OMG Poetry

I was thinking about my old poetry today, and I was a little shocked to realize that it wasn't collected anywhere really, just incredibly scattered through my old livejournal. Blah. So I collected it. I haven't written anything new in about three years. I've tried to force the issue occasionally, but never ended up with anything good, which is too bad because I really, really like to write poetry when I actually feel like writing it, but... anyway, here it is. I think the last one is my favorite, usually. And "conversations with James" is really funny, in retrospect.


firebug

the last time you came home you dragged all these
old bits of my life out onto the lawn
to have a bonfire you said hey baby
pull up a chair, come here and get warm
it was the last time I saw you laugh,
the last time I heard you smile
and pieces of my heart were going up all the while

and we picked through the memories
and pulled apart the minutes and years
and tossed them all in the kindling pile
and laughed at everyone's stupid fears
you laughed because maybe it was better for you that way
and I laughed because I didn't have anything else to say
my tongue got in the way

in a way it was forever you know, no one ever
wants to leave. when you're burning everything
you've got cold and hot can last an eternity
and you know too how everyone always thought
for some reason we had a lot- I guess that shows
what everyone knows. when you left I sat and watched
until it all burned down to the coals


9/11

ten thousand miles away from
the crashing and burning
and the bodies
in a Japanese hotel
I unwrapped a cake of soap
thick with coconut flakes
and a razor
a toothbrush
a heavy plastic cup
no radio
I noticed
hot water flowing
into the bath tub


scotch and water

everything I see is broken
like the pieces of a bottle
full of whiskey by the river
there was summer in the water

it was August, I remember
she was dancing in the fountain
her hair melting in the darkness
and her skin reflecting moonlight

scotch and water flowing through us
down the river and around
and the fragments of her story
like a poem on the ground

she was singing like a mermaid
who is terrified of drowning
and holding on to everything
even though it was falling


for my family, wherever this moment finds

ice is the sign for waiting
a virtue in the north
stone cold opposite of fickleness
which stops the wheels of wagons
and sends frost crawling
razor sharp over windowpanes
and slick on snow

time stretches

space stretches

the double mirror plane of the sky bent back
reflects here and there the echoes of
dead stars and so, we walk around outside -
who knows? we are all overwhelmed
by the strangeness of convexity

how to speak, then, solid as this bouncing lens
transparent with the distance of the
things that blood and water hold in memory?

too much is made of action
while galaxies tilt and slip and go on existing
and legend upon legend slides into oblivion
across the surface of the same constellation


untitled (rock and roll)

and rock and roll
is in my blood
she said
out of my mouth
sideways
she said
boots and leather
seven times
she said
an incantation
we're dead
heaven on earth
getting out of our skulls


poem I wanted to write when I was seventeen

bloodsuckers damply fluttering
battering, hovering at the edges
of the light like a
seeping bloodstain

wings of tissue and crinoline
wings of moss and darkness
wings of lace and laudanum
and rain

looking in all the wrong places
flickering synapse ghosts
blood is not warmly forgotten
they are here again


pulse

a house has a heartbeat, deep and slow
thick with small pulses and sleepy breathings
i never said i wanted you to go, loves, and yet...
fingers in my ears or no
through air and walls
my heart can hear you leaving


love settles

love settles in lightly
butterflies in the stomach
indigo, scarlet
metamorphosing

love settles in lightly
mud between the teeth
packed, sun-baked
white adobe


ohm namah shivayah
(you change everything)

the moment in which
I wrap my arms around you
curve of my chest to the curve of your back
one palm against the back of your neck
and breathe with you

forever– not a word for you and me, love,
except, forever: how far away your kiss takes me
and, forever: how long I'll never ever forget

the moment in which
i wrap my arms around you
curve of my chest to the curve of your back
one palm against the back of your neck
and think of the moment in which
you wrap your arms around her
curve of your chest to the curve of her back
one palm against the back of her neck
and breathe with her


conversations with James

when James came to my house he told me this story:
a man asked him if his shoes where gay. he asked what the man meant. the man said people would think he was gay. he asked if the man thought he was gay. the man said no.
I looked at his shoes. they were kind of gay.
I said "that's the kind of question you have to hope people will ask you, though"
"I guess so" said James "at least I didn't get beat up"
"that's a possibility I should probably consider more often" I said
"it's better if you don't" he said

James said "I guess there are some things we'll never really have to discuss"
"like what?" I said
"like cars" said James
"I guess you're right" I said "we'll probably never really have to talk about cars"

James said "about Sara, I agreed to some things because she wanted them,
but I never really thought we would be together forever"
it was the first thing he had said of which I was particularly skeptical

James said "are you good at stealing things?"
I had to consider that. I said "no I don't think so"

James said "I bet you'll really like Lizzie. I bet you'll really like Degra too."
I don't know if I will. I guess I'll find out soon enough

we were talking about an artist's work "it's fine though" James said
I said "what's the alternative? it's just not okay?" I was laughing
"something will have to be done" James said

James said "I've seen your husband throw away too many relationships by being dishonest"
my husband has said the same thing about James, but the difference is I haven't seen it

I said "do you want to see where we used to get the refrigerators?"
James said "yes" and then he said "do you want to climb this hill?"
I said "yes" of course

Kristy said "I talked to Sara, about what happened with your husband.
she said she did some things she shouldn't have"
"we all do things we shouldn't have, sometimes" I said. I was feeling generous
"maybe you should talk to her" she said "I'm inviting her to dinner on Thursday"

James said "it occurs to me that maybe we're cheating"
I thought he meant because of my husband
"because we have such similar contexts" he said
"maybe we should have to work harder"

"I slept with James" I said
"why?" said Kristy eventually
"I'm not sure" I said
I went home and wrote a list- eleven possible reasons why I might have done it

James showed up at the bus stop.
he was wearing my sweatshirt.
he said "I'll bring this back later"
"don't worry about it too much" I said


anarchy on a Friday morning

rain is spreading on the pavement and I am thinking
of life taking root in a million tiny crevices
jack-knifed into trees, spray painted on balustrades
I am thinking too of counting other people's money
eight hours a day "for the revolution" because we have none

(inside out t-shirt
knee-cut suit coat
boots i couldn't run in
pliers for my nose ring)

I've seen the best minds of my generation
go off to Vermont and come back crazy
still hearts expanding like balloons
pockets full of moonlight
sweetness a preview of

Boddhichitta
(breathe in-
darkness,
heaviness,
pain,
breathe out-
it's nothing)

I am thinking of you at home folding and
stapling our dreams for a new tomorrow and
lust is catching in my throat where
I would wish your fingers might be if

[here could be a whole verse
in a different sort of poem
about anarchy and love, full
of roses and Molotov cocktails;
since it is what it is
this will have to suffice-
I want to shoot your adrenaline
I want to see behind your eyes]

I am thinking, too, of last minute packing
gas masks, bandannas and casserole and
a worn out letter from my father about
Allen Ginsberg, ohm and Joan Baez
out of which I had conveniently
forgotten the qualifiers,
just when I was beginning to wonder why
we were eighty kids in black on a bus
and where all the old anarchists had
faded away to leaving us

(I gave them my phone number and
I wrote down my next of kin but
I didn't tell them my daydream
which I guess is a contingency plan
for dying at the barricades today
do you know what i would do?

1. i would hope to be on television and
2. i would ask for you)


Waiting for River

the forest pulses
dark and endlessly
waiting through an
uneasy month
between the violets
and the fireflies

month? months-- a line of hungry days
crawls by after the scent of sugar.

i used to think
(round and sweaty)
there were only
(stuck here)
two ways to go
(between breaths)
in life

(...)

nowhere, and
straight on towards death

but

when you scream, the universe is possible
splits, and
opens
up


Centrifugue

and we were lying there together on the
earth's dented surface you and I spun
and i said to you green grass green green
grass brown grass under brown grass blue sky
black stars under you and I and then said
you said water flowing under water
flowing to the lowest ground always
after standing under water moving
faster than the spinning dirt
we're made of I was and