Your ubiquity in my memory
has led me to miss
the fact you are now missed

in the day-glo green-yellow
gardens of eighties summers,
scattering mother’s pride,
you were overlooked in the search
for brighter birds
with better song

so I try to cherish the
rattle and chatter
of your extended family
alongside me now

no songs for me
to join your mourning
but your chip-chip banter
tells a cautionary tale

I’ll do my best to listen and learn
even as our own gardens dwindle

i had another writing class
above the pharmacy today.
we watched a movie about bank robbers.
and in our discussion our professor said

there is so much evil
in the world
i dont even wish
to understand it.

i dont know if i agree or not
i dont know if thats the right answer.

//

eighties ladies
spray their hair back
wipe the snow
off the mirror.
march on.
glitter and sparkles
can always make
a dead thing look alive.
right?
youth and marriage.
love and wonder.
age like bread
on the windowsill.

there's something
worth loving
in here.

Woman at diner who knew Fugazi,
I wear all these pins
on my denim jacket
waiting for someone like you
because a t-shirt isn’t
loud enough.

Woman who knew Fugazi,
waitress at diner,
had “seen them twenty times,”
without exaggeration—

with cracking olive skin
and graying curly black
hair to her shoulders,

the light refracting off my pin
my friend bought at a record store
in Philly      reflecting her the image
of a slender, voluptuous youth
donned in fake leather
worn Levis and beat Vans

shaking her mop of jet-black curly hair
in a throng of like-minded dressed
individuals in a dingy club
          angsty Washingtonians
fleeing the Reagan Youth

mad at Capitalism
mad at Middle Class,
mad at Excess, Abuse, Malaise—
driven by the furious punk rhythms
of sweat-drenched Fugazi.

Woman who knew Fugazi,
friends with Ian MacKaye,
hadn’t seen him in years—

waitress at restaurant
where the scrambled eggs are dry
and the coffee is stale.

Waitress at diner,
Mother now,
wife, adult,

                 [[punk]]
at heart.