Wednesday, April 29, 2020

dashing

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

Tuesday, April 28, 2020

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



Monday, April 27, 2020

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.

Sunday, April 26, 2020

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


Saturday, April 25, 2020

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!


Wednesday, April 22, 2020

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

Tuesday, April 21, 2020

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

Monday, April 20, 2020

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

Sunday, April 19, 2020

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

Thursday, April 16, 2020

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

Tuesday, April 14, 2020

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

Monday, April 13, 2020

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



Sunday, April 12, 2020

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

Wednesday, April 8, 2020

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



Sunday, April 5, 2020

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 

Saturday, April 4, 2020

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

Thursday, April 2, 2020

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







Wednesday, April 1, 2020

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?