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.