Friday, January 30, 2015

Reverse the Curse

I'm into leaning this way, even though I'm hard pressed to think of any part that might not creak off of me.

I'm properly propped, letting gravity do the work, becoming mattress sediment.

Habit and relaxing into the next chapter of discomfort. 

This Is Just A Corner



Between oceans

the diaspora of friends
thrown far apart
or landing haphazardly there
far off

There are two worlds

The native one and
the one of the colonizers

or

the one where you are good and stay awake
and stare at the back of the man's head in front of you,
because you cannot see the screen of the movie about
the natives and the colonizers and
the one when you are bad and let yourself fall asleep
listening to the words of another language
hoping to still glean all the important messages

or

the one where you read all the books
and understand how things are connected
and see big meaning in not just people in the sidewalks
but in your own small grievances and
the one where you sketch an imaginary apartment
layout again and solve more problems that don't exist yet


Hive

a time of traveling in packs
tight knit sweaters
ready to tense up a shoulder
against any naysayer
and draw in closer
the breath of inner circles
was not all without ripples
but a ship was set with certainty
tides of doubt not yet lapping
 at our helm

Winter stars

frozen garbage outside the school
thrown about by 
the wind presses a scrap paper
with the negative space of a heart
against the fence

I had thought the tumors

some perpetual state of wondering
of the bad things an ache might be
a tilted tooth
and so many more years 
to live in this body

Thursday, January 29, 2015

Decking

What I'm not seeing when the sun is not streaming through the patio door, what I'm refusing to imprint when I wake up and it's not there and I kick a cat bowl across the kitchen, the kitchen that is only grey tile and a step above the living quarters and I twist my back reaching over the counter for the radio switch and for what, World Service, service the world for Christ's sake, stop scaring me into a stupor, Quaker laughing at me from his perch on the oatmeal tube, daring me to fill a pan with water, boil it and start my food cycle over.

Nouns to Verbs



Writing past the boundary's resist
Resisting disorder in the  house
Housing a welter of memories
Remembering a laugh in the dentist's chair
Chairing a committee I have forgotten
Forgetting an unskewed self
Self-centering on the views of others
Othering the random ole' gene pool
Pooling funds to scrape off the film
Filming it over in my head
Heading for years I never imagined
Imagining it as I write.

talk

can we talk?
is it the breakup talk?
is it the let's get more serious talk?
the what is this thing talk?
the what are we doing talk?
the you hurt my feelings now apologize talk?
the i'm just so scared cause i like you so much talk?
maybe we just won't talk.

Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Doing a Thing

Doing a thing instead of enjoying what a thing is.
Hands on hips, cocked head, Wisconsin sass.
My ambivalence, my lack of engagement,
my terrible justification.
My not living, 
my not even doing a thing.

4

In the closet is a vacuum,
that sucker is a considered a prized possession.



Lasagna Nights

we spent our nights
in the kitchen
as i taught you my lasagna technique
we'd cook meat because that's how you liked it
we'd cook kale because that's how i liked it
you're not here now
so i cooked alone
a meatless lasagna
with kale insides

night sledding

night sledding in the park
meet by the arch
tromp through the packed down snow
adults line the hill
broken sleds and garbage pail lids scattered at the top
soggy cardboard boxes and rubbermaid covers discarded
his first run down the hill
dodging trees
slams his back into the dried up fountain
her first run down
spinning out of control
slams her leg into a fence post
the pains, the aches
don't stop them
as they climb back up to the top
and slide back down again

private justice, love and the public

This comradeship experienced through desire
The broad chested climate movement boys, espousing feminism with hesitant machismo,
The tough jewish brunettes. loudly in salvaged button-downs and queered up dresses.
The tough nods of racial justice leaders, quivveringly unattainable across coalition table.

I've written this poem a hundred times before, love is justice in private
lusting for that better world beside and inside me. The work we need to do, in the flesh.
Do not be afraid of the details- without objects of desire we are only ideology.

I launch in to nervous pacing whenever I hang up the phone, mutter to the world- I love this work. I love this work.

THE PARTY


Again I’ll illustrate the room: wool plaid and chestnut hair, the whale belly held in by buttons, 
my brother kissing my bangs, my mother over the endive, torches out, 
my waist, my waist, shimmy spine 
to scoop out ice 
with a crumpled cup.  

Tuesday, January 27, 2015

3

I've crawled
just for knuckles,

Gathered a uniform
to outfit the crevices of young lung-legs

Hung around carrying cake,
no fork.

Then, a sick-dry
Catched
the old California shrub

Widowed some plexiglas stuff,
made a blue that just looks at you.

O fake Venus of Palo Alto!

He gave me a beautiful old car,
Said never, ever for driving.


Stew

Glaring across the way,
46th St shysters, kid brunch of an excuse not to bag the leaves.
Late last year, I could see the scramble flying across the kitchen,
baby rolling with the eggy spoon,
soiled apple rash of a face, someone scraping like hell at a waffle iron.
My face, a rash also, of anger and shame at my anger
and shame for having bought into the dream,
for not having considered what happens
when similarly cranky folk,
harbour the same dream and are driven crankier by it still.

Across the way, tapping the 'gansettled snow,
46th St wankers, oblivious to the resentments of fall,
mucking about with a sled.
A baby flails, its experience righteously new, and calls out to no-one in particular.
My stew is still in the oven from last night.
Ten minutes from now will see to it that I am full,
slumped on the couch,
facing 44th St.


Elders

Societal grandparents I'll
never meet I can't even
figure them out, who they are/
why i need them I'm getting older,
not much but a little

Monday, January 26, 2015

the disappearing act

where do you disappear to?
don't call
don't write
then she hears your voice
can we put this off until later?
but later never comes

2

the photographs are
a dusty mirror
hard-of-hearing
dyslexia he say
false positive
false omen
peer pressure
deleted-msgs
dreams
half-dreams
love drubk
invincible feeling
youth-on-this
optical illusions
delusions-of-this
lost-ness,
blindness,
eye-talk.
glasses get broken
hot pepper in tear duct,
inflate disguise,
supreme plays
no-axes.
practical jokes
communi-ca-tions
dropped calls
-notes-
hair-care
typos.
said-in-light-,
aha, pierced you.

1

There's the way you move,
and the way I move along the echo train.

Two things.
The plan: I am going to kiss your ass.

Eyeing your silky shirt
and your butterfly net,

Girl's done a seagull
for the naughty thought,
right around the corner
wrecked by dogs.

snow days were the worst days

younger me
never liked snow days
both parents went to work
left the kids with the old sitter
watching game shows
all day long
sitting on the stiff carpet
bums going numb
afraid to sit on the long brown couch
every man for himself
we learned when she took out her wooden spoon
after a poop that i didn't flush because i thought i wasn't supposed to
not knowing the mellow rule only applied to pee
the other boy was blamed
and got a whooping
as i watched
silent

Oscar

Oscar Schmidt, 1871.
Bright idea.
Travelling, with traveller.
Shining script,
tradition piling, oral tradition,
piling on, piling.
Tradition, is about piling,
piling on songs,
making songs,
making bank.

Woops

Relief! You've overslept
so long that now
the day is yours. A cereal
beer day is not the last or
only day. This is just a
zodiac moment, you're
excused. You're not
unhealthy yet! And when
you are, you'll get better and
have a stronger gut,
a rested mind. It's fine!
Celebrities might read
your horoscope and make
choices you might make
the ones that aren't expensive,
some aren't, and you can
have a cake day you can
watch tv. Some have
watched tv one day and
written a poem the next, or
even right after, which is
proof.

Sunday, January 25, 2015

Maybe She Was Easily Fooled

eyes whistled shut
ribs tucked in neat
countenance unspent
swell to her shoetops
thumb crooked over the lip of the pitcher
measure measure each drop rolls like mercury
each memory bounding like beads unstrung

memories of men

my cat snuggles up next to me on the couch
slowly closing her eyes
deep purrs turn into snores
reminding me of all the men
who were once
here
sleeping beside me

MY FATHER'S DAUGHTER

as my father’s daughter
I’m not myself
til I’ve walked around a bit
found trails
to the water
not told anyone
where I was going
and come back
on my own schedule
with a story to tell
ready to make a meal

date night

our special late night
friday night
date night
your first time with korean food
we yawned through it
both eager to get to bed
a warm shower then
you fell asleep
against me
while i wrote a poem about pooping my pants
wondering if you'd notice
if your eyes were really closed

MERMAIDS IN THE BASEMENT

after Carolyn Kizer and Emily Dickinson

300 miles from the sea
in this town I’m out of place –
a mermaid of crashing oceans,
a mermaid of the mountains,
a mermaid of rain on city streets
and a busy lake mermaid.
I have alternated.

there are other kinds out east –
mermaids in the fog across the wheatfields,
mermaids in the river winding through town,
mermaids in the waterfall behind the convention center,
mermaids in the basement of my shotgun house,
mermaids whistling from the teapot,
mermaids coming out of the faucet
and going into the garbage disposal,
mermaids coming out of their mother’s wombs
into the bath, into my hands, into a broken down
house with a pitbull out front and a kitten inside
gnawing on the edge a McDonalds cup,
mermaids in a brand new hot tub where I go
to soak my body when it aches from changing.

Saturday, January 24, 2015

The Song Came Forth All Shakery



Sing ahead of your life;
make your death an early midpoint in your song.
Age is long, with much sitting;
therefore, twirl and clap, a Godcap caper.
Voice the joy of the stream-lined chair;
Push back weary thoughts, hang them on the wall.

The simplest bonnet frames a wrinkled face
slightly smeared with crumb and preserves

Futures

If we all knew how to buck the system,
wouldn't we?
And we know how to buck it,
in front of us,
on top of us,
firing up the wire,
flickering so fast cats can't see it.
Blue gate,
blue gate,
not the entrance.

Those who buck,
buck downwards.
The one thing we all know.
Swallowing the kernel down with tuna melts,
or a wedge of Boar's Head.
Chewing a deli lunch, somewhere.

Friday, January 23, 2015

Shit Pants

it's a big day
lots of plans after work
go for a run and stretch
on your way to the bathroom
shit your pants

it's a big day today so
throw out those panties
and zip up your jeans
don't cancel those plans

The Crone Does Crosswords Under the Moon

Eight letters is all she gets,
and her mind balks at the limitation.
The way to freedom is the clue.
Easypeas. She's done that!

shuffle, rage
snuffle, rage
stuff/full, rage
sluff, you'll rage
suffer, suffer, rage,
pull off the R
age
suffer, age,
and suddenly,
suffrage

"fire dragon"


Four Months Later

In the moments after moments I notice I've been happy,
and think, gently, "that wasn't so bad"
usually on my bicycle,
usually with friends
in the evening, in the marches, in the go-around, paint still on my hands.

What changed:
the final line
is every slightly less confessional, heartbroken
slightly less about you.
I feel good in the cold sunshine, confident.
and then I catch myself
silently telling you so.

Yelling to you:
I don't need you
Waiting for the day I won't bother to yell.

This is also in-between: not clinging and not over.
Filing away all thoughts of togetherness under "next october"
one year later.
far enough away to hope that when I get there
I won't want you any more.

Thursday, January 22, 2015

Mixology

Everything's changing,
I never act like this,
we were brought here,
yelp pilots, I will never act like this,
being here,
but I am,
everything's changing.
My world will never be the same.
I was but one,
in this bar for whom everything will be different.
We have but changed,
smashing towards the re-skin.

O little Star of Silencio

O Little Star of Silencio
  - remembering J.Edgar Hoover, the Herod of His Era

How humdrum the skylence,
birdless,  the breeze
barely feathering the droopy eucalyptus....
Above the butched lawn's creep towards sunlight,
haze,  with dull sky and dissolved clouds
barely breach the spotless windowpane....
Yet in the double boppy, the infants/twins do grow
and pull in air and circulate 
the blood Herod would spill




(sort of can be sung to the xmas carol O L T of Bethlehem)

SOUTHGATE




We just have bodies
and move them around
mine feels better with a  little
height-help, a soundtrack,
something fizzy
“that’s some classic bullshit”
hashtag hashtag hashtag
the gliding queen in black sweat shorts
pivoting at angel angles
the bandit hand holders and all
the tumblers – the little bar
with the carpet corridor,
waitress in skates
a daisy skirt
all kinds of medicine
in the breeze

I Am Afeared of a Hungry Lion, Too



i am afeared of the lifting fog
rising from the morning moist
EartheArtheaRthearTheartH
tiny damp songs pillaring through the dirt
don't be like me, no, not me
I'm humming the tune, can't help it,
a spiritual from family gone down,
from family seared to ash
family thick in the very strands of me
more Addams than Brady
the autocorrect says brandy, but it is wrong

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Both Sides Up

on the subway and in the mornings, turning over the idea of no downside in my head,
I felt it easing in to place at last today.
landing both sides up
on my bicycle, finally picked up from the shop.


yes:
transition: taking time for progress, control. . neither bad to or from good.
yes:
longing:choosing the bravery to desire instead of wait.

What we need is not to be loved but to love.
Not to be needed but to do.


Etiquette

correctly placed in time, space, thought, intention
thinking what's wrong with "layers of history"
there's no meaning there, the chain-link fence on
the old brick fence on the lines laid out by
a street-sign name, what's wrong or
when does it work? Ok so what's another term for
"feminist free school" what's another term for "Allison,
you're on the right path, way to go" what's another term for
"it's 5:30" what's another term for "I'm tired" or "good question!"
Right? So what am I supposed to say? How am I supposed to say
"sure, I feel good!" or "get off the counter" or "this is my five-year plan."
How am I supposed to say "my day is busier than yours but I made it that way"
or "was the ante- or postbellum? When was that?" or "How long was the
French and Indian War" or "should I go to grad school?" or "It's my birthday!"
Which it isn't, yet. What's the best way to be totally self-aware and
totally happy, telling everyone how fine I am in a way that
makes them happy too? I have to go to bed, I always have to
go to bed, what's the best way to tell everyone that? Or
just to say something general and affirming or like
say "I'm great!" and talk about not experiencing jealousy but
also perform heaviness or make concrete plans or read?
These layers, the co-existence of the ghosts in
not a cycle but a cake,
a birthday cake!

heat poem #2

hands feel cut up and scratched
rough like sandpaper
it's just the winter
the cold outside
the cold office
the cold home
the space heater is on
drying out the air
the humidifier is on
but still not moist enough
not warm enough
slip under the sheets and blankets
toes greeted by crisp cold sheets
hoping the body warms them
a mash of skin
and muscle
smooshing and stabbing
elbows digging in
your mouth hangs open
a gasp of breath
drool escapes your mouth
the pain nearly unbearable but
if you let it happen now
it will feel so much better after
she knows all the places to touch
and it works
and she knows it


GAME DAY


On game day everything is quiet and I can take you,
Brother of Mine, out for food, 
we wait with the old people and the surviving punks 
for corner tables and you are already grossed out 
by what I will order long before
I’ve chosen

I lust for potato pancakes,  you just want a bagel
and bacon, the streets are quiet for us, the rain is like
Seattle on TV, not real deal constant wet but strong large
water that fills that streets and weighs down
the windshield wipers

We've got ideas and dreams and know what will make us feel good, 
in Goodwill I don’t have to plan anything, we let each other go,  
I’m looking for a good winter coat  but will settle 
for any number of jackets, small, old clothes 
from Asian countries fit me best

And you want a Mariners hat now that the Seahawks
have won

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Italian Carnival Bread

We lied about the crusts I was trying to fry with tomato sauce and garlic.
Kitchen physics, the awry lie dodging what cannot ever be done with bread.
Italian carnival bread, we told her. For the festival of the pig.
Our misogyny erupting from the crevices of the sofa,
like the mould and maggots of the following summer. 
Waving away the Bean Feast,
mansplaining what should have been unmansplainable.

the day

The two borscht day
when the bus arrives just as you decide to take it and it stops in front of
the first of two of the three best remaining restaurants
of the territory of your ancestors

the friends you've been waiting for years to find,
 just the right clever things, the second bowl
the boys game, your elbows on the table
the table's  a load of shit.

careful- a high on your power day: don't speak to fast.
landing smoothly backwards through the crowds next to the boy you like with his friend.
 the buzz under your elbow on the table, the glow of the day, the smiley face,
 desire transferred sideways
: )
!

The glow of the generations you know and the ones you're recalling
the glow of cheeks in the cold,
what is being said, really? when
everything-for a time- lines up just right.

Monday, January 19, 2015

The audacity to have desire unrequited


I challenge myself to look in the mirror while I'm fucking myself in the bathroom during the meeting
This, too, is called loving the world.
I challenge myself to fuck myself in the bathroom
in the bathroom during the meeting
looking at myself in the mirror, in the bathroom during the meeting.

Long heartlessless, crudely, ruthlessly, in every direction,
When I suspect non-reciprocation, in spite of the fact.
desire with your whole heart from a fleeting idea, a conversation.
the service to choose to want it the way you think it oughta want to.
saving both rage and strategy for politics
the bravery to want the world daily with all the pounds of your body.
The bravery in the face of loneless
to decide the world knows it wants me to want.


Hey Hungry Hippo

The pet names fly down the hallway,
Pudding, Butterscotch, Lurch...

The worst names ricochet like racquetballs,
usually after cheap beer, not the better Scotch...

The lunch words oil splotch the paperbags,
Flybynight Focaccia, why do they line thermoses with glass?

The passenger calls shotgun, putting walls up
for the slower runners, who only get to honk, beep cheer...

Ratchet up the volume, more Magnetic Fields than REM,
cause Science is for the vibrant thermal reactors, girls.

Cocktail Club

Wine bleeds into orange juice into vodka,
tie-dyed the drink, 
cool customer wakes up with marker on his face,
does care but carefully does not seem to.

Early years, where no-one states the code,
the parent heat-traced, red, orange, yellow, green, blue,
tie-dyed the drink, barely blue, the handprint on the cradle.

Belly-laughed, the fool. 
Guffawing at what we think the rules may have been,
no shaker, no stick, no list.
Wine bleeds into orange juice,
blends into it like piss in the snow.
Trickle down. 
Effect.

Headache, stiff neck, sugared throat, hint of a cold.
Bus ride, home.
Nothing to report on Monday,
though the teethmarks on our coffee cups
better than the bitten tongue,
than alluding that the weekend is 
what we thought the rules may have been.

Double days

goal-oriented storytelling,
focus on the faces, tiered up
afraid of boredom.

I'm forming opinions about the art world, drinking seltzer from a can in the subway,
wearing sweatpants.

tiers of faces afraid,
or blank, perhaps and I
run backwards, gesture -

I'm wearing sneakers, feeling so great, fast and good at breathing thinking about an email
I might send tomorrow

and after, gestures,
song of agreement intangible
sense of creation

I have new headphones so I can stop borrowing my coworker's, totally in it to settle,
focus


Artificial Heart


#4

fingers sink into rich earth
rip through moss
dripping water soaks into dry shiny hair
soak into middle parted ladies of before
galloping americana running water like realness
piney sky view
white vinyl fences
rip through
not neat pages of
terrifying knowledge
useful not wise big not good
either or thinking us both
quiet pink and green palms
dresses cheap skinny jeans
sunk for a minute

heat?

tell me when the heat comes on
then i'll go down to one pair of pants
i'll hang up my hat and vest
until the heat comes on
i'll be hiding under this blanket
with a shivering cat resting on my chest

ground lamb made me, I don't know who

eating meat from a cart and a salty
chocolate bar whole,
the nausea and tears that follow
are so grounding
I don't like to admit I feel better
feeling sick I get stuff done
but so far away from poems
and god
liness?
consequence of feeling it all
consequence of numbing out
the same?

MEN WITH BUTTERFLY TATTOOS



The light, wet day
is a hard pressing hand
not enough, but something
a faded, fucked up reckoning
a butterfly is different
than a swallow,
than a dove

Sunday, January 18, 2015

Immoderate Family


The father pouring in the liquor, sucking up the vapor,
folding in his ears, and keeping the tips low
The son yowling with the movie, ripping newspaper, tossing the foods
that touch on the plate, casting spells, frantic gestures at every face...

One pulls what's alien inside him, one pulls worlds out of him, 
both bizarrely tethered to screens, 
or loudly demanding the attention of their shared motherwife...

There's gulping, and gavottes, and plays for the girl...
It's getting desperate, the screens bounce jellied trampolines,
the woman admits she is tired, as her son melds his bony brow 
to her cheekbone, still bruised from last night's antics.
Her husband forgets he was childish. He says what he thinks (again)
and it sinks in her, and then, like a glancing balloon, rises up. 

love and pearl jam

i have one party trick
i can sing like Eddie Vedder
and everyone turns and looks
shocked
when they see the gender lines being crossed
that growling sound is coming from a woman
and then there's him
moving right up to the front
standing there smiling
and cheering me on
as my voice moans and cracks
the moment when i knew


College Days

we saw each other every day
seven years ago
communal meals
and lots of beer
inventing games
and laughing so hard you pee your pants
and it was like we never went our separate ways
like college never ended
we played the same games
the one where you pretend to be my hands
and shove multiple tiny cupcakes into my mouth
my face covered in frosting
and I try not to choke or spit them out
yelling "I just love cupcakes so much!"
remembering what if feels like
laughing so hard
in a bar
having only one drink
because you don't need anything more
when you're among friends


Tubes

The language deranged the light in the box.
The language deranged,
the light,
the box. Tube is the word for not understanding
electricity, anatomy. Deranged,
I feel a twang in the tubes, the ol'
tubes twang, the light in the box the
heavy-handedness of leaden-fistedness of
hefty-palmedness of weighty-digitedness of
porcine-pawsedness of corpulent-mittedness of
oh god, my tubes hurt! The tv hurts!

Media Can't Handle Us

Incredulous;
What is this?
This self-awareness.
Ability to do the right thing the right way for the right reasons.
You didn't throw cash at it?
What?
There is no home here for that,
nowhere to hang the hat,
peg retracted.

To Sloop John B:

Eddie has a dream,
on minus 17,
we had no money,
so we signed the players on loan.
We play from the back,
with pace in attack,
he went to Burnley,
but then he came back.
Let him come home, 
won't you let him come home?
It's grim in Burnley,
let Eddie come home.

Sun,
footy,
sea,
footy,
sex,
footy,
blue rinse,
footy.

Harp on, journo.
Harp on.



I'm With Pizza

Can it, comment drone, saying something for the sake of something.
Someone for the sake of someone.
Quieten, won't you.
Your peace is not defeat,
it will elevate,
You, be the hook that resets the pole vault bar,
it's not rocket science.
Peace be peace for silence.

si dulcemente

si pasen las olas dulces
del río
en el pie de los jóvenes
beberé té en una mesa grande
y
si ese río sea
invisible
del estacionamiento en la colina
miraré al árbol
caído dos veces por rayos

las luciérnagas paradas
en la distancia
de meses y estaciones
disconocidos

o amor al cuello

tu cuello es una
caracol

curling and guarded
slow slow slow
in the night

WISHING I SMOKED



Justify a break
out back
with the garbage,
justify
a few stolen minutes
unreasonable, unseasonable
love
vice equates justice
and cigarettes make fingers
look long

Packers vs Seahawks

I'm watching the football game

I don't even know who I am anymore

Fantasie/Laundrie

When in under 3 hours have I had a rest,
a moment free of fear or worry?
When you have so few pairs
of matching socks every day takes longer
is a hunt that consumes, that overwhelms.
My life is perfect but I have no socks,
my life is awful but I have no socks,
my mind is healthy but I have no socks,
my mind is [lacuna, lacuna, whateva].

What witches in white girlhood have my dreams embraced?
Is Anne, is Caddie, is Heidi? A witch, that is, am I?

But back to the socks. How close a match is matched?
When my mother was my age was it so?
Did childbirth pair her socks for her? If I had a child
would I fold my clothes? Or hide my piles from baby eyes?
Whose mother washed the towels most? Not mine
or did she?

If in the woods the eons of hours of words I've known
and then forgot entrance me in the waning of my youth
is that the thing of which I dreamed when reading
Roger Lancelyn Green?

But where in fantasy are socks? The hero always has a pair,
I guess, already folded up he [he!] has no time to match
the laundry bugs that crawl about.

Fever Dream 3

I swam in four inches of water

you had green clay on your face

I smeared chocolate,
or was it hemp clay,
or was it shit,
all over mine

Saturday, January 17, 2015

Not Alone

What was different this time:
I was so
not
alone

so much

and though lonely
and scared at times
in this period of in-betweens
It is only hours,
most days,
until I disprove this.

In every way the work asks you to commit in this world
you are not alone


Archive of a memory's release

I rolled around in the grass, in the overall shorts of the past three weeks.
flipping over myself and squeezing my hands - to affirm
that they were the same hands who had made this work, and who had lived all the moments before this began.
It seemed impossible,

Like the time my friends took me to their sweat lodge
I could not fathom that all of my memories happened to this same body
that was slippery with sweat and dirt.

But on the hill, fully comfortable
un-phased by the sprained foot I'd attend to the next day.
I had done it, i'd done it, my body had been through the days 
that first brought the impossible incrementally closer to being,
closer, relentlessly, daily,
until it was done.

I wonder now with worry, this ideal-
Release tied to achievement,
That first time I remember feeling so completely abandoned
that one one else had chosen this thing with their whole heart
if it would be done than I would do it,
I would birth it.
and I had, it was done.


worst dream

I woke up and was glad it was cold enough that I'd layered all my quilts on.
thick and heavy shield between me and the world.
it was still dark.
I didn't know how to move in the world
still with fear of it, baffled and scared by the thought of looking at my phone.

I could not think it through until twelve hours later,
the day consumed with an uneasy desire to talk to my mom.

I had been in an unfamiliar apartment, but not unlike the one I grew up in.
lavish, clean, my mother loading and unloading from the washing machine.
Fighting with my family and waiting for them as we packed to go on a journey
a journey to another floor.
finally I huffed off and left without them- both impatient and in in legitimate haste to beat some unknown threat.

I travelled up some flights in an unassuming elevator without them
sped from floor to floor- both familiar and unfamiliar.
The angles of my vision shift rapidly, like speeding through the spaces.
one was a rec-hall of sorts. a series of carpeted, friendly instituational rooms.
 kids playing everywhere, I knew them.
I mediated small fights but slipped from situation to situation.
to protect myself
some ticking time bomb, that feeling of urgency, of fear.
The last floor, the top, was at once indoors and a sundeck
like a resort, all of these vibrant young folks lazing about in bathing suits, posing dramatically, complaining:
"oh this place. it's a phony load of shit. it's an awful place. a prison, a fucked up trap, a tragedy, a scam"
the sense of creepy grew, and
I decided to leave and go downstairs.

At the very first floor, an empty glass lobby, small, clean but not ornate. two doors with long concrete ramps.
On the left, the exit: "once you leave you may not come back"
On the right, the entrance: "once you enter you may not leave"

I walked out without much thought, but then
watched two very small latino children skip out, thoughtlessly wander past the exit line.
They cross the street and I see a boardwalk, like coney island.
The children giggled as they crossed  and in an instant
careened over a cliff edge that suddenly appeared
I could see them split open and bloody, immediately dead.
Their mother was only a few feet beyond the exit line when they flung themselves over the edge
she broke down in tears instantly on the floor.

The last image I saw was this woman on the concrete weeping, collapsed to the floor.
My mind's eye turned to the entrance that she could not return to
and I woke up.



Fever Dream 2

I stand and move
outrageous
the tip of my tongue like a lost cow
the jewel between my breasts sparkling testament
I stand and move on soft feet
raid cabinets
pass gas
turn my shirt inside out
deny everything
I stand and move through a black house
sleeping standing up
fever has me in its arms
I wish I could stand and move in the dark
move from this bed to the perfect
one
where perfect arms fold around me
brush sweaty bangs off
 my forehead
and I disappear
all the pain leaking out like sweat
outrageous
I am 30 years old.
I am busted up broken
unacceptable
I've run out of beds
I'm hungry,
nothing to eat

Can't Get Past That Bong in the Kitchen

Malificent magnificent jolie belle big screen tv good to be bad
Tail thwacking Great Dane galumphs along aquarium wall, stirred fish, crazed under glass,
Cushions torn from couches trip the boy, the cushion redistributor, manic howling
boy, whacked out with late night energy, dances Night on Bald Mountain vigor
babysitter apologetic, parents loopy, ice cream bowls balanced on the fridge
from the dog, from the fuckinghuge dog, and the neighbor's pinata party still going,
cheers, a loose onion rolling past, the houseguests drawn in, a bong on the kitchen counter,
familiar burning sock smell, two conversations and the opera child in the floodlights,
smartphones consulted, music upon a time fairy tale, gestures flung, it's grape-stomping,
lungs ballooning out the rib slats, grown ups gobbling, pulling more in, more food, smoke,
determined human vortexes, careening close to the pint sized caruso,
pajamas damp splotched from the overture in the bath


Child Run



The saddest day is when the child chooses not to run
but to walk, to simply move from one locale to another,
without any shift of speed, without that glorious bristle of muscle fibers
catapulting gravity, weaving past furnishings, big people,
over rock, roots,, shifts in linoleum,  around the Best Toys, 
weirdly equal to the Worst, as impediments to an inner velocity - 
Child with unspeakable knowledge that to move fast is to be superb,
no future drug will ever match it,  superbeing wheeling
joy, the bird of your mind on an updraft spiral,
never hungry or tired,
just tearing  air, or,
puma/velociraptor/sailfish
crisp tissue
snatched





Crisps

No hands no, no, away from the bag,
no grease to grease.
No wish to be left alone,
but in wishing so,
no desire to accept other hands,
smothering my food,
breeding with the leavings
of other hands on it.
Away from my food.
No.
Don't touch,
don't taste.
I'm here,
but don't taste.

THE COOL GIRLS


The cool girls agree there needs to be a fund for better ambiance. Their latest collective dream is Christmas lights, colored only, squished into messy rats nests, pressed flat across walls. No inch spared. The cool girls slouch into their drinks and talk about deep things without meaning to, huddle with their batons. They have bundles of daughters and mothers and ghosts joining their chemistry,  tucked under collars and stored halfway up the slim sleeves of essential white shirts. They triple the warmth of the room, humor the suave operators, enjoy some of it. It’s part of their job.

HUNG UP


Envious of that
rotary phone reality,
hip forward walk
through the screen door
to the sound of a ring
(some things are actual),
and I’m still
hung up on her.
If she were perfume
she’d be named
Reason To Live
and all the lonely
dogs and goats would
buy her by the bottle
at the drugstore,
coat their bodies in her mist,
cloak their lazy head colds,
the sheets of their death beds,
sleepily shut their  
heavy liquor lids
to the sound of
the spray.

the Bus station

Three day weekend
Staying out late
Singing karaoke
Early rise
Sex and showers
The bus gets in early but there's a transfer in a hour
There's no worse place to spend a hour
Than a bus station
A man lectures a teenager about the bad choices he made that got him stuck here then pats an employee on the back as he wipes windex on a display case
Everyone is grunting and sighing
And farting next to me

curfew

a promise now
to stay on cold streets
until almost midnight
to feel moments are 
adding up
to be some sort
of
best time

Thursday, January 15, 2015

A holiday party
Late
For what holiday?
Skipped
For shopping
And Chinatown

Bird Dog

you are you. And I am me.
And I am not you. And you are not me.
But there are ways in which you and i. me and you, become something new
altogether.
An entity birthed from
our hopes and griefs and bodies and
blood and orgasms and
moments of looking in to each others eyes' and the 9" between our faces when we
stand in front of each other and the
birthmarks we wear
and the gaps in your teeth ans the moments of
painful silence and the mornings where
I can not believe how good it feels to
lay next to you and your pet names for
me and the voices, songs, and meals
which take new meaning when shared
with you. An egg has never felt less like
an egg than every time we sit down to breakfast.
You, are you. And I, am me.
And I am not you.
And you are not me.
But life takes up purpose as those singular
definitions fade and gray. As
the rhythm of a new heartbeat rises
through the chorus. Melodic and sweet,
it harmonizes.

To Anyone

The story as described to me by someone who heard it from you
but not from you to me. A very nice play with great moves.
I come home with moves in mind, but I don't move. The cat
overgrooms and I, under. Which smells, again, are sexy?
Come sit in our yard! In winter when the dirt freezes it's
more magical (read: crunchy). Come visit us! The morning
sun is all we get but it's enough reminds me of
the rest, the evening and the afternoon. When we see
you we'll do moves, the moves I've had in mind
you'll tell the story so i get it layered back,
exposed like if you see the movie, read the book and then
you have a crisis but the crisis would have been the thing
that got solved by the book. I'll shower
when you get here, not before, so that you know
I trust you.

THE SUN KISSED



The sun was fair and kissed
the gold field, your teal t-shirt
evenly
I made your birthday card
in the wind
boys walked by and argued
rolled Rs, harsh Us
something about
Abbey Road, Abbey Road
new couples kissed new kisses
the sun kissed the sky
and set
pale nectarine