OO{S

c'est moi

here come all the anxieties of socialization i thought i was over years ago

stupefy.

expect to be sitting there a little cold with shoulders hunched

and mystified eyeballs

namesake still in the can

my passionate go-getter self with larger teeth and eyes

i see the lack of myself in you

what's the weather in your soul today?

cloudy with a chance of rain? i thought so.

flurries of texts forecast from here until late next week.

bundle up!

Sitting the Quiet

In the moments
where the city of masses
becomes empty

I sigh
lean back
stretch arms above my head
tuck my head into the bend of my knees.

These are diamond moments
unforgettable in their rarity
few and far between
glorious in the moment they arrive
and say goodbye.

The city of crowd control
grows quiet
and it feels like home.

test

Tell Me The Story

Tell me the story of your past
in its black and white glory.

Tell me of that first date
in the sprinking rain
ratty shirts and work clothes.
That was a day

But now it is gone.

Tell me the moment of pause
of how we teased
and I pressed my head to your heart.

Tell me of the moment I grabbed your hand
and we walked off together
into today.

I was a stranger,
lost at the station,
green at the elbows and the knees,
absent direction,
absent expectation,
gentle and willing as you please.

The canopy above your bed: once
I came with your permission here, though
without the wherewithal to've said how broad
the gap between premonition and fear.

Your better judgment, your
your reservations.
The reasons you put me on the shelf;
I have no use for
your recriminations.
I can recriminate myself.

Please, look my way again before we're old.
Make me the beneficiary of your doubt.

well, he says
there is a magnet
i say, if a cave doesn't provide.

i read all of them
when i woke up
i spent some time
and i saw more
i remembered i had to make them,
i had to make some time;
and so accordingly, i went out.

For Lu

I feel brattiest in how often I forget to admire

I am trying, vigilantly, to Problematize and to Be Needed.

selfish me, even this dedicated poem is about myself.

Lu, Selfless is a thing you are that I am not.

Lu says, publicly, that she likes what I do

and she uses this word

inspires

that I just straight out forget about

to be a person who yearns to make nonprgamatic things

(as pragmatically as possible)

and to forget the word inspires!

this is an insanity that I falsely think makes me tough.

Lu says she has been watching me work this week

this week I am the crunchy girl doing the eco-thing so publicly

this week I am wrestling quietly with the impossibility of consciousness shifting

as something done in one push, by a visitor, or something done en masse.

It is painful, what change is not ready to be made.

I whine all week that this feels thankless, like no one is watching

but when I get what I say I am craving I feel wriggly

why aren't you loving me by stepping up to say what I did wrong?

Lu doesn't do that,

she is smiling and honoring and saying,

the way you should respect me first is by how graciously I treat you.

She embodies this dignity so deeply I almost forget to stop and look at the work she is doing,

she is organizing young people too,

and she is singing to them and supporting them, quietly. one at a time.

She is so good at this job that I could never do.

Participating fully without taking up any of the space that we are saving for the youth to shine,

she steps forward only when modeling stepping and I say, damn there is someone

who commands badass space with her gentleness and love.

There is someone who is girly but not saccharine, who is tough but not aggressive, who is strong but not mean.

you don't need to do this thing, friend, my ego doesn't need it.

What strikes me is not the nice things you write,

but how tuned in one must be

to make space to just take what's good from what you see, and to just honor openly.

and that is what you do.

"I can't understand this. She is so great....We used to walk down the street together bumping our hipbones together in joy, before God and everybody."

Donald Barthelme, "The Abduction from the Seraglio"

M. is back in town. Yes,
M. is back in New York City
M. is back in town and she is
sitting there on gchat and
she's sitting there on facebook,
o! most perfect, most exquisite
agony.

I wish that I could travel back into my infant body
and take and take and take all of my memories there with me.
These twenty-five years would be mine to live again,
only I'd get everything right this time.

summer camp

I do not say

step in to the circle if

more than once or twice

I am not digging deep

I am not sixteen anymore,

and amidst all these sixteen year olds

I can't decide if I lament that.

What I'm feeling is not nostalgia,

but the certainty of time not moving back.

I stood on this basketball court and ate cereal before.

how deep does my owing of that past learning go?

how much do I owe this place and how much can I push it?

When do I push on forward and when do I push back in?

the oar, for instance. in, neither,
nor on the lake, it interrupts. displaces.

to love is always violent.
to act is--to wake is
--and to be woken is to receive
violence.

from here to the floor
it's not so far. do not worry
about cruelty, nor little boys.

Slip

There was no water for the river, the dam

had been reopened intentionally. Still,

moisture came quickly, like a new age,

as the bridge murmured its weight

and bare birds ringed the shadow of a cloud.

Summertime, relentless, its pickling

daysweat pooling fear

at the armpit, red oak rashes poisoning the ankle and back,

each bump emerged like the head of a match.

We crept along the water and all at once

we just sort of came away in the mouth

as an excuse is swallowed, thick

as a finger in the ear, and chippy little screams

dipped over us, thin scarves.

Even the sirens listened until

we faded, though we felt our mother

picking us apart, her immense love draping

down around our bodies.

Body Poem

Stop me if you've heard this one before, but
the saline hum of crushed cabbage at my fingertips
amplifies each heartbeat
each contour of broken skin
each shallow breach of integrity,
and stop me if you've heard this one before, but
the lunged arc of my spine invokes
shrunken lungs and wax-dipped capillaries,
a ventral etiology of concern

finding my way into myself- or at least to other things through meditation

i sit down

sit bones feeling the floor

ok, know breath.

k, now breathe

ow- this hurts, why do i do this?

ow this hurts. k know breath. feeling breath coming in-lungs fulling, hmm more to the right than left.

images of sex

ow this hurts.

i see all the little creatures pounding and piercing my tissue.

breath? emails, phone calls, images of sex... ok ok- these are thoughts.

this hurts.

images of sex- again?

it's been more than twenty minutes- my alarm must be broken.

dont check your phone- dont check your phone- dont check your phone.

ok, only 5 more minutes.

now, breathe,

now breathe

images of.....oh god

where am i anyway?

All out of town

You there. Instructions.

The dog bless a bowl a day
and a shell curled, pink.
Bring me my mine, he'll say,
Belong to me like a belt.

At night he will remind you
what was clotted in kindergarten
and nobly hung in the bathroom.

Comfortably sing to him the following:
I had some dreams,
they were clouds in my coffin.

We will be back to back. Til then,
de goob as golb. Uh, no.
Be here. Be here for us. Til then,
be here for us. Bye bye.

the point is

the day has come when my father is texting me

and not only that, that it is not surprising

and the medium is not even the point, the point is:

he is on the Bart in the Bay, and

I am shaking my head at my longing, thinking

wanderlust is what makes wanderlust,

why did I leave here and return only to miss being there again?

and that is not even what's making me achy, what aches is:

what this week shows. what this week shows is:

the enactment of ideals does not equal bliss.

today was a day about processing out through my body

This week is called:

beauty in what's achy because it's complicated.

and I write that in the facebook thread with old friends about

'what is your week called?'

and the point is not even that it's on the computer, now.

The point is not even who that is excluding

the point is not even what the ideals are.

the point is.

the point is not.

d

don't say my name in caps lock,
or with a big first initial,
if you're writing to me.

Insiieae

I try to read these poems out loud
to hear where the emphasis lies
Nick joked that you don't stop/
at the end of a line
but I don't get it. You don't? Who don't?

I imagine I start reading sitting down
and the words catapult me to my feet/ propel me off the couch
but would I stop to pace in front of the audience, or would I run to the boat house and steal out onto the still water?

"If I only had a month with you."
As if time could chip away to reveal a statue
Could you tell me I didn't simply throw these words onto a clothes rack/
and hope?

Loon

Monarch of his lake.
He wades through black silk.
Red-eye detective.
Family man.

Missing

I miss you
with every inch of skin
all three layers.

when I think about the paths taken
words said
I wish I could edit out, be clear about my missing.

I carry it with me, an accessory in my life
until the missing changes
and I change with it.

headshot

the frog is to me.
green as a wheat-grass shot (kapow) but instead on my wall
like guts. green as shockingly as red.

the green is as shocking as red gets.
the frog within a dangered state,
palpating like a live heart would on my wall instead.
if the house had a heart inside its own chambers,

oh boy if these walls could feel.

magic is ambient, p.s.
i’d like to be a frog upon THAT wall,
someone must have said.

three words shifting us

when i say the word 'between'

the syllable created from my tongue touching my mouth excites

when i say the word 'closer'

we soften

when i say the word 'leaving'

you move quick, the cells in me holding must believe the can hold you here

(mistranslated poem by Trzy Slowa Najdziwniesje by Wislawa Szymboska)

little crypt keepers

picking off scabs- to reveal dazzling, burning scars of

multi layered, colored, expressed pain.

WHY does this hurt?

fold origami shapes, around my heart. lungs.

fluttered paper cuts along my abdomen.

draw blood from places

not yet felt.

i remember your stone face

shards of glass

mixed into the

cement of your skin- so every time you reached inside of yourself,

you got ripped apart.

it's like how, little kids

jump into pools

jack-knife

without worry.

or how,

i can lay in

darkness, for hours

upon hours.

down these city blocks

As I walk down these city blocks
I see faces everywhere.

Holding soccer balls
dancing and practicing moves
Running with wind in their faces.
Strollers, heels, towels from the pools.

Each face with a story
a place here
a life with its meaning.

We forget these faces
as the blur into a mash of rainbows of colors
images that are all around us.
Each one the same
just another.

This face
and that one
with their stories
heartbeats
and voices
are there.

If we walks down these blocks
and look.

These days

maybe my body is not here yet,

I hurled across the ocean, after all, and those things should take time.

I sleep, involuntarily and repeatedly,

and after a day maybe I wake up.

Does a thing become strange from too much looking?

or is it my mind racing, pouring out through my eyes?

it comes as a surprise:

I can spend hours, days, alone

leaned over the bicycle handles and makeshift drafting tables

ink stained hands, snack strewn kitchen

it's urgent when it's urgent,

and the days move slowly, resisting hurry

when it's only me.

despite the looming Fall of not knowing.

I think I can be okay today because of the Just Enoughs:

space to strew

bouts of company

phones to answer

food in fridge

sun in sky,

cash in wallet

yes, that's it. always. that's the one.

new lebanon someday

yr heart slipping through yr rib cage
yr purple lips
yr purple heart
yr bare feet rubbing each other on the couch opposite me
like we just got home from the opera and you had to escape from yr shirt
and those so and so's
yr toe nail fallen off two years in a row
yr purple purple heart
oh, and of course, your delicate, balding head

soggy little moment

on another note, i hate you.

she said

muffled

by the choke of

the feathers

growing out of her neck and

sticking,

embarrassingly,

into her liver slick mouth-

as she curses our name

repeatedly.

Bread

The cat has finished another potato
And I wonder, what am I missing?
Not B12, surely, I've been tested
Nr Arendt/Heidegger correspondences, no,
but I'll hang my posters
and hem the drapes
restock on emulsifiers
re-engage my rear breaks
And? Well?
Days arranged in a strained trikonasana,
Lungs that vacillate, not respirate.
The cat has turned her focus to the bread,
gnawed plastic, pointed ears, errant dough.

How Best Despoilt

Practically mitotic fleas, motherfuckers.
burring the room like static would,
screwing the simple surfaces.
Roommates my loves: with athletic sock
make pale your shins,
and gallantly toast bread,
tucking unwhitened eggwhite under,
there are infinite points between one point and another,
and they bite.

i am really not alone

uh oh- uh oh

Berkeley Bowl feels calmer than me

must be the weekly itch

i am in the grocery store

begin the begging-

i can whimper too

must have been crazy

long long ago when i dreamed of babies

i been longing since my kindergarten playground

never ending dreams

"don't put me on a pedestal and look up my skirt damn it" She giggles

so do i.

she got me to the grocery store too

what is it about grocery stores?

and i can't remember that word you taught me

and i cant ask you

now i lay so heavy that i know where i am

?

last night, i was thinkin, things are bad when i see someone is reading my tumblr
from jersey city and i get excited

but tonight, only hours after posting a plea for company,
to not have this house, empty and big, in the dark to myself for the weeks following,
promising home-cooking and the swing set,

i've never heard from so many lovers, old and new and (bashful, teasing)
potential, promising, and
all at once, remembering past years of the empty house
remembering my room in all stages of me, and long before the marmalade walls, remembering my bed with its crisp white sheets, stretched across the mattress like our
arched backs, the curl of our toes, waking with kisses and cups of tea

am tempted by all of it, a little for each of them, a little more of that peach of a girl,
a little more for hoping you'll see my words too, out there, and will say a bit of something
will give me a sip of your cigarette for old times, will come take your clothes off slowly

and get into bed the way you do always, as if you are diving into the ocean

there is the other hand, that dreamcastle boy driving me to shakepoint, to wrapping me all up,
to making me pinky swear to him and then deserting
to not ever reaching for me first, and damn, doesn't a girl just sometimes
want to be sure of something

sketch

not un-well-fed, but still starving for it
these are my dog years

resumAY partAY

ok so we're all in a room

and some of us are SO OLD

and we have a lot of advice to give

and it's a party, but a party with advice

and multiple generations

and all of us at different ages

it's a resume party

it's the WORST

but our whole lives have lead to it

to this party where we can still get young people to come

but we also have a lot of practical knowledge

it's a total nightmare

it's a job?

jobbing for jobs?

resumes in the fruit bowl

car keys in bags

and pockets

who related to my resume?

who wants to come home with me?

who has a cracked copy of powerpoint?

i want to present you

with my presentation

resume party

resume the party.

-A Collaboration

Miss Grass

i met you at starbucks.
crossing the street, zig zag, squinting into the tinted windows to see if you could
watch me
.

you took your break (starbucks!)
sat outside, shady stoop.
after your bike accident you had band aids all over your legs.
I sat with you, touching your bruises to see how badly they all hurt.

it's a good thing to know; how badly one can bruise.

the catch

One rainy hunt we thought our lasso caught a witch,

alive under umbrella.

we prized her yellow eye, her bug,

her toothy kiss, her dappled cheek,

her warm brooch and her muttering.

Upon inspection, also caught a woman, whoops,

who glared and rattled harshlight facts

until our dream receded.

Best to twist her up, we thought.

She is a witch, but nowaday

her burn's a bitch, and we're unfed, miraculous,

misogynist by slip.

yeah but i can't

the following sentences have been commented on previously...

hi
hi
so what do you think
what do i think
yeah what do you think
well
yeah
it doesn't make sense
no
no
no
because you love her but you don't tell her
how come
that's for you to say
for me to say but i can't tell her that
why not
it brings the situation to reality and i can't handle reality
you do it all the time
i put on life is much harder than i am letting it be
you will feel better if you just open up
maybe but i haven't done it yet and this would be big
big
yeah the grandest greatest moment of my life and i want to know it will work
well it won't work if you don't let it work
who's to say
she is and so are you but most of all her

just do it
ok
yeah
yeah
maybe you won't
i will
but you've said yes before
maybe

i'm scared.

And thus ends this week's broadcast

so i will ask you

ok i asked you
i will become so similar to you and touch you
calling people being outgoing drinking and being outgoing drinking and calling people
that was a wound
that was an hour
that was several minutes
that was my mother
sit on the blanket i can bring you eggs
whatever feels good SLEEPING BEAUTY
you like drinking with my mother
he is crying
and
he is crying
and
he is crying
there are three men
they are all crying
we do not have to cry
your friends might say hi when you will be alone so be ready i might say hi too ok
lets start crying i talked to you a little with some words not all of the words but yeah we talked with most words then
! tell me you love me cut off your tongue cut off you legs cut off your hands
tell me you love me put your tongue on put your legs on put your hands on tell me you love me
this friend is here that friend is there i have other friends there and also behind you above you she is my friend too
OK its a LONG TIME put on my hair put on my eyes put on my lips ok i love you
put these on! i love you no joke i asked all the cops and they all liked the story so much that they bought you this place that nun loves you seriously she asked me for a lot of things but i couldnt tell her because i forgot so thats why im asking you outside of it its this and its fun

Gilda grabbed her tail and said, "I don't know why Pete Seeger songs always make me cry, I'm really not a nostalgic or sentimental person."



It's irresponsible, I thought. How do I know which is which? Although it was true there was something those kids were unaware of, it was rude to say. We were all getting ruined, shiny-skinned.

Themes that seemed like sidetracks were actually central; embarrassment, childhood, failure, woozy-when-looking-in-the-mirror.

A shake across, I was never introduced properly, collecting medium-old objects and now stopped wondering, sometimes at least. Wear an apron, it looks constructed, if I weren't so, cramming over a stretch of grass. I couldn't tell them how excited I was in case they weren't excited too, but they were.

Those shoes

They were striking

as I saw them walk up to me

in semi-circles

around and

out.

burned now into my flashes of memory

When I see them now

in windows

displays.

I feel a knock on my chest

and I remember again and again

who wore those shoes

and what their walking in them

towards

around

and through me

meant.

A Symbol, You Pull It Off Well

These days

I think about you a lot

About writing you a letter—

(it would say: every day, I cut up half an avocado and put it in my salad for lunch.

i remember how you used to eat avocados, with a spoon,

scooping barbeque sauce from the pitted center)

Sewing hair on hair, you made a long braided lock,

detachable and impermanent,

(you wore a different hair style each week)

like the studs you stabbed into black denim,

one by one, while I talked to a long lost friend

and collected dog hair off my own skin tight jeans.

Now your arm is dyed

In twisted shades of dark ink

And it’s hard to see that first black/green star.

Time has passed. I like to imagine you in old age--

Wrinkly skin, misshapen tattoos,

An inspiring lack of regret,

Doing whoknowswhat.

But I’ve never known how you thought of me,

Or how you might think of me now.

Solicit

In this city we
solicit each other
while ignoring.

Some ask for food
money on trains
Beg us to listen to their stories
make them visible for a moment.

Others solicit for a cause
reaching their hands out to touch
another in the crash of bodies.

The ask, simple as 'do you have a moment'
is heard in drips along the streets
and left for forgotten.

The crisis, the cause, the issue
to be defended
if only one would stop
sign the paper
listen to the worry
or the needs for that person
to speak to other people
to get paid that day.

The Vine aches down towards the sea

We step into our lives from the errand
and life does nothing

and we know we have not fooled
it

Sophia across from me, table cloth with the... very small flowers.

I've now given her a book in black carpet binding. Not... carpet.
But, we lost the cover.

The cat walks across the sink,
and we're the only things in the room that

`0`0`0`0`0 ugh i'm gonna barf in my body 2 `0`0`0`0`0`

innocent and adventurous, i
climbed atop the platform
for discovery

we have seen our cat eat: tuna, placenta, a mouse

being that there are for Adam four ways of being—mood-health professionals being of accord—namely madam, badam, gladam and sadam— and being that said Adam rarely if ever reports himself unabashedly one -am or another, rathering when questioned to declare himself Fine-am, a nonhappening phenomena if ever there wasn’t, this illustrator in an idle moment finds his drawing paper quite spontaneously accordioned, as if to suggest division from the quite path of unimien portraiture into, instead, a quadtych, gilded, its parallel panels of –ams doing Adam a good justice, concurrently relieving said illustrator of his woothy burden, that of choosing.

searching for poetry?

Sometimes i don't see the poetry of slicing an orange

or standing in the kitchen

or waiting in line

or unzipping my pants

typing, staring,

or stepping

(i watch her put on her glasses

the babies legs are cringingly extended)

But oh when I do- when I do!

aaahhh, when I am.

*sometimes one just needs to eat- or walk- or lay day with out it meaning a damn thing.

a Quotation

If with the literate I am

Impelled to try an epigram,

I never seek to take the credit;

We all assume that Oscar said it.

~Oscar Wilde

I'm Not a Librarian, But I Wrote This at Work

I.) Librarians burst into song

every day

desperation and cosmic peace come together as

self-assurance via self-awareness of a joke of who you are;

last night I slept on the floor for no reason.

And today everyone is singing all the hits.

I woke up at 6:30 am hallucinating Alexandra

Alexandra you were so happy I was up so early!

I felt I’d failed you when I awoke again at 9:30, on the floor

bathed in light.

II.) Madeleine met her husband at a conference;

You can’t even say “conference” around her; she blushes!

When librarians go to conferences they doubt they’ll find love but

Librarians can find love anywhere else just by saying they’re librarians

Anyone can find love that way, it’s ok, you have permission -

not from me, but you have it.

III.) I feel close to my mother lately.

She can pee in front of everyone.

It seems normal to her but terrifies me

knowing how she used to live, who and what she used to do;

like a librarian who goes on dates -

and

talks about them!!!

I worry that I, too, would bear a child

Who is so prim, who must be trained to accept nakedness

to unlearn her inborn manners

in order to be happy.