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