I want friends as percentages
that would be more realistic
in "social media" that makes me feel anti-social
I wish we could go back to a time
when we saw each other face to face
looked each other in the eye
and didn't exploit the fact that we're too lazy
to get up and do that
the isolation increases, the fantasy heightens
Reality doesn't matter so much anymore

I had to do it, since I wanted to see him again
one last time, it was OK
Just a guy in a typical poofy too big man's shirt
Funny how men try to puff themselves up with their clothes and suit
and we try to look smaller,
undershirt borders underneath too big white sleeve his wife bought
A married weight, a paunch that began at chest level
and made him look like a mango and brown slacks
a tan, and that curly hair with the little twirl on to that seemed to asked to be
grabbed onto and pulled back
and his authority the sexiest part
I needed him to sign a form and he took a long time to sign it
read every tiny thing, as I squirmed inside, but sat up straight and
perky so happy to be here.
was he drawing out--for me?
Then he looked at me with those baby blues
up from the paper on the desk, with those deep rivets in his forehead
all these huge scrunched up muscles
why do they need muscles even on their forehead?
and I was pierced to the center
and I know I'd think he's a bore
and as I drove away I saw him walk out of the building
carrying a lunchbox his wife probably fixed for him
and no, I'm not proud that I feel like this
and no, it's never something to act on
but as I drove home, I thought of him
despite the mango body, the huge shirt
and my not in shape profile that would have to be
crammed into a corset I thought about a lot
and if I could forgive him his middle aged flaws
I should be able to forgive mine
because humans are much more complex than those
dumb two dimensional magazines let you believe and
we haven't been photographed for all the thousands of years we've been reproducing

An Israeli pilot was missing for years
and presumed dead
somewhere in the vast desert of the Sinai

I don't want them to die
my old relationships, I don't like killing
I'm No ****, nothing must die under my watch
even unhealthy relationships that are only anxious attachments
and it's better to accept the finality of their death
let them provide compost
nutrients for a better one to grow
that is the life cycle

Out of the emptiness of the Sinai, grew a date palm
Strange, so much so, that a search crew landed and dug around it
And they found him, the pilot, who ate dates, and put the pits in his pocket
before he died.

When I first saw him, he smiled, was very welcoming
And I thought nothing really about him, Authority figure warning this boss
who wasn't my boss because now I'm a student but there was nothing about him
Just another AP, covered in man clothes, long shirts and collars and belts and
slacks and at a married weight with a paunch over his belt and a picture of a
child on his cell phone. same old.

At the meeting I was sitting next to him and I felt that feeling
the authority figure disease I get where I think he's hot
and I noticed he had blue eyes, and a good build underneath
the married weight and this was totally insane.

I'm just nervous.  I don't really want to ride him like a pony
as I was thinking and crossed my legs and imagined
us naked, stealing away in some bland hotel and
just going at it to ecstasy and that blood rush feeling that starts
in your groin and seems to go out the Universe and you
share it with that, other being who for this moment is God and you Goddess

And the meeting was boring, so I shifted my legs again and
thought.  I'm just nervous.  This is what I do.
My habit of mind.
He doesn't really look like Robin Thicke
and I don't care and God I hope he doesn't notice
or can't read my mind and he turned and tried his best
to look up my skirt and I'm sure in his mind,
it's my fault he did that when his wife lives inside his cell phone
and has borne him new beings and here he is

And thank God the meeting was over and I never thought
about him again, not once

A student again, how cute it is and really I feel free
the thoughts, of life, and planning and how things could be
not tied down to a job and obsessing about my boss did this and that
and what does it mean for me now and why and
today I had a wasted day but that is normal

Because life is full of wasted moments, and
the most tragic moments are those we don't feel
The painful part isn't that we were at the laundromat
and put our stuff down to study and highlight in different colors
and a woman put her family there on top of our stuff with McDonald's for five even
though there were only three, and that there was nothing good at the Goodwill
Even the Rainbow colored sweater from Lane Bryant, which was way too big
and that the laundry from a month took hours and yes, we really do have that many socks

What is wasted are those moments folding the pile of shirts where we are not there
we are somewhere lost in mourning over a lost love and thinking,
he loved me more than he loves her, I just know.
Because all we have at that moment is this pile of a zillion articles of clothing
most of which looks like it could be hanging at the Goodwil and
a flimsy plastic chair and two times the amount of highlighters we needed because they were half price and we are hungry, but the snack machine is turned off and you can
only look at the cookies and hot cheetohs
and yearn for them and imagine the flakey tenderness of the vanilla wafer
crumble gentley into your mouth, and watch your creepy
neighbors walk into the strip mall listening to a song on a phone
like it's a boom box
and this is your moment to feel and live

We make grooves in our minds, I'm told
Our thoughts, the racing ones, that we go to
are like grooves, the ones we obsess about
and when we clear our minds we make new
connections, literally
new grooves and rivers and inlets and that's why it's so hard to break
a thought pattern and my groove

is a man, always and once I've done with one I am relieved and think
I will never do that again and then the going gets tough and
I am anxious and I suddenly start thinking about a new one
and I don't know him and or I don't like him and it's better
if he has a girlfriend or wife because I can think
oh, they have the perfect life and I am cold and outcast
looking in a perfection, out in the cold and

it's existential really, to ungroove this, to make
a new pathway I need to know, to make a groove that
says, no one is perfect and always happy
it doesn't exist in this world
and you are not the abandoned child looking in at
your parents happiness forever and ever

But it's so hard...my new one I don't even know...only in pictures
a kind of celebrity, of sorts, but I don't like things he's done and he's got
a wife who is on TV and I don't like her either since she's with him and she
knows what he's done, and is doing and she still married him
and they are not always perfectly happy
they are rich, and go to gatherings of the elite
but I've been to those and I hated them, was bored stiff
Couldn't breathe

But I am anxious--
A student next year will I be nearly all the time,
and it has been a long time since anything so freeing has happened to me or
frightening, because I've been used to a kind of hopeless drudgery,
but I will emerge with a new skill and live near the beach
and near one of my favorite places on Earth.
So what is there to be afraid of, really?  Only the grooves
the grooves that take me back to suffering
only in my mind

Those profiteers of animals, the devastating news I found
this summer,
They finally wrote back, after I told them exactly what I thought
that killing is not a happy ending
that animals have fear, and know when they are facing death
They wrote back, those with the big bank accounts from the Big East
who tried to stop No **** San Francisco to protect their friends at the **** shelters
They wrote back, those that we fought off, because we are in the right
and money and power and influence cannot stop justice and we are right,
not them,
And they finally acknowledged me, and the wrote back,
trying to show how kind they are
Their over dressed CEO walks down a carpeted stairway to give a woman her dog
and they wrote back
because at the end of the day I have nothing to hide
only justice at my side
and they can sit in their fancy Eastern clothes
and they can wallow in their power and influence
but at the end of the day
it's the little animal lives that matter, those they don't save
and justice is more powerful than any earthly prop
and it will win