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

bags

I keep on having dreams you're talking to me about grace

and that I'm falling you

following you around from room to room

Always your head, the back of your head for sure

Always your slow stately bringing it up

  like the notion of grace stuck in you repeating

  or you secretly seek my advice on it

and you haven't anyway to work yourself around it.

I am also in a boat

in a cockpit

in a mall

in s america

and I can see your face as the back of your head slides around.

I am not a pretty girl

I am not intended

I wait for summers to come

I wait for bad news

I try to get some 

I try to wait

but I haven't any patience.

I wake up with kafka, breton, sanford, nelson, even nin

but I haven't swallowed anything, still just still just still just.

I got a sunburn, I want to pretend it's a cinnamon tan

I asked my friend if he wanted to get a manicure with me

because he always says he wants to do that with me

he paints his beautiful gold nails

like chitinous beetles

but today there's nothing I'd less like to do than that

like normally

like acetone

like $$

like filipino muzak

like a woman holding my hand, not speaking to me

like all of the problems of our national celebrities

like the stars are just like us

they bring their own to-go jars

they secretly compost in the bushes

they drink stale coffee

they drive home drunk

they wake up and write bad poems

to prove that they are bad, or that they're helpless

like I'd rather peel my skin off

peel my hair out, have a happy saturday

a good may

a pretty week-end

partysoul

throw yourself a soul party

maybe I'll get all high on drugs or something

or maybe I'll be a yuppie

with a shaved border collie at the farmer's market

in swedish clogs

just like the stars when they're just like us

or maybe I'll be an artist

I'll throw up on my nostalgia

and my sentiment will break me out

I did throw something away, you know.

It was a baggage tag for an airplane flight

it said 28 November 2006 on it

it said C A's name on it

it was from the last trip we ever took together, we went from Chicago to Montana

I remember it was 9 degrees when we left Montana

and we listened to Music for Airports by Brian Eno while we waited for the plane to come

and he took photos of me sleeping on the airport floor.

Apparently I'd been dragging that baggage ticket around with me for 6.5 yrs

I'd say that's pretty fucking impressive, Molly Stoddard

this, mostly

I was thinking, am thinking of color. I am always thinking of color, and was reminded even more of it at the reading of Bluets, and am reading it now, and it is about color, and it's about sex. An old boyfriend once told me that one of his favorite things to do with me is to talk about color. We had been on it for hours, watercolor. This winter I printed some kitsch scenes for presents, giant bats hanging above palmtreed vistas, pyramids sitting dumbly in the background. Maybe I did this was for the mixing of inks, for making a green grayer with red, and  photographed each tightening flush of color into itself. It gives me chills too. I keep ink as a pet. Sometimes it gets rancid if you don't tighten its container. It ends up the bottom of the barrel smell, not like anything in particular rotting. Mildewy, maybe. But I keep them... add a little iridescent gold, I think...

When I spoke last night at the bougie bar to the pbr salesman he asked, do you know what my favorite color is? and I said no, how could I. Black & White, he smiled. I see. Nothing in between. No uncertainty. But my favorite color is vermilion... and he asks if it's a blue. There are birds with vermilion breasts worth finding as examples. The color of 2012. 2012 is over. I overheard my friend last evening at the sunset on campus tell a woman that I have a checkout roster for my personal library. I do this so people can be held accountable for my books, for returning them. There are books signed away that I will never see again. It's  more likely I won't see them again when they go through these proper channels.

Jim the pbr salesman said there are two types, mechanics and creatives. But of course I have to argue. I need rules to dictate what I do creatively, how creative I get, all of it. I could never be a painter. Paint on a blank canvas to me is too hopeful & eternal. I am an extremist I want it all of it right now all of it, all of the time. I think, he loves me, or he hates me. I think I am beautiful or I am so terribly gross. I think I am a genius, or I am the stupidest. I have the most full heart or I've never learned a thing. Black & white have all of the colors in them a scientist says. It is sort of beautiful. But I got a yin yang calendar to color as a gift. & I've definitely been coloring everything. Vermilion, turquoise, chartreuse, gold, pale pink, magenta, ultramarine, my yin/yangs know no lacks/infinities of color. They everything me

before I went to this reading last night I dyed most of my clothes a deep bright blue like

because I am, where are you, too

And for you all. I know how you feel, the sums of you, like me. I require no addition. I refuse to upsell. I refuse the heart's upswell. It's swollen enough. It is full with lightening and smoke and the jam of some fruit going bad fast. The gel of my own enormity. The poems for all, the abrasive truth of them all, the disquieting arguments within a self, my drunken glory, in drunken revelry. Wanting a walk through the leaves, so many still covering the streets and street-scenes, marking october, punctuating my own private october happily. Wanting the walk through this litter all red and gold and old, crumpled, to see a recognizable face, and have you read me, yet? will you recognize me when you do? will we converse, is it possible... have you ever heard of it. The rustle, the slight birdsound at night, the wicked idaho shadows on garages and blue of earlynighttime sky. I am in love.

21: cryptic dust

Searching, endless, we found a dark wood, and in it, surrounded by the most exotic mosses and lichens, stood the hazy southernwood.

Determined dust lichens, softly ominous, splayed dryly. The yawning grass suppressed itself. Sometime else elated deer rose, those emblematic creatures spread diligent towards a spotted fog. Let's take an inventory: Gold dust lichens; stuffy yellows, so original lemons, soft tangerines... Spearmint, tortoise, emerald, dream malachite, every young grass slick kinetic. Curt tree coral lived dangerously, yelling gravely; yarn needles stab one blistered, dwells the lavender, rapacious.

My rock hair, my roast beef plant, the thick fur which is called black tree lichen, I wear them all like I should wear a kingcup; my swarthy rock pigeon upon my clock.

Three or four things about me are ordinary. Some, like my cryptic kidney lichens and cancer, are obvious, but I have also many tools at my disposal... tools like the sweet rocket which is intended to generate a response in a crowd, and the legendary Irish Healthblanket, also known as tree moss, in which I wrap myself gladly for some sake of pride. As this proud soul, I spurge & caper about my home on the coast, the cove in an emerald bay. The rock-olive lichens lay clustered against the wash of waves, and beneath bare feet behave as winter squash; toes sink but for a moment, a memory cushion. I'd trust a hag taper to lend the way, an austrian briar rose as my strength.

treading warm breath morning

just like a kiss the morning starts, without me. her furred feet warm against me, the darkness more night than day, is. the voice like dreamtime maker trading against my headwalls a subtle beat & throb melody. I'm falling past the night now. I don't pull on them, the hairs, and I can see nomore the big gold spider recently webbuilding above the sewing machine. funny should they choose the places used oftenest, or at least of late. just to dare us to keep working. much better than dust gathered. and let it, then, let them all build their intricate perfect villages throughout the subaru. the dog moans, is having a dream. the paw pressed on my leg still warmly twitches. she breathes, should I wake her? Is Dreaming Away, Ida. Let her dream, let the spiders watch & wait for still opportunity.