In a library, reading a book and drinking coffee.
On Lake Michigan, after a dune climb
a wade through the cold water, and laying in the sun on my back.
In a lover's bed on a rainy evening.
In a Portland, Oregon vintage shop,
trying on dresses.
In any vintage shop, trying on dresses.
On the dock in my neighbors' pond,
fishing with hot dogs in my bathing suit in the sun.
On my bike, riding on a path that cuts through a meadow.
At the top of the hill, in the forest on a walk,
looking down telephone lines into more plush forest.
Walking on a frozen river with a hiking stick,
smashing it into the ice to check its stability.
Writing something I love with a good pen.
Eating turkey soup, or chili, or green beans in autumn.
Or opening up my window on the first warm day in March, April.
Outside on a back porch in a quiet neighborhood
at dusk, with a friend or two.
In a reliable car driving north,
driving west.
Arriving at a new town, looking out the window.
Cradled between a railroad track and a river.
Stretching, floating, looking up into a canopy.

The most incredible sight this morning in a clean city:
a young girl like me back then is walking
thirty, forty paces in front of her parents.
Speed walking and rubbing her eyes, like she's been crying.
Her head so graceful and straight upon her neck.
Her parents split up,
dad walks on the sidewalk where I am sitting opposite
this clearly perturbed daughter,
mom behind her daughter.

And perhaps it happened but maybe I imagined the mother
call out to the daughter "slow down" is what she should say
or what she did say. It takes the girl everything she has
all her courage not to turn around

don't turn around I am begging from my seat
across the street. At least try to make it to the crosswalk
at least. It doesn't really matter why she's mad.
I could try to come up with some reason but it makes no real difference.

What's important is that I was holding a memory in a loving embrace.

The scene the scene
is happening through something empty
sitting outside alone
it is okay I am not the most important person
in the universe

Dad,
How come you gave me all your old Bob Marley and the Wailers records, you listened to when you were sixteen and fixing cars, humming "emancipate yourselves from mental slavery?" You grew pillars of brussel sprouts, you got a rain barrel, you used grease to run a 1971 Mercendes Benz, Benzo-Lorenzo, you kept the wood-burning house so cold Mom threatened to take us to the Holiday Inn and make you pay for it.  No matter how much I wanted to go to a hotel (play pretend in my head, little girl-glamor pretend) I would plead with Mom.  We are fine, we are fine. I'll put a sweater on.  See, I was a little sustainable champion. Stoke the fire, it smells so good. I appreciate warm so much. Inside I feel proud, like, my dad prepared me to live in a punk house. God, I wish I could be you watching me when I was a little girl. At Walbridge Park, those little pastel coiled spring animals.  Mulch or little pieces of rubber? I like those little squishy pieces of rubber. I want a boat, a fishing boat.  I taught little kids how to fish this summer.  I kept a straight face, but I was beaming on the inside. Careful, considerate, thank you notes, visiting old ladies, kindness, loss of God, reading the Bible, reading everything, Swedish, cooking chili and pozole.  Where did you learn to cook pozole?  I want to know how but I am afraid to ask.  I don't want a speech, I just want clear cut directions, with love.  Just clear cut directions, with love.

I read a spanish word and teared up because I knew I was feeling a feeling my mom felt when she was twenty. I mean-- she went to the dominican republic and she studied a foreign language in college. She was curious
and I am curious.
When people show me unexpected kindnesses, it makes me tear up.  
What did I do to deserve this? and then I remember a little bit.  

I wrote down a few notes for a paper:
the setting implies the corruptibility of female bodies.
I walked down the packed streets at night and applied that rough thesis
and it felt sad to be in what Steven calls a world of abstraction
and even now I sound like a liberal-arts university program ***** (I’m not).

I heard and just missed something fall from a tall tree.
I caught the tail end of the leaf debris, and wondered while
I read Ali Smith’s Hotel World, how many squirrels died in freak uppermost tree branch
falling incidents, and if it made a noticeable difference.  

The scene, the scene is happening through temporality and that makes it seem empty
Sitting outside alone it is okay I am not the most important person in the universe

Now I’m working on holding all my adolescent memories in a loving embrace.
My ears also perk up at the sound of little kid voices.

i am being very disdainful of those people who don’t have to work and can just enjoy their lives like it is no big deal I have put an enormous amount of pressure on myself and I now I am just cracking at the seams..just cracking. i don’t want to get drunk i don’t like it i don’t like being hung over i want to be responsible i want to be able to be around people i don’t want to feel like my experience is not legitimate because everyone gets down sometimes i am quitting my job i can’t make a bunch of apologies because i feel bad i can’t do it anymore..the mail man is delivering mail its ****** up he’s working on the weekends where is my package where is my 100 dollars where is it where is it where is someone who is going to sit in my room and take care of me i want you here i want you gone i want someone here mostly but i am too overwhelmed to admit it it is ****** up i am crying every day i am finding it hard to get close to people i am only twenty i am going to live alone the rest of my life i am setting a precedent for the rest of my life i really don’t want my life to be like this but if i want to work hard i have to not get distracted by all of these...worldly things but being around people makes me feel better it is what i live for..this world is muting me i feel muted and frustrated i can’t relax people are telling me what is meaningful and what is not people are saying it is the system and i believe them but i still want to make meaning for myself **** everyone is having a good time but me where is everyone else how are they getting any work done why is this paper due i want to say something important about norse mythology i promised i would work hard i drank a bunch of coffee and smoked a bunch of cigarettes **** i lied i only smoked one this morning and it gives me confidence makes me feel like i am okay i am okay because i am smoking it is something else to think about i get it thats why it is addicting **** i want to go home i want to go home but home is not the same home here doesnt exist there are maggots growing underneath the dish rack and i don’t want to clean i want someone else to clean for me. i don’t want to find time to talk to someone all of these influences i will feel better in a couple of hours i know i will but right now i just want to slam something glass against a wall

Sixty dollar insurance i'll pay
for the chance to talk to someone
sixty dollars sixty dollars
take it put it back take it away need to again
sixty dollars I owe you three sets of twenty
one, two, three neat little thin stack I removed
from the Atm from a skinny mouth slit
slot and walked over and smiled and said
I'd like to reinstate my well being fee?
it is sixty dollars it says it's so easy to feel better
what a comfort. Okay sign here, it was so informal
sign here send us an email proving it was you
Shoot well that would be kind of a nice fraud
an anonymous someone paying for the chance
I might not feel well. Okay sounds great thank you
so much I really appreciate it.
Mom says well are you going to go
use it you paid for it might as well use it?
Yeah she's right I don't want to waste
it away or waste money I better find time to fit it in
when I can go I go I will feel much better financially
too if I just go.

The new education
building was beautiful
because it was reminiscent
of friends’ houses past.
Fond, albeit naive, memories
of stone suburbs and finished basements and iPod stereo systems playing easy listenin’
trite popular rock n’ roll music to the smell of toaster muffins,
some Pillsbury brand I can’t remember the name of and didn’t bother to then
because my mom or dad (for different reasons) couldn’t be persuaded to buy boxed, branded
items (usually, and until an Aldi came to town), and don’t bother to know now because
it’s probably better and cooler to not know.  

We fear what we think we know about what we actually don’t know.
I learned that recently and it is popping up everywhere.
Popping up like processed delicious memories out of new clean toasters.
Where are all the crumbs? Where is the crumb life?
I’ll ask that if I ever return.
There once was a statue of a short Italian chef with a mustache and a tray attached to his stone hand, for letters, I assumed, and if I ever go back I’ll also ask: is that for letters?

See the truth is that there was depth.
There was depth but what bothered me I mean really made me uncomfortable
was that it was hidden and wiped off the counter and swept up so to speak
with perhaps, someone else’s hands.
The depth wasn’t measured in wood chips and smelly black beautiful old independent dogs
or falling apart antique chairs or comprehensive but dusty cd collections, k.d. lang, Stevie Wonder, Jesus Christ Superstar soundtrack, or posters of hot chile peppers or piles of unsold rocks and bricks in the backyard that were also high standing posts for kids who were imaginary queens and kings and warriors, or tacky red spray painted bicycles.
Our depth was visible and pure and it seemed like everyone else’s was cleaned up and stored away.
It felt that way when I was young.
Now I value my family’s visible depth
and consciously remind myself that no matter how
fresh the paint smells or how not present a quirky old photograph is
it is somewhere, it is somewhere
****, it is somewhere
it is beautiful
to remind myself that.

I suspend disbelief, I do
Pretend for glamour’s sake,
That I’m standing in line, not walking down
Legging capri utopia, but style,
Books, Asian fusion,
And I open my window to outside fire trucks,
Sometimes voices, to pretend I’m not in small-town
Southeastern Ohio.
I close my eyes to a new, non self-conscious,
Self-aware vision.
Well, it was once a real moment:
In a studio apartment, nervous about my mom
Downstairs, outside, below me
Smoking a cigarette on the sidewalk.
Afraid she’d get jumped when I was eleven, or twelve, or thirteen.
Forgetting she’d lived in New York City
in the 1980s when she was
Eighteen.
I didn’t have any fears for her then.
I didn’t have anything for anyone.
I didn’t exist, and I wasn’t afraid
All the time, of something.
I exist now and I watch my back in small town USA,
But I still make wonder visions,
Beautiful, rhetorical, hypothetical
Walks in October five ‘o clock sunshine.
Me, and a book, and take out food walking back to work,
Where my work will be to write this down,
To try my ****-dest to convey what I felt
Out there, on the street.
That self-importance, comfort of the light
In my eyes, and my dark pants, too, they mattered,
And an imaginary cigarette from the ether,
The sun-ray concoction.
It’s almost the exact feeling of sitting on couches,
Next to my aunt’s bubblegum pink ceramics in Brooklyn.
Thinking—how glamourous.
Pretending the one room apartment was mine.
Pretending I could live in such close proximity to a stranger.
Another person, who I may or may not find strange.
Pretending I wasn’t made uncomfortable by the women
Wearing hot dog and hamburger bun bikinis dancing
In kiddie-pools in broad daylight.
How bizarre. While my brother and I played war
Upstairs. “That’s art,” someone probably said, in a
Fenced in small grassy plot in a neighborhood in Chicago.
Later in college, I’d say “the best art makes
us uncomfortable,” and my professor who loves
young adult fiction will applaud me for my incite.

An inherent desire for brass,
And fire escapes, and being
Consumed by tall buildings, and bars
On rooftops is not…
Natural.
It must be media-induced.
I consumed a fair amount of media
That glamourized and shined up and cultured
Cities for me.
Then I went there and saw that I was fearful,
Yet wanted to feel important inside of something vast.
I want to talk to curators of museums about
Everything I’ve learned and haven’t learned.
I want to impress myself with knowledge of streets,
And towns, and maps.
Out of my element, maybe I am finally ready.
Out of mostly whiteness, most of the time,
Into people I’ve never met, people I never thought
I’d know well, into hoping that I can sit in a different
Kind of circle, in a new conversation,
Restoring, transforming,
Wanting to say some sincere things, and
Make some observations in earnest.

concrete slab steps busted knee
in your town
cricket buzz bird wake up call--
your town.
And licking two peace out fingers
in your town.
**** me in your town.
Bone skull ceiling window pane
but it's your town.
Soft all over,
in your town.
Your poetry, your teachers, your town.
Sweating it out, counting steps
in your town.
Sweating it out, too small to fit
in your town.
Blood stained jeans and I
am in Your Town.
And can I borrow your shoes, your shirt,
your ****, your smokes, your friend, your lover,
your town? Your unfinished work?
Your town.

The world is too complex
to divide it into separate columns.

Crickets out the window
long long hair
wispy green leaves flying
and browning outside.

I drove up 23 north.
I drove between a smoldering dark cloud
I drove between lightening and I worried.
Behind me, the sky was purple and clear and golden
and exactly what it should be,
exactly what I needed it to be.  

I was so unsure, all the time.
I know I care about symbols
and trying to articulate the beauty and meaning and sadness
in an inanimate object.
I know I care.  

I won’t always be able to explain a rake
leaning against a pale blue garage.
But at least its there, for me to look at.
It remains unblocked by the sharp splinter in my eye.  

The sun’s energy gave me a fair amount of
Vitamin D this summer.
It will stay stored up in my body.
I will recharge when the sun peaks out again.
When it is vaguely warm I will sit next to the river,
and recharge.  

For now I use what I have
and listen to the bugs outside
and the occasional car.
All of my thoughts and feelings
are in the green leaves flying
and browning outside.

you once sat up in your bedroom
you once sat up
there were nice brown wooden walls that you sat against
you invited people up to your room
to sit with you too
well, i just wish i could invite someone
but i wouldn’t know where to start

When I wake up in the morning
big drooping beautiful sunflower heads
bend to the sidewalk and bump
against my shoulder.  
Through windows kitchen items
sound.
Preparation clanking gently.
A handsome middle-aged man reads to
his daughter on the porch.
A child tells her mother:
"one toe has more air in it"
and what does that mean?
Neighbors carry a door frame across the lawn
and I ask where clark is and pretend
I'm new to the area.
Good morning is hopeful in that way.

Folks shopping for a car at a car dealership
is a depressing sight out of the car window.
All the sedentary businesses along route 131
in Michigan were vague. "Distribution Center"
"Shasta Rentals"  "Oasis Family Restaurant"

And PEACE in a flowery calligraphy
on the bumper of a gray dodge neon
on the bumper of a red denali.
A maroon sedan.
A silver-blue ford truck.
A pale red camero.

Everything with battery life is dead
turn to light breeze
seemingly clean, cool air

I dreamt of floating down a shallow river
with the current
I held on to distended bank parts
reaching over roots
moss clumps
chunks of connected forest debris
The mud at the bottom of
the shallow river was gush
I feared hidden sharp objects
fishing lines
bottle caps
shards
I clung to the edge of the bank
tried to float my legs over the gush

an eagle flew in front of my face
I swore I saw a great blue heron
or several
or a crane
and all of their babies.

I don’t know what to order so I order the cheapest thing on the menu
I don’t know if you have lotion, but if you do could I use some
you pulled something out of your pocket, that attracts the consumer I’m sure
it looked lip balm, it looked like blush, but it was lotion

you walked me to your place
made me a whisky and soda
you had mint, you put it in
before then I had read about that only in novels
I didn’t go home soon
I was thinking of polyamory, the next morning at noon
the next morning at noon
curly hair, brown skin, brown skin, curly hair
nose ring, curly hair, brown skin, nose ring, and curly hair

guilt guilt guilt guilt guilt guilt guilt guilt in the morning
I’m mourning over my Catholic upbringing
and do I always have to tell the truth when I write something
I don’t wanna drink and drive like I don’t wanna drink and make love
make love with a woman
I don’t wanna drink and just fritter and **** away
******* guilty conscience
you’re wrong socialized conscience

let me dip my feet, let me submerge

Aside from the tea
the hot soothing tea
a kind of scorching bitterness
was searing
inside of my stomach
the bitterness, like a sore bump on the mouth,
kept me awake at night when I was supposed to be tired

having not gotten the preferred eight and surely not come close to the long sought after nine
hours of sleep, having only gotten the feared six hours  
you can imagine how tired I was supposed to be and perhaps
that is what put me in the searing sauce-pan bitter mood

it was a bitterness infused with guilt and disdain for oneself
and I will admit that only once.
Here’s another thing, too, for anyone who is not a semi close friend and who cares to know
I don’t feel like answering any extra questions that I don’t need to answer because guess what
I might not be in the mood to talk to people that day, especially (I might add) if they are the people who sit at wooden desks with folders of paper and decide whether I might remain at the university.

Yes, I want to glide through unnoticed.
No.
I want to glide through noticed only for my achievements.
My perceived achievements.
No.
My earnest achievements.

I simultaneously try to follow the most convenient path while being exceptionally **** about being exceptional.  Grade cards, capital letters A-F.

I want to be more extreme,
be more *****-nilly with the lexicon, the language,
and say that I am experiencing sheer disgust.

It’s a disgust that prefers to be left alone.
A disgust that yearns for some company, but upon being
surrounded by that company, prefers to be left alone.
But after being left alone, wonders what it might have been like
had it stuck around for a couple more minutes.
I am experiencing the after-effects of dizziness right at this very moment.

It is an uncomfortable and shifty way to live.
An uncomfortable seat on a mode of public transportation,
that’s where I’m sitting and I’m in a fine mood otherwise,
just very shifty.  The shiftiness of it all makes me wonder
whether some of the other passengers may have more comfortable seats.
I think to myself, I think, gee, that person looks awfully comfortable.
I am unlucky.
But then I look again and notice that they couldn’t possibly be completely comfortable,
because the seat has a visible deformity that certainly prevents them from being comfortable.
So it’s okay,
and I feel better because of it.
It’s disgusting.

I harbor this kind of attitude and then what happens is
the fellow passenger exits,
leaving me with the opportunity to test out their seat.
Ah, from afar the seat looked splendid.
Plush, really.
But then I sit down and after a couple of seconds (that’s all it takes)
I realize that sitting in the new seat feels exactly like seating in the uncomfortable seat.
I had thought awful thoughts over at my first seat.
I had thought, perhaps if I criticize the other passenger in regards to the seat (that seat makes your outfit look all wrong...the way you seat in that seat, it’s just kind of, I don’t know, the lighting is off) that they might get up and leave the seat.
But then I sit down and realize that this seat is really no different than the first seat.
I’m just a little kid.

when the musician hits the note perfect
with the accompaniment and the words
a little something inside of me
steps out of the back door, and into a sunny shining
7:30 am summer morning.

Something inside of me takes a bite of
egg yolks cooked with bacon grease.

Something inside of me cruises down hills on a bicycle.
Something holds my little girl hand and jumps into August, Michigan lakes.
Something like warm sheets in the sun.
Something like orange and black birds letting us watch.
A yard sale, or a canoe, or something free.


Something shifts in a comfortable bed, and regains consciousness.
Something drives through rain but can still see clearly.
Something cooks and bakes.

My organs feel pressure and pleasure-pain.
They grasp for more of that sound.
They compel me to shut my eyes and reopen them.
They let little sighs escape from the back of my throat.

That nearly perfect combination coaxes stuck tears.
It brings back and moves forward all at the same time.
It makes me feel faint and it makes me feel awake.

Older men stand around talking about comics
when I walk in my vision all mute and
dark from the sun I sit in.

I can't recognize their faces, or their
voices and I have nothing to add to their conversation
because it was before my time.

A twig falls
into an oblivious backpack
and leaves a tic.

A package of cigarettes flies out the window of
a five-story building and smacks on the sidewalk,
like spit on some skin.

A scenario:
young, misbehaving child cools off in
a peaceful space, a bean-bag chair.
A premonition.
He’s twenty and wondering, where’s the bean bag now?

Two days of dryly coughing,
so much glowering,
he’s biking in the wrong direction.

“You’re idealistic,” he says to nobody.
He looks out the window, unsatisfied.
He eats a 3-bean salad, unsatisfied.
He adds bacon but it doesn’t matter
because I think he would rather die.

Drove to the grocery store,
the lights were all off
the power went out
the deli was shut down
no cold cuts today.

Walked to the cafe
tripped on the curb
tried to regain balance
and tripped again.
I laughed, but I needed to cry
bad.

Thought it'd be cute to go bra-less this afternoon
turns out my cute little top is scratchy and burning
my **** like mad.
Raw, like my cactus heart.

I can't come
to save my life.
Is anyone hiring?
I'm going to label myself as "sexually frustrated."
I'm going to tell people that.
I'm going to work on my performance
but they all need to work on theirs, too.

At least no one saw me fall
at least I have my trailer park girl sunglasses
at least the power will come back on between 1 and 2 pm.
at least I have a change of clothes
at least I have my hands a pillow for between my legs.

Don’t tell me you’ve never had an overwhelming urge to reach out and touch a baby
I want to stir up a young child’s fantasy right now so swell
up in my heart this overwrought emotion
to see a little Ivory or Avery running around
matching up Velcro smiley faces with his current disposition
and not have to call mother and home and tell her how naughty he’s been.
Hopefully she cares,
I sure would.

Baby Misha, I’d call her.
and we’d stroll down the banks of the river
the nearest river we’d stroll.
I love you so much
and not just because Nature forces me to.
Nature forces women to have babies
but I still want to
produce.

The ultimate work of art, I’d joke.
The penultimate prize,
my arrow I’d shoot out of my womb
and let it fly, unencumbered by my wants and wonts.
Ha ha, that’s so funny.
I’d nurture the hell right out of my child.
No phone! No i-phone! No phone until seventh grade.
But mama, she’d say.

But mama,
But mama,
But mama,
But what?
You are better off.
You’ll understand when you’re a mother,
and that’s me functioning with the assumption
that baby Misha wants to be a mother.
She’ll feel the same things I’ll feel because we have the same blood
maybe not the same blood type,
she may be positive, I may be negative
but one day we’ll dance like my mother and I danced
and I’ll cry like my mother cries and say
I’ll miss you but I want you to be free.

But mama.
But what?

You opened my jar.
Stuck, so you ran it under warm water,
banged it on the counter, and leaned
your full body over it and strained to
free it from its lid.

You scooped me out.
I was luke warm and spicy salsa.
Cold, watery hominy.
Salty greens.
Fermented sugar cabbage.
Smelly and raw.

You ate a little of me every day,
tried to make the contents last.
The jar had been in your cabinet for a long time.
You almost donated me,
but you forgot.

You stored me in your refrigerator,
I got cold, stagnant.
I loved when you poured out my contents
and warmed them up on the stove
and ate me in front of the window on a mild day.

I loved when you seasoned me and made me new.

I drew you
playing the flute
but your hands were too large
you couldn't push the buttons down right.
I didn't realize this until after
I drew you

With remorse,
I recalled ******* at you to not
shave your beard.
I drew you
with a beard.

With remorse I remembered
you, growing up with you.
Being outwardly critical toward you,
did you ever say I hurt you?
Did I ever hurt you?

I drew you
and I drew a map of you,
and I love you

I know a stranger that does not bring me artifacts from the earth
he does not give me flint pieces or moon snail shells from
the coast of Delaware or from blue grass Kentucky.

He does not look familiar.  He looks adult. He looks salt and pepper.
I wonder what he won't bring me next.

I was an errant vacuum
cleaning up all the hay,
******* on the floor in my room.

I was not a wooden broom
with a sturdy handle and bristles.
I was an errant vacuum.

Innocent clumps of dirt loom
along with pennies and bobby pins
******* on the floor in my room.

I cleaned best by the light of the moon.
The crackle of staples did not faze me.
I was an errant vacuum.

I didn’t care if the machine got ruined.
There was no one to scold me.
I was an errant vacuum
******* on the floor in my room.

I'm really sweaty.
I'm really sorry
I read you such a heteronormative poem.
I thought it was beautiful and short.
I forgot
if I was a lesbian.

If it is trendy for me to like my same ***
I don't want to do it.
Some of us argued, on Lagrange, in Polish Village,
about whether I wasn't shaving because of ideology or
because it was annoying.
I said it was annoying, but I meant that the whole thing about it is annoying. Everything is annoying. I'm annoyed and cold but still sweating.

Sometimes I feel the same as when I am transplanting
fragile cucumbers into the ground with clumsy rubber
gloves, very graceless. I feel tenderness toward you
and disdain toward myself that I subtly impressed upon you.
I am sorry about that. I don't want to do that,
to her. I don't want to do that again.

I felt good when her and I watched raindrops drop into a pond.
Both our natural tendencies were to lie down in the grass,
maybe she was thinking about our muddy bodies,
but I wasn't thinking much. My thoughts were warm.

Today we're going to ride in my ticking time bomb car,
fifty-five miles per hour for a couple of hours,
forty-four degrees is the high and *******, we are going to feel that high. Embrace the peaks of the weather and the pits of our lonely, young, emphasis on the young, but still rather manic feelings.
I feel better doing that with you,
but I don't know if I want to touch you
all the time.

The miserable city.
Bankrupt *** holes and bbq.
Langston hughes rock drum solo everyday people
wear baggy pants and cross the street
no crosswalk necessarily style.
A leaf wishing wind would push it to the cleaner side of town
right across the way. Companies paid make flower basket hanging
contraptions and tend to the grass till the grass cant be tended to no more.
Glass city style, glass walls in the loft shiny windex clean
to secure the sweetest view of wendys or a steel solid warehouse.
Calculated anthony wayne trail street lights
and twenty four hour surveillance, vaudville light fixtures
and bus stops empty of any white people.

Drone turnpike ride comfort.
Brownish blackness
I wonder where I am for six or seven seconds
and feel genuinely afraid.
But then, once I realize I am in bed
I feel in a womb.
Only two dank faded blueish eyes look straight up.
The smell is like me crawling around on the carpet.
My brother wearing wearing a pink feather boa.
The smell is people describing the smell as "country"
but the way they say it makes it sound like a bad thing.
Ordinary people.
Ordinary ******* people.
Using so many bags.
They never put kittens in barbie carriages.
Caged themselves up in their rooms with just barbie.
Tortured on a bed of legos for feeling attracted to a doll.
Sexuality is a spectrum, young young happy go.

From monday through wednesday leaves have crisped up cutting cutler hall streaks and a car flying twisting down route fifteen
mean trucks made kind passing over with and around gas injection wells quite old and scenic.

No more free merchandise.
Nothing soft or sturdy.
Nothing even red and dripping.
Raised eyebrow fooling into choking
uncomfort
unsound
reasoning.
I never thought about it like that before.

A free mind.
Worried about the bee buzzing near your lower back but that's it.
Slightly concerned about the sun in your eye.
Unbuttoning your courds, shamelessly.
Authentically.
A tad unnerved that you can't name the trees
or the songs of the birds but
promising that youll work on it.

I argued with myself briefly
about whether
I would reach out to you,
near the middle of the
night, body eager,
mind willing,
and finally decided I would
and I popped the question
(such a dubious question)
and you,
did not respond.

I hope I don't run into you today.

Like a log cabin with the door missing
a beautiful painting of a lady with the eyes botched out.
lazily wearing sunglasses and thick oriental scarves and stumbling around snow covered bricks and steps for tea.
If we spoke last night, I’m not the wiser.

Multiple television screens were left on, emitting evil streams of light into the darkness everywhere.
I misstepped and said my favorite instrument is a tuba, and a tuba bellowed and burped in my second sets of dreams.
Now everyone goes and I just sit here alone, without the right books
without the right writing utensils, without the right self, even.

You all look so handsome walking down the street together.
Will we ever be able to reminiscence Wednesday morning, Sunday morning, Saturday morning, Thursday morning (you know the rest) and feel that all the decisions we made were wise?
Idleness does not exist.
Impulsivity does, though, and she is a *****.  

she’ll come at night, draped in ****, soft, alluring material
she’ll tell you it’s okay for now
do what makes you happy for a little while
for a while
the morning doesn’t happen
the morning might be bright
you might have an internal dialogue and it might end it “why am I here?”
but, hey, it might not.  

Like a painting of beautiful angel face woman,
naked, and stretched out on a velvet canopy bed
but the eyes are botched out.

I'm a student so I'm kinda sitting on the toilet
looking out the window in the one of the "centers."
There is this Anselly-Adams snow surrounded pond
in the view but it is all hazed and glazed over from
some fumes. The steamy, heating types.
The fumes are making the view all convoluted.
It is kind of cool but also grosses me out and makes me
feel space-cadety.
Anyway, I see one of my hot babe friends down
below. He is the size of an ant--from my vantage point,
at least. He's wearing a long grey-black pea coat
and combat boots and he's walking with mad purpose.
Like he's about to do something mad important.
And he probably is. He might be picking up his
amp, or going to buy a cup of coffee from the cafe, or going to
play chess with another equally hot babe and
talk about astro-physics.
Whatever he does, I'm guessing there will be a
mild to medium byproduct of disdain, you
know, as a principle.

I felt rather disdainful, today, actually, if you
want to know.
It was because of individually wrapped honeys
(I am NOT talking about small, packaged beautiful ladies).
It is such a waste.
Condense the honey into one container.
Also, not everyone uses the same amount of honey.
Don't lump us together like that, multi-million
dollar food suppliers.

I asked you to come downstairs and share pancakes with me
and you did. You are so obliging.
No. Scratch that. You are so kind.
Not just to me, either,
(maybe I hate to say I may have felt: unfortunately)
but to all the creatures of the universe.
(Except behind the backs of corporate CEOS and anyone who rapes and pillages the land and its peoples).
Your roommate is from Japan and you ask him how his day was because you genuinely care to know.
I could forgive you for almost anything.

The doe ran across the road and I had to catch my startled breaths.
The doe ran across the road and a car swerved, successfully.
The doe ran and looked at my face for fifteen seconds (or more...or less).
The doe ran across the road and jumped so high and landed amongst a small bunch of trees.
The doe outran me. I was on my bicycle that day.
The doe ran five miles per hour. Every hour.
The doe ran while I climbed wooden staircases.
The doe ran after she acknowledged my presence, and I acknowledged hers.
The doe ran because she was afraid I would hurt her  (why would I hurt her? for food).
The doe ran away afraid and I was secretly afraid--don’t mention this to my Nature friends--that the doe did not hurt me.
The doe ran away from the other does because of overpopulation.
The doe ran. I want to run with the doe, or on the doe.
The doe ran across the road a lot every day.

Singing as spirituality,
people would feel free, free,
people would feel...
light, funny, not embarrassed,
not embarrassed to ****,
companionship. NO TELEVISION.
More land, communal, raising children in groups,
healthy food, everyone feels empowered to share,
constant sharing, trading, collective owning.
Trees.
Naked, warm, outside living, living mostly outside.
Freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom like Richie Havens said.
Learning and putting that knowledge into practice.
Everyone's opinions would be heard and would be legitimate because they are humans.
Intentionality. Dancing, intentionally.
Living in a tent, intentionally.
Singing: everybody's singing all the time.
Humming, whistling, body hair (or not depending on your preference)
But most likely a lot a of body hair.

It is worse for a tulip to live again and be renewed
than for the tulip to die and be dead.
“What happens when you die?”
I asked several romantic partners over the course of my adolescence.
“You’re dead,” they answered.

It is worse for the tulip to be born again,
dust to dust, dirt to dirt, true god from true god,
in a process that spiritual peers define as, reincarnation.
No tulip is an individual (that is clear), but a process.
A perfecting oneness.

I can’t admit or bend to any resounding belief that every tulip is the same.
That FernGully was a farce and Pocahontas, a phony.
That is just not going to fly.
Maybe it is the environmentalist inside me speaking,
or maybe it is God.

I refuse to believe the prodigies and professors of renewal and rejuvenation.
I can not discount individuation, even in tulips!
Tulips are victims of suburbia, they have been relegated to the lawn, to the mulch bed,
but inside of them there are remnants of humanity.

I couldn’t believe it, ever.
Not ever, even if you convinced me or bribed me or seduced me.
No chance.

Shampoo your carcass.
Lean it against a tree, like a scare-crow in your garden.
You smell very greasy and downright delicious.
It’s impossible to imagine how greasy you smell,
unless you’ve worked in the fast food industry.

Scramble up some soupy eggs for us,
we’re hungry, all of us, all the time.
Your emaciated and good at it, too.
You’re talking on the phone to no one in particular.
You hang up, “bye.”

Don’t tell me when to wake up.
Talk to me instead about hormones,
and poke fun at human anatomy.
Talk about how manic you are, and I’ll agree,
I’ll say, “me too.”

Flash freeze all your groceries.
Cancel your subscriptions, lock the fire-door
and wonder why you don’t like dogs.
Try to think of something to say to someone,
something nice.

I sense compliance when I am reading.
I just like characters.
I let the characters do what they would do and I don’t ask any questions.
I laugh out loud, a lot, at some of the things they do, but I don’t normally get frustrated.
I feel my stomach churn nervously with each new installment.
I’m physically stressed out by the genius.
When I look up and stare at the room, no one is looking at me.
No one cares, and if they saw me, they’d think I was nuts.  
Or at least a quarter loony.  
The background noise of my rapid epiphanies is a woman asking about a continental breakfast.
My stomach is acting up so much.
I just feel nervous a lot.  
All I can do at this point is stare at the beautiful lack of color,
of a rain-washed, dim, quarter to five evening.

The ink pen brings out the remembrances.
Breathing in through my left nostril
and breathing out through my right nostril
in a chapel, laying on the carpet.  
This weariness, looking at a stark naked, loud tree.
So many words potentially rushing to the floodgates,
pursuing the exit, the fire exit, the iron staircase,
window escape, chimney scaling and freed.
Instead, words smash up and block the entrance way
with their attitudes of arrogance
or their inexplicable self consciousness.

Words are canned soup and my can opener got broke on the second day of school so does anyone have one I can borrow or use?

Happiness piques interest.
When happiness peaks it is
always nervous,
treading blindly,
violently
joyfully spinning and shaking my hair.
Liquids pouring in and out,
steadily.

Ripping, interdependent happiness
worse and better than solo sadness,
calling out or whispering,
strategically,
Admit that I exist. Admit that I existed!

Heaven is anticipation.
The edge of coming--always.
Heaven is walking out and into the clearing,
about to dance, the most primal dance.
About to eat, the most satisfying meal.

Culmination, the foreplay before death, is life.
Mortality arouses me,
viciously.
It blinds me, then allows me to see.
Pulls the covers on top of me.
Alive and gyrating on air
with isolation or autonomy,
happiness is coming all over me.

Cough, cough, cough cacophony
and justify
next to the jumping garbage can, ash can
split sliver of a view to a mountain range,
and an iron ******* symbol of pollution,
as someone once described it.

On a wooden patio
Jerks, cousins, strangers all breathing heavy
and avoiding the essential questions.
All consumed with their radio, stereo, headphone
intermission, remission, warped time machine
evil, sneezing ideas.

Before you ask--no, I have not seen your cat.  
Your cat left the house around 4:45 pm, while you were at work, I'm assuming. I'm assuming your room-mate left the door open and the cat saw an open space, a new world, waiting to be scratched and pawed and possibly snacked on. The cat walked out on you in this way.

The cat padded along the wooden steps, peacefully, quietly.
No one was around except a grasshopper, who died in the cat's mouth later.
Meanwhile, your room-mate brushed her teeth and did mouth rinse for as long as thirty-five seconds.

There were puddles in the road, and a car drove by and water splashed up into your cat's little face.  The little face of your cat winced, and the little body shook off the water, and kept cat walking to nowhere in particular.  Your cat--the zen master.

Seemingly out of no where, a large tree appeared, and the cat walked around the tree to the other side.  A squirrel paused to observe the cat, cautiously.  

Like the squirrel, the cat then proceeded cautiously around his or her own predator, the dog.  The dog was chained to a fence though, and your cat was free.

When you came home from work, you were so tired you fell asleep and did not even notice that your cat was gone.

The frustrating pocket sweater lies
next to a glowing, sharp calculator and the vacuum
smells up the whole place with purple air.
The knot on the table is promising,
the curling band-aid twists over a sheepskin pencil pouch
and dreams continuously of health-care, and affordability.
A series (or a set) of remote controls telling the canned beans to drink from the yellow mug, that's the lucky one.
Cat-tails whimper, and an old man hugs the edge of the moon,
making sure the fork in the road is repaved.

Flossing, a girl looks up into the eyes of the lawyer and asks him,
"Have you ever seen me before?"
A running start the clock gets before it jams into the car,
with the other undesirables.
Counting their blessings, the smaller plants assemble before the dawn of the helicopter, to plead with their feather-dusting friends.

Keep up the good work, a construction worker yelled across a desert,
to a tree. A huge tree with sparkling fruit and splinters waiting to be annoying.

Coffee creamer rain drops,
wet and thirsty and cursing the turkey
who said too much water was too bad.

Bring on the damp leaves
and the damp seats of pants.
Splash on droplets dropping from branch
to sea level.

Salvia, spit it up, into your
baby bird's mouth and
drop some on me accidentally.

Flood tiny concrete rooms,
irrigate me.
Smother in luke-warm raindrops,
and I scream when stink-bugs press their
wet little pad toes on me.

Dampen everything!

The bubbling smugness that coagulates
in the core of my psyche is unstoppable.

It's a blob.
It justifies and frees,
it separates for days at a time
and then meets again
with calculated oomph.

A summer day,
warm and comatose.
One where algae festers in ponds
and frogs ribbit and jump
at the buzz of dragon fly ***.

Bugs and sweat thrive on these kinds of days
but the grass browns slowly under a shrouding sunny ski.
Bodies feel loose and lazy,
like jazz,
and words don't form as easily.

We scratch ourselves instead
and sit real far apart.
Hunger reduces to nothing
and our torsos taper and stretch.

You've had a best friend, you say
but have you?
Like where you're sitting there
and problems are dirt
and dirt is grass
and grass is growing
and grass is weeds
and weeds are prairie
and deer and rabbits run through
and nature runs its course, too.

Navy blue skirt and crisp white blouse,
over-priced boat shoes and cream hair like feathers.
Marina, with polka-dotted purse and flirtatious disposition
enters the news room with a head unoccupied by news.

And the teacher speaks of floods--
that’s news to her.
And one student brings up debt--
that’s news to her.
One more comment ‘bout the Knights
she’ll say, “ain’t that something,”
well isn’t that something, by jove.

Pets her brown tan,
observes healthy fingernails
and strolls on down the hall.
Mild, sweet, unaware of the news
Marina thinks,
“But who owns the newest car?”