Je suis une fille fluide. Je parle simplement. Je me trouve Entre autre choses Étranges et solides Specificamente: Les briques. Avec mon paume, Je touche chaque. Sur la craie, Un chuchoter avant Je les mets Dans le ciment. - Les horloges Ne sont pas vraies
Quand j'ai appris le passé Tout s'est ouvert
Mais c'est immuable Pas comme l'horloge
Ou comme l'horloge Çela dépend des yeux
XVII
Playing the Stewardess of which I am the title player so I cram - yes, cram - my infected fat ankle into pumps (consider: this impressive dedication but also *sigh of relief* there are no thin red lines yet)
Next,
Bird in Flight this is the action sequence my mouth is very familiar with dirt. Very.
Next,
the Quite-Quite-Afflicted-Lover of bankrupted brain and no insufficient funds following (it’s easy to put out for anything - poetry, attention, bank - that’s not the discomforting part - it's more ...)
It’s the corset.
I didn't tell you about that.
The playing at the feeling.
XVI
The impossibility of coming anywhere leads to bed. I am proud of very little: nocturnal vision also my impeccably reliable unreliability. I let in no sun. In a while, sure as a clock works -ha ha- I will scrape my knees across carpet for the insensitive faucet. "Move," I will say. Move I cannot. It is wrinkles that expel me. Nothing else. - My days: looking for freeways eating bread leaving crumbs
XV
There is this And also
Goal: Unpredictable rationality And also searching for lost Bobby pins wherever They are not
Liberation
Reality: Predictable misfortune And also fake it Until you make it
I've shattered many mirrors
There is this: Women in Rwanda are the majority Of Parliament and iron Their husband’s socks Also
Promotion is fragile So silence is practiced
And also: I ask for equality And my hair to be pulled Also
XIV
Pocono looks Like a painting I obviously haven’t been Aired out Enough - I’m in need of a good airing out Because the trees look Like paintings - Overdue Airing out Paints the landscape - Trees paint So I’m overdue For air
XIII
Hollow river’s echo Wooded secrets make no fire The old woman unfolded My laundry on a wire
I waited drumming silence Ticking thick like lead I asked of her to drown The remains of my head
She sat for a while Her hair long and gray She could have been a rock And yet she could not stay
She left me in the hollow She left me to the wood The old woman told me Never is there good
XII
A tank Was placed By this pond In memoriam to...
? - Contenders Don't know That running wins Little More than waiting And inventors Can confirm Exercise is good But can't negate Genetics - A tank Was placed
By the pond It is
XI
in seven hours and forty five minutes I will wake to the sound of no lovers breathing but the air conditioner with its double depression - In some hours I will wake
Cold to the breath Of no lover
But the doubly depressed Air conditioner - No lover But the air Conditioner To wake to
X
packed up to the zipper I traded my job with spasms and now await electrocution at the border
IX
Salutations from electric soldiers occupying the streets like power lines. No foreshadowing to Chicago's ocean or losing at night to the ear of the sirens to the hand of machinery to the man sweeping gas station concrete and barking lucid as a dog to the chic apartment on a shit street (named something like ambrosia) and especially the wild eyed conscious insomnia coiling from the center until all extremities are itching wind up toys or orgasms
VIII
Driving in the dark for many hours left me without pictures and without my mind. - A good place from irony and refrigerators: corn fields full of contortion witches: up from the dust and tangle trees sucking from the air: wind to use for the next hundred years cantations: a refilling of the spaces: we'll choke on fate
A litmus test for the screen addicted: does the deep hurt your arms? for how long? can you tread? or suck it up until shallow waters run within: use later for lubricant or thirsty children to replenish stimulation capability: choke
A dry spell to conjure if you are one who does not drink: a holy rock: rest your head holding a sprig of lavender for aesthetic affect: pretty martyr: you're no different:
VII
- He'll request his ashes scattered in Paris
But I will drive them straight to the Badlands smash the ceramic urn and whisper, in French of course, "But you've always been in hell." - There's sun stained blood stratified on these faces these rising mounds these flat top beds of stone these openings stretched wide like the yellow breasted birds erupting from the wheat fields house cows grazing sweet and sweetly kissed or obsessively doused with sun But where is the water! I must wash the wound that will never heal lest my own legs stain plain with the obvious mark of one who misses
VI
- We're already thirty miles From revolution Like horses raised In a pen The gate opens Then nothing But the sprinklers In the morning Feeding time - What do you think about the revolution asks one sister to another answers I like totally would like like that but like my goal isn't to change the world but to like like no love people
V
In bargaining With neither devil Nor terra cotta warrior All trades belong To you and you Know this
I traded my eyesight for silver Haired testaments to countless Neglecting colanders and condoms
Good judgement’s payment: Better whiskey Toasting wit And poor pockets
A warm shower Hit my bruises but I still had to deal With a burn on my bagel
We got a mattress In the middle Of hospitals, bar tabs, a bleached bathroom rug, Jigsaw puzzle pieces, a stack of harmonicas, and lists Aside, how the fuck Could we sleep In that mess?
But hey, at least I got good theory And a willing tongue - A sapiophilic Marxist on paper
Remember the amalgams Of flesh: Having run all night Through sticker bushes I fell as a skinned Tiger At your feet and trusted A pair of hands That weren’t mine
I have no delusions All trades belong To me and I Alone
IV
When love is romantic It's an apple, either too high up to pick or overripe and rotting and mixed in to the dirt. It's cinnamon lips and blurry vision. Cracked palms and manicured calloused feet. It's hot pavement and cold coffee - old odors sweet. Firewood, teflon burning and sea salt. It's saliva dripping from the tongue and sweat pouring for exhaustion or lust or fuck you and isn't that fun? It's go away come quick run here change the same as me and shave my pussy when I'm pregnant. It's a cell phone drying in a bag of rice overnight and forever holding the gritty residue but it works. It's a long lost well hung even tempered picture frame. It's a bad bag and a worse egg and an even better bandaid. It's drinking water out of nickel because metallic is pretty and also tastes like blood. And it is bloody but not like a battle just more like a bird that stopped breathing in mid air and fell, breaking open. It's going to bleed until it's done or until a bigger bird eats it. It's going to breath until its lung gives out or until a bigger lung beats it. What I'm trying to say is love is breathless. It's romantic as in Here honey, eat my apple I'm not hungry
It's poison.
III
I the sea floor stuck with secrets keep A sunken heart still yet to be revealed And eyes that teem with likeness of the deep That by the salt might injuries be healed
Full of fish bones picked to clean and bare I've wished to meet the grand expansive swell I've longed to drown in depths of dark unknown To hear the waves tide life tide death tide knell
And when the gentle song wash over me Tide's toll shall ring with quiet coupling news For I the seafloor evermore shall be Joined all my sense with sea my soul with you
II
There is a tree on Sixteenth Between Here and There Surrounded by barren comrades
She holds her leaves like weapons Against Winter's bare teeth Bullets blank and unaware
Blow winds howl winds Crack winds coo Tree stands in between Tree stands like you
I The sky tonight is pencil shades. A smudgy thrashing shrine to the ravishing Selene who usually arrives in mediated time. But the shadows ask if she might make her entrance tonight whiplash fast and smack-clap cracked through the ashen shelter.
The sky tonight is not quite inky. Had I taken the plump part of my fist and pulled it across the expanse, it would have been leaden heavy with the newly accumulated charcoal. Had I ran my thumb among the clouds, the moon would have appeared luminous and exhausted.
But the sky tonight needs me not and my hand, a whisper itch, remains at my side.