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

20 day grace.

period
period
period

I haven't had a period
in like 28 years
or like
20 days I think
is what I told the doctor,
but she knows what I know
that 20 days is an arbitrary number
But at the doctor's office, they want figures
not just my figure, though I was more than happy
to show her, sitting up, naked, with a thin sheet over
my abdomen & thorax, & I had to hold up my arms over
my head in a way I thought might be misinterpreted as maybe
a little too ZEN, like I was searching for some yoga pose I've never
done, because I've never done yoga. That's weird..... I lived in portland
for awhile, you'd think I would have gone & done some yoga with those
tightbodied haltertop-wearing necktattooed gage eared dreadlocked mothers
who Needed their chai lattes with ricemilk, rolling their eyes in judgement that
I didn't, that I PERSONALLY didn't have organic ricemilk for that darling drink
that they'd need to get to that motherfucking yoga class. You'd think I would have
taken to following along, to grace along, to put down the smokes, all of the beers, the
intake & inhale to trade for the outtake, the long slow meditative exhale, but instead.......
period period period period period period & I like to live the long slow meditative death life
the one with Life beginning in a capital letter & ending with all the world's periods........
& so... I Inhale. I let her go out & through me. My sorry young lungs getting all the
more tired, all the more old. 20 days is plentiful mine. It isn't quite three arbitrary
weeks. It doesn't have to include a final weekend. It can & will include at least
a dozen meals, about a million snacks, multiple brevities regarding foods
eaten, foods craved, foods desired wished-for thought about, discussed
& that, that talking about what we put inside ourselves, that, my dear,
is learning how to Chill. But I am warm, so warm inside. I have a
slick thick gorgeous coat to lick clean to lick so dry, will you lick
me clean & dry, will you comb my hairs straight & slick thick
for 20 long days? & your tongue with its short tough hair
like a bristle comb like a pig hat like your rubbery snout
like your pink skin in the sunlight, mottled in the bow
of the springtrees, like the flowers still-lifing away
on the table, wilting, petals cringing, slowly
dying, but waiting, with at least 20 long
gorgeous promise-days of life left
not wondering, not anxious
but I can change the water
and I can brush the sludge
from their yellowed
stems, in forever
patience for
that period

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