past all accident.

Read this immediately.

You won't regret it.

As Planned

courtesy of Frank O'Hara

because, at this point, it's been well established that his are the poems that I wish I wrote. And, because, well, it's been a awhile since I've posted.

It's been a strange few weeks. I'll write more soon, once I feel like reflecting.

In the mean, herewith:

After the first glass of vodka
you can accept just about anything
of life even your own mysteriousness
you think it is nice that a box
of matches is purple and brown and is called
La Petite and comes from Sweden
for they are words not their feelings
or what they mean and you write because
you know them not because you understand them
because you don't you are stupid and lazy
and will never be great but you do
what you know because what else is there?

Insomnia

Easing myself to sleep, but you won't
let me. You, siren who keeps calling me back, holding my wrist.
And I obey, letting hours pass,
too much wine, thinking

beside me is too far. And, yet, you remain clever,
too close to dream of me.

I ache, you dream, but only of indian summers and nighttime
when it's at its most aggressive, pressing down, the air growing crisp.
You dream, grow wistful, woozy,
as if the alcohol's in you, instead. You wouldn't recognize me,

not in your sleep.

You sleep soundly, and we grow further and further apart.
I watch the shadows, formed moonlight. No courage.
The sound of your breathing bears down.

[untitled]

I am not the kind of girl you'd take home
to your mother. Had she seen me last night,
she would not have approved. I wandered
glassy-eyed, voice as smoky as the bourbon I sipped,
cracking from laughing too loud,
trying to get you to notice me.

What would she say? And
would you listen? Or just tilt your head back, smile,
let light catch in your hair?

Did you even see? Or, were you too busy
talking film with the woman at the bar?
Too red lips forming a question mark on her glass,
fingerprints leaving it grease-streaked.
You probably thought she was beautiful, and

I'm sure she was.
Would you light her cigarette? Lecture
her about the dangers of carbon monoxide? The thinning
ozone, how it's causing the polar ice caps to melt? The
rising cost of living and flour and gas and, well, everything?
Is that what beauty is?

If you stare at the sun too long,
is all you see blinding whiteness?
I bet you could get some great pictures.
Not like the one on your first license that
you won't show to anyone.
Do you have your passport?
I want to travel the world and
see far-flung places so that

I have stories to tell.

and, one more for the road

lullaby

I was up tonight, you
on top of me
the steady in and out
of your breathing
pressing down.

The stars were out in full force.
I watched them, and
you. Watched as you tugged at
the blanket, leaving me with less
and less.

Only, you didn’t watch
back. And, you always tell me to
ease in, but
I don’t believe in moderation.

So I watched. I am not so arrogant
as to think that
you should think only of me,

but, you should

at least occasionally, maybe
while you
sleep.

Stay with me, wide eyed and
insomniac. I don’t smile much these days.
Maybe its just lack of sleep, but
I’m taking that as a sign
of something.

From the vault

I'm hoping to get inspired to really, really start writing again.

In the mean, here is one more recent discovery:


Summer of Sam

It's an old photo, the beginnings of their
collective history.

Can you tell what I'm holding, he asks.
I think a law book, think this is when he passed the Bar,
think it's the Summer of Sam
when he would ask her to pick him up— Main Street, Flushing—
despite her long brown hair and mounting fears.
So does she.

Of course, I remember it wrong, having
never been there. Having not even been a thought
to them.

It is my fault—their child—for refreshing her incorrect memory.

I see that now;
See how I've stepped in, disrputing the chronology.

It's a checkbook, he says. I was buying
your mother her engagement ring.

He cracks a joke
about his generosity. And,
he is generous.

I am not, with my false memories
of events I
have not witnessed.

They are so young, and
they are smiling
so broadly.

He, with his checkbook,
his first major purchase.
Later, more will follow:
mortgages, children, college educations;
the buying of a life.

And, she, gazing forward
with eyes burning, fierce. As dark
as her long chestnut hair.

Later, she will cut it, shorter
and shorter,
dying it, lighter
and lighter. Trading
cosmetics for youth. Seeking
the protection she lacked
so many years prior.

Fair Usage

I'm on a Bob Creeley kick.

Here's why:

The Sentence

There is that in love

which, by the syntax of,

men find women and join

their bodies to their minds

—which wants so to acquire

a continuity, a place,

a demonstration that it must

be one's own sentence.

Ten degrees fahrenheit

It's bitter. Too cold to snow, even,
and I am drinking
far more than is advisable,
yes,

but, far less than is
necessary.

It's not as bad as all that.

Cleaning out the house

Cleaning house this morning, I found these two [somewhat old] poems. Of course, the real issue is, what am I doing up so early on a Saturday?

Herewith:

It was one of those nights
that wraps itself up—
your red shirt that
turns all my clothes to pink
and I wouldn’t mind
but all you offer is some strangely named drink
ordered just to impress
our waiter. Cuban margaritas this time—equal
parts rum lime amaretto
no tequila or salt.
Not even a margarita, really,
So, what is it that you call love? Last week
it was a dirty martini, which tasted of
oceans and gulls, circling above
and gazing too intently
to see what they could scavenge.
Well, take it all.
I’ve nothing left to give
save myself, which you have not seen
and there are names for that too.


still life with blue

You will remain
forever changing, forever
remaining consistent in that. It’s comforting,
in a way. In the same way our collective silence is
provided it’s punctuated by the sound
of a garbage truck moving up our street
slowly making the week’s refuse smaller and
smaller until it's gone. There’s some solace in that
as there is in Sunday mornings in winter
in air that tastes of embers
and in you sleeping late, allowing the garbage
to remain uncollected, allowing birds to sift through
it for the perfect length of blue yarn to make
their nests home.