She was my friend,
it just worked like that.

We had routines and we had time together
we had what we wanted.

She liked grey –
dove grey and flat almost white grey,
when the ocean and the sky looked the same,
she liked that.

She had all these feelings about where I was from,
and she told them to everyone.

She liked to gape at everyday things,
like the walls that held up the highway,
or the houses lit up at night.
That’s an amazing wall she would say.

It was my wall but I had never noticed it.

We went to a party where everyone had feathers in their hair
outside in the yard people were grazing and lazing
her face was round and pale
a “twinkle in her eye,” my mother would say.

She had something going on.

Endless River

Tilt of the black plastic
ribboning through
Green split vein
Making it true

Cold season rain
Reminding me of

My company, myself
Accompanying myself

To the other countries.

Reading the paper on the living room floor (door open), like picking it up the paper at Kline Cafeteria (I never read it), it bought me time, sunlight streaming, and spring, oh my, SPRING, the cool air and all the hope, the hope, the love of hope.

Inventory

The things you loved
and love
cactus in bloom and
any type of careless face
the bask, the flash, and flask
America’s books, her birds –
not songs, but views
vistas of the universe
go on –

SAVED

Idea music & Ideal music

like The Pretenders singing The Rascals

or a woman performing surgery

on a snow child in Park Slope

there were berry colored lights

& a rose patterned sweater

with low hanging threads.

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.

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.

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.

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.

When Machines Get Wet

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

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.

I’ll Carry With Me

Ever-lovin’ paw print
Ribbon rings around yr waist
Tiny plastic alien
Yellow cat, brown bear
Quilt heart, gold frame
Straw suitcase, and always

That picture of myself.

-----

What Prayer Beads

Long hair and
All my secrets
The wisdom of kids
Those same tendencies
Towards home.

-----

January

These are work poems
They collide
Night after night
That’s all it is
To be born again.

CALL TO ARMS

Charge the cold, charge
The city and its powers

All the workwomen, their
Electrician counterparts, their
Immaculate craft –

The glass house dispatches
From the shore

Stuck and sailing we
Grovel for means –

Kosher dogs and escape routes -
City on the sea

Trading carpet strips for
Double sided tape, for
Needles and pins -

This is a survival story!

Bambi & Flower

We lie flat &
Dream up skills
Proficiency and singing
Making space & bed
Keeping up I want to
Keep up.

Baby’s on Fire

Sometimes NYC’s All
Dotted Rage And
Being Stuck
Under The Weather
And Under The
Ground.

Los Roqueros

Hot Date

You stole dumplings and put them down yr pants you grabbed them from that expensive place we used to go to then we bought hot white rice with your one dollar and my one dime and took them both to the Starbucks on Bergen where I bought green tea for 2.75 to ease my loiterer’s guilt. Why I feel this loiterer’s guilt I don’t know for sure but I think it has something to do with my mom and a book she read about the Judd family and how they always made the bed even in hotels. Then you worked on your computer and I read a free magazine and then we went to a movie for cheap and it made me think about Country Boy Can Survive. Why I remember all the words to a Hank Williams Jr. song I don’t know for sure but I think it has something to do with my mom and a dark sound from the car radio it’s just one of those things she loves and can’t explain why.