wussy

I left the party after I flushed that goodfood down my throats
I couldn't find my keys, they were obscured by the watermelon half on the countertop
it was getting dark, they were shooting off the works
the hills probably caught fire somewhere

when I was a kid we'd go to my grandparents' house for the 4th of july
my dad and his friends would get all of the illegal fireworks from ontario
ontario: no law
and we'd sit on blankets
while they got drunk
and lit up the hillside
the trucks would come
and spray the sage and the grasses
and shake their heads at my dad & his friends
whose heads would hang in semi-shame
but we'd all been having a good time, so
it was always alright with everyone

I left the party to go find kyle & matty
I drove up 8th street all the way until the road was a parkinglot
some dj booth was playing rave jams
and my friends were calling out Molly? Molly? Where's Molly
and everyone said, Yo, you looking for Molly?
kyle threw up along the hillside, fell down
matty & I were laughing at him
and matty fell down on him & I think they were wrestling
then they went home with some girls.
I shouldn't have been driving
I reversed too hard & slammed the car into the hillside
on kyle's vomit
and I drove with an eye on the winding road
because I'd been promised a date
with condoms & beer
so I had to get there

I came home but my date never showed
and I read things I shouldn't read, and I laid down in front of kari's club
and I was crying, and yelling quietly about it
voicemails
I told my date not to do that anymore
and he said, I really like you
Do you still like me?

we had breakfast
we talked about opening up
about closing up
about things ending for us, individually
but we're just a Date
so we never have to worry about
Us
at all

I'm no wussy
I'm willing to tear it down
as long as it's straight at me
and honest
why should I be crying about some girl
letting some girl tear me down?

I'm alright. I've got a sunburn, finally
and I have someone to kiss on a beach
a good listener, a slow responder
but a responder, nonetheless.
so I'm doing fine
I'm doing a lot better
than some, out there
because I am fucking righteous
and I'm brave
and I'm beautiful
& young
& dope & proud
and that's not just my '90s american flag tank & neon bikini talking
the freeflowing justicefull flag of my stoic disposition
and my unforgiving neurosis
flying me futurforward
and foreverwards
till death do me apart

teen stuff

I just burned your name.

I watched the deathgray spread, smoking out

the fire on your letters

tried to scald your promise.

I have said goodbye so many many times

& keep finding little reminders, or they find me, or they already know me, or I them

I can see them behind my closed eyelids

little burns on my eyeballs always.

but I burned your name

& I couldn't ever say your good name. let's someone else say it for you

because I'm a giveme, we know

and you've ataken

which makes it all a part of it all.

scrapes, now, ashes

those letters

just stuff

on the wind

forever, dead like forever.

period

period

period

closet muscle

I think of cyan in everything
I put it on all of my clothes
someone got fired today
it's sortof dullsky, I wonder if he got to the bar
to get shitfaced after being shitcanned
I have a birthday present for you
happy birthday! here is some of my smokehair
oh, you left a quarter in my bed, how tender
how tedious, I left a button beneath your pillow
  from my dusty vermilion silk shirt
  I wore cornflower blue tights
    peeled from my body
and can't wear my shirt anymore
  till I sew back the button
you should ignore me, I'm a firelight
  watch, I ignite
  gold ingots, look it up
impressss me
  get another pillow so we won't have to share
  put a shirt on it
let me sand allover your bed
  brush it off
   dog paws running against your wall
  scratch me off, cook me dinner in the waxing morninghours
   tell me to move in to your attic bedroom
     I can say whatever I want
       abt you
         bc you'll never read me
  suggest fingers to point at yrself consciousness
     tell me I don't appear to have any, make me laff
read abt how to woo a woman
by bringing a blanket out
  read about how to fuck
    or how to trade tender for passion
   or let's discuss
     that I love the talls, the uglies
       tell me that just bc I'm tan... thank you
          tell me I'm too goodlooking
for any of them
   tell me abt yr disease
     and yr panic
     and yr sad because-of-it-all
  and I'll tell you how we're ready for ever

like everyone

like everyone you cry when you are kissed
  especially in the dark, a tear falling silent from each little eye
down each little cheek
flat on your back, a body
hanging over you
  like everyone does
you think abt love
abt how to kiss without sound
escape
without tears audible
to keep your kissing audience
  in the dark
you definitely don't want a conversation here, now about that
  and you remember the chill of connectionless
  and going in a motion of
no-I-really-do-want-you
just like you think I do want you
  with the windows open & naked
like two kings
  in one kingdom
  trying to share a body
but without that kingdom-brain
without anything for striving
  it's chilly
  & you've got to chill
to flat-on-your-back relax, now
  because kissing is not for minds
  or saving-for-loves only
and loneliness doesn't it save
  you from dying, touchless?
you would cringe for weeks at being touched
  building your fortress
  around your rancid heart
    to keep it all from taking you to war
and like everyone, you try to buzz it away
  with fleets of imagined fire
    and the knowing
  that a body
and a mouth
  can be healthily penetrated
    
     but a brain,
oh
     but that still makes your moats flood out
   and the road is washed away
  so no one can get to us
at all
  anymore

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

virtue

I moved inside and logged

  that fire

write in the light of it

with wet woolens dangling

there isn't a dictionary

  no one thinks to bring one

     it rains on the internet

   but I still find out that nemesis is the word of the day

                     

              but we have a different word of today

  

manliness,

      excellence, 

           godliness,

                potency

Virility & Virtue

    an advertisement urges me to click on a link: why men fall in love

  and its subheading: remind him why he loves you

  I am not a virtue

but a virtuous woman might

  just

remind a man

    why he loves her               

          

  like I am virtually her

  like I am virtually here

         I am essentially, practically there

  like I am essential, practical.

         a word on mouths for 600 years

  being as a fact but not as a truth

the fire is virtually dying

the fire is dying with virtue

nothing in the translation 

  of an old dead tongue

       can truth it real

& our descriptive grammar

    is proven absolute again

(so I know: another log for the fire, another wine for opening, feed them)

  

    I ate potato pancakes from the pancake & christmas house

  they were virtually crawling with onions

    why isn't that so true enough

      that I commit to it always?

and so drink & glorify in the 

older-than-that 

  words

the I-came-before-you words  

from a landscape slammed

  before latin was the only real shit

  Let yourself in then, your valor

        your worth  

  let this ancient adjective upstand

  let it be goodness

  let it rein america in

  let us men be strong

  let us be members

  let righteous members abound

But where's your tuff?

  where's your I'll-show-you-molly

  where's those gods-in-your-veins

  where's your justice?

  where's that wishful name

  placed pressureful on your slumped shoulders?

can't live tuff
  hide-in-a-name jelly skeleton

a nemesis has 

  Just indignation

      Righteous anger

         & thrashes & divines wrath up allover everything

  the virtuous

& the goddess of vengeance? at a Party sometime

   taking some beerbongs

     bodyshots

  Virility's glistening biceps in his threadbare tank

Nemesis' dampened tramp stamp

  and sunkissed bejeweled stomach

    glistening in the fluorescent basement lights

the Good & Strong & Excellent & Essential

   versus

the Defender of Justice

  who can shotgun the most beers

  who can kill that keg

  who can take down the party.

Who is splayed on the patio

   at the outcome of a chicken fight

 which one asks for more

   & which begs to be left off

  

  

champion

I have a gold heart,

I have a chocolate heart

but foilless, boxless

gold in gold out

squish

the most sublime gold goo

little valves, gold hollows

close & open

letting in the steam hot sludge

the kind of gold you need sunglasses for

what does an ounce of gold go for these days

or a lid of gold

an eighth of an ounce of my heart weighs the same as a ballpointpen

gold around the size of my small fist.

remember when you were wrapped around me?

well you should have put it all in

because then we could have said we'd done it

elbow deep

flush me out

vacate me,

inhabit me

you could have built a fire inside

set about with the world's pillows

take the draft out

shake out curtains

spit shine like glass

throw the mirrors in the fire

a tree grows through the kitchen floor, through the roof

wrap around that, get scaly

ponderosa splinters in your trying arms.

downcast your eyes, 

do a tired tried falter

There is something to do with heart like that

submerge it

melt it

slice through shell

heat & drain

a poem for smells

"The lovesick, the betrayed, and the jealous all smell alike." - Colette
I will smell the ever-wilting white lilacs.
The mosses the lichens the smell of wet grass and clover,
I can smell my feet and netherregions stinking away.
I actually smell really, really dirty
And the memory of your smell is mostly what reminds me.
and to smell the neck of a beautiful man...
the smell of liquid fire draining the sink.
the sweet smell overtaking.
the smell of wood
always will smell of tortilla chips.

an hour and years

songs of yesteryear :

2008, 27 august

An hour, a little under two, in a life what to remain. awake, Tucson time. underwearclad, we’ll never sleep, we’ll touch the sky, a perfect down blanket. freezing cold here. It is warm there. My heart will burst into flames and I can make a home from it, camping. Cuddle up to a fire. not smiling still smiling. Everyone looked at me impressed, all of them pleased at my pleasedness. like a gift just suddenly deserved. mustn’t be loquacious. Be laconic. Ooh, reticent, taciturn. to hear him talk for ever for once, his sweet pretty voice and the truths about him. I could hardly know. I awoke and hearts falling out and dying. fret about its immanent end, fret about its immanent end, I have the pleasure. excited beyond compare, thrilled oblivionward, obsessed capricious. I could have become so frustrated to destroy everything, letting it go, it all. I will give of myself openly. So much of everythings. In so soon, beautiful agate eyes, profile, face against smooth neck, eternal smile, arms around, one of the only two blissful people for miles and years.

events of hours hoped or wished down

pretty little, 53 to 55


The events of hours: by tomorrow I am chiaroscuro. I am whimpering, almost, with the night now and still, once again, of light and shade I'm made. I think as usual, hiding in time, an affect of silence.

Consistently a chicago coffeeshop, it’s contrasted light and moderately I attempt to hardly be here at all. Just a beautiful shadow created by furnished apartment. Choke back in the unnoticed French light falling unevenly. Preparing tears a mind never blue from two; I produce a clear cherubic direction. That adjoining abruptly, the life of me, all throwing soft light in. Seeing, difficult & dry. I’d like to wake on the table, leaving love hard and saying, knowing, thinking, goodbye at the rest of a room.

A dance around things, an epic poem, the East in chiaroscuro. To prepare then. Somehow, take me for some marked action mythology; have you found humor to recommend me? might a fire you are looking for?

Black must do to be breathing around. Velvet forms a part of female singing. I try singing it too, for me to keep most interested. The head knows all the words, I loudly need the feel. I never hoped or wished down.