be bred,
receiving what you said,
these old poetic dimensions
of the Image Nation, the old
religion you lay upon my
pillow must survive I want
to hear you scream an
esoteric mystery school
undertaking the practice of
living-in-place won’t be
outside-
in becoming
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Matt trease
Matt Trease is a poet, artist, teacher, and astrologer. He serves on the board of the Cascadia Poetics Lab, co-curates the Margin Shift reading series, and serves as the poetry editor for the CAELi Review. His poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. He is the author of The Outside (forthcoming Carbonation Press, 2024) and the chapbooks Later Heaven (busylittle1way designs) and rcvrdtxt (rlysrslit). He lives on the shores of the Salish Sea in the Cascadia bioregion on the homeland of the Duwamish people (Seattle). Find out more @ https://bio.site/mjtrease