hey, romance

I love
sitting in a car and drinking
outside the new orleans food coop
84 degrees
77% humidity
windows down, listening to Active Child
I like Active Child because it might
be the super-genuine
it might also be
the sarcastic type of falsetto


I went to the bywater
with a two-babe entourage
in cloud shirt, mulberry skirt
& the other, in the dragonfly print dress my Auntie Sue gave me for christmas
I think she should wear it always


I, like the others like me,
like the bywater, what little I've seen
for it's sprawling bed-stuyness,
for
that we're foreign & safe & unsafe & belong & really don't
like, we can & do afford your neighborhood
so adopt it for our art studios
& our coops
in our glasses sliding off our humidface,
disinterested, jaded, working

I'm sitting in my subaru legacy outback
smoking black american spirits
drinking a la 31 boucanee smoked wheat ale from a sweating bottle
awaiting my sexy entourage
thinking about us
midsummer us
some energies
  are up
I'm trying to get them
I'm displaced & sidesmiling about that
I've cheers to make up
I'm a girl with a cause
I'm a fitting in I don't fit in here
I'm shopping around, taking advantage
of my natural
  luck
& my born-in guilt is all overme
all over one only subaru in town,
  we drove it here
this is a chant
this is a waving regular flag
these songs are our songs
how many times a day can I mention I've been to college? I've been to 3 colleges
where'
s my college?
it's serendipity, that I'll sing
song it through all of the
most obvious
  cloud
  & voice it all out of
my wet wet wet
upper
  lip

the real really happening

The new day, old songs. Is it easy to tell, now? Until tomorrow. If it has been at least two weeks, and untrustable they are to bring the truths to us. How truthful is enough. How much does one say to make another comfortable. How often does one say it before lying. How likely am I thoughtless of the others. How deep am I swimming in it. How much does he mean it. How real is really happening. 

Gravity, and the slides in my head through the night. I dreamt of charles last night again; it had been years since we've seen one another, and he lived in a bus or a plane where I peed on the carpet, then shrugged it off coffee spilt from the real gray cup from which I absolutely drank throughout the short night... here there was also a tiny espresso machine... and he familiar height & body of years and years and years. I kissed myself upon waking.