the first time i met you

we were both taking the elevator
& we were both going to the fourth floor,
only i got out at the third floor
because i was nervous, and also,
because i thought it was the fourth floor,
so i took the stairs and hoped
you thought i had some brief sort of business on the third floor.
once before that, i thought i'd seen you
at the grocery store & for some reason
i thought you'd seen me, too. i had headphones around my neck
when i got in the elevator
& you could hear paper back writer, because the music
was on loud and the headphones weren't very good.
you talked about guitars & the first time you'd heard the song.

then i watched you disappear into your mind for a minute.

you know, i read in this book that autistic children can't stand being touched because they become overwhelmed with emotion and it feels a lot like drowning but at that time i hadn't read it & i didn't know as much about dairy cows & i'd never even heard of a squeezing machine.

there are children outside

there are children outside and they are screaming and running around. they move like a train through my yard, across the wall under the wallpaper but between the boards. they dissapear. one of the cats scratches at something in the corner and the heater does something similar. i remember more about last night and cringe a bit. drink apple juice from a coffee cup. there are two forks, one glass, two mugs, and an empty bottle of beer on my desk and my desk is green. it is not my desk because it belongs to will but it seems so much like my desk. i wonder where my desk went. a girl lives on broad street with my furniture. i haven't been in her apartment, but the furniture never leaves. my furniture lives in a nicer apartment than i do and will's furniture lives past the crosstown. if i were furniture i'd rather be a suitcase and the children are outside my door.

man turns into woman gives birth

maybe i'd sold the books-- could be.

ankit says he'd kill himself but we wouldn't believe him.
instead i drew
sharks & airplanes on bits of paper. made jokes.

make jokes, for the love of god, make jokes.

it was the best
remedy for everything, including gout
and back pain.

so my analyst wants to be a photographer
& there is a book i saw

we'd parked the car at the beach past 5:00 and debated
whether the sand was really snow or the snow
was really sand. the world was blue

and whipping at our throats. new york, nice
enough but the cold caught up
inside us and the cigarettes are too much.

so we ran out quickly. he is living in a basement
in park slope & his room doesn't have a door.
the curtain rod keeps falling.

they cut a line down my father's face
after they'd called it a cancer.

consider a run, wearing a wide-brimmed hat, depressing
he says- ridiculous.

will would move into town, into these stretched
& useless arms. they call you up & no one answers.

we ran out quickly
after that-- should've seen you & i'm sorry.

to avoid all talk of babies & make bad jokes
as i'm leaving, i sleep through goodbyes. i leave things
behind. i dont blame you.

i should've met you in the city & i'm sorry.

they cut a line
down my father's face
& i'm sorry.

the garden is hurting this winter.

he says depressing and i make bad jokes about leaving
things behind me. it is hard to be here and always leaving.

help me build a dog in the snow. this is important
i'll say, when you want to go in. we'll sleep foot to head
in a room with no door & i'll leave before the snow dog melts.

it is getting used to be here & always leaving.

in between i slept

in between i slept and dreamed my love to smithereens!

revelation

i dont want a soul sucking job. in fact, i dont want a job at all. haha! what luck to know oneself!

two millets scamper in a field and i lie in between things.
i am soil. i am grass. i am air. i am feet. do not ask me how many.
i know all these people, they tell me tick tock tick tock.
they turn to eachother and say tick tock tick tock.
in between them i lay down and pat my sleeping bag.
i dream my love into smithereens--
wake up an unoriginal thought and no new words.
is this life now the old life has died? i would ask frank o'hara and his love,
but how cruel to expect an answer.
how cruel, even, to answer.
the cuckoo bird never asks the time.
the cuckoo bird never shows up late.
the cuckoo bird isn't even a bird.
i am soil. i am grass. i am air. i am feet.
do not ask me. have many, how many, or how.

to who only wants one thing

the lost picture,
having only shown once,
slipped back into the purse.
(a safe place in between traveling)
in between safe places.

today is a day we will not kick ourselves,
i see her saying. it has always been this way,
i see her saying. there, in a musty classroom
the desktop ever so bent
towards our laps. crowds of listening
and gum chewed. Giotto with the wood panels
that took a year to themselves
just to dry. the frescoes
needing each day
to be new again, or were they
to be completed in sections.
it can always be this way, she says,
& only this
in the bed of defining. it can always be this way
again.

the carpet of memory unfurls into a blue
future, the unfinished
into questions. the origin of memory is black
& white or set in the real
and the non-real

but this is convoluted, colored--
layered and abstracted by the passage of time
& new memory (distance).

mary magdalen with the foot raised to her lips,
remains as a needle
pulled through,
in the few ancient trees
we've come to remember and to lose

the picture again
like the slanted desks
to sit & stare
at gold leaf & wonder a year
at a self just for drying).