Thursday, October 4, 2012

Find me


Nowadays I'm over here instead.

Below are some poems from a long ago NaPoWriMo.

Below that, I can't remember.

Monday, May 23, 2011

may.22-23.2011


           
                       
                        often, i am not thinking  about my family


and then           becoming a monster, both of us

creative,
              a mother once pausing
            with bad thoughts
that stick
  in relation to whiter things,
what we consider teeth

children don’t know about wind    or leaning
but they            get to feel their own personal weight

                        & we can put more sections in
                                    that involve my adult steps behind yours
                        our shoulders humming together

            it is not easy to  start thinking about    gravity
            &         what it wants,

picture  rows of feet and how
the height of a body
makes pavement a lot less
     of traveling

it’s this kind of  stacking that
i wish i knew,
how to weep

or at least

pile myself big enough
to hurt people

                  often          i am      proud of the things
            that come out
            but forget about
their leaving

so i       eat unusual foods
outside
                        or near grass
so that i can
                    feel different

toward you
when we’re in the same room


you remind me of
that [one] time
you were so good,
  you said
what
         about          my family

            or my name, once  inhabited

 by little balls of light

                        & i said

let’s be more like shoulders




                        i would never kick anyone
            in the ribs
                        but only because
                                    i cannot reach them



may.22.2011



 I apologize ahead of time        for  all   the

photographs that have               never
                                                been written



for the limbs


we talk about           frequently
bcuz
we have a lot of them
&
they can’t distinguish each other

little categories, sure         
but just
blowing into empty space
           
            slowly

& it’s been a           very
                                    complicated
                               relationship

with my
                                                anything really weighing

on my
                                    last time i honestly can’t

really start meeting folks,    how i relate to mine

the only way     i can     ever      really         see you
           
            through displacement,

you, or glasses of old cabernet
you, or windows with dirty hand signals
you: (a little bit) tricky long-distance
from/manipulation/or/that time we knew about walking home

i would sleep
                        /if i were     something else/
stop being fooled by
                        constant breathing
so i could
  harness
my
    peripheries
in getting lost
                            if i could just be
                            OK
                            and
                            sleepy

but instead,
i am not moving at all until
the week before i am                comfortable,

since there are things          i just can’t say,

but what if i just    deep down
remove the     years ago parts,
            and remember the good fortune
            standing between us
            and what it looks like
            to be a daughter
            when i finally think i can
            stick my hearing around
            the corners of your mailbox
            or tell you about
            the risk of changing topics
            or
            the fucking conversations
            you might compare me to
            if my ears became bobcats
            and i stopped saying thank you




but first, i wanted to
                        get all this down,

so i took my right leg

and then i took my left one
then my right



Monday, May 2, 2011

She wanted second-hand smoke the way his mouth said “hi”


the ocean is not a good idea. is around 6 years old. is full of freckles.
the ocean embarrasses me. low-income, squirming.
makes me feel different around people in tshirts, with long legs,
or else if i pretended to write a letter
and it only spilled out, raw sewage all over,
on the airplane’s descent. the vulnerable anthropologist. 
the ocean is confidently predicted by my embarrassing hunger.
the way we made pretend ocean using ropes and finger-sized breath. 
an embarrassment of riches.  (yes, i did say many…

            but i retextured all the little swimming holes.  the fish,
held in place.  movement and the needles, a sewing that makes thread get thicker.  time
becomes a decoration, or a paperweight.  the ocean unravels into paper, just the same,
children splashing at the water basin, the enamel continuous and shoulder-like.

there’s a way you can rent water for these kinds of things,
said one child dancing on cold circles, ignited and strands dripping, pulled.



the entire scene shifts and focuses on one tiny anchor,
keeping the boat

in place, fifty men caught pushing their least
favorite months into the burning engine.
there’s never been a water cooler more easily filled.

if i could step into it, or you, like so many before me,
putting water on my face with my palms
laid out together as if to tell you
i like the weight, the water pulling our hair
into thick globs of rope, infinite fish,
the one child still under her umbrella,
listening to the circles blown out of your mouth.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

April 27th, 192011


i write “Derrick” in a love poem,
thinking this means people may fall
for,
thinking people other than me are,
sometimes sideways and once,
a small placing like hands or chalk lines,
once tipping over like names that don’t come from,
once naming something inside a person who feels empty.

one time, “maybe people will fall in love with you.”

somewhere, buried in my closet.
somewhere, only my cat knows how to arrive.

sometime, forgetting who it really was.
a certain kind of shimmy, once two-fold, once the better half.

the name, only halfway.

Day Twenty Five/seven/4


as far as               formulas go
it is the capacity
                  
                                    of things in slices
                                                mostly
  where i understand
the importance
                            of literal meaning

how we
            sometimes
walk into
                                 all of it, at once

no sudden                                             basements
            or positing, like
chains    or    family    units,
     pluralities of
          neither           pointing
              backwards
            nor recognizing             numbers that shift

this is why language needs:
without soft               understanding,
my legs             are    no less likely
  than foreign
          words,                                                          kind of
  couches   that suggest  themselves,
by no means     comic
                        editorial
                        overinsightfulness

lost within armchair
&terrible cruelty

here, a first sentence
  is like a strange face:
burdened with the      responses
of lonely dogs,
  not necessarily
            completely
                                    realized,
but a similar
  craving      than
                           horizon,
          was once inspected geography,           was often
the ground,
    approaching our hands                          and
and all anyone can   be
is where the sunset may       happen
thirty years later,

                       our legs
                        continually
                        bending backwards,

trying to remember
                                    once
            fitting our knees
                 in appropriate          categories
           
            or a right   angle   that
used to be                        something,
                                                pretty



after K

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Day, something


I’m being forced to write something.  The sun’s pictures of dead and dying fans squashed against the railings.  I’m not making it into cheapskate lemonade or authoritative figures, not just for dead people but for all images: they’ve no problem with making someone look a bit prettier or more appropriate for the grass photos of stepmother sin.  Do you know that almost all dead people are making some common home decorating mistakes that may make our home look wasted?  They were in and have been scooped up by the river side, not by wealth but understanding.  How ‘bout pictures of really, really large dead people?  Because more children are making it to adulthood, more people are putting up pictures in the house.  So compared to what people have been talking about here the pictures are quite candid.  Does anyone have any advice on making a Catholic Advance Directive?  Who owns the copyright to images of famous dead people?  Chances are they’re making a nice home for themselves in black issues or the naked photos; people have to speak!  How do they embalm people?  By making a purchase of 25% of each journal.  I’ve seen so many creepy pictures.  I’m not totally opposed to making fun of dead people, as long as they’re from Italy, certainly, and the effect of this promiscuous and indecent splashing down into so many wells just makes out a sliver of all the ignorant people.  Is it OK or not?  The importance of making a bunny of yourself involves allegedly trading pictures of people beneath interstate 4.  When I was in high school a quasi-friend died in a car accident; these are the best beauty tips and perhaps, at that time, your understanding of the photos shows little understanding of how people are still dying.  After all, making the desert bloom, carefully laid out and circulating people, nearly 3,000 of them, means you have the authority of the days growing shorter and people still looking for mischief and instrument.  Mt. Everest has around 2,000 dead bodies; the air is so thin that there is no margin for error.  I bet those people must feel like God, like 200 pics of almost everything posted to a Swedish or German website: taking up the information and spreading it along, making censorship next to impossible.