seven random tips for happiness (in no particular order)

I.
an apple a day keeps the doctor away,
but if you don't have an apple
really ripe oranges will do the trick.

II.
never go to bed angry,
it makes your hair look funny when you wake up
and you will definitely have a bitter taste
in your mouth.
instead, take deep breaths, and try very hard
to accept that we are not always perfect.

III.
reminder!
thanksgiving can be celebrated
all 365 days of the year,
and you don't even have to
roast a turkey!

IV.
two words: hot chocolate.

V.
pay attention to pop culture:
you won't get into grad school
at harvard that way
but you will win
every game of charades.

VI.
speak another language,
even if you have to make it up
and don't worry so much about
your fluency:
remember, everyone speaks the
international language of gesture.

VII.
love.
as often,
as boldly,
and as recklessly as possible.

(#10)

Ducks in the cold, steaming river,
thier frilly backsides in the air, fishing for the Ice Man's dinner.

My ceremony, to list

Egyptian sheets, their orange hieroglyphics
weak lamp, tacked to
the wall

It made the most yellowed and ancient light.
It was so easy to switch on and off.

Much Stuff

Family heirlooms
use it or lose it
give it away or stick it in the basement
It's not doing us any good.

With apologies to Emily D

Despair--when here--
is silver pain--
and witness to the Cold--

In Love--it loses traction--slips--
goes deadly numb--goes Gold--

TWENTY-NINE

He weeps, he snarls, then he returns to bed.
"My love, come walk under the waterfall with me."
This one's different, it's unpredictable,
and it's For Rent, as all things yet to be,
either fantasy or speculation,
hover in contested luminescence.
All my life is but a porch swing, packed up
in a crate and sent to a storage unit
out of state. What happens to the dancers
when their joints begin to ache? Most of us
don't ever make mistakes we can recover from.
So I start to unpack, to backpedal,
to reflect and snap back, crowbar in hand,
the wood and nails that sealed the story shut
long before it ever got told. To what
do I owe this unexpected visit?
Simply to an evening of daydreaming.
I stole into the future, walked around
like a ghost, and picked up lines of speech
and states of mind that I just found, lying
there, on the bare floorboards of an unfamiliar house,
eleven months and twenty-one days from now.

A place to slip past

What I am is what I did,
or said I would, then did.

My word builds up a fortress of who I am.
"That's me,"
I say on a good day.
The to-do lists all crossed off
and promises kept,
piled as stones in a wall.
Let these deeds leave room for light to peek
through.
The thing of me I wish I was
and am.

mission accomplished?

another day of procrastination
4:49pm and what have i done?
didn't do the laundry
didn't buy the groceries
didn't sweep the floor
or clean the litter box
or write those lesson plans
or take out the trash
didn't clean my room
didn't take a shower
didn't get dressed
or leave the house
but i did make breakfast
and had a cup of tea
and watched some tv
and got an internet date.

Salt and Mothers.

I hate you sometimes.
I really do.
I hate that I always feel like it's my job to heal things.
It is not my lot in life to fix everyone's mistakes.
And you never really asked me to... but
somewhere I blame you for this burden.
I know that it isn't really your fault.
You grew up with the same kind of need,
the desperate need to please and prove.
But sometimes I watch your pride for me
like I watch a thinly stretched balloon-
expanding, with me cringing in its wake.
Because I was your dream child. I was perfect.
I performed the role you wanted me to be to a tea.
But now I'm getting a little older,
and sometimes when you are smiling at me
I am cruel and say salty things that go straight to your rawness.
Salt has a healing power if you can endure the burning sensations.
But with you it always backfires,
I end up choking silently on tears that taste like the dead sea.
I feel sorry for you,
I get so terrified at the thought that you might be lonely or sad
or worse- that one day you'll be gone.
Because you do everything in your power to show me you care.
You do all you know how to do to express your love.
And I wrestle with the possibility that you may never understand.
I thrash violently at the realization that my life is not
for changing you-
but for change in me.

... I love you because
I have the capacity to hate you.

Jung + The Miracle Internet Condenses Real Space, Expands Virtual Space, and Redrafts the Meaning of All Social Relations (Poem 10 and one for fun)

I saw the Carl Jung at the Rubin.
He spent a long time
on those paintings. A glimmering.
Clearly he was on
to something.

But that stuff is weird.
I thought, millions are in therapy?
I'm not sure
my head looks
like that.

-

I am friends with a tourist resort in Thailand.