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.

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."

After almost 5 years of hanging out,
all I know is that I am kind and sympathetic.
Not jaded,
but I wish I wore glasses.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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?

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.

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.

"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.

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 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.

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.

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?

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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'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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?”

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.

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.

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.

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.