Garbage bags
Tater tots
Black beans
Milk

This is a grocery list
not a poem.
But my brain is out of poems,
and the store is out of milk,
so maybe it is both.

the trees were my first love.
you are my second, maybe.
i don’t love you any less, baby,
just because i love them first
and maybe more or deeper.
then again, i miss you more—
but how could i miss the trees,
even as they fill my lungs?
and are nourished by my wastes?

until i turn blue and later black
and later seed, root, and flower
the trees will love me more.

There's a radio on
Blending into the drone of the car.
Outside, it is silent.
Silent trees, silent night.
Inside, there is weight.
All around, may as well be outer space.
Dark, there's stars.  I'm an astronaut
Gazing through the thick paned glass.
Inside, where there's weight, I feel completely
Filled.
And so separate from what's out there.
Not just the stars, the trees, the noise,
But the people, the laughs, the bounce.
Tomorrow, I'll be buoyant again.
Eyes wide,
Limbs nimble,
A-glow.
Tonight, though, I am heavy
Heavy in my hips and head and heart and ribs
Every breath wraps me in an embrace of air
I feel my stomach hug back.
My eyelids steal kisses
My legs melt.
Inside (of me) there's weight
Soft, sweet, lulling, drawling
Weight.

It's always here,
In the loud, long nothings.
Always in the cramped quarters
With my legs woven,
All stiff and wound up like some morose marionette.
I guess that's where the words grow.

I like to imagine cars are horses
Running free, wind spirits of the open plains
Not machines.
I like to imagine I'm some great poet,
Inky pleasures flowing from mind to parchment.
Not just me.

I'm always imagining.
Especially here.
Imagining myself,
Imagining people notice me.
I don't much care how.
I imagine because it's harmless
And mine alone to taste and to have.
And I don't wish my imaginings were real.
For I cannot own experiences,
Only fantasies.

It's always here that I find myself tangled tight,
Sewn and enshrouded in words and thoughts and imaginings.
Maybe it's the dark or the late or the loud or the long
Or the routine
Or the nothing,
But it's always here that I find myself somewhere else.
Always here that I tie it all together, somehow.

And to think that even the otherworldly
Is made other by this world of ours.

And every fiction
is just some little reality
wrapped and tied in ribbon
or cloaked in elven wools
painted in one thousand colors
or masked in grime and muck.

And, so disguised,
Reality becomes truer.

Out in the penetrating haze
Of the natural world
Weapons are used, not made.
No battle is a war
Out in natural light.
And weapons are used, not made.
Indifferent as she is,
Nature picks no side,
And so weapons are used, not made.
When something is born,
In natural light
It is born creature, helpless
So no weapon is born to be made.
Yet under lightbulb, in man's metal warehouse
In sanitary stink and entombed disembodiment,
Some weapons are bred to be played.

The rice cooker broke
because I turned it on
with no rice inside to cook
And its empty clay
couldn't take the heat all alone
So it just cracked, all spiderweb
Almost pretty.  Useless.
And I hated myself for that.
I felt pretty useless for that.

What's funny,
I think it's funny,
I want to think it's funny,
is that it's been years
but I remember, and I still,
and I am still pretty useless for that.

Once Upon A Time
Pressure cooking was exciting
It was Hot,
It was Tense,
Leading tone to tonic
Tugging me towards...

But I'm bored with that now.
I'm bored of stress.
      (but I'm stressed when I'm bored.)

I'll just go to sleep.

And in the morning

I'll remember to add rice.

Knowing myself to be but fledgling and ephemeral,
I find tomorrow thrown upon the floor.
Knowing myself to be but half-baked hope-desires,
I stop to iron out the seams.

I am reminded
by my cracked lips,
And the way my mouth
tastes like mouth,
How hot it is in here.
That,
left to my own devices,
I might just burn myself up.

I am reminded
by dragon breaths
Blowing softly
on my forehead
How warm you are out there
That,
left to my own devices,
I could bake myself into all that glow.

And never know
Why I'm still so cold.

Today I'm feeling oozy
Sweet and slightly snoozy
My heart feels jammy juicy
My eyes still stale and scuzzy

Today I'm feeling rotten
Young and quite forgotten
My heart is made of cotton
My eyes play tricks and soften

Today I'm feeling crispy
Jeweled and fancy frisky
My heart is feeling thrifty
My eyes, regardless, misty.

Sometimes dorms stink of stories,
Of drunken romps and late night melodies
Of no-good ramen smashed down sinks
Broken hearts and centipedes

Sometimes late at night,
(Tonight)
Showers reset arteries,
'Til we smell of peppermint
And scrub out grime and memories.

If today,
To grow
We must destroy
If to feast
We must parasite
Or to plant seeds
We must plow down

I'll gladly sit a moment
In sweet sunlight
And soak her up sat still,
For once.

That soil
From which we grew.
And to which we will return.
To stardust.
To twinkle.
And tidal pool soup.

That soil
Our always mother
who will take us back
to bark.
To worms.
And stars.

2:00am
***** sheets
A locked up jaw
And dread-dried-joy

It's just a moment
A crinkly smile
An innocent thought,
About babies or ambitions,
And suddenly I'm old,
Suddenly I crinkle.
I watch myself crack slowly,
No wait--all too fast.
Suddenly it's empty, as it was before
But I can't remember
It must have slipped my mind.
What does nothing feel like?
Like sleep or pointless thought?
Is it rice cakes or white or black,
Or all those words unsaid?
I'll never know what nothing is.
Not even when I'm dead.
Nothing comes and nothing leaves
The nothingness again.

It isn't names that brings me there,
Or tombs or words or history,
It's when I blink and see before me,
Me, but crinkly.
Me, but looking back on the supple face of now,
Looking back and seeing the story from the other end,
And standing in the epilogue
All in a single blink.

I see so much, and hear so much
I smell, touch, I taste and fear
And love and hate and joke so much
It should have killed me
Made my hardware overheat,
Made me want the nothing.

But even when I see her,
(Me, but crinkly)
I know she's laughed and cried much more,
And I'm glad I gave her the chance

I am wide awake.
I am tired.
And my eyes do not want to be open.
They are old.
They have seen too much,
For today.
They are tired.
I am tired
Of this.
Wide awake
At 4:00am
Jazz on the brain.
Right now
I could dance until my skirts ripped to shreds
On knee high grass, and ticks crawled up my legs
I could dance in that,
And not care about ticks and scraped up shins or
How bad I am at dancing
But I'm too tired.
So instead of twisting myself into somewhere new
My jazz brain
Plays on an empty room
Elevator ******* skull.
Too tired to do anything more than echo
My jazz.
But I'm wide awake!
And I want to use it.
But it's no use against such heavy
Blankets and air and silence and space and brain
And I know I would care about the ticks
And it would hurt, to bleed all over that prickly field
And I would care.
Since imagery doesn't feel the same
Never feels the same
As real world nettles.
So instead of dancing.
I am writing a poem.
And my brain is on jazz
Like fire.
And I am wide awake.
But I am so
So
Tired.

In suburbia,
a blue house with purple shudders;
a sloped hill, more wildflower than grass;
a peach tree, perennial, too old to fruit;
and robins, Miss Carolina robins, catching worms;
all told, making a home.

And a girl with wildflower hair
that reaches down past her waist,
that catches sticks like Miss robin's worms,
that's ends remember times she's forgotten,
that's dead and dry by her shoulders.

And the girl, she's catching caterpillars,
putting them in jars,
plastic wrapping up their sky,
poking stars with table forks,
making them a home.

Until they crack from wooly cacoons
when they're made into something new:
a kitchen moth, drawn to the light,
and so what about you, little girl?
What about you?

I know you to be
End-beginnings.
Secret.
Hidden,
For me, for now,
Forever, for me, not for you,
Since my forever
Will end long before you
Ever even notice I was looking up.
But we were both born once
Of stars, maybe, of mothers.
And though you are endless
And I am so very ephemeral
I can't help but wonder if
Some of your endless
Lives in my one Moment
Of your great
Forever.

I'm sorry, Mom
The squirrel got the bowl of nuts.
I know you told me to watch.
To keep watch.
But how can it be the puppy
with the black tips
has turned all grey?
How can it be?
She smelled like milk,
now she smells like vet
and clean and dead.
And the brothers,
they were toothy and twelve
and now, somehow, they're men, Mom?
And me?  What about me?
How can it be these legs of mine
sprouted long ago,
and there are muscles now,
beneath the round?
So what I'm saying is,
I must have looked away
Missed a moment (or was it 16 years?)
And this is why
the squirrel has chewed
this tea-stained memory.

I'll say I looked away,
since even that feels nicer
than admitting it all happened,
that the squirrel stole and years stole more,
all while I was watching.

In this moment,
All swamp air and sunlight spotlight,
Sat atop an old oak log,
I wonder
Who listened
To the swansong sinking melodies
caught between opulence and open water.
Who will listen
To our deep-space golden records
lost between planet and pale blue dot.
Who is listening
To my hushed hums on an old oak log
that once fell and may have made a sound.

I wonder.

And I listen.

On nothing day
I talk to myself
And know myself
Better than I will tomorrow
Better tonight
Amongst a lifetime of clutter
Between childhood diaries
And what could be a clover field, in a dream,
where everything was the same but better
Like it is when I write it down
On soft paper, cream with a pressed flower
Folded in the seam.
Of course, I have never written on this soft paper,
And tonight, on nothing day,
I type with tired, uneasy fingers
On a screen too bright for midnight eyes.
And yet in all the nastiness and stickiness
The imperfections, oddities
The house spider webs,
Crooked paintings,
******* ants, crawling up my legs
Here, in nothing day,
I somehow know myself better
Than I will tomorrow.

I miss you from the future
As in, the time ahead bleeds into now
As in, the space apart balloons from here
As in, these minutes will soon be weeks and maybe someday years.

Someday will I see you and not know who you are?
Your bearded face, your grown-up heart?
Once we were Gemini but then we could be strangers.
For years we blossomed side by side,
Now your fern and my oak have been planted far apart.
And I fear we'll forget
we were saplings in the same ***.
For just a moment,
Family.

Such dusty wings,
Crackling spines.
Such musty smells
Just as I remember.
Though perhaps a little older,
As I am older.
Perhaps left behind,
As I left them there.

the sun is liquid hot on my bare back
seeping into the indents at my waist
gently igniting the tops of my shoulders
burrowing through my hair to curl against my scalp.

it is silent, though there is much noise.

i
The shadows on my walls
Echo me.
Do they watch me?
Sharp figures dance in lamp light
Silently.
Mockingly?
The long shadows on the pavement
run from me.
Will they wait for me?

ii.
So many ways to cast
a shadow
in dewy dawn-light.
in ecstasy.