wildly

I said I'll give you a month. I said, it's only going to get worse before it gets better. I said I'll never be an empty husk, a broken shell. I said this is all that matters & I won't give up. I said read me. I'm pushing on you. I'm pushing so hard I'm pushing infinity. I'm trying myself out. I said, if you ask me, I'm ready. I'm grasping wildly open handedly. I cried nearly everyday in August until I left Idaho. I said, there is justice, there will be justice. I would have written something, titled it justice. but my brain was strangely clearer then. then I healed up, contained cask. I keep on finding you but you'll never find me back. I keep on but I'm still here. just swollen full like it is. I'm around and nowhere. I said it again, too

"and a liar... and pathetic..." (6/12/13)

I found you. I will find out everything about you, too. You won't know, because I am an invisible thing

I am a thing you know about

but really you don't

because you've never met me, never will remember me

Isn't it fun? I would ask you

To be an unreturnable?

to think you haven't a thought about it. I am a wish spyer

I will pay extra close

any amount of $$, silently

like I'm a wall

but I haven't any walls like you.

I guess this is where you live, then. So this is your place? god what a scum place you've made into

What are your walls made of? Where are your softspots.

How do you even say my name like that, when have you ever said my name

I've heard you say it aloud, in some past

we were living in a present then

I gave all the presents I could think of, still do

I have already taken myself back

I have been taken aback.

but I'm hanging on the walls

a crack

in your softwood, grosswood, moldwood

you are a fat disgusting wood, tall & forward & upright barely

I have to go to work

and pretend like I like to be there

everyone, no not everyone

most everyone has a problem like this, you know, with work

unless you like to do what you're being paid to do

but who does, who does figure this out?

I ate too much salad, which is funny

because salad is so little, so good-for-me

and I am pretty little, I am pretty bad-for-me, though

Was I worse for you? when I existed

Why am I the only one asking all of the questions, here?

Why am I the alone interviewer? How will I get my articles published? 

without the answers I'm needing

I don't know.

I don't like where you live,

 I don't like YOUR grub

it's a gross grub

and I don't blame them for not wanting you

I don't wonder why they won't

and that doesn't leave me with questions

so instead I will just sit here & interrogate

myself

the world

the seasons

the wind

I saw the moon again, it's back

and I can't wait to interrogate it tonight when I get off of work

I'm going downtown

to paste up a portrait of Carl Sandburg in some ugly boise alleyway

and a portrait of Mark Twain on some gross streetcorner

and a portrait of Walt Whitman on jamba juice or something, I D K

but first I have to find a paintbrush, and a roller, and I have to make some wheatpaste

and I have to care to

rather than to not care to

and during all of this I will be asking the questions, here

I will do all of the talking

at the moon, or whoever you are

and I won't be answered (maybe)

but the last time we spoke

you actually did answer me

you reminded me why I've never loved you, & why I don't love you now

because there are Actual people in the world

who are Actually there

Actually available

who Actually, Actually give a shit 

about something other

than some decrepit broke shell 

for inhabiting

that's big enough only 

for your brokenopen egg

because nothing else exists to you

save for alone

& sad

& miserable

& longing for longing for who isn't longing back at you,
backwards glance garbagehouse

6/12 3:16 pm

LML

oh no

  everything did wet, then

    and the trail from the bed like a 

slugtrail, the sailboat skirt 

empty bottles

  and... oh no now I will certainly never read a hundred years of solitude

   because it's wetter than I've ever seen it

at the garagesale an old man sat on one of the diningchairs

  he bought a lot of books and he said to us, There must be a really smart person living here

   I mean, I'm just lookin at these books thinkin,

     Man

       so I kept trying to interject I live here, she lives here, we live here, we're totally smart

     but he just kept shaking his head

   at how smart whoever lives here is

   he paid us $10

to seem as smart as whoever that is

I know who lives here

            ghosts

     there's the one ghost from the way-off

       when I fell in love 

                 I fell in love when I was 15

       in driver's education, where I learned to drive a manual transmission

       and I cried for a year

       and I called the beans in my stomach evil butterflies

       and I was a bad teen, and I got to go to therapy

       and the therapist said, I think when you fall in love with someone

       that you truly want their happiness, that you'll do whatever it takes for them

       even if you have to give them up forever

And I was like, forever's forever, yeah right

   I can't

    but of course I did, and we were free for awhile

 But he came here, to ghosthouse

     and he slept in my bed days

     and I said, I'm taking you to colorado, now

     to see how you exist

     to keep remeeting you after 11 years

     to feel what I felt keep feeling what I made you into 

     the teen bleached-blonde you

     to keep eating your past-skin

     & swallowing your hair & beard

     until I've overstayed my overeating

a ghost

  I fell into bc of his bookshelf

     I saw that thing and I cried come

        & I thought, I have to meet this person

            he will become my best friend

              we will play cribbage we'll fuck

                  and we did, and he told me that he already has enough friends, thanks anyway

a ghost. a sad triumphless one

 we stuck our claws in

   to gather strength

    to gether strength but together was lost on us. 

we ate mussels & crabs & clams & fettuccine & drank all the world's booze

  and we killed each other for summers

   floated on summers floated on wet tear beds

     ripped sweaters on doorjambs, broke doorglass, ripped door down

      and I'd sobdrive away

        thinking, is this my beautiful life

a ghost

 fuckadream

  let's be friends

   let me lay on your back

    let me grow out my little nails

     so I can scratch it sweet,

       submit you

a ghost

    we rained on

       I was a guiltmachine

          I was an apology, but stay here with me

       I was giant, round, full of it

      & months goes & you've said it

a ghost

  was a forced-upon, let's do this

    anything, get me out of anything

     but first forget me

   just as I'm a warmup

a ghost

  with hangers

   with somother smothers

    shortest days of the year

     like longest cutters

      like I'm in bed all of the time

       like where did I come from

a ghost

   threeweeksolder

    strangefaced tallbodied creature, get out of town, I'm falling

     in love with someone else's

a ghost lives in my shell

  pillowghost

   do you have some new dates, ghost

    does your ghost snore at your sideghost

      do you moan in your dark morning

       do you picture yourself there, do you picture me there

        do you dream drunkdial

         do you quit-it-ghost, voicemailghost

no one is smart here, everyone's gone. I moved inside bc wetbed is coldbed

but now there's the snorer in here, and it's a breathing vaping ghost

 a ghost

  we just got here

    let's get married

     let's drive to nevada

      let's have sad breakfast 

       become sweet in capable years

I'm out of this ghosttown, l8r

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

we listened to yo la tango, remember them?

He will bring all of the candles

he said chocolate helps, jsyk

and she bought a bag of tiny tangerines, 

and I can see myself diving right into them

like when Amanda opened that tiny clementine

and she told me to look at its puffy section

like a little slug on her leaf hand

and its shell 

its pith a neon orange baby foam

and I put it between the rows of my teeth

and I teethed
and I teethed
all night

when I was 18 I listened to yo la tango a lot

in the tall dark dormroom

and I festered

(I asked you yesterday, as if this is a question, what do I do now

and you said,

wait

wait, and brood

and I said how can you wait for nothing?)

when I was 18 listening to yo la tango

I knew what I was doing

but I used to sleep till 4, when it would get midwestern scyscraper village dark

and now I am up at 4, before it is grey spring western light out

and I am very aware of the mountains,

big fool rocks

the continental divide

the crying light where the tears flow down east or west

and some get to your rivers, and some get to mine.

Maggie Nelson said something about waking up with your weeping, don't write me anymore to tell me about it

because she knows you're so in love with your weeping

or something like that.

And maybe you truly are

but I truly am not

I am not the type anymore

when I was 18 

I would scream into the bedclothes

I would rip & sob & cling & claw at my smoke hair

and my young face

and I couldn't now scream on the patio, in the livingroom, into the couch clothes

and throw up the young foam

my young brain foam

as my throat makes a sieve for it

and its goop pushes out, around, tries through the cheesecloth

to be swallowed, into the mash bod

or to be vomited

in bubbles & sobs

See now I'm 28,

going on 29

in about 20 days, I guess

so my brain is still there, it found my head again eventually

and my heart crawled back

slunk back, eyes downturned, embarassed,

out from where my bean stomach lives in struggles

and all of the organs 

fell back asleep

in their gooey cradles