For Today

 ship's bow shaft

of winter light

proud at the pointed

intersection and

scalloped by swells

of garbage holds me

in one place long enough

to look

up at the co-ops and the 

glass beyond, my

birthplace and my child's,

and also our present 

and only our present.

For days my father has been

telling me what motivates Macbeth,

or scares him, or delighted King James,

or delights us, or him when he was young,

or me hopefully one day, and how

nothing is more tragic than an evil heart

wrapped in a poetic mind.

We repeat ourselves, he looks pained

and at the ground, "I wish you could have seen

my Macbeth" and so do I.

ship's stern shaft 

of evening light 

flat along the staid 

planned streets, today

was like tomorrow (and tomorrow and...)

without ambition

there is only light, 

my partner's, child's, and my own,

without light there is only

another day in winter

in my birthplace,

in my home.

Colder and colder

 The northeast come up from the south to get us

 here afraid on the daveno

toques on inside, 

channeling our more northerly relatives we never knew

as well as those we did, know them as well, and also those we did, I mean

Syracuse St. Lawrence North Country gothic

once in. the summer and once in the snow, and once as a cutthroat ghost

she come up to get us, froze to the daveno, oh no

Party On

Merriment like a brick to the head

my desire for merriment like old with an e

not happiness, not joy, but merriment as in

making. It. Make it with me, someone, anyone?

I'm 37

Done it again! Each January, my own New Year's

as in, belonging to the New Year, that which is

of and owned by the New Year, owned and operated by,

of and in, at the place and in the possession of, the New Year,

held by, kept by, possessed by, kissed by, loved by, the New Year.

I the owner holder possessor and lover of that which owns holds and possess and loves

that which is fundamental to a new beginning in a particular calendar at a certain point in which

I made my entrance which is only notable in that it is, by the calendar, a relatively early entrance but also

heralding the beginning of the end of what we can all agree is really generally a very difficult month, New

Year's month, New Year's me.

Scale

 I'm up I'm out I'm reversing the scale

I'm big I'm small made of pressed tin

or pumped full of helium controlled by a rope

think about it, compared to me, are you big?

Or are you tiny?

We keep saying "big boy big boy big boy" but

only in the smallness does the bigness charm,

hey what about medium me? Well you could get bigger

maybe we'll laugh when the person you grew

outgrows you, we love to laugh about that

it's like is a giant doll a doll anymore?

How big can a doll be before it ceases its dollhood?

How small can a statue be before it's merely a figurine?

What if the figurine's outside?

And what about when all these things are soft?

Big boy big boy big boy screams at the small puppet but not the large,

the small puppet is too big for what it is in relation to the large,

am I too small or too big for what I am in relation to 

him? Or anyone/thing else? Eat me, drink me,

a little ornament, a puppet, a balloon, a doll, a mannequin, a scarecrow, a float, a dragon,

ancient armor looks so small I feel good at three quarter size everything,

in control, cute

book of hours

hours, one, two

stop, a prayer, half,

one, two, stop, a prayer,

maybe one, one, two, 

maybe three, stop, a prayer,

half, one, two, half, lost,

twelve, one, two, stop, a prayer,

no, missing, half, or one, then half,

one, two, something's missing, stop,

a prayer, one, two, stop, half and a quarter,

one, two, what happened to, stop,

a prayer, one, two, lost a quarter,

a prayer, one, two, pushing it,

stop, ten, one, two, two missing,

stop, a prayer, one, two, woops three,

stop, a prayer, one, two, stop, a prayer,

drift, one, drift, two, five, two, four,

one, two, systems down but, stop,

one, two...

Christmas Research Project

Serenity as absence is dread,
but the moment ends when the dread descends 
so what's a pre-dread lovely nothing?

Best to think about Christmas after it's done

which is before it begins, which is how a child decides

do I believe in circles or lines?

Loving to live so maximally, stuff and celebrations,

but living so minimally feels best at last,

yet also maximal like...Christmas?

Simple stories, serene and stuff, nothing

but tinsel of the times, baubles of the mind.

Folk Song

 A story about women working

dying fabric weaving together

sweating and losing teeth together.

What if we were happier than we knew? 

"Dashing Away with the Smoothing Iron"

O, falling in love at the washboard-o,

We know

the record has holes, 

the annals have gaps,

the suffering's assumed,

but what about joy?

What if history is full of plenty of

work and play and transcendentalism,

always? 

Serfs who celebrate and cavepeeps who cavort, 

and no one wrote it down for fear 

of spoil

ing

the moment -

o? 

Ears Back

 Is it too late to get the hang of my face?

What's its secret how to arrange it what light

where does the hair go which muscles clench maybe

some bulging? Should I get into some bulging?

Pucker, don't bulge, they say, or don't but might have to

when addressing me next also what to contract for a smoothing effect

and did anyone get to see my new smile before...you know?

I used to have some looks that got me some looks, certain

face muscles I would use without realizing but then I overthought it

saw too much content about lymphatic drainage and drained

the whole damn thing am I too young or too old for

this drained face? I have had to tell two different therapists

I love makeup because I've lost my face and I'm afraid

they won't help me right if they think the current face is the

real one, the real one has makeup but which makeup is best

for a cheek-biting baby? Not to wear, to bite? 

Is this like when you stop doing something for a few

because of work and then you're too old and you never do it again?

I'll get back to it, I'll get back to it, it's just a face hiatus

but you start to think was I ever really into it did I miss

the last great day of my face...

Street Encounter

 a pest control truck following me
in weather like this
honking like a last chance ring toss 

the driver i guess saw a pest in me
on a day like this
following me, a bug-killing ice cream truck

hey hey i see you i think we should kill you
i'm looking for milk
well you're secretly vermin and everyone knows

oh petulant pestilence! he sees me, at least
today I resolved to be joyful
too late, I am a roach, too eternal for joy

January the 14th

 Who feels healed?

Winter's just a drier hand against a warmer cup,

wind to blow your eyes shut as they should be

a time to be big, to have big

healing feelings

One Last LiveJournal Entry

 Always having imagined a certain way of life I wonder now what I've done to fail to have it. It's houses and the city though the city to me is the closest expression of what the thing I want would be if it was our whole society. But in the city you can't have the compound without great wealth and in the country you can't have the compound without great individualism so Rowan only has two parents instead of the longed-for ten or more. The truth is I can't get straight with my relation to rules. Hate trouble need to know boundaries need clarity but can't play a card game to save my life. And why? Well how can I remember steps one two and three, that's no fun! So how would I manage with all ten of the parents with my need for simultaneous excess and absence of rules? I've asked these very questions in this very place a thousand times in a thousand ways, none of them direct. Plus I would be the worst at laundry out of ten parents instead of two, at least here I get the silver medal. Every day I wake up inside an unrealized anarcho-consciousness inside of a failed socialist experiment and "wake up" is a strong term for it anyway. Then the day passes. I could live on cereal and television but I don't consider that counterrevolutionary. I don't consider anything counterrevolutionary, there's just energy and no energy and you know where I stand there. All my life I've had no time and nothing to show for it and you might say that's just because of American mind disease telling me to "show" something for "it," but I say I could have just gotten more sleep. The baby just cried which is hard on the cat. 

Lingering Pain

 One's knees may never return.

The body takes back a screaming ball of blood (another story absorbed),

the body shrinks or expands (finding selves in new sorts of surfaces),

the body might grow new muscles (a world of women locked out of time),

the forearms may have something going for them (in what bone does work begin)

the face retracts a few strange spots (what will old be when I am dead and gone)

but the knees may never return.

Trying to Fit my Therapist's Narrative, I Guess

"well we had it worse so" and that means "I love you"

and "you cried and cried and we had no home" (but we did)

and that means "I love you" and "we thought we would die" and

that means "I love you" and "my father, my father my father, my mother, my brother, my god it was awful"

and that means "I love you," I know. 

I know. 

I remember jewelry in a trailer in a dessert in a sea of sage. That's what I remember.

But I remember what you remember, for you have told me over and ever. I remember tears and shotguns and skid row and being a little boy with no glasses, I remember, I remember how awful I was as a newborn who made this starbaby so angry will the muscle-testing tell, will none of the mediums among us answer? I remember. I remember a bassinet full of maggots and I also remember everyone misremembering who got earplugs when and why and I have no sense of what happened when, though I remember it all, you see. 

I remember. 

"I remember" means "I love you," little worries caught in the cup of big trauma, like a rainbarrel for dry times ahead, should life just so happen to swerve well. I will still remember what you remember with you. 

I will. 

Beans from Scratch

 Waiting for a bean to soften,

remembering when it all started

and the bean man marveled in his new popularity,

once the loneliest man at the marketplace,

suddenly the feeling of the hard dry drops

running through our urban fingers

felt like the woodcutter and his wife

with their provisions, their hearth;

the sight of hard dry beans assured

a speculative fiction survival

and a fantasy continuity

all at once. But what about now?

We're no longer the woodcutter and his wife,

collectively, though personally,

well, I personally am an unspayed housecat

but that aside, can't keep the pantry stocked

these days, anymore, though those days

have yet to truly pass into these, these and those

are endless and yet still the furniture moves,

my driver's license expires, my health insurance lapses,

we got windchimes but the wind blows in new directions,

the beans soaked and yet, and

will I ever stay out all night again,

and the woodcutter and his wife, weeping for their friends long gone.

Some Huge Percentage

Good morning new dimension

just one layer down,

a metaphysical flesh wound, as it were

but weren't it? Wild? To see these wounds

walking everywhere around me suddenly

smiling towards me, knowing me

"how old is he" and "enjoy it" and

"I am doing to die, my god, don't hurt me, I am weak!"

and slowly dawning other horrors how long

have I been surrounded by so many flayed open hearts,

hidden from me but now with open arms they grasp me,

and fix me on my chicken legs, forever. 

Generations

Vibrations at me should be of me 

but aren't me,

aren't me at all. 

Where did I come from, 

if not from

this person who now makes all my notes quaver

whenever

she tries to sing my tune? 

What happened

when she remembered who she was 

when she was me

to make me suddenly 

so much less like her, 

I who must bear all the burden 

of being the only

one who could biologically become her, 

who's from her?

And how if I'm the one who moves too fast am I the one

who fears this frequency 

too high, 

too loud, 

like theatrically talking to distract from something awful

in the next room over, 

or the corner?

Please see this energy,

I beg,

Please see yourself and me

as we are now not as you were

when I was helpless, 

and you were too.

Eighty

The hospital sent me eighty dollars.

Me, who, on principle, pays no bills

somehow paid eighty dollars too much

on some imaginary thirty or one hundred thousand that

no one paid that only manifested as a threat

against anyone who might dare to be unwell

and yet live or have loved ones and no boss.

It was probably actually more than thirty or one hundred thousand

but I can't add conjectures but it wasn't whatever it was

and eighty. Or is this eighty an apology? I'm sorry

it's not our fault, we're so tired we hate this job

we'd quit but then maybe we'd get sick or hurt

or pregnant and then boy we'd wish we had this eighty 

so take it and don't ask but I have to ask I have to

ask what service was it that was overpaid or not

worth eighty dollars when just sitting there cost

I don't know, twenty thousand? Was that for a cold egg

or someone else's blood or water or a sheet? Was it iron or opioids or pads?

Was it part of a long flirtation with a Cigna rep a game of

chicken with the boys down in billing, you know the type?

Is it the eighty dollar discount for remembering to wear my mask

and being more or less polite? Is it from my doctor, does she like me,

want to befriend me and, being so busy, barely knows how?

One time the chiropractor sent me a ten dollar bill in the mail, I don't know why but

is this like that? Is it just me, a reward for figuring out

that anything I see in the mail is, in fact, not real,

and you don't need healthcare if you just don't bother to pay!

Am I being rewarded for my avoidance or my suffering or

for the six hundred dollars I also know I overpaid which

might translate to eighty in the imaginary realm of all this.

I thought by now I'd have hit the larger meaning,

thought in thirty lines I would arrive at revelation

truth or humor but maybe it takes eighty, maybe more.

An Active Bleed

 Welcome back the body! Welcome back, "the body!"

Am I a hippie or friends with a greaser? 

Can a hippie be friends with a greaser? 

Can a person of my generation ask that?

Can a person of my generation reject generations

and still have something to read at a desk job at 3?

What sort of categories should I get into now that I'm truly alive?

I want to be a librarian, and I am fresh off some wild internal bleeding,

so what does that mean in terms of classification and this future

of mine? 

Welcome back, Allison! You have a twenty-first century family, now

your nineteenth century family would just be Matt, now,

and your twentieth, well, you'd have to be more specific now.

Call me, "the body," now, why not? I've got one, and more, I am one! 

Not so much a mind these days, thank goddess and don't mind me.

So what does that mean in terms of nature and nurture, this future

of mine? God it feels good to be alive! 

Growing Up Near the Dealerships?

Crossing an extra large road my eyes drifting behind my legs I wonder if the cars will see my open beak a little too freaked by the fog and the skyline thinking "I'm from here" do I look like a teenager who "gotta get outta this place" or just a mom from elsewhere? I've been living on the edge all wrong.