air, water, deviled eggs

besito

the hard-boiled barman
with frozen arched eyebrows
such a timeless service character
probably does a lot of coke
muddled jalapeno drinks
too watery and full of ice

we note his vibe
the comfort we've made here
our conversations a bubble
a sphere and a circle
we go round in together

I'm sorry we have to 
hang out at places like this
I'm sorry I have no money
and we can't live somewhere cool

you show me a crack
I'm thankful for it
I see from your side for a minute
not mine mixed with ours











black car

in the morning driving home
from my Saturday dog outing
it's mid winter but the sun beats
on my black car warming me
that battered feeling like after the beach
parched and wiped out and satisfied










Phoenixville

I'm rolling somewhere
down the road to this bizarre PA town
with two bridges and a cowboy strip
this alternate reality 1950s town
showing up at night
it may as well be floating in outerspace
it's so dark all around it

clouds & the country

not cloud 9 in time
for the cloud themed
party

wear the sun and moon kimono
for the first time
no clouds there but
suggestions
perhaps

star hoops
close but no
more hair

easier
perhaps
I look thicker?

I thought it was a beautiful day
but it was fake summer

tired in my bones for
no good reason other
than waking up again
and again and again



-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --






I had a very moving dream. It lacked the embarrassment that most dreams have at least an ounce of. The embarrassment in understanding the dreamed scenario as an appendage, or a fragment from our impervious depths. Subtle embarrassment plus vague familiarity. This dream, instead, was richer than liver in its newness, in its maturity. In its departure with my senses, there was a freshness that I had yet to feel. The content was indeed "familiar", but, like a beautiful film made by someone else, from an other year, or, an other country, the viewing was a luscious package. Divined? Created elsewhere, and delivered.

   walking on the farm that

   my dead friend used to go to 

   in the summer

   with his family

   I'm wearing a small sundress

   and the sun is heavy on me

   at full volume

   its brilliant green

   circles around 

   my walk

   the chickens look fake

   I question them

   a little charcoal smudge for eyebrows

   on a plaster form

   I'm walking with my dead friend's brother

   I want to say

   tension is high

   side by side I want to

   be there for him

   we walk in the sun

   earlier

   Jake was sitting on the stairs

   playing out a memory live

   showing us everything

   there was to remember 

   about him

   like his crooked mouth and

   troubling silence 

NYC

Yes we’ve met before

Can the vibes be good

Can everyone stop calculating 

And try making each other comfortable

Bring your egos back down to human scale

Do I have to throw your phones out a window

NYC

Looking down on a miniature world 

from the elevated J train

All the busses below are pulled over at haphazard angles

Pink yellow and blue lights casting

isolated spheres over miniature characters’ miniature dramas 

I feel faint with the swaying and heat 

and layers of sweaters

wheezy and breathless

The windows of apartment buildings pressing in

I see the busses all fall over on their sides

Too top heavy

NYC

Wind smelling like soil

I think of my childhood backyard 

Where is it?

So much of the world is under construction 

Dream # + After

I think I dream of true community
always so many people in one place
with no walls

this time the freeways were littered with people
and the blankets that they may have had in their cars
everyone had the norovirus-bird-flu

it looked like camping but
everyone was just laying,
throwing up and dying
I guess

I wondered how they got sick in their cars
but I never saw those walls

when I couldn't drive any further
I left my car at the edge of the people
nearly sick myself, I had to ditch
my new Nike zip ups on someone's
vomit towel, and I missed them
even before the lightweight neoprene
had fully left my feet
I walked off my exit, shoeless






25 cents to pay for myself to reappear
just to see me flat and frizzy
without even a face






what doesn't get old






starring in a dream is just
front manning the emotional riff-raff
and dealing with the various shapes






sometimes when the sun comes up
it's so brand new
it feels like Monday or spring

But You Already Know Right?

1 Thing
         the all one thing of it
watering my plants is the same thing
     as taking a shower
grooming my self is the same
     as vacuuming the carpet
shaving my legs now
     making the bed





Safe Ladies' Chamber
  the way the cars arcing toward me
     on the winding section of road by the river
meld with the beat of the song
because we said this so many times
 I cross the white filagree bridge that shakes
      over the frozen Schuylkill
this was Grace Kelly's kingdom
before she became the Princess of Monaco
     and my therapist Kelly
is a princess too

jakesdevs11

it’s the first rain of the season

when I find out that

my first boyfriend has died

I was standing over my sewing table

with a dark pit spreading in me

seeking its link to reality

and the click is obvious

my car broke down on the way here

that’s the darkness

I even see the lights go down on the

image of that moment

and although it started back up

it was too late, the pit had hatched

plus it was about to rain

I was standing over my sewing table

figuring out how to attach a cloth head

to a cloth body

Alice texted me, I wanted you to know

about Jake Goldberg

no one ever wants you to know

something good

about someone you haven’t spoken to in years

at least not in the middle of the day

we spent afternoons after school

at Jake’s house on Elston road,

eventually these names

Elston and Jake, morphed into one notion

of where I could find him

or at least imagine him being

we got cell phones at the same time

and texted all night

with just a mile and a half of quiet town between us

the first time we kissed was my first kiss

the creepy games of our age

had begun and

we were in a boiler room

it was freezing

everyone in makeup

shrieking

“we were all nightmares”

Ethan says

the demons

the dark AIMS

I would print them out

jakesdevs11

signed off

a basement boy in

basketball shorts

playing the same games

now the rain is hard and
I’m looking for a candle to light

just a little something,

Mary says

it’s times like these

it’d be nice to think
he’s remembering that kiss in heaven

I believe in the mystery and melancholy of a hand

The weekend is like stepping into a glass ball
I decide I will be in the glass ball
The snow globe 
And the work days will not touch me
A melange of open ended questions 
The surface tension of water 
waiting to be broken 
I step through Friday 
It melts on me like gold
Proenneke alone in the wilderness 
Chipping impossibly perfect notches in a log
With a small axe and carving tools
Rolling the logs into their notches
To make a cabin
Having a “tin bending day”
The weekend is my Tin Bending Day
The Wissahickon River dressed in snow
the lady horse standing unphased 
with a black and pink plaid poncho
Tall and narrow colonial houses 
Like milk cartons made from stone

Another Walking Poem Buckle Up

maybe being a writer is just being or

or deciding 

to be like a snake

being a shedder I’m thinking something slimy

a layer that needs to come off some layer

that absorbs

and they all just slither into situations that they think

will make for an interesting shed?

all I’ve got right now is the weather

the exhilaration of California in January

it’s like cheating, honestly, like hokey

the waiting rain here, the polar vortex there

it’s really something

and it’s bigger every time, the sidewalks, the sky,

everything grows when I go and I always forget

how far you can see

the light sheet of clouds

the room temp breeze

my most comfortable clothes

plus Tyler’s earth shirt

-

is today a sensitive day?

I feel every pore has grown an inch

someone’s birthday balloon out the window

banging weightlessly

small grandma in Burberry pants

I smile at her for real, nearly followed by

a dance move

package delivery boy

singing Rihanna

I sing quietly too

both our songs

--

if only I didn’t resent my notepad so much

aka my phone, can I practice gratitude 

towards my phone?

man walking his two teeny dogs like

he’s carrying two heavy buckets

his elbows high

maybe church got to me last time

I’m seeing…god…everywhere

in my earth shirt

I could flop on the clear mountain

and blend right in

---

does aging feel like a song slowed down?

I try to track it

in the smallest possible increments, aging,

checking my song does it feel

slower or lower as I crest the

familiar hill

----

I love feeling like a boy on a clear day

baggy clothes flapping pleasantly

against invisible form

is it the synesthesia that flares up

with the pore expansion, the being

in step with the scene

feeding myself the sound amount

the light that matches my…

and I’m afraid to say soul

because then what else

the music in my ears is just melted

no expectations moving forward

just trust in the next beat,

trust in this walk for every car

is a piece of my mind and therefore

harmless

-----

one day I’ll look back on this gush and feel

sickened by the delusion of synthesis

I gotta slither into something other than

weather-walking, gotta shed off some crazier shit

than this pretty album ending, the street lights

blooming with the hymns

dead bird or…flower?

the dog-sized wild cat that crossed my path

makes me think life is crazy and that there’s

good luck

don't wanna take my eyes off the mountain but

I need to write it

down

flower

but dead squirrel later

Bedding

Wide dragging bell bottoms made out of languid black water and very big wet eyes

The excitement I feel when I think about  

the sky blue jersey bedsheets I just ordered

the maturity of my 2018 duvet cover choice

will get me through the week 

I even got the matching pillow shams

Pillow Shams

presenting a fundraiser where the incentives 

were parts 1-12 of a butterfly 

An ancient red stone house

With perfect ventilation 

15 degrees and frags x 3

1
I can't remember when people started
shutting their shades on airplanes
since when are they dark places?
The flight attendant even made
an announcement suggesting
we shut them

we have collectively agreed to
prioritize screens over the sky
and everything else

the sunlight makes glares
so we shift into
dark flight

landing in Newark is like
rolling into my mom's bed

2
for the first time I like
saying Merry Chrissssmas to people
something wells up

3
feeling mushy like I'll frown if poked
with a stick but my eyes will be sweet
still cuz the December sun is tender
I'm happy to be the mush pile in a
temporary way

the cloud of dust sparkling
before the bathrobe it's Christmas
the dust is the snow
in our freezing cardboard house

4
today I am miserable
hormonally miserable
the softness has melted into misery
and this truth never saves me
I did the money wrong at work
and forgot about the sandwich board
it was stolen by frat boys and
I cut two boys in line and
they didn't forgive me

5
the seasons in our house are stronger
outside a year in LA is a blur
hot or hotter, fire or green for a week
but when again? the circle itself
seems to be spinning, the lazy river...
was I sitting by the AC or
the space heater? did we have
rats or ants?

6
starring in a dream is just
front-manning the emotional
riff-raff and dealing with the
various shapes

7
it's a dark sleep with my jacket on backwards
I seen my eyelids meeting sideways
and feels like a fluffy duster
resting on my face

8
the'res a wooden reindeer running towards me
his limbs are flat and old school
on hinges, like a set
screwed on so they'd swing if
he was suspended
the clean wooden shapes gallop digitally
across a freeway
there's one tissue on the street

9
he appears larger when he arrives
as if teleported or animated and I think
of UFO's

10
I listened to Tyler's arch of reaction to
the space x launch, he was sure it
was aliens, I was excited and pleased
he pulled over and said excuse me, sir
do you know what that is in the sky?
I imagine an old man, a Mexican cowboy
pumping gas, no, he says

I am sewing and my phone is on the table
I listen to the high energy rustling
the car beeping noises

11
to be kind, one has to swerve regularly
from their path

12
crying about
everybody's children
notions of generosity
Quest on fresh air
gifts that give back

13
we need different words to describe our experience
(gratitude)

14
sleeping with your period
to make yourself at home
I see a dark blue skirt printed
with black forks and blood
is getting on it
I don't know how to sleep
with my period anymore
when did this happen
every month with no answer
I bleed so much I can't keep up
like my organs are being wrung

15
dream I was at Erin Pillsbury's wedding
there were cakes being shown,
one looked really good with
powdered sugar almost like
more was appearing before my eyes
or I was willing it to

boats on the water with glass windows
the wedding boats

16
mini wheat world
letting everyone have a piece of me
in the frost
sometimes I wanna be
a winter loaf alone
buttered with the guilt I can't control

17
do we all take our lyft drivers for oracles?

18
he says 8 has to be better than 7
you can't times 7 by 2 and I think
he means divide and I think I know
what he means