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I’m so siced about the Barbie movie. I just watched the latest trailer. I felt a fluttering in the stummy.

Peter’s birthday was May 1st. “What do you want for your birthday?” I’d asked.
“A flash for my iPhone,” he said. “Your phone already HAS a flash,” I replied, helpfully.
“No,” he explained, “a professional, external flash - they’re much more subtle and variable.”
“What are you going to take pictures of?” I asked. “You,” he said, smiling slyly.
“Me!?” I said, with a wrinkled nose, somewhat alarmed. “You don’t take pictures of ME.”
“Not usually,” he admitted, “but we’re going to Paris and the snaps will look better with a flash.” “Just ME?” I asked, “What about some ussies?” “We’ll take snaps of us, but you’ll have savage new pics for your poetry sites.” So, Peter got his flash and he’s taken a baZillion pix.

“Smile,” click, (iPhones don’t always click, so the click’s a writer’s dramatic effect)
Peter takes bursts of 50 pix at a time and only one in fifty turns out looking good (my opinion).
“Look this way,” click “toss your hair,” click. Apparently salads and my hair are better ‘tossed.’
So now we’re in Paris, but before we can take our tourist pic, I must lean over, like I’m going to throw up and comb my hair forward, so when I flip it back, it will appear fluffy.

“Look sad, look happy, try not to look so drunk, look ****,” he asks. “You’re kidding,” I replied. I exist only in his view finder.
“Just part your lips slightly and look vacuous,” he advises.
“Can I DO both at once?” I asked, as if challenged by a scientific equation.
“Don’t roll your eyes,” he said. Today, he was ‘the serious artist’. I’d never want to be a model.
Finally, I’d had enough constant photography and I just started looking moody. Peter seemed not to notice.

I read somewhere that when you smile, the activated muscles of your face actually improve your mood. Or something like that. Anyway, I’m trying to deepfake myself and smile my way to happiness. I ordinarily think of myself as tough, but lately, I’m soft.

A Yale counselor once told me that sometimes we tell ourselves a story and we just hold on to that version of things until it feels true. I have to stop thinking I’m on the edge of a deep, blue loneliness. I need to get on a metaphysical bike and ride away from my sad-self.

Later, when we’re back at the hotel, Peter was reading in the living room and I was lying on the bed, watching another Heraclee Beach, sapphire and ruby, sundown through the hotel windows. Peter came looking for me. He had a book in one hand, his place saved with his index finger.

“What are you doing?” He asked, lightly. “Want to go out to dinner or get room service?”
“I’m thinking thoughts.”
“What kind of thoughts? He asked, taking a seat on a desk chair he’d rolled over. Now I’m watching his face and he’s watching mine.
“You know how, everyday, at school, we tell each other everything that happened?” Peter nodded. “Which, of course,” I’d continued, “is impossible, but it’s as if we’re having experiences just so we could discuss them later - share them. It’s like, when we aren't together, it isn’t real life.”
“So..” he said, verbally prodding me on.

My voice felt thick, like it knew I wouldn't say things right. “Well, I’m two me’s now, I’m split right down the middle. Before you, things were easy. I was becoming Dr. Me, I had one goal, things were simple,” I shrugged, “but now, there's the me that’s going to be a doctor and the me that needs you.” I can’t seem to take my eyes off his face.

He touched my foot and wiggled it a little. “You don’t have to figure out the future right NOW, Mz overachiever.” He said in his soft, western drawl, “You can’t wrestle the future into orderly submission, like a chemistry test - we don’t have enough data (says mr. physics). Anyway, don’t we have forty or fifty years to figure it out?”
Suddenly, my head felt clearer than it had for days. I chuckled. I may have had my hand over my mouth and a smile was so big it hurt my face.

“You were very patient to put up with me today,” I said, turning slightly and quietly serious.
“You be you,” he said, smiling bigly back, “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Then I got serious. “Do you think we can find barbecue?”
“But of course!” he said, in a fake French accent, like Lemiure, in ‘Beauty and the Beast.’

1
today on the radio, the voice of british engineer
kenneth bigly,
shackled in a chicken wire cage in iraq, is crying and
begging his prime minister
“please don't leave me here...”

the sound of his desperation rises like black smoke,
takes a solid
form, lodges itself in our hearts, non-transferable as
we continue to
invent as we go, what to do next.  this evening,  a
televised debate
about homeland security and foreign policy...

life has spilled out of its channels.

2
the rain has finally stopped, the puddle in my
basement is
deep enough for minnows.  dawn wrings itself out
before the
sun comes up, and trees shake off their heavy wet
skirts and
move on in the wind.

outside the back door, a large spider, the colour of
sand looks like a
crab walking on air, weaving, weaving the repairs of
her lair.

this airy space, this life, holds everything in place.  do
not pluck or cut
or name what you find hanging – it's only time
rearranging itself.

a sense of the invisible in the corner of my vision, a
glint of gold, a
secret life is moving between the trees; they are
always whispering.
in the solitude, behind the rocks, in the tall grass, and
below the
surface of the water, meaning passes silently.

this is not daydreaming. it's watching yourself dream.
the way children
play.  draw the curtains.  open the curtains.  vanishing
or fusing?  what
course will this take?  when the time comes that I can't
feed myself or
get up from where I lay?

3
thoughts are throwing themselves like discarded
clothing inside my
head.  i pick up a few and make some notes, but the
rest, strewn
about, disappear when i turn on the lamp.  sometimes
the very word
i need goes dark.  i want to get on my hands and
knees and look for it

4
the trees have entered the house.  they are on the
stairs and in the
hallways between the rooms.  i can hardly see you
anymore.

you stay, you go.  you will be someone who will always
remember
sounding the hurting horn at the wrong time.  you
catch your plane.
my body wants to fold forward like a suitcase locking
in the pain.

i begin giving things away.  a long time resident of my
head, I tidy up,
fold the past away, and gather what feels like a new
method of
thought – to admit that we just don't know, never knew,
where we are
going.  passengers waiting for departure.

5
tonight i pull on a cloak full of the moon that won't come
off.  i begin to
dance around a hole in the world where love once
thrived.  i hear the
trees applaud.  whirling in the shining light, i float.  i
fall.  i learn to fly.

healing without, healing with

Trump supporters ...
we're supposed to be nice
& understanding
& not suggest
they all chew straw,
play banjos on porches,
or gnaw dogs legs
on rocks in the
desert sun,

that they don't
talk of Yankee money,
the good old days,
& shoot possums
& squirrels
on Saturdays
for fun,

that they actually
don't go courting
with their cousins,
are sure Barack was
a Kenyan Communist,
or think that the earth
is oh 4,000
years old or so,
cos The Good Book
dun told them so,

we're supposed to
be kind,
sympathetic,
walk a day
in their shoes,
feel their plight,

but its hard
its hard,
so hard,
when in actuality
they cast their lot
with a lying ignorant racist
just right out of
central casting,
in a Hillbilly remake
of The Last Days of Rome,
Richie Rich Goes to Washington,
or The Devil Rides Out Bigly.

You promised us you’d make the country great again
And that you would build a Mexican wall.
You said you’d make America bigly wonderful
And that you were the smartest of them all.
You said you’d keep the immigrants from coming
To take away our jobs and ruin our land.
You finally came around to getting rid of gays
Now that they are getting out of hand.

Scamboozled, that’s what we got.
We’re hoodwinked. By all the things you’re not.
Plum snookered by all your fancy words.
We’re still waiting for what we heard.

You said you’d fix the country with your knowledge
Of how business should be conducted.
So how come we are starting to feel
Like Russians came here and we’ve been abducted?
You promised you’d put the best minds to work
But you hired a bunch of babbling stupid clowns.
Watching your soap opera presidency
Has really begun to get a lot of us down.

Scamboozled, that’s what we got.
We’re hoodwinked. By all the things you’re not.
Plum snookered by all your fancy words.
We’re still waiting for what we heard.

You said you’d never take any vacations yourself
And be like that black guy you hate
But you have taken forty seven golfing weekends
And plan a two week vacation to date.
When you first got your self elected to the job
It looked like a new era was in reach.
Now I think I’ll join with the majority
And see if we can’t all get you impeached.

Scamboozled, that’s what we got.
We’re hoodwinked. By all the things you’re not.
Plum snookered by all your fancy words.
We’re still waiting for what we heard.

With that incredible brain in his skull,
he drags this country through the mud
like a child drags his blanket.
His enormous, mighty hands grasp
impetuously at his phone to plop out
****-like tweets to his army of bots.
That statuesque frame, upon which his ill-fitting
cheap suits drool down, stumbles around courses
in search of new ways to lie about his lies.
And his striking eyes, squint and squirrel away the truth,
deep in the soul of his heart, which is bigly, and grate (we know).
Oh, we know, Donald. We know. It’s hard to ignore
such an enormous heart as yours. So big indeed,
that this country needs to get out from under its weight
before the inevitable cardiac arrest. It’s a democratic test,
while the Feds investigate all the best people
hired to sell off this country’s assets
to net the richest more riches.

the way I consider the world
as one who has rarely been heard
is through a glass darkly
no matter how sparkly
or bigly the presidents fared

Young Donald is so very bigly hoping
that he can rest his fat golden *** in
the Queen's oh so golden carriage
when he visits those green, green lands
as he's used to sitting on golden stuff
& it makes him feel so very ...
special & important,

he's instructed his minions to pull strings
twist arms & just plain plead for this to be
allowed as he is just all pumped about the
idea of sticking his big orange head out of
the golden carriage so as he can wave to
the adoring multitudes,

it might even be better than the time they
allowed him to sit in that big, big truck &
toot that big, big horn ...

oh my is he excited.

Me ... I hope there's a riotous seething mob
that makes the storming of the bastille look
like a rowdy friday night at the pub,
but me,

I guess I'm just a dreamer.

Our Great & Wise Leader was just so busy
basking in his omnipotent all-knowingness
& radiating light that reached the four corners
of the world where millions were at this very
moment reflecting on the so, so many Time
covers he'd graced that our Huge Orange One
needed a nudge from his missus to snap him
out of his bigly reverie in which his coffers were
filling, & his bigness was getting bigger & his triumph
over all living beings was being chorused in the very
heavens above,

oh lord he was lost for awhile there as he forgot
to put his hand over his heart
during the anthem,

thanks Melania.