Professional Development Day

I am full of forgiveness.
Tomorrow as I bend my middle over cardboard
tomorrow as I bend my middle
tomorrow I will speak to you again
bent through my middle.

I went to the woods last summer
I built a tent in the woods last summer
I open my arms in an empty intersection
I close myself through the middle.

Some people learn to work.

I wonder what they want.
I put all of my women in the tent.
All of my friends
we eat and eat in the middle
in the middle of the tent we eat forever

I open my arms in the empty tent
the woods are closed
tomorrow I will speak to you again
I am full of forgiveness

I want to learn to work
again my legs my cardboard skin
I want to go to the woods this summer
tomorrow I want to go.

Tomorrow I won't learn to work
again tomorrow I meet my women
we talk and it is effortless
we eat and eat my women and I.

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.

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.

BYE EVERYONE!

Well, bye.
we would say well and then "blank" but
we've chosen to do the usual thing and just -
bye.

I'll miss you! I ripped the skin off my knuckle
and woke to the sharpness of old blood
in my nose

before I would type in one place and then in another
but now i just do the other, this.

I'll miss you!

cramp

curly muscles
foot betrayal
toes cross one over the other over the other
i'm not going out tonight

folk

lady margot lady margaret
my lady my lady
my margoret, maggoret
five and twenty all - forgive me!
frigid embroidery all - forgive me!
no leave asked by the by the by the by the

wan low haunch-ed things I want your hunched things I want I want I want I want your
what?
toady
throated voice
sings,
you zither smothered polyp kings

no dinner

narrow electric line eyeball edge AH!
something's wrong, there are rules to seeing -

i named all the tulips in the garden
they have multiple but specific genders

neon lights are like mothers;
they try to be helpful but make things blurry

zooming backwards I smell meat again
the bonny cuckoo sings "meeeeeaaaaaat" god I'm hungry

i'm in the city again there are no tulips
my eyes my eyes my EYES!

I will go around relating to things
"hello!" and "excuse me" and "kiss me oh -"

OH! MY EYES! If I pull out my eyelashes at work
can I go home and nap?

TODAY IS MY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!!

big plastic collar
big plastic hands
rat rat rat rat
rat circus man

rat circus man.

a good act, but -

a rat's heart is a perilous thing
so quick to fail
crushed by new environs
and a rat circus man so quick to anger!

oh rat circus man, remember when we were young?

today i remembered my old guinea pig

My guinea pig
named for a dream
died of constipation
I think
though I realize these things are usually symptomatic

years earlier he had experienced
a deep deep deep
despair
which was, of course, also life threatening
but this proved curable,
if you'll excuse my little boasting heart

little blank brain

I forget the five stones on the ground
and the hundreds in the pile
a tangle of gangling legs - and what I used to do

garden party

all the good ladies
lie down in the grass

everyone's skin smells of bread

the boys are all barely awake
they look sick and are too warm
they hop over you and want to get away
get away!

we've stopped having fun.
my eyes feel creaky.
That can only mean I've been weeping again,
and here I am, not even knowing

you think you're tired, mr. so and so?
oh no, stop right there
think about me and how none of my objects work
all of my sisters resting
all of my resting suitors
all of my sisters resisting
all of these -
these goddamned beautiful birch trees
and that great fucking lake

mystery!

My thumb against the telephone
is a wet mystery

why every time i touch the two
things become slick, well...I can't imagine.
the two things both become things I don't understand
to misunderstand one's own thumb!
so go all of my days.

I used the telephone half as much as I thought I would
today
I used the telephone twice as much as I did
yesterday
I use the telephone about four fifths as much as I mean to
on the weekends
I use the telephone not nearly as much as a normal person would
at work

and all the time! my thumb!

I gchatted with Emma earlier

When I asked her,
Emma said to go and look at blank things.

my cheek against the floor, i felt aligned but overdressed,
wanted a bamboo temperature,
one sweaterless second.

Alas, it was not to be. Today was a day for walking two feet
and stopping
and wa -
and stopping.
Today was a day for looking at blank things.

cheap rug

Got no plans
outside of a year
palm down through musty carpet
held on with upturned nails

press, gravel blood hands
sideways at the mirror
forever plastic edge,
sugar hair

dressed for work

damp pants damp shirt
shirt thighs what is going on
it's cold forever and forever colder after all the sweat
terror and boredom mostly
and outfits
especially outfits, foreign things
approaching from outside and engulfing
outfit nightmare outfit apocalypse
outfit ether outfit chloroform
who is outside outfit? not me!
I'm in outfit struggling you should have seen
me on the weekend

a maiden in the flower of youth

Once I had a long rest
i planned to pursue my fortune
the sun was high and then low again

I had a very long rest
long enough that i would be able to do something after
gray clouds brightened and dimmed

I thought "I am taking care of myself"
it was the first step.
I was sweaty for a while, and then cool

When I am old, I will reread this and know what went wrong

unreasonable evening

Go to the seance
gun in your heart
stay up all night, itchy, holding hands.
Tomorrow we will call each other,
describe baskets of pears,
endless pears and three balls of pure love and
a thousand impossible hypotheses and also pears
umpteen pears, appearing and rotting as soon
a spirit gift, a guilty gift, a burden.

barbecue

The soup was a disaster
seeming holy, misleading
always flavor escaping

I put on a blanket and
snuck past some beautiful girls.
I had to get away.

Outside was like living in a wet dog.
Already two imaginary fights
and a third one on the way.

How I shivered! The blanket was shaped like a man
How did they end up on my patio?
My patio is everything broken.

Someone screamed; a splinter
sympathy everywhere, automatic.
Splinters hurt. What should I have done?

romaunt

let one think you are miserly
I mean let no one
well maybe "one"

I mean, a wise lover should let no one think
or should she?

A wise haberdasher
should not think that you are miserly
if you are to be at all well maintained

a wise villain, a ribald, dirty sort of gent
should think...

I can't remember

correspondence

The best trash,
from us

in my gray green neighborhood

greasy creatures daze themselves
against our feet

I suspect that I
misunderstand its reality

i will represent my foolishness to you materially, you know, by sending you trash.
Via the United States Postal Service.

I've already filled my coat, my purse, my shoes, and my pockets with debris.

My monstrous trundling
makes me new.
unrecognizable.
and then who am I to my environment again