3 poems

So much

I watch the plate of chicken legs
being brought inside and think
of all the fat i will have to rip off
to get through to any meat.
while i eat my fingers burn
and i barely get anything.
i am annoyed i tell my boyfriend.
i am still
hungry. so afterwards everyone
goes outside to smoke and i
stay inside and watch
the plate with everyone's discarded
bones on it and wonder
why they left so much meat
on there.



too wide

i painted my boyfriends face but it was not
perfect. it was too wide.
i painted both my feet, too.
i painted abstractly
i watch the face on the floor
and it does fill me
with some pleasure
despite the fact that it's
too wide.



it's nice to have your own room.
it's nice to not be able to hear
it's nice to be alone all the time
except for when you are not
alone. it's nice also to get to turn
on the TV and cook food when
you want to and workout and shower
and listen to voices tell you
different things and then
sitting with them all and giving
them equal weight. it's nice
to not have to hear.

war on style

Uh hello says the wake up
crew i don't know anyone
who doesn't know how to wake up
anymore the blinds they stay
behind the sides of my eyes
shelving rituals i know how to
shop in a cart in an ocean that
greets me i sweep music like a
piece of fabric touching
glass it rises into the heat of
lemon day i have nothing
more to understand the hatred
it unravels me and stands
too close for me to give it
anything of myself.


war on style

hello it begins
each day with the blandness
the blandness opens up like a star
and i don't care if anyone doesn't know me
i don't care if i never make it faster than
you, i don't want to open up the war just to see
faces shelved in repeat
i have known where they come from
growing like grass i sit outside
listening to the humming of death
come to wing and sit next to me
it understands how to try
color and shape so you understand it
like the day
rips its shield off and you walk through it and you
don't know anything about the other side
anymore but you can imagine that the walking
leans out into a green field and that the words
and voices tell me to stop
she wilts
away to

hello

Starting Over

what returns to me
is a map. i follow backwards
its pathetic little lines
that draw faces reaching out to me
faces i cannot place
oh it used to be simple
there were no lines to follow
there was infinite space
ever reaching
and i had movement inside of it
down, like i had illness down
but now you have to choose:
and with choice comes
death. yes, the ultimate
choice is to die. now
wait a minute before you
mistake this for a death poem;
it is not.
what hurt little happenings
tender their offerings to me
on minor streets
have garnered only a few more games
from my existence.
games are only here to
harness my willpower
and so they do.
the life that blankets stolen
moments that offer you
a glimpse of how and when and why
the music carries you, it carries
pictures and faces of yourself
jumbled up with those of friends
or those you used to be able to call
and now the living has gotten
the better of you. you put
both feet in and drive
these days, like anyone.


*


hatred permeates
my skin dripping
in a boil beneath
loved bones.
i cannot help the
pain i feel, yeah right:
just like i don't control
what music enters
my ears. some days
i do: some days i live to touch
rubbery sounds and force
starving syllables into
existence the way you
train a cow to produce milk.
i train myself to produce,
every day something new
like this piece of everlasting
coiling infinity, mute enough
with its advantages
no one can see, but me.


*


loverly beginnings imagine penetrate
and well that is no way to begin a poem:
you have to begin by name calling
and pegging with balls and all types
of other hurt that can be translated
under infinity's gentle guidance, to dance.