confidence mustard

christmas 2013

I did the same thing they do, how many years, teens in the street, thin merino wool caps and northface jackets, shiny pillow coats filled with weightless goosefur. gray earlynight light, bald trees and trees few in leaves, silhouetted always, for daily we're twilighting. the dog moans, the house is empty save for us. all of the windows seem uncurtained, meaning there are curtains but they're heavy, and folded or shoved away, impossible curtains. I'm leaving Idaho in the morning.

lately

elements of a day

downpour, palms asway, explosion on the wires. your grip on me.
laying in bed with the clouds
balcony
nevereat
benevolence
the perfect soup
mirepoix
driving in the rain
personal hell, snores in stereo, clock tick tocking, tick tick tocking, tick, tock
little roach
bigface, pockmarked
folding your sportcoat over the spine of the sofa
new cold wind
new baby asthma
fighting the funk
fortunate,
luck

stereotype, a song (explicit)

  I'm hysterical

  watch me spin

 whirlwind

wash the place,

wash the world

my innards trying

 as women are wont to do

with the ra shon a ble
world

my wet stuff enticing like

as far as your
 deal   can squish
measure me in that way
ruler me

sorry, to be rude

 sorry, but I'm crying? right

look at me go

swish around

 I'm a heart 

  in a shape

cut off the arteries, the connectors
cookie cutter me

 obliterate
  into dough
masticate me mush

I'm sorry, I became

I behave

 in    that  way

so

the only genius in the room is   y  o    u

 disimportant  me

wash me
 down the drains of history

histrionic       girl

pull me out

push me

 push my breasts from my body

thumb my nipples from them

scrape it off, 

grate me

 cut me out

slice me, sliver it, silver it

wealth my slit

suck my gold voice

savor it

 drink my words,   betray them

take it upon yourself to translate me

 who could write it better than you.

 name me

compliment,

stand up for it

defend.

   my dear darling,

  I'm for a girl

 all of my ins

  and the bones of me, & marrow
 and my heart

but boy
     as I hang a shameful head,
you've the heart of my brain

  and the brain of my veins

decembme

with a whimper. I put down the meusli, I put down the grapefruit I halved (done right) because it tastes bad to me, or it's from texas, or, or, the beans in my stomach making puff puff at me. I think all the herbs from all of the world come into me through the nostrils down the throat. I lost my appetite because you thought I might drive round the crescent to fetch you at 8:30 drop my hat, take you to work, did you stay up too late? oh no, did I should rescue you? I am not that me, anymore. it's december, let's get up. this is pretty real, in me. growing back your bones, we see with it in them now.

somewhere

I am a little beast in here, a beast for you 

babe.

who has fingered me? don't stop touching on me. don't use your words at me, leave your swoll fingers afar from. I'm grippable. take my city from me, push it out my holes, fill my brain with other-fluff, the stuffs of else. I already knew, read ahead in all the books of this. once I was at your house and we were fighting, I was in the bathroom and you put on fade into you by mazzy star and I started to weep. I thought it was an example I could grip, of you connecting to me. and you hadn't any idea I felt your playing this song to be a reaching out for me. I started to cry because it felt like we were in the same place for once in awhile. you were hearing & responding & sending it back out. but then you changed the song in the middle, and I looked at my tearface in the mirror and the illusion was spoiled. welcome back, I said to us. but always remember, to never understand should never be a surprise maker.

oh well

what would a miss be, a true one
aligning alternately, who can you hear?
I've the salmon wall
I've the meat separating me
I'm the I'm sorry
I'm the original I'm Sorry
I just want my blankets back
I don't want you to have anything of mine
I want to bury you
I want to be the most unforgivable, the meanest
I want to tell you how I never believed it
and that could have stayed innocent, but now I'm free and now
it digs
because sometimes I think I'm better than the world
and I'm standing on air
it's nicest to be alone in winter
it really does something to us
I think you're wrong and I hate a lot about that
so abandon baby
break the space in two
winner
make me too easy

acetaminophen

there are so many other words I'd have used

let's get real

it's still thanksgiving

you know thanksgiving, the whole day you're thinking how you want to break up with your boyfriend. do you ever look at yourself

and not out of self depreciation, or self pity

you look and you think, now honestly

let's be real

how do you like me? what have I for you? and there truly is something, then, isn't there. isn't that something. so driving around new orleans on a cold day, and tearing up with headcold, and disgust and fear and hate for someone to love, and the streets are bare and cold. I like that everyone seems to have a place. too many places for us. it took hours to finish the cranberries, the green bean casserole. aunt sue always calls them greenie beanies, which I'd forgotten all day. 

I'm going to wake up tomorrow    a  new   woman   I think

I can be so mean, I can be so very ugly

  you're right about that

a year ago today

we weren't yet listening to born to die by lana del rey, but I am now, and we did soonafter. it was right before christmas, days before and I was making screenprints in my room and it was 17 degrees outside in december. I remember walking from Gayulz Club down state st. to the hardware store where I purchased painters rags and who knows. I was almost crying, but it was sunny. this song really makes me remember that feeling. I had just been abandoned, the heart was sagging in my chest with loss. I remember that so much. but one year ago today (it's thanksgiving today, but a year ago it wasn't, but say last thanksgiving is a year ago today) I was too hungover, I think I threw up. I think andy left Gayulz Club to go to thanksgiving dinner with sun blood stories and I was left huddled on the couch. nickey made me scrambled eggs in coconut oil which is all I wanted, but I didn't tell her that the brown part of the eggs made me feel sick. I hugged andy around his waist and I urged him to come back soon. I wanted him to just hold onto me forever, thanks. 

we had gone last night one year ago today to brittany's SAD party, which was pretty fun, andy & I played piano and I danced with brett and nickey & brett & andy & I all walked home to Gayulz Club in the 17 degrees and we separated and remet at home upstairs. then it was the next day and I was too drunk for thanksgiving and honestly, I feel just about the same right now as I felt one year ago today. well?

what now

what did I do today. I went to westwego, la to the department of motor vehicles, it's in the smallest building and you have to walk around to the back where you're surprised to find it isn't at all the david lynchian experience you'd hoped for but a quiet smalltown city hall experience, endless waiting room all quiet with one or two voices on a cellphone and then the waves of murmur, people getting up to go because their ticket says J85 when we're only at J16, let's be honest. I was trying to read this ernest hemingway story called up in michigan when dan came traipsing through to say it wasn't going to happen today. or any other day, I didn't say. Let's go get a thanksgiving po boy, he sighed. and then he got on the phone with his folks and said he'd need a new birth certificate. this is the first time I heard the voice of his father. he had a nice florida drawl I could tell. sometimes I can taste it on dan, and it's like beach and it quicksands one in. sometimes I don't trust it, which shouldn't be, in fact I distrust that I distrust. no matter. but we didn't, we went to his house, we had to, he's getting $ in the mail and his peacoat, its 49 degrees outside, it's like burgeoning wintertime, louisiana style. it's alright with me, it really is... but for some reason I can't fathom it. I am a hard-to-please. I am like the version of me I regretted years ago. I watch myself with the hands on the wheel, no traffic to speak of. how hungry am I, will there be a second chance for a thanksgiving po boy? is it thanksgiving yet? 

I took some offbrand nyquil about 15 minutes ago. My left nasal cavity cleared itself. 

I went to the thansksgiving po boy place, I thought I'd get us one. I even made danny call them to order it ahead of time but guess what, me & everyone else. so I drove on over. I realized as I got on orleans avenue that I knew where I was, connected the 7th ward to treme to bayou st. john to mid-city to uptown. I keep blowing my nose against this hawaiianprint skirt I've been meaning to dye olive green. a sexy beyonce knowles song called speechless comes on the headspeakers.

The line for thanksgiving po boys snaked through the restaurant. way more people in line, reading menus, applying lipgloss, smartphoning than those eating po boys at tables. it felt almost empty of spectators, just mad paraders. I left. I wasn't even mad, but I did leave, it was like the dmv all over again but without numbers. this is a terrible lovesong but it's straight r&b '93 style but who wants it like that right now?

I went to rouses. I liked it immediately because no one cared about parking places anymore, everyone was shoved together against the yellow lined drive and I knew it was not the legal place to park but that no one would do a thing. it was a small triumph, the first of this holiday season. it's strange to think that I might have moved to nebraska. I almost never think about that anymore

In rouses I got cranberries which were floating in a red pool, scooped them up with a slotted spoon. some satsumas, couldn't find a fucking orange! save for a bag from- get this- california! can you imagine? with florida just around the corner? 

The drungs are starting to kick in. left nostril totally clear, right, hmmm... I lit the end of my hippie smoke and another shitty beyonce knowles song comes on- rather die young

Then I went back to dan's and I drank tea and we talked, I laid on his couch actually and we ate all these cookies his mom sent to him. I'm sorry I'm such a sobby I mean snobby person sometimes.

Anyway I hadn't had anything to drink since I had this one beer on sunday when we saw the puppet show about the history of the red light district of new orleans, which was amazing. and I only had a la 31 roasted dark ale and so tonight I dropped aja at her place with the firepit for tomorrow's feastparty. she made me a hottoddy and it was great... I only worry I might not be able to taste thanksgiving. but there are worse things.

I moved my goodnight

I moved my bed so it's parallel to the wall, between the two windows, still. I thought I would go to sleep with the red notebook, the one without lines. I used to write in it round my birthday last may when I lived at kari's club, and I was drawing pictures of flowers dying every day, and I was really stoned all of the time & I'd go to bed alone because I wasn't allowed guests. I would read kafka's blue notebooks until I got too bored or distracted or tired and then I would write a little something in the book and I would fall asleep. An example:

   19 May, bed

      You've a lot of work to do. Read    deal   finish/throw away  your library         move to New Orleans

I started again, writing in the red notebook, and it produces similarly, only I am not the devastated one I was in may. I am still sad to report that may of 2013 was historically one of the worst months in my recent years. it remains cloudy and dismal in my memory, and it has cracked something of my view of idaho or of impending summer or of love or hopefulness or something of those natures. I am still sad that I can't laugh at that. I had the sweet depressant in my skeleton. so many questions. I had begun to see luke and he knew me enough, made me come in the park, screams echoing and I snuck him in kari's club afterward but then in the morning I wanted him so gone. I was like that guy, we all know. I felt like the truest broken thing. it was late may by then. I was a dead finish. r

I made some apologies to them. I was sorry that I wasn't going to fall in love anymore. I was sorry that a whole, flat bland vacuum of the country was off limits to my wandering brain heart fingers breath. my best friend moved away, I moved away. I haven't smoked a real american cigarette in days, just the herbs of the world, it seems better for your health and for your pocketbook and for your roommates and for the smell of the world, right. I like to smoke while I cook, like while cooking things like chicken noodle soup for my boyfriend because I want to reach out to him, and he is sick, and I want to prove that I am good & careful & capable. there is science in the chicken soup thing, and I believe usually what I hear right away as the truth. why lie?

which reminds me I wish I had a cigarette paper. I would roll one of these good smokes. I have these little butts, but I, too, am ill. I'm sorry. I shouldn't be smoking, I almost almost even considered quitting smoking for someone this spring. may2013 killed notions of that, so I must have smoked 100,000 smokes over the last 6 months.

I liked smoking and cooking. I spent four hours in the kitchen, four hours at least maybe more. we have a nice big kitchen, and a table ben secured from a house where he was working, it came from someone who overdosed, he told us. it in the sorry for him, lucky for us voice. it's nice to sit at a table. I watched project runway and I ate sweet potatoes and rice from louisiana, and arugula from louisiana. I asked ben & colette to get me some rosemary from the store, and kayla looked at the show with me and we all tried my smoking blend. dan came in and he tried the soup and he told me not to overdo it with the parsley. we don't like to fight but somehow we are fighters.

I'm listening to rumours, which I'm waiting to remind me. ever listen to music expecting it to shock you back into something? after justin left boise I listened to all of the music he sent to me. he sent me music over the internet, and he sent me flowers once, which he probably purchased over the internet. we had an internet relationship & so I listened to rumours on the internet. it wasn't ruined for me, I keep waiting for that. I don't feel anything about it either way, the sting is gone. somehow that's a little disappointing to me, like it felt like so much back then and now it's almost as though nothing ever happened. like it should remain important? sometimes I'm such a dreamer.

I haven't been drinking or doing drugs or anything. I am trying to drink tea & lemon & ginger from louisiana. I have never lived in a place where I could eat ginger grown from my earth here. it feels lucky, but also like an of course kind of lucky.

I think the cigarette paper is the toughness I appreciate. I really shouldn't be smoking, but I feel justified. I still wonder. I met someone in florida named justice and I told him about things a little. I'm glad I love the south, and even though it bums me a little to feel so little, I'm glad to not feel the pull sting anymore.  goodnight

I just gotta finish this smoke and then I'll get on the road I might even stop to get you some ice cream

I'm still sitting here on the bench in front of work
still drinking the same old drink
Charley's steakhouse eliminated
I called my drunk boyfriend
he's pretty drunk
he said come scoop me
but I think I just got to smoke another smoke
I'm talkin to myself
making the most of myself
I'm following my instincts
it's nearly 11:30 p.m.
man that kids been drinking
Group me up
why don't you come screw me up
uh oh

this is a little bit after work it makes me think about to work

the street is empty and humid
I don't know what temperature is anymore
I don't know what I did this drink at anymore
don't know what kind of drink it is
it's free after work drink
I'm sitting in front of work out
and I'm wishing that I had all of the minutes of the world
to Castle Rock on me
to turn it rock on me
order it
rock on me
I sweat out this in the kitchen
the sins of the kitchen
the wet slimy under my nails
the slamming me under my nails
it under my nails meet under my nails
I have more meat for my bones
what I have in my milk crate:
animal on a sandwich wrapped in tin foil
chicken eggs wrapped in a brown paper bag
a quart container of coffee, dipping in wrinkled on the lead
addicted and then a peach and LA sky
and non negotiable pay stub with my name on it
a box of roasted brussel sprouts
a bottle of water I always forget to drink it
phone charger
sliced bread.
I'm in a good mood
I like my people,
and I like the scene
just wish I could call Kyle
because I miss him
any send me messages that a Dad would send
I could see how you could be lucky to have him for a dad
but I've got mad dads
every man I've been very close to, close to by choice
other than lovers
has been dead to me
they've been dads to me
but it's alright after work hard one
in short sleeves and short dress
and a compliment from a woman
and a smoke with new friends
but I forgot to change out of these Pumas
so my style remains fresh.

most sloppy

I'm so fresh,
not worn down at all
I'm such a tight ship
I'm     ask girl
    how you say,
   so tight
I like this better than with anyone
and I say, that makes me sad for the past you
and so you said, don't be sad
       you're my future    you're my future


from your dirty dish work
with your dirty hands
with your master jeans
mustard jeans on
what hi fashion
  sure that
the mess
we bring this
  is home all the time
all of the messages         all of the masses
all of the messages
  every mess
we mess up my bed
I miss my hands into your hair
I miss my arms around your shoulders
you mess up and down my body
you message across my back,
you mess up
  my mind
we missed in and out of each others brains
mass in
mess out
  we are massive pod
on a flat floor flat surface, cush ground
breathe heavy snore me for me
I'll whisper tired hate at you
are breathing so rough so sleep
    estoy dormir
I'm sorry it's just a mess
something called something
  for something
it's unsafe to step across your body
it's wrong to walk up on it
and through all the sorries
we can sure of it laugh at it mess it up more
just call it out
  of love

give it a week

I'm actually wearing wool. I'm actually final, here. I am surrounded by the latenight drilling of the roads about. I was sad and awander, I fell into step. I felt time dally around. I make the most of it, child's bed. Make me. 

We picked up a hitchhiker, we were all going to New Orleans. Danny came back to the car and said, He's pretty dumb, but he's harmless. He introduced himself as Christopher, then interrupted himself to say in drunk drawl, But erryone calls me MISS'IPPI! Y'all mind if I DRINK? and I'm sprayed gently with beer. AW NO, this un's sprung a leak! So he chugs. He's made up a song he doesn't mind singing over and over. The chorus says, simply, and straightforwardly: Ga pocket fulla LINT. Pocket fulla LINT. Pocket fulla LINT. Danny says, Aw man, yeah I already heard this one. He puts his hand on my leg. I'm driving. Missippi ain't talking to me. He's not talking to anyone in particular. But I'm at an advantage because I've got the window down, and I'm smoking and drinking coffee. We're outside Mobile by now, Missippi HATES MOBILE, ALBAMA! MO-BILE ALBAMA CAN DIE, KNOW WHIME SAYIN?

Well, shore enough, he passed out for a spell. And we made it to New Orleans, Louisiana. Passed through & over Lake Ponchartrain and it began to rain a bit. We got rid of our traveler but he left in his wake a bottle of smartwater, empty save for the dip he'd been spitting. Bye bye.

I was worried three, four, five six weeks ago. Wondering, will I? I read aloud to him the poem I'd written, we were at the bar neither of us really likes but the one that's close, and always has an empty patio. At the picnic table. He was tired but I read it anyway. I was worried but I'm not worried anymore. I'm a weepless one, now.

no prob

hey pretty getreal
we have to $$ too much
I always hated air conditions
but I moved to the south, to the endless summer so
we pump her up
I don't like to sleep enclosed is a room without windows
is hard for me, for my want of fresh breaths but
the buggies
they fly invisibly in
and suck at my ankles
at the underside of a toe.
so seal up we do.
but we can't afford it anymore, controlling our climate.
so now it's a heavy 85 degrees
both in the house & out of the house
at 74 percent humidity
rains in waves
I don't mind it at all. covered by 150 yrs of balcony
but
inside my skull it's humidest
and I can't defog it
I don't bite my fingers anymore, too relaxed to chew me up.
leave that for the buggies.
I've got nothing wrong. I'm adaptable, you know.

optimism

the haha you!
the edit you
there's always the you to write about, a sort-of you
the all-sorts-of remember
mes
I think back
in a few months ago
or 6 months ago
I was trying to see the pain end
trying to date that end
telling things, to picture it happening
like Molly, you won't live here forever
in a deep sadabandon place
you'll find the surface
you'll move in with your blood
get comfy together, you'll get comfy
together
swim up in it, bubbles coming from a nose
for my mouth
how I shout, mouth
to suck
being a stop-now
suck it out, stop being a shop mouth
a sob cave-maker
let your burbling oxygen bubbles rest
let your breath turn into flowers again
photosynthesize
on the horizon
oh haha you
oh, 6 months later you
oh where it came, from where I am again
the dissolve of flowers in a vase
the burning of your name on a hill
my abundant cusses
I've almost forgotten them
empty hole empty house
no more radiant crevasse
full of sinew & thread
the prettiest sky
the prettiest scab
peel me off
smile laceration me
the pink soft of a nomore scar.
  the teen is    dead

anymore

I miss having fun with you, do you think we'll ever have fun together again?
I wanted to have a cocktail
at this poshplace, I had an oldfashioned
at the bar
and I sat next to this bearded guy
who I couldn't look at
 and who left instantly
I feel like if you want to live here you have to be in love
with her
here
I feel it in me, it's not devastating
I wonder if I will drown, here?
or get up?

  of course we will
be laughing
and nice to each other
I don't know where my   space    is
  it's everywhere

I got pulled over last night
I don't want to drive anymore
I get nervous
I want to put an e in nervous
I want to spell nervous with molly

I don't like to be a  thing
in your freedom thing
your venge
isn't mine
I wish we could fuck loudly for someone else's benefit
  I don't tear up that
  just makes me shake your head
  it makes me a judge where I don't want to be

my throat hurts
my head is filled with coffee
and with shit
and with chocolate scone
and with a nap
  I think
              I won't tell you everything
anymore

dear diary

where am I?
it's night the bugs are silent
but this: go about my legs
scheduling, sucking at my blood
well, turn around slowly, fat body
move about, checking
for degree of lost
for debris I've lost
I slap
bet you squash it, you
everyone else talks about how
the winter is coming for them
but no winter comes for me
I'm bare legged, short skirt-did
I'm sheeny, I'm shy
I'm processing ponds
little pools of poem in my head
my arm stay open
my legs spread
I'm a constant in this pool
I'm a constant sweat
it gets dark early
that's the only way to tell
there's a change
can see more stars than you think I can see more stars than you think.
you'd be surprised at the recognizable constellations I see
the same as they're at home, or whatever
its all open late
arms all open late groping
groping at the full night the full  night
my warm wet me
where am I?
I'm a big open wet glad sack
and I got all
that I smile
and I schedule
and schedule
and scuttle
and sad, at it all
but really not
at all

in me

it is a body heart
a panic muscle
my lungs, yours
full up to the throat.
I talk too much
everyone seems better memory
repeat my repeats
rememberize me.
it hasn't been
long I am
afraid of the big
I am afraid
to fall out
of love with my city
with my girl.
how much room is in me?
to quiver in me?
to pulse & pound in me?
will I shiver me off
around over through to finished?
will I kill the gapes
will I fill with sound, me?
I want to
I want to give it
I want to give it all away
I want it celebrating not
cursing
I want to course with you
I want to birth
it not
death it
I want to steal the
deal
to spark my wordless mouth
my fullbellied, worthful mouth
I want to spout the right ones
at you on
you in you
, in me
  I want us safe inside
we're unsafest. world fastened.
harnessed.

<no title>

Don't tell anyone
I am here thinking about all of the sad sagged faces
mine too is sad

I don't know you, let's hold hands
jump on a train
bergman, tarkovsky
popmusic
I'm young
victorian window display
person of the people
pidjin tongue
crescent moon
crescent city
dance to your neighbor's motown
sweeping glass off your bed
barracade your door
forget your keys
pockmarked
greasehair
mosquito bites
drowning cicadas
saving a cicada from drowning in the fountain with a discarded sandal
cicada makes a dive at my face
spilling a cocktail on my face
carry your groceries
climb through your window
fix a wound
sour shirt
fickle
ice cream
kissing
driving
sob
wash your pants
wash your cellphone in your pants
foodstamps
cheesestamps
grungey
asthma
little roach
singing
bulbous
hacking
husky
river bend
orange porchlights
magazine street
kitten
blue eyes
shower
sit on my face
beignets
dogfood
bruises
hydrogen peroxide
late for work
call me

hey, romance

I love
sitting in a car and drinking
outside the new orleans food coop
84 degrees
77% humidity
windows down, listening to Active Child
I like Active Child because it might
be the super-genuine
it might also be
the sarcastic type of falsetto


I went to the bywater
with a two-babe entourage
in cloud shirt, mulberry skirt
& the other, in the dragonfly print dress my Auntie Sue gave me for christmas
I think she should wear it always


I, like the others like me,
like the bywater, what little I've seen
for it's sprawling bed-stuyness,
for
that we're foreign & safe & unsafe & belong & really don't
like, we can & do afford your neighborhood
so adopt it for our art studios
& our coops
in our glasses sliding off our humidface,
disinterested, jaded, working

I'm sitting in my subaru legacy outback
smoking black american spirits
drinking a la 31 boucanee smoked wheat ale from a sweating bottle
awaiting my sexy entourage
thinking about us
midsummer us
some energies
  are up
I'm trying to get them
I'm displaced & sidesmiling about that
I've cheers to make up
I'm a girl with a cause
I'm a fitting in I don't fit in here
I'm shopping around, taking advantage
of my natural
  luck
& my born-in guilt is all overme
all over one only subaru in town,
  we drove it here
this is a chant
this is a waving regular flag
these songs are our songs
how many times a day can I mention I've been to college? I've been to 3 colleges
where'
s my college?
it's serendipity, that I'll sing
song it through all of the
most obvious
  cloud
  & voice it all out of
my wet wet wet
upper
  lip

why not

I'm going to write a story called, "I forgot where you said you were from"
it'll be a sort of relationship, subtle-drama
the kind where nothing happens
I came outside without any pants on
to think about it
and to hear the thunder
and my glasses fogged up immediately
but the storm was over, of course


I can hear an argument across the street
a guy is saying to another, You don't have any friends. Doesn't it bother you that you don't have any friends?
he's saying, No one likes you! You're a fucking asshole!
I can hear a train whistle somewhere close by.
when I lived in Portland, I had one friend
his name is George
he thought writing poetry and writing fiction was a waste of time.
reading it, too.
he told me that he'd had a friend,
back when he had friends
who had promised herself that she'd never
live in a place
that didn't have a clawfoot tub
and she'd never live in a place
where she couldn't hear trains running by.
I thought then, as I do now
that these are good rules
but I haven't been able to live by them
until now.
now I live there.

I'm going to get up early and I'm going to write a story
because I can't think of a reason
why I shouldn't

driving through bayou

that daft punk song is on
I looked at the map
there is water everywhere
I'm thinking about the alcoholics I've loved
I guess I'm reading a lot of Raymond Carver
it feels like the closest I can get
to them
and I've been alone for long enough
which isn't long at all
but maybe it doesn't do well alone for long
it dies inside a little
the people around me love 2chainz
and they overuse the word yucky
I don't like it
it makes me feel lonely when everyone else is laughing and making noise
the white longlegged seabirds with the slender bills
sifting trash
from the gulf of mexico
I should stop reading these stories
or I should stop thinking of people I used to love
or still love
or I should stop loving
or expecting to
or I should stop drinking
even though they do love me
more when we do
I like living in a place that's sinking
I like keeping my mouth shut, just
watching for the other mouths
of sewers
to get taller than
I

wildly

I said I'll give you a month. I said, it's only going to get worse before it gets better. I said I'll never be an empty husk, a broken shell. I said this is all that matters & I won't give up. I said read me. I'm pushing on you. I'm pushing so hard I'm pushing infinity. I'm trying myself out. I said, if you ask me, I'm ready. I'm grasping wildly open handedly. I cried nearly everyday in August until I left Idaho. I said, there is justice, there will be justice. I would have written something, titled it justice. but my brain was strangely clearer then. then I healed up, contained cask. I keep on finding you but you'll never find me back. I keep on but I'm still here. just swollen full like it is. I'm around and nowhere. I said it again, too

me, again it's me again

I'm getting too good at this
like being too old at this
I'm reading a short story in bed and the story ends and
I realize I've been doing that thing
where I go back in a murky ball
  for you
a guy at work told me about how he cut his knuckle on the meat slicer once
and that the worst of it
was the sound it made.
it was just like the mortadella
it was just like meat.
reminding him we're just meat.
oh I know
it's a brain day
that I'm tender meat on the in & out.
I'm all brain heart lungs
but I look like a regular body bag
and I force them on me
and one day, someone might want to, again

stickygirl

get me! we made that allnatural health poison
the squitos drive around me, knowing I'm delicious
but knowing I've the poison skin
they land on my safedress
and I knock them dead
their striated legs in a little pile
on the ancient cement stoop.
I doubt I've ever stuck to the air
this much.
bye bye, louisiana
august

why are you following me

I'm empty nest
but my body's gettin biiiiig
sooo float
I walk around new orleans in these hippie sandals Barb gave me the night we stayed in denver
and the pink hawaiian shirt I got last week, it's the only clothing thing I bought since leaving idaho
  17 days ago
I walked down the middle of the road
at twilight
saw three cats
to buy cigarettes
I would trade cigarettes for love
  with you
  with any of you
it's chocolate city, you know
           heeeeyyy, chocolate
I got ice cream
in lieu of screaming that
and I've got the bug
the hotbodied, bloaty bug
& I know,
  I know you're not
  really following me around
we aren't tether limbed
we're not elastic lipped
I'll shush me
but I haven't enough
      friends
         in this sultry, sultry wetnest
yet

VENUS

my evenings in summer. I couldn't smoke at Kari's when I lived there so I found the clubhouse. when I'd ask people if they wanted to come there they'd say yes and we'd zigzag sharp upthe hill through the sages and past mellow pink & graygreen donkeytail succulents and we'd wedge our ankles into seats to prop us on, and they'd say, I thought there would be an actual house, here. I loved it at sunset 10:30 at the tip of summer mountain standard time, when up & to the right there'd be glowing venus. I can do anything I want to now, here, so I sit on the balcony in the trunk of summer at sunset around 8:07 central standard time and up to the right there, thar she glows. familiar as ever. if I were in Idaho still I might lament that the trunk of summer radiates nervously, that days shorten at not my wanting, for I've no doubt the same sun sets there, too. I share a timezone with you. doesn't that craze me? meaning makes me crazy. I'll always think of the sultry air surrounding me at this moment, forever I know it. I might not ever quit at saying so. time changes, my zoning mutates. but I've my forever promises & my familiar footholds in any muting sky of summernight. I'll die with some imprint of a silhouetted palm behind eyelid quakes.
there be no doubt in that.

get mello

hey, chocolate
hey, me
how is this southern night so quiet? where're my bigbugs
just the subtle quiet singers tonight?
and topless bandana'd summer teens on the porch across the street
in hammock house
the forsale sign is gone
hey, pretty mansionhouse
I love it in you

how do you do still

watching this very sad Spanish movie
I'm thinking of a you
wondering, did you ever watch them, things like these
& did you read subtitles
and lay on the couch alone
I thought of you today when I read that Raymond Carver story
called Fat
(how boys love their Raymond Carver)
how they've excuse to be witness
to the Great Calm Mess of
Us All
how they've permission to write
in a simple language
to be expressionless, loveless
nondescriptly appreciationless
you wouldn't appreciate this heavy European film, I'll bet
you're too heavy yourself
too Fat
too otherthanthis
I don't think of you too often, anymore
but when I do
I still fully wonder
for a time

sunday

there's a neighbor to my left, coughing & smoking
at his low brick house.
does lethargy
set in earlier, here?
what's the type of overcast here
the bright light blanket
lavenders & cadet blues
trademarked
I don't know, there, I said it.
I'm overcast in sprays of grayed down, too.

big rubby

sitting on the front balcony in the wet wet wet wet we're buggybodied
insects
sliding legs against wings against hair! in wave clouds, soundclouds
  like little pour cloud passing over the house
solid mists between
biting my sunset
the significant gray lavender
rubbing hairs with a gray butter peach
  where we are,

in denver

little dooms
a light
pile of chirps
an element
  I need to think of
an element
a string of vowels
insects brushing against
night
when is the next full moon? is a question

get in the zone

on this first day I woke up like a new girl on a 366th day of the year, skylight above me roasting me, white thigh from out of the blanket, flannel sweating stuck at skin, breathing around, where am I? we got in too late to see abundance of gardens and trees and coloradoness. I just changed out of my clothes & into my better dress, the good dress from 2008, the always dress which is now the always dress of summer 2013. I woke up differently from me now. now I am coffeed and cooled and thinking of autozone. but I came out from the house and I am dreaming of my new house in new orleans, walking around it in my mind.

even if I try. even if I wanted toooooo

I'm sitting on the yellow house's stoop, again. This for the last time, maybe. It's an immanent tomorrow. Tomorrow is a better day to leave. The neighbor, not at pukeneighbor's house but at squat brick house, is listening to something punk or something, he wears a black tshirt when he smokes and looks at his phone, there's a tv inside, the neighbors watch it with the door open. He isn't doing much on a late Tuesday. Is it Tuesday? What day is it, Kyle asked some guys who came in to his restaurant tonight. I think he had some lines lined up, he probably knew the day. Kyle's good at being a waiter. I like the words waiter and waitress better than I like server. I like to sex things. None of that is particularly true. I'm drinking a watermelon beer again, we got them for the road. The car is packed. Save for the soda maker. We don't even know for certain that it works, but. What if it does? I'm going to make us sodas when we get to Louisiana, and Thousand Island dressing. I think I could make delicious Thousand Island. I like the name. Sometimes kids only want Thousand Island dressing. None of this is actually on my mind. Today a vase fell a couple of feet from the bookcase and onto the carpet in Luke's room. He hollered for a second, and later, on the log at Brody Beach, he surprise-gripped my sun arm and warned me that there is broken glass, to be careful. I thought it was funny because the thing broke, and also because he didn't pick up the glass, and also because he was being careful at me. The vacuum has been in his room for a month at least, a bunch of ants came in and we got the vacuum and had a great time sucking the ants up. So I had a pretty great time sucking the glass up. So he won't cut his foot later, thinking of me. And the little pieces I'll try not to leave behind. I'm sitting on his stoop sort of listening for his skateboard wheels on the sidewalk. He might be surprised that the car is packed. That I said goodbye again to John Shinn, and to Bri, and to Kyle, and Kari and my dad and to Britta, the last. No one is crying, which is a good sign. But smell makes me cry. The picking up of a handsome plaid shirt with sweetsmelling collar makes me lurch a little. But I'm more more more than ever, and it's ready in me. I wish I could write sweet notes for all over the cute yellow house. Maybe butter yellow is a forever reminder of the Summer of 2013. It has been a good one, thanks to many, and to one. I am glad it's true. All of the hugging is out, I've got it in. I've got a shower, I've got a salad for the morning. I've got an ear to the sky & an ear to the heart. I've shaken off the butter sheets with the black ink constellation. I've sucked up the glass. I've got me wrapped up. I've got me winding away, I think I think I do, now.

when I die bury me in the liquor store

I'm sitting on Luke's stoop listening to Nickey's birthday track, it's pretty loud. Drinking an Outlaw IPA not because I'm crazy about it, but it's a pretty good IPA and I taste IPAs all day sometimes, but because it's from Garden City, and made by an acquaintance from highschool, I never had a crush on him, but I guess I'm trying to be pre-nostalgic for Idaho because I truly am leaving it tomorrow. This song doesn't make me nostalgic, just makes me think of Nickey but I'm taking her with me. I mean she's taking me with her. We're taking each other with each other. I'm going to Dad's for a final Dad dinner, and I'll maybe sell the dogcrate for $50. I made $55 selling my synthesizer to Britt. I was going to sell it to another exboyfriend, but I like Britt better. Maybe it's because he was never my exboyfriend. I think I like the music he makes more. No I know. A giant man in a BSU tee walked by with a golden on a leash. The golden was wetfurred, and peed on the tree in front of Luke's cute yellow house. Ida didn't chase it. But I was gripping her by her aqua bandanna. It's not too grubby for a bandanna. For a dog bandanna. Or even a girl bandanna. I said goodbye to Brittany. To Chad, to Gray, to John Shinn. I wanted to say goodbye to John Shinn again. I've said enough goodbyes. Everyone's like, Why aren't you gone yet. And we're like, We know. Because we've got to pack the car up, and I've got to clean my little messes I've messed Luke's cute yellow house with. But then, maybe I won't. Maybe it will become real to us. Maybe I'm more excited than they are. Maybe later I'll write long words about long skins to miss. Long bodies pulled tightly down over a butter yellow bedsheet, long feet dangling. Can you dangle straight. I have hours left of goodbyes, I know. I will be saying goodbye forever, I know.

slowjambs 1 (5/12/13)

your touch is so wonderful
your touch is so marvelous
the joy that I feel when I'm with you
it feeeeeels so good
I'm so glad yer mine
know that I love youuuuu
make it last forever
ya ya
give me kisses
oooh love me
hold me
squeal me
chimney
you know I do
oh oh ohhhh ohoh
mmmmm mnnnnn
you know
know that I loooooooooooove you
hoooo
prettertnnnener
oh io
never never never
make it last forever
I want our love to last a lifetime
I lovey lovey lovey love you
got to make it
ohh honeyy
I I  i I I i I i

how do you do? (5/14/13)

I've got these goodmess
those good meds
I've got those who will do whatever
big bosslady
Trundlelegs
it smells like garlic at work
we got a lotta tomatillos
I'm at the beach
I am the beach
I am a beachface
with riverhair
But we're talking abt mt rushmore
and how crazyhorse will never be finished

I will dedicate a tango to it (5/16/13)

define sentimental
blood red sentimental blues in the style of van morrison
when I was listening to van morrison I was thinking oh man
I'll bet he was like 23 when he made this album
because I was thinking, he had to be 22
and of course, he was
when I was 22 I was in a bloodbath
I had black hair
I weighed 113 pounds
I chased my own tail
I was sentimental
cleaning the sink with bakingsoda and vinegar
the gum red, it was dry
I threw a mango into the yard
I threw the ball for the dog a couple of times
I said what is sentimental and you told me it's the by-product that oozes from your pragmaticism

I'm just sitting downtown Boise Idaho

what I'm actually doing is hanging out next to Lewis and Clark
there's some little Indian kids and stuff
looks like they're treating a fish for some chestnuts
you can always tell Luis, he's the one hanging back
with a raccoon fur ahead
and Clark pointing
and the other guy pointing, too
they've all got on these crazy friend you jacket
the friends hanging down
of their bronze arms
I'm going to miss the way
of the Great West

things we think of alone

in the stars & bars, the neon bikini
wet from river,
it sucked me in
this is how drunks drown
the water black linesnaking across
I wouldn't have fallen in there in daytime, too dangerous
wet home, always the sprinklers on the greenbelt between 3 & 4 am
things we think about alone
the dry eyes, the good goodbyes
the dreams I have about masturbating
always a mother or stepmother figure to embarrass myself in front of
the geminates: double rs, double ss
the ending of sentences with prepositions
I'll let you sleep all day, I'll tiptoe about you
find you coffee
watch your skin on the butter sheets, your shorts of a dusty salmon pink shirt
long pretties
I get jealous when I overhear things sometimes
but alone on a bike in the dark, feeling cold, wet, driving fast to beat it
coming alone in the heat, it's nice like winterblanket
it makes a sigh smile across me.
thinking of your leaving, of my staying put
I'm putting out even in sleep.
get in me
you did, once, many
I'm alright with that now
so I think it
so I build it true.
now

screamy

for those of you writing, I'm suspicious
I have amillion miles long
I am waiting.
I'll sit with your body folded up in me
we're under them, dots con to each, like the pen drops
on your sheets
wish I could find an animal for it
but no matters.

I am growing, in & up too
I've
left, we've talked about it
I'm here for the 4 or 5
nickey britta luke river dad

I like to look at what the others are doing.
I DO not like to think about what I'd be doing otherwise.
I keep glancing out the window for your
spiderlong
and I am wondering, where did you,
& I fairly shed on you

going out

waiting is not moving. shaking limbs out isn't staying. I cleaned I cleaned I sprayed, I even cinnamoned the ants out of mine own evil, watch them shake & burn. isn't that just, why you gotta be so mean. the party neighbors are at it again. mine whine friends, my dad & his friends. they're good, they only really remember one or two stories from my babyhood. or else there aren't enough good memories. or else two just stories for them to shaken their drunk heads & their squint eyes at. When I'm their age, they warn, In 34 years I'll be thinking, Weren't those the best times. thanks for making me look down at the bodworld I've made all shameful.

wasp

"Last August
  I Gave you My Heart
  and The Very Next May you Gave It Away"

this written on a sign above her bed. this lighting the afternoon cigarette, but they won't sleep sober so it's noon when a roll-out can happen. it's august & maybe it's assumed but the shortening of days can be assumed. there is a broken sprinkler head just shooting out little waterspurts. she went home drunkenly to care for his dog, she was being funny at the time. one can write paragraphs for another so long as they're cryptic to let the other roll eyes because their meanings are decipherless, meaning-less. a long white limousine driving by, the pound of bass in some other car in vicinity. tap your dog out of the bushes. don't touch those eggshells. wen't isn't a contraction. it's august, we're leaving tomorrow. go back three months ago & say so. may was a shell looking out of it at an august too far away. but here we are! sleeping in your bloodbed, all of the dreams bad ones. we aren't sex. se'x isn't a contraction. moving all of the cups in to move them out again. a view from before. tears dry, little cheeks for washes all dry. I made you oatmeal, I invited you disinterestedly. I'm back to disinterest, aren't we proud. wad up in my arms saying nothing but that. is it bass or bass? I guess I've the things to go through, I want to be alone in my own arms. to share my own anxieties with my own disinterested self. dis all over me. give me my push-me-away. give me fortyeight hours, push me away. fuck my eyes open, shower me, my hair to grow long outside from me. look up from your paws, feel the breeze on your pretty cinnamon back, feel the scary unfamiliar humid real in front of you. I'm excited for next may. I'll be such an alive thing then.

garbagepail

so many Gs in the bank
I'm listening to the neighbors party
someone just walked out of the house saying,
Party tiiime, gurl
and I'm like, Hella! I'm alone in pretend house, the dog isn't barking
another guy just called out, Text me in 2 hours to find out what I want from Jimmy John's
and I'm all, Helllllla!
one of the neighbors is a super-puker
he superpukes really loudly in the mornings
right outside the window where I'm waking up, and
rubbing my eyes, going, Hella
Hella puke it OUT, bro
get it
another guy who lives in that house is the breast marauder
the tiny razor pube man
it's a gross story
but he doesn't remember me, so
I'll underbang glance grimmace at him, like, ohh Hella
I never have to remind him
that that's not the romantic way to fingerblast a babe
that he has a million too many identical sweaters
that ripping off a hot babe's nipples isn't the way to get
your sharp little penis inside of it

sorry, this was a bad one
but I'm alone, and feeling proud
of life, of brain, of heart & future
  for at least the next twenty minutes, or so

hungover

I can't tell if I'm straightup being ignored by you
I don't want you to leave, am I? where are we going
I don't want Kyle to go back to Nebraska, it makes me feel like I'll never see him again.
I don't want to never see you again.
I did too many bad things, I lost all of my words in one paragraph
I lost all of my tears, down my throat, backwards
I don't remember getting home
to your home
you interrupt ignoring me to ask me if I know what time it is
I don't know how to find the things
the people-things
I've lost
I'm already gone
I'm trying to be capable
I want dates
but I am so sick on dates
I don't know if I impress
leave impressions of, on

I like your face
I like your beard face
I like your profile & your mouth
& the way you point instead of speaking
I like that I'm in your kitchen
& I'm writing about you
& you're moving about

and you just handed me a black ricecracker
with hummus & pickled okra
it was really pretty

I'm always asking so many questions
so people shush me & hush me
when in bed & I'm talking in my sleep
I forget sometimes to not read your
poems and then I can't tell if I'm
sweating or if I'm crying

there's a golden retriever wandering around outside
and I feel this weighty terror
& a terrible jealousy at it

bucketlist

I don't have enough paper to excuse myself. cricket sounds, alone on your stoop. too date to, too summer to. L H D C. I met my date's unknowing mom today. I walked into his house expecting to find nobody and there is his mother sitting stooped in the kitchen seemingly hairless with a hat & shades & cane, and I introduced myself as my date's friend and she introduced herself as my date's mom. I went to the bathroom & thought wildly of laugh-saying, Oh so you're my new mother-in-law haha but I just said Excuse me and It was nice meeting you, afterwhich I afterwished I would have said, It was nice to have met you because I think this is a far pleasanter way of sharing the sentiment. I am not mad anylonger, feeling unjustified or afraid anylonger. I was talking to Chad last night about how I worry more that I am incapable of feeling Those Feelings anymore that maybe I am trashed & shredded more permanently than I'd thought, anymore. the feeling of not feeling being sadder than any feeling. that maybe I am a sad incapable husk of humanity myself, then. I think maybe I am just losing steam on it all, on everything & maybe I get whiffs of it back often like when I realize that my date has not one but two pianos in his house. & his cat eats my dog's food & my dog eats his cat's, etc. his script on his french homework. his tall bed. underclothes, wet from river, draped about. we're both buying blueberries, now we've only too many for a blueberry pie. I'll go extra & sadly to the yuppy store to buy noodles & corn & squash for you through my hate for the place, parking my subaru legacy outback, parking my collie at the Temporary Doggie Parking Zone. walking past the old white ladies lunching with biodegradable packages. my date has dad hair, I told him there was a fine silvery one & he wouldn't believe it, asked me to pull it out to show him. now he is whitehairless. I've about 9 different pretty iridescent hairs coming out from me. his record collection endearing. there are long shoes, the kind I'd have worn should I be stretched out longer. maybe I am tired from it. in my fantasy hotair balloon basketride. in my I'll make you dinner when I get Home. in my parents' house, and they say, You don't have to leave! We like you here! in your arms & you subtle say, Don't go, just stay & live with me, with your insinuated shared invisible chuckle. I'm blowing kisses at everyone these days. Amanda zipped it away for keeps in her pocket. my date caught one across the alleyway & threw up back to me. John Shinn & Bri stored theirs away like best friends can. I can see actively the shortening of days and my dad reminds me how shitty is Boise in November, that might I just leave then? a year ago today I was fastened to Matty & Kyle & Brittany & Nickey in sweat, blood, pus... oh, tears. it's all the same to us. I quit my job in Portland exactly three years to the day, yesterday, when I quit my job here. But I was out of town on August 4, like planned. that was then, when my buckets were all full. my future was inflated, helium'd. & now it is a solid wonder, but I'm sunk at the wonder. maybe my organs have flown grown away. thought I'd my heart back by now, but it's a wash & my wickerbasket is a frayed mop & I'm moping away in my girl reflection.

on today's date.... those muffled rofls

on today's date we thought of defining irony, we can tell the difference, but can we define it? we can tell the difference between it and coincidence, certainly. we went to the high note, and who was working but brett who said, You'll be gone by halloween, right? I scoffed a scoff meaning, Of course I will, yeah or maybe, God, I fucking better be. he told me it was our anniversary. I looked at him, not wanting to, and he said, When we met, and I laugh muttered Oh yeah, and he told me that sun blood stories is playing a show on halloween with wooden indian burial ground. when I met brett & andy we danced together at the wooden indian burial ground concert. It's ironic, said brett as he wandered backwards away. I looked at my date & told him how this is a perfect example of what irony is not. after, I thought to look into my diaries of yesteryear. this is what I found for today's date, uncut, uncensored, unedited. and all that's left is, Did I do that? 

monday 30 july

salt tears

& the worst cramping. Waves of pain, maybe I do have cysts all over my ovaries. Isn’t this sad? I will never be able to give this birth.  I’ve a new long-distance boyfriend called Justin Ryan Fyfe. A super-unfortunate first two names but I like the ys and the double fff.

LAVA
for magma

i am in lincoln nebraska
my heart only bleeds when you open it
i screamed gin blossom lyrics
at a bar in omaha
how much of what i say
makes it to you
i was excited to go through tunnels
in west virginia
on the way back from the beach
the ocean is terrifying
i haven't said a word
to my father in over a year
and he tries to kill himself
and that sort of thing hurts me
i don't want people to feel
sorry
i am sorry
please forviv me
yr turqouise
i am i am the shades of a wasp
i am smoked in
i am in SP CE
listening to third eye blind
writing you a poem
did you write today
i am 28
and i forget
to drink
water
will you math me
will you hold my hand at the edge of a mountain
cliffs or the beach or the ocean is sky
my eyes are barely no years old
but i hear
or i can't listen from here
the wind over nebraska
lifts the cranes to other planets
kyle to the moon
you can call me
or i dont know why anyone would
imagine being stranded on a desert island
with your southwestern kitsch
am i missing south dakota
how do you say coyotes
what color are the hills on the moon
all these 90s hits i hear
break my heart
break my heart
break my heart
with a hammer
with the fist of rocketships
i am dreaming of clean water
but i cant dig deep enough
the earth wont open
where i am dry
is it too late tonight
are we just going
to skip to the end
i am asleep
i just woke up
it's nice to see you again

This is a Justin Ryan Fyfe original, the first no, no not the first, Erwin I think may have written one for me. But yes, from a person who doesn’t know me. Kyle’s best friend from Lincoln, NE.

After work, now. Tim made me a delicious salad with coconut chickensalad & greens of all sorts. He then brought me a plate of strawberries, chocolate, and whipped cream. What?!?

I'm hung on coincidence, now. & so quietly loling

the luckiest girl in the new world (3/20/08)

I just got home in perfect timing, just between rainstorms. I stopped making fun of myself and said hi to my room, in a happy tone. I found the cat, invited it in, opened an aventinus, and gazed longingly into the shattered remains of my reflection. That last sentence was a joke! I am so funny! I forgot to laugh! Not! I am laughing! ANOTHER JOKE

I wrote a poem at you in my sleep but I forgot it instantly

there is always a you in the you I talk about 

spurts of months ago

acid wash

the act of being worn out

I dreamt I was to do the charleston in an auditorium of people but my dress was too long, and or I also was wearing pants beneath it (the long thin breaths in a bed beside me in real life) so I called, tiny voiced, Wait, and of course I'm dreaming of all of my bags and luggages, filled with things like ski pants, the hippest new threads for shredding the gnar-gnar on sale now in Hailey, Idaho. I parked my car next to the dancefloor and half an our of my changing into flouncy layered skirts I was asked to move it, I was skipped, relieved. I had sex with an obese black man who'd come from the Twin Cities to find me. some grandparents almost wouldn't let him in. analysis: I'm moving, don't know where I am have all of my things billowing from backpacks & car don't want to go skiing don't know black people lament for being missed don't know how to dance but want to be before a crowd

analrapist

therapist

it's overcast & so am I

at this internet cafe

fresh out of bed

fresh dirt sheets, chill out I'll wash them

we've jobs to do to end a vacation 

ants in the bedlam.

<no title> (2/24/13)

The cardigans! More on those sweaters... wait... what is that... it's like a sweater, but it's cut down the middle, or yours has holes now, and the scent is strong like me, and like old man

just kidding

o god what a joker! I don't care, I care. you don't care? good, I could care less. wait... I sort of care now. so do you. but suddenly you seem like you don't, so now I'm nervous. if you don't care, don't do it. if you do, I want to know. but I can't ask, at the risk of seeming like I care too much. you liked me because of my disinterest. safety for you through my disinterest. but what about now? how fucked we got.

<no title> (7/10/13)

Still hurting like scald hurting
In one direction
At you

<no title> (12/22/10)

I make feeling of the brain.  Mostly low-growing, the mixture of that sun and me tryless. A little frolicky. Belonging to the primrose, those strong legs of his. I’m a magnet for choking the mind outright.

I’m not family; I don’t like this like that. Making love, having tuberous rootstocks and nodding strong legs, I’ve been complemented often. A self promoting deprivation. In the alps with deer, white, purple, pink, I see. My ability to create such a young and early death. And berries, unfortunately, crimson flowers with reflexed petals, can get  pretty intimacy only just awhile. In that mindset.

Describing expectantly comfort with strangers, a life donated to my abilities. A circular boat so I can find severe athleticism. Here I am, viewed from inside.

I'm not in love with you

I am not in love with those who don't love patterns
with those who don't love onions
with those who don't smile
with those who call themselves boring
with those who don't want to come
with those who litter
with those who don't think I'm sort of beautiful
with those who won't constant clutch at my bod
with liars
with those who don't cry
with those who don't ask all of the questions
with those who write as badly as I
with those who drink from to-go cups
with those who don't love my dog
with those who don't love language
with those who don't get drunk on words
with those who drink too much, too often
with those who say, I don't care
with those who mutter, I don't know
with those who deoderize
with those who make excuses
with those who hide
with those who deny
with those who don't give it
with those untouchables
with those who don't hurt honest
with those who won't ride with me
with those who don't sleep outside
with those who watch me & aren't okay with it all
with those who
  just can't hang

raise me up

in haunting backs, smashed up
all of the compliments
I have to go visit my mom for some first time
I have a whole family
to share my pits with, my grub
to not smoke in front of
to smile at
to not get too shitfaced, to keep it together for
to let know my excitement
they might make me go rafting, or something
which will be pretty
it's one of the prettiest places on earth, Hailey, Idaho
I'll sleep under the stars, I'll read my kafka & my baudrillard & my sontag in lamplight
I'll think of your haunting back
long smooth brown, because I'm romantic like that
of your mouth, the prettiest part on you
with a mole on a lowerlip
Do you like it?
I do, I do
I compliment you freely, no one likes compliments
  because they don't seem free
I'll drive alone, no
just me, my brain riding in the scrub seat
I'll say goodbye
I'll say hello to a secret you
  when we last met in the tropical bed drinking rum, running our bodies out each other
  but that was years ago.
  and we're brothers again.
all of my brothers, then
  and I'll be the failed aunt daughter sister
whispering, bye byeing at Idaho
    you little sucker
bye byeing at the mountains & clear summer waters.
see you soon, future turn, let me let's go peacefully, wrap my brain up
wrap me good, my little passenger

sitting by the river being all proud of myself (truth)

I am homely, driving in my car
             waiting
how many words do you think are in my vocabulary
how many words do you think of me
  I'm too something to something
  some pre-you pre-yous I'm doing, I'm after
I'm tired
I'm sprinklers, I'm sprinkling under summer
I'm sorry, I'm out
my car will die
I'll need a jump
I'll dry eye the night
but I'll
  sing at the tops of me
Truth
  with its un
recognizable
bassclarinet
     goodbye
         I'm asleep
            & truly
         from the mist
         from the most severest place
       are my apologies

cruelbod

the teens are sitting on the bleachers at the highschool
but they aren't teens, anymore, basically 30 now
kelly is arched back in a vermilion haltertop
and tad lays flat, looking at the stars.
she graduated from highschool
and comes & drinks rose on ice
on the bleachers
she does reverse cowgirl on the bleachers
tries to pee between steps
as latenight athletes run the track.
God, why aren't YOU running with them, she accuses tad
who exhales smoke
and sips rose, ice clinking in his plastic cuppy.
I know, right
kelly sat with brody
on the highschool bleachers
when she was pushing 30, a couple of augusts ago
she was wearing a white dress and a denim jacket
and brody was drinking a big beer
he was trying to convince her to just drive with him all night to nevada
so they could get married
she thought that sounded like fun
but they'd just met the day before
and she knew they'd get sick of each other halfway there.
she never sat on those bleachers when she was in highschool,
just after she moved begrudgingly back after years away
and it was only twice, and past midnight
with guys named tad and brody.
kelly only fucked brodys, now
she was done with seths and aarons and todds.
she is feeling pretty superior in her vermilion haltertop
she is looking good, teenlike
she tells tad about the jeremy she'd been harassing
and tad tells her, kindly, that she's been humiliating herself.
she is gleeful
she doesn't care, has nothing to lose
she claims a lack of cruel organs in her cinnamon bod.
but she's a liar,
and pathetic,
and she's alone in life and she's mean
so she smokes & she chugs
& she takes her shoes off and pees freely.
she's got those good strong outside peeing legs.
she says Whatever
I'm Me
never growing up
just justifying her moves
with evil eye glimmers
and secret, hopeful tears

bros

boys letting girls drive them around in their cars
boys sitting on the beach with girls reading the thoughts of important french thinkers
boys kissing wet girls on the beach
boys wanting to be sober with girls
boys going to their parents' place for salmon
boys drinking and driving
boys making their cocktails with raspberries & mint leaves
boys referring to their cocktails as their cocks
boys letting their moms move in
boys with their phones in their pockets
boys anticipating a latenight call
boys inviting girls over
boys listening for the sidewalks to ring out with skateboard wheels
boys drunk driving
boys sitting with anxious girls in their arms on a bed
boys holding girls as they cry on their faces
boys telling girls all of the things
boys sitting on the stoop with girls
boys crying with girls, talking about being broken hearted
boys getting naked
boys saying, I want to fuck everyday
boys wanting to tell someone they love her everyday
boys falling asleep to the party
boys waking up kindly, with fondness
boys wondering if it will end soon enough

things we talk about

tunamelts
limbs
river
French
coffee
illness
plays
translation
college
white hair
regret
cinnamon tans
vocabulary
laundry
noise
New Orleans
cats
moving away
sex
brains
babies
shirts
periods
breakfast
sadness
money

in summer

on not getting real

how many daze
what happens? in july
what happens when it is suddenly subtle sad breakfast & walking to the river in the heat becomes tedious & tiresome
stop by a greencovered pond, a pretty mossy blanket teeming truly,
to say, We have to keep walking, I'm angry, I'm not in the water
and we got to the river, saying, Sorry for being an asshole
& you underbreathing, I don't care, or Whatever
sitting apart
wondering if we are..., if we are near enough too much
some silence
is this the sad starts
saying, You're leaving really soon.
I know. so. is it?
are we going to be? are we holding hands, will I reach constantly for you? is it growing
on me
in that sort of way?
the good admittance
the reaching around for arms
measuring limbs against mine
length of brown forearm & mine
You know my body intimately
Don't you know I'm all legs?
spidery, leggy smooth thing
Feel this branch, instruct
worn away, green & fresh
rub on it together
I'm just moving in
later, the big dipper barely hazes over
I am good at the sad afar, keeping it
somewhere in some future
for now, just brains simple enough, bodytruth
plain beauty
nothing further
no worryables
these are the subtle anxious dudes in us
acceptances, all of the who-cares whatevers
  to share

I just gave birth

I just gave birth and I'm high as fuck
hell yeah I wanna party
well I want to sit in the sprinkler in front of your house
I want to bring you a card on the front of which reads,
You made a choice
and inside
But it was a child, it wasn't actually a choice
you are actually my inspiration
and now, my thinspiration
imma take some tit pics
& take them to LA
& be like, Dr please, I'd like these ones
oops I didn't finish my beer before I opened another one
Does that mean I'm doing this right?
we're like real babes in this world
the real natural babes
doing what we want
how we'd like to
stuff in, stuff out
let's get those good drugs
let's put them all over us, in us
let's rocket ourselves
enunciate our worths.
I love you
I love you
I love you
& I'll never tire of saying it.
I know you're the best
so here's to years and upwards of forevers together
  to never letting the parasites in our brains
   to never have any unworthits about us
       four more years
   to fortymillion more years
that's the fucking love about us
 

i have a swimming pool, you should come by

18 ft long
9 ft wide
a giant couple in neon green leaves the bowling alley
presumably headed to eat ham & cheese sandwiches
I'm a jerk
I'm making this woman do a cannonball in my mind
tidal waves, letting her thousands of grandchildren surf the day away
how do you get a swimming pool, I want one
I bet I'll meet one in new orleans
I bet I'll meet some mystics
& crafters of witchness
nickey, chad & I
we'll have to find our fourth
from the corners of a bright bluewatered rectangle
Hail to the guardians of the watchtowers of the east, one of us will call out, disinterestedly sipping a mint julep
We hail you

I'll b your crying shoulder

love's suicide? I can't remember who does this song
but,
regardless:
your fingers and wrists and hands are waking me up
up inside me, waking up
sweatless, sweetsmelling
my back the length of a bridge
foot me
I'm covered in it
I want to wake up your breakfast
I like the sitting under stars in perfect summer
what will I have to talk about when summer's over? maybe it will all be over
haha I'm not sad, I just don't have anything to say
haha
I'll bet you're a nevercry
I like your eyes downcast
boylashes
symmetry face
gaunt
like a balloon letting out
up high in your kitchen
I found gift certificates for a hot air balloon date
they expire in december of this year.
they were written out two decembers ago
when this summer wasn't invented yet.
you said you would try to buy them
from your basement roommate who teaches churchy preschool
I am not dressed churchy today at all
but I'd be churchy if we took a balloon date
I won't be here in december when the gift dies
but I'd get up early
make some mimosas or something, whatever you drink in a balloon
I'd like to do it in the air
but some old man will probably be there, so
I doubt it.
I'm a fun float date, I'd guess
I like the fantastic world
I can be a good time in it, above it
I took a hot air balloon ride once, over lake tahoe
above the epic deep turquoise
so let's sky before our summer dies
rightly

can't crush your dreamz

I had to run home last night from the bar
and by run I mean melt-stumble
and by home I mean the car
and by last night I mean very early this morning
I didn't order any drinks, drank water for hours
but I got time-lapse wasted on the tequila we drank in the car while listening to Nickey's summerjam playlist called "niki". we chased the tequila with
1. an old tasteless apricot, textured like vomit
2. a pistachio
3. soft huckleberry wine
I was on the back patio of the bar, the front was offlimits for us
it was being haunted by many ghosts
ghosts with eyelashes & concave chests & doublechins & combovers & depressants
I got up from the table, I was alone
buttice had to watch the punkband
I can say buttice's name, here because he'll never read this blog
I got up from the table because I was drunk & tired
and I knocked over all of the furniture
and I bashed shin to fence
and I was glad no one was around, I'd of been 86'd for sure
I wished we were friends
that our hugs weren't forced, or awkwardest
bc I'd nosed his neck before
but that was may. remember may?
I'm a way bigger care-less, now, anyway
but still trying to be care-full
I crashed in the car, woke up to mosquito bites all over
I guess I'm ready to be swamped
I'm ready for someone to call me
lovely, or wonderful
but the former is my word, the latter yours
& I'm becoming jaded by inventions
so I'll recline in the whip, with the dogs, with the bugs
with oilhair in my brain
tearless. I don't readily cry about it anymore.
& my own detachment from sadness
might be even sadder to me
than all of the sadness I've been desperately trying to dissolve from me.
you JUST can't win?
  lol

sunday crowd

the sunday crowd at JO BEACH is suuuuper lame
they have their fullbred retrievers
who fetch consistently, barkless
get in get the ball repeat
BOR RING
they don't realize that I come here every single day,
that I get in the water
and I smoke smokes
and I drink cocktails
and I publish things I write on my phone to the internet.
they're sunday people, weekenders
they work all week & then come cut loose on a hot summer's day.
it just isn't right
I pull out the blankets and sleep through storms on my beach
I get naked at night
I makeout, here.
while they sleep, I stake my flag in the sand.
but they're easily scared away by the exaggerated sounds of orgasm while two girls struggle to open a bottle of soft huckleberry wine.
poof! it's our beach once more

on the clock

finally & see everything
I'm alright with my voice enough
  just us, hear the sound around what I make
can be a beautiful music
or a beautiful temperate weather
material list,
eternity ring lessness
this is how we do this is how we
  justify
making all that money
  standing around with a beer in my hand
  standing all over the place with hands and my beers and my limbs
  if this was a poem that would write itself
I'd be in the echo room
I'd be the coolest echo in the room
but I'm a remaining here, now
I'm a present here, now
but my room is so vacant
and so gorgeous
I wish I could
sure you
what's inside with you?
I didn't me, don't me
  to find someone who wants to be
    inside
I'd ME two
I dare me to
sometimes I look at myself in the mirror
and sometimes I think you'll love me

growfup

beat up baby, wakeup on the floor
a year from today I won't be
I'll cut my hair, I'll be 30, time to be reasonable
I'll be an ex- most everything
an exsmoker, exgirlfriend, excryer
in a year I'll be in a subtropical environment
an exidahoan, exlover
excinnamon-tanner
exkid & exfloor-baby.
I'm loving this floorchild lifestyle
floor power
we move where we move, roll around
bathe in the river
get those strong arms
in a year from now I'll be benchpressing the world
they'll watch my tender brown muscles twitch & release
and there will be gratitude
in honor of my new strength.
a year ago I was caught in a jam
humid sex cave
living on the floor, out of the car
it must be a boise thing, the abundance of
floorcribs & car bassinets
I'm just barely strong enough to lift me out
but that's why some people get cars, right
rentless & mortgageless
a year from now my seas will be calm
& I'll float in that clean cast
like otters do with their kelpbed kiddos
stormless, contented
because childhood ends
& the myth of suffering subsides
& the broken will be trashed & forgotten
& I'll be grown & help
filled

married

the only thing that really makes my hearts heavy now, is the river
it is the cleanest emerald & cobalt & turquoise river
& it runs right through my town
it's there every single day
it's hot outside, and sunny every single day
so I am in it
& in it's in me every day

I was just sitting there, drinking a pacifico I borrowed from my dad's fridge
I got under, swimmingdress on, coconut oiling hair
just dog & me, and that's when I realized I couldn't be sad about a thing
save for the extinction
of me in the river, of our beaches
  JO Beach
&
  Hella Beach
and that's all
I want boise to drift into the ocean all of the time
I want the city to shrink & dissolve
I want the highdesert to crush it
I want the sage to take over again.

I don't love you anymore, place, my nostalgia has evaporated.
because I've been in you too long.
and now I will leave you and I might
come winter
have missed you enough
for you to squish my puffy heart.
I'm going to the asshole of the great muddy
there won't be my clean clear water
& it will be hot, & I will be wet
with my coconut oiled hair
and my tender aging skin
freckles > cinnamon tan
& I'm not going to escape you,
but to
  reacquaint myself to the big true love.
I don't have to call you to tell you how I feel.
I don't have to tear myself apart in bed
in blood gorges
to prove it.
because we're inevitable
this is called forever since before I started
using the word as context for everything.
till death do us,
 we unavoidable
  be doing it together.

wussy

I left the party after I flushed that goodfood down my throats
I couldn't find my keys, they were obscured by the watermelon half on the countertop
it was getting dark, they were shooting off the works
the hills probably caught fire somewhere

when I was a kid we'd go to my grandparents' house for the 4th of july
my dad and his friends would get all of the illegal fireworks from ontario
ontario: no law
and we'd sit on blankets
while they got drunk
and lit up the hillside
the trucks would come
and spray the sage and the grasses
and shake their heads at my dad & his friends
whose heads would hang in semi-shame
but we'd all been having a good time, so
it was always alright with everyone

I left the party to go find kyle & matty
I drove up 8th street all the way until the road was a parkinglot
some dj booth was playing rave jams
and my friends were calling out Molly? Molly? Where's Molly
and everyone said, Yo, you looking for Molly?
kyle threw up along the hillside, fell down
matty & I were laughing at him
and matty fell down on him & I think they were wrestling
then they went home with some girls.
I shouldn't have been driving
I reversed too hard & slammed the car into the hillside
on kyle's vomit
and I drove with an eye on the winding road
because I'd been promised a date
with condoms & beer
so I had to get there

I came home but my date never showed
and I read things I shouldn't read, and I laid down in front of kari's club
and I was crying, and yelling quietly about it
voicemails
I told my date not to do that anymore
and he said, I really like you
Do you still like me?

we had breakfast
we talked about opening up
about closing up
about things ending for us, individually
but we're just a Date
so we never have to worry about
Us
at all

I'm no wussy
I'm willing to tear it down
as long as it's straight at me
and honest
why should I be crying about some girl
letting some girl tear me down?

I'm alright. I've got a sunburn, finally
and I have someone to kiss on a beach
a good listener, a slow responder
but a responder, nonetheless.
so I'm doing fine
I'm doing a lot better
than some, out there
because I am fucking righteous
and I'm brave
and I'm beautiful
& young
& dope & proud
and that's not just my '90s american flag tank & neon bikini talking
the freeflowing justicefull flag of my stoic disposition
and my unforgiving neurosis
flying me futurforward
and foreverwards
till death do me apart

badbrain

we're having a conversation in the middle of the foothills, right now
you know that, right? we did
we fucked them all
bye bye out of mouth and I
make underbreathed promises to self about
  who is I really?
what kindof a name is Ammon
it has many favorites
I'm a collector of letters, by the way
God is a collector of prepuces, by the way

I'm sorry
  again
I'm waiting for someone to come to my house
on the porch
on the battleswing.

cplofe

xplode
I got those him and chicks
I've got that puppy pooper for a 7 Phone
I have the roundabout way of party
I'm here its a fourth of July
I've got money on bikini and got my cinnamon tan. cinnamon 10.
I forgot about your dads hot head I PA Steve knows how to roll.                    
what amount
watermelon p****
I got a s*** ton of this s***
I said ship not what a b****
too many cusses
free very very uncool very very very uncool

jaded pinkett-smith

in highschool I had an acquaintance named Tjaden
  the T was silent
she was a teen raversomething
she wore big nylon ufo pants
& glowbras
& she'd get on all that ecstasy and twirl glowsticks
her boyfriend's name was Angus, he thought she was the hottest thing in the world.
he told Kari once that it's slutty to wear both eyemakeup and lipstick at the same time
Tjaden taught him this.
I never knew that makeup had anything to do with promiscuity
but I did notice that Tjaden (we'd always pronounce the T when discussing her) would usually be wearing both
so
was she slut-shaming herself?
what a shame
I think I might be
shaming, sometimes
but I never call anyone a slut, in seriousness
it's not a real word, it's an imaginary thing
I've told this to Kari on numerous occasions
bc sometime she shames herself in this way,
  though she'd never do this to anyone else
I think I am used to it
getting used to the what-does-it-matter
who-cares vibe
of those around me
I'm learning to be expectationless
maybe
maybe this is something I learned from you?
maybe I have something from you
  to be regretless about
or am I just
so terribly used to everything
that whatever life sparkle is dulled
and stimulation
falters, falls short of me
& I'm afloat in the who-cares
& the idgafs
until I punch my body back
to the no-it-matters-terribly
oh when will I see YOU again