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