May Is Cold This Year And

May is cold this year and

(I don't really know how to breathe

under the weight of)

every day progresses slowly, darkly 

into the darkness of night, night like a 

blanket like a blackout curtain, bag over

the head, 

trunk of 

the car 

the porch is blue. I sit on it 

smoking. I think

of Uncle Charlie some more.

I don’t know what he did all those crabbed winters

those springs and summers beneath thunder,

I have heard that

he fished the little creek, he read books

and read them again, he had a cat and a dog

our family somewhat blown around,

the fragile aspects of a little tree,

a little creek.

From the strip of oil spill coast we meandered

north, or east, or stayed put like dad-

dad came home covered in petrol 

in 1969 he says. 

He remembers the year it was 

1969 he says. He will remember this year 

too, it is 2015 and Plains All American

Pipeline 

has made a mistake again. 

Things break. Sometimes,

broken things even break things- 

candy shrapnel in the belly of 

a seagull. 

And there are two kinds of silence, perhaps

even more, I am familiar with the one

that arrives all dressed up

in organza and chatter, looking 

like something, sounding alive.

Another kind does not arrive,

it has just always been here,

and we have never noticed it, 

and still we do not notice it,

but soon we will notice it, 

and when we do it will buckle 

the tender of our knees,

we’ll all fall down. 

(I want to touch you the way

one can touch a tree can touch

a creek. I am not looking for anything 

that can be defined by taxonomy, 

unless it is creek. Unless it is light- 

from the family greater phenomena

of the genus things above us things beyond)

And sometimes I act tough, for I’m tough; sometimes

I act tender. I consider my maker, I consider

the fader. I consider consider.

I consider Plains All 

American bathing the round rocks with 

crude culminations. 

I know I’m not doing all I ought to be doing.

I’m working and writing and sleeping and writhing.

I’m searching and finding and discarding my findings.

I give it away like a rich man;

crumple beneath sun like a leech.

It’s hard to stay well when life is so vicious

in its joy and its tumbling doubts. Uncle Charlie 

went in with a rifle when they didn’t 

give him that job he interviewed for.

Though, I’ve heard he sat 

in hot tubs naked, good moments were had-

I walk on the wharf and my father tells me 

about fishing. In pictures they are 

tiny boys and fishing with jaunty caps 

frozen in time, like beautiful little blue fish, 

like beautiful tiny boys. 

I love them.  I’m messy;

do you understand time?

I do not. I live with my hands over my head. 

I live with my hands over my head because 

strange things fall from the sky sometimes.

Spiders in Australia. Frogs somewhere.

Petrol. Rain, 

or just time, fragmented seconds, 

descending, like some sort of 

scalding judgment, descending, 

and it all turns to steam before 

it hits the ground 

Charlie

“I am bombarded yet I stand

I have been standing all my life in the

direct path of a battery of signals

the most accurately transmitted most

untranslatable language in the universe”

-Adrienne Rich

This is not the first time I have said that 

I am going to drive east but only halfway

because halfway is where my destination lies like a 

yellow picnic blanket next to a sort of 

quaint stream where he fished and smoked and 

lectured the dog when the dog would snuffle his 

nose into the pouch of rolling tobacco

as the dog was wont to do and our dog 

was wont to do it too. 

There are some things that are so easy to know about him 

that he could not hide them even with deliberate and

meticulous effort, things like 

the color of those two stones one is a blue stone 

one is green. The color of those shoes is I suppose 

a point of some contention. The color of fifty percent 

of his hair or twenty eight percent of his mustache or, 

to diverge from this tumbling, 

the color of my hair as a child for instance was 

a very dark brown. And the color of my eyes as a child was 

a very sludgy green. And I weighed eighty pounds as a child.

And I weighed forty five pounds as a child. And I wore collared shirts

with buttons and plaid caps backward and I slept beneath Hale-Bopp 

beneath the roof of the car and I slept beneath oak trees beneath the nylon

of my father’s bike trailer and I slept in tents and 

in one little bed, dreaming the simple quilted dreams that a child dreams.

The color of my childhood for instance was the color of 

that quaint stream in Dodgeville, Wisconsin next to a yellow house 

where a dog trots along with his nose low to the dirt and tail aloft.

And an orange cat finds another orange cat, as if fated, to summon up legions 

of orange kittens. 

And my uncle died in a hospital of Pneumonia.

This is many years after he planned his escape route to Canada.

This is many years after he planned his escape route to east,

but only halfway. A handwritten note painstakingly 

cyphered read that he loved me because I said 

read read read. 

Read read read. 

And if for instance I do not read very much anymore 

because my body buzzes with fear and a little ghost won’t 

let my mind settle into that imperative groove,

and if for instance I cannot make humble head 

or tucked tail of my own teeming life, 

well then it is time perhaps to go east but only halfway, 

if only for a little moment and a very tiny paw. 

The roof and the rifle, the thunderous summers 

and steady perch of raw-bone knees

Terrified By Nature

Illustrate this: this storm
and the one
between collarbones and pelvis.

Illustrate this storm, it’s so seismic.
My body caving like wet paper grows
all tenuous and slow, and minute
sparks communicate along all of my
jagged byways, lord help me.

Lord help me the sun has been gone long enough
that I feel it like the beauty of the absent bedmate.
It’s the sort of thing that makes you fall asleep watching television
and I am buckled and unbuckled in this black pulse.

I could talk about relief and how I wait all day

for it to come home, I wear only a little, something sexy,

I await the arrival of that tongue

I attempt to speak, but I am
wrought of chalk or spewing smoke.
I’m catching my lip on a sharp thing,
I’m terrified by nature
and terrified of its blatant premonitions:
dead gull wing wavers like a discarded
single page.


Dead hill surveys penetration of
little mesa, fracking drills dipping
up & down.
Storm hovers like blade
but never drops.

So I attempt to shake the bottle up:
I’m adjusting my cleavage for summer, and I say,
love me for this shivering jelly or don’t.
Love the abrupt last quake of this
listing rock as it pitches toward fire.

After all,
I am the vicious ghost of forgiveness unconditional.
I am the vicious ghost of grandma’s deck chair,
ritual and mastectomy.

I’m dripping in the blood of the beach, the contents
of shark eggs, the slickness of seaweed, the sweat
of summer cleavage, the dust captured by claw,
the night captured by morning.

I am leaning out toward love and I
will lean that way forever,

terrified by nature.

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.

Our brief winter is buried in the warm
thawed earth now, I tell this to Hillary,
we were all a little befuddled there
on Broad Street.

The merchant told me that, when young,
she set her mind on living in a shack.
So she lived in a shack, in this our
teeming ghost state, and then she met
her husband.

I'm not going to send any love letters to
the void anymore, because
it doesn't seem to notice how pretty I am,
how pretty my living heart and medicine prose.
More fool me, every day.

The truth is that I drove up, past the
green quilt hills, the chalk-white Egret,
unhurried in the rice marsh, I drove right up
to this patch of quartz land to write a Great
Book.

And I did not write a great book,
but I'll drive home tomorrow