Laying Love Down and Paying My Tithe

But one more waking from a distracting headache

and the distracting ache of guilt, the overwhelming colors

of need, the headache of logistics descending

like rain over new-shorn hair, so short

because I have the eyes and am on the inside like

an infant. New and new to everything.

Lost and lost to the past: I ran away. I was like

an animal in that way, in how I ran, and I have thrown away

photographs for the stifling disservice they do this

Current Moment.

Love me for this shivering jelly or don’t.

I will not care very much as I run away. Richly,

I consider the aspects of my body and

the way they touch other bodies: sometimes.

I’m a bergamot or a pomander or some heavy

bowed flower,

laying love down and paying my tithe.

And there is a difference between lying

and being wrong. I’ve been wrong and

wrong as I was wronged, I’ve even been right

and found in hindsight I was not. I have loved

the crown of hair, the head in the lap, the face

between knees, the little polyester slip,

I’ve baked cookies, made madeleines with

delicate orange, the fantasy of crawling away,

I’ve been pulled back by the hinge of my high-heel.

Skin has lain before me like a country mile.

I’ll undress you and dress you up

in vapor. (How much can language conjure?)

I’ll leave and leave a small space in my wake.

(It can be a face between the knees.)

I’m not frightened, not trying to talk about

water- not trying to talk about time.

I am laying love down like a laminated

card, with a heart,

like a quilt, like a dollar

I am paying my tithe

The Week Isn't Going According to Plan

May 2015

Try not to be disappointed that the week isn’t going according to plan. With all of the sun’s swift evolutions, the love of love, the time spent in lines, the hope for a change, the news tasting of chalk, stoned neighbors and excitable dogs,

somewhere along the line I got lost.

Remember how you used to swim naked in the Santa Ynez river, or how you took those magic mushrooms at the Santa Ynez river? Remember how you had to pull the car over, time and again like a shuddering cassette, to throw up on the highway?

I am sorry that higher education, though she does spread her legs, is not as desperate as you hoped she would be. I am sorry but not surprised.

Remember how you listened to Jefferson Airplane at the river and when you opened your eyes Brian was laughing in the sun and you watched peripherally familiar faces in the clouds? Try not to be disappointed that the week isn’t going according to plan.

That guy at the party was like a young soft dream or one of those cacti that look so fuzzy. Beware for they are not actually fuzzy.

Remember that time you petted a cactus that looked so fuzzy? It was not fuzzy and every quill was removed with tweezers fished from your mother’s purse. It was a Santa Barbara wedding in the mountains and you saw cave paintings and howled with surprise. Every pluck of the tweezers seemed to be that cactus intimating fuck you, or ha-ha!

Childhood is one long sunset. It is radiant like life bouncing off of a blade.

As you grow older, everything that hurts hurts twice. It hurts just as bad the second time. Pain isn’t a murky ephemeral trip anymore. Every love leaves a little bruise and when one day you walk into a table it twinges a reminder of that summer you ate magic mushrooms at the river and couldn’t drive the car very well and had all your drugs stolen and were stood up at the train station. You read poetry even then and it did hit you that your tragic sugar skeleton could not withstand all the knocking about indefinitely.

Much is indefinite.

I guess what I am trying to say is that I love you. 
Try not to be disappointed that the week isn’t going according to plan.
If you like, I’ll take you out for a crepe. The bike is ready to ride now.

Maybe Love

Maybe love will call you by your name

if you sit a little longer eating olives and alone

read a book that makes you feel things

and drink fermented tea

and rather than moving forward or

moving backward, simply levitate,

like an enchanted rug, this method is hallowed,

it has been tried.

Or in lieu of more complex plans, drive

until nearly gasless.

Think of the present rather than the past

and of how it feels,

sitting next to you in the car.

Lovingly you may find that nothing is lacking.

(I always want something different

than what I end up getting, and find that it is fine.)

Maybe I expect

that when love calls me by my name,

it will look and sound differently than it does

upon appearance- looks

like sunlight on a bedroom, sounds

like barely anything at all.

What is most stunning upon introduction

is a lack of love.

It always makes sounds,

even says things,

always looks like something or someone.

There is a little trapdoor in my closet

lined with tea-rose wallpaper.

I wonder what it will hold and realize

I have no secrets.