things we do to damage ourselves

   put your head between the two speakers & lay upside down so your organs can slide back, loud as you can
   hold the knife blade in, but gently
   never quit
   never quit
   never quit
   take drugs that half the time urge you to kill yourself
   tell your friends you want to kill yourself
   let music & only music hold you
   lament the past efficiently
   get pleasure from tears
   destroy yourself for crying
   give up
   forget someone you thought you'd love forever (a celebration in this like your very last birthday maybe)
   starve
   stay up
   fall in love with your own heartbeat
   let your own heartbeat drown the world out
   isolate yourself in you, as if you're the best hiding place
   dislocate
   disavow
   distrust
   promise
   expect
   forget why you came, pretending you never intended to
   keep your heart a secret
   keep your brain in your throat
   keep your mirror as a pet
   wish
   hope
   look behind you with watery eyes
   call the best poem you've ever written a tear-stained page in a diary
   forget your own beauty
   call yourself a genius
   call yourself a retard
   kiss anyone who holds your hand
   make truth out of whatevers
   say I don't know
   tell someone that you do, and they won't
   watch yourself go
   write bad poems
   thinking they're like a bath
   thinking they're just words
   try
   stone face smiling
   ignore
   revenge

wash

I first practiced devastation when I was six, it was a devastation determined by a crushing guilt. I would run a bath and sit in the pink bathroom waiting for the tub to fill, and the roar of the rushing water would ring my ears like two speakers switching on back and forth. I thought I was going deaf, I was deaf, I thought I could hear so well that the sound was damaging me. And during these moments my heart would rise up to deafen and I would feel the anxiety building and I would become weak and fall into a rush of panic, which I interpreted as guilt. Capital Guilt. I would try to calm down, sit on the edge of the tub, and would eventually decide that I'd have to stop the water from filling the tub so much. It was all I could stand. Before I learned that I had to stop the water, that I had to sit in a tub that would barely cover my legs, I'd run out of the bathroom to find my parents to admit something to them. I'd tell them only one thing that I'd done wrong. It usually had to do with saying the word asshole or pretending to fuck one of my friends. They'd shake their heads, confused, trying to stop my sob panic, assuring me that what I'd done wasn't so bad, really. I've never understood why I had such a debilitating guilt complex, I was only ever told to treat people well & to not lie to my parents. It was because I had secrets, and that to me meant I was a liar. Keeping a secret isn't telling a lie. Keeping is holding, knowing, treasuring, being inside of a self. Telling is exposing, pushing, forcing, demanding, active & obtrusive. But keeping can also be taking, stealing, and telling can be truthful & necessary & helpful. I'd like to hold & give over & over forever, but the feeling still shakes me away sometimes. I quit admitting, though. I haven't enough faith in that.

plug

I've got a meal in me now, it feels pretty weird

it also doesn't feel like april should end today but it will

because I think it's my favorite month. 

it's the early early mornings, and the sick smell of blossoms, 

and the promise of may

which is historically my favorite times

& I guess still should be. I am waking up, now

I can feel the blood back in my legs, the bones replacing the gelatin sog

& the sinews hardening, or maybe it's just the poison leaving my system

and I was supposed to be there, a friend

but I have only been friends with myself

keeping a mirror as a pet

making promises to the past.

but I'm sitting up, now

& looking at my face again, and it isn't as bad as I thought

and my smoke hair

is coiling like silk on the end of april

and my breath is sweeter than the sick blossoms

even with dying flowers

finally

like a motto from a tea bag I used to carry around with me to

always do the most beautiful thing.

so I'll try before I die & long before the great byebye

vengeless & celebratory is me

did i do that

I ate mushrooms last night

I wouldn't recommend it

because being alone in your hair, trying to keep your face in the sun 

or the table candles

while something so frivolous happens behind your warm eyes

like a buddha 

like a shiva

like a bunch of women on camels with eyes in the centers of their faces

and pyramids

or million-eyed aliens depantsing themselves in a fractal,

and all you're trying to do is recognize where you are inside

or maybe I wanted to "open my mind"

but then I realized my mind is wider than the sky, 

that you could lay your head athwart my hips & plunge your tongue into my barestript heart

while I read leaves of grass

and I didn't trust anything, not the lemons & bananas on the countertop, or the cigarette

or even the tea

and especially not the hippies who, and this is the only thing I wrote down, "with their fancy drugs try to distract you... reminding you of things like Egypt"

so my mind tunneled and

and then I thought I would write a poem,  

so I laid my head on my book

and I ruined the pages with watercolor tears

and when Nickey came home I told her I had written

the most beautiful poem in the world

with just my tears

and I thought that was pretty hilarious, that I'm pretty good

and I remembered that drugs can try

but I'm not a festival-goer

and I won't be feather'd

and wing'd

and glitter'd

and halo'd

and bindi'd

or distracted

that it's okay to give up sometimes, just so long as I don't have to

to do

this poem's called, I bought a bag of lemons

this poem's called, I just bought four bananas

this poem's called, I bought the unripest ones

this poem's called, fuck it, I don't care

this poem's called, yeah right, I use all of the rooms in the house as a hankie

this poem's called, I'm being forcefed

this poem's called, someone hook me up to an IV

this poem's called, I just need those nutrients

this poem's called, when donuts come up, I think you're talking about me

this poem's called, I will get you or I will get you back

this poem's called, I finally swallowed my brain

this poem's called, my molars are for molling

this poem's called, ∞: break my heart

this poem's called, you can have it all

this poem's called, tears are in your eyes

this poem's called, we listened to yo la tango, remember them?

this poem's called, wait & brood

this poem's called, the worst number is 23 because of the following reasons

this poem's called, I can have it all

this poem's called, oops, I did it again
this poem's called, I'm in the break room
this poem's called, coke 0

this poem's called, I'm a variable

this poem's called, I'm running, I'm running faster than ever

lemon bag

When I was last there,
inside sad cave london room, with the rooks on the roofs
Why isn't rooves the plural, by the way?

When I was locked in that room I started drawing with a tiny paintbrush & india ink
pictures of the Olsen twins
and I'd find their photos
attached to the livejournals
of anorexic teens.
this is where I learned the term
 thinspiration
(an expression not found by the iPad)
and I looked at selfies of knobby spines
and clavicles sharp enough to cut cheese
and I read advice from pro-anas
to struggling anas-in-waiting
about how to get skinny
and someone wrote about drinking lemonade made with maple syrup
and I thought, damn that sounds good.


When I couldn't eat I knew I had to put something in me
my body was 21 years old
it was young
but it was a bag
there was nothing left in it
I was shriveling away
And I remember looking into the mirror once while I took a shower
because my housemate thought it sexy to watch oneself bathe
and I had grown so little
like a teen
like a teen with a blog
who could advise other teens
on how to let their skin tighten around their sad little bones
But I didn't like the girl I saw, that shivering little teen
because she wore her devastations like foodservice film
clinging to whatever was leftovers

So I drank that lemonade, like what else could I do? I drank it every day, all day. I drank it so much my urine was lemons, my shit was maple blood. Tapped, juiced. And my organs drifted out through the  holes left,
and I had all of the energy
of all of the suns,
and I was thinspiring the universe to bony tears

we listened to yo la tango, remember them?

He will bring all of the candles

he said chocolate helps, jsyk

and she bought a bag of tiny tangerines, 

and I can see myself diving right into them

like when Amanda opened that tiny clementine

and she told me to look at its puffy section

like a little slug on her leaf hand

and its shell 

its pith a neon orange baby foam

and I put it between the rows of my teeth

and I teethed
and I teethed
all night

when I was 18 I listened to yo la tango a lot

in the tall dark dormroom

and I festered

(I asked you yesterday, as if this is a question, what do I do now

and you said,

wait

wait, and brood

and I said how can you wait for nothing?)

when I was 18 listening to yo la tango

I knew what I was doing

but I used to sleep till 4, when it would get midwestern scyscraper village dark

and now I am up at 4, before it is grey spring western light out

and I am very aware of the mountains,

big fool rocks

the continental divide

the crying light where the tears flow down east or west

and some get to your rivers, and some get to mine.

Maggie Nelson said something about waking up with your weeping, don't write me anymore to tell me about it

because she knows you're so in love with your weeping

or something like that.

And maybe you truly are

but I truly am not

I am not the type anymore

when I was 18 

I would scream into the bedclothes

I would rip & sob & cling & claw at my smoke hair

and my young face

and I couldn't now scream on the patio, in the livingroom, into the couch clothes

and throw up the young foam

my young brain foam

as my throat makes a sieve for it

and its goop pushes out, around, tries through the cheesecloth

to be swallowed, into the mash bod

or to be vomited

in bubbles & sobs

See now I'm 28,

going on 29

in about 20 days, I guess

so my brain is still there, it found my head again eventually

and my heart crawled back

slunk back, eyes downturned, embarassed,

out from where my bean stomach lives in struggles

and all of the organs 

fell back asleep

in their gooey cradles

I blame my parents

I think the last thing I wrote was a list, not the list of vocabulary words but something else.

A list of reaches, desperate

my mom came by last night, she dropped off some lemon fettuccine with shrimp

it was delicious

& perfect because I've been craving fettuccine since three sundays ago.

my stomach rode cradled in my pelvis

my brain was in my throat

my uterus had dropped & splattered in the steps of my feet.

but I turned upside down, in that bridge move

a real yoga move

and I stretched & my organs sort of congealed back to their places forawhile.

she said, do you have any idea how much I love you?

and I couldn't possibly,

and that made me cry

and does she have any idea what I think? what I've thought?

that I have the smoke of a thousand cigarettes for hair

that I have walnuts for a hand

that my fallopiantube legs were withered, so it was difficult to walk

and I tried to spring with just my feet

but they're too small

and the shells of my fingers turned to stone, they were all numb when I woke up.

she didn't make me all alone,

but I think about how everything funny is sad

and everything sad is sort of funny

and I wonder does it make that everything

devastating, tragic

is hilarious?

and then you said, no way, what's funny about your relative getting shot to death

and we both laughed so fucking hard at that

she didn't make me all alone,

but she knew what she was doing

she had to go get a reverse tubal ligation

& dad had to get something done, too

his sperm count was low

too much yellow 5, dad?

doin the dew?

they knew what they were doing. he was 29 when they met.

they knew that there would be a baby would be a human

and it would have to live

in the future

in this world

and it's a big place

but there's nothing bigger

than being shut up in your brain

which is still throat stuck

& choking

list

chromophile

disavow

samsara

these are the words I looked up yesterday

not here

I am not sad, I am not mad,
That's something said aloud.

it's as if to say
i am not
or
i am Not
or
i Am Not
or
I Am Not

permitrr

with permission

I felt I had Permission

okay I had permission 

to fall in love

I have permission to fall in love

I am permitted to fall in love

I permit myself to fall in love

you've given me permission 

to fall in love

it has given me permission to

I got permission

I got permission to write

I got permission to write instead
you're permitted

and I'm permitted

and so are permissive

and can have it all, too, just like I said earlier

this, mostly

I was thinking, am thinking of color. I am always thinking of color, and was reminded even more of it at the reading of Bluets, and am reading it now, and it is about color, and it's about sex. An old boyfriend once told me that one of his favorite things to do with me is to talk about color. We had been on it for hours, watercolor. This winter I printed some kitsch scenes for presents, giant bats hanging above palmtreed vistas, pyramids sitting dumbly in the background. Maybe I did this was for the mixing of inks, for making a green grayer with red, and  photographed each tightening flush of color into itself. It gives me chills too. I keep ink as a pet. Sometimes it gets rancid if you don't tighten its container. It ends up the bottom of the barrel smell, not like anything in particular rotting. Mildewy, maybe. But I keep them... add a little iridescent gold, I think...

When I spoke last night at the bougie bar to the pbr salesman he asked, do you know what my favorite color is? and I said no, how could I. Black & White, he smiled. I see. Nothing in between. No uncertainty. But my favorite color is vermilion... and he asks if it's a blue. There are birds with vermilion breasts worth finding as examples. The color of 2012. 2012 is over. I overheard my friend last evening at the sunset on campus tell a woman that I have a checkout roster for my personal library. I do this so people can be held accountable for my books, for returning them. There are books signed away that I will never see again. It's  more likely I won't see them again when they go through these proper channels.

Jim the pbr salesman said there are two types, mechanics and creatives. But of course I have to argue. I need rules to dictate what I do creatively, how creative I get, all of it. I could never be a painter. Paint on a blank canvas to me is too hopeful & eternal. I am an extremist I want it all of it right now all of it, all of the time. I think, he loves me, or he hates me. I think I am beautiful or I am so terribly gross. I think I am a genius, or I am the stupidest. I have the most full heart or I've never learned a thing. Black & white have all of the colors in them a scientist says. It is sort of beautiful. But I got a yin yang calendar to color as a gift. & I've definitely been coloring everything. Vermilion, turquoise, chartreuse, gold, pale pink, magenta, ultramarine, my yin/yangs know no lacks/infinities of color. They everything me

before I went to this reading last night I dyed most of my clothes a deep bright blue like

aloneless

I woke up with a lot of you, and was most thrilled for Maggie Nelson and this copy of Bluets I had in my backpack, Kyle's, signed by the author, because what she'd read gives me the runs in my mind, and I was sitting there sweating in the corner of this strange room while she stood in the brights behind the orange & blue podium framed by the tall gold pipes of an organ. I sweated & didn't look anywhere, she faced me. But seeing her wasn't anything. She had a slight lisp which carried me through more maybe. She mentioned the root of the word etched- to be eaten. Etched in my heart. & I was thinking of all the things we've said, I've said & written over & over, and the songs, what they say,

  you own me

   you have all of me

    you can have all of me

   you have my heart

  you have a hold around my heart

                    so do you have two hearts in your chest? is that what makes you so loveable? (delicious)

After she read friends addressed me and I averted eye contact and said I don't know. Are you coming to have drinks? I don't know. They looked surprised, offended. I walked through the back of the gallery. Collages of matchbooks. Giant plastic windmills. A cyanotype of a bike, I yawned. And I calmed to chill outside in the sunset, where everyone smokes, and it's a smokefree campus but everyone's a poet or an adult so I smoke too & start hugging the women I love, and can't talk about what I'm thinking how I'd like to crawl inside of her mind & live there & have her pet me and this just from a brief forty-five minute rainy brain hug. We went to the river, same place I was with you when we missed Alice Notley & Jeff Mangum but didn't miss each other, and I sat on your flat rock, and I had a beer and watched the light on the water & thought about how I could write anything or read anything and that I wanted to be a knowledge tampon and a thought sponge and I wanted to vomit up beauty & honesty. & I did become very honest. Don't touch me, I can't be touched right now, okay please touch me I am ready for you. It got dark & we rode to the same bougie bar where I'd have the same sazerac at a different table, & you wouldn't be there, but the weather would be nearly same as when you were. Someone offered to buy you a drink but didn't. Someone asked what I was drinking, Jim with a Greek surname, & when I asked him for his surname he looked at me like I was too classy a broad no maybe he looked at me like I was old fashioned (which is at this time, what I was drinking) or British or old or young or beautiful or wasted. I didn't get a free drink, because he only wanted to buy me a pbr

                    
                 he asked me what I did in school & I laughed, and he said, why does that make you laugh and then I felt like crying.

Outside on the cement fence in front of the hotel. He said Maggie Nelson, if she'd wanted to, could have turned everyone in the room to weeping. Can you imagine having that power? he cried. I told him if he ever got the power to make us weep everyday to let me know & I'd move in & stay by his side forever.

He told me he schemes for love. And I said you fall in love for six-six-hours-at-a-time. That you told me once no one can ever break your heart. He doesn't remember saying that... two people have crossed his threshold. Physical pain at their nearness. And I said, I know you love me, I know I'm important to you, but why is it that I'm always checking up after you & you rarely ask after me? & that you're so easily distracted? He said that he & you, most of you, are better at communicating through the written word... which is an of course, so why even ask

                      

       It was a full moon & I was honest. I would have told you anything, if there was anything you'd want to know, and some did, and some didn't. I like what is conversational, the meaningful ease of listening to a lisped voice in a muted microphone, she being available through her writing & words & explanations & interrupting herself and the moment her voice failed at her last sentence. I still like what I do & how I do it, the true it, and I do take a compliment that I am such a fucking beautiful person because to me it means my heart still pumps gorgeous in my chest, that I am a whole. But I must also forget the lovesong cliches & the notion of being inside of someone else, or losing my organs to another, of being eaten. I have doors & they're open so many of them in my house that the crossbreeze sometimes makes my hair stand on end.

from black diary,

14 March 2013

drive Oakland - Boise

your actual concerns:

                   What to do

                   Where to go

                   How to be soberish & effective

                   How to seamlessly be rid of my belongings

        & to forget the notions of the Desperate Love

            to be only desperate to begin your life for self

        & to actually fall in love with yourself, Molly Merrill Stoddard

"In their perpetual uncertainty - she of being loved, he of being desired; she of being appreciated, he of being wanted - they drifted bitterly apart." - Baudrillard 

so many questions I know how to ask anymore

I am talking to myself today? 

what day is it

how many days is it

is it 77 degrees outside

why did I ruin this skirt for me

will it make an appropriate mini for you?

why can't I cut straight

why is there glue everywhere

why is the paper everywhere

why am I not a perfectionist

why do I say I am a perfectionist

why do I want to throw away everything 

why do I want to throw away everything when it's perfect

when did you say, "men are perfectly     Okay"

when is it

when is the last time 

when was the last time?

do you remember the other thing you said to me?

why do I want to tell you so badly what you said

why don't you remember so I don't have to tell you

why do I want to tell you

when can I tell you?

can I tell you something?

who made that decision

who is spontaneous

who is uncertain

when do we take turns, why do we take turns

why is it so easy, now

will you write back to me

will you tell me soon?

why don't you ask me questions

where will I put all of these things

what do you think of craters of the moon nat'l park

what do you think of idaho

why would you go to idaho

why am I in idaho

what's my excuse

will you cry tonight? you said we would all cry tonight if we're honest, will we all be honest?

why is my brain such a pretty brain

why is my brain such a pretty brain, is it

what do you think

what can I show you

when can I show you

what if

when was the first time

when will be the first time

will it be the first time

the runs

When I was 24 I moved to Portland and lived with Jessie (& it's her birthday on tuesday) and Adán and Jon and that weird blacksmither who was into fractals and TOOL & made business cards out of razor blades. Some of us drove to Battleground, WA where we met four ducks & we packed them in wire duck cages on newspaper. It cost us $40 for the four of them. They shat all over the newspaper on the way home. We'd built them a pond with a heavy expensive tarp beneath that we covered with rocks and took days to fill with water. They each laid an egg every day. The young ones would lay in weird places, underfoot sometimes or hard to find in the blackberries, and the older one would push them into piles with her beak & try to hide them from us. I started waking up everyday to the quacking of Candace who was the bossy one, big & mottled with shiny violet feathers & she'd quack & nip at all the others and take all of the food. She was the one who liked to push & hide all of the eggs so we couldn't take them, but we were hungry. I found her one day sitting on a nest she'd made beneath some scrubby bush with 18 eggs neatly snugging beneath her splayed duckbody. I left her 8 of them so she wouldn't feel like it was all for naught. We ate duck eggs every day. They had such a strong foul beautiful deeprich flavor. They had the biggest yolks, goldorange yolks that greased all down your throat & oiled up your palate. I nearly choked every time. I used to like running yolks, but those were those of the meager chickens so I never know what a real yolk could be. They kind of ruined me because I like really strong intense food but the duck yolk is far stronger & tougher & more rich & foul than I'll ever be.

it's a great big world

someone today told me she had a feta fetish

and I was like, girl, me toooo

I didn't forget to mention that I've been watching this hit show, & finally today it ended

just the season

but it was supposed to be an "explosive finale"

and I was so unimpressed

relief when it was over, like I could have my life back again!

but! 

not so fast

I started watching something else

and I was laying in my bed, thinking of all of the clingwrap

laying around the room

because I get these gourmet sandwiches

that are as good as they sound

and the collie finds the wrapping

and rips it to shreds. But I wanted one of those sandwiches

to be inside some of those shreds

and I went furiously on the fridge

and found all of the world's vegetables

and 

and all of the world's oils

and vinegars, what did you just say?

and nut butters 

and nuts themselves

and no hardboiled eggs 

so I sort of cried out

hard

boiled, I cried sort of out

because wouldn't that have been what I most want in this world

to eat right now

my salad, so trashy, so desperate

20 day grace.

period
period
period

I haven't had a period
in like 28 years
or like
20 days I think
is what I told the doctor,
but she knows what I know
that 20 days is an arbitrary number
But at the doctor's office, they want figures
not just my figure, though I was more than happy
to show her, sitting up, naked, with a thin sheet over
my abdomen & thorax, & I had to hold up my arms over
my head in a way I thought might be misinterpreted as maybe
a little too ZEN, like I was searching for some yoga pose I've never
done, because I've never done yoga. That's weird..... I lived in portland
for awhile, you'd think I would have gone & done some yoga with those
tightbodied haltertop-wearing necktattooed gage eared dreadlocked mothers
who Needed their chai lattes with ricemilk, rolling their eyes in judgement that
I didn't, that I PERSONALLY didn't have organic ricemilk for that darling drink
that they'd need to get to that motherfucking yoga class. You'd think I would have
taken to following along, to grace along, to put down the smokes, all of the beers, the
intake & inhale to trade for the outtake, the long slow meditative exhale, but instead.......
period period period period period period & I like to live the long slow meditative death life
the one with Life beginning in a capital letter & ending with all the world's periods........
& so... I Inhale. I let her go out & through me. My sorry young lungs getting all the
more tired, all the more old. 20 days is plentiful mine. It isn't quite three arbitrary
weeks. It doesn't have to include a final weekend. It can & will include at least
a dozen meals, about a million snacks, multiple brevities regarding foods
eaten, foods craved, foods desired wished-for thought about, discussed
& that, that talking about what we put inside ourselves, that, my dear,
is learning how to Chill. But I am warm, so warm inside. I have a
slick thick gorgeous coat to lick clean to lick so dry, will you lick
me clean & dry, will you comb my hairs straight & slick thick
for 20 long days? & your tongue with its short tough hair
like a bristle comb like a pig hat like your rubbery snout
like your pink skin in the sunlight, mottled in the bow
of the springtrees, like the flowers still-lifing away
on the table, wilting, petals cringing, slowly
dying, but waiting, with at least 20 long
gorgeous promise-days of life left
not wondering, not anxious
but I can change the water
and I can brush the sludge
from their yellowed
stems, in forever
patience for
that period

what I'm doing

smoking them all. He smoked me

we wrote this poem together, it crept down to the corner of the table

& my script, my script I couldn't see with one eye

but it's legible

So I have this porch, this balcony

the Smoker's Balcony

My Balcony

Sparkle Porch

and I have bsu sweatpants

and a navy wool coat

and the baby blanket 

and brown leather moccasins

(beaded, of course)

and this forever collie

and a cocktail

(in a cool GLASS)

& I'm saying goodbye

to a thing that isn't a secret thing

but the goodbye has to be secret. If I go on giving it up, what will I have to tell them I've proved?

       (and by them) I really mean me & all of the mes in me

goodnight see you tomorrow

what I did

I smoked them all. I castrated them

When I lived with joey he told me about the time he went to a montana ranch

and he was superexcited, because on this ranch 

of course

there would be cowboys, so many

beautiful, beautiful cowboys

in denims

with lassos

& hats

& dust boots

& pockets clinging

and I totally got what he meant

But instead he was with beerbellied rednecks

with the straw in their teeth like it says

& the minimal views on the great wide sky.

The only projectors out there, have you even seen Big Sky Country?

And he had to wrangle the calves, the wriggly knees & thick lanky bones

& hold them tightly

& hold them so

and catch their bloods

& be a teen with them

but a teen with a man promise, but to be a man in this country

was nt that 

brokeback mountain promise 

at all

what to do

I want to write a $10 poem

I want to smoke all of the cigarettes

I want to sit on this blanket

I got this blanket when I was born

and on it you can sometimes make out the names of old strange women

strange women I don't know,

who made patches for it,

and one embroidered balllooons

and one did bears

and one did a bible verse

and one, one did a map of idaho

and all that's left of that is a dot in navyblue thread where boise is

and a couple of scraggling rivers.

So I think that's sort of beautiful.

but I want to write a $10 poem, for nickey

because she said every time you spend five dollars, you should have to make a poem

and then she said, I don't even write poems

so I can't do this with you

start this project, where everytime we spend five dollars we have to write a poem, and we have to

she said, what about when we pay rent? and this is after I said, no

no

every time we spend ten dollars

we'll write a poem

so she said, everytime we pay rent we'll have to write twenty poems

*     *     *     *

so we thought about it for a few seconds

till she said, I don't write poetry.

(but she said it with a flurry of ellipses) 

Well neither do I but I can write

a $10 poem

I think

is what I said

based on the hit song AMAZING GRACE

kids keep naming their kids Gracie, or Gracey, or Gracee, and I wonder, so are these kids naming their kids Grace & making it easier on them 

to deal with such a supreme sort of name

by childishing it & making it easier on the come-out?

Because the ee-affixes 

are sweeter sounding on the tongue.

Because I'm thinking, in my mind (it's where I think)

as this kid's giving birth in the hospital

or in her bathtub

is she moaning out about how graceful it all is

how this parasite's been inside living off of her for most of the gregorian year

a creature pushing out uncontrollably

about ready to kill her, & finally

that it's filled with blood & skin & miniorgans

and all so grace-filled?

with its little closed-eye expression

& toothless scream-out,

that she, that it be the grace of god?

Gross.

There was a girl in jr high with me named Grace

(& we called her Gross, pretty mean)

and she had posters of nsync on every inch of her room

so you had no idea where the walls were.

I never was inside her room

or in her house

but we were neighbors so when she had her lights on at night

I couldn't believe it.

I mean, nsync is good

but really?

Maybe Gracie in her little stupid babybrain

knows totally that she's just got to get out of there

she's gestated

she's turning

she's got limbs, & little healthful graceful organs

& a little angelic face, so they say when she comes out & they rub her down in soft towels

& stick the baster in her nose

& blow out her kid mom's fluids

so she can stop breathing what she has been

& come out & do it like a human being.

Maybe Gracie in her little, insignificant mind

with her eyes already open,

& seeing better than I can 

or you can

looking about, speechless, graceless,

is thinking 

hey

I got out of there

& it was a prison

& I am a free man

& I will tattoo the world with my fullness

& I am eager to devour it

with the windows open

with the blinds shattered,

that Curtain City is closed until death

which is way, way too graceful & far away

i swear a mourning dove lives beneath the awning

today I'm like the actor in monochrome when the movie is like heavy

like saturated reds & greens, that kind of movie

way newer than technicolor, but still the thick dense 8mm sort

that thickworld

& I'm the one with the umbrella, but it isn't raining

so the other actors walk around me down the streets,

avoiding me because

umbrellas always have those sharp stabbers when the rubber things fall off

which I think always they do,

and it's even worse, doing this, because

I've always hated umbrellas.

I've always thought

so I will be wet

so my hair will be fuzzy

so my eyes will tear up

so my coat darkens.

but the rain on a face,

nice, nice

nice

nice

& the other actors mill about avoiding

but they're uncertain, mostly, why don't I see the sun &

the saturated red & green?

but I mean, they're just actors so probably they aren't thinking that at all.

it's really hard to tell, I mean

impossible to tell

what the others

could possibly be thinking

it's okay because I won't stop thinking of what others could possibly be thinking

and what they would think if I told them what I was thinking

or even would they think anything at all.

I had this box of coffee which mostly just spilled onto the floor of my car.

I had a beer in a jar.

I went to the thrift store, and there was an ad on the radio about how boise interior design & co or something supports the christian radio station

what was it

not the teachings

not the services

oh, oh

the duty

yeah, the duty. doing a duty deed

& so in the spirit of it all I bought a child's forest camo tee

like the kind with the leaves

& the branches

& I paid a man drinking a sprite

and he sort of stood there for a second, I think deciding what to do with this sprite in his hand

so he settled on setting it down. He had a superlow voice

& this steady uncertain movement

of a recent believer, or a recent exsmoker, or a recently having been given-birth-to, again

and he said: with fondness, & a struggling sentimental: I'll bet this is for your little boy, isn't it

and I almost lied

no

I said I don't have any children

& he looked me over

and he said, oh, I see, you're small

did he say small bodied?

I left because the beer in the jar was getting warm

& I had looked in the mirror

& my clothes were so drab

so like end of summer, hating on early fall because it will become winter so can't look at the

pretty present

but instead at the sad torturous months ahead, sad futures

it's that sort of outfit

but I'm not that sort of girl

I don't hang in the treacherous promise future

I hang with the heart in my chest kind of present

my brain

my bod

my chipped teeth

they are good for tearing flesh

they are good

for caring

caring flesh

& this morning

& right now

I hear the low moan of a mourning dove, and it sounds so close I think it just must be tucked under that stupid stripe-ed awning

which is pretty nice

it's pretty nice

∞

break my heart
break my heart
break my heart

what's the difference

between you and a chair

I would say I'm average tall

not short tall or tall short but sometimes someone 

just needs a chair

to stand on

I can't stand on shoulders, but yesterday I got a leg up

she made a basket step with hands so I could look over the cement wall

my friend bought a new house, and maybe it's my new house so we went to creep around the outsides of it, and it has these thick levolor blinds. a fireplace, carpet city

I like to live in curtain city

sometimes, 

but it's like the I have a choice kind of sometimes
& in a carpet city, we're choiceless

so one has to buy an expensive vacuum, which reminds me of

one of the differences 

between you 

& a chair

a chair can't buy an expensive vacuum

and you just won't

I can & have stood on shoulders, but 

I don't really need to

I live with a tall tall woman 

who can reach everything in the house.

& she puts things way up high sometimes

because that's where she sees

and I, I'm thinking

I'm thinking from way down here

I'm thinking how I don't have an arm like that

or a legs

like those

& I don't have a way to get up

or stay up.

so I ask for help sometimes

sometimes

if it's not inconveniencing anyone, I'll ask for a hand out

or an arm's reach

or a leg up

& then if I have to wait 20 days for

a handout or an armsreach or a leggup

I am begrudged

& I pull out a chair & climb on up

Some differences

both have legs, you have only two

both can have arms, but you have to

you have hair

a sad mouth

cornereyes

words

sweat

a chair has wood

a chair has upholstery

a chair doesn't spell it out

a chair is silent 

a chair don't talk back

a chair gets what it deserves.

I'm actually going to try to sell all of these chairs, how many chairs are there in this house? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 inside

& more outside, but I like it out there, I think you & the chairs both like it out there so we'll just stay in wait for the next 20 days. It's sort of hard to give them up but I think it's right, the deck is wet, the trees die & get wet & get up again, and I wonder how hard it would be to use you as one or a tree as one, and then I know immediately that it would be the easiest thing in the world

oozehair

Tonight I went to a dinner party for a best old friend

and he made chicken in the oven and with tiny tomatoes and tiny asparaguys

and I sat across the table from an old still someone from teen years,

but with his two parents flanking us,

and I practiced with knife & fork to shred the thigh

this little juice thigh, and I also thought I don't know how to cut meat from the bone

because I was so meatless for so long

& I like chicken only twice, now

so nothing I think like would be perfect bacon

I listen to this song by adele a lot

where she walks through paris

on the rain bridges

with the jawbone & the cheekbone & the buttchin

looking sad like crying sad

like sad crying sad

sometimes it lasts in love but sometimes it hurts instead

The dinner conversation, how to kill a chicken how a grizzly kills a fish don't you gut a fish before you eat it, don't you pluck a chicken once it's dead?

I thought your parents were great. I liked the creamcheese frosting

My eyelashes rainwiping the insides of my glasses

if you call me I will answer,

if you call me I am calling you back

and I am talking to you for a million years

I came to my room & opened the door

and I found a smell to trap

sorry if you think that's gross, but the odor is in my top five.

I was afraid of the bedroom, waited till 9

I was afraid of the bed

I was afraid of the bedside wine box

I was afraid of the pillow, the pillow we stole and wanted & somehow sometimes shared

I was scared of one side of the bed

I am afraid to go into it

but I came and in the dark breathed it all in, pillowed

& filled with scents of another other than me

and you & me
and I am afraid more that should it not become an artifact
a museum room
in all its dust
and fur
and hair
and debris, and all of the soak in it
I'm taking pictures with the fingers on my face
& the fingers in my nose
in snaps and little licks

I washed my hair today, but it is not a better person for it

it is better though