she paints ugly things in pretty colors
she runs with the devil and whispers with the saints
she is a good girl in bad times
she's a angel in disguise
you can find her riding shotgun
in the roughest part of town
you can find in her the softest heart
she is a flower blooming in a field of thorns
she is a woman to be reckoned with
and a force of nature to be feared
but she will always be kind and gentle
she paints ugly things pretty colors
and gives them happy homes
she really is an angel in disguise

dragging our voices
through detailed agendas
paying meticulous attention
to points of marginal interest
to please bureaucrats
who most likely just
stamp RECEIVED
on the file
and lay it to rest
   quietly
in bottomless
desk drawers

the howto
             is a mighty force
             it tells us
                with authority
             how to
             best navigate the world
             appropriate to the occasion
            
             from love to cars to finances
             it guides us
                to the proper steps
            
             and yet
             it somehow fails
             to say  
             why
                if we follow the directions
             we feel like children
             rather than adults
            
             why
                when all wisdom
                has been eagerly applied
             we still don't know
     why
                 our hands and feet
                 are tied

the world is slowing down

a mist of milky gossamer moves in
between
my will and things to do
the clear shapes of objects
are growing soft and dull
the moment's urgency
yields to my ponderings
   of possible decisions
abstract rigidity arrests the words
things stay forever as they are

   is it a sense of death
   that delicately touches on my neck
   and steals from me the comfort
   of continuous change?

life seems to walk away
in long and measured stride
the kitchen clock has never been so fast

it measures time
from here up to the stars

it counts
and blows
the moments of my delicate eternity
one by one
into the past

* *

And would it have been better, after all,
after these months full of suggestions
leading all ways to find the one
that would
perhaps
point to a chance
for change in stasis,
running the risk it be
revealed as but another dry oasis
adding to those we left behind?

Would it have been less painful
to postpone, again, the action,
have suffering continue as before
when it appears to have become a habit,
but does not seem, for that,
less of a pain that daily tears your heart?

How to improve the second-best solution,
feeling the best is out of reach for now?
How not to hurt the other,
driven to take the first step
out of tune
in the prevailing dance of possibilities
that threatens to go round and round again?

How to let temporary logic
rule over whispering love,
how to ignore my pain
that looks at me out of your eyes
in shock and disbelief?

How to explain
that I do love you even more, not less -
when your blank look cuts me
in half and lets me know that you
believe old fears have now come true?

So, would it have been better,
after all,
after the pain, the hard words
and the crying, the mutual reproaches,

to have left things unsaid, untouched
and stumbling as they were?

I do not know.

If it turn out
this change was for the worse
and not the better,
I will have learned
maybe you, too
and we can take our steps
into our futures
sadder and wiser
   for all the years
   spent separately
   together

          * *

my mind is cyclical,
Battle Bot on Hamster Wheel
installation art soon to be in
Tokyo, San Francisco, New
York, Chicago: every city
I had the languorous pleasure of
kissing You in.
being unkind to me is terrible and
yet I love being able to vent
my emotions like so much
sulfurous smoke. [redacted]'s in
his bunk bed, 30,000 feet up and
only 1 girl is invited;
****** brain frizzed out, wasted
girls coughing kush while we
contemplate wasted opportunities.

please shut up and let me pretend
that the streetlight shining through the
***** window is moonlight glittering
across my angel face, because
it is 3 in the morning and everything is
poised to break apart like
the ice on the Iowa River.