Lo Fi

I chose a bastard Manhattan
over a bastard Old Fashioned
It cost 9 Dollars
I sipped it at the bar
in Green Glass Wing earrings
and a Bolero jacket
while kids in suspenders
order 3 Dollar Rainier Tall Boys
Maybe I was doing it wrong.

On the crowded dance floor
I was the only one moshing
Throwing the soft sides of me
into the bodies all around me
Until a boy in stripes pushed me back and whined
"Sto-o-op!"
Well what did you expect
This is a 90s Dance Party
and they're playing Smells Like Teen Spirit.

Then the Photo Booth
I stuck my head in during other people's
4th photo on the strip
I was laughing
Now I will be on their refrigerator

I'm Coyote
I'm Loki
I'm fucking shit up
Come on, you came to get down, right?

hospital beds

hospital beds make people look smaller and sicker
the silly gown
the plain walls and stacks of tubes and gauze

I want to weep, and sometimes I have
but mostly there are things to be taken care of.
She's fragile
and her skin is tissue paper
and she's shaking and gurgling and shouting that she's falling forward
even though she's leaning back
and when I touch her,
skin to skin,
I am bawling.

Me, young girl, purple pants, striped shirt
bawling, sobbing beside a hospital bed
every letter, every lunch
reduced like so many into limp gray hair
fallen skin
shakes and shivers
Just another person
just another extraordinary person
just an ordinary extraordinary person who will absolutely die
and just as surely, so will I
and so will everything I've ever made or done
and everyone I've ever loved
and all those I haven't met
or known to love.

moth

woman at dawn
her back yawning open
her feet want to wake
they're hungry they want too much
they want to taste everything
her hair wants wildness
her fingers are hungry
she is still asleep
knock knees
her hands taste her shins
here she is but she curlicues in
she floats on top of the Eiffel Tower
she is always falling
she is wildfire

personal mythology pt.2

The moles raised her in a land with too much sun.
Their eyes were so small they couldn't tell the difference.
But without shadow she couldn't tell things apart.
The land was flat and seemed to go on forever.
There was no night and no winter.
There was no distinction between hut and tree or tree and food.
She began to blink all the time, longer and longer blinks.
She craved shadow, edging, lines.
Her eyes were flooded, dazed by sun.

Carl's Yinward Way (a found poem)

A gradually growing estrangement
arises in the dream, or after I awake.
She seems entangled in my entrails
as if I have just stuck my foot in a black hole.
It feels as if he is always here;
he has shed his denims, shaved his beard, and he drives a small sedan.

sequitur

my pen is leaking, slowly, beautifully
and my dance career is my single most driving force

we're flying over the mississippi
and I can be so much better

teased

hearts go up and down
and always forward

but you control
how high i rise
how far i fall

and i have fallen
down to earth

lift me up again
i prefer the feeling
of weightlessness

i'll always keep pushing forward

help me up