Loose Woman

This morning I’ll stretch until I am a loose woman.
I’ll take some trains until I exceed my community;
Then, perhaps doing nothing, perhaps flopping down.
Flopping instead of sitting, rolling when hills.

I’ll let my hair grow all day.
In cotton,
excluded,
I’ll forget as much as possible.

My goal is to spend more time in dreams,
less in the default dream,
which has begun to absorb me.

recondita armonia

everyone wants to write books
the ego is only available to choirs
the love of self is a lousy passion
ICH- das kann doch jeder!
do not stare so inspired kindly study law

japanese death poems

i dog-eared this page in high school—
now, on the train reading about cicadas
the sounds they make the ringing could stop
are you are you waiting for the thaw?
bike ride at night with a t-shirt on
wear a helmet and carry a pen
and paper for the ambulance
driver to take down my death poem

florets

yellow
folds into red, nudging blue over
to yellow again.

Coney Island For Emma OK

Patron saints and your
eight legged god -
strip dancing like crazy,
show off in the tank.

I could write poems
about everything I feel
I’ll never know
or death or death or
death or earth or
earth blood
or caged animals in
bed together trying to
decide who is the
meanest of them all.

cervi

today i was your windmill
and you charged toward me and i saw your gleaming flicker

i drink juice from the bottle
i saw you towards me and i threw myself in circles

being a cyclone
sometimes tossing reeling really I

towards what, I
only the gat knows

if you don't know by now

"what if they die before i get married?
what if they never meet my kids?"
ah, part of him still thinks
mom and dad have all the answers

you can scan anything in 2010

there is a thing called a 3d printer
which prints anything you want
by pooping out hot lil plastic pellets

it's 2010 which means meter is still important but not fucken necessary get me

When You Are Old By W.B. Yeats

When you are full of water and exhausted
and homeward bound on buses, feel the glass
and watch your face in windows as you pass,
and lenses that your hot breath has defrosted;

how many drops have formed against your skin;
like words in sentences across your face.
but one had gone beneath and found a place
to hydrate you and name you from within.

And squeezing out the day's apologies,
arrived at home, remember how it dried.
and rose among the vaporous odes outside,
and hid your praises in anthologies.

Jingle for Fanny's (why didn't they use it?)

Winter's cold and bleak, but then it passes.
The thaw will come. It's time to get new glasses!
The birds and beasts will all be after sex.
And you will, too--also, new pairs of specs!
The bull shows renewed interest in the cow.
You'd better shop and find some new frames now!

JUDY AND KRYSTLE

Hot moon. My lover

scornfully clucks her tongue. The sound

digs a battery out of my back.

Ew, my unpiloted cockpit's

all widened by the calisthenics of scorn.

Scorn is a thick plug

in a tractable earlobe.

but of course,

were she to bounce

I’d freak, my loosened skin

Aswingin’.

Bloat

Because it’s lines are convoluting,
let’s narrate your life--
“At twenty you became a daughter.
At thirty found a wife--”
with decades incrementally diluting.
An adult is a baby. Just add water.

Red #26

I came back wearing red lipstick
I wanted you to know I had changed.

yama farms

Brown shingles, yellow windows, small stones, it is "Chinese architecture" in America. It used to be something else, sort of like all those bungalow colonies, but by then it was just rentals and apartments. Still, nice, a lot of glass panes and small outbuildings.

Neighbors you were friends with, not anything intentional or perfect, but parties and homebirths, and so on, in the country. This portion of that generation made the breakthrough of being too kind to their children, with mixed results.

I am having a "lasers in the jungle" kind of a day. Will Avatar be like King Kong? Will we be like the Yama Farms people? Yes, probably, no, yes, yes (duh). Driving by, the reservoir is almost melting, and I see horse stable ruins, three floors of people's old clothes.

soil will emerge from under my eyes one of these days. i will miss the city and all its dead cousins, and become part of what people walk on. until soil drips out of the corners of my eyes like a leak in the rudder or just a sandstorm i will fight for the field that floors/open bars/open legs/holy helicopters. until that day when my corpse is gravel. 

ghosts

in my dreams the ghosts told me
"we're not chasing you,
just racing toward the same point"
ages ago this thought comes back

my friend robbie can do anything
it's cause he knows how
"once you decide you want something,
it's actually quite easy to do it"

that's what he said!
now he lives in japan sometimes and thrives in the internet

the night and day will pass away
but love will always be
the night and day will pass away
but love will always win

lala la lala

if i were a commoner
and you were a lady
would you marry me anyway
would you have my baby

Machine Wash, Line Dry

holding the fort down,
waiting for the washer to thunder to a halt.
for to take the traumatized stuffs
and hang them, by their own limp weight,
on a cord.

so they hang against the cord,
and are indented.

so when you are full of water and exhausted
and i lay one finger to your cheek
do you stiffen against me

so as you dry and lighten
do you retain my touch.

party

keep putting your red lipstick on
while waiting in the bathroom line
my heart

saw everyone, ol' red lips and ol' girl's brother
he remembered the things i used to do with her
no they're not wooden saxophones

when i marry, i shall be a rock for my friends
an anchor in these murky waters, no,
buoyant, or sailboat

tuff also

3 Teeth and Laughing

The single man who
knows and cares
about babies because
he's known them all his life -
they're not foreign species, no
not crime shriek aliens
reaching out from
stranger's arms.

slide guitar 2

you've got a button eyelid
I would hold it open for the sight of shores unsighted
I would sign up scores un-knighted
I would assemble armies to give you an ocean
and unite divided countries to show emotion
I'd run through the wall, dear
I'd weep in the sea
But a million years won't return you to me

You're a dinosaur's drivel
You're a bird's apogee
You're a melody's opus
and a cranberry tea
mixed with blood oranges
the height of a dream
but I swear I won't lie dear,
you're ancient to me.

I will write you a waltz
and build you a palace
built of blue chalice
lapiz lazuli
Be conspicuous, darling
You're ancient to me

I will redeem my weeping
with soft apologies
I know that it's changed now-
it's always changing
And the lilt of your lace, hon
Impossible seas
makes me rhyme to the moon
and fall on my feet
That have never quite broken
Not once or not yet
But let's first ask the trees, then
before we forget
Always getting cocky
and running down the clock
Til the people arrive.

together

tucking and folding create corners,
eye rolls and shoulders found intimacy,
this is you and me and this is our house.

slide guitar

I wish I had a lover
or maybe just some where to be
it's easy to get distracted
when this flame won't let me see
and the wax is all bedazzled
the sunshine's mane is frazzled
our minor cloudy hassle
we promised to the sea

you hate when I am craving
and still you're craving me
my friends wish that I had you
they've sung us in a tree
your nose was always perfect
and I shiver poetry
you gripped me by the shoulders
you picked those pearls for me

I kissed you at the movie
when I was just thirteen
you laid yourself before me
by night philosophy
you wish that I would sing you
into sweet clarity
but I am just a lover
promised to the sea

Sometimes I dream of leaving
and flying to the sea
where we would swallow pearl songs
and night philosophy
and kiss inside the movies
and revel clarity
but dreams reveal a lightening
what works makes sense to me

Aye eye I

i'm a secret when your eyes are on me.

Procession

When it’s morning and you’re underground,
sleep-burred against the jostling.
When nothing tempts nor beckons nor entices,
nor recommends nor suggests itself,
only lurches to meet you,
for example coffee.

i'm already pregnant

Valentine

One day we'll stretch our pregnant bellies
and strained throats toward the sun.
Hands grasping our own love handles,
and ideas of new ones all tangled up.

Calling all friends,
when will we raise our babies together?

Taking Place

Over the dishes
tipping a gray pan.
Suds half moon.

I can’t see,
but I know,
There is cinnamon on everything.

And salt and garlic and juice.

I can’t smell, but it is known.
This place is taken
by a minute rotting.

Old Phone

Came looping from her,
incessant, same what were they called:
“protestations of affection”
as always, poignant,
as history, full of questions.

And the question is for the receiver.
Tolerant, helpless.
Awed. By the spiraling towards him.
But does not wrap him up.

People in love are completely horrible.

Requested:

Fields of palpable flowers.

Honestly, anything with temperature.
Or color? Or odor, smell. I need it.
Women with faces.
The burn of encounter.
Gravity.
From, towards whatever.
Please.

early valentine for my father

especially radiant today,
on this first afternoon
of springtime sun,
are the splendors of you,
echoing--triumphant!--across
the road map
of your face.

they are
a celebration, perhaps,
of the time you have seen,
long shadows and
golden mornings both,

or a recollection of
the things you have
given
to the place from
whence you
sprang.

Heavy White

Quartz floors and shoes of high sensibility.
A courtly manner, with thrilling digressions.
A tap a tap a tap a how are you mlady?
He was a class act man! A real savant.
He could charm the pants off adam.
But he dwelt among cold bags, shuffle,
clipped to the quick.

it keeps going til the day it stops

On a gray, rainy day
in the dark kitchen
she winds up a fork of long red noodles
all of them twist and spin together in a bundle
she escorts them the short distance into her mouth
where her teeth mash them and tear apart their careful strings
into a soft, homogenous mush
that slides down her throat

later, when her stomach and various intestines
are done with their reductive labors
the nutrients and calories of spaghetti
will reform into the order of her flesh
then fire off into a burning jump
into a quickfire thought
a note of song from perfectly orderly vocal cords

Before, the spaghetti was orderly strings of wet pasta extruding, growing out like hair
before that, a mush of flour, water under machine hands
before that, smooth round wheat grains
before that, a mush of dirt, water

Now they are churning in her stomach
dissolving in a sea of mush
after that, her orderly muscled body
after that, the chaos of shit
after that, the earth

Her body too, orderly muscled, singing in time
changed somehow between the last seven years, and the seven before that
traded out and reformed
mysterious in its orderly skin cells and long strings of hair
in seven more years, slowly breaking down
vocal cords with frayed edges
after that, seven more years,
after that,
After that, a mush of dirt, water
After that,

wish you were here

so this is what life is now,

an endless array of phone calls
and email messages,
the occasional video chat,
a facebook comment
underneath a photo of you
in a silly hat

and the missing
of our arms entwined,
the unadulterated sound
of your laughter,
your voice,
unmarred by distance,
and the
leaping of my heart
at the pleasure of your nearness

snowed in

cooked onions with olive oil in the oven
burnt and soggy and stuck to the pan
i hope i won't die

Surety

unsure what is recreating.
but, nonetheless, levity.
and clear stretches.

fully turn away.
sleep thinking: tomorrow,
when i’m alive, i’ll sunder
pastries with my coffee.

saddles

so is it still violence when there is no violence and
what is it when one sees violence where
there is no violence, just a woman and her
epileptic convulsive movements on a stage and a tall man beside her but not seeing her,
like a scientist ignoring a small and distressed and objected animal.

she puts on a blonde wig and shakes her body. the tall man subjects and objects: "she is bending over--
there is a flower growing behind her--"

the audience, around her in a fan, nods.

but what is it when the woman is not hurt but you
feel viscerally otherwise.

it is your own ghost gasping,

like the dead farmer who is
hovering and moaning over the infant colt who is

so important, a gleaming body, wobbling, but before long galloping
off in the other direction without him.

I wrote these poems midwaitressing. while asking would you like a cup or bowl of avo coco soup? or what a about a hot marinara or almond alfredo we all are equally lost by the amount of choices in life even in this small restaurant blazery and we vanish together into a silence that is unforgiving. At that moment I waft away from the tables and write small dreams that attempt with the greatest of intention to escape the walls of service labor and baloney smiles that breed ruthless schizophrenia. Just like Madam Bovary on her deathbed I am turning green from too much talk of cucumber dip and the ambien I downed the evening before. Here, we are all villains in a pretend world of interaction. No one is a friend here. We work in restaurants, we eat for comfort, and we hate each other.   I write poetry (it's a giant secret.)  

**

rich everglade 

dusty red  

rouge tongues  

hibernating 

together in silver blankets   

 **   

horse lipped and dry-eyed I come to the reservoir 

knuckle me down like your companion  

we watch the water rotate like a pendulum.

 **   

hire me into your eyes 

nosebleed 

gaping tooth  

shipments, canisters 

of dung hearts  

packaged away in the freezer, 

waiting for hundreds of years  

waiting to be reborn in a world less cruel.   

 **   

walnut bones  

catastrophic titles    

** 

retarded your bluff reddens  

we are in swamp territory  

thick muddy glaciers are your forehead, orange whiskers are my teeth  

luminescent hunger is my horse ancestry

knawing is my mother  

** 

the right to hum'

almond cream breath

body born in flux

territory:open

snowflake eyes

reverberating like

a gutter.

**

Excerpt

too much glass around, i walk
down the glass hallway
from here to Queens

stern faced beaten bodied woman
in coat ensemble
reasonably asks for assistance.

Asking everyone, she has no personal relationships.
Being asked, dough face obligation woman
relates personally.
She pocket digs and waits,
fearing weakness judged.

I'm busy in the glass hallway
but I know what's going on.

Woman A (we'll call her Marthe)
is frozen - will she not take
her offering?

Woman B (we'll say - Jill)
looks at nothing; pennies sweaty.
Marthe condemns us to the rat lords or
we are the rat lords

I continue.

I don't like waking up under glass
or eating it
or cleaning under my nails with it
I hate to wear my glass overcoat
I hate walking down the glass hallway

Ater Marthe and Jill and the four hundred twenty four people I noticed at the exact moment I noticed them,

I stop seeing familiar faces.
My feet hurt and it's a long way to Queens.

I used to have a lot of friends
but they all put on their map pants
and walked down the map hallway and
I don't know what to do with that.

Passing

Álvaro gave me a piece of candy.
That’s his opinion.
Later Javi’s opinion of Ismael was ripped up
by the teacher, Javi stayed after class.
In the teacher’s opinion.

Green On Red

Everyone lives
On some sort of island

Death and angels
On the ground

There’s incoming sound
And the man up front
Moves all the time

He’s frantic, dehydrated
He’s the captain but
He's got no authority

Death and angels
On the ground.

the thrill is gone

zulassungs-verfahren
i learned about exits
sometimes, what makes a
good goodbye is just the relief

jetzt
deine letters soll kraftlos sein
doch sind sie noch with feeling of corn husks and dissapointment
uh butch gurl sully sunsut hub
undur duruss druss bun buw
lugubruuus ulwuys whunung
thuh thrull us gun

Fever

Cradle hand coming at me
Picking me apart,
Sifting through
Like I were grain.

PWRCOUPLES

Bonnie and Clyde

Beyonce and Jay Z

Foxy Brown and Jay Z

Tupac and his Girlfriend

Me and my Girlfriend

The really tall guy and the really tall woman with black leggings and no ass at the gallery opening in the Greenwich, CT public library.

greybeard

shame dream fell asleep with the lights on,
frosted image on my dead screen, scratched
by accident my body with a fingernail
surprised, the most sensitive part is dull now

like Vaughn, with his scarred penis?
with the highway bloodlust and semen drip?
no, just me, only me, i'm looking at my old cat man,
hobbling to the litter box, hardly any words left,
begging for release

Broom Game

always more dirt in the canyons, always a fresh track across the floor
there were times when we didn't sweep for months, do you know what happened?
things happened, nothing broke
it didn't get dirtier
it stayed the same amount of dirty

then we were living on a red couch
back then
we were galumphers, fleet-footed thieves getting our bread out of dumpsters
getting our clothes off of sidewalks
the universe seemed ready to give
and we were not ready to clean

sometimes we cleaned
people hated it when we cleaned because they didn't notice
and then we'd say PLEASE DON'T TRACK DIRT ACROSS MY NEWLY MOPPED FLOOR
and they'd look at us like fools and step 5 feet forward to get out of the way of our fresh mop
I never realized that was why she hated me, always mopping around her feet while she tried to dance
I just thought she was crazy
hating me one minute, loving me the next
now she calls me darling and hardly ever acts like I'm dead to her
which is better
because I don't mop around her feet anymore
and I AM a darling.

When Machines Get Wet

Once there were 2 liquid streams
they crept towards one another
made deep in the dust,
crossed in the dirt.

c busten loud

it sounds different
when kate sings:

"i still dream
i wake up crying
you're making rain"

different when i say it,
different when the guy says
"i make it rain"
different when i'm crying
different when i say
"i still dream"
reception,
different when i wake up
different when i rub the stains on our mattress
different when i wake
different
i'm not her,
not a feminine locus of attention
the screen goes black in a second
roll over hope, different,
anxiety the year will just disappear before its ours

what helps
different than her
"i just know that something good is gonna happen
i don't know when"

listen,
don't be such a, listen,
the world is there for you
you can watch the ceiling or the big sky

watch Fanny and Alexander

"Everything can happen. Everything is possible and probable. Time and space do not exist. On a flimsy framework of reality, the imagination spins, weaving new patterns.” (Johan August Strindberg’s A Dream Play, )

In that final scene, in those final words, the grandmother reads in her crinkly voice, breathing insomnia like an old person does at midnight. Alexander curls up like a dead mouse or crumpled cat seeing death too young. Bergman pleads with the audience. I'll give you my soultrip he says, if you dare to feel one single emotion, one tiny quiver of. 

Halt your practice. Do something terribly un-useful and blissfully sweet. 

Should I call Joanna and tell her not to worry?

I'd say:
Speak
A high heart
with string you hold.
You know what that is?
"That's precision,"
a man behind you might say.

Go Get a Job!

No qualifications!
No experience!
No self-respect!
No motivation!
(But:
privilege--
privilege--
privilege-----)

Space

Listen, fine pigeon.
Just gimme a smidgeon.

After the shoes this morning,
I made it through the day
without seeing anything that upset me.

Time in not mine

Time in days of gravel in toes,
like when will the next bag
of Chips Deluxe Cookies arrive?
(two weeks)
And how long will we make them last?
(a day or so)

The waiting for things beyond fingers
now less for edibles
and more of intangibles
like
when will it be easy?
(two more years some say)
And how long will we last hanging on?
(a question I see resting under someone else's fingers).

Those things all out of reach,
delicious when someday mine.

Sandwich Joint

Mk
limbed across
the shivering timbers.
Shedding sun! In a mild environment
she was someone to prepare for,
a potency.
Take hold, she might say,
or take heel! We are soldered
in place if we don’t shake a leg.
Scald a pot. Be good to a man,
and enjoy.

But the bartender, he couldn’t stop.
He enjoyed her.
Like a mermaid wallowing
in the shallows, she was eating her parsley;
she was milking the lemon
over the ice.

The Wild Internet

A skein of poetry flung out into the void
(0) Comments
A Facebook comment to a beautiful redhead you met once at a wedding
She never answered it
A posted video of your latest performance art project
5 views

The internet is a wilderness in the way that New York City is a jungle
Who knew you could be so alone among so many people
In the middle of the rainforest, you can call and call
and never wonder if a person will answer; you know they won't
Out here, there's always a chance
There's always a waiting silence
Wavering, suspended




Sometimes we cry into the wilderness
"Eleanor Rigby"
Tommy Steele 1982
Liverpool, UK

Wednesday, February 3

put up a feeder
black seeds in the cherry tree
chomped by tiny birds

I've been lighting candles
and making strange
wishes. Bad wishes.
Wishes I'm not proud of.
I've wished for things to
happen that would hurt
people I love. I'm not well.
I'm starting to toy
with things I don't understand.

google voice message for dad

Hi, hi, it's me. I'm down to about the training in very very probably, and I'll
I am.
I have some fun, meaning.
8.
I quarters of thing, call me bye.

brecht

"And that girl the world, who gives herself and giggles
If you only let her crush you with her thighs,
Shared with Baal, who loved it, orgiastic wriggles.
But he did not die. He looked her in the eyes."

Artemis

Working on will power
via elimination,
and emails

"I like to take in
everything at once"
hot broth,
sage smoke

House Guest

Coke can rolling between

I like to move around

Everything you own

Then move it all

Back again like

I was never there.

Specimen

A twisted and growing
flattened out and ordered.
The bigger one holds
his little
still.
And the dead things
curl
and go somewhere
piece by piece
I guess.

collaboration

your thick German accent makes you hard to understand
they asked you to slow down, stop, repeat yourself
but you keep going and talking
and they don't know what you're saying
or why you're saying it
even i find you hard to follow
and i can't hear you because they're all talking
why aren't you doing something about it
sometimes i just want to sshhhhh you
but you sound kinda smart

tomorrow we'll keep you quiet

the cut

I slept a fearly long time
and now slouch for the corners, paranoid.
where are my contact lenses?

sometimes, girls cut their hair
to let their boyfriends know it's over.

Canister

Finger nails painted white,
flood gates,
or
the other day gone.

The spirals around
touch
instants together
lightly
somehow.

the little one on the corner

i wandered around aimlessly
no list, nothing at home
that looks good
oh that too
probably don't need it
i would never buy this in Bushwick
my basket is full
ringing it up
quickly but still so slowly
more and more lined up behind me
i grew nervous
the man behind piled up his five little items next to all of mine
i worried they'd get mixed with my fancy cheeses
and peach mango salsa
and 2 for $5 pita chips
only one register open
i felt their glaring eyes on the back of my head
$97.34 he announced
i never felt so naked before
so this is what Manhattan's like

old friend

portrait of ari fenton, 2005
season pass at six flags
great america,
"its playtime"
black and white
john lennon glasses,
thick hair and beard,
open mouth,
sideswept

now you live in israel and who have you become?