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

poem for dad on his birthday 6/26/23

today my cells turn in

with narrowed eyes

your birthday is basic, but flying

it’s green and blue

and the orange lily that grows this week

your birthday is a backyard

how random is it who we love

as I’m putting down this 

particular cat

yesterday the orange lilies at mcdonalds

and my soft serve in a cone

today mom is getting cancer scraped off her nose

while I talk to you from her backyard

every cell narrow eyed and

swimming away with

my info

I get mom a sandwich wrapped in pink paper

from the Italian market with the old hunchback man

I touch the cat’s fur through the screen and I'm thrown 

by our eye contact

how random, who we love

or orbit, and if you’re 

prone, if your sleeve

has a heart

you wear something like

the time you have left

but you used to draw us 

hard mazes in the shape 

of a brain

you just are 

the lilies in June

and your special name 

gets me over the gulf

(imagine) all the contents

of the gulfs between us and 

who we end up loving

the crosswords

the low voice as tool

something gentle

dry, some hint 

now there is a lizard at my feet and

I’ve seen your eyes widen for creatures

your patience surface with youth

**

yesterday they removed the angel sculpture

at the end of my street who’s plaque read

and the angel wants to go back and fix things

it’s from a Laurie Anderson song and 

everyone knows you’re Lou reed

and the angel wants to go back and fix things

to repair the things that have been broken

but there is a storm blowing from Paradise

and the storm keeps blowing the angel backwards into the future

and this storm, this storm is called Progress

2049

 

xo

 
he said the floor was lava
and laid me down on the bed

took off my apron and socks

then went to do all the dishes

we worried about it a little bit,, but that's all

I'd love to fall harder than for a friend

and for it to be allowed

it's been a very long time

I told lori-may about my acupuncture appointment

and the butterflies in my stomach about seeing him after

she noted the image of those butterflies being pinned

the plan of the house, the body in bed

the car that got stuck, it’s the mud, it’s the mud

a stick a stone, it’s the end of the road

it’s the rest of the stump, it’s a little alone 

it’s a sliver of glass, it is life, it’s the sun

it is night, it is death, it’s a trap, it’s a gun

fire for a while

 

flowers etched on mirrors in the back of your mind

why a daydream 

of the cool dark isles of a pet store? 

scent of cedar, alfalfa, millet

white mice and inscrutable fish

watching them quietly do not disturb

05062023

a sunset with the prettiest eyes

you're so see thru

I think we are equal parts 

heart and mind

and what we do

and how others reflect us

and how we reflect others

..99~*drifted

desk

to lately be sharing 

    my bed with just 

sand 

    it's fine 

have you ever seen

a drawing made in  

gunpowder? 

              how when 

lit from one end the 

fire races    along it 

like a snake 

            all the way 

    to the other? 

distortion high on 

the fretboard sings

to me like that; 

hot,         sparkling 

songs make me cry

daily but      I can't 

tell sometimes  the

tears feel A.I.? like

  tears very witness

or replicant     as in 

moved by not   my 

own heart        but? 

because    I want it         

like because    they 

are       silk chiffon

the curtains I made

hover like     

                     a dog

(*fog) like 

once when I was 16 

I left class  because 

I was stuck  

in third person      I

walked as far as 

I         couldn't stop 

crying so hard that 

my nose bled thick 

dots onto the steps    

where I was hiding

dad and us     on the 

fog beach with the 

dog     a treat in his 

hand wind whipping 

a strand of hair into

my mouth red jacket

lined w/ fleece b&w 

striped shirt

I was this I was that

I was    any     thing

I can't really    look

at those photos  not 

now, here  knowing

what           happens

window729

  2 pale dusty roses dropping petals on the sill 

 

 no matter 

how I fill the 

  hours waiting 

for me at the 

end of 

the day is 

a bridge to 

nowhere like

did I

  accidentally

see myself 

  to the door?

and I'm 

  terrified

all songs are crazy

allsongsarecrazy “”

song 1

no i can’t find the old you

not even as mine

or in the future when i’m special and smooth 

how the sun will cook me in dusty rectangles

and still

in the lq store 

when i’m dressed clown in the titled mirror

pick my vice,        like a fruit

be done 

song 1b        

and  still

the whole picture with no  footprints     in  the     snow

it’s so miss

1c

slide me as piece 

you as door guy

watch my hand 

take the ticket

dark tn and your door   you’re my door guy

1d

tossing a free lemon to tree level 

staying for the end  lemons 

just on the ground  being done

dream

watching battleships from the shore

babysitting expensive children

the end

staying for the end my friend’s 

new kid 

friend 

told me that whoever is inside me is safe and will emerge informed later when i explained feeling like a shell and craving oysters 

meanwhile in the dugout my visions blur the chainlink i’m happy

song 2

i don’t remember our love but i remember you

no beliefs, no kinks 

dream 2 your house was nestled into the mountain so close to the clouds right where wind was being made                        

1 astronomer says the heavens begin right at ground level so wherever there is ground there is sky

so wherever the earth ends—

song 3

needing the city inside of me/being inside of it isn’t enough 

friend 1 missing from the whole picture   this whole picture 

severed like a heavy cabbage split and left to fall 

if cabbage was more butter

how if rolls and haunts

looking to draw as in draw out or   continue 

you 

as chord progression 

slide me or

turn me as  page  bible thin

thinking sideways or 

how the rearview brings a moment ago into the frame of the moment ahead

see 1a, me as 1b, 1clown in the titled mirror 

it’s like this now   being alive 

in small curls of broken news 

dear 1,

should i just—

i already told everyone

meeting you was like finding 

reality 

perwana writes me layers of nothing

the morning after ice cream at the bar

it’s funny my latest fantasy is swift 

imperceptible even 

see (1c) when you reach for me

on hold  beneath the coin

that’s fatally both but   

heads up

fragclept0_41423

 

 a w9 for

"Status Symbol 

Auto Body"

my baby's so vain 

she's almost a mirror

arrows with no target

shackles made of snow

do you want to be 

the ditch around a tower?

there are lots of

different kinds of 

"two kinds of  people 

in this world"

you can suck on the hard candy

of an "always" or a "never"

but I prefer the softness 

of a noun

I almost bought the giant silver

fork and knife at Goodwill

love's not the way 

to treat a friend

there are so many better 

things for you

than to see your feelings sold

as magic lanterns 

to somebody whose body

casts no light