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