headliner

this week i play housewife. lay your clothes out, set the table, greet you at the stairs with a smile, pray, hope, twist my hair into curls and stare, vapidly at myself in the mirror for hours. i play games in my head, scattered pentagrams and rainbow boxes thrown about classrooms at 1 in the afternoon, early sunshine and the days end earlier lately, cold has set in and i find myself making nests for myself, none of which i fit in or keep me nearly warm enough. im not ready for harsh winter and sleepy weekends with nowhere to go and no reason to get out of bed. i pad around the apartment, doing dishes, making elaborate dinners and cakes, anything to distract myself from this, this this mess im in, i will be in until im not, and i just dont have the will power right now to get up and shake it off. im trying, im trying, im trying. and it just isnt good enough. planes fly over head and crash in the night fifteen states away and no one hears a sound. i dont know why i ever thought i could have a family, make a home, why i thought id be good at something like that, when i get restless and unsure after ten minutes alone. riding the bus is like torture and im continuously only alone with myself.
i dont remember the last time my fingers were so cold, and my bones and getting chills and i layer sweatshirts and rub my nose with the sleeves, hands tucked inside and dream about shrinking into coats and scarves and december and hibernating away like a bear. except maybe i was cold like this in oregon, but i was with you and so i felt nothing bad at all.

lunatic city

night time is the worst. did you feel the earthquake? it made me nervous and start thinking how awful it would be if you werent able to say goodbye. it all feels very morbid. i have to stop watching dexter before bed. it gives me creepy dreams. vicodin helps.


lately
i feel like faulkner
no subject or verb
quit putting me in paragraphs
ill never fit
the way you
want
me to


we go to the MOMA and do that silent walk, that museum goers do when everyone is pretending to look at the art but really are seriously bored out of their minds and horny from the silence. all we want to be doing is tearing each others clothes off and fucking and then laying in bed and smoking cigarettes in his loft bed above his rehearsal studio but we have to get credit for class, so we skip the lines and rub up against each other in corners when no ones looking. there are two paintings, encased in glass in the middle of the room, some silver plated tree branches and sky. i keep an eye close on him, while
pretending i care about the artwork, total period bullshit that neither of us are into anyway, put my hands up on the glass, my face, close my eyes for a minute, wishing we could get the hell out of there. i only had a string cheese today and a gatorade from his fridge that was warm and im feeling faint. im starting to get sick listening to hushed voices talking, babbling like art critics, pretentious fucks, he always says. opening my eyes, he is opposite me, breathing on the glass and writing my name with his finger, like a fogged up window. i laugh tremendously and drop my bag on the floor which causes the loudest hush ive ever heard. he looks at everyone and bows. deeply and graciously which makes me laugh even harder and when we get kicked out its understandable. he lights a cigarette in the lobby just to prove a point, the lighter his grandfather gave him encased in leather, flicks quickly from his hand, to his face, to his jeans, snug in back pocket. im thinking how a museum is really perfect for us, all that talking we dont know how to do. outside its hot and his dog is laying on the cement, drooling and waiting for us with her big cow eyes. we walk, silently, down market, sweating and smoking. i use a book of matches because i love the way his lighter feels so much i cant bare it, like if i use it too much it will be just another thing to miss when hes gone. its too much him, musty smell and worn. just another thing i know he cares about more than me. at uptown market we stop for whiskey and ginger ale, more cigs for him, water for the dog. inside his place its stale, and there is the casual undressing i have come to love. its too hot as usual and we work better unclothed. he says to me after, distracted, not looking, hands in my hair, you look better through glass, you look nice magnafied but far away. im picking a scab on his arm and roll over to the side of the bed where theres water in a jar, drink in long painful swallows, listen to the city through the flung open windows and let my eyes tear up. theres matches on the window sil and i light another cig, smoke, think, smoke think. keep cover closed, be safe. this feels appropriate, naked, on his bed, silent, no words to say, just trying to keep cool, to pretend were both not just a little afraid.



and a poem, for all you lovers out there, cuidado con tus corizones

love crosses its islands, from grief to grief,
it sets its roots, watered with tears,
and no one-no one-can escape the hearts progress
as it runs, silent and carnivorous

you and i searched for a wide valley, for another planet
where the salt wouldnt touch your hair,
where sorrows couldnt grow because of anything i did,
where bread could live and not grow old

a planet entwined with vistas and foliage,
a plain, a rock, hard and unoccupied:
we wanted to build a strong nest

with our own hands, without hurt or harm or speech,
but love was not like that: love was a lunatic city
with crowds of people blanching on their porches

number 25

a year ago
i hugged her through grass stains
and placed palms against
faces and she was wide eyed
blue

today
eyes closed
heartache
breath take
the mechanics of breathing
broken down
and she dies
not slowly
but just one flat line

centerfield
grass stains
my old living room
dusted cd covers
and that laugh
making valley
small



RIP LIZ i love you

organ donor

if you dont care about anything then nothing will disappoint you.
its a thursday and i cant seem to make it to work. i cant seem to pull myself from bed, from the bus, off the ledge of the bar, from the crook of amy's shoulder. i cant seem to make my body work, and all the sudden im robot emotion, everything we had laughed about 9 months ago isnt funny anymore. its our life. what was funny that rainy afternoon we pushed the couches together and smoked pot and laughed isnt funny its sad. its sad because it feels fake, it was robot emotion, it was everything we hate. and so amy and i sit slack jawed and steely eyed, damp necks and sweaty eyes, looking at each other for something, im sorry we keep saying, im sorry i dont know what to say to you, and we just sit in our sadness. just stir it around the rim of our drinks and fend off boys who try to bum cigarettes with glances, like, i will fucking kill you if you talk to me right now, and its funny how easy people read our feelings, know what we mean, with one glance, and the people we have loved forever, it seems, cant even figure out how to not make us cry.
i find myself on your street. on our streets. this city will ruin me and i wake up exhausted. i cant keep avoiding mirrors and storefronts, closing my ears to peoples conversations on the bus and hats at the bars i drink at. i hated this city, until i met you, and now its nothing but a museum i hate to visit. a place where everything makes me sad. my friends sit around a table, silent and i say nothing, i stare them all down through the red and green and yellow christmas lights and let their faces go blurry. there is nothing to say when they ask for answers, prod my shoulders for reasons and details. and were just in limbo. and all i can say, all i know, among the fake fur and faux greenery is i care about you, i care about you, i care about you. and then i lose myself on polk street and wish away street corners that held us, that held me, that changed us, that changed me.

bale lane and old faithful

im watching the temperature rise from mid 70s to high 80s and in some other city, sarah is watching the weather channel and telling us, tomorrow will be a good day. my car is full of wood for you, pieces of the house i grew up in, old window sills and door frames, the door we bought to replace the plastic sheet of door covered in wallpaper and calendars covering holes, but it didnt fit and sat in the garage, five, ten, fifteen years. ive got it piled up on a sheet i slept in when i was seven, small flowers, pinks and yellows, sheets that held me and kept me warm when i still made my mama tell me stories, just to get my small heart asleep at night, its back there, my rearview, the length of the 101, and like everything else, its shambles, and splinters and not safe to put your hands on, fragments and paint chips and i want to open the hatch and let it fly across the freeway, i want to watch it hit tires of cars and windshields, fall into fields and hit limbs, bust open foreheads and feel like i feel, like broken pieces of wood, you thought you could make into something much more beautiful and now, now you never will. because you see i did this before i knew, i spent a day in the sun with my dad and walked barefoot and tried to breathe deeper than i ever had, because that smell, that idea that getting out of the city, that the country would "do me good" was fleeting, and i found myself with aching feet and hands raw from digging at the ground, slivers inside and i know, i know, i know my screaming and shouting wont keep you...and the reality is you cant build from what is broken, you must use tools, shiny and new. and thats just not me.
i feel bad for you calistoga, i do. i never give you a chance and every time i just use you for your dusty air and warm nights and curse the streets you made me on. there is a ghost in my bones.once again im pulled over, a car on the highway, crickets and frogs and purple mountains, i wish you could see it, because this place is so deceiving in its beauty and purity and at the end of the night theres never anywhere to go and the streets wont house me like they used to, ive used them all up.
the sun isnt all the way down and its eerily hot, the hood of carissas sweatshirt is too tight, too warm and i cant breathe when you tell me these words, its all just talk, and ive heard it before, you are old faithful and i know just exactly how this will feel, the brimming, the waiting, the boiling under ground, and the release is steady, consistent, and tired. after youve seen it once, theres no need to watch again, the tourists hit the gift shop, collect their kids, buy a t-shirt and drive into town for dinner at the Inn. its predictable, its a science, a timetable, an art, if you will, to the actions, the reactions. and my recovery is predictable, i know how i will drink this one down, away, out and push it all back underground to wait. wait and see how it all turns out, because even though i know what will happen, the exact time, the minute, the moment, i cant. look. away.
grammere tells me, be happy, why do you have such dark circles? are you not drinking enough water? and i smile for her, take her crazy dog on a walk, tell her how great im doing, because i am, i was, i will, i dont know how i got so lost in all this, and when i get ready to leave, i kiss her on the cheek and am brave for her, because the women in my family dont do it any other way, and i just hate to disappoint. the drive is easy, theres never a perfect enough song and my legs stick to the leather seats just like any other summer, only its not summer, and im not brave, im sad and scared and without any streets to drive on anymore. bale lane was untouched by me, and now its all dried up like the fields and leaves, vineyards turned bright gold and burgundy, and going home to clear my head was a wash, i dont know what i was thinking.

sometimes all you need is a good nights sleep. and you wake up giggling in bed and the morning is grey and cool but the sun lines the leaves outside your window and everything that felt so dark and twisty last night has cleared away and you are smiling, youve soaked in it long enough and can get out and dry off on your own.
this morning its these poems that make sense, that make everything better and the same.

A Rational Sky

How Life Longs
to deposit
self-centricity
Be cautious!
Do you want to give in,
do you want to give up?
I dont!
How nights linger-
the tragic delusion
that loneliness
is martyrdom
be cautious!
are you better
for not getting better?
are the days better
when you are numb?
is a rationalized sky
anymore blue?


He Dreamt She Was An Atom
She Dreamt He Was Enola Gay

the lorenz attractor
the space between
my fingers and your skin
infinitely divisible,
infinitely separate
never connecting
never touching

Fingernails in my back
10, 000 miles away,
penetration goes nowhere;
The mouth on your mouth
is as distant as Baghdad
the whispers in your ear
radio broadcasts from
Czechoslovakia

Maybe I never saw you
as closely as i should;
nor did your hands
ever hold mine; and so
this parting should be
no more than reality
amplified by tens
and tens and tens
until it becomes only
slightly more heavy
than i can bear,
until i see so much
of this sad sphere
that hope approaches
asymptote


and finally.......





Finally Written

Dont be afraid of writing a pure sentence;
even if at night you feel you cant sleep;
and the weight of the words on your chest
gives way to heavy sighs:

Youre lucky,
if she can calm you;
youre lucky
if you can write it down
youre luckiest
if you can tell her.

And when I learned to drive I said;
"this is the death of my youth,"
and when i first made love I said;
"this is the death of my youth,"
and when i first fell in love i said;
:here is my youth again!"
and when she left (because she will always leave) I said;
"here is the death of my youth"
and my youth has died
1000 deaths at the hands
of corruption and decay
disintegration of the imaginary worlds
i flew in as a child; replaced
by the sea of experiences
and the sense of irony
that tells me never to write
"a sea of experiences"
But when i make excuses:
"here at school, how can i be pure"
"here at work, how can i be pure"
I'm turning my back on the noblest search:
to burn these books and shatter this steel
into the purest form it can handle
without breaking my body in half
everything else is compromise
everything else is the death of our youth.



thats enough for today. i need coffee, and a walk, and time. to fucking. clear. my head.

friday flux

ive had one of the most confusing days in awhile, my kids were happy, we laughed all afternoon, i had two parents tell me how much their kids talk about me and i finished grading papers before i left work, left a mountain of red and purple check marks, pages of notes on 12 year old stories on my desk, to sit, for the weekend, while i go live my life. and it was a great day, despite the thought, like a tumor, ever present, silent and destructive, that it is all just a big show. a big joke. i keep scratching at the surface, clawing at my cheeks and rubbing my eyes red and puffy and i cry on the N train and dont even care that my hair is sticking to the back of my neck and ive sweat through my shirt. i want the outside to look like the inside and inside i feel like a mess. ive got a new soundtrack and run around the city with it playing on repeat, repeat repeat over until im able to pretend i know all the words and pound along angrily, fingertips to wrist, push it out, get it out, and its never rough enough, the bruises never dark enough. im never enough. something about today has me a wreck, sick to my stomach, i cant make this up, im just floating and waiting and waiting for something to break, to crack, to fall around me. we wait for things instead of taking action and i just dont know how to do this. i want to throw my hands up at you, i want to shrug my shoulders and say maybe im not cut out for this. maybe i feel too hard, to much, and all i want is a space to feel it, to carve out a hole, a room, a trailer, some space in your heart for me to be. to just be. and if i cant make a home in you, then im lost, i dont know what the fuck im doing at all.

i need to move here, fall away, explore the forest and write for hours at a time....you can come visit if youd like, and id make you tea. and wed talk about life....in a very removed sort of way...

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/nby/apa/878977211.html

today im scaring myself and i hate it and cant help it when i get like this. all lock jawed and frozen, tiny hands trembling and shifty feet, left and right, i make others uncomfortable and no one can stand to be around me. i cant even stand myself but i wont make myself get up off my bed, i wont move around or go outside or change the song blaring through the walls. i wont because i cant, because im not ready and thats my shit. im trying to figure it out and learn and grow up and im in between all these things i want and throwing it all over the bridge and swimming for safety, swimming past the breakers into nothing and in the end what looks like drowning might just be surviving. what looks like swimming might be sinking and i sense us running out of breath.

you could never write me like i wrote you. no one could. ive made this impossible for everyone, for anyone to get close to me and for me to feel safe with anyone at all.

so we take shots, we dance wildly in our rooms, we cry for no reason or for everything, we pour ourselves into each other and laugh and shrug shoulders and use genuine glances to try and convey what we ultimately ultimately in our deepest realist hearts desire. and we just keep moving, shuffling along, breaking the wishbone, tying the cherry, crossing our fingers and following the yellow brick road. dayna yells from the other room "can it just work out for me, one, just one time!?" and its real, everything that were feeling and saying and wanting is real, its real, its real.

an opened wound

take my time
to unwrap fingers
browned edges
salt vined, intertwined
theatrics
annimated summers and terrible twos
your violence is
impossible
santa ana winds
over a telephone call in june
fumble your
words to the ground
lazy like
kat nap
geometric tears in blue jeans
side swiping glances
regretfully
long and
lustful
fine feathers, like
lips
grapes among gold
cold cotton and deep palms
lets leave town tonight
wedge our disasters
in some streetlight
and watch it all go black

variations of the same

evening wiles

the corners of your eyes have
turned black
something like khol and
evening
where underwater movements
make your face
shiny
fluid
glass bound in silence
air bubbles held with tired resistance
and words mouthed
like gaping wounds
hello, you say
turning to me at midnight
your skin sheetlike and sleepy
make me angry again
you tell me
muffled fragments like crumbs
i pick up from blankets and feed you
eat those words
i sign to you with forefinger and thumb
let me count the ways
i hate you
wrap me like a movie
it wont take that long







october continues

"oh," I said to myself
while we mingled with acrobats on larkin
his cazals have sent rainbows
to shop windows
and im busy putting hairpins, tigers eye and velvet,
behind my ear-we forgot to smile
on the walk to our apartment-I was
distracted by his hand upon my face
a bum is passed out on post street
holding a book close to his chest
like a loved one
we take a nap under
paintings, graffiti and oil
my face is stuck to his arm at 4 o'clock
and I read the paper
the times
while he brews coffee
heart beating irregular
and mild
isnt it funny to be here again? isnt it funny
that "here" is as temporary as
your goodbyes?

friday freakshow

characters im developing. well. people i find so fascinating for one reason or another who i have the priveledege and good fortune of spending three hours with every friday.

and because its anonymous, the names have been changed.

molly-works in juvenile detention center for community service, owns a seriously divey bar on irving. looks like a combination of anna nicole smith and tammy faye. its frightening. she shakes nervously. her speech is always on the verge of tears. i sit right next to her and she draws on a fake mole right above her upper lip. its really strange and moves around and its all i can look at when i look at her. she has asthma so i get her glasses of water throughout our meeting or else she coughs like crazy and her jangling gold necklaces make so much noise its distracting.

"tug boat" original member of the hells angels. maybe one of the most obnoxious and unnerving people ive ever met. uses the same jokes every time we meet. "sorry, my suit was in the cleaners." constantly looks as if he just came from a 10 day bender, peeled himself off the floor of his own vomit, threw on a ripped worn 49'ers t-shirt, wiped his face with a greasy handkerchief and came to class. his speech is slurred. i never know if hes wasted or just brain dead from years of abuse.
"tug boat" is full of stories. says his friend held the rights to 'brave new world' but sold them. not just his friend, his best friend.
he also bursts out in the middle of the meeting
"wheres the best place to buy a liver? my old lady needs a liver and im gonna get her one."


al wears a hat from lone palm. has blue wolf eyes and looks ruggedly handsome but not. when we leave the meetings he tells me i look familiar and asks me where i hang out. i feel embarrassed the first day that i could have had some really wasted night at some bar and possibly talked to him for hours....that possibly i do look familiar to him because weve met. but i just laugh and say well, san francisco isnt that big, and he winks at me and drives his huge lifted truck around the corner and im standing in a cloud of exhaust.

delaporn is from thailand and hardly speaks english but when we do our weekly check in she says she "feels sad about the businesses and bombs in her home town." its endearing that this 30-something year old is so naive. or stupid.

chris is hot. wears a gold ring, like a family crest, grew up in the valley and looks like an athlete. looks like the boys i grew up with, tan and skin stretched tight over accidental muscles. he looks like he swims, snow boards and knows what its like to hear crickets at night and sleep in the valley heat, the way crush smells. hes the type of boy id fall in love with, hard, sweet desperate love. a boy id love but always, always leave...because his world is too small and my dreams, too big.

max is crazy normal looking. cute almost, has a thick lisp and shifty eyes. he tells us he used to do a lot of speed, like its the most casual thing you could tell a person, had a girlfriend who shot dope and got pregnant but she ran off about three years ago and he never did know what happened to her. his real name is something russian. and long. so we all just call him max and now hes a lab technician and doesnt do speed anymore. says he quit real easy, cold turkey.

this is all i have so far. but it seems like the material will just keep coming....

hablo espanol

¿usted recuerda las palabras que hablábamos?

té del excedente se convierte en de alguna manera

octubre

que llueve, usted las cubiertas que suben y susurro

my ears are mercury

con palabras como

ángeles en agua

and everyone’s got a name for you

pero le llamo mina

usted de quién ojos recogen sombras en olor

de la caída como la tarde dada vuelta a la noche temprana

you are fall and i am summer and we make

las rosas se desmenuzan

y uso la luna como ornamento en mi pelo

take a walk, clear your head, forget the things you never said

omar says whats up angel
on haight street
im walking to get a burrito and i
take the long way
to pass by his house
stand on the curb
for five minutes
smoke a cigarette and chip my nail polish
take a left on webster
smile at some little girls
who dont smile back
on valencia i notice
my shoe broke probably somewhere by davey jones’s house
where there is a huge chunk of cement
sticking out of the ground
where once he ate shit on his skateboard
and we walked to divis
and got an ice cream
tonight its getting colder earlier
somewhere along mission
i notice its fall
and walk a little slower
three people on the sidewalk
do a sideways dance to avoid each other
but we brush elbows anyways
and i wonder how many peoples
elbows
have i brushed in this city
at 23rd i realize i forgot where
the burrito place was
the bank where it used to be
has turned into a dollar store
and im all flipped around
i buy a coconut popsicle from a man
who’s hands look like my fathers
take it to dolores
but its too late and people
are going through garbage cans
and drinking in the dark
i wait for the J train which takes me by
chuva’s house
i like to look in windows on church street
and watch people cook dinner, watch tv
smoke, one arm out the window into their night

this is how a short story starts

i dont remember the first time, cant remember the last time and all of it is falling around me, confetti and sugar cubes, rice flying down stairs of the church and slipping down my dress, into the yards of fabric around my legs, between the tiniest of tiny gaps between mine and his pressed palms. last week we were sitting on the corner curb of 16th and mission, among bum spit and burger king wrappers and now, now we are wearing silly outfits, smiling and hugging old family members we dont know and putting cake into each others face even though i know he doesnt like sweets and he knows i hate his mother. last week we had been regular, had been riding bikes and drinking pabst and today, today were freaking married.

i finally find elijah in the back of the studio, where i had left him that morning, mixing paint and smoking cigarettes and looking at pictures of unicorns on the internet.
“whats up, man, i thought we were going to meet at 8?” it was now 10:30.
elijah turns at me and his hands and arms are entirely covered with pen marks, drawings and words, half sketches that look like math problems and parabolas, smiley faces and phone numbers. this morning he had been clean, we had washed his arms clean.
“lij, what the fuck is all over your arms again? i bought you that notebook for your poems?” i see the notebook still in the bag in the corner.
“linds, i just have to put it anywhere else on paper, you see, i just cant put it on paper. its too
final, and this? these things? they cant be too serious. they have to be as serious as what people say out loud...and how serious is that? what type of change does that make? im not even sure of half the things i read in print. i just cant be like that linds, i dont want to be unbelievable.”
outside a group of kids walk by and i catch their sentences slamming up against each other and the summers hot night, hanging phrases and laughs, suspended frivilous nothings. i want to be one of those kids that talks about nothing, i think. i want to stop all these secrets out loud.

vintage

So

as if your leaving is not enough
youve taken my heart
in your knapsack
next to the bologna sandwich your mother made you
ate both of them under an oak tree
on some back road
some truck bed
and napped afterward, easily
whats wrong with splinters under fingers
and paper cuts
stubbed toes
or bumped heads?
why make blood be on the outside?
or at least mend the gaping wound
at least use needle and thread to put me
back together again
patchwork quilts of eyes and lashes
lips and wrists and waists
and smiles
use the tools from your excavation
to build something beautiful
for yourself
we cant have those shiny, thoughtful hands go
to waste



Good morning,

that day we cut school
took Old Toll Road
out to the waterfalls
slipped into naked and the rocks were warm on our bellies
as you both tried to impress me
with your
mystery
it was somewhere after three i woke up
with cattails in my hair
and sunburned
you both were in the water, diving under
and gasping up like newborns
it was your laughter that woke me
it sounded like
when i was seven
and both of you brought me valentines cards
made of elmers glue
and innocence
that day the sun had made me lightheaded
and looking off my rock
the glare of waterfall and valley summer
made your faces indistinguishable
it turned two into one

To: Colorado/Montana

it wasnt our kind of dive bar
we drank no name beer
and fidgeted and wiped sweat
from our top lips
with crooked fingers
i ate peanuts and pretzels from the bowl on the table
but they were stale
you smelled like body and flannel
i was wearing a slip for a dress
still wet from the gas n' go bathroom sink
where i washed it
and you brushed your teeth
the man at the bar
sits next to a wife giving birth to the moon
her belly swollen and exposed
he says get another shot for ma women
were getting the baby drunk tonight
you swatted a fly away
suggested we take a walk
and outside the night had lit itself on fire
the cement ignited the sky, ignited the car
the womans hair on the corner, the soles of our feet
exploded up and out
you sighed and said, baby, its fucking hot

fish out of water

i cant finish anything ive written in weeks and i hate it. im literally gasping and reeling over the keyboard. drip drip drying my eyes over x's and o's, and nothing feels real. im sorry. im sorry. im sorry. i want this to be real for you.

i dont want to live in grey and its the only place ive been lately, staring at this business card i have at my desk saying, "you are your art."

and my art right now is nothing.

i want to write you love letters and apologies at the same time. that just seems fitting. to say:

i love you, im sorry.
or
im sorry, i love you.

they both just feel so fucking sad.