sober

I was laying in my bed trying to 

sleep and I was thinking about some things that make 

me sad. Im thinking about the time I got 

my heart broken, one knows the time. The one person who I loved and who left, twice. It was a relief to have him again this late night in Tucson over spring, over 7 years later. In the stilldrunk sunlight next morning I was barefoot and my face still reached to his chest, his button clearly still aligning with my nipple. and whoosh! I say it was a relief because I let go and remembered that we are older now, that he doesnot rock my world. But I remember it a lot. Not often But A Lot. Im thinking that I dont know who will care for Ida for the three weeks that I am away. That I dont have plans. Im thinking and I have chestburn and lonely contemporsry future. I wish I was asleep and it was later, I dont know. What I wish.

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

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

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

for you

#9

yellow flesh on me
first fragile fixer
up me, in me, broken brain


#20

where did you get me
is it in, did I
come? tell me did I do that


fragile thing. pick you up put you on me
darling thing, did I brain at you too hard
did you inject me with laugh
did you wake me with pain, at boring no did I
were you the real sad
were you extinct, even then
did I try to crawl away
did I try to fix your broke bod
don't I remember the superface of superficial
don't I tear a little at giveruppers
masks &
masks &.

regretless

I fell in love with this surrealist painter
he was my height, 100 lbs,
and I could pick him up & carry him over my shoulder.
he would laugh a lot, it didn't bother him, I guess.
he wore polyester printed largecollared shirts and a grubby fedora
and he had a shady dali mustache.
the first night he spent with me
was the night I punched my best friend in the face.
we were fighting & I demanded a cigarette so she threw it across the room
so I punched her in the face.
I'd been punching and getting punched a lot, those days
just being drunk, just for fun
but she didn't think that was very fun.
she had a pretty good black eye
and she wouldn't talk to me for a week.
the boy & I took a turn punching each other that night, and laughing
I gave him a shiner, too
but I already had one
from the boy I was already in love with, the boy who drove me to indianapolis.
the surrealist painter & I fucked a lot
we fucked on the roof of his friend's house
before playing poker with pennies.
I won that game, it's the only time I've ever played poker
so I am undefeated at poker.
before we fucked on that rooftop
I'd had to remove a tampon
which I left, as a sleazy fuckplace marker.
we climbed down a ladder into the kitchen
and I won $1.33 in pennies.
he was a drunk guy. the first alcoholic I'd ever loved
and when it got bad, when this tender genius would get wasted
he'd slur
and fall around
and I didn't like who he'd become.
his skin was yellowish.
he told me he wanted to cut back.
I learned to cook for him. I wanted him to eat something besides hot dogs,
but he didn't care what he ate.
I started riding a bike,
because I thought I could get some exercise into him
but he didn't care about that.
he didn't care about anything.
when I told him that I loved him
but we couldn't be together anymore
on account of his broken promises
and failed endeavors
he said, Okay. that he knew I deserved better.
he didn't put up a fight.
he moved away shortly after, he couldn't hold a job
but he made a beautiful painting for my birthday
which I left accidentally
in my basement.

bros

boys chugging wine out of a jar in the cabana parkinglot
boys getting nervous before going in the bar
boys being disinterested & brave
boys acting cool when they see the girls they came to see
boys getting cocktails
boys getting handed a matchbook with a phone number, an address
boys being glad the girls are stupid, too
boys texting boys first thing in the morning
boys driving to sad breakfast with other boys
boys listening to that girl's alt-country band
boys laughing
boys smoking pot in the car in front of the house
boys smoking smokes in the sun
boys hiding from their neighbors
boys laying in platonic bed together
boys eating cold fries in bed together
boys listening to all of their joey-exgirlfriend CDs in bed together
boys talking about how gay their exgirlfriends are
boys in purple, lavender, blue, chartreuse
boys suggesting that maybe the next girlfriends they have won't be sad, or broken
boys laughing because that will never happen

I'm late

before I went to the babyshower

Britta dragged me to sheepherder's breakfast, which is something I'd definitely have taken you to if you'd come

chorizo & eggs & pimiento sauce, and bottomless frozen sangria & churros

but I hadn't an appetite, I drank all of the frozen sangrias

and the sugar tangle of the churro couldn't quench anything

on the way to the babyshower I thought it would be best if I showed up pregnant & engaged

like my two cousins, respectively

and I'd take the party away from them

and that was funny to me

because I felt the cling of forever

at the notion

she says forever to the guy who said marry me

she says forever to the baby she's doing

and that is a word I have a strangle-to

but it never ever stops finding me for trying.

I guess you all fell in love with someone else,

it's what I'd have done if I were you

but I never want to be like that

   I may be a planet

a gassy little planet

but I'm solid

even in orbit

and I'm a relier 

and I'm rely able

for always I say always,

and forever is in your mouth

and you spit it at me

and it clings with suckers in me

and now I'm a danglefish

and I'm a tanglegirl

and I'm still an alwayswill

                        alwaysdoes

and I'm still a forevertry

                      foreverdo

and may be you see me banished

bashful

tender or miserly

but as they say, I am not a broken thing

             though I have my broken things

we can't be altruistic we can't be selfish

we can take care

we can take care

&

we can take true care of us.

I wish I had health like yours,

but I'm more lightning

than you are cloud

Mediterranean stairs

pretty little, 27 to 29




Mediterranean, sighs the year. Just you and I considered momentarily in the reaches. Bedroom  me, and us being together, the prospect of family. It’s broken in half. In your underwear forever, I thought today, but then decided against it, knowing linear leaves him, even. How my elongate clusters of white look like his arms draped. Interesting. Dislike me pink, broken over my hip. And later...

Yellow flowers from upstairs, of my lifestyle. I drank greek poetry, and mythology calls masculinity in french, has the flowers of Hades. Dinner I wanted him to be, and new. Nothing to do, dead, still. Staring, relieved, actresses with india & sacred to Persephone. I hope you never die triangular. My lone french poetry, rest: I do, because to think further. To my good fortune, the daffodil rolled underneath me. I’d sink further.

I was approached by assuagement; with this I’d wonder even more. The kind of delicious and english intensity you remember. Think about that tantalizing possibility, thinning distress. Back to the second, impossibility cut short. Pacification with the tiny subject. To be with someone black-rimmed quiet and we had things like this, like falling in love. For now a red appeasement and we are going to take fear for a future. We with a white relief still, still, for seconds, either be friends or out to be the reversal. Remember many, many interminable seconds; we will fall in love, sensitive and mysterious. The strangest I’ll be. Nowhere with each other, emotional but relating around, unplanted. I won’t know where to look for you and I. Hiding behind something ancient from the grass.

I ask for a general rule, rules and ancestral footsteps. You try and should, oftentimes, to make amends. A door opens and a few steps are taken, not to begone for that long. Be abode by me. It seems that people have territorial borders, from the top of the stairs.