July #20

I wonder what it is I did
to make you come to class with me
live just down the road from me

I wonder what it is I did
to be so lucky finding you there
sitting so unconsciously

I wonder how it could've been that I
had never known you before this

before love

July #19

there's this girl
that I used to know
and now begin
to know again.

she and i were
new friends full
of warmth and lies,
hopes that died.

it's interesting to watch
us reform some nebula -
she is eager and i
i am wary.

July #18

I like the casual
I imagine
the beginning
so expository
proclaiming.
I imagine
that if I were to write great poetry
it would begin
with casual phrases
that knocked you away
with their power.
I imagine
often.

July #17

I imagine
that if we live in London
we will live in
rolling countryside
dotted with sheep
and streams
and rurual life.
I can't imagine the actual place,
the throbbing city life
of a bustling booming
busy capital
of that foreign country.
I don't know what is really London,
but I'm trying to find out.

July #16

I worry about
being shut out
forgotten or abandoned
by people I think friends.
I worry about
being shut out
cast aside
for more interesting people.
I worry about
being swept out
ignored, forgotten
alone all the time.

July #15

London calls
it is drowning
in lonely people
in half couples
with no one to embrace
London is calling
alone and feebly
drowning in single or half single people
looking for the answer.
London is drowning and I
I feel like the river.

July #14

I sent off a letter today,
a convincing one, I think.
One that compared
the stupefying heat of summer
to the literary world
and wondered
are you bold enough
to read this and take it
and shake it up
make it rain?
are you bold enough
to say yes?
It was a challenge.
Unfortunately
now I have to wait two months
to see if they have thrown down
their glove with mine.

July #13

I have been hiding all weekend from a mountainous pile of assignments and finals,
one that looms before me as I cower in dread. And today
today this day of rest that is today,
it is time to roll up my sleeves, shake my head, and get down
to work.
Honest work, successful work, work that makes me feel smart,
prepared, honest work that might get me a job someday.
Time to face the music
so that I can interrelate everything
and get a life.

July #12

We


We are going
to have a house,
a nice house,
somewhere
far away from where I am right now,
somewhere that I may have never been.
We are going to have a house.
We are going to have a garden,
with flowers and pumpkins,
because I like pumpkins,
even though
they might not grow well there.
We are going to have our garden and
I am going to have my pumpkins.
We are going to have children,
adorable children,
who take after relatives we don't know.
We may not even know they take after people,
because we'll be far away
from the rest of our families.
But it is a beautiful place, I hear.
We are going to have a yard
with room for a sheep
and two dogs
and a cat, at least one cat.
Perhaps
if the children convince us
we may have a hermit crab as well.
But no bugs, snakes, or slimy things.
We are going to go visit our families for Christmas
and Thanksgiving
and New Year's
and maybe sometimes in the summer
just for fun.
We are going to be happy,
with our house and garden and children and pets,
and high priced airfare.
But we would be happy
in an apartment
with high rent,
no kids,
one flower growing in one pot,
and a goldfish,
if we had to.
Because we know what love is.

July #11

There is poetry in silence
in carefully crafted blank pages.
Sometimes the absence of words
reveals so much more
than abusive, muddying, confusing words.
Words can mean
whatever you want -
but the silence is always apparent.

July #10

The poems I was going to write
have flown
becoming birds that,
upon startling,
escape further than any human can go.
They are v shapes far above
flying off
reaching the horizon
whereupon they float away
escaping gravity at last.

July #9

I came home today
checked my email
and got irritated at my teacher
who emailed us twelve pages
to read in 17 hours
except that
i will be sleeping for seven of those hours -
ten hours -
in class for an hour and a half -
8.5 -
commuting
which means driving my mother around
and parking
and walking
in hot summer heat
for another hour -
7.5 -
and then
before i can manage to do the reading
i need to write two response papers.
one is halfway done.
and
what about that damn essay?
i sent an email
to the same address
that he emailed us from
twelve hours ago
asking
for the extension that he said
he would willingly give.
despite getting
twelve pages of more work
i have not received even one word
of actual response back.
he is not getting his five page essay tomorrow
reply or no reply,
the essay i have managed
to write a page of.

July #8

About How You Can Never Complain Again




so
this one
is about how you can never complain again
about how sometimes when you call me
and i'm too busy to talk
or i'm hanging out with other people
and am talking to them
instead of you.
this one
is about how your right to do that
has been revoked.
and this one is about how
i put away time to talk to you
when i was away
and you
you can't really be bothered.
this one is about how
you turned off the volume
when i was talking to you
so that you could do other things
and the sound bothered you.
this one is about how
even when you're online
"talking" to me
you don't say anything
and i have to wrestle with the conversation
to make anything
happen.
this one is about how you don't really talk to me
unless we're on the phone
and you have to.
this one is about how
i do things, so many things,
for you.
not everything.
but i put away time and don't develop friendships
so i can talk to you
and i support you,
your drinking, your friends
that i don't know, or that i don't like,
and i never, ever tell you
that i'm so uncomfortable with something
you have a deep desire for
that you can't do it.
this is about how
we are uneven
and more and more
how it matters.
this one is about how
you can't complain any more.
with love.

July #7

spinning
the act of creating use
out of easily broken
formless fibers,
magically transforming them
is a process that has been done
as i have done
for hundreds of years.
maybe i will prick my finger
on a spindle
fall asleep for 100 years of solitude,
wake up
when I am kissed
and turned into a frog.
Or is that
not how it goes?
oh well -
back to work,
the wheel,
ever turning

July #6

I want to know why
I am so silly.
Others might say
I am compassionate,
or humane.
Isn't it funny how close the words human and humane are,
and yet how different the end products?
I drove today,
beautiful twilight dusk
that was destroyed
when I watched a rabbit
flee too slow
and end up between my tires.
Trying to reassure myself,
I listened for a crunch
that never came.
Yet still
I drove to my house,
found my father,
put my head on his shoulder,
and whispered
the unthinkable,
and then, unthinkably,
I cried.

July #5

Driving
down country roads
headlights on
against the dark
when a sudden turn down a hill
lights up one thing:
an innocent white tail
tiny and low
bobbing much too close
to your headlights.
it is too close
and too soon
to react.
you can only watch,
and grieve prematurely.

July #4

I said
I am drowning
in a pool of vomit
and then to lighten the mood
said that
only the best die that way.
But to tell the truth,
I was not feeling best.
I was feeling suffocated,
buried,
in messes of my own making,
messes that I could not swim away from,
that bogged me down
and would not let me surface
to breathe.
And when I tread water,
the very movements
pull me further down.
I am suffocating,
face down,
in an ever deepening pool
of my own vile vomit,
and no one will save me.

July #3

I am still so broken
in ways I never knew.
I am envious
of friends that I have to share.
I worry
about losing everyone,
anyone,
to that other.
I am insecure
and broken
and want to hide it
from the world,
yet cannot help wishing
to expose my weak
awful
inner self.

July #2

"It makes me so happy, and so devastated at the same time."

"Well yes. That's life."

life
a mix of extremes
the times
when joy is bitterest
are the times you love the most
the times you feel most alive.
when pain is the sweetest,
burning within,
deeply lighting
the core of you.
life is too flat unmixed.
it requires
combustible combinations
to make it all work.
life,
and love,
my love.

July #1

So I got waay behind on last month's poems. Time to fix it by doing a lot this month.

1.
It seems I spend all of my months
waiting for summertime,
the golden summertime
that I love best.
It is in the heat of summer,
the blistering, smeating heat,
that I am finally warmed,
my lingering winter frosts melted
in the love and the glare
of the brightest sun.
I wait and yearn
for the summertime
when memories become edged in gold
and onlythen
do I feel perfection looming,
reaching for me.