eleven minutes

i sound these days
like foghorn over a prairie
the pain tempest in unreal storm.
freeze it , you whisper, numb
the bitch out. i take an esmoke
lesson in the virtual, do crunches
and scizzors in the pool, remember
the round ball of your touch
and the fuzzy oxy bubble
in the  middle of the night. he says
i just have to get used to the bed
and i says i just have to use
the pain. recall how you soften
it how the swelling billows
over san francisco's famous waters
reach in vain for the long lonely
bleat of the horn, sounding off desperate
ignored on the sunny plains of nebraska.



















*





i dunno . that metaphor didn't wok.
when the pain subsides i always want to just
take a li'l nappy time, enjoy the void.


like now. i can do this sitting up. in fact
it's better that way. but if you wanna
run your fingers over the burning point
let me lie down, succumb to the fire.

if  we had different homes
or ummm addresses then maybe you'd
see my value. i dunno, maybe i'd
see yours. can't believe you'd
not pay the tip, can't believe you'd
still be a trip but whatever now
i think i'll just remember green
and the way your yes looked
in the empty shed.

ok, show, stop telling begin to show.

yeah.7uy888888888888888888888888888888878

thanx budha

you always loved the way
she looked a few minutes after
she cried.






*(*






i haven't writtten to you
in a while haven't been compelled
to break the training of the jeans
in the third drawer down
the pull of the muscle adjusted
by the crack of silence.

i have new respect for other
people's pain. mine is giving me
the effect i wished for from all
the paint fumes and sniffed glue
solder in the mouth, cyanide and sodium
smelts.  i gather the fixings for meds
and a velvet black bag, set them next
to my phone, keys, wallet. a list
of things to bring to work. automatic
is a  pre raphaelite remembrance
effort a retention pond dug in the planned
community, surrounded by a fence
fed by drainpipe.

i write exactly the thing to make you
leave me alone. i am jane's bitter pill.
don't call me hun, babes, i am not
your hollah back grrl.

red glass

paint spilled last nite
settles in a rectangular doorway
on the concrete. she imagines

an entry into carnival
or some kin of hell, writes
the poem in three minutes
then dismisses it. the blob
is thick, shiny, primal, it moves
like slow motion cooling
glass under the morning.

just like you said to do. the
spirit that haunts this porch
has brown and white wings
tipped in true love rosered.

red and red and red. burn
and renewal. eye pop.
stradivarius laughing.
where is my spell check  now, bitch?






















*(&&&






the weather
let's talk about the
clown skies of maine
perpetrated in your eyes
or the mists of smokey
breath intertwined
with photon bites
and animus divine.


or not. hows the weather
where you are? she has
a half smoked cigarette
half a cup of coffee half
an hour till she  leaves.
the handy display in the corner
keeps her connected to time.

she could: suck your cock
write a poem, do a complete
ab workout take a shower.
she chooses poem. she chooses
write.




















**




on your balcony
is a memory caught
in digital form , transmuted
to pixels recombinate with waves
eaves of recollection bubble
under the thick surface creeping
across the landscape. show don't tell
yet i tell and tell and yelly tell.
yawn. i can only think of the way you
described the fizz above a glass
of soda water , tied it to
motes of dust in a light beam
stabbing the still air, thru
a curtain from the eighteenth century.

and then the sun breaks
from the morning clouds here
letting me know there's minutes
and hours out there, and they run
a line of fire ants with amdro manna
in their mandibles.


the pipe is ash. a bird calls
harshly the songs of others
from the tip of the lightpost.
it mocks the orange cat
that sleepily watches
from the honda's roof.
pain is a constant lover, she
realizes.  and plenty to go round.

tilted to one side

=i love the ritual of the smoke
the inhale, the exhale, visible.


morning rain brings inquisitive look
from ember. her green eyes tranced
by the sound of water on aluminum siding.

it's surprisingly soft, like gramma murmmuring
sweet nothings in your ears.

i stub the cig, i'm cutting down
thanks to electronic miracle vaporizer

i'll save it for later. i allow myself 3-4 a day
doled out by my teenage son, a lesson for him

in addictions.  you slept
on the thirty year old shag carpet on top
of a comforter a thin excercise pad
for a year. the storm grows more violent
the murmurs become the gravel in your voice
the unfairness of the symptoms, the sloth
of the hook. from computer chair to floor
and back again, this is how your life
flowed before i left.

now i c ome to you again
but you don't want a horse again.
the needle in the vein,
a need for the pain. just to know you live.

the roses i bought for mother's day
bloom, carmine velvet bullets of beauty.
they are the color that means
my heart beats for you.

they are my daughter's. i keep them
for her until she's ready for them

i should water the plants. my hip
aches less now than this morning
when the left side kept me tied up
in angst . i thought about out of body
experiences, the epiphany of the release
but i couldn't go there. i'm afraid
i won't come back. if you could get rid
of the pain, even if it meant lack of pleasure...
i dunno, some sleepless mornings
that seems worth it, but i have these flowers
that i've planted, and they like the morning
suns we've spent and will they don't want
me to go too soon. so i deal. pain is an emotion
that has its lessons after you forget it.

time for work.

eye

that doesnt elicit a response from you b/c it's not a big deal


if i don't. you'll take it if it's offered and leave it when it walks away.

knee deep in the way life is, you wonder what's the entertainment

and i tell you it's just another addiction like everything else

only quicker. i want to write again, so let's leave the sex

to people who care about each other. or not. i'm just tired of the half

life fakery of babe and honey substitutes for hearts. yeah ok

it's been four months and you're a captive audience. time to let that go.

get you out of here, moving into the life you think

you need to live. me, i need to be free to fall and i think having

too much sexual comfort, too much imprinting by you

will make falling an excercise in futility. so, hadda nice time giff

but it's time for me to move on. when i'm crying before and after sex

it's more than pms. it's commentary on the trajectory

of these comets after the rotation's been handled.

caught in the poem

the front porch floor
is painted in purples and greens
like you told me to do, spills
of paint and yen yang symbols
break up the picture of a hubble night sky







*




so here i am again, fallen
into something i didnt expect
like you changing your mind
because  of not m e
but your own addictions

you do better in a couple
me too.

you've kept new
england weather in my state
for a cool couple of months now.
if you joined me in the morning
i'd come undone. endorphins
for breakfast.


*

the bright green of the steps clashes
with my sense of the morning. barraged
by the garbage truck's  grind, the sciatica
burn, the morning is broken into traffic & bass.

i don't want to try to understand why
you'd care if i moved on if you're not
in my picture. you're always going to leave.
that's what the message is. i deciphered

the code words "going to leave'. lol.
this is an itenerate state and i don't get to keep
nice things.  that's why i splashed
paint on the concrete, left the borders
and corners undone. it already looks
like a mess but it's really
just a semi controlled accident. besides
your guru is different from mine.

still, my hair sparks red in the morning sun.
i wish someone would appreciate it now.

i could wake you but you're dreaming
so sweet. it's best to stay in these seperate time
zones, venn diagrams of the night.

threes and sevens and nines

or the parable of threes

outside at break she watches
cal come up the walk. he's stooped
and shuffling,   baseball cap loose
on his head, red company polo
shirt tenting his wasted
body. she stubs her cigarette and emerges
beside him from the smoking area, he stops
a bit surprised to find this pleasant
obstacle to his determined progress. it's a goodbye
party for the boss, who has been given
the customary six weeks. cal himself is 85
battling
cancer, kidney & bladder, for 2
years now. hey she says i'm glad to see
you ain't given up show biz
gives him a hug, surprised at the frailty
of his shoulders, the spine's
stoop. well i'm in for chemo tomorrow
i think this is gonna be the last
go round for me, she wishes
she'd say
something like don't give up or
keep fighting but she can't
see the reason herself. she loves him
agape, he's a real mensch
didn't deserve to be poked and prodded
in and out of the hospital like cattle
feeding a vampire colony.
 she cannot stand to go
inside hospitals, small talk is excruciating
and large talk impossible. she doesn't
visit him, though he
would have
visited
her, she's sure.
who's taking care of you
who's home with you now?
once she and her son painted &
refacia ed his house
he'd go in and out
 the door, getting drinks, talking to the boy
about his days in ww2, navy man, regaling
with tales of the open sea at war
with the lift and hammering, the brushstrokes
not performed
by his own hands but he
was cool about it, laughed at the failing
body, the crappiness of aging. she asked him why
he never married. i was close once
but it broke off a couple weeks
before the wedding. i decided then and there it just
wasn't worth it. she nods.

life's full of other things. do them instead.

bottom of the ]]\\\

you were telling me how you thought
you were ready now, how the blinders
have fallen from your eyes and you
think you can love again how you'd maybe
like to see what comes from us and just as i
was about to answer i got a call from him a visit
at the front door so of course i invited him in
took you to another room asking
for maybe a bit more time see
he's here , he's asking to try
so i have to try again and then he walked in on
us and walked out again, skating away
but calling me sayiing follow me
with the curve of his back
and the back of his head
which i want t o smash like a melon
now i'm awake and realize
that i can't love anyone else until he says to me
no, that not talking not seeing not being
with him is not enough he has to reject me directly
before i'll be able to move on
so o
i'm sorry i give you shit
about how you're being my bf 
because i still have to keep you
wearing the tgif hat , even if