i hope you realize this is post 667

i'm just very emotional right now!
i have kept my finger nails short and never dyed my hair
in deference to the old ways

but my baby brother is growing up to be such a good man
a good beautiful kind of human
and beyonce has a new album out and everyone is dying about it which is a good
and that girl i loved in vain is out there doing slo-mo without me TO OUR SONG
and my life is a horrible horrible small contained mess
and i have done so many grevious wrongs
on so many bodies
and my own
and i feel i know a lot without knowing much at all
and i'm leaking blood
and i'm very very tired
and i don't know what the hell i'm doing
which is probably sort of okay, you know?

this is what we have. this is all we have.

the game:
at any time, someone can call the beginning of the game by pulling something out of their pocket and proclaiming, "this is what we have. this is all we have." then everyone else proceeds to take everything out of their pockets, bags, fanny packs, etc. and hold each item up, one by one, saying "this is what we have. this is all we have."

these are the tools of my life:
red-handled knife, often dirty, often dull, and sharpener
a black sharpie
white greasepaint and gold powder
a lighter
cell phone, beeping
slightly glamorous earring which doubles as a toothpick or last-minute gift
masking tape for decoration and minor emergencies and securing poultices
red and white water bottle i got from a bin in ashland for a dollar
lemon balm tincture from the wolf house
bandanna, any color
pouch of tobacco

it would be nice to have a fork, too.

in other news,
it is frosty here at versailles! this past month-moon-cycle has been a steady stream of transformations big and small and guests. after samhain, i quit my job and worked my last two weeks at the residential treatment center. fox went back to work and carrot strolled into our lives as a new housemate-subletter along with their two chihuahua-creatures, potato and kinikinick. the rest of the acorns fell and the leaves continued to drop, the daylight hours starting to fly by, and when i came back from the bay this weekend the mornings are 24, 25 degrees and those white jagged outlines and sparkling nights and mornings are whisperin the coming of winter.

we have begun having fires most every day which means splitting wood and scheming about getting more wood. the cold keeps us orbiting around the wood stove and goose, who has been living in the south wing, is moving out and toward another house or perhaps seattle, bike mechanic work and other family dreams. we got our little car starting more reliably and something started leaking, so she's out of commission again. the deer have eaten all of our kale and broccoli down to the stems but left the wong bok and cabbages untouched. i have a lot to learn about gardening, and the deers' appetites and easy leaps over the fence have been one clear and painful lesson.

soon, tomorrow, i will plant garlic, a bit late but not too late i hope. we got a few varieties from avram, a friend and garlic farmer nearby. i am reading more, a biography of isadora duncan, and getting excited about winter scholarship and dancing too and garden planning again. i am so on fire about performing and making creative work, toward wild theatre and a dance-theatre of rewilding, art emergent from living with the land.

and, good night!

the starlings?
we should know a starling when we hear one
i ask what sort of birds are those
a crow she says
no crows are much bigger
they're glimmer birds, you know a crow, you know a night
you should know a crow
there are no pigeons here
which is odd but there is still bird shit on the sidewalks
and ground down gum

i thought you said this was a clean city
he said
it is! it is! i said
don't you know what all those black marks are
they're ground down gum

i thought you said this was a clean city
i've never been to a clean city
there are cities i feel unclean just thinking about

i asked after the dirt that lies in the creases of my sheets
i did that
can you believe it!
i can be very silly sometimes
under the hot noon moon

theme: dirt
i own several machines
but all this dirt gets in them
maybe faster than for other people
do you have pet dirt?
i could have a kitten i suppose
i have dirt

theme: dirt
a-poi-sea-uh
poi
poi poi
poor as dirt and like a god
cramping, bitten

do you remember you wrote "what do real people think about"
i don't want to do die because other people think we're not real
i don't even want to die because we can't remember that we're real

i have not killed the quirky girl billowing in me
or the policeman inside my head

oh what's a girl gotta do get slavoj ziz
to write her letters?

 i have been a boy forever
my long pants pulled up above my knees
the flap of the shirt
flopped over the belly
a winking boy

a hi fi vid
important people
but the fucking bathroom
is hanging out in the background
the toilet winking

i keep my boiling, particled shit
in a swirling bowl

i'm still peter pan

but i'm not i'm not i'm not

i lean on dads
fill up on dads

and i put up a sausage machine
that grinds out some half
limping three year old
with a bowl cut and a rubbed up stick
curling up around a pole
begging for nothing
but seeming to beg

santa sancta sanctified
peter pan humping the playgrounds ropes

pistachio tree a la chateau noir

i. 
the palm tree receives the bat
cradles the three norteno songs
throbbing in
from all points of the compass
save one
(this is the red cardinal we should take up
when we finally put down our bodies)
in its herringbone fronded trunk
are folded the yowls of faraway dogs
an orgami of sound

where is the succor
where the honey that drips
i have felt no press of flesh
but i am still somehow real

the best we hope for:
the palm holds the crowned eyes
up to the sky
they do not become pouched
our hearing never degenerates
and full sentences hold purpose, never terror

the bat offers no threat
it does not even care that you are there
but it can be the totality of the night

ii.
i am the night
in leathern fingies
fur stroked whorl
curling
uncurling
dose of wake up cortisol
all pressed down
the dripping honey for the space between the ears

i am the night
don't wake up

why do
beautiful bands of color
appear
in the tiny oil slicks that form atop puddles on a rainy day?
what do slugs leave behind
that shines?
the first trace of color
the band snapped across the chest

who would dare to talk in the night?
and who would pray?

iii.
one should serve the jello gray
in the shape of a brain
on an oil slick tray

no one will ever have sex again
no one will marry
all music will be banned
only so that no one will ever talk about music again

santa teresa will remain pierced
in the house of her ecstasy
and some large curving bronze structures
will be permitted to stay standing
all else will crumble
the world will become the color of green pennies
though i think we will have put those
all underground by then

i have not said what is right
only what will be

iv.
after the green; the white
down where the pennies go
you can put your memories in a house of aspic
but this is not as good as bronze

v.
oh i am the night
nay-cree-us
know that the locust
breaks its leg open
attracted by the smell of oozing fat
begins to eat itself
all is so scarce
nay-cree-us
an old man feeding his son
the son drinks a glass of milk
the son manages
nay-cree-us
the cockroach
the beetle
the cat's eyes in front of headlights
nay-cree-us

who would dare to talk in the night?
and who would pray?

some tell themselves
it's a peacock

it is not

buy the golden arrows
turn up the funk
i am coming

all that is left to us is poetry

physical pulse and poetic pulse combine

a hunger that hopes to reconcile 

avoids articulation

but the feeling we know when struck by deliberate blow

as softly a loving knife comes not from behind 

slits our throat 

and born again because we learned to listen

dared to sweat while running scared to break

the nature of those who must burn to live

     what makes the blood coil inside my chest

     now i want to strike.

     how i am stupid, made dumb by intensity 

     blurry, i don't want things

     i am grabbing at someone, money is falling 

     i am reaching for some image never to be held

     i can't swing without hitting myself 

i yam a mere BLORP
a solid wet blorp under a strangely ringed moon
sloshing over my YOWN sides
(emphatically now-uh)

ariana reines is reaching new heights with poetry
and i am
smacking wetly against the walls of my YOWN

a droopy wet BLORP
child squeezed clay goin
blorp blorp blorp
up jacaranda ave
n sometimes
putt putt putt

I YAM A MERE JEALOUS BLORP
oh my loves
"is this love, now that the first love has died
where there were, like, no impossibilities"

jacaranda pistachio persimmon
fast burning and unknowable
pop pop
and up knuckols crossing
putt putt putt

a wet and jealous blorp
oozing and hoping to double cross cream my body
outsmart my bones

i see you abandoning sense and it is sucessful
but when i do it
will it look as good?

know a little mirror for viewing little hairs
to be pulled
know a ceiling, know a blue ceiling
unevenly painted, poorly kept
a strange burn on the wall
know a mat
torn and rock embedded
know the crank as it cranks
a forward growl
only the faraway thinking of us
i'm dreaming hotly
on stained pillows
mostly of the prince i wove out of memories
all of you tumbling out of my slightly open mouth
it's very dry from the valerian
know a pile of cigarette packs
squashed
know clothes that all feel odd
know money tucked away
and the girl that becomes as she stands behind the counter
breathe and the body becomes heavy

still aboard bad writing train (yesssss)

you know what they say - stop smoking and sell little bits of yourself, dried flakes of your liver, to get inside people and on their salads, hair for children with cancer and stem cells for babies and ears grown on mice, sell little bits of yourself that you don't need, but grow bigger, grow larger, your smallness will not be valued on the market, grow gigantic grow over and up and in with the rose bushes for ever never

keep a list of tips and tabs and pay back your overdue electric bill, tell the story of you again and again until it becomes bright and polished and leave out the bits about staging a fantastical and bloody seppuku at your desk cube

sell little bits of yourself
i repeat three times
america is the country i love because it is the only country where i am allowed to drive a car
this you might say
at a bar
or i don't want fuck people who talk about their feelings for six hours
blech blech blech
the skinny arm girls with delicate neck jewels
dangerous arrow and spear shapes
will just
die

---

would have woke

within or without the stench of struggle

no default redemption set in, pre-anything

in morning with you

wrestle the blessed pressure

of flesh and wind, linen upon skin

have gone out and got those leaves we need

and bulbs of fruit, perhaps the right piece of meat

cut it up to eat, posture in no clench, at ease

there is a way to arrive again from night

to not perform rising, as if it were a step in a process

with the yoke already running, blood being red though blue

resist the rusting hook upon bedsides

it wants to be put in

drag us across the stage

there is a way to be surrounded by light

yet unseen

to be found all at once and not ever at all

do you understand what i mean?

would have woke with you

closed eyes open again

i've really done it now (somehow this is really long, i think because i need to purge myself, which is pretty much always, so whatever please forgive me)

you get exactly what you ask for! i am in an unknown city! in invisible cities there is a city called tamara. did you know that? i was shocked. i was shocked for sure reading on the purple line the purple line which no longer cradles my ass that honor now goes to my little motor my little pikachu looking little vroom vroom. you know, in the city of tamara, according to italo calvino, ITALY'S PREMIERE FABULIST MIND YOU, in the city of tamara there is nothing but signs, you never see the thing but the image that means that thing. i thought, great googly moogly! what can i divine from here? i mean nothing because this is not how the world works. a thin volume of strange prose is not a prophecy and fleeing twelve hundred miles to ever-summer is not the entirety of the battle. or even really a battle. it's a long drive with someone who you like alright but not that much and not enough to spend five straight days with and who will tell you shit about a person you have loved and been trying to peel away from that will making said peeling easier. in other people's mouths you become feckless. yes, i am terrified all the time, but i do not think that i am only capable of fear and that is why i had to leave you know because we could have dragged each other down forever. (btw, if you find any good theories of fear let me know, i am sick of reading about abjection and failure and sex and just want to know about fear but all i've got is uptown problems which is a dangerous text that could lead me to crochety old man hood and my one goal or well one of my goals is to become kind or at least intentionally so.)

i am scared of my food and my clothing, my books, anything that can't be too easily thrown out. scared of needing to lie, scared that i won't be able to hide my terrible unhealthy habits for long enough that they can kill me before i have to do anything about them. i don't hate myself and i'm not having a crisis, i just died again and am now only waking up. THIS IS SO DRAMATIC and I did not intend for it to be. i'm sort of losing it? or like not? the losing-it-ivness is sort of immaterial. i mean to say i was in a grave, though not very grave and now i'm out of it, but i'm sort of dirty and feral, like in that one episode of buffy where she climbs out of her grave and she's all messed up and can't talk and doesn't want to eat and has to be gently reminded of the world. i mean that's me, but with more calling my mom and more calling you and forgetting to pay my bills.

by the way i dream of you. just so you know. in the dream, you show up to a party where i am talking to people and you shout my name and i, then i am high in your arms and blushing and my legs are around you and i'm crying because i'm happy and because i can show everyone how much i love you and just how well you can carry me. it's you every time. we don't kiss, but my tears get your hair wet.

today i said in the mirror, love god and mend. like the city of tamara, god is the sign of a thing and not the thing itself and the trouble is i still don't know what the itself is. there. that's it. there there. (remember what i said about prophecy?) i looked at my body in the mirror also. even less success was to be found in looking that in saying. my mother bcc'ed me on her shana tova email. william thinks i should go to synagogue, but i'm not sure if that's what i mean by god. remember when i was really into india arie as a pre-teen. all i want is a little lover who will fuck me while also respecting the spirit world. I DON'T KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS. i will probably settle for a phd candidate in linguistics who brings up lacan in relationship talks or at least that's what the internet tells me i'm going to do because i have a degree and an apple mac and i read more than two books in the last year and i do in fact masturbate. that's what the internet tells me. i'm going to let phd candidates chew me up. HOROSCOPE PROPHECY.

However

the

city

may

really

be,

beneath

this

thick

coating

of

signs,

whatever

it

may

contain

or

conceal,

you

leave

Tamara

without

having

discovered

it.

austin looks like la and i barely know where to start. there are so many people moving here everyday. my fear is enormous! everything's bigger in texas. pity for the addled new car owner and suffering junkie. there are still beautiful people. i hate beautiful people.

did i tell you memphis is weird? memphis is so weird and graceland is horrible and i am sort o regretting that i ever went there because i actually don't like walking with the dead that much. and that much carpeting is a fucking crime. if i were rich i would buy some horrible glass monstrosity out of architectural digest and cover the place with white leather and i would wear white leather too and i would stop ever bleeding because that shit is way expensive and you can't ever get blood out of anything. did i tell you we picked an ice cream place at random and we ended up in a swarm of very dirty children who were half naked and covered in bug bites, wearing sagging underwear, and i thought, i don't know what to do about this damn country at all.  people stop wherever they please there, sides of highways whenever they want, but there are still farmer's markets and tight-panted bearded types (you know the dreaded word) and it falls away into texas which is wide and flat and has a STAR on every juncture on every bridge you could drive under. what is cool but lots of color and patchwork and you can find that anywhere, there are coffee shops everywhere, and there's always free wifi when you look like me in a flippy skirt and a small mouth. and these days i so badly want to be cool, but in a way that involves more leather and a lot more gray and shaving the back of my head. it's so expensive to look like i could be trouble.


by the way i am reaffirming my dedication to writing terribly today. I AM GOING TO WRITE VERY BADLY NOW FOR A TIME. everything i touch is going to be a dusty horrible rusty and tangy and gross. invisible cities a fabulation and my ass my ass MY ASS. ghenghis khan you can me out of this place.

i'm still thinking of you by the way. just want you to know.

i am going to be a very bad writer for now!
i am going to write the worst tripe ever!
for now

william says he's exhausted by people leaving
we joke that everyone we know is dead
(new york city is a graveyard for chicago)
he brings me flowers
because "in any case here's some flowers"
are those for you girlfriend
a man shouts on the bus
THEY ARE FOR MY DEAD FRIEND
MY DYING FRIEND
I AM TAKING THEM TO HER AT THE HOSPITAL
he says he can't cry
he cries anyway
i tell him do the sally bowles!
he shouts fuck maxamillian
i shout i already do
he shouts me too

take my couch
take my clock
(touch my cock)
take my shit away from me
(i realized i don't not like stuff
i just don't like my stuff)

seriously everything i write is going to be terrible
desperate and scared
we cried in my bed and in a patch of pachysandra
i have been drunk a lot this week
I'm ALL out of tearz
you were such a mainstay
you're my family now
i don't want a repeat of last time
and actually this has been so much worse

this is to say
xcuz the big melting sloppy feelings

HA CHA CHA CHA

yr a 1der mr blumquist yr a an absolute monarch butterfly, now let me tell you about the time a manboy administered a popular science test to me beer in his hand i said i'm not gonna know any of this stuff! but i only got 1 wrong this is how the situation ended being a date not a date per se but something akin i mean he get handsy in the taxi after he got handsy on the outdoor dance floor after he decided to smooch me when i was shit talking another manboy you know from my old canvassing days the one you know who made my insides go cold i mean haha! i never wanted him to touch me but he was always all about his hands on my shoulder or trying to hug me or whatever and i hadn't seen him in forever you know and i wanted to be ruder but couldn't do it so i just shit talked him after he walked away and so the scientist advanced degree weapons grade scientist i was talking too much was i was probably talking too much and any long story short it was a fairly underwhelming evening mr blumquist

okay i drunk now mr. bloom, mr. quist, mr. twist, you know i have a friend who calls herself twistine, it's a corruption of christine and have you seen the piss christ, do you remember when the piss christ was everything all the time, remember when rudolph guliani was mayor (dickhead), you know in my head mr. guiliana, mr julia, mr. gills is still the mayor of new york the only mayor of new york, honestly remember it though i was wee! really i do! praise be to the most high i will forget this time, i mean the intra-graffiti times though there were no manboys then only the shining shimmering WW (you will remember him, i pined for him, though he drooped and withered beneath my gaze, i was always mistaken about that which the that the with of whom would perhaps which which which boyness) oh brother mr. venkat mr. tres panchos i am hard pressed to remember anything at all!

have i told you about the time a rolly pole-y fell outta my hair onto my desk. yes, having a body is a disgusting and humiliating experience. cf. 2001 circa 2001 though pre-developing a theory of such as i was mostly disembodied (i touched and froze). have i told you i am ghost? no perhaps not? there are bugs in my hair. have i told you? have i told you anything at all? oh mr. nevermore mr. evermore i am drunk i am good i am gone. that suit looks good on you tonight. it suits you. HAHA. praise be. let's move on.

once i loved

tate is west

to the northwest

o wee i am just a little person in this great big sea

this great big scene of people

what is past

when it bleeds into right now

so easily

a big black duffel bag in the room i am staying in

i left it here years ago 

open it up to find old costumes and clothes of mine

capes, wigs, dresses, farming shirts

my old life almost

rags ringing still with those rhythms

in his house

his new house

with his new man

who is strange to me

photos of me are on the wall

are in the new book

but this man really won't touch me

with his hands or his mind

not with his eye

big suburban windows

through them i look out onto burnt lawns and the airport

just beyond the river

i haven't made it very far yet

from the airport

or the past

which, wrecked and misunderstood,

sits before me

i sit before my own image

and i sit before this man

yet another example of

i once loved and believed in many fragile things

thought the places and people i loved would be salvaged

excused from this process of change

time passing over and through what we love 

i remember this land, this face

from a many turned page

bewildered by old costumes 

i wore when it was all felt beyond forgetting

all my sins all present all accounted for

1. i told the story of you to people who know you, to people who had been in your house, opened your doors. it was yesterday. i wonder how long we will continue to speak each others' names. i will tuck your name behind my tongue where i have put so many other names. i will water my silence. saliva gathers in my mouth. i will not spit.

2. i've never kissed anyone. my hair always smells of cigarettes. i always have a headache.

3. i will lie. i will not lie but i will try to put off telling you the truth for as long as possible. this constitutes a lie.

4. the blood approaches the surface of the skin still inside the veins, taps at it with a sluggish punch. i don't shift shapes, i was not built of clay, summoned from the sea or pulled out of the air. it is very possible that creatures from other planets would cower in front of me because i will live an absurdly long time for a carbon-based life form and my nails keep growing after i die and i and my ilk have been known to put metal in our faces and our genitals. all i know is that i have always been bad at sleep. too much too little, though doctors would say it matters which. the blood is always a dull push after i walk for years. for minutes. i meant minutes. i am trapped in here.

5. DRAMA DRAMA DRAMA

6. i mean it won't seem dramatic, but i am terrrrrriblllllle (you know this word as it is breathed at parties or over coffee). although actually i have no idea what other people say about me. is this normal? though, no, i can say for sure "chronic inability to take anything seriously" is somewhere in someone's thoughts at the times when i am alive. maybe my ass and eyes and hair. i get that a lot too.

7. do not repeat this to anyone. i cannot control myself. but i wanna be a nice person. life is so long. i don't think i can go to parties for another forty years. i've never kissed anyone. my hair always smells like cigarettes. i always have a headache. i take really long showers! i am killing the earth too, you and me together, murderers. natural born killers.

8. once somebody said to me, "you're giving me this look like, this right here next to me is my brother and we're together." what was that about?

9. i don't want to talk about this.

10. don't talk about her like that.

11. there's a forest in the bed time tale. in this forest are creatures that can smell the souls of the people who live in the village. these creatures shift shape, are built of clay, were pulled out of the air, and summoned from the sea when the sea is near. if you smell right they send you certain thoughts. when you don't want to wake up, which is a lot, you will see your body peeling back to reveal a smaller you trailing a cord of blood behind you. your body will peel back and back and back until you are too small to be counted. or you will see knives sliding into your flesh but you will not bleed because you are made of marzipan. you become a porcupine. when you cannot sleep, you will conjure your hand pulling the trigger on a revolver. you have never seen a revolver. you have never held one. there is no magic in this world.

12. it'll be okay, i'll be driving all the way there.

i dont want a new life

furniture gone,
trim fat off life
a possibility of bones beneath this
bare dark wood floors
a savannah reflecting light from windows
dark luminous skin
naked cant a body just be
what is with all this shit
i need to be able to locate the sun

to eliot:
"i dont want a new heaven and new earth
only the old ones
old sky old dirt new grass
nor life beyond the grave
god help me or ill help myself
by living all these lives
nine at once or ninety
so that death finds
me at all times and on all sides
exposed
undefendable
inviolable
vulnerable"
alive"

twitching with the flies

like skin wrapped around a void,
the hollowness of being a vessel-channel
today the echoes are loud

it is a beautiful day,
the lady came by to confirm that we demolished the greenhouse
and filled in our poop hole.
we did a good job
even where the rules don't make sense.

fox found some huge zucchinis in the garden
and i have stopped twitching with the flies.

i am having a hard time, feeling really unclear,
broken record player on repeat,
ungrateful for the chocolate cake of my life which has been placed before me
because what can i do about trayvon martin
what am i doing about international human rights violations
running through, could i be making more of a difference if i offered my body and my spirit somewhere else

but, there's also,
today
here,
this is my life.
intricate, spiralling, not totally consumable-comprehensible,
watering the garden, smoothies, empathic,
learning myself and learning this place and signed up for a course on anatomy and physiology
because i never want to stop learning
because there are so many books in the library...

fires in southwestern oregon

here, the air is "unhealthy"
and the sun is red
behind the smoke.
it's eerie.
the kids at work are to stay inside.
there are masks you can get if you have to be outside for long, have to breathe the ash and smoke in the air,
a fierce grandma in merlin isn't flinching, is still watching TV,
teenager: "hey dude check out that sun, huh?"
i don't know
i don't know
i don't know
21000 acres of fires in my neighborhood is more than i can conceive of
what do we do when the storms make fires
what is "normal"
i knew about fire, in theory;
i want to make a lasagna and bring it to someone
i want to walk around the sanctuary and touch things
i want to cry
i want to see fire and not just smoke, feel heat,
but we are a few miles away and there are crickets and barking dogs, the germinating seeds are cool and moist in the dark garden soil, there are stars behind the smoke. we are safe. i feel powerless.
so close
so close

write about your mother, write about your motherrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

git crazy with me
say to your boss
and this is important
i have hated every single minute of this god forsaken period of employ
it was always that i was a little fuck up
i'm not romancing my brokeness
(it's not poverty and i do recognize the difference missy)
but i would so much rather fail
I LOVE FAILURE
ALL TYPES OF FAILURE
LET US CRASH OUR MARRIAGES INTO EACH OTHER
LET US FOOLISHLY EMBEZZLE FUNDS
LET US GO TO PRISON
LET US MOVE TO SECTION 8 HOUSING
LET US FOOLISHLY ENGAGE IN COITUS WITH THOSE UNSUITED TO US IN THE MOST BASIC OF WAYS
LET US NEVER SAVE A SINGLE PENNY
LET US DIE BECAUSE WE DID NOT SAVE MONEY FOR OUR RETIREMENT
LET US BECOME ADDICTED TO THINGS THAT WILL KILL US
LET US PUT OUR FURNITURE IN THE ALLEYWAY
LET US ABANDON OUR FRIENDS
LET US LET PEOPLE FORGET US
LET US ALLOW OUR RELATIONSHIPS WITH OUR RELATIVES TO FESTER AND DEFLATE
LET US PICK AT OUR SCABS
LET US BURN OUR SKIN WITH CHEMICALS AND RAZORS AND LET US NOT SEE THE DOCTOR ABOUT THE PERSISTENT STABBING PAIN IN OUR ABDOMENS
LET US SQUANDER OUR INTELLIGENCE
LET US NOT BECOME LAWYERS
LET US PASS OUT OF THE WORLD UNNOTICED THOUGH WE ARE SURE WE EXISTED BECAUSE IT IS NOT IMPORTANT THAT EVERY SECOND AND EVERY PERSON BE RECORDED AND NOTED
LET US BECOME LONELY
FOR WE ARE LONELY IN ALL BUT NAME

there is some fantasy somewhere that one can be marked to be real, looked at and looked at until you are almost invisible these are not divergent in anyway there is no difference between these two and i would like to be alone forever if that's alright with you because i can take the jealousy and the possessiveness and the madness and the boundaries that are unclear and the quietly building resentments and even the ecstasy but not not not the logistics

a half pitcher deep
walking down an empty side street
after a hurried squeeze bye
and a remember when snort
the wind moving through the trees like always
in the summer in the summer
the voice of the rustling leaves
a friendly foreign presence, our little ghost
that you don't speak to or mention
it's always there of an evening

that's it
that's all
i never need to write another poem again

and then he said, NO DON'T ACTUALLY CATCH IT. GEEZ

zoom zoom priest
pleaze
pleaze pleasze me
hold on to the tssss phwish
(coca cola delicious smacking noises)

maybe you want to just rest
but there's nothing better than dreaming about resting
depending on the rain
a hip swing up against something solid
and after the fish scale dress
pooled on the floor
and a hip swing against something solid
but so
much
slower

i am talking to you from around a mouthful of toast
that i am taking hours to chew

you can smash with your eyes
and yes there is a period of this
zoom zoom priest
hold on to the wall
as tssssssssss phwish the room tips over

what's me in the morning, me in the noonday, me in the evening?
it's me
baby baby zoom zoom priest tsss pwhish
it's still me

kuh-tssss kuh-tssss kuh-tssss mmmmmhmmmm
drop into the knees
popping invisible buttons
fish scale dress
as long as you're not standing under florescents  
you'll look damn fine

but it's the bruise blue that holds
in the morning
on another dried out, hiccuping face across from your own
a mouthful of toast
chewed over hours
hum in the bathroom, act like nothing happened
that your button bruised hips dropped into the knees
were never even there

coca cola delicious smacking noises
it's me, it's still me
the police will catch you smashing things in the noonday light

living is the most intricate torture anyone could have designed for me
yes
i was so sad this saturday, sadder than i have been in a long time
it is so teeth jangling to never know
now that god is gone to roost
if you are sad because you are sadness
or if you have a terrible life

some wretched little hope lives in me
and it is wretched
always spinning out calculations of better-tude
fawning over good ideas
not letting me fall asleep

my wretched hope
i love you

---------(for the intellectuals)----------

in this light! i have given up realism (again again the same disavowal, each time with more feeling). i was in high school once (yes yes i know difficult to believe) i have read shaking-his-spear and i know all about this mirror up to nature, but of course if we read our sontag carefully she will tell us that the art is a thing in itself, that you must pass through, that you might hold, or sit in (ariana reines calls it a sieve) and i am heading towards a gentle wordlessness, perhaps i do not like myself in words, where i am too dramatic and too effacing and too harsh

i will take a video recording device out to the woods and bury some friends up to their waists where they will draw full circles with each others help

it's a sergei o day
you know
perfectly democratic and ordinary and tired
this is everyday
yes this every day every way

i could say this very intricately
i do not want to
i cannot read anymore theses in twisted english

i i i i i i iii ii i i i i i iiii i i i i i i
clatter crash clang
i have nothing of my own to say
there are wars we cannot see

maybe i'll develop a very specific taste for
erotic literature

always promising making promises alice
blue dress white smock
a diseased brain that lights up different on the scan
i'm tired of my body and my brain and my horrible little self

i could have gone to Georgetown u know

little little gnome little wart little snail little grease stain little little little little garrison of flies buzzing in the doorway little troll little cobbled together barely functioning homunculus little little enough to swim in the bathtub little tooth little snaggle little praise little known little corner little room

absorb myself!

who's leaving who this time? (again, a theme for violins)

i swear i swear i swear i'm gonna yuke like all over the place my legs feel like jello you are my friendship rock of womanhood civilization i am so so sad this weekend this week i am so excited for you so excited for you so excited for you so excited that my bitterest rivers flow sweet such that we can kiss and not feel aroused my traitorous body at last feels nothing its bones damp and its nerves damp we did the sentimental thing which was like a funeral for the not-dead the just-leaving promise you will call me i read lorca i thought the repetition makes no sense i am growing tired of repetition it is so so easy so so so so facile and limpid and crystalline and easy easy easy easy there easy now easy now it is so easy to repeat yourself i said lorca lorca lorca why all the repeating the repetition is so so boring as the man and three women step to each other closer and closer whispering on the edge of the woods i am not interested in this anymore except when we are all always having been being on the edge of heartbreak not the woods not the grass not even the clear sky but the thunderstorms and concrete and holding a cellphone up to play music cupping your hands around it to blast it out in a very specific trajectory round/under chain link everywhere sweat underneath shoulder straps everything damp my bones my nerves my notions here here here like a symphony like ravel's terrible bolero that refuses to resolve at the very last moment the moment in which we have been playing charades and it's turned into war i am so so so so so excited for you i am excited for me i am excited for us YOU WERE ALWAYS THE MOST MOROSE DRUNK everyone's mumbling death or talking about their new job are you king of groupon yet are you the king of my heart we could all fuck before we go our separate ways my nerves my nevers my bones all damp the day ends in a cold bath and a headache

democracy museum

one night among all nights
we make war in the sky with noise lights
we make this peaceful war time most real
gathering on the hills we otherwise never come to
honoring the freedom we do not understand

reeking of wasted time
whores and hours waltzing on asphalt

we clench the image of free people
til it bursts absurdly
from darkness under pressure
light blooms


there is an orchestra playing
there is a dim din lulling
americans' obedient awe.
their subdued faces awfully independent.
phones turned toward god
mine eyes toward the ground.

July 4th

despite birdless skies and foxless lanes
clapping & looking longingly at the hills beyond our windows
with hungry telescopes

on fourth of july
the spectacle
of independently divided peoples
united daily by rhythms of peaceful war
skies lit up with what are
the sounds of bombs.
contradiction, hypocrisy, greed,
blooming into metaphorical nights
phones upturned
faces sagging toward light

to even mention the word
america brings up the crippling potency
of absurdity.

,

DECEMBER/2011

i'm tired of the care to know myself
i've investigated into smithereens
and what's it good for anyway
if at the end of the day,
you think more than you speak
you dwell more than you laugh
you doubt more than you run

i'd like for a change to lay down
this weight
what am i so scared of anyway?
that if i swim in the pool of my tears
i'll enjoy the company of fish
or more, that they'll enjoy mine

am i really so selfish?
to not see that we
all
enjoy a good swim

ravenous

more than anything else
i love to be alone
not for the masturbation on the image, but
for the hunger that surrounds
the solitude that is the question
where will i go
what is this day to me?

never in the present happening it seems
i am to be found usually outside of it
one way or another
circling time as animal
but unseen to the idiot

i feel ravenous friends
every day i trim a wing
as to tailor flight
toward the ground
every night i twitch and pace
toward something else
much less
knowing this failed bird
this buoyant creature
succumbed by acedia
unable to pray
its own and certain way

a window becomes overgrown
unable to swing open when once
it was never closed
not against light,
neither cold nor night

nothing of this world has been built to consume
a being full of curiosity
thinking and feeling are constant revolutions against madness
what reaches out to us and takes us into it?
asks us to go somewhere
something ugly hisses silently  
you're nowhere for no good reasons
just fear
what asks us to stay here in imagination's wasteland
ego preserved up in facades and cables and locked doorways
the sidewalks we have to walk to be guided by the dead will of men
adults are just laying here, some are waiting in lines
i am remaining?

engage me in strength of energy and wonder
what's with the subtle blood drain
prick here prick there
little by little waning the soul's hunger
often i rise i find myself dizzy
perhaps this is why

hardly ever in the unfolding present moment
usually situated forward or backward
neither are true movements
but relations, reactionary
from zero, stillness, center
forward and backward are strategies
against disappearing into
this collective grave

Saturday night party cycle

Did I mention there is no more “death for the living” left for you? You’ve gone through your options. Tried on all the nuances of American freedom. So this next bit will be challenging

Real

Life vs. Death

You vs. You

A long time vs. 25 years

Beauty vs. Beauty

Participate vs. Disappear for real

9/11 vs. 1994

Walk vs. run

Lies vs. truth

Water vs. wine

You’ve got to gather all your parts boy

And burn them to create a moment of wholeness

And make a decision while within

What does it feel like this light

Is it worth it

What will I do if

Tomorrow this pile I built

Falls, just falls apart

into ash

Did I mention

There is no death fit for you

One taste and you jumped the gun

Went beyond the one life the you were born to live

Though an agony of time drags you from behind

Often never forward from back

Because you sit outside everything that is not you the basic earth itself and you

you’re caught in a liminal lane between what is and what’s not

between war and war

If you go to that party its for the love of smoking cigarettes

Such company among others gives many a folk enough reason to

why sit in the pee-warm shallows of 2013 looking for marriage and jobs

Smoke because modernity disappoints now on the surface of skin

It used to take longer for our collective lies to percolate

It used to be subtler than happiness

Hate the pigeons and rats for the truth they reflect back

Hate the mirror and the face that lies within

If I go to that party it is because ill come back home trashed

And get to begin the return to integrity

Use the hangover as a useful distance

with what I can again become in just a few short days

of gym time, celibacy, raw vegan food, no sugar, no gluten

A worthy complexion always forms after punishment

A worthy distraction is that which can occupy time
without us needing to

A white man looking in the mirror cannot but hope to always exist 

Guilt and shame are temptation’s toys

If I go to this party it is because I got sick in the museum my mind

Walking its predictable hallways

I lost my voice after calling out what I find

with a dim watt of TV english

From cell to cell         I feel, I think,     this is

ugly, cool, beautiful, wow, interesting, hmm, I think, I hope

What must I announce? And to whom?

Who knows how to listen if none know how to speak

Who knows how to think if none know how to feel

Where does a scream go without any woods to echo through?

What is the point of hunger if there always a plate full of food?

What is a poem without its poet?

How’s a child to grow if there is none to look up to?

What's an adult supposed to know if life is spent looking back?

What got me up here in the first place?

Why can’t I get out?

Where is a window I can lean out of with a rette?

Where’s a good girl’s proper gasp of breath?

Where’s an old fashion romance and grip of breast?

Someone please come knock me down.

Someone come knock me down.

Someone hear me

Someone knock me down

Out of this tower

“you’re missing out on a pretty lovely night”

well that night is here with me too

i'll stop when the coffee gets out of my system, i'll find my breath and my silence again

daddy protect me
daddy deliver me from evil
daddy save me from daddy

daddy daddy daddy daddy
put tarantula eggs in my mouth
i'm dead serious daddy

i wish to cultivate a small voice
to silence my green-hued brilliance
this likeable lickable
to turn the corner around cleverness

"hey yahoo answers, how do I tell my girlfriend she’s beautiful if I find all corporeal forms inherently repulsive"


i do not wish to join the armies of men

you should know
for instance
your touch was inaccurate
i did not like that you closed your eyes
and that you were silent
but the overcast skies still make me want to sleep on your chest
or at least call you

i am all soft bruised peaches
when i am not noisesome
you should know this
you know this
already i suppose

conversations with people whose age I cannot determine, due mostly to my inability to judge these things, but influenced a great deal by their inability to identify with those who have had children and reached stability

even (especially?) Frank O'Hara went to grad school
in michigan!

i'm sorry for when i'm overheated and haven't had a cigarette in a while
and want decisions to be made now now now!
but the blooming roses of the unairconditioned
and you how old are you?
when we have all fucked and been fucked and been drunk and paid credit card bills
and still
i'm not an adult??

oh boomer baby
baby baby baby stay-baby babied to your grave
not even functionally true!
do you soil your pants - no!

option 1) the toddler has no teeth with which to bite world. it is easier to blame your own gums for not protecting you against the nibbles of your city than to blame your city for nibbling you.
option 2) the adolescent can still laugh. the teenager can still know the tightness of best-friend-itude. we babies know the damp joy of the cupboard in the kitchen where we die together playing clapping games as the bombs come up over the horizon.
option 3) luv u mom n dad
option 4) in our dungarees, bright colored blocks, we were only stopped when we knocked things over

oh wee little bairn
born under a bad sign
bjorn all out of line

i saw a marathon runner shit her pants
her nylon, neon-piped specialty shorts to be more exact
all down her legs it went

memory is shit anyway - India Rs 295, memorable the new money blonde wood book shop, the boutique salwars, the fan and pink city walls in gray florescence, the strange drinks and the "your awfully forward for a sophmore" but inside the pages only the passage on his body, but what did my suckers latch on to then? sorry arundhati.

i'm smelling bharat everywhere these days. the street festival tent. inside the wrist of the woman that grips the pole next to my head on the train. the corner of the bar. someone drinking down bidis round an unseen corner. phir bi dil hein hindustani? i imagine i read every book differently before six months ago (this is why i have given away most of my books because it as if i have not even read them and so must start over again), but the silly thing is that i bring the six months with me, so the six months is always six months from today. i see wider now, i said to him, everything is different now. i already forgot what changed though and this is why memory is shit anyway.

you have a terrible memory, kitty, no no no my memory is just for the things you shouldn't have to remember, for the placement of objects and the color of sunburns, why are you talking to me like that? what is this about? okay okay okay shhhhh let me pet you.

if forgetting is an act of violence, then i am the most violent person i know.

medici pope?

i am going to dig up saint augustine and eat what's left of him
Mrs. I'm-Not-Special-But-I-Don't-Deserve-This
This Is Beyond the Pale
in woad paste decorated, nibbling on postcards
standing above a ditch
the drool from the mouth eroding the dirt
grooving out a deep divet
over centuries

oh yes when he was a student james joyce
and we will call him james
and not stephen dedalus
couldn't trust his annotation stippled textbook
and he saw hell
for fifty pages!

such a latinate ego, what a notable quotable

can we name the thing? i mean the mid-calf deep in lake water, too hot in unshaven evening wear, hundred dollar silk dresses, under bruise purple dusk light sighing, a kissing only religion, the sense the sense the sense that there is a sort just a little bit of maybe just possibly some - i swear it's right here i promise i saw it beheld it held it hold it hold up slow up, but what are cloaked wizards and proud god smashers on tv when you close your eyes but don't intend to go to sleep?

a vestibule off the side of the face
hanging behind you
double

you say you believe in astrology or the tides
not so wrong i guess
we grow big inside of ourselves
we promise ourselves we'll go to heaven
we color in a punishing hand.

give me some of your bourgeoisie minute
now cmon
im not well
easy on me

pour some wine
there's no shield, i don't cower
i deserve red now and again
dont we all

an archetypal cigarette is a formality
im not well
just need good company
but their eyes beat one easily

we're not well
or am i crazy
two thousand thirteen
a weird time to consider strangers' eyes

we are them
and have been
at once ourselves terribly
longing to remember

they have been dancing behind our veneer
dancing though long since dead
we sometimes dance behind living this and that
and once we longed to die

a confusion for sure
as sure as tears burn
behind the eye
a curtain of tension
memory shakes its fur
dust dances
we've emerged
from among the living
we are dancing now

i.
i was born small
isn't that something
isn't that always the way?

ii.
there's ice cream on the sheets
lay my bare mottled skin down
and i'm in candyland
candyland and my rubber band all possible
my wink zings minty
bedazzled right down to my innards

iii.
sure just tell other people you think i'm beautiful
that'll do us just fine

iv.
our stomachs match
hanging sort of low and sort of heavy
bare down hard on me
bare and fat like me
swinging low and heavy over me
you loom silent
kept your hand skittering across my belly all night

what if you had grabbed it and pinched it and smacked it and pushed your face there and made me cry and said horrible things

v.
i want people to be beautiful
yes
but

that never changes

my billsssss
my mortgage-uh
my divorce
my children!
my life
my bad hair days

class markers for millenials

nothin's good er bad
but thinkin makes it so
there's only interesting
and not interesting
and other people will let you know

(i gotta say ur dang writing and dang self got me through a weirdo time in my life so im doing 4 u a thing the only thing i know how 2 do im making u a lil mixtape for better feelings stay strong james i believe in u okay i'll write ur dang wikipedia article myself)

erry sad baby insists on being a rat, a pile of laundry, a robot, a demon
christ, timmy and alexandra
"the children appear to her to be depressive realists, not idealizing, for the most part, their parents' struggles or modes of survival while at the same time feeling protective of them for their ordinariness of their social humiliation"
pierre lauren hideki leelo buzz
hanging out with garbage

andi'mnotsaying
I AM NOT SAYING
anyone has it harder that anyone else
just that this is new
like a NEW new
that feeling crawling up n up n up
til there's only like three heiresses and a movie star
that aren't flinging themselves against each other to hope something will stick

this     is     all     just    fine
the moving the roaring the calling out
but i don't know what's poison anymore

half a thought in half a moment

today i sat across from someone, over cafeteria trays and paper placemats, talked about oatmeal and anxiety and college majors and our favorite plants, he asked, "what are you doing here? like, why here?"
which seems to be a question i'm confronted with often
when hanging out in grants pass--

(a brief ode is in order, perhaps)
Ohhhhhh, Grants Pass,
how i love the bike lanes on your two one-way main streets,
the community-funded library you support is a testament to perserverance
and to your hatred of taxes.
Oh, let us count the NRA hats,
the $4 biscuit & gravy breakfast deals,
oh, you are exactly what you are,
this town without pretense,
rife with mysteries and interconnected like chainlink
"it's the climate" you proclaim
and i say
it's the moment
and the possibility
it's the land
and the spilt blood
and the biscuits


yeah, there are lots of reasons too,
here i am amid many webs
and also much of my time i spend alone,
not really a lot of "people like me" here
so the funhouse mirrors of every cashier's and sidewalk-walk-er's eyes
mirror back some other exciting anomaly.
i'm 18. i'm a boy. i'm a girl. i'm a hipster. i'm a farmkid. i'm in high school. i'm refined. i'm a traveller. i'm lost. i'm home.

get home,
pet cats,
reclaim self-definition,
start dancing
draw pictures
fall in love again and again

help help
my dad makes me sad
even when i try to be good to him

finna marry ma bed
nobody's gonna stop me
#liking things that are problematic

hit me with your giga-whatevs
laura dern rilo kiley jenny lee lewis juliette lewis
not so much freaky as circa-freak

listen up, baby bangs
listen up, horn-rims
listen up, radical needle point
what no one tells you
is there's too many of us
and i know that the number of atoms are
finite
and yes, i know we cannot
weigh so heavily on one side of the planet
and tip it off it's course
so
text me later, coffee shoppe

finna sleep til i'm dead
is that right?
brew in the fridge
"it's official, i'm a hater"
there's a schedule for giving up
and the straightness of your nose keeps it

what are you so afraid of?

Nothing. I don't know. My father. The town. My body,
and disease. Heights, small spaces, drowning, you,
poverty. (A little laugh.) I’m not afraid of anything.
Except loneliness, choking, stroke, anything socially-
transmitted, the dark, weakness, guilt, this, you, I
don't know, loneliness, going blind, history, this,
things like this, my father, fathers.

the flat back of your lower incisor
along with your soft flesh
what did you call it?
your armpit fat?
are my concern

i am the king beyond the feet
or just in the toes
putting my hand on the warm place a few hours a day
you are afraid
or want to be afraid
or want to be more afraid than i already make you
or angry with me for not scaring you
and not afraid at all
or just warm warm and aching
underneath my stare

the knee cobbled together by doctors
the lungs held tight by asthma and bike rides
the ass, the overextended lower back
the tummy that will never, never go hard
not like you want it to anyway

did you trust me with your neck or something else?

that's all

i washed my scarf
and i washed my sheets
because you're coming over

i am very tired today
because the washing machine
had an unbalanced load
and i had to separate all my clothes
and wait it out
so very very late

have i said all the words
in all the possible combinations yet
because
i feel my desire for this
construction
slipping

errybody on my facebook feed
is feeling real good about themselves today
here's a gold star for having a base level of decency

oh my god
also
how could i forget

in a test situation
write your cheat sheet on your thigh
and pull your skirt up under your desk

you teacher shouldn't be looking anyway

all i know is this
men so desperately want access to feminity

not your friends, not your drag queens or your good men
or your neither-category-no-need-to-tick-boxes besties
no of course not (though good men, be warned)
i'm talkin the weaving bro flailing past you on halloween
your father when he was in college
the road trip companions once they've reached the secluded cottage

they want it so bad

they want it so bad
they get drunk and put on their friends' skirts
at a house party
and somebody calls them a fag
and they play it up real good and pout and simper
everybody laughs like it's fucking funny

i bet they feel dangerous
they want in on the deal
to feel tall and teetering and animal
to present all wispy hair tendrils and then bear their teeth
i bet they'd want to bleed down their legs permanently
til the skin turns red forever

they laugh like it's fucking funny
and it's not and they know it
don't you always want to become what you're scared of?

bless them

the pussycat dolls are important
kylie is important
rihanna is important
kesha is important
beyonce is very important
and britney is still important too
gwen is important
and christina and willow and taylor and ciara and miley and estelle and nelly furtado
important important important

swish swish
our toes are pushing into the floor
and we're windin'/grindin'
and we're not listening