It wasn't only me -

sputtering at the hands of a journal that's taken too long to fill
(surprising, considering all the broken promises I've made).

And if I could find it in myself
to form some dream girl
from this cakey-play-dough,
then don't.
Don't. Dough.

It was just a wandering
of feet between streets,
(and the loneliness of hawks
or vultures, black/white wings,
circling
in the sky).

It wasn't me, I'm telling you.
It was only my shadow.
(and that bad dream
of the empty book
with all her lonely scribbled pages.)

----

This sun, orange, sinks,
heavy with the day
into that coastal cloud cover (that)
we love so completely.

This orange sun,
pregnant with the way you saw mee
and laughed, and spoke and touched -
(like we were half our age),
gives birth to an evening
of strange whispers,
while we tell our truths to ghosts.

This red sun
so full of things we shared
while she shone behind our backs
and overheard your words
(you want. I want.)
must surrender to This red night.

and this coastal cloud cover heaves
like the ocean.
like the sailboat.
like the sun.

----------

we are falling apart with such grace.,
hopeless and aimless
and completely in love with this pretty game.

-----



My Things appeared politely in your place:
sea shells sprouting in the bathroom like
the crocuses in spring;
small rocks gathered on counters,
the corners of coffee tables;
little jars, unlabeled, full
of far-away-smells seemed to
shuffle into the spice drawer,
full of pardons and excuse-me's.

I was never so polite as my Things.
Storming in like hot-July in the African desert,
demanding you turn up the heat, talk louder,
ask more questions -
and then an unexpected cold front would arrive
 --- our lightening was never as loud as the bar below --
but there's really nothing like the smell of rain,
and me,
wet on your apartment floor.  

From Some Time Ago

We arrange to meet in some cafe to work
on our writing, bring
perfect blank notebooks brimming
with smooth thick sheets
and brand new pens, virile
with ink.

You say - a gray-hair woman, wispy
and sunglasses, long scarf -
elegant, her favorite acronyms
line up, they would die for her.

Or the sunlight turning the trees' silhouettes -
keeping us half blind by the beauty
of an ending day,
the chill wind speaks the language
of knit mittens, / Green, Green, the city / is a jungle
of...

some guy sitting near us, with a
growing bald spot
and an empty notebook,
rubbing the pages against each other,
the corners ever-so-gracing
Seduced --
(by the dog in the front seat of the SUV -
learning to drive.)

I'm not a blank notebook, though,
I've been rewritten so many times
and my pages thin, torn in parts -
so this writing is a fallacy
and may it never be read!
(I'm working on my novel).

-----------------

I had a vision of you,
bright orange and jaws like a tree
waiting in the water
(for me to count the stones).

you swallowed sea shells
to get closer to the sun,
to spin records late at night.

I hope you do not feel your life
so long. I hope its moments
are brief and eternal
like this sunset and the memory
of rain.
(of rain, of rain. of rain.)

---------------

There, carrying keg on broad shoulders, dark tan below
your eyes. There carrying plastic grocery bags, caught up in
your shoes. There carrying a phone and two books, breathing quick
in your breast. There carrying your whole life, house piled on house,
an SUV, two kids, a dog, your husband, and a briefcase with
some stranger's initial, your footsteps sink into the pavement,
You are a Titan, the sun rises from your ass, and when the
day comes, I will take my orchids to your grave, place stones
there, all caught up in letting go of
all I watched you carry.



-------

you live such ordinary moments
in a house I can't keep clean,
profound like oceans trapped
in sea shells, too heavy
to be braided into hair.
Cat hunts bugs; dog stares.
How did this ever get
so important, enchanted as we are
by cinnamon, by rose.
(but skip, if you will, the fennel.)

Rain falls from the sky and right into me -
my open mouth, gushing and
bubbles from my nose.
The poetry of silence is
deafening as a car passing
and the obliging water moved out of the way.

They say we're moving towards chaos.
I disagree.
Order will be the end of us,
when, finally, everything is exactly in the right place,
the universe will end.