Too hard

Watching you from the porch, socks up to my knees

There are kitties up to your joint ends

Kitty smudge

A bigheaded creeper. 

We spend all these times

With our passwords

With a cigarette

With the neighbors in our rooms.

Shut me off

I'm too hard right now

regretless

I fell in love with a lithuanian name
he was my best friend, he shared his xanax with me from time to time
I would have anxiety attacks in those days
we would dress up
in ponchos
and feathers
and we would play pool and ride bikes and drink mountains of old style and sing karaoke everyday
and we'd have sex in soapless showers
he would sing, wouldn't it be nice? by the beach boys
but he had a longdistance love
and we both knew our time was short

on his last day in town
I discovered bloody marys
they were $1 at the bridgeport sports bar.
we stayed there for hours, playing pool, drinking thousands of bloody marys
the bartender stopped charging us for them.
there was a thunderstorm that night
and I knew I was going to cry
so I took off my shoes and climbed into a tree outside the bar.
I sat up there for awhile, screaming with the wind
& it was so loud I couldn't hear my voice.
I couldn't wind my thoughts & goodbyes.
I watched the lightning all around me.
I waited until I was finished howling
before I came down
my knees were bloody from scraping up the bark.
I went into the bar and borrowed a pair of scissors.
I cut the button I'd had dangling from a string around my neck
and I gave it to him.
he knew I was going to give it to the next person I fell in love with.
he told me that he loved me, too.
I cried all night while we laid in bed together,
he took off this grubby tiedyed shirt that I'd given him
so I could blow my nose on it.
I found it a couple of days later, smashed between the bed and the wall

I saw him again, 5 years later

his band came to town

it was my 28th birthday.
we sat in someone's convertible in the parkinglot outside the bar
and we talked about how we loved each other
and how we were
and how we were.
I wonder if I'll ever see him again

what are the chances

that at any given moment someone somewhere is having the same thought as you?
is someone thinking abt driving in a red car through the middlewest with you
or maybe someone somewhere really wants a tunamelt, too

how likely is it that someone has invented you
and someone's laying around
imagining the two of you together
even though you'll never meet
and chances are
you aren't imagining them, at all
or, you don't feel the same way

one of my old boyfriends told me that
I wasn't his type
he told me that he didn't know who she was, this dream girl
that he had never met her
or anyone like her. he just new I wasn't she

when I was 18 I wrote on the cover of my diary
  everyone loves someone who loves someone else who loves someone else who loves someone else
I thought it was pretty poignant at the time
I was listening to a lot of modest mouse
and was dying my hair blonde and wearing white cargo pants

I don't really think abt that anymore
its just degrees
& timing
  aligned for two
and how often that happens, that two times converge
& then go along for awhile
it's probably as frequent as someone
  somewhere
envisioning a red car travel-companion
in shades with the windows down, hands on your knees
who'd love nothing as much
as sharing a tunamelt, too

a million bucks

thank you for the invitation

  I woke up with flowers in my eyes

  something happened when I was asleep.

  what happens when one is asleep?

all of my millions left me

I was knocked at the knees and 

all of the change

  is in gutters around.

    where are my shoes?

     where are my cadillac dreams?

        where's my word of today?

perfect

  mercurial

I was trying to flirt yesterday

  with this miniature bikejock

     he asked if the tunamelt was poisonous

I said, Hey guys, mercury is in retrograde right now

  so it's left the giant tunas of the world

  sucked back up into the atmosphere, right?

I mean, that's what that means

  I want to empty out thermometers in you

  I want your insides to burn sizzle out

    or is that mean?

I had a million bucks yesterday

  and I blew it, on a couple of things I wrote down

  on a drawing I made.

I felt the soft edge of some bend

I felt me pulling round it.

but dream memory

  and reality sad come by

    even in my silk vermilion blouse

       and the woolen plaid & everyday's tiedye

         I am still a solid wish 

                        a wonder

                         a so very solidly disappointed

I'll break my own record

  it's a tedious thing
  
   and what's left

                   but to wonder at         disappointment

there's nothing to be done with it

there's no effective

diss
diss
diss

what I did

I smoked them all. I castrated them

When I lived with joey he told me about the time he went to a montana ranch

and he was superexcited, because on this ranch 

of course

there would be cowboys, so many

beautiful, beautiful cowboys

in denims

with lassos

& hats

& dust boots

& pockets clinging

and I totally got what he meant

But instead he was with beerbellied rednecks

with the straw in their teeth like it says

& the minimal views on the great wide sky.

The only projectors out there, have you even seen Big Sky Country?

And he had to wrangle the calves, the wriggly knees & thick lanky bones

& hold them tightly

& hold them so

and catch their bloods

& be a teen with them

but a teen with a man promise, but to be a man in this country

was nt that 

brokeback mountain promise 

at all