i painted my window shut

with purple paint.
if you look out
you can see the flood
from five days rain.
forty would surely drown me.

i'm writing on a ball
like the one we used to use
when i was a kitten
and you were insane.

through the male gaze
"you were always the summer girl".
 finally, the why-i'm-so-easy-to-leave of it.
the gutters we lie in are rain swollen.
the beaches we walk, needle sharp.
hurricanes travel up the atlantic
make landfall in your current hometown.
there's  clouds on my horizon, summer's over again.

so i follow the path, parallel. i want
to see sugars burnt, dripping off white limbs
against a sea blue eye. let the ac take care
of humidity and frizz, let fires take
care of the rest.


and the one who stayed didn't need to return.
but i left him anyway.

so outside it's almost october

and rain falls as if it were august.
fall is late this year. summer's lasting longer
but no one wants to speak of climate change
as if hiding the emperor's clothes
made them any less visible.
oh man, that didn't come out right.
my logicbegoms to fail.
all my october brethern and sistren
the mind follows the body
quickly to basest dwelling
it takes energy to fight pain
day after day. psychic, rightkick.


i dunno my love when you left that night
after i had your door broken down
by that man in my h ouse again i dunno
i didn't know if we could ever talk again
and if you wanted to abandon your baby
to me, you know i love her as much as
i do you, blood to blood, navel to navel
but you picked your wits up and thrust them
back into your head when you saw here there
YOUR daughter, your baby waiting
for you and fuck that bitch if she thinks i will
ever let her take this girl as long as i
have a breath in my body and roof over my head.
and so you have not come back here, a place
no longer your home, but mine, a woman
who gave you all you should have for freee.
if it's not earned, it's worth less, a lesson
your daughter will teach you one day
i wager, she being your first and only
and only know i know how hard it is
have me judge you, the one who didn't want
to ever judge at all, yet it's the role
well, my sweet  my cherish my love
the things you feel for yours, i felt for mine
which is why now you must your own way find.
love
mom.

title please

she was indian american. her eyes were covered by diamond shape glasses. i  got a sense she would do anything for the man in the black suit,red tie.   by the time i met them she  knew he had tired of her. she told me   " i don't know
 what to do. he said
he loves me.
 my grandfather was in the hospital
from open heart surgery.
 he went with me every day

spoke softly, like a dove,
 pecking at the ground
with satisfaction
 because the keeper has provided food.
he told my papa
 not to worry
 about me. he would marry me."
she looks at me with eyes imploring me to confirm this. i do not know this man. he is a poet i met on the internet. he is here with my lover,another poet, whom i also met on the internet. i am a poet. the indian american woman is a photographer. she snaps the camera at the slitof light coming through the curtain capturing heavy swirls of smoke from a night of cigarettes and weed. snaps the open rilke volume lying
next to  the man on a bed,.  He is speaking and laughing quietly with my lover on the other bed. i have to go to work soon. we take coffee from the mini bar. the red tie is wrapped around the handle like a bow. a gift says the tieless man, from my lawfirm.  he opens the slit of curtain wider. the light falls across my lover's shirtless chest, where the scar runs thickest, a keloid in the shape of angel wings.  the poet turns to this sincerely in love  indian american woman, takes the diamond shaped glasses from her face, begins to intone
""
blueberry and tiger blood
fill  the room where the old
man might die.  diving deep
into the center of your depthless
eyes,  look
 for what you wanted
from me. '
it's pretty damn simple, she stutters, clicks the camera, focused on the beam of light. i wanted what you told him to not be a lie. but it was a poem  he laughs,. falls on the bed clutching his knees, shaking with mirth.   my lover joins in..her face, furrowed, khol rimmed, flawless is intent on the lens of her pentax. . i look at them both, then at her, focus, snap, click. she falls between them to get a better angle and brushes against my lover's scar . he  blows me a kiss, says bye  hon, don't be late for work.

new car

i'm getting a new car soon. approved and everything. i feel like if i can't go full EV why do it? why new? it's  a half ass commitment to carbon reduction to drive at all. why not just stay with my old car and clamber in and out of it uncomfortably, mimic the damage to gaia in my own body? thing is, EV is not ready yet. i've never had to be the first kid on the block, but dammit i want carbon reduction. if it's not global warming, it's my grandkids' asthma or the sterile sturgeon of the yangtze river, both symptoms of the industrial revolution ad infinitum. it's time to be smarter about harvesting the riches of the universe. solar is a no brainer. we have the technology but i wonder if anyone's done a real CBA on it.  as far as EV, what  no one's talked about yet is the requirement on the electric grid to power all these cars.my electric company burns coal to 1990s standards. you remember the nineties? the global warming debate along with the planet's average temperature, was visibly rising. almost twenty years later and there's only one company that i know of that's entering the solar charge game. it's limited to about 12 states and paradise isn't one of them. so what's a girl to do when she's weary of driving a twenty year old car that gets quite decent mileage but needs to spend more and more time in the garage getting nipped and tucked?

 as for new,. i can only afford to go with the vehicle that's just about outdated in its tech. if i plunge deeper into the pocket, i could get a full EV with real driving range. i could be a leader instead of a come lately crowder. or i could buy a limited range full electric and resign myself to staying in my own town. it would be easier if there were, say, a super train between tampa and orlando and miami. but that dream died with the current governer's election.  i could maybe wait two more years for EV to become established. obviously, they are flying off the shelf if the model close out year holds only one to bargain on. in two years the resale value of my new car will likely plunge if EV does become established and all the yokels like me begin to buy them. what will my 58 mpg mean then? it burns carbon, albeit with fewer emissions. like i said, half assed commitment. if i were truly committed i'd move to a city with real public transportation, like seatle or chicago. yep, i'd have to be committed if i did that. i'm a sub tropical species. pretty sure i'd die the first winter.

hmmmm. this did not help. i want to make up my mind before the end of the month. i have two long trips i want to take in October and i really don't want to rent a car. or wait. maybe that's just what i should do. rent it for these trips, buy the smart ev and rent whenever i want to travel. i wonder if they have hybrids at hertz?

sarcastically benevolent

why did you write that, is that even relevent?
is that even a thing?

talking to you i run the gamut of engagement.


strange nickles in my head.
caution signs in the gutter.

i'd lift  your phrases  like silly putty.
don't send them.

cantonese in the living room.
a waffle iron in my bed.

forced beyond endurance i told you.
the water rushes the pipe, explodes.

ensuing catastrophes. bottled up dolphins.
like post hole digging. like strangled mimosa.

the door closes, the quotidian calls.
fungible is just a theory. snowflakes.

whY do cats rub your feet and other semi scientific questions

I've heard they Mark their t
territorythatway also it's been said
it feels good. mine seem to like it

why would a young woman today
decide tohave a baby and give it up
for adoption instead of
a_ abortion pet
or
b_keeping it.

I'mso weary off the cry
of murder. fetal pain disclosures ?

mommies being bred by Christian radio
commercials and right wing legislatures
despite safer alternatives.

just what Gaia wantedforChristmas.
another unwanted unplanned child.

what it's the average temperature
of a Googleplus account?

if a score of internet poets
write a page a day how
long till the cliche Meter breaks?

when youraiseyourvoice like that
what it the decibel change that renders
it a yell
whenWill tablets have true Swype?

never doesn't mean never anyway

and always is never always.

dreadlock canyon

i brush my hair everyday she says
to her grandmother as the car turns
a dangerous left and the sun glints
on her tow head curls momentarily
making the pool streaked twirls
 gleam with a  low fire's twists
around hints of red clay, and brown
mud near the skull, where the sun
barely reached at all under water
while she swam all summer waiting
for the leaves to change

open MIC

ok i'm so bad, there are two poems i want to write on this fair september night , moon just rising pregnant, water break immanent, veiled in clouds of grey and white across her black bed. it's the eleventh, when everything changed in the usa because safety became a cause d'affaire. safety uber alles, keep the homeland safe but there's no place to hide from good intentions. spread  democracy like clymidia you'll get reinfected with a drug resistant strain. good or bad, here's what i'm aware of : the god of war is us and we eat him. every bullet riddled suburb, every border crossing central american child, every vigilante posse, that jihadist walking with a severed head along a riverbank in idaho, each of these and more come from the game of guns we play , with ourselves if the Soviets are absent. another thing i know-there are always buyers.  that's the thing about money worship. the buck rules. the buck doesn't stop, it doesn't know how. anything for a buck. so if you even wanted, through some twisted sense of idealism, to eliminate weaponry, it couldn't happen. from the smallest razor to the largest anti aircraft missle, we loves our weapons. and we don't  want you to have them. unless you got a buck.  we'll take that buck and make a better one. so anywaze,thinking about the poems i wanted to write and i saw the date. so that's what THAT was about. now i don't remember the things i wanted to say. something about the trestle at lunch. something else about entropy and energy, how dark matter, already coalesced is straining at the seams, stretching me thinner and thinner
skin bruise at a scrape, taut flesh itches.  there is some freedom in the thought of winding down. no lawns to mow, weeds to pull. dogs to walk. not everyone lives an urban life, i wanted to tell her when she dissed my metaphor as quaint, as passe, as why can't you get your head out of the goddam mud woman and i realised that she and i do not live in the same worlds at all. in her world, trestles, if failing, get fixed. if a shim is needed, a check is written. there are no oxen in her condo or her county. she does not live in shri lanka. but someone does. so the metaphor stands. when i work, when i don't feel like a stripper being worked by a host of pimps, i feel exactly as dumb as the ox, whom i contend understands the whims of the farmer as well as i understand those of management. my metaphorical yoke fell off when my kids grew up. no one depends on my wages but my mortgage company.  why should i care if they get it? ahh but the straw is in the stable at the end of the day, the hot shower awaits at my pleasure. i hear the undersides of bridges are a bit short on facilities and i do like my comforts. this is why i'm not in the mood for your revolution. your jihad. your killing spree.
however i'm quite fine with you guys going over to your neighborhood to shoot of the fireworks i'll happily sell you because the boss put me in charge of getting rid of  them all. we'll make more.  got a buck?