“LIFE IS SHORT. THANK YOU ANCESTORS.”

You know what I’d kill for?

A primitive Italian Madonna and Child.

In the meantime, I made my own:

2 gold leaf arches to frame my mother (dead)

and my daughter (bad girl)

2 strong women framing

me (little mouse)

between them – 

Where do you come from?

Worried people. The land.

Where do you want to go?

Pink potatoes. Apple core under

the driver’s seat.

Somewhere safe

where they will have me. 

HAPPINESS

Health/money/business/love

rainbow candle from LA,

once it’s lit you’re not supposed to blow it out

but I just made a deal each time:

little death wish

little hope chest

the quilt was made of patches

stuffed with pantyhose

our boyfriends were bad,

we needed to hide or run to the woods

arms spilling with animal babies

the Broadway thrift stores smelled like lotion

we discovered stretch and mesh

and 80s radio, mocha dregs in the bottom

of a holiday paper cup,

heater headache

hours and hours of

particle happiness

lost,

lost is a thing

you built yourself

branches that were papers

taped to the wall

then trashed

what kind of thing are you

to love

does it feel like a pin prick

a leaf caught in hair

is it ever assault  

cold water

clean --

NEVER BE SORRY

The easiest face

to draw

two lines, dots, then hair

again and again

like wall paper

smile to break

the room

a flower trapped in tape

old burger place your dad

used to take you to

never be sorry

PLEASE

because I wanted a fresh slap, a cut lined with honey that might stick to the walls as you passed them, maybe I’m looking to secure these certain germs myself, gestural promise that a wind that smells like coriander destiny isn’t all it will take to carry you off to the rich, green valley where the women are robust and lunch is a circle and I’m not invited or noticed or real

FIRST DEATH

When the matriarchs die

we pray that the neutral Gods

of clean lines, no centering

will step aside, swap out for their

rambunctious, aromatic alter egos

the un-hushed – 

old hospitality

parting gifts of

fish and flowers

(plus color)

let us sleep knowing

that everyone has

tried

OH LET ME LOVE HIM LIKE A STRANGER

In Hawaii-nei the time is nanea
just before you're awake,
after you've finished dreaming;
Like I am now, nanea, named and married with you
this delicate place of our mutual being

I make prayers from this place
to One, hidden face, who speaks in a voice like a whisper
Help me bless me too forgive --
I repeat Esau and David and Jesus, add mine

Oh let me love him like a stranger

I'm so sorry to clog up your airwaves with half-baked words plucked from the air.
I'm trying to get back on track
But quality can be a casualty
To an unyielding idea of
Powering through

It feels good
To bite your teeth down hard
On something that makes no sense
Is staring you down
In defiant cruelty
Or harsh ambivalence

Sweet sweet round and round
The big bush in the driveway
Circled in bikes with training wheels
A McDonald's take-out window
Dream big
A thicket dense and opaque
A pretend hamburger patty
tasted like nothing
And a plate of spaghetti was something to hide from
Under the kitchen table

Let's fold our legs up and press backs into sofas and chairs
To re-hash our stories
The snapping turtle in the crib
Stuck in the snow-mud on a spring day
In freshly cut jean shorts
Which one of dad's failed business ventures?
We'll protect each other (ourselves) from pricklier washed out memories
I know mine are:
A feeling of forgotten-ness
A vague dread of being in trouble spread wide around
And something too about not being enough

I've heard glimmers of yours,
But don't know them by touch
In the dark of night
And soon you might be too far away to ask.
But I never seem to rest my head on your shoulder
even  when you're near.

THE WAY OF SAINT ANNE

If Anne had been born into a basket

not rolled across Canada into the arm

of someone so lonely

if Anne had had brothers, sisters

if Anne had had daughters

 -- Anyways, Anne finds her way to me

(silver oval in the wet laundry

mystical cheap French church trinket

thank you whoever washed clothes

before)

Anne had sons, and was a gremlin woman

who also spoke sophistication fickle

like a dinner flame

and hated that name,

Anne

keeper of:

lace makers lost articles carpenters childcare providers

people equestrians grandparents miners mothers moving house

old clothes dealer poverty pregnancy seamstresses stablemen

sterility teachers

lonely on the cruse ship, lonely in the cabin

lonely watching for rain or sewing herself

to the cushions

someone said I looked like her

and even though she was beautiful 

I took it as an insult – 

Anne would have done the same.

HONEYMOON

in the flavored fog

there was blamelessness

before we agreed to

any transformations

I tasted metallic, right there

hands sticky with orange

halting the daily

spins

I miss us both

your arm out the window

as I ran

down the stairs

Recommence

Reconvene, slot into the other life
I don't hang out in locker rooms,
I barely shave,
don't know the rituals, I barely want the space.

Old men, splayed in the YMCA, friends gone,
towelling absently, it scans peacockery,
so maybe my mind isn't fully formed. The part that could be,
sloughed off in the 90s, feet still frozen, muddy knees.

I'm not so sure of men, sure of myself,
you know, codes and all that.
What am I supposed to say I don't
care to waste speak, dead air can just be that-
we're passing through so many places this month,
what am I supposed to be bringing, sullenly staring
out of taxi windows,
baroque beauty, just jam for the brioche.

Continental clutter, I appreciate it maybe
as a stoner gag, if someone reframed it,
for the locker room.

There's clever.
          Then there's clever.

99%

"How's your battery life".

He's a micro prepper, Myers Briggs Type: DEFENDER
fiscal conservative, long game, no spender, "I'll get there".

Eventually.

His kindness is material and now.
His knowledge is interface and iOS updates.

"What kind of phone do you have?"

He has two phones. One with an external battery case.
250% more battery life.

Perpetually.

I leave work carrying a lithium torch.
I am bad about keeping my phone charged.

"How's your charge, maan?"

Q Pro Tips

I forgot sea horses 

existed. 

I hope you 

haven't. 

They kind of look like 

ear wax. 

Which now that I 

think about, 

I am also grateful 

for. 

STOMPING GROUND

New York body, Godzilla lipstick

double Kali trucker hat

mind always blown so she

kisses crescent ink to forehead

to keep the stuff from oozing out

You boys have a good time?

stayed out a little too late – that’s ok.

I’m young. Full of energy.

Steam the milk, make the change

so long as spells don’t sour in replication

viral witchcraft must be a good thing, right?

Somebody rich bought a bunch of tan land

for spiritual purposes

the violet mountain pile

could claim any number of nostalgias

but her girl is my girl

so the air stays still

while you shout

Goodbye gown

Tim, son, brother, uncle, godfather, friend, classmate, obsessive Star Wars, aliens, and comic lover

self-taught breakdancer, armored car security guard, P-Town tattoo artist,

gamer, LEGO fanatic, collector, expert at whatever he set his mind to

took a breath, shaking, rattling in and out the tubes put into his throat, down, to his chest. 

He closed his eyes. They were shut for a while. And with eyes still closed, 

he stopped. That was it. Good riddance, tubes. Goodbye gown. 

Light

The lightness of 

a bird's body in a hand.

That same hand on my back.

And my question 

of whether I want it there, 

more than anything else I want

in that moment in the sun on the hill–

or not. 

How does it feel? 

The bird slept until the hand 

got tired and started drooping.

The bird still slept. 

Head deep, nestled into feathers.

Eyes far off, into the soft, 

downy place of its own heartbeat.

The bird flew–

the hand rose up, instinctively

without the tiny weight in its palm

to keep it down. 

Ice

A man is scraping,
chipping at the ocean
of ice spread and sitting
on his driveway.

Sprays of white,
freed
escape, fly
in the direction he moves
his thick, metal shovel.

Not the kind for snow.
Just right for ice.

For freeing,
unleashing, and resetting
the ice into the blue
depth of the sky.
Before it meets the
ground nearby.
It looks so light.
It could be shards
of fleeing, flung water.

starfishing

Well, it sure doesn't feel as luxurious
to claim all the space
in the bed
when there's nobody else
to claim the space from.

Just you
a starfish
with arms
and legs
flung out
in bed.

maslo-fidelity

high culture

saves the world

by eventually trickling

the fuck down sacramentally

over the scalps of those weary seekers

     who sought to escape the generic protoplasm™

    they felt covering their middle-to-lowermiddle-working-

        class lives. Enlightenment was a Wikipedia link hole/Heidegger

       footnote/appreciated aesthetic/two seasons too late realization. Yes,

             someone has been here before you, thought that and still there is no utopia. 

          HA. Your reading list is now void and balance sheet is still in need of a chakra

             realignment by that person who is more spiritually attuned, and esoterically practiced 

          than thou. Yes, you the person that every story and song is written about; welcome to the

         club. You now work for Them, our beloved ghostly labyrinth keepers. I suggest you start with:  

             
 
  

Your cashmere elbow
Your fine bowlcut

My witch skirt
My bowl full of mush

Get Knotted

Habit forming and keeping it fresh and a new habit, then,
and who has time to really indulge a habit and learn how it
becomes them, crawls out of them and makes them habits too.

YADDA YADDA

low key battle

would be ultimatum 

(commercial break) 

something cozy vs something

fierce

same poem for years now

come on be DIRECTIVE

(commercial break)

don’t tear up again

girl who

cried girl

the rise and fall of

anger wave

grind it up red

see the gem

inside

the curl 

SOMETHING DIFFERENT

Paul’s hair if I

braided it, home birth

clean sheets in the trunk

vinyl boo

boo

the sea smell of the thrift store

under the off ramp in Louisiana

or sometimes Bulgaria

when I’m falling

asleep

polite sentences of a foreign male

educated in Anglo-academia

I want the thing I start

to be made

of nothing

a thousand contradictions

so dense they let me

float

ROLE PLAY

The bright lines are in the haze

follow them with your impartial snout

root for softening or just reflect

exasperation in a new calm jingle:

you’re really devastated by this

running a business must be really hard

what I’m hearing is you want to be heard

I am waiting for the dance revival to come around again
That high from shaking cells up
Throwing limbs through the air
The pendulum swings back
Motion inertia motion
Limber hips
Muscles longer and stronger
And the feeling of making something
Come true
From thin air

This year
I forgot to write a poem about my brother on his birthday.
It's slipping in this direction
Like a pair of tights
The crotch always sagging away from warmth
Towards the ground.
The corners of my lips turn down
When I'm not thinking
And when I am thinking
Of how those laces are loosening
Tied together in some hardship
To help keep us all afloat.
How do we shake off the sinking feeling
And not the thread that binds us?

In a room full of sleeping children
Sweet twitching feet
Rubbed against each other
And resettled.
This time
It's peace
Next time
It's time
To put your shoes back on

Dad partied too hard at the Disco last night
Straining in calico perched on the toilet
We'll keep at it, and see what comes
The dawn
And another one

wholesale

me,                                          or,

the wacky waving                   the Great Value brand single celled organism      

arm inflatable tubeman           that crawled out of  a puddle of piss and Dr. Thunder

attached to the muffler            in a Walmart parking lot.

of the General Lee.                  me?

or me,                                    or me,                                     or me,
at my friends' cover               becoming one with                finally giving in
band and they are                  the hum of fluorescent           and embracing
singing things that                 lighting that coats the            the vinyl wall decals
are very relatable                   walls of this office that          that read, "Faith, Family,
to this demographic               that I am signing a lease        Friends," as Truth, and me
that I find myself in.              in and deciding to live.          admitting to snobbery.

My final words will be, "How unoriginal."
And I am beginning to think that's wonderful.

The Depths of Heaven

Wish you were still on the ladder instead of enjoying the depths of heaven

I would kick it away, does my weakness show, am I on the ladder then,

slam dancing to techno, you still party? If not, are you a nesting machine, 

what are you, did you just do your farewells with all that,

will your gentlemen's bet seem like a shredded voice from the past, 

did you really just say that and thinking back did you really just say that then,

how does one perceive post-pairing is it really the joy 

of the fall barrage of apple peel curling in the sink, the compactor backed up,

lifting it out you oxidate in real time, they don't fall like rose petals do they,

scattered now on the tile, sticky glops that will crust on sock bottoms,

the cats glaze over, is it the same squirrel every morning, 

did the racoon get it, is it regenerating on the perch, the same squirrel jumping a

Mario barrel pattern Kong levelling up. What's in a club, why is this exceptional,

I know café culture in the century of the self, let's not celebrate it 

but ideas are ideas I don't mind a small one, I've embarrassed myself, 

I've interloped, I love youth culture, maybe,

may I ask not to stay static and watch my generation shrivel up,

and the next one 

and then the one after that, 

vampires regurgitate ideas,

I just want a spoon to feed mine.

BEST PRACTICES

we could give so much up. chewing gum and privacy.

we could catch this wheel mid-roll and trap it in a borrowed

terrarium before we have to re-invent it. we could curate the junk,

methodically: all the first attempts, the righteous feverish ones 

in diorama display while the second shots – more humble – drape friendly 

in brighter corridors. in the lobby they’ll ask you to sit criss-cross 

on the floor, kiss your ankles to your tails, bow to the milk white antlers 

arranged in six point star and scrape the playdo off your paws

cast that residue offering high across 

the good architect’s

sunshine.

SCANNING

The story goes

they moved to a bad place

to start a good life

they told their loved ones

“there are no bad places” or 

“nothing new happens

in a good place”

they counted good things

and bad things

aiming for harmony

one day the lousy GE clock radio

scanned, then latched

to a fresh mellow

millimeter murmur

between the sports and

classic rock

HEART THROB

sad evil sweetheart

with the pretty snake

hair

lashes that fan, beckon

shadow-carve

a dangerous place

at his side

now he’s awful

and we, the devotion club

keep tabs and miss him

write messages

in the night

think of colors

to tell him about

when he’s happy enough

to hear

CO-HOUSING

The compound is clean, just ski clutter

once-wet health food now crust

dripping snow sculptures around the

frozen pond

dogs cats dogs playmobil

where worries include:

happiness being boring

guilt being rhythmic

that families smile different

in visitor parking

Attraction

That night I was high and trying to understand
how things can never really touch because everything is made

of atoms and atoms contain electrons and
electrons are negatively charged so they push

away from each other when they get close
enough and I know I was high but still

I caught the truth between the lines;
this is the struggle between you and I.

Back yard

They can just burn me in the back yard
it's okay.
Burn me, bury me.
It's okay.
Wherever.

I will allow it.
Because I want to be a cherry blossom tree.
I want to be floating on the surface
of the ocean.
I want to be burned or buried
in the back yard of the place
I last lived.

Another Snowstorm Job

Snow cleared

each spiderweb from the air.

Over there

they said, pointing to a ditch. 

Where a car had been rolled

onto its back. Like a beetle–

without limbs to shake in the air–

settled; extremely still, on the freeze. 

Each step closer crunched, 

under weight. Weight of me, 

weight of boots, of body,

of consequence. Weight 

of metal chains; 

I sunk in, to my shins. 

Too heavy for the surface. 

Towing, against the slip

of snow. Clipped: 

bumper to bumper.

Then the pulling. Like

a dentist, tautening.

No room for thought

about the cross: beaded 

and wrapped upside down, still 

swaying from the cracked rearview. 

Waving faster, frenzied. Hurried and wild
as the roof slid forward against the ground.

Upward, up over the shining ditch,

and out. Onto the road again. 

Dirty Old Town

Pastel vinyl siding rock and roll New Jersey hey I saw you in the kitchen last night
woke up on the floor, man, I should go home but what's up today have a beer
for breakfast I can hear everyone laughing and the lights are on,
turn on a light or two before the sun goes down

How haunted is that, not too much, rootless people do I have
a land to belong to man, have you ever been to Fairview? I
haven't in a long, long time. I think I know who has or would be
maybe we should start a band, hard core something stay up late -

Man, is my aging as poignant to you as it is to me? Fairview's
32.9% non-families sounds about right or like how does the census
understand what happened in my childhood when all the light
was water grey. The smell of spring time by the tracks, an empty park.

Shit, is there an ancient force beneath the linoluem soul of chaos
wood-paneled carpeted staircase Jersey City for the day
Strange ungovernable child atop the sink with broken glass in hand
No not within my blood my feet upon the land just open me a beer, man.

Plane Breath

Automation is obviously killing jobs but it's not doing a damn thing 

about performing the sad ritual of switching the time zone

to GMT, my computer doesn't pick up on signals anymore,

it's not what I paid for and also why no eye mask and free pen,

is this the banality of excess, does this mirror Band Aid III,

no child in Africa wonders about Christmas, yes they do,

I'm stretching here, thinking I should be thinking about mouths to feed,

paternalistic, such a mean, fruitless way to feel tired from a plane ride.

eloise

she went barefoot

into the restaurant and I

thought,’ At last, someone

I can bring home to meet

my family.’

Your shopping cart is empty.

You are behind on

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climate change

literature.

Phase 3

Climate change

Cinematic

Universe.

Customers who bought this item

Also bought:

In Catastrophic Times,

Facing Gaia,

The Great Derangement.

I’ll admit that I canceled

my subscription after

The Great Disruption or: How I

Learned to Stop Worrying

and

B i n g ew at c h

these irregular-ass seasons.

However,

Due to the lack of my own character development,

I’m here in my (well, your) Amazon Prime

to rejoin this paradigm SHIFT.

Frequently bought with:

Learning to Die in the Anthropocene.

Uncluttering

I just woke up from a dream

where Paul held up a map while we brushed 

our teeth and then pointed out: the wall had shifted, torn at its seam.

We could peek under and into the entire house. He hushed

my worries. Said the plumber would be by the next day

to take a look and work it out

and in the meantime, it would be okay. 

I couldn't help staring at where there once was grout

and now was nothing. Space, darkness, a pause.

It was all a little obvious.

Themes of: structure, revelation, discovery, denouments–

I mean, holding a map. It was almost artless. 

The part, though, that's stuck in my head is that it wasn't scary. 

Seeing the empty insides. They looked open, uncluttered, airy. 

Growth

What I feel in my body
are the shakes
of trees
lopping off their last leaves.

Deteriorating

Where in the overall framework, the overall time line, the overall arc
of utopia do the next 24 hours fall
I ask myself each night

This is why I'm going mad.

Are we in the failure upswing success downswing midswing halcyon
memories, ease, these lonely hours of peace or descent who knows
each night.

Written over the course of several nights

Disaster just around the corner means these are the best days,
best
years
of
our
lives! But of course every day all day it's
disaster just around the corner. There is no living in the present
without the disaster, coming faster, oh!

Is it another night again now? For whom
did the disaster come today? Not me I'm on
a slow-rolling plan and if I do not spend
all day
every day
thankful for that I am a monster from Hell.

To be from somewhere, a sense of home!

It came a little today but unclear if it's within
my personal Utopian framework to be itself
within the opening flourishes of
the disaster

Are we now in the next day the quiet hum of
days of plenty looking back I remember you bustling
from room to room and family is safe and alive its
radical we're radical it's a salad day night or else
it was a warning, and not the first.

What Little Shits We Were

the side compartment
in the back of your
green-now-silver
stick shift Toyota
was never cleaned.

it was an elephant graveyard
coated in decomposing high fructose
corn syrup from a Barq's root beer.

it was sweet n' sour sauce,
a discarded ninja turtle,
hot wheels,
and Big Lots! receipts.

you shifted gears and,
restrained by seat belts,
we warrior-oned away from
the tidal filth that threatened
to pour onto the back seat.

did you know?
this funky smell is not you
it's your grandchildren.

it's the pit of trash
Nick and I created
and named a name
that now escapes me.

Everett

A boy in my Nature Writing class
once described the smell of magnolia blossoms
as a miasma of semen and sweat.
He also used "varicose veins" in both of his
pieces that semester.

I remembered frozen magnolia leaves
on Dee's farm during the ice storm of 1995,
and, after looking up the definition of miasma,
the smell of chicken shit during the summer
when the wind would carry it from adjacent
Tyson manors.

That same wind would carry Maw Dee
across the small rectangular pond in
her cow pasture.

She would float on her back for hours
dressed in a modest nightgown;
her black beehive hair let down.

Her hair would disperse and find it's way
to the pear trees, and apple trees, and row crops.
Her thoughts crawled out of her ears like the green
worms we found husking corn and took flight.

A Yarn

Can you grow closer together
if you are unraveling with distance,
like a ball of yarn falling from its tether.
Rolling out, getting further and further
and further and farther away

stretched long, unspooling.
But retaining elasticity?
Well. I guess yarn never had elasticity
in the first place.

Almost

I almost couldn't make my arms swing or lift my knees. The left kneecap creaked each time I brought it up and put it back down.
But in my ears, the sound of a five year old asked why Earth is called Earth.
And in the field, a cat jumped across a trickling, just unfrozen stream, coming up a slight incline.
Distractions like these
detracted
the minutes
until it was enough.
Enough plugging, enough hopping over ice and mud.
When I turned around, the cat was hidden–just his head showed. And I was on the way back home.

A Taste

THey said they liked the taste of lobster–
the exotic salt of sea and sand under the shell.
And we were on vacation at the beach, after
all. Playing daily in the waves–coming back to the smell

of boiling, curdling, briny water
whistling in the pot,
with the tops of claws swiveling and reaching out once it got hotter,
like the noontime asphalt in the lane on our bare feet. Too hot.

"Can't have shellfish at all," said Paul
in Greenpoint, this Christmas holiday break.
"No lobster? That's a shame," Dad replied, then remembered the way they'd crawl
on the wooden floorboards before he plucked them up to make

dinner for his extended family. Playing executioner
because we said we liked the taste of lobster.

Idont_USUALLYmakestatuseslikethis.jpg

HOWEVER,

this is an opinion that I am

sharing.exe

because it is qualitatively different from opinions

that I usually share and

VERY.mp3

different from similar opinions you might be

seeing rn.com/moment

on your feed.

But I don't usually share things like this.

This is different.

tHISS will be different.

And if I did make statuses like this
I would most certaintly
do them better than
than this.
I think.
LIKE.

home

i’ve seen seventeen houses
and you’ve seen just twelve
each time for you seems to get harder
as i grow excited,
your face hangs down after each one
as life becomes something
you didn’t want it to be,
not quite expecting
to build any sort of life with me

i stand in each kitchen trying to picture
us cooking side by side
the record player spinning
as you take my hand
back and forth we’re swaying
a slow, middle school kind of dance
not trying to follow the beat
of Love and Happiness

and i walk through each living room
looking for the fireplace we both want
hoping for
that perfectly comfortable couch
and cuddling close under blankets
the cat and dog sleeping nearby
the calming sound of logs crackling
and the feeling of your warmth
your body pressed gently against mine

i look for a sign of the future
what life could be in each home
if this is what would make us happy
or if this is where we move on

Empathy is Easy

i was bullied for being an ally
he said
my student
and he stared at me
as we both tried not to cry
hoping he wasn’t looking to me for strength
maybe just knowing he couldn’t look at his mom
already crying
and i realized
me too,
at the lunch table
i told him later with a hug
after we all cried
and laughed about crying

do you doodle?
i do doodle.

a cry for
help
no answer

The Bid and also Schools

Come to my town and mine and mine,
the Olympics, Amazon, deals
deals, I'm all about the.

The boardroom, behind the thick walnut,
if I mirrored the blotter would the doodles
show me in their idle brevity the complete
lack of guile employed,
I'm all about the.

Smoke and mirrors who's been remotely near
Brooks Brothers, is that door walnut,
where's the theatre, sleight of hand, it's
all words none of substance
somehow becoming the substance of deals done,
pick up artists,

getting the job done, yes this works for me
it works for you, or if we shift in increments
but then yes we don't need to keep nodding
pensive, in the shadows, we can keep a disco ball
spinning if we can keep talking
through the poor cut, the tired cloth...

lightbulbs flash, the pop shield played like a harmonica,

yeah we did it, we pulled it out the bag
for you.

Decades

there are rules for watching it

know that it changes, day to day

which decade is it now and will it

be another in an hour my inner

sense say 70's but I must prepare

for any moment it's the 40's the memories

when does it end but then again

when does it start who else is

meandering through time with me

tonight to hear on this day that

on that day this, and it's a marathon

on this day of that year of course

they took the boys aside and taught

them all the wars the girls did

all the reading though so if its

books they'll know but this

shit isn't books its wars its

presidents (it's Nixon mostly)

right now it's the 60's or 

the part of the 70's that feels

like the 60's on TV to one so young

and fresh as me. When will they give

the rules again I start to lose

the sense

Dream Interpretation

I keep dreaming of dead rabbits;
since my twenties, every once in a while.
The rabbits are sometimes alive, or in distress
but usually they're dying or dead.
I don't dream of the rabbits I had as pets
when I was a child and would forget
their vulnerable bodies
alone for days in a cage.
I just did not think
about them as living
when i was off being
with other objects and things.
The way a baby doesn't realize his mother still exists
when she's out of the room.
Last night it was a black rabbit, looking
a lot like the last one I had, but different,
the same but different in the way
dreams do that.
This time as an adult, I tried
again to have rabbits, but
again the failure to pay attention
to care as much as I thought I would.
I looked up the symbolism
Googled, "rabbit dream"
and the screen showed me words like
"lucky" "magical" "fertility" "sex drive" "prosperity"
but there were no words to tell me
what all the dead rabbits mean.
I guess that's obvious.
I guess I have no choice but to
keep burying them.

Glassy Pavement

Ice expanding through the concrete pores, and the streets too,
and my eyeballs, I think of the amount of time it takes
for the image to build and register, detached from the retina,
seeing that the street lamps are pulling even further and
perhaps they are spewing from me as with the thoroughfare
of the ferry back from Calais after tripping all night in Holland,
the ferry stretching out of me as if I were my own travelator,
stretching out pulling my future from me egg strands stretching out
the bounds of the bow my future from me, me and the ferry stretching
out beyond me, out of me, made of me, no thought of the
dismal stock of celery green that floats the ferry,
my viscous steps, shoved back and forth hydraulically.

Calm Deep Dark

Cats sitting sadly staring into space me too, my friends, me too.

And tomorrrow? Then as well, then too, the morning first, and then the rest. 

The day is full of paintings or of numbers, formulas, your choice, and space.

And then? The same, my dears, and night as well, and pauses in between. 

Dissolution

Hey! You say-
I’ve got a lovely idea.
Envision this beautiful future-
And I can see it, sugar-crusted, a sunny day
A couple of curly haired kids
Swings, laundry, laughter, tears
We want it all, we say
Diapers, long nights, a mortgage
A house- with stairs, a new fridge,
Washer and dryer on the main floor
I want you -  you said.

We say all that, but here we go
Horrible messy monsters
We flail, flop, fuck a little
Talk too much probably
Share our feelings and hurt the other
Share the hurt and wound again
Honey bubbled future crusts over, flakes

I should be careful when I really want someone
That I don’t mistake the person for someone else
Another me, a better monster
A kinder family than the one I can from.

The Body Opens A Window

The body opens a window;
it knows the way out before you do.
Stay close to the bone
cut away the urge to extrapolate.
There are 17 pitfalls ready to trip you up
if you make that mistake. And there are those
who do. Who fall into
every one of them.
You see that every day,
the ones who got so freaked out
looking over the edge and not knowing
that they jumped.
They didn't know the body opens a window.
We could drown in the tides of interpretation
or we could stay, sway, ride waves
right in the inbetween.
It's dis/orienting, that feeling, but it won't kill you.
And if you can wait, listen in,
the body will open a window.

:0

$atori,
or that moment
when you finally identify
with Kesha.

:-/

At a franciscan college's dining hall
I discovered pierogis and
that my size 29 pants
no longer fit.

Huh.

I imagined a frozen lake
and a gramophone playing
a nocturne once,

(I really just "read" a biography of 

Tolkien)

and how I would be in love

and we would venture onto the ice. 

(Ok, I skipped to the section

  on how his wife danced for him in woods once &

it inspired the tale of Beren and Lúthien)

So, I started wearing mock turtlenecks 

whilst dreaming of New Hampshire. 

(I wear turtlenecks and live in Troy, NY) 

Rd 397

You smile

and most importantly

I show the camera a 

velociraptor backpack; 

a lost world scratched

on nylon tommy hilfiger logos.

it sounds like 

the refrigerator

dumped in Jofuska Creek,

as it died and begged for

a murky resting place. 

we walked down to visit it

carrying cane fishing poles

for red bellies & mudcats.

we lowered them crickets

from the bridge and

as I grew older 

you lowered me down 

to the creek bank so 

that I might see under it.  

Between the north highway

and Marty Stuart Drive, 

that bridge is gone

and a cattle gate blocks

the way to Dee's farm. 

but that refrigerator is there,

still perceptible beneath the veneer

like Coca-cola stained teeth. 

courage

Let us all remind ourselves
Of the fierceness we have known
Before we knew we were brave
Before we knew we felt fear

That time on the boat? When the nav went dark and the captain went below?
And you stood on the deck and steered in the night,
Eyes locked on Orion’s Belt,
Singing to the sky?

Or what about that summer
When I sunburned my breasts climbing the Mesa
And wheeled with eagles, and camped under a rainbow full moon?

Or chanting in the dugout sweat lodge in the desert
Ember lit, slippery sweat, then midnight sex on the ground
With a long haired bicyclist whose name you never learned?

I knew my mettle when I went swimming in a chilly blue lagoon on Gozo
Fought off an old man who wanted to kiss me
And ran up a cliffside
On the seventh day of a twelve day fast.

And I remember when you pulled your hat down
Retracing our path through winding cobblestone alleys
While a shadowy figure followed us.
You were solid gold armor, man.
You were steely as hell.

The Pinch

Enough of a crack for the L of hall light

to show I'm not wholly rude,

but to half frame what shuffles downstairs

for the crack to be maintained.

Acting out, no you can't chuck my workbooks,

though they only remind me I only

half-remembered maths then,

and now the blood I drew in rough.

I don't want the family tree either,

or to think of the bass amp in the 

shoe cupboard, fuse blown,

its last catastrophic rumbling wheeze.

Charles and Diana

rattled in the dresser,

they feel it still,

clattered into saucers.

Waking up in the Valley After a Troubled Sleep

it's strange but I love the sound in the valley out of body as it is and also the most recognizable of the things the valley does to the body but since I never see the welcome signs nor register my hunger as a welcome sign nor see my distorted body in the mirror as a welcome sign it is the sound that welcomes me so soft with undertones of bellowing and loud ticks as a welcome sign my own ticks
as a welcome sign welcome to the valley I know, I know I've been here before in fact several times this year
well yes of course it feels unsafe here but think how it is up there on the peak the things you can see and once you see them you have to take care of them what? This year just started? The fiscal year I mean I think in fiscal years because you get to say when they start based on your obligations and your debts not stars I'm no hippie so the stars won't help me plan my trips to and from the valley what? I mean I'm not a hippie that way. I mean I've stopped believing in anything other than debts and obligations and that means calendar years too so when I say I've been here several times this year I mean not since a few weeks but since July.
Yes the sound in the valley is my favorite is at its loudest now and also how heavy the gravity is that how it always works are you lighter on mountains or is it just the air that's thin not you and then it's hard to breath? But it's in the valley breathe comes heavy and how loud! How loud it would be with the softness surrounding the accent on the keyboard and a sense of song I heard it first from the alarm clock as a child (the ages run together) but it was the Disney clock, golden, playing bippity boppity boo and Boo! the sound had changed and I was there, or rather here I guess since here I am but at the time of course it was my mind and not my body and feeling them separate I knew not who to tell.
But now I have the language the language of topography and expectation and of sound I love the sound the confirmation not I'm not avoidant just insane and trapped or on vacation I can't help right now can't make decisions but why should I this American obsession with productivity I'm simply a sophisticate in Europe they all take vacations have you heard? So I can't see beyond the sounds the mountain walls green slopes and distant tumbling rocks approaching but so far I'm safe. There's danger but the sound alerts you, so

AT LAST

When I finally become a woman

I’ll sneeze myself into something

more/less durable

a bride’s caress

with pruner’s strength

blue diamond filtered water kiss

against the hatchback

darling  darling  darling

I’ll say

this is the right decision

today is the first day of the rest of our

decisions

DAVE’S MOM (SHELLY)

It was a dark place

camo walls camo blankets

burl stools, pepsi cups

but she was his mom and he wanted

to show her to me and me 

to her

it was slow, there wasn’t anything

to talk about

except crime, or the cold

or whatever was on tv

he really loved her

so much

he was proud of her

her deck garden 

her night job

how she never got

that mad

ONTARIO STREET

Thank You For Doing Your Laundry

With Us,  Please Come Again.

Soap bleach softeners 75 cents.

Red/silver garland around the column.

Green garland around the white picket fence.

Smile 😀 you’re on camera. 18 minutes now.

Crime & Drugs Tip Line 233 2161.

Your cooperation is appreciated. Ms. Pacman.

American Meditation Institute: A powerful decision holds us captive.

Read about the remedy starting on page six.

9 screens in the monitor camera and 3 have

VIDEO LOSS. Soap, bleach, softeners.

Pushing stop will end cycle.

Start up will require full price to start.

Snow village Xmas scene in the window display.

Now its 9:08. Folding counter.

If anyone comes in, I’m writing grocery lists.

Island Liquors across the street.

Open 7 days a week. (t – 06 minutes).

Particle Players

Welcome to the land of no-things! 

Where we get as close as can be,

and everything is made/remade

by touching energies.

Where there is no you or me

no roles or fixed entities, 

(since who you are depends on who you meet).

The potentialities draw us near

to where the space is queer;

a process we can constantly undo 

and constantly make anew

in a dance of trans-realities.

Fifteen years

Happy Birthday
from Stevie Wonder
and his sleepless, yawning nights.
His grit and bear it calm.

He's sung and danced,
flown and rode the ropes to the back
corners of this hateful country.
Cried the riots into form.

A man–possessed; for fifteen years.
Til 1983 gave him his due.
Til a phone call to Coretta
became more than just a dream.

Dear Jane Doe B-10

Dear Jane Doe B-10
white female
age 12-18
I will call you 
daughter
dear one
unforgotten

Drapes

1.
her small hand
draped over my
thin wrist

2.
one leg falling 
out of bed
one leg draped 
over his

3.

I Can't Leave

I'm not restless, it's not a kink, not to be the

self, happening things upon me.

But I am excited by night,

for all the things by sleep.

Not rest, or the wide ephemera,

to be shaken loose over toast,

but for the things that have happened,

five hours ahead, or behind,

the morning when a cushion plumped

might restore a sense of space,

or when the news seems weird

and its pigeon bones are the meal,

my day becomes what's made of them.

We hope to age, we hope to think 

of the slight adjustments we make in series,

as the true scope of the intent to age

and I can't wait to sleep,

to wake and think of what I must yield to,

for the next age, then the age after that.

My skill set's stuck

and there's an old way brewing,

I can't wait to transcend news.

I'm clapped out forever.

I like the canteen space,

I like letters, falling,

I like to peel off the others

I'm not rested, it's not a kink,

so long as I'm tired,

I can't leave,

I can't wait.

Matinee in Winter

Rosewater mothball fish perfume what heaven is this am i dead

such ghosts as these beside me now one block up and one block down

the city peeks around and buzzes with my comrades late, in silk, asleep

and then at last the train. Outside the city limits and straight off into the sea.

Mothball candy tin of rose are you my age or older, much much older have I

been here so long to be like you I'm sitting on the curb a single cigarette unsmoked

white sneakers risky in the street it's summer and I look my age not yours, not yet,

who are you? I'm trying to explain the past 5 years and how to pull you back

from internet abyss are you my friend, young man, or just another woman

in the cinema with friends, for once, the gals, faint plastic scent of

rosewater mothball fish perfume our chance is gone it always was when I last saw

you I was young and walking through the park at night and drunk and warm and now

riptides

It is good to be speaking in such a rapid manner? 

It is healthy to have eaten fifteen carrots in the past ten minutes! 

The stars come out every night?

Riptides are good for your soul. 

Riptides are good for your soul? 

It's not broccoli if there's not cheese on it.

It's nice to be getting older?

Riptides are good for your soul! 

a happy poem

try to write a poem

that’s not sad

she said

well, here it is

did this make you happy, glad

did you laugh

3 days off

you’re supposed to cherish these days

make something of them

savor the freedom

go somewhere special

have a little fun

but all you do is stay home alone watching

television shows about serial killers

and blood and death and breakups and tears

and your 3 days is ending and tomorrow you go back to work

supposed to be refreshed and everyone will ask you how it was

and you’ll lie

and say it was good

mother

when my mother calls

she starts with a series of questions

she asks in succession

i wait for the last one asked

and that’s the one i answer

she calls on sundays

sometimes she texts instead

a long list of questions

How are you?

Do anything this weekend?

Got any plans?

How’s the dog?

How’s work?

and i choose which ones to answer after

staring at the list for longer than i should need to

even responding to my mother’s weekly text is too much for me

but it’s better than when she calls

because she knows my voice too well

and the questions quickly change to

Are you okay?

What’s wrong?

Are you sick?

Did something happen?

and if i don’t answer just right

i hear my mom turn into a volunteer at the suicide hotline

and she says all the things you’re supposed to say so that
someone feels loved and cared for