home q

 

home 1

can’t put my foot down 

on anything hard the bone that sticks out 

until the alarm I cheat

pushing clouds from a central core 

of blue sky in an organless body 

with doves if I’m lucky

home 2

the sunny corner of a wooden table

before the kitchen window I will look out 

in love, depending on strength the hardwood 

I apply years of wear now how I want years of—

home 2a

the shop table from a grade school fully tagged

how Katya put it in her kitchen it’s soft surface

where I make your birthday card and sing oh

california so home especially when sung

home 3

I've been so dust to dust

as medicine for detail fever

or love as ancient knot, plus

the way you say lifest life

*home 3a

allergic to scope too like

bigness repped by one *word

it’s dizzy the circles I write

around, for instance,

the labyrinth on the cliff

wind, etc

tbc

A Mini Course On Time Management

 

mind is a year

heart in a button-down

how to look haunted and afraid

lightheaded smelling the jasmine

selfhood is nowhere to hang a hat

girl go

around the edges she's still with me

my soul external

like peter pan's shadow

tripping up the stairs

lagging behind

girl, go

anywhere you want to

thirteen years later 

crying to this song in my cubicle

she's still with me my soul 

lagging behind the others

I know my place 

leave life to the living

I still can't claw my way

into 3 dimensions

or suspend disbelief

long enough to stay there

mirror to my nearing birthday

with Grandma Rebecca's sudden passing

I'm turning 30, she was about 3 times that 

photos of her as a young girl

the sparkle in her black eyes

I know her, I want to know her

the pain and fantasy in her heart just then

her soul and how it corresponds to my own

girl, go

anywhere you want to

wondering about 

herding cattle

knowing geography

hopping trains

shows and lovers and parties

finishing books 

drugs 

working summer jobs

fixing my own car

playing in a band

girl, go

around the edges I'm done

over being lost 

with my selective memory

irreverence and rootlessness

dear diary this

isn't a poem

We Jam Econo

the wind whipping the empty fields 

through the windows on all sides of the office

the crows and me

we walk in this place no one goes

how did I know that the pretty jingling was the metal tag 

on an electricity meter box blowing in the wind

the daily leaving-my-body-here

and following-my-mind-elsewhere

down a gunpowder spiral there's peace in it 

I'm a simple girl I don't need much

for me, anger (or july 5)

it is poetry ultimately that grants survival

to a degree beyond pure function

breaks up the fight and

and cuts the scheme for the next 

kitchen window which I will look out 

in love

anyway there is sun dancing here

in this 6 pm, or there was

the kitchen window I will look out alone

depending on strength the hardwood 

table top to which I apply years

of wear now

 

how I want years of

but the way tonight joins with 

ln, fused in one still of the sun 

setting through bamboo

and yet, there is the shop vac

the compost

the radio

I know a me poem now grown 

on edge and medicine

at best, I devise 

a tattoo with a shadow

here is the cat's grave

her name written in rocks

unspelling itself

there is the oregano

the exterminator 

the phone

it's power

for me, anger, July 5

and one orange left on the tree