no prob

hey pretty getreal
we have to $$ too much
I always hated air conditions
but I moved to the south, to the endless summer so
we pump her up
I don't like to sleep enclosed is a room without windows
is hard for me, for my want of fresh breaths but
the buggies
they fly invisibly in
and suck at my ankles
at the underside of a toe.
so seal up we do.
but we can't afford it anymore, controlling our climate.
so now it's a heavy 85 degrees
both in the house & out of the house
at 74 percent humidity
rains in waves
I don't mind it at all. covered by 150 yrs of balcony
but
inside my skull it's humidest
and I can't defog it
I don't bite my fingers anymore, too relaxed to chew me up.
leave that for the buggies.
I've got nothing wrong. I'm adaptable, you know.

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

  

  

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.