dashing

some kind of sword
to fall upon
feeling hyphy
like a rag doll
or a tumbleweed

you you and you

new pen in the sun
besides, the sun
is the best artist
so, really you
and I
ate some cake
today the sun
is uplifting, loud

I hope it's the cake
and not the unprotection

my whole life
I kept my mess in check
just haven't made one
that time she said
you don't have to clean up
and I wept

you might
know who you are

***

I recorded a dream
in emergency red pen
on the back of my flash
dad's torso covered in
ratchet acrostics
I envied them
he wore a towel
and behaved like a fly
when I came with my case
buzz jumping
shape shifting

****

that day we sat around
drinking coffee in the esun
as if cute, rare

you sweating in
NY clothes
good to boil a little
I thought missing
you a lil

state and rev

Society, which will reorganize production on the basis of a free and equal association of producers, will put the whole machinery of state where it will then belong: into a museum of antiquities, by the side of the spinning wheel and the bronze axe.

thing theory

did I make this void?

all I wanted was more time
to read
to vanish

anatomy
a jump rope
sex in 3rd person

my mind goes walking
down to Jennifer Grocery

the vinyl siding
fabuloso and campbell's cans floating
through a digital window

we’re nothing 
but the effect we have on others
or rather
a collection of effects

did I make this?
parallel U

did I make this
phone call
to my soul?

echoes in a well
graffiti dancing on the surface
of the digital window

I get choked up
corresponding with my spirit
thinking about who
my spirit corresponds to

did my mind make you?
and yours made me?

Kayla in her digital window
flat and solid
we talk till it turns
from blue to black

Mary

I told her I was writing about walls

how I felt strong earlier
now that I think about it

what about reporting/
with the language I wash

the claw that won't
get the toy

reporting what really
happened were
shifts in focus

see strangers
draw the globe
and another

she calls me from the tenants union

this is she, I say, I'm stoned, Mary, we laugh
we always laugh
reporting--
on monkdom
the collective weight
of internalists
draw another globe
for example

look who just showed up at setting

don't sit down to write a poem but I want to

I must say, summer

is here like the rain 

was 100%

long everything

dear April's 

ending

open window night

cold shower

cold noodle

dead phone

your cold

part like

thorn

how many

principle contradictions?

who is...your?

try variety but

no other song

cuts it like 

there are times!

when I look above! 

and beyond!

bow out

coffee becomes wine becomes coffee
and the wind is haunted

blowing the sun just out of reach again
chase it like a hat flown off

what would be groovy and liberatory 
for a person to read?

what’s a projection
and what’s solid?

what am I taking for granted as permanent?

there’s lots of different kinds
of “two kinds of people in this world”

and you can suck on the hard candy
of an “always” or a “never”

but I prefer the softness of a noun
“pocketbook” is like
a saltwater taffy

it can hold the whole day
zipped in a deep corner

lotta lawbreakers

poem today
is breaking
grooving
light like
keypad
fantasia
see below
for between

the night upon me like
a fucking weight
conjuring ambiance
with a song [an ad]
one plate of dinner
her fork clinks
outside,
hold on

I'm back
from the last blue
now it's just night
which goes on

I want my body
to do the talking
 unbutton top
 lids at half mast
the shadows of
how my hair sits

the cashier said
do you also 
have a love 
for baggy clothes?
I said what
because her
plastic shield
baggy clothes,
they are so
peaceful

the rhythm exists
between longing and
the song, or
like Mary said
between the house
and everything else

writing in the margins
of can't hear myself think

till we're all free

a licorice night
shiny windows

my soul slips out
lingers by the river

drawing thick lines
with toxic ink

the fumes, the flute, my soul
slips out

I tie it first to my waste
it slides down to my ankles

wet and shaped like
a comma

sew it to my foot
like wendy

how to write a song
with the texture of wind

ride a note sidesaddle
into a candy story

licorice night
shiny windows

home is the head

westerns are a language
I’m not fluent in

but I want to go back
stand in the middle
of a dusty main street

we all want to be a child again
even the worst of us
perhaps the worst most of all

two pale yellow scorpions
writhing in red ants

in the books we'll say
the time before Covid
and the big question mark
following

there were clothes on the line
there was the smell of the basement
there was affirmation
in our joblessness

there was screen poisoning
and time travel
to your childhood home

I don’t miss
the places I used to go
or the way I would go to them

gripping ambient worry
boring concern

I long to try
something I've never had

shedding a time
when the questions
were theoretical

loose translation

I always leave the party so lucid

never drenched in it/who’s 

cleaning up

even my bulletin board is earnest

woke up from a big [party]

no memory but will write

it down on a paper 

towel, who’s 

cleaning—

to walk out on my mind

into the dirty world

free of consequence

starting to write

theoretically

starting to sprout

starting to be

an old, hourly way

this place at 1, 2, 3 pm

1a

 1b

  1c

starting to think, 

theoretically, about

how the cowboy said

never go to your room

in the daytime

the birdsongs

from the wings

the theater 

of the livelong day

the way its all moving 

the wind 

delivering

warbling the rosebush

petting my curtains

I’m blaming everything

on the wind today, everything!

its clinging outfit

I am the snowcap 

of mountain 1a

empathy measured

in obvious veins

the look of my bed 

[the stacked edge]

has me hungry for 

another character

I once played a lost boy

and now

my minds? been gone

a vagabond, she visits 

phone to feel party

as for the sun

it’s earlier across the street

working for them like

a good oven, in circles

I move my chair to chase it

they throw balls through its rays

vibes of my poems for translation

abyss of night, beauty infinity, alone

laughing to myself, sensory overload, in tune with nature really feeling one with the neighborhood, giggling

dream logic, weird, symbols, school? reading/connecting

sexy, freedom in lucid dream, kinda weightless, dgaf

observation, walking, checking on the neighborhood, playing games with one friend at night, secret 

just feelin poetry and living

epiphanies, tender to myself, memories, watery, spent

spiritually pissed, surrender, acceptance, peace with shit

yearning, horny, drugs, boy ego

drunk poet, 2nd part is about teaching in juvie, inside vs. outside, boundaries

sad, lamenting, mundane, turned on by mundane memories of places and things, remembering

also about teaching in juvie, feeling emotions in space, also inside/outside, being a grown up baby, basics

dream logic, confusion, yearning, cute, macro/micro

funny, sexy, word play like touching myself

heartbreak, history, time, pensive, still, literary

macro/micro, sexy play with words, fuck u kinda, feel like shit but having a tiny little fun with poem

heartbreak, body psychedelia, feeling stupid/little, yearning

dream obviously, unattainable, mysterious physicality, revealing things to myself, hide and seek, pissed, betrayed but calm

horny, fantasy, dream confusion, how can we all be better ---> poet alone

god mixed with sex, spiritually pissed, resentful, but I’m better lol

on losing ground

a sunlit, corporate terrace
the narrative dance
theater of
well,
sunlit
color

it's about translucency

she reads the book in her head
and we hear it

I roll this trick back
into the wings

I once played a lost boy
and now

supplement for longevity

an awkward party
unfolds on camera
his ques come from
the clouds are for
reading

looking for ecstacy
at the library

and I'm caught
and I'm done when
she's 100% summer

Genie

my street is a party

walking towards the mountain

everyone’s home

the birds too

yelling at nightfall

woke up from   big

party/no memory

thought I should write it all out

on one of our brown paper towels

driving the big van 

in the   little garden

flooded with the gray reality of circles

(birds then  and now)

the other night of

heavy blankets

that old bedroom

but dank and wet

with pear dessert 

teabags 

clocking weird

pouring out

the closed window

my own heart beat

is too much

don’t know where

to put my hand

a star

the whole pretty 

hand thing 

again

and again

end of A world

On May 31st, 2019 I tripped
and skinned my palm

the local character who wears the
Santa Claus blazer told me
the world was ending

in 15 seconds, 15 seconds 
14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8... 

I see Santa Claus Blazer
out and about in Covid World
way more than I ever did before


lounging on the stoops
walking in the middle of the empty street
scarf draped, sounding off

dropping my book

call Grandma to
     open the door on dark
the desert mystery
  in her day they never ran out of equipment
    everything was reusable
now they use cheap plastic crap
   why'd they make that switch anyway?
we wouldn't be in this mess
   she had a shift running bedpans
and sharps through the autoclave
    I'd dip the gloves in germicide
and line them up on this rack 
  wrap up a bundle of thermometers and
shake them in disinfectant
    the metal hypodermic needles 
could be sanitized too 
   you filled them from vials 
with rubber stoppers

    she slips into a memory
of walking in on a fellow nurse
injecting morphine in the bathroom
     she had been refilling the vials 
with sterile water
     the hospital tried to cover it up
put her up in a room on another floor
    with a regimen to ween her off
I went in to administer her dose
   she had all the lights off and said 
"no no don't turn them on, just 
    use a flashlight or something"

the dark

then Uncle Henry
   sneaking out of the house
she drops the image of
   the open window
curtains blowing

d-a-r-k
d-a-r-k
dark
dark
dark

slides into another story
of Mom conning her out of some cash
a feast's worth of groceries
for a fake party
she slipped out to pick up
an imaginary implement
and didn't come back
5 o'clock
   6 o'clock
7 o'clock
  and she wasn't home
no guests either
 the sun was setting
I called the cops 
they couldn't do anything
but tell me there hadn't been
any accidents on the highway

d
  a
r
 k

in bed fading
after the chapter on Palestine
....apartheid... a convo......
our Palestinian boss at the restaurant
...sandy stone walls &Kayla
Passover
     the hanging gardens of Haifa
bombs over busses
dropping my book

a classic storm at midnight
cymbals crash in the alley
white light
then I'm in a wet city
  like New Orleans
where you ride an elevated train along the waterfront
called "Aldonius Avenue"
     painted tugboats and scrappy houses
bobbing
     heavy plaster columns
with decorative yellow and green dragons swirling up their trunks
    coming slanted out of the canal
fallen by design
    we ride to the southernmost tip of town
a ferry depot
   grand like an opera house in the mist

some summer 2014 (love letter)

MAKE WINDCHIMES
----> lol I move to Santa Cruz
and make windchimes

I feel afraid
because I miss the dark solitude
that gives my brain that space
am I doing the right thing
I miss New York
I miss lonely + Livia
and mom
and cold
I think

***

How to maintain the desire to write poetry?
More than one snippet
one flat, southern california snippet
cut from the cloth

I wonder when Livia will be home
I hope we can go to Saturn or something
I want a french fry
then a bar at midnight
it is sunday night

we collectively hate the restaurant called "burger."
all lower case with a period

sunday night what's up?
there is something at the catalyst but
I don't know who they are and I don't
feel like looking them up because
they don't look good

there are lots of good people in this world

watch out for the little skunk in the yard
when you're coming home Livia!
That would be too bad to get sprayed
with a skunk on the eve of your 21st

***

I had a dream that
I felt kind of scared and vulnerable
lots of people I knew
didn't want breakfast just yet etc.
she kept knocking hard on the door
and I knew she wanted to introduce me
to the boys I was to choose from
they were nearly jumping up and down
I don't remember how it went down but
it seemed like she got first dibs while
I was changing

***
July went so fast

***

I really hope my dad is ok

I want to do a poetry workshop

I think

I always have so much and also
nothing to say

    closer to home

I love to draw and
I have no let go of that

write
   cook
eat
 so simple

focus on that
plus exercise
and kindness

***

my summer friend (Allegra)
we were very organized
we had lots of small plans
and crushes to follow at night
drunk boys on bikes
putting my bike in the garage
in the thick quiet
going to my room feeling
spooked and cooped up
window wide open
feeling the hot blue
come into my nest
I miss that room
with all my heart

I wonder when Livia will drop
the book she was reading before
she fell asleep
maybe she will sleep this whole
night through holding it as delicately
as she is now

I am really feeling time
I want to pause for a while
I have some battery powered candles

I'm glad neither of us got jobs
I want poems to write

I want to do more
I am also so happy?
content just being right now

broom theory

over it today
it as in being
being as in me

we say time isn't real now but
Sunday still knows what it is
the birds sing about it like always

the song about being the first awake
the song about the pit of my stomach
butterflies, possibility, an hourglass

each Sunday is a little death
I sweep out the corners
all the traps I set

my side of the house

being fully alone does something 

to my spirits

they are high but slanted

I sing and

like it

I don’t wear underwear 

play languidly 

there is something I haven’t told or

written rather

which is that I wanna cook outside

I want 360 windows

I am so tortured by the setting sun

each day

I can’t wait to just stand there

I mean I can’t stand there

I go into the kitchen 

What do you do while waiting for the shower water to become hot?

sometimes I do a lot

there’s a window in my shower

which I wonder about

how big it is

how much of a shelf it is

the day just turned from hot

to cool which has changed my shower plans

now I’m getting a wet phone call

where’s the rice and where are all the towels and 

what are they all for? the dirty one for tanning the dirty one 

for mopping the dirty one he used that time that will never

act clean (what gets wetter and wetter and never...)

and the clean one I use wrongly 

I don’t answer by the way

the droplets just shiver while I find another

way to say unplug, I wanna throw something 

at my ADD or is it everybody's?

sometimes I write for 2 hour chunks like 

they’re 2 inches on the simple school ruler of

was, is, and, will be

Amia says no peeking at the rice which

gets me thirsty, thirstier, thirstiest 

for the self possessed steam and 

I crave the possibility of a lot

sometimes I do a lot

brush my hair out straight

to medium in between something 
something like this, I know someone who says 
something like this instead of that 

her orange hair in my coral brush

feels like best friends

the two of us are already wearing pieces of

tiger, accumulating accessories on accident

and now what does tiger mean, I mean

today what does it mean its something like

covered in frosting? soot? like a leaf blower found it?

even doing nothing means too many things

I mean looking at my leg hair before my shave date

I think I’ve taken this tattoo to the beach right?

sometimes I even make a plan

while the water gets hot

share your water

* * ** *     * **
big high winds

blossom petals and 

shimmering dust

in the covid breeze

solitary/darity

socialize with 

Neighbor Beth 

on the balcony

when the sun's out

sharing seed packets
and speculating about
what's in Miracle Grow
how bad could it be

4/1

the merry go round
of the text message
not the sixth sense
but another

dreams water down
around seven, eight

step into the day like

stop to smell the fried fish
remember life?
and the roses

you still believe
heartbreak should burn like a star?

Hoopers

Celia said she hoola hooped

to Lana del Rey for over an hour

on the sidewalk back home

a meditation

shink shink shink of the sand

shifting weight

my sister mom and I would have contests

counting each rotation in a tally 

marking it down with chalk on the patio

the only object to keep it going

for hours and hours

how about when this is all over
we start a society like the Shakers 

called the Hoopers but not repressed
hoola hoop as sympathetic magic
for the revolution?