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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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 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.

Each time my eyelids close
I commit a new photograph to memory.
I hope I have enough space.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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

i 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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.