some day i will find friends
who keep their word

too good to stay like this
soon something is heavy
and all sinks down, down to drab slumber
Days and Days and Nights will be the same
soon
because this happiness is so fleeting

my companions are
disappointment
and a cold night.

when
you say "I'm there for you"
Do you know it is a lie?

Perhaps I ask too much:
to be here,
to be loved.

But I am all alone
except for the solitude
and
those words

Burning little lies
to pull over my shoulders,
and keep me warm as I fall asleep.

dear dream self,
please stop committing grisly murders. It is making me quite tired,
and a little nervous.
Thanks.

wondering if
I just met my soul mate
and he slipped away
into the invisible

a warm evening in september
a couple rocks their baby on the porch
leaves drifting down cascadilla
crickets still chirping

thank god my next birthday is a year away.

12 am bacon run
i love the way the rain falls at night
caressing the streets with slick and glitter,
independence on my skin
As my feet dash out in the moonlight
unseen by anyone
running with the rivulets
to a destination unknown

and back again, to feed my earthly appetite

kipple

I feel illiterate, a graduate grasping
onto the last word I read:
kipple.
the world filling up with it.
On a cool evening I ride by cemeteries, doused in long honey light,
past old sheds with wobbly ladders, broken window frames,
potted plants (long since dead), hula hoops and giant inflatable snowmen perishing in the autumn sun,
cigarettes, sticks of gum, treadless tires
snapple caps, pens, dimes
Popsicle sticks, the foil tops of yogurt cups
old tooth brushes, condom wrappers among the leaves
USB cables, telephone cables, coiled like a rat king
promotional cds, nutri-grain wrappers
the tabs from orange juice bottles
outdated cameras, batteries
tired shoes and fishing lures
some times the sheer magnitude is terrifying
i pass a can and bottle redemption center, cans block out the windows, their weight seems to have cracked the glass
I cannot keep a record of what I throw away -
I have also given in, lured by shiny packaging, tastes and smells and statuses
How freely
ordinary happy people use,
how desperately ordinary unhappy ones
buy and sell and waste.

I walk with my bike, mostly
afraid of dying
I can see how this may progress
to agoraphobia
surrounded by the boxes
in which I create and store life.

I don't want to be buried in a box
bones shifting up and down with the frost
weeds covering a forgotten weathered tomb --
but
i'd like people to have somewhere to go back to
if they feel they must commune
there's always something compelling about those beaten stones
filling up the fields,
endless kipple
those vanished bodies, cities of the dead



*Kipple appears to have been coined by sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick, in his novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=kipple
*Rat King: a group of rats that becomes tangled together by the tails and become one organism (30 Rock)

manic

I'm plotting,
I'm planning,
I'm designing,
I'm dancing
I'm breathing,
I'm diving
I'm changing,
I'm thriving,
I'm quick and I'm agile
I slip through the night
Without a whisper
like starlings in flight.

I'm sketching ideas - and
fleshing out bones
I'm coloring the air
and making a home.

I'll shape
I'll contort
I'll create
and I'll change

I'll be free, I'll be just
I'll be strong
I'll be strange

I won't slip
I won't slumber
I won't cry
I won't fall

I'll do what I do
and outrun them all:
Those fears that don't stop
don't fail and don't fade
thick like a river
that's too deep to wade.

Real Person with Cat

The air is still warm on this august evening. Walking through the city, I skim past the rhododendrons and the freshly cut lilac stumps, a smashed “honest tea” bottle lingering on the sidewalk and an old man in rolled up khakis pushing a shopping cart. I like to record these sights, for they are insignificant and fleeting, perhaps noticed only by me. Couples hold hands, strolling across the painted stripes of crosswalk, beckoned by a blinking hand. I know the corners of these streets by now, although they are still unfamiliar. I know which doorway the curly-haired homeless man sits, eyes forever vacant.

It feels as though I am the only one alive, walking these streets – but perhaps I am the only one unconscious. I am still half asleep as I retrace my route back to the apartment, a paper bag of freshly-ground coffee nestled in the crook of my arm. For a weekend, 7:00 p.m. is the real waking time – I feel strange and distant, as though on the cusp of something different. Perhaps I am about to meet someone new and exotic, and forget all of my present happiness for a future of uncertainty.

There is the clack of skateboards in the street when I get home, and the sliver of a crescent moon in the light sky. I sit on the porch and eat my dinner, green beans, garlic bread, and potato salad, feeling more like a voyeur than someone enjoying the outdoors. The viola player is silent tonight; perhaps it is dinner time for her too. The thing I like best – and perhaps dislike the most about this new apartment – is the ability to people-watch. It startles me a bit that they have the right walk by, to live here, to see me: they are not trespassers. All of them belong here; the teenage skaters, the moms pushing strollers, the bald bicyclist, and the girl with buds in her ears who picked three flowers out of the garden this afternoon. Here is a man with shorts and loafers, an orange shirt and matching orange man-purse. Even from here I can see his open mouth as he listens to the phone at his ear. I know the passersby can see me too, through my illuminated windows, but they hardly ever look up. I imagine that if one did, he might wave, to acknowledge my existence. But I will most likely stay a ghost.

everything seems alternately wonderful and hopeless

jobless, homeless

potentially

free

Things I'm interested in

geology and paleontology
ornithology
biology / genetics
Electricity
Long chain polymers
Anthropology: forgotten cultures, hunter-gatherers, cosmology
Odyssey
Re-drawing of country/region borders

sick

silly to think
this was all in the past
sick to my stomach
every time I laugh.

there's too much ozone
in my head / heart/ and brain
it's filling my lungs,
scalding like acid rain.

on hot days I find out
what you really feel,
the way you pick at me;
A scab that won't heal.

I sit in the heat
trying to visualize--
an alternate end,
where nobody dies.

maybe I'm just sick
like sweat on my face, as
my insipid rhymes
puke all over the place.

sort this out

1. I've lived a lot in this house
Laughed until the air ran out
Buried my face
And cried and howled
Filled with some accomplishments
and many regrets.
I have a lot to clean out
before I'm ready -
Stark and blank
To leave again.
I've lived a lot in this house
I hope I live as much elsewhere


2. i'd let you see me
without my walls
whatever's there that's real
if i knew how
and wasn't afraid
you'd notice


3. I don't have to wonder if I'll be alone in the future
I don't wonder because I know
I don't know about God or Love;
I know this.


4. We don't choose who we love
the choice is to accept
and defend it to all who ask

You've been running through my dreams...

i dream about library ghosts
forgotten luggage
and rejection letters

unprepared
self discipline isn't something
I've cultivated

No one calls.
Can they tell -
everything makes me exhausted.
Am I a pariah?

interview me;
I'll tell you I'm reliable
But I'm beginning to doubt my reliability
except for sleep.

Me time

Accomplishment: full day
I walk along streets
lined with the hum of air conditioners
bated breath and highway hustle

a taught blue sky
and humid leaves scurry
in the wake of my purposeful steps
i feel so self-sufficient

I run, I fetch and carry
the rudiments of my imperfect life:
all that's necessary,
at my fingertips

5 p.m. comes hot and slow,
still the light stretches across the yard
where sun-sick children whine and drag their feet for home
and I still have ambition
to tackle chores and creativity.

So - I spend the day -
An independent soul - almost forgetting
my existence is defined
by being alone

Evening falls as though to say, what's the matter baby
as if an answer is merely a word
that dies, like memory, unnoticed -
and solace only ebbs like the sea

I wish I could say
the future's not more of the same
in my bell jar

no dial tone

can't connect.
like clockwork
I feel as though my world will never entice me back again.

Listen up, Me.

I do deserve this, all of it.
I work hard, and I do my best. I am a good person.
Bu this is overwhelming
like a dream, a fairy tale.

It seems too good to be true.

learning

life isn't any different today -
there's so much to learn
always always, each facet of life -
I have so far to go still.
sometimes it excites me;
and sometimes I shut down,
overwhelmed

life without you is just the same.

"

loving you was just a waste of time

on grungy gray sundays

when the pavement runs

and all my eyelashes kiss

is mist.

crumpled

if i lie still
i almost can't feel anything
at all

My toes become part of the bedspread
my knees the sheets
my thighs are pillows
my head a cotton comforter

If i lie still
and listen to the mattress breathing
I almost can't feel anything.

I almost can't feel foolish - I believed in change.

today

today is an orange sunday,
aluminum on the wind
a silent morning
i feel safe.

Isn't there anyone in the world who's willing
to listen to me,
even when I don't want anyone
to hear how broken I am?

today the first graders told me that they were proud of me.

Good Day

i had a good day
today.
the sun shone and I was alive:
I breathed, and wrote, and walked and spoke
I left my hermit home.

but it's pathetic
how dependent my life is on you.
YOU YOU YOU. You wily hook. You desperate sparkle
in the watery iris of the world.

Pathology, mythology of the mind:
Here I am - feeling nauseous
strung up like a gutted fish
and flapping on my pole.

So betrayed at the thought
you went to sleep without me.
you don't need me
to be your friend - anymore -

Do you ever think of me
so strongly
It could cut like a Subtle Knife through my loneliness?
I think not.

so I'll go to sleep, floundering
disgusted
a good day
should end like this.

Soon I'll have another friend
my shiny bait, my blessed goal--
Soon I'll forget
the times I felt so tired of good days.

every time I'm happy
the rebound is so empty

Perhaps I'd rather
feel nothing at all.

I love you because I'm only human.
I want to hold you so tightly,
the tears in my eyes free themselves --
A sinking feeling in my stomach says
I think this is about to change.

poem by dad

SNOW HANGS LIKE WILD HONEYCOMB
FROM THE EAVES,
ICY FINGERS,
POLISHED NAILS.

The snow dragon

I think I have some kind of anxiety disorder.

Fall 09: Leaving

The Box Room
In shoe boxes, in milk crates, in plastic bins
I store the accumulations of my life—
These are the things I couldn’t carry with me;
Too heavy, too old, too useless
They slough away like shedding skin.

Underneath the sloping brown-paper ceiling of the Box Room
Is the Lion King tent, the old plastic swimming pool,
the bee-hive screens, doll-heads, shuttles from the loom,
the Christmas ornaments and tangled thread,
Dad’s electrician kits, lonely pairs of one-worn shoes,
clothes I never liked---and ones I liked too much,
holes in the knees of ancient jeans, my baby blankets…
The musty reminders of
What I have abandoned, what I’ve left behind.

Here is a box of legos, rattling like the loose teeth
The fairy hid in a jewelry box on Mom’s dresser.
Here are the plastic dinosaurs; triceratops and brachiosaurus,
pterodactyls and a mastodon whose tusks have been bitten off
Lizards tumbled into a plastic birdcage
Tails and legs twisted,
Their adventures are all but forgotten.

I left behind my red-headed Ariel doll
The one Dad didn’t want me to have because he thought it was a Barbie
But my sister was visiting, and she bought it for me anyway.
Underneath the glittery mermaid tail, the doll’s feet were flat and rubbery
Not like Barbie at all.

I left behind the teddy bear named Dora
The quill pens I cut from turkey feathers
My pink rubber Oshkosh boots
The sound of peep frogs in the pond across the road
The clatter of rocks when I walked across a stonewall
The way frost covers the windows
And how to slide on an ice-glazed pond.

I left behind goodnight songs and stories
Pressing my nose against the Green-room window every night
As I watched the red light blinking on a far off hill
And whispered, “Good night, Radio tower.”
And wished on a star.
I remember the wishing
But not the wish.
Maybe it’s in those boxes
Somewhere beneath that sloping roof.


Ebony
At home there’s a black cat in the window
A sphinx-like friend
Who sits on the foot of my bed
And blinks her glowing eyes.

Pets are good for you, they say
They eliminate stress—
That must be what I feel
When she runs across the tiles to greet me
It’s such easy companionship

She
Crouches on my knees
The throb of her larynx just below my fingers
The bones in her jaw
Like the core of an apple—this
Is her existence.

Her nose is cold against my palm
She looks up at me all pointy-eared
Her head on my chest
We see each other upside down.

Cats are liquid, they say
Well she slips like mercury
Between my fingers
I don’t want her to evaporate.









Fires in the Green Room

Cold.
Cold is both here and home
And the homestead’s insulation is thin.
But I know now
there’s nothing like a fire to warm you

Here, I turn the thermostat
Heat comes to life, an automatic roar.
But shivering in my apartment’s draft
I know this is not warmth.

I remember: the Green Room
The snow is piled high against the windows
And long rays of light filter in
Above the eaves, icicles shiver

3 p.m. and the air’s getting cool
Knocking snow from our boots,
Dad and I hurry down to the cellar
and gather up the kindling
for the Franklin stove.

The fire takes words
crumpling their ink
and turning yesterday’s news to ash

Then carefully piled twigs come ablaze
eager young branches
and guttering logs.

If the wood is too damp
The fire will blaze and flounder
And you must squat on the stones
And breathe on the coals.

This is what I remember
Warming me.

But here there is only a gush
Of tepid and dusty air
Pretending warmth against my skin



Electricity Outage
Home alone, lightless
I wait in the cold.
It’s so hard to be positive
Sitting alone in the flickering light of a candle
Because snow lies too heavy on power lines.

It’s 4 pm and it’s too dark to read
And the candle flutters too quickly
To steady my eyes with light.
The heat’s off and I’d rather not
Move from the couch where the blanket covers me.

What would we do, I wonder
Without television
Without the internet
Without light and heat and microwaves?
How soon we will perish. I think.
I think, how unfamiliar this darkness feels.

At home, I know where Dad keeps the flashlight
By the radio-cassette player and the tin lunch boxes
The matches and candles
And the ever-ready woodpile.
But here in the city, with lights all around
I thought I’d left the shuddering candle
on Rural Route 2.

I’d taken for granted
The warm showers
The toaster
The electric kettle
The light on the inside of the refrigerator.

But here I am
Thinking so much about myself
And none of it is going anywhere;
All fluttering in darkness
And the future will always be this room.
So I open the door
And go out into the snow.





Remembering Loneliness
Hello old friend
I wish I had left you behind.
But you follow me
Like a habit, whining at my heels.

I can drive across states
And still
You are waiting right there,
To remind me I’m alone.

You whisper to me of 9th grade dances
And empty summers
Foreign beaches
4H meetings, field trips
And state fairs.

You wave to me as
I stand on the edge of a crowd
Surrounded by laughter
Still pretending that I belong.

Yesterday I existed outside circles
Waving, peeking, asking to be let in.
And tomorrow I will still be as invisible
As an only child.

Oh loneliness—you belong to me,
For every time I would abandon you
I clutch you tightly;
You are so familiar.

I eat another meal in silence—
Feel you creeping up to embrace me;
And wish you would go,
Because I’m just another performer
In this mad dance of incompleteness,
Everyone as alone as me.








The Problem with Leaving
The problem with leaving
There are just so many things
Little odds and ends
Untied shoes and mate-less socks.

Who keeps the oven mitt,
The pie pan
The poster of the Eiffel tower
The soup spoons.

Where’d we keep
All the things
That really matter

There are so many boxes to pack
So many goodbyes
And notes
And words left unsaid.

When you think
It’s time to go
You still need
To fill the car
And the gas tank
Close the door,
Lock it
And return your keys

I wouldn’t feel so bad about leaving
If I could just
Stand up,
And go.

Youngest Wal-Mart Employee

Youngest wal-mart employee ever
she said with a grimace
grinding her finger
into a heavy set nostril
and laughing with a smoker's throat
that bleached do' shaking
as she shoved off
to attend to children, four years on the planet
whose future has already been set
in the stone of her gray matter.

cells lyse

too scared to admit the truth
our fear filled us up
right to the very brim - until
with a hiccup in the throat,
a soft sigh of tearing muslin...

we vanished
engulfed by the endless future

split up and spilled open
like some ripened rotting fruit
our existence stretched so thin
even our cells could not hold