Lecture

Celestial sciences sour me, make me less
Pope-like which isn't a problem as I
am a woman and was hoping
to be a mystic.

However I would be a great Pope,
a corrupt magician type, the cool kind.
Am I immodest? The worst
thing about magic is

it's all treasure-hunting,
which is for boys.
What, I get recipes?
All these gold word-blocks
and the demons don't
solve math or teach computers;
which, pardon me, I'd
love to find feminine.

I don't care about treasure
but I would love to see
a cavern of gold automata
like I heard a French guy
who became Pope Sylvester the
(I can't remember numbers,
that's what demons are for)
did.

Fare thee well

Drizzling rain, a song and being together.
Called for a birthday wish, and here I thought
it was condolences. Twenty years of chemicals,
and all the better for it, feeling powerful, oh January.

Such things I ate tonight, the thought of it astounds.
The sauce and regretfulness, not doing enough
relaxing into and because of dread. A glass of wine,
optimism of destruction and television, smiling scientists.

Sung with my small voice, infinite exponents
of nameless women washing which I do not.
Who to call back, so many and without time
or the right kind of it, quite, oh January.

Living a Better Life

I know of half a long life well-lived that seems the more so for being half
but a whole life well-lived might indeed be better, if a whole-life can be
considered to exclude being a child, when one cannot live life well for
fear of never learning. There's always the possibility of being killed by a bug.
Ssssh, watch out, one day it's the heat and the next it really is a killer
with a metal leg and a sad backstory. When I was a girl the door to the attic
locked from the outside but always unlocked by morning with the cat
looking hunched and fatter in the dark. Looking forward from there,
which is toward the present I could include some sex stuff,
which is also half of a life well-lived but could kill you. Matt has two
pairs of bellbottoms from different phases of life lived differently
because they are different sizes though neither is tight. In a way
having bellbottoms that are too big is both about sexuality and its opposite,
which does not exist. I believe that people around me pretend to
have opinions about penises that they do not actually have, though they
may, under some circumstances, have the penises themselves. This is
the result of a request to write romantically in the midst of writing
fearfully and about death, though the thought to write about death
has more to do with celebrating a long life. It must be such a relief to say
"Ah, I get it! That was it. That's what happened." I think I fear
death more because of how you can consume a whole series at once
now if you're a genius who uses the internet. I used to want only
to be a genius which keeps a person (me) from making plans.
Keeps, kept. I thinks keeps, let's stick with it. I'm not smart enough
to use the internet to fear death so much because of watching every
series I can at once but I am enough of a genius to know that
historical re-enactors make bad money. If, in keeping with the theme
of a life well-lived or half of it, I note the redundancy of "bad money"
I will be less radical than I think. What have I got to throw at the devil,
bellbottoms? Can tight pants kill you? When my grandfather died I was
wearing a periwinkle blue sweatsuit and, standing on a concrete slab, was small.

Home Office

Quiet of many days down poisoning the house.
Advice to "walk" is never wrong, easier to tip the lid.
The more possibilities for health and renewal, the longer the list,
the longer the list the fewer possibilities, etc.
Improbably, it was really at the DMV that I felt best,
Resigned to sitting still with others sitting still.
When everything was perfect, the milk and the sun,
the list was longer, graphomaniacal, impossible.
Snow, then, is a blessing and a direction, as are all
clear things but to clean, which is too much of the heart.
Also, to bend over and stand back up is unacceptable to me.
Quiet of many weeks lived in the chest, the stomach spared.
In between the weeping like peeing or eating toast.
There is no shoe without a flaw, and all advice points foot-ward.
Leaving the DMV is for another errand, not for a slow drift home,
but a slow drift home it is, or was, the time unclear past dark,
though it was light and still morning. When, in success,
with enough money for asparagus and beer, the condensation
breaks the bag. Glass so unpredictable, an imp of a vessel.
The sun making it harder to get up, which is new, for before
I blamed the window or the lack thereof or the exposure.
The last time I remembered the feeling of really dancing it
complicated the list though didn't quite make it longer but
somewhere in the closet is a sweatshirt to mail and in the fridge
a pile of dregs. Quiet of many hours spent without breath.

5:00

Distinctly working or not working is not gonna happen.
"Am I working?" my grandmother wonders;
Do I work here? Is internal, "Do I work here?" is tragic.
Do I work, here?
Sick at the sound of the phone; all night long my mother gulped and gasped,
"Quantam Leap" was working, then, for her.

Crying Jag

Snow rose looking up!
Lower layer of quiet not at all peaceful,
ominous ghost of contentment, still
I smiled which was necessary. Nothing
wrong with anything but
the delicacy of eyeskin, rubbed raw
and looping, cause and effect unclear.

The Plants

gloomy mood plant killer, oppressed by the victim;
drooping reproachful, why me but why ME I
                                                    admit it's
winter which isn't my fault but it feels like
it might be, two hours away the hills have it but
here it's a sense of personal shame; snow unseen
is simply a failure to be sunny on my part or ours
while pausing to check other screens, the winter white
of all seasons, I'm sorry I failed the lengthen the day
so lost in text, so sorry, the plants, so sorry

Party All Night

bug dream again they fly though

so

of all the things to fear

the side-tipped head ain't one.

so

mother was always into fresh

haircuts, but now I'm grown it's

mum on that.

bug dream again.

what she see, ghosty? My

thighs on the alter of whatever

my sweatpants working hard.

my

mother was not into

guitar music it

reminds her of whales.

bug dream again.

Periodical

What is cover ever anymore?
Every first thing seen called cover,
I'm a geezer.
Which sci-fi saw what? Take a class, do math.
I meant magazines and the internet, earlier.
Scientists, also, on the internet calling all things cover.
Someone please come over.
Earlier in the mirror, my hair.
What is it called, the Ecumen? Whatever.
Remember when the borders? Screens that
look like years. All Asimov always on the radio.
Before, in the library, magazines.
Trade journals, especially, pour parfumiers.
One time say page, one time say screen one
time once I said worksheet I'm still
embarrassed. In the mirror, almost over.

Queens

Half sleeping man and cat, white rug awaiting disaster, non-magnetic fridge
going to the store for prepared foods only, generating trash and feeling warm
arranging rectangles as if to fight, as if to distract from angles, to make a home.

Once they found that planet and it was the best poem I'd ever written and now
I can't even be bothered to know anything else about that planet, what happened?
That planet was always flipping back and forth like how it's not ok to be but

everyone is.

Half sleeping man and television, off, prismatic and silent.
Long-awaited venetian blinds promising glamour, and, again, cat.
Guitar in the corner, used, and ukulele, lonely. Furniture sphynxlike.

Shelves of modest height and plaster teeth, the lamps we will discard and those we won't.
The planet shifts poles, that's it, and did it have water? With all the chances I have
I won't even look, won't ever, the two scratching posts, the stairs, the blue windows floating in dark.

Victory

suck down a string.

Don't get all happy,

spooling out.

glad for the news,

but feeling tearful sick

and lying down for it.

feel all I do for

businesses as symbols

of everything to lose.

you slow motion scene,

you neon sign you

old man in the snow.

sensation of twice forever,

sandwiches and records 

unsmoked single cigarettes.

Storm and Lateness

Rain sound being very heavy and too wild.
The flat roof and the car roof, defining shingles loosely and being afraid.
Betrayed by one's own sternum, its lack of will, the sound of rain.
When the plants are finally all dead, the ability to breathe and reboot.
Rain sound affecting toes to eyes, and feeling disbelieved, and fat.
A beer is ok if it's tomorrow and not today when already, too many.
The relationship to liquid being rough, and always feeling full and not full.
The sound of the rain experienced through nostrils, like camphor.
Consciousness that there is less ticking now than once there was.
A little bit of something brown in a crystalline container, ice, a treat.
In the morning sleeping through the sunshine as though it gives permission, oddly.
The sunshine giving way to rain and the sound of rain obliterating shouts and calls.
The sound of ticking being missed, liked family and wood paneling.
The sounds of rain and ticking being not so much the same as just a thing.

A Career in the Sciences

knowing less is being smarter says
my child brain my
smarter
child brain remember
smarterchild?
Then pretending
to read Plato now
pretending to type
all working is typing except
paleontology which
is the ultimate way of being,
master lifestyle bone cult I
might some day have a salary for
emailing which is typing I
will never have a bone-touching living
I know but
if I knew that less I'd be
a genius

Staying In

It's time.


To discuss my first impressions of disco.

I can't of course recall, so first off "first"

means nothing.

In this is the first point had, the "nothing" of the "first" is so

disco.


My second impression of disco is wholly positive.

My third impression of disco is
a great boot bit of jealousy, a
hot frog face envy an
ahistorical dismay

My fourth impression of
disco is primarily sexual but
                                                 not entirely, though.

My fifth impression of disco is the loss of my favorite restaurants in New York City a sense of personal health code oppression a
wild righteousness.

My sixth impression of disco is to feel younger than Matt and other people.

My seventh impression of

disco is

as the first though

so

Daily Devotional

forgive me gaggle, am I a man? Do I betray us?
What words I use to speak of "us" as "you" am I to judge?
One hundred thoughts on groceries, lipsticks, are these jokes?
One hundred more of thanks and praise to sisters known and not,
and here my jacket, red, and here my mouth, and here my own on food,
my own!
and here the record of my hours (we ladies and our books of hours)
a jewel-like devotion to hang from the wrist, to hang off the wrist
to waste our words for women

Two Years Ago

white sheet sister looking wind-blown but myself

inside and warm with one leg bent under

threat of seeing someone sad

remember a man at the window inside

looking out at falling snow and now me 

and my man see snow already fallen gone

so lovesick he would never see it stick

the other name i can't remember winter

which one was it was I ok or maybe no

this polar vortex gift of language i heard

actually head the "vortex tentacle" said I

only started with the radio two years ago

Aging Out

Stretched my whole self on the full-sized couch.

Always for me its been loveseats, 

young woman: small sofa, stripes.

This evening waking up without a cramp

muscles too loose to hold hot tears, what have I done?

Why go to bed in a bed but that I'm old enough to know to?

Stretched my whole self on the full-length floor.

Always for me its been corners,

young woman: second-hand, junk

This morning with no reason not to resting further,

cool and flat with nothing to do and nothing done.

cooookies!

sugar in the spaces, in every breathing bit
the nonpareils of every day I've lived without them coming back
the maple on the snow in grade school the
food coloring in the ice tray my
veins feel awful, I'm crushed by sweets

noise

inner ear at the cusp of new realizations,
the fluid in my head is basically brilliant
understanding all before I do and ever will
a wave of infinite hand-wringing compressed
to ominous ocean, gulls, and electronics.

Am I about to be left out?

balance of the brain at the moment of oh no,
panic in the bony labyrinth, reaching for release in the sinus
what is the tune of the thrum and thunk, the meaning of the music
percussive jaw off the beat of worry

Another Vacation Day

Hum things in the kitchen:
the fridge expands, till fridge no longer
the cat, depressed, sits still.

Last night I hated the movie;
today I see I slept it through,
tonight I fear my sleeping's length.

Are we the last ones left?
The plumber saw a ghost with a pencil mustache
and that was the last we heard.