Being sleep deprived
is a lot like being drunk.
2. It's generally better
not to sleep with someone
who sells drugs.
3. If you don't want to have ***
say so early
and often.
4. It's vitally important
that his head is not too small.
5. Teeth too.
6. Frenzy and impatience are either fantastic
or not good at all.
7. Don't be too accepting and tolerant.
This will be mistaken as keen interest.
8. Some people are nice but not interesting.
They will not become interesting later.
9. If you're mainly looking for ***
have *** right away.
It's not going to make more sense
with time.
10. Some people have voracious, intriguing minds,
simply because they are enthusiastic about everything--
they enjoy but only endlessly consume.
11. I am not meant to play tennis.
12. Nor do I want to.
13. The long deprived are not looking for friends.
14. I am capable of incredible
self and shared delusion.
15. It's hard to say for sure what a messy home
represents, but it's not going to be anything good.
16. Don't be too accepting and tolerant.
I may mistake my own acceptance
for keen interest.
17. Don't overlook a multitude
of small dishonesties.
18. There is such a thing
as too much of a good thing...
and too little.
19. Don't encourage small feelings
if you would not want them
when, **** like, they have grown enormous
and tenaciously rooted
for little enough
reason.

Thinking of you,
but the things I’m thinking are really too complicated to be worth sharing,
and anyway the more I think the more I keep ending up back where I started,
and while I’d like to share something with you every time I try writing it down it seems kind of pointless,
so here’s a card to say that I’m thinking of you
which is sort of ambiguous if you think about it
but the picture on the cover helps with that.

a few weeks after our love affair ended
my husband and I were walking through your neighborhood

and in front of a coffeeshop, holding on to the rail,
an old man had his pants down, ready to poo

and the customers looked on over their late night coffees through the large glass windows, expressionlessly

once out of earshot, he and I giggled wildly
as I asked "do you still think it would be glamorous to live downtown?"

I don't remember what he said,
I was thinking in passing of what the old man felt

soon the subway station where you drop off the women
you're sleeping with on their way home

will be awash in cherry blossoms and the scent of a food truck

my husband shakes his head at your seeming prowess,
but a bird in the hand beats two in the bush.

I dreamt you were a **** officer--you know, one of the relatively innocent ones--you aren't of course--even though you couldn't read my face--

I no longer feel you, yet you're frequently in my thoughts, usually on the bus, on your way to another one, talking to me,
and I go through my slim repertoire of ways to nicely say go away

I’d like to write a little poem without words
like a very small flower located somewhere between
a meadow and the side of a mountain
opening silently, for no one at all,
certainly not you.

But undoubtedly a strange little rodent
would eat it.

let go of your heart,
let it out of your fist.
let the blood travel in its natural exhilaration.
it knows the way.
(it knows every way.)
look away, let your eyes
rest awhile.
you know the way.
your heart is transforming, transformed
from a pump to a seed,
transforming utterly
into a new being.
grow to the sky.
go coursing forward.
you know the way.
(you know every way.)
rest your voice awhile.
let it change--
let it travel through your body,
let it be transformed.
the love in your heart
can transform worlds
even when
you have covered it utterly
for
it knows the way

In the middle of the night, she wanted me to
feel her belly—I forget if there was a tumor there
or the gap where a tumor used to be or
just a gap, a mysterious gap in her belly.
And old skin ripples and softens—now mine does though
nobody knows, I look only a little different,
and only I see the downturn in my mouth in the mirror.
I don’t say anything to you because I don’t want to talk about
the gap in my belly, the sags, the hardness that shouldn’t be there.
All I have to say is about pain, pleasure and poison.
So I wait for the good days to speak, I avoid answering questions
and try not to be too much myself as I am.
I wonder about your quiet days, though,
what dismal truths do you keep to yourself?
And do you have moments like these,
reaching through the lonely velvet dream
towards the scintillating shadows of someones,
only to fumble and go slack, exhausted
before having touched the other end,
to find if it’s an inky vibrating projection
or an ephemeral, delicate reality?

everything is littered around the living room
while it rains softly outside.

you walk around
while I sit tired.

all the objects in this room
wish for someone to care

as they lie, unable to move
to some place better;

instead they are where we dropped them
or where the cats last pushed them, in play.

and they all
wait.

wherever I go,
I never seem to be there.

only the things in the living room care.

I know you are there though I can’t reach you.

And I have something to say though I don’t know what it is.

It isn’t that I love you, although I might.

It's some unformed thought, an adventure lemon bright,

cold lake shine, green dark roots,

quiet mud…

It is peaceful urgency,

reposed progress.

It is knowing that between us words will play like children in the light,

and their games will endlessly expand,

and we will always glance and understand

that language secret even from ourselves.

I am
the balance point
at the center of
a vast universe—
whooping with complexity
and groaning with emptiness.
And how absurd to see me
standing there,
powerless in an excess of power—
my only fulcrum
within me as I take a deep breath
and whisper, implore, reason, soothe
the great, uneven immensities
to be calmed,

and I dissolve my consciousness
into placelessness
so that I may place myself at the center of each
zone of complexity, each expanse of emptiness,
and center each millimeter within itself,
so that all this universe is a universe of balance,
continuously shifting yet continuously balanced,
her foot in absolute certainty on the path,
her body all containing,
the void her nourishing heart,

the enormity neither ordinary,
nor frightening,
nor any one thing,
but to see the consciousness in formlessness—
looking back at me—
all creating,
(and yet created, reflecting,) and yet
giving me
such power.

here's a poem
that isn't about
what it's about.
here's a window in the sky
perfectly transparent,
and deceptive.
here's a face
that isn't a face,
a person
that isn't a person,
pain that isn't pain,
emotions
that aren't emotions,
feelings about something
that isn't what they're about,
physical sensations that
are not physical at all.
here's a jar that is empty,
and dangerously full,
open and inaccessible.
here's a dribble of water in its bottom,
corrosive as acid,
maddening as quicksilver.
here it is.
look around you--
everything's normal,
same as always.

Because this is what's normal,
remember?

There's a kind of love, calm, open, merciful,
a strong and tired and peaceful mother for the aching soul,
that brings more pain
then lets it go again
in waves.
As long as we remember to let a broken heart
be an open heart,
its waterfall from the tear
falling upon each gnawing thought
and giving everything
the open heart
can give.

along the spider's threads I climb
to find the one I'll claim as mine

even if he's just a bite
to get me through one night

afterwards I'll stay quite still
until the next small thrill

I visit the black cup but rarely
so I find it only soft and slow.
Drunk in the corner of the living room
the rabid dogs forget you.
They slumber, sore and fretful,
until grey peace invades their brains again.
We have all confused enlightenment with something...
a bottomless cup of love,
an oblivious fog.

Here is a box of
cocktails. Enjoy each
one fluttering
and composed of
ORIGINAL
ingredients--
yes, REAL!
So real you can even
taste
it. Let me cry
for you that
you never tasted
anything
else.

And there we'll all be
crying, the chorus
oh God, not that again
and people paid
to tear their heart out
(or hair, whatever)
and rend garments
while cameras
click

That wasn't me,
because I'm nothing
you just got a lot of
bows around a box of
nothing--

Ha!

The new growth on my apple trees is covered in aphids;
the leaves curl and darken under the crawling green foam of their bodies.
My roses broke out in black, dropping yellow leaves,
bearing thick sickly flowers of hope on bare spindly stems.
Now even old hollyhocks have scales, those innocent seeming bumps
multiplying and spreading. And the aphids will go everywhere when they
**** the apple trees dry, they are already migrating
to poppy buds and young tomatoes.

I go to the nursery, resisting the urge to wring and brush off my hands.
She uncovers the facts--my garden got no fertilizer, and water may be insufficient.
So I will try to give my garden what it needs--the nutritious powder, the thorough watering,
the ladybugs in cheesecloth cages, the beneficial microbes, and where I must I will hack the plants away.

My self, meanwhile,
crawls too.

I slather vice on the wound, but the sting always returns.

The world expects me to be stronger than I am. The world is set up
for strong people, and it provides for them.

Once again I am like the short, shy child standing by the counter, overlooked.
But I cannot expect to grow into strength. And the world will only protect me
once I no longer need protection.

At times I sit in a stream of presence. I slather virtue on the wound,
but the sting always returns.

I straddle need and lack,
a gaping wound between my feet. I could sink down that hole,
but it too hurts, it hurts.

I am in the wild--no gardener comes to tend to my hunger or thirst,
or my illness after harsh conditions. Well, one comes--
a harsh gardener comes.

I wring and brush off my hands. I brush off each little invasion,
but there are always more.

an ecstasy of snuggles

I fell in love with a shadow on the wall.
I fell in love with the light.
I fell in love in dissolving, parting,
stepping in sing song.
I fell into never falling,
spreading into every direction,
feeling and being felt everywhere, within and without,
feeling familiar and utterly new.
I fell in love with nobody.
I fell in love with nothing.
Nothing was there--I could see it
in the shadow on the wall,
in the light.
I could not see it, and I was in rapture at the not sight of it,
a face that was not there,
a thousand times a thousand times greater than love.

Yet here I am, miserable, a fool.
With no great gift of strength, or if I had one I squandered it.
A snarl on my lips and my face in the mud,
cringing all around my heart,
withdrawing my hands ever away,
dragging a great sack of rocks.

You say: Your power is effortless.
Your effort is confusion.
Be still and remember what is inside you.
It is a fire that burns sorrow clean.
It is a river that washes your heart new.
All you have to do
is stop trying to be you, or safer, stronger, or better. That is not you.
Don't keep grabbing--let go. Say "Not that, not that."
All those grey, thorny treasures are worthless.
Return to what is eternal: nothing.
A great, shining, smiling, flowing, blossoming, nothing.

Say no, say yes.

Now this dark pool is quiet,
it hardly drips.
And so we wait here, contemplating,
nervously.
Nothing to say,
little to plan,
less to reveal.
Your private space is safer,
most of the time.
I know that much.
I would lie beside you
and play with your hair
while you drift to sleep
glad that I'm there.
Here, though, who can say
what lies in my dark pool?
Scry if you like and see.
It will tell you of something distant,
not what's within.
Always hiding, disguising,
pregnant with what might be fear.
Elsewhere there are women
with red maps of meaning
coursing through their organs,
veins, muscles and bones--
My heart's as alive as the underworld,
weirdly irrepressible,
eternally mourning.
Still there are roads here too,
and those who know some parts of the way.
I want to do better, be better--
not collapse on the instrument
but touch it one key at a time,
controlled and skillfully wild.
Must remember,
must remember,
I am still alive.

the kiss of death is sweet, swoon black river drowning
afterwards you are not the same, drained
light as a shade and heavy as a stone, or, later, chasm
the rest can see you when you're not there
and you find you fade from the day.
you seduced me by calling me a ghost--
so strange how we know before we know.

once death was both hidden and seen, a higher vision, a kind guide
but now he seems a cheap, deceptive *****... visiting everyone,
staying with no one, leaving behind nothing and less than nothing.

When you seek me out
and I say it's not happening
don't act out
of the passion of apathy.
What we long for
isn't what we have.
Don't let's find
the virility in sadness.
Not that there's
much risk of that...

You and I already
keep around enough baubles
to keep away the
loneliness.

Don't let's make
each other more
of the same.

wind in the trees sounds like a door opening
in the garden, someone is touching plates over and over
dry plates with hands that are only a tiny bit sweaty,
so each time they rub and have to give up their grip
and someone else has a tambourine between the tall buildings
and is shaking it, and shaking it fast
they said that I can see through to death
and I said I know, you told me that just yesterday
then they said you are an actress
here are your papers
the play opens tomorrow night
and the plate and the tambourine went quiet
but the door is still opening

The daddy long legs dandy
has a mad hatter laugh.

the theme of this love is ghosts
as it shivers by the sill.

what keeps us here, our grey shadows,
but our torn souls from the air.

loss echoes back for the ghost is lost
because of all the ghost lost and lost

sometimes one emerges and visits,
shifting from the emptiness, bringing thrilling chills

and sometimes I find I am the one
disappearing into the grey.

explain this knife's wound.
gaping and jagged
and, surely,
without cause.
empty, too, look--
inside there is no substance,
only sound, vibration, shuddering,
flickering, shattering, glimmering, deafening

explain this knife's wound.
always secretly my mouth hanging open
in imitation of it.
no words come out though.
if they did it would only be a call
to close up the wound and
suffocate its interior.

explain this knife's wound.
fear on its edge
though no knife.
that was tossed aside long ago
no longer needed
since the wound opens anew
every night.

Here in the tender grass
comes the eager step
of a fairy's foot.

The fairy's of the earth and air.
She can fly high
and she knows what's deep down.
But her favorite places
are the many paths--some known,
some unknown--on the earth's face
criss crossing with endless adventure.

Stand in the glade and wait
for the eager step
of a fairy's foot.

What a lovely walk I'm on
as long as I manage not to fall
down these pits and
cracks in the path.

And I, too, would give you the round
path of my love, without end,
but instead I can only offer that of time,
shattered and not endless,
though grand and
sweet just the same.

If my hand and my will were one and the same
I would reweave the strands of fate
and bring you to me in your sleep, in your light,
and here on a lazy day our minds would
play and delight and create.

My will however is only in my feet, so far,
with their certainty and their guesswork,
their endurance, their finding
and their leaving behind.

Here I'll set down
the rules I'm to follow,
thin threads of
highway lines.
Don't write,
don't ask,
don't invite.
You've said enough, wait
for the reply.
Let him work.
Don't help.
Let him figure you out.
Let him say, "There's something there I want"
"That I can't find in anybody else."
"I must learn how to reach it."
"I must get it for myself."
Let him think about you,
in the middle of the night.
Let him reach out.
Let him reveal himself,
not so casually, not so easily,
let him want more than
easy warmth.
And if he does not
then let him be.
When you're ready for your favorite mind
you'll find it.

you are as beautiful as death
standing outside with your cigarette.

your eyes seeing further
than far away—
you can’t quit that one utterance
of nothing, or you would be left with everything
you have to say.

stand outside and forget that it hurts,
simply exhale and watch time’s tendrils blow away,
and let death make you feel alive
as it settles its tight cool peace on your mind.

you are beautiful as death,
standing outside with your cigarette,
******* impermanence in deep, deep, deep.

the end can’t come soon enough.

This is not a night to immortalize in words, merely a quiet evening--and there is no great success or fall here. We are more ordinary than we expected to be, yet more odd; and these autumns of our lives are light in fruit.

I feel always like a bright shadow, standing aside--a tree in the garden's periphery, planted as a counterbalance for the side of the eye; paired with a contrasting element and yet waiting to be paired more directly, and to be seen more directly.

My desire has no grand meaning, I am neither deprived nor fulfilled. I am protected, and hurt by protection; for the most part left untended, yet not strong of will or wild.

We are the garden in winter, waiting to be entered and enjoyed; for without you, we are not quite empty, yet not quite full/real. Will spring make me soft/sweet/welcoming again? Will it come (to me)?

a hand in the waterfall
the river sliding over my shoulders, down my sides
the memory of waves rising in my mind

closer than a thought
ghost standing inside me, looking the other way
a secret known to no one at all

If you give me your glittering pieces
I can make you whole
you speak from inside me

You are a wisp of a thing, cradled in my arms, suckling in vain, a ghost in my shirt. No one knows you are there.

They forgot you in a paper bag, withered, and you were taken out with the trash.

You come for me with your absence, you comfort me with it: I protected you by making sure you are not here.

I am here. I am a wisp of a thing, and no one knows it (yet they all do) because I carry you in my shirt, the way some carry stains. You can't seem to live.

I don't know why any more. I acknowledge that I have been bested. I carry on, knowing that--my defeat resounds, year after year. I cannot spin it and myself again. But I manage to shield you still.

I do carry on--I will enjoy this life until I sink down and am taken out and finish my withering, as you have.

We are only a little more insignificant than everyone else for dying this way, early.

I'm a giant tonight,
stretched out in a chair from the 70s (and one feels it)
ribbons of red, flies can smell it,
white face and ankles,
closed eyes, a droopy expression.

Universe, I breathe you.

You have exhausted me, extracted from me
at last; now, at last
you will let me
sleep.

step, step on the path
back to simplicity, nothingness
you have nothing to give that is yours
take a simple set of actions
that foster clarity and simplicity
and accept the confounding chaos
with a simple heart,
a simple presence,
simple acceptance.

I'd gladly climb
back into your heart
and get drunk on your pulse
again--that
limitless
chamber.

I'd gladly climb
back between your rivers
and feel the power
of everything most ancient and
utterly new
behind, through,
and before me--
speaking
with rippling
mouths
and signs.

You're gone,
though.
Everything is back to
the way it was before.
The invisible seed
died and dissolved,
unimplanted.
It's all still there,
scattered, dissolute,
lonely.

I would give anything
to be fooled again
by that most true
illusion.

My hands are empty,
my words are empty,
my blood courses without destination,
my cells divide without promise,
my heart only waits for you
to come back with your drunkenness,
your truth.

As I lie past midnight
I watch fireflies signal urgently
green-white in the night
"I am here
have *** with me."

And think
of human courtship cries.
On Craigslist,
tentative men want to cuddle
and yuppies want to dine
(and much else besides).
At the milonga,
passion turns to counting steps
for some
(vice versa for others).
In parties, humor reigns.
Not always well.
Coquetry is a competition
and need is a sin...
except when it isn't.
(Someone somewhere's writing a poem
to keep hidden, yet irrationally
hoping to convince.)

I don't have a point.
Only that in our most simple instinct
we are so complicated.
And that despite our disenchantment, still,
it never ends.

is your dryer driving you mad,
dried up electric or gas?
are the walls melting all around you,
gooey with paper and damp in the mist?
has your garden been taken over by spiderwebs,
each one with a hopeful hungry orange
little being in the center, a thick closure
of soft sticky strands filling up those well planned paths?
have the flowers all fallen away, admitted defeat in august,
to be covered up by eternal mums or merely weeds?
Does the dust creep back into each corner
unjustifiably fast, so that all you can do is to watch with disgust?
Do the dishes grow heavier and more plentiful
with each passing meal?

Well, have I got a solution for you...

So cheap it's nearly free.

Just burn down your house,
wrap yourself up in rags,
and make your way to the temple.

Because I hear at the temple
they need someone to help clean.

Let’s make one thing clear:
I am not here.
I will be nothing to you,
whether you decide or do I.
And no matter what hints and whirls in my brain
I have nothing to say,
just gestures that begin to extend then fizzle and fail.
And I am a reminder only
of what I once almost was,
this body suggestive
only, not actually meaning, offering,
or capable.
Mind and body both.
So don’t even think.
Don’t think it or anything else
to do with me.
You can just go away
if you’re even here.
I’m not.
And I won’t.
You can take that to the bank.
Laughing.
He who laughs first laughs lasts.

In my invisibility
I will enjoy it
defiantly
as if it was something that I wanted
which it wasn’t
but I’ll find it that way anyway.

And you can’t take my solace away from me
casually,
as if you were interested in what was underneath,
but then you weren’t,
anyway.

The city thunders, groans, drones, whizzes and whirrs, squeaks, honks, gusts, rumbles, wheezes and rattles.

The light leaks through, not just light,
presence, all the windows coming in through your window.

The others snore, talk in their sleep, ("Take off your shoes!") take up the bed. Join them again and you might wake them and then they will want what they want--always thirsty.

The bed creaks. Mattress springs sproing. The pillows are hard, or squishy.

It's just a little too warm.

Dinner was a chemistry experiment.
It's still bubbling. Foul barbecue sauce--
So much for comfort food.
Mouth tastes like medicine.

A plane flies overhead...

Soon the birds will start singing.
Yes, there they go.

hungry flowers bloom at night
wide and ripe as milk.

You are my axis,
from the root of the earth,
through my heart,
to the star field,
and back.

I can't see you,
but I can feel you;
like balance, you are always there
yet often I have to find you again.

Throughout the day
I am many animals:
leaping, cavorting, laughing,
hiding, crafting, contemplating...
There are times when I stop transforming
and I am either a shadow or a light,
a husk or a seed.

I don't know why it isn't easier.
But I can feel that axis,
that right place.
That place where the chaff
falls away
and I remember that I am alive.

You are my axis,
from the root of the earth,
through my heart,
to the star field,
and back.

why don’t I pound away at this sadness.
I’ve got nothing else to do but sleep.
somewhere in between the crumbling stones
won’t I find it,
something worth having.
a face that sees,
a mouth that gives
a body that knows.
eyes that turn the lights on.

not another
stumbling shambling
upright stick figure
of a smart man, right
now and usually,
words saying,
face being,
mouth speaking,
body leaning,
eyes to see
where to go.

it didn’t seem to hurt before he came here,
a scarecrow waiting for his clothes
and I put them on him—clothes I’d saved
all that time.
Dress up clothes
for ideal roles.
Clothes don’t make the man.
Buttons don’t make the heart.
A mask doesn’t make a face.
And he doesn’t know the play he’s in,
a play about sadness
to pound away at it
only when everyone else is asleep
like an aspiring escapee
so nobody else knows
how much I’d give
to not be here
to be in the flat plains past these feelings
running in the sun
nothing on and nothing around
and nobody
just completely free
and forgotten
and forgetting.

somehow you
still have a hand
on my heart,
though what part I
don't know--
you are
passionate yet
disinterested,
sudden and
deceptively
straightforward--
yet I
know you
somehow
past your
rigidity
and can't help
but want to
caress your
lonely
impulses.

I co
me
in li
ke
a
se
rpent:
clos
ed
tight
and
long,
writh
ing
imp
er
cep
tib
ly
wi
th
in
my
se
l
f

compelling

loving you was hard enough;
not loving you,
infinitely harder.

In my purse there's a connection
to the universe.
I use it to contact you.
Come back,
I ask.
And you'll come back,
a shadow of your
shadow's shadow.
And we'll dance
in the bath,
splashing and
sad.
And they'll laugh.
As well they should.
For I might not have anything to say
but it's funny
anyway.

The prickly rose does not flower,
and hides its thorns under artificial
innocence.

Soft rain on
a cool summer night
quiets loud voices in gardens
revealing the contemplative hum
of the city in motion.

You sleep, still dressed
beside me
in your world always
slightly apart.

Eros is madness,
but madness isn't Eros.

Hide your despair from God.
Bury it deep in your heart.

Do not think of kisses,
or hands touching skin.
Do not think of meeting with relief.

Forget the blankness of
this room in the dark.
Forget the empty,
scooped out sadness,
no longer pungent.

Only when you forget your desire
can God see it
in its truth.

Cover it in a cloud of forgetting
and turn your thoughts to the simple joy
of unencumbered being.

There you are a little god,
enough to answer your own prayer.

Here you are a demon,
swathing yourself in torment.

Hide your despair from God.
Bury it deep in your heart.