how we recover what is lost

lost, noe valley
found black backpack & duffel bag
sunset
national geographic magazine

looking for good samaritan
photo attached
stolen party
lost my heart...actually, it was kinda stolen

starck glasses
engagement ring
one gold earring
find people
FREE!
found Keys
lost purse in taxi
due to burglary
found on bus & given to driver
a white chihuahua with black shirt found....kind of
lost coin purse/wallet
silver with glass beads
identify it and it's yours -
have you found it?
theres a reward

lost ring - gold with opals and an emerald
lost my orthodontic retainer
ocean beach parking lot
my passport
found in speedway meadows
identify it and it's yours -

free

i have to make a home in you
spiny nests, comfortable with wings
spread
yes -
i have no legs to stand on right now
were rich on a sunday
hey you,
i approach

my home is burned ashes, black stakes
someone tell me that were like two ships in the night
happy birthday from portland, oregon
are you still thinking of me while you're over there?

i still think about you
at gas stations in sonoma
when toys are all we can do
outside academy of sciences
your rendition of perfect day made my day so I gave you a dollar

meet me HERE
some future day well be nice to each other
play songs we like to hear
come out tonight
well be HERE
but I am always yours

you are so pretty.
busy and counting -
and counting



girl with purple scarf 8pm 9pm gone


I think after everything -
your green eyes are blue
two friends hitchhiking on east cliff to ocean
meeting on friday
adult world on el camino real
SFO long term parking
ice cream at whole foods
cafe trieste boy
russian hotties at borders
cute couple with very cute puppy
so far no news

im ambidextrous

every morning, golden gate park, i'll teach you
how to keep LIARS away -
I was not DELUSIONAL about you smiling - (I did not even LOOK AT YOU)


mendocino
you on the radio
windy ocean hillside
cup your hands, hold still
fasten your belt to that bus
tuck me in that space between shoulder blades
i dont need much
after dark, epic, balcony, cigarette
goodnight

ramble gamble

i guess last night on the bus ride home listening to gaga and eating pizza i stole from hydeout i got hella passionate and wrote myself some notes in my phone. this is what that looks like:

im your biggest fan, i'll follow you until you love me

bubble wrap a dinosaur and send it to yourself in argentina for your next birthday so that even if you dont live there someone will get a gift in the middle of july

controlled burns is what they call them, but theres nothing contained about wildfire

exposed brick is hot

el guincho-alegranza!

irish mark whos "really" puerto rican

stevie as a girls name

why are we waiting for the thing we want the most? why are we not doing exactly everything that we want? why do we hold bakc, make timelines, create far off goals, extend deadlines...so that when that day actually comes we are too tired, too heartless, too forgetful, too stuck. i dont want that for us, we can move just as fast, be just as quick, as agile as life. we have it now...this desire, this want, we have everything we want now...

books to look up tomorrow: kevin henkes "kittens first full moon", "the prophet", read "eat pray love" even though its on oprahs book list and like ten people on the bus probably have it in their bags. right. NOW.

hot pink and red can be pulled off by very few people. remember this if you ever get pink eye.



apparently there was a LOT on my mind last night, preach on sister, preach on....

dry spell

train conversations are the worst. an awkward, pale handshake across laps, bags crammed under feet and half shouting your name, nice to meet you, over iphones and ear buds, rain slicker backs turned and daisy ringed hair bands. its eager eyes on the 71, sitting on a fire escape balcony with your michigan roommate turned best friend, smoking pot instead of going to your low paying job, singing songs that remind you of 6th grade, getting lost in berkeley, swearing to your mother on the phone because youre late. its bright clothes and shiny bangles, are these free treasures, the skinny street boy asks me, and my life is spread across concrete, rich, yet defeated. lonely against stark shark white sky. if he is the moon, then i am eclipsed, she says, a growl, a dark whisper, like black paint into sharp pointed night. i feel this way the last month i am alive, the last month before i have no idea what i am anymore. a gypsy vagabond, floats too close to the surface, bubbling over and babbling about. close wound, seal tight, lift gently, shake well, close to cover. rinse. repeat.

last glance

a note
three years in pockets
deep with loose change
ink so faded
thin, worn, your hands rubbed velvet
moleskin
tired, time
pulled down petticoats
finally, finally
evening has come
your tie
is too tight
our faced bunched
browned
like old grapes
harvest
crush, you say

digestion

wednesday in san francisco. bayview is just children over airplane hum and rush of freeway like water. freight trucks crashing across uneven on ramps and neon kids with wild hair fly by holding buckets of oatmeal, pins and needles and fish. the sun killing off any sad residue, wiping the table clean with windex and paper towels, yesterday grey and then the sky opens up with hail like a giant mouth and b is saying "i just dont understand" on the phone from oakland, having argentina dreams, delirious on making something happen, getting a plan, a plane, outta here and we both just laugh and say "i got nothing" despite these three whole weeks away. wednesday is weird like that, mid week, mid feelings and everyones calling on the phone, waiting for the weekend and stretching out their "im fines" lazy long like a cat.

its anything now, a song mostly, a word, an N train, rush of steamroller by my window at night, where i have restless dreams and wild thoughts and tired tremors, a third cup of coffee when your hand holding your cigarette is shaking, a face, the back of someones head, and its true, your aunt was right, you dont have to look very hard. you are everywhere.

i cant say your name without blushing, without uneasy stomach and nervous hands. i think about you in all of my writing and every sentence turns to you. it has been such an incredibly long week. i want to say i miss my friends, i miss you, but these words are even a fraction of how i feel. those words dont make sense anymore. saying i miss you is missing b, missing his smell while he is gone, but one i can still bring up, can still create, can still find in my sheets where i know he will return. missing him makes me ache, makes me sad and lonely and my heart hurt but it is a happy missing, it is the missing of something that fits, something that will hopefully return to its place again and lock in and all that missing will be worth something when he smoothes back my hair and calls me little lady right before sleep. there is no comparison. missing you, its like missing your youth, missing the way your mother used to be able to fix things, missing summer, that last summer before college, before moving away from home, missing the first drunk, the way nothing will compare to the first time he touched you, missing something that is lost, love that left you, love that you believed in and is now gone. the missing of something that will not, ultimately, ever return. the missing is easy, but what do you do with all that hurt?

graffiti walls fly by on the mint building, im on some bus, bringing me downtown to my boy, where all the buildings are grey and faces, red, wind chapped and unsmiling. i cant get there fast enough and all i want to do is hold him and say im so happy to see you because it will be true. and im into telling the truth right now. i get to the bar before him and reapply chapstick three times, come back from the bathroom and he is sitting there, making a face at me all the way from the back of the room. i sit down and he just says, you look so happy, and its funny how differently we see things, how much better i am at being myself than i thought, that what i had felt on the train over, the replaying of one song, the desperation, the sadness, the fear of not making great things, that all of that has been washed away on the walk to lukas, the trip to the bathroom, the staring at myself in the mirror, the placing of a smile on and seeing his face. seeing him waiting for me, that moments can change so quickly, that life moves so quickly.

pattern alteration

Page 101

by frightening them
low
what sort of man is he?
we wasnt willing, however,
he was very nice about it
where there any others?

why, thats rediculous







What Happened

brokenly,
you didnt tell me how she was hurt
the look on
her

his little girl!
in what condition would he find her
when he reached the end of this soul-trying
drive?


Queen Margaret

as i trust it will, to be a kind prince to me, for i shall never marry but where you bid me,
nor never part from your grace, for i will never of my own free will abide here. send me
your pleasure and what your grace will do for me, for all my hope and trust are there.


Chapter II

this year was a very unquiet one
fighting
among
manhood
courage.
he was unfaithful
forgive even less readily than she could his dishonesty

she knew that he was the only person
with all her schemes
that was not cleaver enough
and writing pathetic letters

she implores him to return


your face is like backroads
after rain
november
and its just guitar and
dirty chewed fingernails
stale car heater and
drive through coffee cups
lets a take a drive
turn this car upside down
tilt our faces up to rain
sing out
sing out
against your side
your smile
like lazy sunday
beach morning sunlight
vaulted up like a king
coast air
salt water
ill trace my finger down your arm like
rail road tracks
baby, the next train has already left
you better be on the next one at noon

slip and slide

a flock of birds rises up from smoke stacks and exhaust pipes, against patchy clouds, blue sky, 5:00 early evening horizon, and all i see is brake lights, necks in cars twisted up and around behind and upside down, rearview mirrors reflecting the black mass, the flock of birds, so enormous in the sky, dark outlines, her wrist on a wire, an entire arm encircled in black there are so many birds, the freeway jams, my radio slides on and were under a bridge downtown, a birds eye view. you are in the puffs of clouds and explosion of birds from foggy rainy wet evening, so many that the freeway slows down, time slows down, everyone is getting it this time and no one honks their horn, no one glares from car window, its just up, up up and away in amazement. i havent seen birds like that anywhere but calistoga, rising from mustard and vineyards, drives home from st. helena and i can drive those roads blindfolded, so i just look up into the fields and the sky and it slips into a blanket of birds and i let this comfort me on my drive home, if even for a moment during this three week storm, i am finally warm.

i have coffee with dayna and chad and we push food around on our plates and bum lighters for our cigarettes that we must have, can i get another cup? im asking and were not in any hurry, i could chill for awhile, chad says, a slight grin held between bridge of freckles and all of us, natural and comfortable, easy with our smiles, our words, easy in posture and grievance, we sit a little longer as the sun moves across the backyard, smoke and talk and i love feeling like this, like i could say anything id like and it would be alright. the slip and slide of conversation between friends, new or old, but friendly, kind, gentle people is priceless, i just hope everyone has this, i hope that people all over can feel this safe. where there is excitement, there is fear, anxiousness to be alone, but i know, i know, that i will never be alone. there is a call i can make, in any direction and that call would be answered with what do you need? i am here for you. i havent felt this sure in a long time.

baby k and i drive the freeway to our little city, we cant see it through the haze from berkeley, neither of us wear shoes and he doesnt stop moving the minute i turn music on in the car. the bridge is quiet and we hardly speak but when we do, its outbursts of sound, fast moving and reckless, reminescent of our weekend, laughing hysterically and tap, tap, tap touching the dashboard, looking at each other and smiling, slow smiles, im so in love with our friends hes saying, and this is how it happens, how mine have become his and i love this world, for a minute, for the rest of the day i am grateful. i want to stay in that place, where inside a car, on a freeway, exhausted with a 19 year old boy, moving wildly next to you, things seem pure and simple and being grateful for great friends is the biggest accomplishment, really, nothing else matters as much.

in the rest of the world things move too quickly, your boy comes home and you cant believe you are actually touching his face, after what feels like the longest trip. you sleep soundly next to him, make sure your leg is resting gently, but enough, against his warmth, that pressure is comforting and your eyes push open to him in the night and he is still there, he is still there, he is still here. in the real world, you have to make tough decisions, you have to drive your mother to the doctor, you have to feel helpless as you see a fight on the freeway overpass and your voice to 911 is small and full of fear, you have to talk in code to your father about the weather, see if he can attempt to decipher what you really, really mean. in the rest of the world people die, too early, too soon and you cant cry about it anymore. the last tears came in a bathroom, youre wearing a neon hoodie and a visor and sunglasses and drinking a beer, watching two boys play guitar and you just start crying because of the unfairness of it all. you cant cry anymore, and although you want to keep talking about it, when you boy asks you whats wrong, whats happening, tell me something, your mouth closes and your heart beats real, hard and strong and quick, and you just cant. you just cant cry about it anymore. so you slip and slide, you paint your face, you put on clothes that are not yours, you sleep in beds that arent yours and hold hands with anyone that will. in the rest of the world you try to make your small world exist and on rare days, a flock of birds will bring that feeling around, on a rare night, a kiss can change everything, a dream of other places and feet on new ground can make those worlds crash collide burst panic stricken and resistant into one.