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

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.

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!

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

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!

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.

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.

Check-in

It's wonderful to see you all again
did I mention? To everyone who is someone I
see again, it's wonderful. Which is to say
it's been quite a day. The things that didn't
work were many and the radio, heard with
one ear only was not perfect, was not quite
telling me the right and righteous "things" but
that's ok because I, too, did not always share
the best or brightest information today, at my
work the place where I sit and sometimes, sometimes
place my palms on chair arms tense my arms and
lift! My body just a bit so that the whole thing cracks
which i don't know, i just now thought, i don't know
if it's audible if it is then, oh god, that's gross I
work in a closet so, the acoustics are, well, who
knows we all have headphones on, the radio but then
to see you all again (them all, too) and feel
so right it's like is it even winter? To feel
warm is it not ok, with thousands dead or
even one unsmiling maybe grumpy or unwell
you see i think i
have a fever! So that means I'm allowed
to feel alive, and happy, to feel well if
I am sick is not so blind so thoughtless not so
bad at all! Hello, it's wonderful, you're wonderful but
let me say that better what is "wonder" when it's you,
you all, it's as a bright and buzzy tone, the ring of
smiles (of teeth!) around a table or without that sweet
remembrance something solid and yet changing something
liquid but with cornstarch something glass and ancient is
"wonderful" is so wonderful to see you!

Should I?

It's this when the sense of progress is only hair

when what will i become

is hair what will i become.

One becomes quite quickly, one sees the view

in Santa Fe one learns to write one picks a dress one

sees the view in Jersey City one has

so many haircuts in just one life it becomes

everything it's awful to read

the news or to think of a neighbor

who is less happy and find the thought

unfinished, filled with hair, with hair-what-ifs

with nothing, that is, nothing. 

Oh my god this horrible vacuum sound

illness hours imagined and more worthwhile for being so
unsure of what's created in the mind to weigh the head
and chest.

This vacuum gut-hum is insane!

Today the whole house was a bed, the floor, the cats, the clothes-pile
blasted by this vacuum desperate vacuum just give up!

Youtube

Satellite mid-internet, mall-burden, woods.

Friday night's stuffed-pepper forgotten, likely, in the future.

Garbage rolling monsters in the night when I was 14 also, now.

January Networking

cold eyes expanding, round cubes I'm convinced

more tired than trying to see

supertitles the theater and faces, especially

especially faces a cube's not round until

it's a word for ice. 

Object memories it's a theme

the contraction/expansion is troubling, tiresome

worked all day with two big screens

then to the theater, faces, to smile

eyes squealing shifting states

to smile at someone new

oh god what's a word for

DAM

oh agony of automatic processes
oh dreams in metadata ecstasies.

Today the process by which the files loaded into the Digital Archive Management system (heretofore known as the DAM) are resized, compressed, and generated as an image folder, csv, and Access database for use with the medialoader plugin in the Objects module of The Museum System -

did not work.

There is a manual system for handling this, of course, though not so manual as to forgo the medialoader, of course. Everyone involved in reconstructing this manual process felt nervous, nostalgic, or nothing, and, of course, it all worked out and everyone got their images even though one person complained for a second but of course there was another set of images that we received later for which we had to perform two processes one of which inexplicably involves the terms "neuner" and "jetstream" but that also worked out, of course, though I myself have not yet learned to neuner (shall I ever?)

Later the database administrator solved the problem but this will create a set of 500 or so error messages that will surely grate upon the nerves tomorrow.

oh digital humanity, the darkness of my boring heart.

Rip Van Winkle 2015

"in the papers of" the past, given to, again, the past,

as fiction, in the intro, in the story.

What amount of time is 40 years?

Snooze a revolution and return, it's not so long, 

familiar faces, older, but that's fine.

To Rip Van Winkle is a verb to me,

a danger. I hate my shrewish wife and all, of course,

but that's just for the humor, that's no problem

or was it 50? 60? That's still fine

I Rip Van Winkled that, I think,

that party, textbook, life event, the news

If I sleep through revolution then what of it?

I mean, I'm no one (ask my wife!) but that's

the point. 

10-day

Half a plaster body in white-out snow the edge of island destination such a pleasant thought.
Today it was too warm. What am I without weather when I'm writing, 7 pages through a
fantasy 1 year in and no weather yet, just a mother's elegy the mystic girlhood
set in Jersey City, maybe. When I saw this statue in the snow, the creek, construction, street, the
greatest use of looking at the snow i ever used or looked at, at which I looked, a year or two ago.
What even was the weather which i barely felt today, what was it, it was nothing what is
the weather when it's not a thing it's just the air which [as an office worker] I don't know
the science...of. Of which the science I don't know. My office, see, is windowless
a closet filled with gals of which I am a one. A half-a-plaster-body in the wet gray sun.

Domestic Drama

Cat vs. cat, man
tapestry of life plans
gossamer, great but
there just screaming
two ghouls you love
who love you in
animal ways but
not each other and that's
the whole world,
man.

Temperate Times

A beautiful day and several deaths
later I remembered seeing her start
to fall, to faint remembered not seeing
it at all in fact, but being told. She
was fine, reminder of the horrible day
upcoming soon but not today, a beautiful day.

Between edges of weather reminders
of any season's early moments, a day
like today, the future is the fainting,
the end of joy, the five year plan and health
like what i might remember had it been...
not today, though, not then either

Cherry blossoms sure, but also snow
remembering my sentiment which is now
as once but 10, 11 years ago, this time
of year is springlike in its winter -
my spring is mellowed and less literate
remembering another's fears as fact; today -

A Holy Day of Obligation

Wake up! Saints down 45th, aloft
on brass, on dads.
Families not hungover, godly
horns bleat past the bed.
the dads and their trombones, the child-free and
tubas. Birds competing
"they're still there?"I thought
they weren't still there, the riot
raised when all the saints have
trundled on, have
labored in the sun.