A good girl.
3 squares, church on Sunday, honor role.
Never anything that was unexpected, unplanned, unapproved.
Takes her vitamins.
Takes care of her family.
Takes a lot of shit because ‘that’s what you do’.
She takes a drive.
Full tank, full bank.
Following taillights on the horizon, they won’t even know she’s gone until the check bounces.
Green light.
Wheel gripped tight.
Turning right,
with newly bought bright red nail polish
she heads home.
She’s amped up for extra
spice and surprise,
for moody musts.
She’s crushed on velvet.
a bit of old Hollywood chic.
right out of her luxe list. She finds
any excuse to entertain,
to add some drama.
She’s made to take on life.
He opts for no-fuss.
A good book, his favorite drink,
coziness without compromise.
Room to retreat.
Details are everything.
He wants it the way he wants it,
no iridescence or shine.
It doesn’t take much for him
to live his best life.
There is no connector beam
at the base of their relationship.
How can they transform
the canvas when their colors
and textures clash?
I say love now,
pay along the way.
clothes that missed the hamper
kiss the ones hanging in my closet,
scraps of yarn litter the floor
tiny beads roll underfoot
and charger cords tangle together
piles of papers and notebooks and binders
stacked high sit scattered in the various crevices of my room
books lie haphazardly by my chair, my desk, my bedside table
my bed lays unmade as it has for months now
stuffed animals are squashed into the space
between the wall and the frame
my jewelry lies tangled together
and my chapsticks sit balanced precariously on the edge of my desk
this used to be a quiet reflective space,
where yoga and meditation came easily
but now chaos reigns in this room of my making
and the time has come to purge it.
Grinning with my son at our goofy banter,
I toss him a playful admonition,
— After an inadvertent pause —
Add first and last name through his bedroom door,
Cross the hall to lovingly pick up the threads,
Pleased for adolescent buy-in to sweet remnants of ritual.
My daughter settles into bed, waits her turn,
Wonders aloud how she has offended,
Having been jokingly called her brother’s name before
when engaging in one of his signature habits.
I invade her bed for a goodnight snuggle,
explain that I wasn’t talking to her.
His bloodhound ears sniff out his name on the trail of our conversation.
He demands to know what we’re saying about him
Then again when his suspicion muffles my projected reassurance.
Cheeks close together, the girls breathe secrets
As we wrap up our day
Hold our breaths to hush our giggles at indignant bellows for silence
From the man-child who could not hear a shouted response,
But only our “too-loud” wispy whispers.
Last night, 2016, fortune was kidnapped by
destiny, armed and dangerous, last seen driving
a late-model version of America toward
Lemming Leap.
Everyone was supposed to open the door and
roll out before the vehicle went over the edge
but,
to date,
no one knows whether they did.
talk — talk to another
talk is a two-way, screen-oriented communication.
Once communication is established, the two parties can type
simultaneously, in separate regions.
Permission to be a recipient of a talk can be denied or granted.
The talk shall fail when the user lacks appropriate privileges to perform the requested action.
When exchange cannot be supported,
report an error describing the deficiency.
The following environment variables shall affect the talk:
Definitions
categories.
interpretation of text
arguments and input
the results are undefined.
The talk was considered to be a “better” communications interface.
All references to networking abilities were removed as being outside the scope of this volume
Historical talk terminate the conversations
when either user breaks out of the session.
This can lead to adverse consequences.
* Neither party can be required to communicate
—
Found poem (erasure) from the Linux Man Pages.
Original text at:
https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/talk.1p.html
The one good thing about California
(I said what I said)
Is the ocean.
Vast, unending,
(Ineffable, divine)
I watch the boats.
Motor. Fishing. House. Life.
Take the people away
from the shore and into
The open water,
Where who knows what could happen.
In the distance,
Lyle Lovett waves, happy.
I am not a sailor.
But I could learn.
____________________
*ineffable, divine, is a nudge to Stephen Crane’s Poem “I Stood Musing…” and this title is a Lyle Lovett song
One single feather fell from the sky
it spun in tight circles
corkscrewing to the ground
falling in a tight spin
Just one feather in a lazy free fall
no birds laying claim
caught in the unseen air
a pendulum from the sky
It was an empty early evening sunset
the clouds thin whisps of their former selves
when the mystery of the feather fell to my path
marking a place among the clovers
The sun yawned as it tucked itself in
the feather corkscrewing its way to the ground
making peace with the clovers
one single feather fell in my path
Apologies to the Goddess
1
Lilith, I got you all wrong. I’d long
written you off as cliche, but on this sunny
post-millenium day you’re closer & less
witchy than the demonic goddess my stoned
out girlfriend revered with chants
& candles. I imagine you — cheeky, indolent
& protecting my backyard, a dominion
of disintegration. Slick mud & powderpost
beetles overtake it, not just the winged
archangel staked in the garden through
15 years of Tennessee tornadoes, but a plaster
statue of Mother Mary, now crumbling
& covered with wet dead
leaves & millipedes. An ant gnaws through an oak
wing & moss spreads on Mary’s diminishing
headscarf as if for her warmth & comfort. I ask
for one more chance to get it right. Oh rogue
goddess, I have misjudged.
2
The Lord ordered you to live with the fat
bastards & abscessed howlers, the ones
terrified of your desire. Oh, what a job;
to be given dominion over all devouring
hoards. So frightened they hallucinated
you & your maligned spirit buddies in thousand
fold swarms at their long windows. In Babylonia
they etched you on incantation
bowls, buried your image upside down
& underneath their baked-brick homes. Today
I imagine you as a comforter. At the gallows
with Salem’s damned. Swirling the funeral
pyre of Pratibha Khan, stoned
to death beyond recognition by her father
& brother for romancing a boy in a nearby
village. You are at the landfill guiding
fertile cycles of decay among fast-food
wrappers & mattress springs. In the cold
clinic cradling the aborted. Lingering at my back
door — banished & misunderstood.
babies
…still counting the seconds you are gone,
i am antique roman; i am open, these stone graves,
these clumps of catching pitch in my chest, and
the blonde straw of bird-men thatching, making
rooftops, ridgepoles, and nests nestled
down in the wrinkles ‘tween the bones in my head.
the birds, their warbling punishing, and
my mantra, the eleventh cure for migraine
i fervently repeat:
this is what counts, counting
the seconds you are gone.
and then
neither you, nor earth, nor stone, nor the
clumps of searing pitch in my chest,
nor the bird-men making homes in my brain
speak.
then
all i need do is love you, by the truest way, a music, a
halting, reaching silence, a
melody for all the nights leaping up upon clouds,
and a-down dies the game.
a-down dies the game, and
all are cherry blossoms kissing wind,
passionately a-lovaling like moths dancing, then,
ecstatic,
i could almost pick a plum
right off the ground, place it back on the limb,
then cry gold,
cry true gold, weeping with joy, welding the shards of
this chalice where once i held you, babies.
this i value.
to break, and continue.
to break, and continue.
this is most lovely.
and up from the catacombs, i rise.
