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

diarrhea, entrails, repeat ∞

   we look almost nothing alike
pushing gently at the soft 30
  babe in the rain
I have been a smoke cloud
I have been a sadsack
my smoke face
my smoke stacks
I've been   I've been stuck under the street, gooey
  gummy, gutterblast
a little petrified thing.
I feel a little snaky in my old-skin
but I'm flowing. I mean, this shit's a gust, we're august
  up in here
   thickoil
go down
  my drains. I draw it up, little guzzle guzzle
my body's a goodmeat, my heart
is a harness
  a wetwish
  a no-way bore
and my brains are wrinkles
and I've that good
  innards rope
     double noose, holding them, side by side

  noose me to your pocket
            the one you dropped
  we're on this high plane, now
out of the rot
     plains

I got no grief machines
  driving my bod
  its inward mechanisms, abuzz buzz buzz

Merrill means shining sea in Welsh

we learned a few french words
  we felt awfully proud
     we pooped our bits out
        we stormed the crowd with party
            we danced away
        with our cranks & cogs
      and our ropes are strong, metal
     and the slivers they make are silver shines
   like some
iridescent sea

worth it

I came back
   the same
but so filthy
I don't want to ever wash my hands again
I am a touched girl
I have a sunburn or a cinnamon tan or something
I held the hair at its roots
  oilcan hair
  make that face
given me a corduroy elbow
given me your smokes
given me a double-sided noose
your dirt hands
that good clean mouth
  make my stomach muscles pain warmly from laughing solid for two whole days
  get it
under that big moon... there is some kind of agoraphobialike condition
  where people freak at the airport
  when they see how fucking big the sky is
I freak at that moon in ocean-sky
  around the fire,
& I just stared deeper
  & finally got it
we're finally burning sadhouse down,
  watch her ghost away

plastic surgery

I'm attached to the idea
of being attached to an idea
  I finished my project
19 drawings for 19 days
  the last was done at 6am
    it's just a couple of lines
                a couple of depressed leaves & branches
   with the date stamped depressingly on it
  I think it's okay
I mean, I did it, right
   accomplishment
I ate only part of my birthday tunamelt
  Ida ate the other half
I drank two strong beers
  and had to walk around the Basque block
    to cry out some little-girl birhday-tears
I tried to tell Nickey I wasn't going to be sad
  and then I stopped myself, and she was like, ya right, I know
  but I've the close ones with me
and I'm not a tender misery
  I'm ready for the new-year
and may will end
and summer will
and I'm getting out
and no one will see my emotion-crumples
and my wax face
and I will iron my memory-wrinkles out
and flatten back to life, sewn & sinched

where are those good izod boyshorts?

I just came out
  1 in the afternoon
being
on birthday
ima birth this day
ima birth ima birth ima birth
I wasn't alone, fuck it
  I have a headache, we can't find our underwear
  but who needs it
we're virtually 30
  I said fuck it & you smiled pretty face kiss-me-mouth
  and then you said happy birthday, molly
 
nickey says it's weird to cry so much when you're getting madeout with
or when you come
  but I think it's more strange
that no one else thinks it's strange
  they just kiss tears off a face & don't ask
   maybe that's what Poets do
   they think in tears & come
   so when someone does, its not a shockershocker
   or maybe they think I'm tender
   or sexy, when is sad sexy? AM I SEXY, NOW???
  I got out of the car at 5:23 this morning
& I said fuck it
my birth
   I'm soft
touch me leaky
tell me happy birthday
tell me you disgust yourself
tell me you're a disappointment
tell me you're alone
tell me you'll never leave
 
  fuck it, I'm virtually 30  
    let's just do

jerk

so I think the universe
  is trying to get something out
I think the universe
  is becoming an excuse
this is why a bar's a bar
  bc it gives me every drunk reason
    to blame
     the universe
poor innocent little universe! how small & helpless,
  what powers have you?
I'm a jerk
a terrible friend
a bad kid
kick me to the curb.
  I'm apparently waaaay too date to care
  too date to drive
  too date to be attentionful
someone else.
someone, somewhere else
  tall
  tall
  ugly
open the window
get me a glass of water
open up the compliments
get me those compliments
  you're just so well spoken & eloquent
    I like your face
      I like your smart
         I like your have-a-heart-that-feels
  I like your body.   give it here
  will you marry me? let's just kiss-away each other
  under the waxmoon
  by the river.
I used to love to watch the trees sway from my window
I don't really do that, anymore
  let's clear the room.
  tell me what you're trying for.
  tell me how instinct this is
  tell me how incest this has become.
someone else
someone
  else, tell me more
    blame me
      I'm a guilt
  tell me I'm cold
bc I'm a stonegirl
without all of the arms to hold your bones from shivering
  get impressed & sleep silent pretty
    and shock, then
           shock at my
    jerk

airport

I'm sitting here in the cadillac
I've been ignoring the family
who keeps asking for it back
bc it's my whip, now
there's the trash, rodesoda cans
allofthe blankets off of allofthe cabin beds
a blue-painted sign written I think in my grandfather Bruce's hand that reads,
silk purse
and on its alternate side,
sow's ear
It's a special item
& also the carved wooden fist, I had to break it off the doorway
I'm glad I noticed it, else it would have been crunched
so
it's my whip, now
& I'm in jetstream aviation's parkinglot
picking up my passenger
and really, not sad at all to be at the airport picking up my passenger
I'm no sadball
I'm ballless
& ignore me, nothing abt me is an ugly one
or a gross thing
or a sucker
May be I am a full fantasizer
a picture-of-the-futurer
a let's try it
but you should check out my most excellent smile
it's the one thing I have for your face
give me sentiment, give me nostalgia
give me
a present a future
give me my good face back,
  an idgaf face
give me
bc I'm a neurosis queen taker
a narcissistic give me give me
   I glow
   I'm a glow machine
& no one blow me down now
fly here, flyaway
  whatever,
I'm taking the car
& I'm out of this twobit town

sadalone loser lol

I went to a babyshower on sunday, I walked in the backyard but the fiance had to lift the gate for me, I sat with my dad, he liked my shades, said, Very moviestar. He asked me how I was doing as he ate spinach and strawberries, salad on a stick. All of the women told him to eat everything, he was taking it down. I told him three things. I struck him within minutes of the babyshower, but I was guilty

I don't care that he knows these three things

he's my dad,

I guess he wants to know them

The punchbowl was right in front of us

I had been imagining this punchbowl all day, porcelain, with 8 tiny cups, crushed ice & berries & what my grandmother would call a nice blush to pour in

Small cups make many trips to the bowl so dad & I were interrupted and at one point instructed to Smile and look happy for a photo. What do you say but oh god and smile the only smile you know? Irony corners. Dad always has watery eyes, so might just look happy, not definitely teary. Poor dad. I'm sorry I have lain you on.

But he wasn't even invited! no men at showers. just guess how fat mom's uterus makes her with this ribbon of twine. I apparently know not the width of a pregnant woman, I lost desperately

He just stopped by to say hi & was instructed to Eat EAT EAAAATTTT

so sorry, I sat down & wear it on my face, three things

I tried to get the punch down but the berries were froze, not for teeth

I didn't have any of that cake

  but no one did save for the pregnant woman and the bride

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

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

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

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.

poem(s) for warmth

from crepuscular orations

Sunny and warm.
stopped in the red, warm trunk of a fallen douglas fir,
warmth of sun on faces,
I can feel with the warmth
the beautiful breeze & warmth of sun
and the sweet-smelling warm air.
It is warm but the breeze blows.
The warmth of his hand on my neck,
sensitively, lovingly, warmly, openly?
It's very warm, of course, even hot...
Laying with you is warm.
when he arrives he'll greet me semi-warmly
I can still close my eyes and find you warming down me.
an opportunity to embrace him when he's warm and effulgent.
I need reaction, warmth, a listening ear,
And the warm sun,
She is so warm and open when it is in her best interest;
my new canada goose coathood warm around my cashmere scarfed face...

from momentos preciosas

I am warm & my hands are dry, such as wintry hands go in warm rooms.
I retrieved my warm laundry
and I could tell I'd be warm.
His neck was warm and pungent of him.
And the tea is still warm,
my feet are pressed up against the warmth of a space heater.
it's warming a bit tomorrow
all smooth and warm and everpresently pressing.
warm, but distant.
we could agree on the state of warmth.

poem(s) for blood

from crepuscular orations

my own breath beating, the blood beating
with a bloody, old face...
Blood.
Excited pain and blood to dry in my shoes.
bloody mary
containing all of my blood,
I wonder if my blood is okay.
Blood spraying
spicy bloody marys.
We drank the bloody marys
not to mention the two bloody marys
needing a sweater for the bloody mary
but it's just a bloody hemmorhoid.

from momentos preciosas

And my blood, lungs, full with it.
bloodstain on your majesty
bloodseed of your majesty

third day of hanukkah, denver, colorado

In the land, again. The echoes of everything. I have talked about them all, to one another. Their opinions support my defense... but how will I defend? can I, will I? What happened to you?

I know for what reasons I am unwilling. I will never be the continual shoulder, I will never be the shovel with which to  undig. I will defend your honor as long as I've reason to. Will fight & win for proof of loyalty. What will you be?

The good, solid fires, the surprise on a beautiful face, the accepted touchings with meanders, the sunshine and wearing socks & scarfless, the failure of a horrific nailpolish which remains not in memory... The words for other words. I feel proud consistently for achieving such constants of love.

brilliants

It's the next day, a next door and the clang from it. Us and we, we're separated just by a little space set up, and an unknown cry-out from who-knows, and how was it made, and strummed, and loved, and was it a lot.

O, your little face of different colors. Your little eyes of colored glasses made from suns, planets. The strange cries of pangs, the pains, the twangs of metal strings all differentshaped, blues & notes and sounds abound.