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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The unconscious mind can wander seamlessly through eight hours of time.
Searching, mending, forgiving, DMT-ing.  
Stir slightly dear, but don’t dare face the other direction.

“Let’s go outside,”
I say, but my suggestion flutters around your ears and dissipates into the air.
You sleep, you’d sleep all day if I’d let you.

Up and down, climb down from your parents bed
and crunch, crawl, creep, creak on wooden floor.
Hoping to wake you.

Forward seven months, and still sleeping every night.
Sleeping and moving accordingly with new loves.  
Draping arms and then later, struggling to remember a face.

The men sleep silently, quietly, without cease.
Never wandering or wondering or nervous.
Not self-conscious, fully comfortable.  

I sleep uneasy, unsure, and maybe uncomfortable.
Wanting, then pushing away, then wanting.
Sleep alone, then, you say.

Nothing seemingly tangible has changed in the past twenty-five days.
Except I vacuumed all the hay up from my floor and driving around aimlessly suddenly felt inexplicably good again.  

I was kind of like an errant vacuum,
******* up innocent little cloth specks and dirt clumps along with pennies and bobby pins.
The crackle of looming damage did not faze me.

But now I am thinking about public education, and vaccines, and health food again.
I'm thinking about the pros and cons and it feels right.

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.

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.

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.

In a dream I was asked to be dismissed
from the prestigious group I belonged to at the
university.
Somehow,
they had discovered by true personality.
I begged and pleaded to continue attending the meetings
and receiving the free merchandise.
They acted haughtily toward me.
They said they would still allow me to room in the same
dormitory as the other members but that was it.

In a second dream, a road was blocked by semi-trucks
that tote Ford trucks.
I tried to swerve around them in my parent's SUV,
but I missed the road entirely and my car slowly
dropped into a sewer ditch.
In my head, I thought, get your cell phone.
Luckily, I didn't.
Weight became semi-irrelevant in the water
and I could lift half of the car out of the ditch with my foot.
Only half though, because once it emerged from the water,
weight was relevant.
You know what I mean?
A woman I knew in grade-school pulled me out by my arm pits
and we called my mom.

I woke up and itched mercilessly at the poison ivy on my legs.
Weeks earlier, I had talked at length about how I wasn't allergic to poison ivy.
Weeks earlier, I had been going with two guys.
Now I was painfully lonely and painfully itchy.

The direct, circular reaction between chemistry and electricity
gestates a cyber-space that pretends to know something
about autonomy.  
Unfortunately, the website sparks the Shakespearian within me.
Unfortunately.  It translates and relates with the mission not to deviate,
but as I read "O Villainy!" my eyes glance suspiciously at the sidebar propaganda:
Don't make these makeup contouring mistakes,
there are nine bases in hooking up now,
celeb quotes that will make you feel better about yourself.
"O Villainy!"
O, say this device don't know squat about me!

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.

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?”

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?

Idiosyncrasies.
Convincing oneself that two very uncorrelated happenings,
phenomenons, even, are correlated.
See, like the dry skin around my mouth appeared the day we met.
It lasted throughout the summer and is clearing up, now.
Now that we are all clear.

Or, perhaps, there's been a mind-fog face-fog correlation sans
romantic relationship.
In that case, I've been blind.
Blind as a bat.
I mis-read, mistook, misinterpreted my own dry skin.

It's almost like,
at least it can be compared to the time when I went to the Urgent Care because there was a rash on my back and the doctor said it was shingles.
In some of the same breaths he also mentioned that usually only old people get it.
And, he said, he said people who are stressed, too.
And I said, "but I'm not stressed."

And then I thought, am I?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I refused to scale the wall of an abandoned bridge.
You were already on the other side.
You were spunky.
That's all.
Intelligence yet to be proven, but maybe spunkiness is better.
In retrospect, it surely isn't.

If they were intelligent they would figure it out.
My rocks, my short dress, my latex undergarments.
Your arm, your tattoo, your driving.
My heads out the window because it refused to be inside.
Refusal and acceptance all in a parked car in a peaceful residential place.

"You crazy," someone said in a book I read.
Be more smart, be smarter.
Say something so we can talk about it.
Look up from that gross glowing cell phone.

You think, but you don't think when you walk
step by step, heel over heel, toe to toe, forward in the forest.
You think, cause you can't think about much else
'cept your next step, its the step that comes next.
Provided there's a path, trek steadily
**** the hills, engrain your heels
in the plush, pebbly mud, positioned sneakily
under the leaves.  

Presence, breath, refresh,
relieve, unwind, unconscious,
maybe even semi-aware of the subconscious,
slow down, speed up,
listen.
Hear!
Understand, demand [passively] your peace,
your piece of the land.
And you're a piece of the land.

Insatiable, and me
all I can do is step
toe to toe in my room.

And feel, with all my might
the ******* that will wound.
But salt the wound, with continual
praise and remembrance.

Like a church all filled and all screaming, saying out.
"Amen."
Ah, men.
With dark hair, and deep grins and pictures next to bicycles.
Mix c.d.s and please, please, please.
Me, I'm the tease.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

A sting of wakefulness and
gross masculinity too near.
The preternatural state of half-dream, half-a-wakefulness.

An expensive fan blew through the room
along with the air conditioner
turned on 54.
The room was chilly and a full bed was
packed with three bodies.

A careless sleepiness ascended from the sleepers.
Already awake, sitting upright, and staring
at a wall I wonder on the night before.

Significant wrong has been done in the past 48 hours.
Not to anyone in particular, anyone except the self.

Four stories higher than at least thirty-seven people below.
Walking, one foot in front of the other,
Eyes, aimed straight ahead for duty's sake;
For the sake
Of avoiding
eye contact.

Infant crow's feet well up upon hearing biblical friendships:
Best friendships.
Hood covers eyes; hood covers everything
except heavy breathing and fast-pace swaggering.
The thought
Of you
suffering,
is dagger-ing.

To be brown, and free, and un-connected!
To be without bias, to be without mate.
To comfort and to sidle up next to
in the most innocent kind of way.
To approach, and to be responded to.
To be noticed, all of the time.
To be hidden, most of the time.

I am deeply, deeply sorry.
The mountains humble,
the news crushes me.
Watching discordant relationships on the street,
the extent of self-help.

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.

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.

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 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.

The hillside--
a cardboard box.
And companies cut with exact-o knives along the edges,
removing the center.
Then, carry the useful pieces to me, for my white pine realty.
Leave the scraps to warm under an unshielded sun.  
Burn, blacken, gradually regrow.

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.

When all else fails,
cover me up in literary magazines,
filled with screen-print photographs and short stories.  
Light me up,
fill me up
with egg center yellows and humble rosemary greens.
Let her words, pained and smart, come out
of her mouth,
dance across the dashboard,
(eyes cast downward)
and onto my tongue.

When all else fails give me a light rain
and an intermittent run.
It's okay if it's overcast, but let me be sunshine.

I'm too anxious to focus on short poetry,
but not anxious enough to stop eavesdropping
on folks who talk about poetry.

30 minutes to rush to the Detroit gate.
Stop the plane!
Stop the plane, at least, for me.
I know I'm going to be sick.
I hope I sit by someone nice
and kind.

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?

How would you like to be on top of the cliff?
The one tree
with the best,
loneliest view.

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.

A doe ran across the road
and I rode without looking up
until I noticed, that we rode side-by-side.

Twenty, thirty seconds
we peered into each other’s eyes
in unison.  Looked straight ahead and then to my right.

And She crossed the path
two moving meters in front of my wheels.
Then again, we glanced back and forth between focus and fascination.

No wind, vibrant orange-juice sun,
and a dear, deer friend humming,
“I'm here."

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.

He's raking the garden rake too close to my back side
so over my music I mumble,
excuse me.
Rather perturbed,
distinctly disturbed,
I think how I'd rather do it alone.  

Later,
digging fairly deep into some sandy ground,
two clumps of horse **** in the two of my hands
I feel close to the earth.
I get back to the land.
I get back to the garden,
because she told me to do it,
and without the hired help.

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

I look to cover my head with a hat
and call it a day
but my hair is too long because it has to be.
I long to protrude,
but I enfold, biologically,
because it has to be.

To the man I won't ever see again:
I had lost my mate in a sea of similar looking citizens
and you offered me bread.
We broke and bit into it.
We commented on the subtly of rosemary within it.
I will never see you again,
but you fed me.