calibrating the day

they tell me negative thoughts
will manifest too. i never thought about it
but when i tried to tell Q that it's not always so
using for example my certainty of dying before 40
because my mom did, she said well, isn't that
what happened anyway? she didn't know me then
but she was right. who i am today
was born when i was 40 or 41/i don't remember
the exact year and anyway, it's been more
a metamorphosis than a birth but yeh
i understand that about thoughts. not only understand
but believe it in a half hearted way
sort of like some peeps belief in god just in case.

i need to get to the level where i don't
believe that my magic is subterranean. but pluto
rules so many of my houses how could it not be?
for me, coming into this knowledge was a light switch.
the pluto thing.

now, i was trying to remember what you said
about blame. how it was an epiphany in slow motion
to realize that one who takes blame for everything
is so fucking egotistical they think the world
revolves around them. universe spins
round my little black hole. lol, d/man,
is that how you got out of the blame game
that time. give to other bubbles their own volition
spins and starfeilds? man that's coo. i bet you
didn't even realise it you is/was so zen.
just vibrating thru the sunlight. astrology
is ok yr a cell in a body, you're a module
in a cell even. or maybe yr the module
of that module. all the way in.
and you're trying to zone in your macro mind
by tracing the spin of the atoms two
iterations slower than you.
that's the past. think about it
the star's light generation
is in the past. relatively speaking.
but it's in your now. so.
what you watch when you watch the stars
is your own death approaching.
some of us try to read the signs.

lol. it's an amusing passtime
to hold the thoughts of god here in
my mitochondrial messenger. come ride
the roller coaster of truth on the planes
of antarres. oh that was the star i
learned last week. antares. in the sky near
scorpio. the way the stinger dominates
the southern sky. oh man.
gotta go to work. in the middle of an
epiphany. this is why you're right of course.

my ideal would be to find a man i can love
who loves me, and would want to take care
of me so that i can write. like j did for a while.
i prolly would even market it then. i mean
i get bored writing sometimes. the thoughts
so iterated that the fractal becomes BORing.

so you start another one. it's got surprises
inside of themselves. and no expired daydreams.*
marketing myself might work for me. it's like
commodity is the cult of the e gen. you have to sell out
cuz it's all about buying in. just remember money
is a scorekeeper that can keep you comfortable.
it's not a goal, but a tool. that's all.



((*original thought of justin collin michael bushey))





ok, time to go be a tool for the tool.
i hope i don't have indigestion. i don't want
the universe to die today...

it's not you

it's love that i'm mourning
the gasoline fumes of goodbye
wavering like old glass in windows
of a historic landmark . it's the way
the drupes open, reach out to take
up their space, then fall, with the scent
too far gone -- it's not you.

le ballet , cinq heures

well, ok, 5 minutes.

i was walking thru production
when you interupted me with fresh
daydreams. you stretch
my legs, we pass close
with arms over
head, pas de duex, nanometers
between our lips. heads bowed
the way reverence comes
off of flowers, in scent & color
on the air.

jeremy stands close to the wall's drop , holding


a paint brush & a light bulb. a toaster is on its way.


he descends along the underbelly of the flock, while we move



airborne, ho. I often go the other route


of putting the points


of interest at the edge of a piece, and creating a design that forces the eye off the edge of the canvas, I'm interested


in the tension that that can create."



this is for the ones that got away


the invasion of cages into our breathing spaces


trespassed along my sky, your country, this my tiny



moon.




and don't you forget it.











































































fred bakes archetypes into glazes


innocent gaze on the fence of discovery.


it's what we all watch when we turn on



tv. exit probability and statistic, enter beauty


holding beast, reverence on her face.


why do you do it? she's asked.


"why am I doing this?" she tries to answer it


as honestly as you can, because with this


knowledge you can plan



a life that you'll find satisfying.






If you're interested in money, you can make


one series of decisions. Fame? Potentially another






































. If you want to simply paint


what you what to paint, like outside the window



the way ozone and water combine


with leftover sunlight at dusk how you're trying to capture


that specific blue, the one you want


for a ring, and a band around your neck, those choices will be
different again."





















so then there was this font


that wouldn't come home. we baked


a chocolate cake and everything.but he



kept getting further lost. like andrew wyeth on saturday nights


after the diner closed . you just kept coming back for ham


and eggs but nope, the door was stayed shuttered


the economy hadn't picked up, despite washington's insistence


and forty six million people just disappeared


when the accounting


class had added all their tickers and tapes and medical benefits a sort of



exasperation at the folly of my fellow


monkey's, these days though


I'd say they're about attempting to capture


a mood,


a fairly specific one,



but one that I can't quite grasp


internally, I'm trying to work it through














































so it was kind of a shock when the cosmonauts


sank into the sky, coming down at us like gravity


didn't matter all the sudden, i felt like a ghost in atlantis



and jeremy said he felt more like a sponge about to be scooped


from the seabed. laurie laughed at us both


from her swing where she was pumping her legs


like first grade, didn't seem to care who saw


up her dress, not jeremy, not the cosmonauts she said


she could knock them out of the sky


that's how high she was going



to get before the bell rings.


we scurried over to the curb of wood that always


smells of creosote and played a quick hand


of 2012, with slaughterhouse rules.


when the bell rang we looked over


at the swing just in time to see laurie


launch herself into the air and fred


caught her on his cell phone turning round


to see who was behind her with just a trace



of sorrow in her eye.

meesha on the phone

there's just too much to eat it all. sometimes i wish we could talk like people. on a porch, with rockers. and sun . and blankets over my knees. sometimes i don't ever want to get there. i bet i fight every step of the way. this wearies me in advance. misha reads a hardboard book after therapy. the pages seems more solid. she's learning the names of colors. orange is how he touched her. blue is her inner thigh. grey is her eyelid closed by a finger. white is when she sleeps.

outside she can hear water becoming itself again. she looks up, into a face she remembers from the musical they made her leave. the eyes are not blue, not green, not the color of jesus on sundays. they're clear. irises with no soul. she wants to crawl into the smile. she thinks there are no teeth. she doesn't see teeth. they've all been hidden in space and dissonant.she grabs her sleeping mat , folds into a neat sqaure. her pink hello kitty blanket trails from her hand as she steps into the big round o. it closes behind her like a waterfall.

he wanted to sample the simple things} riots in teheran, cornflowers in dungeons, karate on dancing with the stars. so he hid on the periphery, disguised as a futon. whenever a fat dog would enter, he'd get the smell of pancreas in his slopes and begin to shiver. it didn't matter to the dogs, they always clambered up, slobbery flea motels with bad attitudes. the thing he disliked most was the obscured irony . it was no joke when they farted. it left him weak in the supports, and he'd bend in the middle like the night he finally got to have her at the window, with the blinds open, bad girl mischa who had to write into another life.

diverting obsession

fall into the mix. this pond
could by filled by tears &
the battered shelf life of lust.

let go of the ego. be a walk-on.
bit player.
that's what you are
don't think you're the star.

letters to the dead 1

carved a gravestone from dry
pasts and place it over
the doorknob of last exit.

there are kittens, playing, some tiny
mews from clogged sinuses
sound like desperatation
and hunger, the immortals.

couldn't pick up jorie
tonight. there's a dragon
with a hot air air balloon
in its belly stuck between her pages.

bargained with the iv as long
as it dripped. made deals with
with the ventilator and the ekg
so they'd keep a steady beat


the transfusion shook its head, a mismatch.
the transplants all rejected by immunity.
docs did everything we could but it wasn't enough.
don't think we need the autopsy,it's clear



arrythmia, clogged arteries, gunshot wound & how
the history of future was written in code

rush out with the rudest

paper angels slighted by scissors
the pristine condition of not born
baby teeth under the gum.

i'd follow you anywhere
but you don't want a clone
and all i want is closure.
finality. observance and eulogy.

that's kind of sick. but sometimes
what fire's burned is best buried in the sky.

chronic refugee

breathe like the sum of all parts

can bring back the whole.--lisa gordon



will work for food will walk for food

will pull chipped blocks from rubble straighten

sheared tin walls for food.


privation's constancy suckles our flesh
moving cross broken landscapes and gravel buried
canned beans. genetic images form
my skeleton, grown from all the bones
i've gnawed and have bitten.

stasis in the circle with legs inside.
a curved, unequal pie. apportionment.
i'll take this slice, first servings. you can camp
on the diameter, packed tightly. will walk
for food, bringing babies and novel beginnings
to color the circle as the borders finally melt.

biting down on the light

did you go to the station yet?
trains are leaving, for destinations
and complications,hanging in the air
above traveler's heads.

there are windows. looking up.
rubber to bite down on. if you guess
which poem i stole this title from
i'll put it in a footnote.

all the way across ninth circuit court
of appeals, i've made my arguments.

the cat and its lives, perched all san
andreas, a waul that dismembered a wail.
it's nice to finally

stop talking. let's have a drink.
hyperactive gypsies have banded together
to bring us cards of many nationalities
all saying the same thing. peace. out.

cranial cardio

ah man, where's my pipe?
i have to get up to get it.

i can't believe i'm not OVER
this already. but like the magic sez
you have to get to the point of no pity.

i guess i still pity what might have been.
poor little homeless relationship.

aborted ,distorted, misported.

my girl said she went to the doc
and i was wrong. the feotus is fully
formed at 14 weeks. i said i know
i looked it up on wiki, that's the outside
but i'm telling you i felt life at 20 weeks.
not before. however you want to judge it
for yourself, is what you have to live with.
and i can live with my abortions.
how brain function and formation is only
primitive at this state, how any baby
born at 14 weeks is not going to have
a life even if they could keep it alive
because it's not like the brain is formed
enough to hold personality, memory, emotion.
it' s not some bonsai human yet.

i wonder she wondered, silently,
if you would say this even if they could
prove to you y ou are wrong.

she spends her life wanting to prove me wrong.
deep seated resentment for not leaving him
earlier in her life. eh. this is how it goes.
one tries to do the right thing
but it ends up backfiring when the right thing
was to get the hell out of an abusive relationship
as soon as possible.

woah. that's the key isn't it?
now, let me find that goddamn lock.

time moves in mollusks & berries

how the flower must scent then die
the pistil & cocked legs of honeybees
bring new life burgeoning into fruit
to pick from the bush. gem of sifted rock
in the shell, jewel forms round it.
dirt @ the center. how glowy i'll be

st. in cicero. left behind n luvin it.
othewise, opened, 1/2 shelled, slurped
burped, inert. i'll spend the rest
of my life looking round the next corner
for the thing i'll string into being.

it will elude me, higgs & boson unmisted
in the world series of physics. let there be
choleric plus plussing. no more
virus ghettos.

the ways we are not angels

if i broke upon rocks
i would not ascend.
dusk would not weep neon
for me, nor would your eyes

be anymore lifted than bishop's
in a sonnet filled with menstrual blood.
if you moved among the living
road, your feet would touch the ground

and wings would not carry you past
stones' desire to trip, rip your jeans
at the knee. the scrape iconoclast
the scape alone at last, as you mean

to get far from god's good heaven
to make your own on earth. battened
against the shadows that leaven
joy with flesh, the feel of slattern

lamps and silted rivers slaking no one's thirst
least of all those divine makers of fools
with all their tools. if i were to watch, first
the clothes removed, second the ooze

of mud between your toes, lastly water
closing over your head, i could not reach
out my hand made of bless and slaughter
from this distance between us, to breach

your drowning lungs. i do not know
why the angels sing, except to laugh
i do not know how to grace a blow
except to pass into the past, at last.

(ms sexton is a most awesome poet. this is not her work)