---

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.