dear diary

where am I?
it's night the bugs are silent
but this: go about my legs
scheduling, sucking at my blood
well, turn around slowly, fat body
move about, checking
for degree of lost
for debris I've lost
I slap
bet you squash it, you
everyone else talks about how
the winter is coming for them
but no winter comes for me
I'm bare legged, short skirt-did
I'm sheeny, I'm shy
I'm processing ponds
little pools of poem in my head
my arm stay open
my legs spread
I'm a constant in this pool
I'm a constant sweat
it gets dark early
that's the only way to tell
there's a change
can see more stars than you think I can see more stars than you think.
you'd be surprised at the recognizable constellations I see
the same as they're at home, or whatever
its all open late
arms all open late groping
groping at the full night the full  night
my warm wet me
where am I?
I'm a big open wet glad sack
and I got all
that I smile
and I schedule
and schedule
and scuttle
and sad, at it all
but really not
at all

brief paragraph abt being satisfied

I wanted to take an opportunity
coconut oil, the warm day
the supermoon, tonight, tonight?
I am always mooning, then
how is it, how it does.
I am a drying leaf
but I am fresher
& I am sweettasting, I know it.
luscious gusher
saying my goodbyes, timing them
alright, now
and really
full of it all, this time

& glad to be

29

it's official

summer is here

I baptized everything

at do-it-yourself doggy detail

the proprietor is a giant man with dredlocked dogs of all sizes

he said, When you shave a dog like this, 

and we look suspiciously at the collie,

You have to go at it like you're scraping ice off a windshield

it's official

because Nickey made us a birthday salad

like she made last year, when I turned 28 

& discovered bulleitt bourbon

Everyone cries on their birthday

& I was in love again or still with someone I'd loved 5 years before

and I left the bar alone

so the bar could be alone

so I could be alone with my middle-aged present 

& my maudlin I-miss-you past

we drank the bourbon with salad sap,

rhubarb syrup

we took it to the river with us, 

and a shorn collie

and our beached chairs

and I climbed into the river, under the water

and while I was inside her for those seconds

the hard seconds, my being very much aware of how

soft & warm

my innards are

how they're encased in a thousand knives stabbing you all at once

not to beconstatly reaching for titanic quotations, but

it was a bliss

a true moment where I wasn't terrified

because I am 

soft & warm

at least inside, still.

and I surfaced, gasping, mouth gulping sun

my wet seal hair long down my back

the droplets on anxious tired flesh

trying, breaking, popping 

in the light.

When I'm 29 I will police my emotions

I will make arrests

I will cuff me

I will throw me in the back

I will read me my hurried rights

I will put my heart on a leash

in a chokechain

& demand it next to me

legless, dragging along

taught tether,

slack tether.

that water was life-affirmer

my river hair, passion-confirmer

vehement future-asserter

(The other day she asked, how do you pronounce that word, vehemence, and we said it aloud a couple of times

I don't know that I do anything with vehemence, I said, and there followed the scoff of the century.)

When I'm 29 I will write down the names of everyone I've been in love with

and the list will crush the planet

the names will fall into trenches

into little graves

with headstones in ornate decay

How many people have you been in love with

Are you in love with anyone, now?

I used to ask two questions

when I was falling in love with someone, I'd say

Are you in love?

and

Are you an alcoholic?

It used to be that I'd turn away when the answers were yes

which they often were

but mostly I'd stay. Else how would I keep it all so relevantly destructive?

There are new questions to ask

like,

Do you love

or

Can you?

How many people have you been in love with

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 9

or

1,2,34

or never say forever, and never forvember me 

nevember me forever

did i do that

I ate mushrooms last night

I wouldn't recommend it

because being alone in your hair, trying to keep your face in the sun 

or the table candles

while something so frivolous happens behind your warm eyes

like a buddha 

like a shiva

like a bunch of women on camels with eyes in the centers of their faces

and pyramids

or million-eyed aliens depantsing themselves in a fractal,

and all you're trying to do is recognize where you are inside

or maybe I wanted to "open my mind"

but then I realized my mind is wider than the sky, 

that you could lay your head athwart my hips & plunge your tongue into my barestript heart

while I read leaves of grass

and I didn't trust anything, not the lemons & bananas on the countertop, or the cigarette

or even the tea

and especially not the hippies who, and this is the only thing I wrote down, "with their fancy drugs try to distract you... reminding you of things like Egypt"

so my mind tunneled and

and then I thought I would write a poem,  

so I laid my head on my book

and I ruined the pages with watercolor tears

and when Nickey came home I told her I had written

the most beautiful poem in the world

with just my tears

and I thought that was pretty hilarious, that I'm pretty good

and I remembered that drugs can try

but I'm not a festival-goer

and I won't be feather'd

and wing'd

and glitter'd

and halo'd

and bindi'd

or distracted

that it's okay to give up sometimes, just so long as I don't have to

talkaway the nighttime

do I know what to makeout of you? not even trying, but desperate to. I have the familiar glasses, the quench, and maybe the too-many mentionings, but I am still in one place, and you have left already. but my place is still on the warm, late-night pavement, and my heart still beats beneath a barefoot, but yours has wilted in the slightest in the clearest, and it has begun some slither towards away. even the foods I want don't exist. is it the overabundance, the apostrophes, the apostrophe's. I don't remember you like I should, only I could see perfectly in gesticulations, in caricature. this looks french. your beard in your bathroom, in your couch, in your shower making your hair in snakes, your sad mouth, your eyes looking because they do, right. I can answer that question even if we never speak anymore, still. did we argue into the morning? did we disappear into the morning?

tell me I'm right tell me I'm wrong tell me there's nobody else in the world & who could care? longhair, louisville, mymorningjacket is playing on tuesday

how many of us are there? & you do sometimes tell. but it's cryptic, it's deathly, it's in the ground for you already. but I amn't. & I will try to never will be. I will outlast the saddest-most, the fingers-through-my-hair-most. the ones with the eyecontact, the ones with the hands twice as big hands, long & thin ones too. tendrils in humidity. fine in the talking small. & I know not how to hideaway.

poem(s) for warmth

from crepuscular orations

Sunny and warm.
stopped in the red, warm trunk of a fallen douglas fir,
warmth of sun on faces,
I can feel with the warmth
the beautiful breeze & warmth of sun
and the sweet-smelling warm air.
It is warm but the breeze blows.
The warmth of his hand on my neck,
sensitively, lovingly, warmly, openly?
It's very warm, of course, even hot...
Laying with you is warm.
when he arrives he'll greet me semi-warmly
I can still close my eyes and find you warming down me.
an opportunity to embrace him when he's warm and effulgent.
I need reaction, warmth, a listening ear,
And the warm sun,
She is so warm and open when it is in her best interest;
my new canada goose coathood warm around my cashmere scarfed face...

from momentos preciosas

I am warm & my hands are dry, such as wintry hands go in warm rooms.
I retrieved my warm laundry
and I could tell I'd be warm.
His neck was warm and pungent of him.
And the tea is still warm,
my feet are pressed up against the warmth of a space heater.
it's warming a bit tomorrow
all smooth and warm and everpresently pressing.
warm, but distant.
we could agree on the state of warmth.

"from the ground" in subtle listening, an ode to

keep your floor warm. keep your soft rocks ready. keep your hair down. keep the keys down. keep the wet away, keep the peach in heat. keep your fingers tap. keep your ears uncovered. keep your dreams down. keep your smile on the ground. keep that ground an old secret.