a song for love in the new year

songs with women's names
the number 14
the light of the moon, near full
I avoid it!
 I don't avoid it
I avoid the urge to
my ring slipping round my finger,
  maria        laura        marlene

a train   choos

   10:53 pm, tomorrow
(this time of year, the nights fall longer)
so let your beard grow round your neck
and your torso
and past your new boots
and down my throat

make me toast

        read your fortune!
        little new-year son

I always have liked
the german pronunciation
for marlene

the soft lilt,
the forgiving!
                         (do you remember proclaiming
                           that you'd never love someone
                           that you'd never love someone explaining
                           that you'd never truly love someone
                              who's never caught exclaiming)

  oh, me!


       hello, little new-year babe
        hellow, last smoke of smokes
       hello, pretty whistle
     of pretty, nearby train
        hello, sleeping city-that-won't
                                        the oh-she-won't-quit place

                               dreamy babe,
                              I've never said this to anything
                            I've never been that guy
                              But I wanna die in You

      and, therefore
    thereby

    tinkle
         tinkle
               tinkle
                      little bell, ring
                                           ring
                                               ring in me
whistle past our bedscapes

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

bitchy

the nigttime crowd at the coffeeshop is okay, I guess
there's a cutie in there
he has a big beard and some kind of ponytail deal
a good face
an alright name
he's a 27 yr old aquarius
he laughed
I poured him an apricot cider
he used to have an oregon ID
and I'm s-ing my h, on the inside
but now he lives in idaho
and he's wearing a tiedye slugbug shirt
and a walletchain
on his plaid bro shorts

I wonder if he noticed how stupidly I'm dressed
in my comfort shoes,
and child's camouflage
probably not
he's not considering anything abt me
but that I can pour beer for him
and that I'm a nervegirl
he doesn't know I'm a nevergirl
and that his outfit's a dealbreaker
regardless of his hair
or his brain heart innards
because I'm highfashion judgething
whocareswhocares
MAKIN THAT $$$$$$

one nightstand

one object cannot flank another object
one beard is not the world's beard
a bed on the floor doesn't allow for a tall table
  but a wooden box on which
to set earlymorning unmentionables
  or to obscure little desire-machines
  don't check my motor
  can I check my pockets?
give me your square teeth
  should I say hi to you?
sure, do it
  no no, nevermind
    don't say anything.
a bandana person
  save your scent to share
    get your neckblanket on me
to guzzle
   you through a nose & open drink mouth
I am pretending to smoke a cigarette
in the alleyway, back to the sun
  bc I want to think abt being naked, if you can imagine
  and the tight holds
handles of bones
  a spotted concave chest
    a long torso
      a maybe ugly
    a darling as darling as darling
instead of wandering, breaking everything
  shattering itall
    sparkle cuts allovertheplace
who needs furniture? we ask
  new orleans is on my to do, you said
  a given name? what give you me?
I'm really glad, you said
  we met
stay sweet, I said
  stay sweet, we said, and did
    I'll bet
from our low cushions
  and nightstands

alone in a room of people

a dream in which

i had to pull you down by your beard to kiss you

i'm on my toes gasping for kissing

and your mouth is dry like sand tongue

and i scream inside, so i know i'll wake myself up

but i wake up in a small theater

and there's this avantegarde comedy play

and i'm embarassed bc i went to sleep and woke myself with screaming

it was just rude of me

i kept trying to sit on these blanketed seats that weren't mine

and in an effort to make friends, i loaded a bowl

but the others took the bowl outside to smoke without me

i dreamed there was this new interactive blog

like cutlass but with cartoon skies you could go inside of

with little animated planes lying around you

and anything could be posted

it was being updated like every 30 secs

i watched words & sentences fly past me

and of course i was overdoing it

i was doing it like once a minute,

it was becoming annoying for some of you

was it i who said sleeping is fun 

well maybe it is bc i just remembered the final part of my dream
there were bigcats on balconies
giant shining gray foxcats
so pretty
and on all of the balconies in this depressing town
now this is what i sleep for 

LML

oh no

  everything did wet, then

    and the trail from the bed like a 

slugtrail, the sailboat skirt 

empty bottles

  and... oh no now I will certainly never read a hundred years of solitude

   because it's wetter than I've ever seen it

at the garagesale an old man sat on one of the diningchairs

  he bought a lot of books and he said to us, There must be a really smart person living here

   I mean, I'm just lookin at these books thinkin,

     Man

       so I kept trying to interject I live here, she lives here, we live here, we're totally smart

     but he just kept shaking his head

   at how smart whoever lives here is

   he paid us $10

to seem as smart as whoever that is

I know who lives here

            ghosts

     there's the one ghost from the way-off

       when I fell in love 

                 I fell in love when I was 15

       in driver's education, where I learned to drive a manual transmission

       and I cried for a year

       and I called the beans in my stomach evil butterflies

       and I was a bad teen, and I got to go to therapy

       and the therapist said, I think when you fall in love with someone

       that you truly want their happiness, that you'll do whatever it takes for them

       even if you have to give them up forever

And I was like, forever's forever, yeah right

   I can't

    but of course I did, and we were free for awhile

 But he came here, to ghosthouse

     and he slept in my bed days

     and I said, I'm taking you to colorado, now

     to see how you exist

     to keep remeeting you after 11 years

     to feel what I felt keep feeling what I made you into 

     the teen bleached-blonde you

     to keep eating your past-skin

     & swallowing your hair & beard

     until I've overstayed my overeating

a ghost

  I fell into bc of his bookshelf

     I saw that thing and I cried come

        & I thought, I have to meet this person

            he will become my best friend

              we will play cribbage we'll fuck

                  and we did, and he told me that he already has enough friends, thanks anyway

a ghost. a sad triumphless one

 we stuck our claws in

   to gather strength

    to gether strength but together was lost on us. 

we ate mussels & crabs & clams & fettuccine & drank all the world's booze

  and we killed each other for summers

   floated on summers floated on wet tear beds

     ripped sweaters on doorjambs, broke doorglass, ripped door down

      and I'd sobdrive away

        thinking, is this my beautiful life

a ghost

 fuckadream

  let's be friends

   let me lay on your back

    let me grow out my little nails

     so I can scratch it sweet,

       submit you

a ghost

    we rained on

       I was a guiltmachine

          I was an apology, but stay here with me

       I was giant, round, full of it

      & months goes & you've said it

a ghost

  was a forced-upon, let's do this

    anything, get me out of anything

     but first forget me

   just as I'm a warmup

a ghost

  with hangers

   with somother smothers

    shortest days of the year

     like longest cutters

      like I'm in bed all of the time

       like where did I come from

a ghost

   threeweeksolder

    strangefaced tallbodied creature, get out of town, I'm falling

     in love with someone else's

a ghost lives in my shell

  pillowghost

   do you have some new dates, ghost

    does your ghost snore at your sideghost

      do you moan in your dark morning

       do you picture yourself there, do you picture me there

        do you dream drunkdial

         do you quit-it-ghost, voicemailghost

no one is smart here, everyone's gone. I moved inside bc wetbed is coldbed

but now there's the snorer in here, and it's a breathing vaping ghost

 a ghost

  we just got here

    let's get married

     let's drive to nevada

      let's have sad breakfast 

       become sweet in capable years

I'm out of this ghosttown, l8r

impulse $$$

it was a sad summer

their names were vermilion beard, sad mouth

it was a sad fall

their names were aubergine hair, squishface, eyelashes

it was a sad winter 

their names were eyes

it was a sad spring

their names were hipbones, limbs, flesh

a bag of lemons is a bad sign is a bad notion idea indication

"if someone takes your idea it isn't really yours"-  go to work

"if I am the only one alive I am all of the life"-  go write in your diary

do you remember when we ate mushrooms

and that kanye song, all of the lights 

showed up

and I fell into your sob shoulder

and you asked me to tell you why 

and I said, it just reminds me that everything is as bad as it seems

did you know that kim kardashian has ballooned to 220 lbs since getting pregnant?

that she has ballooned to such proportions that kanye will no longer speak to her?

I read this off a magazine at kmart two weeks ago

when Nickey & I were buying toilet paper

and she desperately wanted a pop tart

so we were looking among the magazine racks for impulse buys

we thought pop tarts would make a pretty good one of those

ohwhell

I kissed five people in the last 19 days
but only one of them came
and one of them is out of the state
and one of them is out of the country
and one of them is desperate every night
and one of them is in "an open relationship"
and one of them I do like I think
but it isn't inevitable
with one I got undressed
with one it was slowmotion
one kissed across a bar
one was sober
one was gay
one was fat
one had beautiful dark eyes
one was tall & ugly
one had the palest thinnest hair
one had the softest beard
one can't grow a beard
one could never look at me
one could barely touch me
two of them made my bed the day after
but none had breakfast with me,
because I had to go to work in the morning

eventually

yeah, I was sick & then I was filled with the life virus & then I made these promises that things were clean & upswept, but unfortunately I was cursed with a perfect memory, of faces, beard-scents, shoulder warmths, eyecolors. so I suffer, and it is tiresome, almost puts me in a coma in a blanket coma, and I try by reaching for all over directions. I want the hands of others around, and a different sort of conversation sometime. I think I will get out of here

o god, o no

things we talk about 

sex, quesadillas, nostalgia, shirts, buttons, sweat, hair, sandwiches, swimming, drinking, dogs, smoking, love, breakingup, drugz, shoulders, legs, popmusic, lust, depression, beards, loneliness, julia roberts, sleeping, comfort, salad, tuna melts, football, stars, family, shoes, feet, eyes, bazooka joes

when i am 28

mine sky is falling

...it will end, but not this second. they remain! & I thought all day, what next will I do? I'll have to start to try. It'll start to try on me. all the anxiety at where will you go & are you gone? & then the popmusic station plays the right track, and I am right on track towards home, and then I see the familiar whip and finally I let a tear fall, in thankyou, in why oh why. & the smiling faces of my familiars, my little sweets still here. How lucky to have it still. I won't be worried anxious again until tomorrow, it means. one more night of longhair, of beards, of feasts. of warm thick shoulders. no one ever reads me, & if you did I'd tell you the same, anyhow. just glad you get to be together, again. to have your thick shoulders to hold with one another, again. & how I wish I could be sandwiched between all of the world's thick shoulders and locks and beautiful, varicolored beards.

until tomorrow, & the crash of the smokyblue idaho sky on mine wet old face.

I'd die for her & she'd live for me

I did my best twenty hours ago. "Travis?" calls the lady in palepink tshirt, arms akimbo. "Yeah MOM" Travis the teen calls across. "We're leaving." Where do the tourists come from? I am afraid when people visit Boise. It makes nothing from them, to visit. Nothing for me. There is a woman sitting behind me on a booth. She is making sounds while she knits, something like a choke, a giggle, a sob. I don't understand but it gives me chills on the back, and I feel like I do. My dog puts her head in her bag; I have a bag, too. The reusable kind from winco. We are both ladies of the bag. I will stop everything now, you've said it. What I've already said in a sob, a giggle, & a choke. You are something, and I don't want you. Most of you are.

There is the one from last night. With the hairline's always been the same. You were eleven when I was born. What were you doing when you were eleven? you were wearing zippered pants, breakdancing. Smoking weed at the end of the culdesac. Taking acid. You had thin white-blond hair, you began to grow it out long. It takes you longer. I'm too there You know how to do it. Your bed smells nice. Your neck smells better than ever. My shoulders have it all over them. I defined metathesis for you. But I had to tell you again the next day. We drank ranier with ice cubes out of seahorse-adorned plastic cups. You want to ravage. I am thinking about you, about everyone else. You look like keifer sutherland, and I've always hated 24 even though I'd stay up all night to watch it. 

There is the one from nights & nights before. That one is faded away. That one knows everything, with another sweetsmelling beard. No heart on. Nothing left for it. The months have changed, haven't they? What more can we do?

There is one who hasn't ever been, and I will quit for you. But that is the only thing I can do, do for you. I am going to drive, but it won't be for you. You needn't worry. I won't ever hate anyone, unless first I love them. So instead I fade myself off & disregard. This has been weeks, week, any-number-of-them. & I'm getting number than them. 

Everything is so sad. 

not

Compliments Received In The Last 24hours:

even though it isn't it, you're still a really cool gal

you look like... whatsername... dana scully

I do take comfort in you

yeah, I knew your ass would be perfect

yeah, you knew it

yeah you knew it

yeahyou knew it

who cares, I'm goin to feed my meter & move into a new room in ONE WHOLE ENTIRE WEEK

I went home to the other old tiny home, and there was he with wildflowers he'd picked and fruit from the stand, and I was handed a glass of freshmade juice in the tiny mexican cup from chicago, and in it there were jalapenos & tomatoes & kales and my stomach just creamed confusion & he said, here I will put them in a vase for you. I try to explain this sometimes to you (of the other yous) and you couldn't care less. & how could I blame you?

old relevant

I don’t even need to kiss. But I do anyway? & I showed late to a dark lawn with a poet reading from the scrolling light of a smartfone. I was quiet, in ambience. eyecontact unwavering. And sitting next to me, introduced, and lovely because from us the conversation then readily flowed. In the grass with jars & cups of wine, like oldest friends sharing knowings all together too easy. Maybe it is easier with a boy. I haven’t met anyone like that who I’d like to just sit by and keep talking to; the girls I know in some sorts because of how easy it is for us to just be. But he it was like a lost brother of mine. Then breakfast, sleepless, and it was a depressing breakfast, in that the breakfast was depressed. Eggs in a weird isolated pile, a couple of biscuits that didn’t fit anywhere, some sad potatoes. We only go places for geriatrics. And hopefully will. It is exciting and we can’t be. We are a secret, a secret shared with bars & the heavens & some select northend streets. Our bicycle seats & our diaries. He asks me questions. No, he just listens. We can’t talk anymore about the good that feels, or the beauty of faces. I can’t think about the feeling of a hand pressed hard against a low-back, or the clench of small arms. Golden beard, Nordic eyes. But our smiles! the best, contagious. Not for those long distances and uninvolved. I got through a day of clenching my lust-carved jaws, of hiding my heartattack chest. And just the saying of the bare-minimal, just that I like it, I want to be best friends, I want to. I have blood-filled veins, after all, and a heart that shakes and pounds, and legs which want to wrap around, and a mouth that kisses with all of itself. I am not there, there, there. I am older now, smarter. I am not in love, I am in love. I am in love with every second, sometimes. Since Sunday night. I am in love with time elapsing, with an everpresent future, with the thoughts that a body feels! The movement, the passions, the lust embrace that I KNOW isn’t gone, has just been hibernating, has not been there, at all, real. It might not be he; he I like so much and feel so connected to, really, like everything is just there and so honest & obvious.

It’s 28 or never baby.

talkaway the nighttime

do I know what to makeout of you? not even trying, but desperate to. I have the familiar glasses, the quench, and maybe the too-many mentionings, but I am still in one place, and you have left already. but my place is still on the warm, late-night pavement, and my heart still beats beneath a barefoot, but yours has wilted in the slightest in the clearest, and it has begun some slither towards away. even the foods I want don't exist. is it the overabundance, the apostrophes, the apostrophe's. I don't remember you like I should, only I could see perfectly in gesticulations, in caricature. this looks french. your beard in your bathroom, in your couch, in your shower making your hair in snakes, your sad mouth, your eyes looking because they do, right. I can answer that question even if we never speak anymore, still. did we argue into the morning? did we disappear into the morning?

tell me I'm right tell me I'm wrong tell me there's nobody else in the world & who could care? longhair, louisville, mymorningjacket is playing on tuesday

how many of us are there? & you do sometimes tell. but it's cryptic, it's deathly, it's in the ground for you already. but I amn't. & I will try to never will be. I will outlast the saddest-most, the fingers-through-my-hair-most. the ones with the eyecontact, the ones with the hands twice as big hands, long & thin ones too. tendrils in humidity. fine in the talking small. & I know not how to hideaway.

poem(s) for hair

from crepuscular orations

down below us was the white-haired man,
it was obvious the white-haired government man was looking for him
he was the gray-haired man's creation.
And smooth her hair.
hairball lichen,
hair lichens
while ratting my hair pre-bun in the reflection with a gold comb
blond-streaked hair.
sun through streaked hair.
their little powerful hairs breaking off and injecting me in various places.
My haircut looks far better
after my hair dries a little,
murmuring into hair
I am ready to cut my hair short.
And he murmured into my hair,
did my hair up and
a new haircut,
cuttin' hair n' drinkin
there is a pile of hair on the naturalist book.
Showed off a new haircut
with the new power-short hairdo,
my hair fixed in back.
The overweight woman with that awesome short hair, highlighted blond
lips and curly dark hair
pretty hair flowed in the breeze of the window...
thick beautiful dark hair
handholding darkhaired tall boyfriend,
through hair
thick long hair
looking up sweetly through dark hair
he looks good naked and has great hair.
So hairy & toothless.
Long curly hair,
hairy, too!
I cried & pulled my hair in the shower
is it his curly aubergine hair?
long-haired, young.
My hair and the captivating sunlight of your glance,
a haircut for me.
His aubergine hair & scented breath & shoulders & neck...
pulling my hair & sobbing silent
this terrible longhaired hero
only in the identical hair & mustache beard zone.
my armpit hairs growing out, now,
his hair-covered body,
hair.
Let our hairs grow longer.
Hair pulled back,
like longhaired men.
Aubergine hair, if possible,
amazing hair
even hairy.
I need to wash my hairs.
the hairless undereyes...
the hairline behind sweet smelling ears...
hair excellent,
hair in his hands.
I have nothing but soft hair,
his hair in my hand,
and hair hidden.
Hair & beard in hand.
The dark hair.
my hair is a wild riot.
Every minute he'd kiss my hair.
but her hair looked amazing.
He has redbrown eyes like his hair
cut my hair off.

from momentos preciosas

The henna crept from my hair,
why not brag about hair.
My face inches from his dirty long hair.
A few people with that mangy horrible hair.
I had to let go of my purple sweater and haircomb...
he was the beautiful boy I dragged home by the hair
with her cute haircut,
The porcelain lid to a hairbox.