For J. in Idaho

i wanted to tell my lifestory. i would write it on a rock, for surely
it would fit, snug between the mosses growing. a higher glyphic
like found on mountaintops by unwitting prophets.
a guidebook to the damned; them who gave a great damn
all the time, against their own best instincts,
given over, nonetheless, to being true,
forthright, and yet ill-equipped as well
as daring as all wherewithal.

peacock feather buried at sea, shucked oysters down the mouths of government leaders. it was going to be some story. but i was cooking in restaurants. i was visiting the dr’s. i was playing yahtzee
with other yahtzee players. i was buying longjohns forlong winters and short skirts for even shorter summers. i grew old with my prince charming, and before i knew what to think i thot differently.

i knew i had succeeded at so many things.
i wiped the mirror with a damp towel. i shut the front door.
i polished the tea kettle and blew out its whistle when i went to bed nights, and daytimes, days like green embroidery on a pink clothesline grew mosses, like the rock had grown when id wanted
to back-when write me.

it started with a rubix cube. an onion unraveled. the real puzzle was how id got on at all but for love. at that point i set out to write love, but this didn’t happen, exactly. i wrote with love. i wrote to people that i loved. i wrote lovely things about people i loved. i loved people and i kept writing. but i have not written love.

i have met sad people. i have met miserable people. i have met the bleaker than bleak, those that gave up so completely that they had given up on giving up, in fact their gig was up. their gig had been being someone that gives up.

i have met people who love. i would much love writing my lifestory.
i wld write it with a penny scratched on cardboard chits, thrown into
the rubbish on the way out, having not won this time. i wld write it with three xes going down the middle, and draw a line through the x-es, pass the paper, wait for my opponent to draw a new board.
i wld write it with a long line drawn perpendicular to a much shorter line one letter at a time building a stickman. i wld always have
different opponents, and they all wld love and each of them would want to read my story.