Once I was young

I felt a little bit like I had arrived
I’d felt like that before
But this was
as grown as I’d ever imagined
I enjoyed depression
and Radiohead
and The Cure
This must be what it’s like I thought
I’ll do things differently, I figured
And I won’t end up like that.
‘I am not my parents’ felt
like a hail mary

I imagine

For me,
like Beauty

But I’d see a person of that age today
and I’d think,
they still have their baby fat.

The velvetted deer are jumping in the meadow

what a dear, sweet child

I think this new crop
may still have that hope

-and so many
my age made
some decision against that-

incredibly naive, shapeless blobs
Perfectly Blobby

Some figure
I’m no good at the wheel
My shit is dry
I hit the floor too much
I know a way
You can become fresh clay

Because the thing about people is
they learn
just by blindly moving forward

It is called awakening
to realize that you are making
a crucial decision
and that the whole thing
isnt fucked
If you reduce it all to dust, pick the bits out and re work it
Well it’s true
A lot can go wrong
But there is always
a decision to try again
I think that thinking like that is
A TRUE WISDOM
and
when I listen to songs
from those years,
Francoise Hardy’s Je Ne Suis La Pour Personne
or wave of mutilation
I feel young
And lots of feelings
actually change your brain
So I can be young again
for longer anyway
and a bit more comfortable
Be a bit blobby and naive
Dream bigger

Well then
it’s okay to make mistakes
or at least be kind and encouraging
to that Self
Who thinks that probably
they will change, at least
into the being they want to be

It’s a practice of being centered

I actually gave up on the wheel
Or rather
Printmaking,
Video,
Not Living in Fear, was calling me
obviously about six zillion other things as well

But here we are again!

Back on the wheel!

We’re only

Mostly dead, not All dead

are things so awful

the fireflies glitter too early

flame hem horizon

isn’t that            sew

we have the couch weft of sweat

for watching vampire-TV and melting out

            what short life we are given

            and unraveling anemic skeins

            of disappointment

i am

without a seat

sitting down always

three fireflies like embers curse my way            tonight

and fly fruitlessly            on

you didn’t tell me

            why today must

            how did these things

            who is to blame for

three tears like coolant salting over Fahrenheit

I want to sit in that window.
The one in the room above the brewery
overlooking downtown.
It has a nice, wide ledge,
even if it’s a little short to be very comfortable.

I think it’d feel like flying up here above the lights
and picnic tables and park where there’s a wall with
all the local war veterans’ names inscribed.
My daddy and both papaws are on it,
signifying so many wars in all these generations

changing lives worldwide,
even back here in this corner of Kentucky
where I grew up saying the pledge of allegiance
every morning without really knowing what it means,
watching my daddy retreat to the car

to get away from fireworks, and
it’d be adulthood before I knew why.
Worrying I’d witness something so awful
I’d be thrown back by booms and bangs.
But here I am looking out at my hometown

knowing across the world people have witnessed
horrors far worse than I can imagine this very day,
and all I want is to sit right here in this window and
pick out shapes in the clouds building walls up
over the hills with these coming storms.

I sat with a une sorcière
her cards drawn from dreams
braided in and out of time,
like a girl’s hair,
longues tresses de cheveux,
and one cord is yesterday
and one is tomorrow
and the third, maybe the coquette
who doesn’t know she is beautiful. Maybe the coquette
whose arms and breasts
sag just below where they should,
swinging her hips in half lit bars,
making promises she knows she will never keep.

we had ran barefoot 
up our gravel road
to the top of the hill
where the everyone 
dumped their trash 
from my grandfather 
because she told me 
he was going to kill us

one get away car later
I was hunkered 
behind my great aunt’s couch
worried he’d find us 
while the orange sodium lights
cut through the blinds 
orange and black lines
on a white wall

the room filled with 
the smell of cigarettes 
Windsong perfume 
Potpourri cooking 
in a ceramic pot 

I waited 
lying on her carpet 
while they talked
about his schizophrenic fits
and wondered 
how long before we died 

we push seeds deep
we pause, wait on warmth
we water
we wait more
we watch
we guide tendrils 
we watch still
we imagine
we make pickles
we share
we smile 
we save seeds
we plan 
we wait 
we do it all over again

26
I no longer cringe when I state my age 
smiling as the years pass 
next year ill state another age 
just as proudly 
twenty six 
Writing it is a celebration 
I’m alive 
I’m living
im aging 
20+6
how is it possible 
so much yet so little time has passed
and I feel so much older than I did 
but still so young 

How like water—still
reflections of mountains lie
on your face, shadows
anchored by glints of twilight
resting your eyes against mine.

I don’t even want to do my poem today.
if I heal, what will I write about?

Today, I woke up not-me, Alice-ish, peering