I'm pretty sure nothing means anything, really.
interpret as you will.

3 hour assembly. all of then are starting to blur. they all wear ridiculous heels. girls winning more awards than they can carry. who are these little robot children? these little doers? what will they need in ten years?

nothing. they will never need anything. they will have ski weekends with their ivy fiances and take the lift up. of course, they will take the lift up and admire the view where the trashy men and coked up women in the city are smaller than little snowflakes, and really all the same. people die. pain is relative. people can be kind. poor people rich people. so what. mountains don't give a damn.

substance & shadows

because the pendulum is tiring. terrifying in its slow consistency. the middle just never sticks. of course, when we have to, we do. do you even know your own glow? you must. just stuck on the shadow at the now.

that's what's so irritating. there is only substance and shadow. there is only ever the something and the nothing and I hate that.

i am angry that we only ever get one shot. that i will only ever be me. not that i don't lovemyselfyaddyyaddy... it's just... unbearable lightness. i am angry about ugly babies. i don't know what to think about the fact that we will all be robot cyborgs someday. these things matter to me. because i don't know what matters. i don't know what is substance. where to while my hours. where to place my bets.

isn't it pretty? it is nice to share a shadow.

stakes

THE STAKES ARE EVERYTHING.
SO, EXECUTIONERS,
STATE YOUR INTENT.

full of holes, she wobbles-
to-walk
wobbles-to-walk

almost
brave
almost


what does enough
feel like?


the passing lane's
a dangerous
and difficult place
for those who secretly want
proof.

all living along the fault line,
careful planners
and mindless dreamers
constantly collide--
and ricochet.

and i-- i throw my fate
like confetti;
because uncertainty
is time

and i was always last in line
when it came to making plans
and contingency plans

caught between
the picket lines
of wanting
solid ground
and room
to move around.

is it the longing
or belonging--

which is the mistake?

armed with losers' luck
and a gambler's
smile,
squandering chances &
weathering (whethering) loss
alone,
and all the hunger it implies,
bred
and butterless.

freefalls and u-turns
midwiving seedbeds
of altering trajectories--->


Let SEEM Be The Operative Word!
Let Seem Be THE Operative Word!
LET Seem Be The Operative Word!
Let Seem Be The OPERATIVE Word!
Let Seem BE The Operative Word!
Let Seem Be The Operative WORD!


room for doubt
always houses
that
tension,
without which
hope
and growth

and hope
for growth,

and every extraneous,
beautiful thing
become
orphaned--

or worse, latch-key.

the riddle's
in the rhyme,
the jester screams--

echoing perhaps, perhaps,
the fear
is in the finding,
the losing
in the choosing? echoes, echoes.

but there are traces of something there,
(it's) the cadence
of his voice

halfway down,
i don't trust it.

& this piecemeal tango
of longing
&

practicing cues
&
come-ons,

with
audible sighs,

no longer covers
the miscarried silence.

pulsing
it is pulsing, this empty.
pulsing


(i am) now (frantically) wire-walking
this threshold
like a (blind) man
in a tool-shed,

where (varying) degrees of indifference
haunt the in-betweens
loose in the footfalls
of peaks and valleys

peaks
and
valleys

forced to play maid and mistress to
half-baked cartographers
whose songs of
ill-defined signposts
articulate winds of change
in the form of
immaterial counter-bet(s),

drowning everything,

every_thing,
everything,

in symphonic ruin.

what makes us fall?
what makes us stay?

do you like the word linger?
in one of its many costumes. (hope, candor, love),e.g.

what makes us fall?
what makes us stay?

(fake) certificates of authenticity(?).

what makes us fall?
what makes us stay?

the song's brevity is its stage.
so he knows only driftwood,
and muddy water.

all else is quicksand.

what makes us fall?
what makes us stay?

she undoes.
in varying shades of nonchalance.
she undoes.

seeks comfort
in common ground,
however rootless.

fetal in the corner, humming,
without hint of cessation:

"we walk the plank with strangers. nurse regret with hard liquor. cradle the light."
"we walk the plank with strangers. nurse regret with hard liquor. cradle the light."
"we walked the plank with strangers. darling, we survived the fall. nurse regret with hard liquor. cradle the light."

"...cradle the light."

-poet friend

ugly babies

You know what bums me out?
Thoughts like, "What about the ugly babies?"
There are ugly people in grown up form, and there are some seriously ugly babies. And that is just the way it is. And you know what? Even when they're babies, they get talked about for their ugliness. I know. I've done it. I, a full grown woman, have snickered and psst pssted about a number of small ugly humans. And that baby is just laying there being ugly, or all smush faced in a picture with no idea that a whole lifetime of discrimination is lined up to meet them just as soon as they reach self awareness.

And this is not fair. Something about this is stupid. Something tears at me when I think about how someone can live their whole life focusing a ridiculous percentage of their attention on a particularly hideous body part (that the whole world is focused on too). It depresses me that there are people who will never have a comfortable sexual encounter. ever. Because they are ugly and they know it. This seems unconstitutional.

But there is something else that bums me out. This whole "designer baby" notion that all my girls want to write research papers on. Thinking about the implications of designing your own offspring makes me... tired. Not sad. More like a really quiet surrender.

So in five hundred years we'll be computerhuman hybrids who can design little computerhuman babies who will never ever run the risk of being ugly. So what. Why? And what matters? And what does it mean to be a human and what is purpose and who am i and who is in charge of ratifications to the constitution of day to day living and breathing and pretending we have some grasp on anything?

what it comes down to is

you do
when you have to.

*

"We are here on earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different." -Kurt Vonnegut

another russian prophet

russian woman with nine teeth and a cart. needs directions. walks with me for four slow blocks. she doesn't need directions. you have a warm aura. this location is not for you. when i smile she inspects my gums and derives from their shade that god has saved me many times. picking up little scraps of paper along the way. messages, they're all messages, love. jesus cured her cancer. he told her in a dream not to eat livestock and to preach. and to preach. when she preaches to people, she makes stalled busses start again. i remind her of her daughter sarah because i have dimple and a a vein on my neck. by the way, do i want to be her caretaker for ten dollars an hour? another russian prophet trying to tell me how i am. no matter how disheveled, i am apparently way too approachable to walk in peace.

the road

humanity comes from fire,
no metaphor.

breakdown post apocalyptic scenarios challenge everything
suicide or survival
isn't suicide more practical?
there is no argument.

morality socially constructed
and FRAGILE
so fragile.
yet we cling to it like it's solid concrete,
a skyscraper landmark
to buy souvenirs of
and to look for on the horizon.

There is no monument that cannot crumble.
Find a shrine within yourself
and navigate the streets,
wary of cracks.

gestures & words

wants balance
feels like crawling into some kind of den
away from eyes and invitation
whittle it down
rest in peace

we're all so beautiful
we're all too beautiful
and misunderstood

let's get one thing straight:
mobius strip paradox
how can we ever judge?
aren't we all responsible?

probably capable. may or may not.

we're all just army crawling
through another fast decade
fingernails clawing new terrors
toward some distant answer
to a familiar longing

possible to gesture toward
impossible to name

breakfast at tiffany's

we both
kind of
each other
what good is having got that?
a powerful distraction
unnamed friend
you never took to titles
and i could chase you, find you in the streets
but that's not how the book ends.
conclusion. resolution.
"Oh, Jesus God" (109).
gogogo heavy heart
lightly like being free (unbearable)
a different kind of freedom
curled up next to a familiar fear.

"love a wild thing, end up looking at the sky"
i left the window open.
the window was always open,
my huckleberry friend.
the mean reds.
the book ends.

google first link: breakfast at tiffany's critical analysis

to my face

liarliar, pants on fire
that exact moment when tension moves to danger
things we convince ourselves
honesty has to be practiced in the smallest ways to be the first thought when it matters most. practice.
let's not pretend
let's not act like real life when it's only reciting lines
while the truth curls into
some kind of shell

you tend the horse, i will grow a garden.