There isn't much
for me to write about anymore.
I've worn out the angst-filled hate letters
and the longing love letters, and
quite frankly,
I thought they were **** good.

When I was eight, I threw a rock at my cat.
I wanted something to love me, and he
didn't. Unfamiliar with rage and unskilled
at throwing rocks, I missed and hit the fence.
I was and am ashamed of this.
I wasn't that kind of kid.

Once, a boy sent me photos from Scotland,
daybreak over  the snowy moors where he
hunted grouse with his father. He was skinny,
and sweet. I stopped writing him because I
had a thousand words for love, and he
couldn't spell any of them.

And once, I took your love for granted. It was vanity;
I felt like the lost works of a prolific master.
I wanted someone to delight in discovering me,
to wonder where I had been. It was easy to
blame you; all those years and you didn't
know what you had.

If you believe in all possible universes,
I aimed for the fence and hit the cat.
I married a sweet, skinny boy who will never
love a poem. I never had anything to prove
and I don't need you to forgive me.

Ambition
           as in
         where the hell do you want to be you
         can't be satisfied with where you are so get
             up get out get out get out to
Beauty
            holy like swiss cheese, all
        tricky to find but once you've got it
        it sticks for life, our redeeming quality
         exquisite fault for
Heaven
          's sake, rich warm liquor still
               coaxes words from reluctant throats
           did you think you'd make it did you
            honestly believe we'd let you slip
       away not a chance not a
         chance not by chance chance chance

    I've forgotten why I came
   *Let me help you remember

He is just tall enough to make me feel like a giant by the way he cranes his neck to look at me

His hands are too small for the camera he is holding

No one notices as he takes pictures of them

While they look at pictures on the walls

I ask him if I am on his camera

And he asks me to sit so he can show me

“Start at the beginning,” I say

There are no pictures of the actual work in any of his photographs

These are 14 megapixel close-ups

Of faces you thought you only made when you were alone

And I don’t want to see myself anymore

But I don’t stop him

These paintings might as well be mirrors

They might as well be

Crystal clear soul windows daring us to stare

a moment longer

The faces we make into them are response enough

To what we see inside

I already know what I see inside

It’s like listening to your own voice on a tape recorder

You can hear how ugly your voice is

Even though

everyone else tells you

“You sound like yourself”

Looking at these pictures is like walking in on your parents having ***

I know I am not supposed to be here

And after about 30 pictures we get to mine

These are 14 megapixels worth of tears drying on my cheeks

Suddenly I wish this museum was on fire

And the beams above us would come crashing down and bury us

I wonder why a little boy felt the need to photograph my soul

And I hate him for it

I hate his smile

And his eyes that have not yet seen enough

And his heart

Beating like a hesitant breeze

Warning us of winter

He must see all this on my face

Because he takes another picture

Then runs to his father almost tripping over the camera

Which hangs from a lanyard

Wrapped around his tiny wrist

I get up and leave

I avoid my own reflection in windows as I walk back to my car

I never again want to see what I feel like

And I will spend the rest of my life knowing

That somewhere

There is a little boy with a camera

That holds a picture of me

While I am crying

My best thoughts arrive when
I wait for my towels to be cleaned.

Leaning over the sturdy white machine,
contemplating life's intricacies
and delving into quixotic thoughts only suitable
for my delicates in their spin cycle,
that's when it happens.

Suddenly, as the bumps and whirrs of a laundry room
fill my headspace, I am
Socrates, I am Plato,
one finger heaven-oriented as my clothes spin,
spin, spin.

I can only imagine that Phaedo was
conceived in the throes of ancient laundering.

As slaving women with their washboards
worked tirelessly on his thinking linens,
that's when Plato must have done his
best philosophizing,
when Napoleon felt his tallest.

I know a lady who waits
Down on Wall Street,
Snaps her fingers
At brokers
And licks her lips for Madoff.

She adorns her body
With black lace and feathers,
An elaborate facade to lead her men astray.
She whips her hair and
Cackles at passersby,
Opening her rouged mouth wide,
Singing verses without pitch or rhyme.

She yearns for the NASDAQ
To touch her,
Waits ardently for grease ***** to
Work their magic.
She gives willingly,
Unabashedly talks ***** to men in
Tom Ford.

This lady I know asks
For trouble. She is
The ***** of Wall Street,
A slave to modernity,
Snapping her fingers at Cadillacs
And bending over for Madoff.

This is a lonely poem,
a half an hour before dawn poem,
a poem like an empty kitchen –
a godforsaken (god, I'm shaking)
feeling like I just want to go home
poem. (and I am home)