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.

She said she couldn't describe how she felt.
Maybe it was like having stomachaches in the Panera bathroom
or ******* about the erred logistics in the directions  
or the echo of my *** on the toilet bowl.
It was probably more like asking a friend to explain the meaning of the phrase "social constructs."
It was more like that.

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

Counting young women in black leggings
and baseball caps, with ancient letters inscribed on the tops of them.
One-thousand, three-hundred, thirty-five dollars
and fifty-four cents,
for half a year
of friendship.

The damp sidewalk is the stage,
the crushed orange leaves a platform.
Rubber rain boots have only existed for three or four decades.
Holes in an umbrella, holes in mother's boots;
Whatever that man said last night,
whatever that was,
it wasn't an oxymoron.

Leafing leaves, neon green with orangish tips
shake subtly with a light breeze,
and madly with a heavy breeze.
Or is that a squirrel?
Foreground, background, juxsta-
positions;
And I,
just in the right position.

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!

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.

Contaminated.
Surely more Macbeth than Banquo.
Level two: Lust.

****, ****, ****, knock and bang
at the door, for more.
Of what?
What of skin?
What about blood-shot eyes, coated tongue, sore back, bad-breath,
harsh light, pants too tight,
legs itch.
Fidget, twitch;
unnatural movements.

Unlike waking up,
joking, smoking on the porch.
Fancy coffee, cinnamon cakes.
Nothing black or heavy on my face.
Purity, hung-over purity.  
----------------------------------------------------
Roamin­g the streets, alone.
Constantly, consistently, alone.
Dancing to my own accordion tune.

Turning all of the lights off and pretending like there's nothing due.
Conditionals, conjuncts, and disjuncts to name a few.

The condition is that my naked body has been revealed to you,
uncomfortably in the light
and confidently in the dark.  

The conjunct is musky, old-timey undertones
of Sam Beam's voice.
Dr. Pepper, eventually, convinced me to be reckless
and rot my teeth, and give myself a stomach ache
for the sake of making out upstairs,
in a chair,
next to home-ade sound absorbers, made of fiber glass.  

The disjunct:
deciding between two and a half hours of utter hell,
driving a broken down dust buster van in the middle of
hell's ******* half acre, chugging up frosty hills and into a town,
a foreign town,
to be greeted with, "Hel-low,"
Versus, not having to do that.

The biconditional is that I will be with you if and only if I can be with myself first.

To be hugged by a narrow railway and a wide river
is to be loved by man and God.

Stick straight trees line hills, their arrangement phony
less than 5,000 feet in elevation but elevating humanity for over
sixty thousand.

For more than sixty thousand human beings,
think of fish stuck, are stampeded by shiny black
blocks of detonation.
Explosion for extraction, and teeny tiny port-o-potties
sit, enjoying relaxation where an ecosystem once
enjoyed rehabilitation after March.

We Marched on, up a gravel hill where wind
blew but we bolted our boots to the soil.
Sunglass-clad woman concealed her hurt eyes,
but her voice hurt enough to inspire a kind of
throat retching sensation.

***** up that black, ooey-gooey  you old, weathered mountain top.
Explosives like a firm finger shoved down the throat
denote a rock spew; regurgitate and repeat a dozen times over.
Flatten and deform, never to reform
the water-giving, life-renewing, shady shelter, stable
stool, magic majesty of my mountain.

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.

Heart beat mad into chest.
Introduction to one-gloved hand,
soft as silk and
hectic as twenty-first century sunlight shining on 1942 stone architecture.

Terrible stench upon entering,
dripping from the bag
tossed into the metal disposable bin.
Echoes; dins.  

Flint carved sharp into shears
plagiarism down to the wire.
Preposition, search the list for antonyms  
and synonyms
and cannibalism dream that wakes a man up
at an hour, two hours too early.

Eye problems from staring at the computer screen.
And leaning, fast and forward into the face
of a full grown, beard.
A laugh, much too much like the written down
pronunciation.
False, endearingly false.

Released in full.
Booming, thrashing, moving around, impenetrable.
Unrequited oxytocin.
Breathing out of mouth and nose.
Hormonal inspiration, and sensations that are insatiable.
Creativity blooming out of pleasurable pain.
Emphasis on the pain.
The unsatisfied, insatiable, pain.
Distracting and sickening but most of all,
more than anything,
freeing.
Allowing, and being.  
Human beings are ****** beings.

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.

There is ugly in every beautiful town.
There are stone quarries, electrical wires, and spittles of trash
on every forsaken corner of the United States.
There is a cloud machine amidst fields of green
and wind mills with long milling legs
that spread like the slashing ceiling fan
in my hometown living room.

There are brown patches of grass
and seasoned bearded hobos, too.
There are minimum wage jobs, and minimum wage folks
waging the war against crisp, shuttered homes .02 miles
down the way.

Billboards, more billboards
crowd the view.
Dealerships, car dealerships
speckle urban seas.
Me, I do live for variety.

Ritual is not specific to any race, ethnicity, culture, way of life or person.
Tradition, if not engrained and present, is despair.  
I remember moments in youth:
pungent, exultant,
bike riding sand castle building,
good old fashioned fun.  
I remember some moments of ten to fifteen years ago, I remember moments from 6 to 7 months ago.  
I've forgotten some.

I opened, read, and placed the money aside
from graduation cards.  I was surprised when I opened a card
received from campus ministry leader with no money, only a sweet note.
I counted the money happily, twenty dollar bills, fifty dollar bills, seventy-five dollar checks.
I checked my text messages, every seventy-five seconds
and heart skipped, slipped a beat when my mother calls and says
she's driving to Canada, she's got to get a way.

Really she's locked herself up at the Econo Lodge behind Big Boy's
only, approximately, eight minutes away.
And we drive up, and she presses her face to the motel window, door locked secure, and I press my hand up to the window.
But she won't let me in.  
She consumes, she consumed.
But she wouldn't let me in.

When I come home from my first year of school
I will tell her
I am an actress, too.

I know some folks.
They sink down.
Sinking dirt into the ground,
landslide and erosion.  
Buildings, structures depressed and falling in.
Make yourself bigger, I advise.  
Open your eyes, blink quickly between the palms of your hands,
face a window, if it helps.
See the light.
Did you see the light? I did.

Repression,
hold.
Hold.
Keep holding,
hold on tight to your bike handlebars.
Hold on to the straps of your book-bag until
your elbows cramp up stiff.
Hold on to your blankie,
rub it all over your body.
Inhale,
do not suffocate.

Exhale,
and feel good and bright.  
You've done something good for yourself.
Feel good about that.  
You've just brightened up your whole house.

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.

Underneath a small lee in the park,
she tapered down so small; sapling pine tree.
Furled a wool blanket like a tootsie roll
used as a pillow and rolled into sleep.

Scene-by-scene dreamed of bedroom encounters
enacted on beds of flowers.
Remembered the words of harmonica blowing boys verbatim
as the dream shifted scene for half an hour.
And a small, four-leafed local sage man came at an importune time
and to write her a note.
Succinctly and politely bargaining with her;
"Would you give up lust for pure reason?"
Turning away briskly, she glanced toward a stump
sat down for a ponderous sixty seconds.
Slowly standing, eyes regal and demanding
she wrote back "no, I won't"

Shiver and shake and she's suddenly awake
power walking to a house near the river.

Is it rude to lean my boots, that which touches the ground, without any kind of discretion or watchfulness, up against the toilet seat and tie them up neat, into little bows?
I'll never know, I suppose, whose bottom will sit, and ****, where I thought it appropriate to mend my un-laced foot.

Is it non-sensical and insensible to stare off into space, breath heavily, and pause in mid edit, while a handsome chap, inside and out, walks past with a stranger? "Call out his name," No, heavens no, do not call out his name.

Are our engagements forever fleeting? Am I to arrange the next meeting? "It's the 21st century," he retorts one day, "I gave you the wrong idea," the next.  Wrong idea? Just because we woke up and smoked a **** together and discussed the pros and cons of city life versus country life doesn't mean you gave me any ideas, I just thought you liked me.  

Wrong idea? Idea, the conception, misconception, that your touching my naked body, meant that from there on out, we were going steady, and I was to call.  

The 21st century, is all that it is cracked up to be.
And I am cracking up, outwardly, while I muse.
Inwardly, I am cracking.  
Needless to say, Athens county should most surely stop fracking.

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.

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.

The slow **** of an ice-breaker
spearmint or cinna,
requires the utmost concentration.
The discipline to savor, the fight not to bite,
the earnest sensitivity to flavor,
like the first glance of attraction,
attention reeled in,
and action unsure and disabled.  
Bite too quick on the line, too soon hooked and released
but bite slow and revel  their favour.

I dreamt a dream that a polar bear and its cub
entered a home.
A home that I was inhabiting with my mother and father.
At first, it only lounged around by the sliding glass door
(with its cub).
Very sleepy like, very casual.
But we were curious about its being around,
so we traipsed around the door, gazing at it.
Someone opened the door! (******)
and I scrammed to some little-boy's bedroom,
locked all the doors, even the doors leading to the bathroom.
Sooner than later, my parents found a way into the bedroom where
I hid.
The polar bear was trying to get in,
to eat us we were assuming,
so we hid under the bed.
Then I said, "let's climb out the window!"
So we did. We sat outside by some bushes.
My dad called me at this moment (in real time),
said the fish weren't biting and he was going to go golfing.
I tried not to sound hung-over.

Teacher, you freed me.
Bit by bit I became willing to talk about I,
Myself, perched on a toilet seat pushing the soft
cushiony fabric into a tight oval to
commemorate the virgins of the midwest.
I can only hope the tenants won't mind.
I am not familiar with their particulars.

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.

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.

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

Day 1
We'll maneuver down your ecosystem driveway onto
Latcha; not on red-spray painted bikes, but in maroon Civic.
Lunches packed, cooler stacked, en route for 8 hours [we reckon].
I presume five hours away and three hours to Waterloo my dad will wonder about our E.T.A, and I will say, "we are about three hours away."
We'll have fought over D.J. and agreed on the Stones,
but you'll know the words more than I.
But we'll save money and lodge ourselves at a
friend's house with the same last name as a vacuum.

Day 2
9 hours to Rapid city, South D
hopefully to see the faces of old men carved into a big old rock.  
I'll look out the window and quote lines from "America" by Simon
and Garfunkel and be the best ******* co-pilot that ever was.

Day 3
Country Motor Inn, drive on, to the Country Motor Inn!
Hey,
now's a good time to take that Adderall.  

Day 4-8
To the coast,
to hike around the area,
to rent bikes,
to drink hip-hoppity PNW brews with yous
and you're new, cool roomies.  

Day 9
South,
Southwest
Airlines.
Clenching the arm chairs,
would rather take a 74-hour train ride
than be up in the air.

Too tired to understand, or too much understanding
making it simpler to punish, and push.
**** virtues,
and most importantly,
**** patience.  
Flying back south and walking to and fro and waking up all on my own
and sitting by the window and biking or strolling with music
to the ears.
Self-inflicated solitariness feeling un-repressive, and un-defensive
and happily alone.

Never let self-inflicated solitary boredom be brought upon by another.
Indeed, cheers to alone-li-ness, when it is discretionary, and free.
Lying through my corroding teeth, I breath,
out mercy and breath in shame.
Over-dramatizing,
the wrong person is changing.

I am different;
You are the same.

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 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.

Armpits, legs, arms
pits of arms.
Instrumental music--dancing.
Hopping, shaking your hips, moving your feet.
Stretching, drinking coffee, going to the bathroom.
Taking a walk, taking a drive.
Deodorant!
Bookbag, handbag, no bag.
Watering flowers, looking at flowers, getting naked.
Looking at your nakedness.
Dressing, re-dressing, *******, dressing.
Salad dressing, soup, eggs over easy, black beans.
Singing in the dead of night.
Blues, pastoral folk fleeting, flowing,
meeting again.
Traveling, boating, tripping and falling.
Bird-watching, laughing, joking,
(Midwestern jokes)
Leaving, grieving, waking up.

How to remember a past year.
How to,
commemorate citrus burns and
the use of a pocketknife to cut pineapple,
and cutting pineapple,
and eating it on sunny, uneven brick paths.  
How to--

channel the extravagance of buying blue moons
from a local, local bar on a strictly dishroom paycheck.
How to

describe, being in the backseat, amidst new faces
amidst familiar songs and then stopping to observe
obscure insects that glow.
How to!

be without, pure two-wheeled freedom
on a path, proudly engineered and purring
toward a destination, marked by green.
Being alone,
so happy and so sweet.
How to?

The same "sweet relief" with honey,
on the same, quiet deck-porch-room.
Even when it rains.
How now?

Eyes, and oxytocin.
Late, late meetings.
Early morning greetings
and taking a liking to.

Week old tincture
tinted with lemon-grass
and snod-grass
and grease from black beer-spilled book-bag.

Weak old tincture
couldn't sustain relationships that envelop
circadian rhythms that clash and grate against bunk-bed guards and bone hanging ceilings.

Play bill:
swam in the shallows, metamorphosed, gender bended
unwavering and unending personal development through catharsis.

Pushy beliefs pushed on people who don't believe,
who won't believe in the "serenity of a clear blue mountain lake."
Science, and logic, and classical hodge-podge of ideas,
no,
of theories;
that makes sense.

The non-sensical is the warm.
The un, understood is the energy.
The sun shines in hard, unforgiving through the frosted window, blinding me and I trust my instincts suddenly.

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.

Honey sweet passions mixed with a dab
of citrus and spice and yellow, fragrant sweat.
Crinkled up foreheads, ugly and unforgiving
presented with a chortle of self-regret.
Possibly, possibly--
We can be friends.
Reticent, regal, wondering young women
bat eyelashes at a tree.
Forward, flexible, fickle females
can't stand to bat anything away.
The line, the analogous line is so faded--
it is unrecognizable.

Who lives in that house?
That house which so determines
Our do's and our don'ts--
Our will's and our won'ts.
Why, it is divine Majority.
We thank you, Emily.

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.

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.

"Oh, I thought you had some kind of throat disease"
Remarks directed toward the inch wide puddle,
of brown, runny spits next to my boot.
No, no, not exactly.  

Sand-pit puts them out quite nicely.
Don't have to rub the leaves out of the ****,
because that's an "ordeal."
Auburn hair, almost quite naturally, has influenced me a great deal.
The meals eaten, and passed through, disgust me.
She reminds me that I am human.

"Acid reflex?" Another gal, knowledgeably inquires.  
"My sister has it."
Your sister, well her and I could be great friends, then.
Deficiencies ****** me.  

Coffee spits, at 11:30 a.m., by the white-washed concrete fortress;
my new back porch.

Sketchpad sans the sketches.
Instead, let the breeze ****** you.
Faded yellow, dusty lime, seventies orange flowers zooming in and out at you.  

Naked, bland eyes,
grainy, grease-skin,
too tight of pants and cold feet.
Shudder on the precipice.  

Who were the main characters in my life?

With the right light,
natural ponds of blue,
young-maiden skin,
loose skirt and **** feet
jumping off the precipice.

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.

Tales of coming and going, movement on the insides
and the outsides
of the bodies.

The amateur beauty of the harmonica child,
Harmonies, surprisingly crafty,
polk along with the crack-pop of chicken being tendered
and fries not too salty at-all.

The line for New York City, Zanesville, and Philly;
a young man softly sifting through lady hair.  
And the shoes on this bunch all surprisingly thrifty.
Do not stare, echo mothers of the past.  

All pragmatics aside, I eavesdropped intently
to earnest voices of men, touch on topics of race.  
Gruff solitude, paired with fluorescent hung-lights
and a retrospective friend pacing endlessly.

Only the words that flow out seamlessly now,
can tell toward which mood I'll be leaning.

Ice melted and the lemon soaked up the
deep plush juices of cranberries.
The smell of you was newly showered,
damp and warm
still looking slightly *****.

Water bottles, made of plastic
were slowly shifted in an Eastern ocean.
The separateness of their position from land
reminded me of us.

Dark brown ceramic ash trays smoked.
Lounging, we read the backs of LPS and
talked thoughtlessly about genius.
Jean shorts sagged and lost their body,
but still we felt pretty.

A really loving melody, Joni Mitchell,
played from downstairs.
Upstairs, a pillow between my legs and
background semi-trucks on the turnpike.
And picking up the smell of you, faraway and happy.

Move back.
The halls will be yellow at the high school
and the front office won’t have ever changed.
The sixth-graders who paddled down the Little Miami
will have remained the same.

The hammock will sit stagnant,
waiting for that push, that shake and bake, that slap and tickle.
A black lab rising up from the grave, smelly as all hell,
will be there to greet you.

Ride a red-spray painted bike down
deserted roads, the same mountain dew bottle trash,
age-less hollerin’ neighbors;
home-run derby crew.

Move back.
Watch lonesome blues whittled away,
and whispering softly,
“it’s not you, it’s not you, it’s not you.”

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.

A blonde from the most expensive public institution
separated keef into sweet, firm rows.
Upon entering the wood-panneled house, you were under the allusion
that none of the go-ers would be doing blow.

Young males huddled against university brick walls
let their fluids go on a-flowing.
Expectation bound phonies make time-consuming calls
to prove there's elsewhere to be going.

And the toilet on the left side, remained fluffily clogged,
the mirrors all gazed into by the dozens.
The cell-phones kept the moments sufficiently blogged
about hazy ladies gyrating on cousins.

Crowds inadvertently bumping and grinding
in their pilgrimage to thee sacred keg.
Four fights broke out, because frat oaths are binding
and their forward almost broke his golden leg.

All dripping with the sour scent of the *****;
Make-outs, misogyny, and brawls.
Those in attendance were all said to have perused
the meaningless, the free, and the foul.

Not even twenty-four hour catharsis;
where at first rumination bred ruination.

The thirty-four degree one o' clock wind whispered "turn around, go back where you started."
The cloth of used, slightly misused sweater and unsanitary khakis counseled with the slogan,
"buy me, feel better."  
Dreary glimpses, averting eyes on community paths spoke most loudly, and most fluently, and quite simply said: alone.  

Mistrust and misuse and isolation undone quickly by steady river, parted clouds, and miscommunication.
The wispy whites of blind clouds says don't spread too thin, don't spread so sparse.
The screech of a gaggle of geese; the urge to speed through discomfort.  

Ruminate instead on steady sediment structures,
and the stranger's closed mouth smile and whole-hearted "hello."
All earthly and nudging and prodding to speak up again in class.