#liminalproject

[liminal-project]

No. 189 “He speaks in your voice, American, and there’s a shine in his eye that’s halfway hopeful.” — Don DeLillo, Underworld (1997) I. I give James Murphy the benefit of doubt when I blow out candles before the house burns down—I'm still asleep, the sofa —no harm done, stunned, solid stone at the top of the stairs; now I dream the smoke (?) & gaily tumble toward eternity. II. After I die there's a long quiet & a loud snap like a storm door wind-slammed shut— a body like the Lord's comes in and turns on all the lights in the burnt-down shell home, charcoal skeleton illuminated amidst "let there be light" jokes, cigarette stench & birdless, humming power tools. The well of my mouth draws tears from my stomach when I try to remember word shapes like "mother"— a time I learned how to be forgotten. God's doppelgänger brandishes a pen and I consign myself to oblivion per the terms and conditions, happy to discover over and over how hard the bottom stair hits. #liminalproject #mentalhealth #endthestigma #poetry #anxiety #doorviewer (at Park Central, Phoenix, Arizona)

[flax-goldentales]

No. 44 When I was sand, I shoveled myself to the mainland. All the kids on the beach were like, “Get back here!” But no one orders me around. When I was grass, there were four seasons: rain and drought and on and off. Kids stomped on but off was the universe expanding – each small blade became a great and fearsome watchtower, never looking down, ever reaching up. When I was a tree, kids swung from my limbs, broke their arms and kissed beneath me. Where they go I will not follow. #liminalproject #Poetry by Eric Ellis

[liminal-project]

No. 191 The only way to watch hurricanes from the desert, is with a monocular. You'll see a myriad of mirages in the dancing burn of the earth but past all the watering holes and mom-&-pop donut shops, sure as the sun rises, the hurricanes raze. Our best people send faxes: "HOW R THINGS? DO YOU NEED TOWELS?" But of course they need towels, and buckets, first aid, electricity, love and honey and bug spray. We load boxes of everything into boats carved out of cacti and watch them sail over the sand from the spyglass we see each one— capsized, destroyed, lightning-struck and think, someone should do something. Someone should really do something. #liminalproject #collaborate #poetry #endthestigma #mentalhealth #depression #anxiety (at New York, New York)

[liminal-project]

No. 183 A decent eviction remedy requires thorough cooking in a hot car or on the sidewalk for two to three hours (until your cheeks are raddle red, and you are out of sweat). When you come back, the awful warning taped to the door will be gone, along with your house and everything in it: you didn't need that anyway. It's all rubble, every house is rubble—how they used to pave roads. The streets are rubble, too now the hawks have finished hunting. Only the urns that remain, that is where we rest. We are all dead sons, fallen off a different branch of the same, tired tree; the space our trachea used to take up, crying airless back to mothers: we are still here in death: don't give up don't give up don't give up]] . . . #liminalproject #collaborate #poetry #writing #depression #anxiety #mentalhealth #dontgiveup #arizona (at Phoenix, Arizona)

[liminal-project]

#liminalproject No. 173 Eternal love means putting water on the shelves after the whole world is asleep. In dreams, The Horned Bat retells the tale: How the last sun went down— ʙʀɪɢʜᴛ, ʙᴜʀɴɪɴɢ ᴄɪʀᴄʟᴇs fɪɴɢᴇʀʟᴇss ɴᴀɪʟs ᴄʟᴀᴡɪɴɢ ɢʟᴀss ᴘᴏᴡᴅᴇʀ ᴅʀᴏᴡɴɪɴɢ ᴏᴜʀ ᴏᴠᴇʀfᴜʟʟ ɢʟᴏʙᴇ. —and if we all wake up, good. I'll have everything ready + just the way you like it. #poem by Eric Ellis #mentalhealth #collab #poetry #writing #endthestigma (at Phoenix, Arizona)

[liminal-project]

No. 192 the moth fly traipse follows dot lines in the air drawn like grape moon tendrils by the sultry ocean + tepid dirt. i follow the insect the way i ʙelieve an ancestor did, hoping one bug led to a tʀove, like it would find the open ᴇarth and bring me to a cavern of light, warm like the mother sun, dressing me in glass before the frᴀcture rended the world— baᴛʜ̥̻̝̙ͩ̍ͭe̩̞͖̹͈̠̲͗̄ͧͪ͌d̥̘̫̮̮̞̤͛̉͌̔̀ͨͥ in beryl blood and quietude just long enough to give breathing a trý. #liminalproject #nationalpoetryday #poem #writing #mentalhealth #endthestigma #mentalillness #anxiety #depression #suicideprevention (at Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn)

[liminal-project]

No. 156 If you dream about sawing down a mountain of trees, it means God is on holiday, and won't be back in time for The Problem. But don't worry: everywhere is 20 minutes from a tropical beach in the way-too-soon future. You, too, can relax as the Lord doth relax. I shouldn't but each morning I draw an X on the day before it's over just in case I miss it or the Universe doesn't believe me. #liminalproject Poem by @elellis90 #collaboration #mentalhealth #writing #photography #arizona (at Phoenix, Arizona)

[liminal-project]

No. 182 “she kissed as if she, alone, could forge the signature of the sun” ― Saul Williams, , said the shotgun to the head. mother grocer, register whisper now knows where the compost goes when the dirt-covered truck shows up at midnight: hazmat people turn fly- covered rot into crinkly, green gold. they call it alchemy but I know it's evil magic: ceiling-mounted black eyeballs, red ink beneath a death seal some body in the distance crumples without wind, the dust they kick up carries nowhere, feeds no one. #liminalproject #writing #poetry #collaborate #depression #igersaz (at Phoenix, Arizona)

[liminal-project]

No. 177 "Imagine not being able to die not having a hand in things" - Alessandra Lynch, "AGITATION: reconciliation" I can't even self-destruct on command, when I jump to see the top shelf—how many jars of jam need replenished— I must wait for the ladder to collapse, to be crushed by a wayward load tall as a giant, gentle as a spring. What good are we flies without wings, stumbling around for the meat: maggots the goal, the winner's circle cracked and bloody lips, open maw of goddess earth I want you to swallow me whole so I don't feel a thing. * Photo taken in Yayoi Kusama’s You Who Are Getting Obliterated in the Dancing Swarm of Fireflies (2005) installation at the Phoenix Art Museum in Phoenix, Arizona. #liminalproject #depression #mentalhealth #anxiety #writing #collab #chronicpain #mentalhealthawareness #endthestigma #arttherapy (at Phoenix Art Museum)

[liminal-project]

No. 195 I can retrace mice steps better than I can pick up the phone —the albatross anymore, worn on the body by a chain hooked through the suprasternal notch, a sign of pride. Short is a rodent's stride, deliberate as one shared touch— human kinesis, no paper no peeling, crusted vinyl. I always bring my 'nocs when I timetravel—looking at two years ago in one eye, the impending eight hours in the other. Torn at the nose all the way down, zipper-sternum, the whole suited disguise unraveling in every direction. #liminalproject #mentalhealth #anxiety #depression #poetry #throughthelookingglass #timetravel (at Park Central, Phoenix, Arizona)

[liminal-project]

No. 194 "These mortals do concern me, dying as they are." — Homer, The Iliad, 20.26 (trans. Robert Fagles) The hospital helicopters come and go like busy Charon, who I hear commands a fleet these days, so numerous the dead and so restless they are to settle eternity. The chopping blades bother me as much as a drunken mosquito, whom I cannot blame —we creatures of the desert will drink any fluid we can suck from the ground. The skeleton decorations in the windows are not as tasteless as logic would dictate nor the cotton spider webs, bat silhouettes —I am, however, impatient for the moon to finish waning, I cannot bear the night be illuminated any longer so long I am alive in it. #liminalproject #mentalhealth #endthestigma #depression #anxiety #arizona #desert (at Chinle, Arizona)

[liminal-project]

No. 188 ob·lit·er·ate [əˈblidəˌrāt/] v. 1. To turn the sound of the sun into the light of the moon, and press the clouds in between into the Earth like stamps on a letter, as if we could mail rain when necessary, or turn off the faucet of the heavens when the shower gets cold. 2. [archaic] To reckon with your knees about the deep shit you're in—this is the way each path goes, traveled or no. Set yourself on fire for as long as you can stand, hot as a kiln in hell, bright as lightning at night... make it around the corner, over the next hill, one more sunrise... And the Mother of the Earth will show you how great dust can taste. #liminalproject #collaborate #poetry #writing #mentalhealth #endthestigma #anxiety #depression (at Phoenix, Arizona)

[liminal-project]

No. 185 Call it Future-22, what we are in NOW the Nirvana State™ without a Latin motto— every phone answered, "Who's this?" voiceless air waiting on the wire: "No, I asked you first." I beg we make love; I want to know intimacy the way a slaughtered cow knows the kiss of sledge. I beg pardon the way a car self immolates, tired I guess of shuttling selfish meat-filled vessels through the valley all of us alone here together. #liminalproject #poetry #writing #mentalhealth #depression #anxiety #collaborate (at Melrose District)

[liminal-project]

No. 184 Start sewing your poems into shoes, so when Kingdom comes you won’t be thrown from the top of a building. I taught myself using rejection letters, except you can’t sew emails despite all the threads on the web. This textile pastime is a hobby for now; I still sell ice cream in America, her hottest city, suncolored hellscape speckled with sterile palm trees, cacti who migrated north from Sonora— They say, “You make everyone happy,” as I pass a Rocket Pop to a grinning kid. His eyes are blue red and white and he does not own a gun yet. Everyone is happy until I run out of ice cream. I hope then that my shoes will keep their feet cold, free of blisters when the ground is too searing to stand. . . . #liminalproject #poem by @elellis90 #poetry #writing #poetsofig #mentalhealth #collaborate #depression #anxiety #arizona (at Phoenix, Arizona)

[liminal-project]

No. 180 . Lucky ones throw up Fruity PEBBLES™ & └taste da rainbow┐ which smells like warm vanilla and mom/dad aren't yowling, yet so THIS Quiet Earth is the safest dangerous place in the universe. . Uncertain about cleaning standards + practices, a cover I decide is best—two neat sheets of papered towel. . I wait for my demise as best as any, drawing cars the way my dad taught me: a prism rectangle, four circles, cadence of geometry, the final form revealing itself only out of necessity. . . . #liminalproject #mentalhealth #poetry #writing #anxiety #depression #collaborate (at Tucson, Arizona)

[liminal-project]

No. 178 “'One has to commit a painting,' said [Edgar] Degas, 'the way one commits a crime.'” — Elizabeth Bishop, Geography III Time does not arrive although we say it comes the way we do, sweaty, but here we are all at the Now: Tuck in the country, checkered plains a patchwork quilt, sewn with nerves of Kansas corn, stitched with blood, our comfy, blighted heirloom. Before it collects dust, I must set it on fire — I can no longer sleep beneath shame, hateful feathers poking through, cruel and careless, the way dogs don't treat each other. Clockhands still as rocks, waiting to be fixed. #liminalproject #mentalhealth #endthestigma #poetry #poem #writing #anxiety #depression #photography #arttherapy #collaborate (at Tucson, Arizona)