decembme

with a whimper. I put down the meusli, I put down the grapefruit I halved (done right) because it tastes bad to me, or it's from texas, or, or, the beans in my stomach making puff puff at me. I think all the herbs from all of the world come into me through the nostrils down the throat. I lost my appetite because you thought I might drive round the crescent to fetch you at 8:30 drop my hat, take you to work, did you stay up too late? oh no, did I should rescue you? I am not that me, anymore. it's december, let's get up. this is pretty real, in me. growing back your bones, we see with it in them now.

tether

anymore we can just ask straight each other
the anxious can pass, smoke
in an overcast bedroom
  chill
these being the words,
purity ring on repeat
well
may ends
well may birthdays are gone
well I have to move a mind again
  somber just doesn't justice

the flowers are so dead
  & so meaningless that I haven't bothered
  to destroy them
or to even throw them out
I just moved them from the table
onto the floor
  so I've room to elbow around

can it be managed, a life getting saved
time isn't what this was
the great length, big old distances
something so desperate
something so drown,
something so make gel bones
slither
  
   throw a brain away
   puff up a balloon heart & fly up in it
   trust only that
   your hands in the silk sand
   sands in your eyeholes, nostrils
  babybird it to me

I'm sorry my heart is an infant
it should never have arrived alive
it should have been stillborn
I should have had more to drink
  while it was parasiting, puffing
but now I've to raise it up
  nurse it
I can strap it to my back when I go camping
and I can toss it in its harness
  and pull it taught until it snaps back to my arms
 
come on, baby
    grow already

FOREST HONOR STODDARD

"The typist lived in a kind of limbo, hovering between heaven & hell." C.L, The Hour of the Star

tiny brimfilled winejar

just colors to design us in

someone's exploding

across the lake

  catastrophe bangs echo

are we in a rough neighborhood

I feel like a tough place, sometimes

on the lake in a dark wet breeze,

    Do you think we do things on purpose that are harder & worse for us?

it's raining on me, on my books

  my winejar has turned into a kalimotxo jar

it's raining around that good lighter

 and on The Hour of the Star

   and on The Blue Notebooks

Forest Honor Bali

  at the cabin we wear our

cut off cardigan sleeves

  as legwarmers

over our jeans

     they end up looking like

  festival wear

      burning the forest down

       with all the lights & smoke & vibrations

I have smoke face

mouth, ears, nostrils all smoke

smoke in my eyes

do clouds get thinner when they rain?

is it just

  I  L  L  U  Z  H  U  N  N  N  N

trying to be a poet in the rain

  trying to use a notebook in the forest?

           Climb a boulder

           Drop a laptop in a lake

  attend poets diversity college

   and get one for free

     if you graduate

you're so reasonable & I'm so maudlin

I'm a model. I moved to New York City to walk down the sidewalks in towering alexander mcqueens and nylons ripped at the knees. I'm so modeling right now, it's insane. EVEN under the thunderstorms, here in the city, right next to the piers where the concerts glow at night, and the summer-stench crawls from beneath chinatown drains, with the women whispering from staircases, the escapes from fires don't pull down, that never seem to work. The women here are talking bored about child support & doctor's bills, and I am wearing too much copper so rains like these move my skin off, they patina my bones and veins. But since I am so modelin' right now, I am all ribs and clavicles, and my jutting hip on which a trouser-waist sits hangs like a hanger, as I am. I'm a model, and I moved to New York City to stumble down the streets in the earlymorning dark, after salons in my prada pumps. I'm sooooo modeling, but then there is you & you are so able to reason. You aren't even here in New York City because you couldn't exist here, because the beach touches the asphalt and the flowers are spare and wispy, and my hair never ever tries to grow here because only the molds and bugs and beauties of the undergrowth underbenches underground can grow, and my one face melts into nothing with the splay of the city, the stupid subway stench in identical nostrils, and we all evaporate simultaneously. You can't be here, because no one is here, and you are so real, so reasonable. Those days (these, of summer here) are entire worlds, are lifetimes and the end never darkens, just turns to puce & salmons & body-odor vermilions, and the sun rises unobtrusively and casual is the steam from the jamaica bay fog. A man in a yellow convertible comes to me, hawaiaan shirted, and I begin to fall back into the walk I do.