Thoughts of Mine Today

I’m blowing on my arm to look at the goose bumps, so I have a texture to look at and distract me. Come back to me.

It’s such a comfort to complain.

There’s a mole on the inside of my left boob. I think you could use it to identify my body if someone cut off my head.

I had a plan for the afternoon. I was going to want to read, then read.

I started working. I don’t write anymore; I have to work. I had to write before.

I want to find the perfect thing on accident.

The car needs gas. He berates. I can’t believe the car needs more gas. You’d almost think it’s burning it.

I just want to hold you. Hold me. I want to be a person who wants to be held.

A train drives by the house a couple blocks away. Thunder coming, or wheel turning, could go either way. I miss living where the bugs sounded louder than the cars.

She sleeps in my presence. She trusts me then.

Tacky decorations pretend to be found by farmhouse garage sales.

My dementia-brain grandmother helps me understand people with thick accents. It takes patience to think you understand someone else.

He asks me, when he calls, about exact topics of worry and concern. They live on a checklist on the back of a Denny’s receipt. Is she healthy? Is she working? Does she need money? Then that’s it.

I hate to laugh at young people’s mistakes of inexperience. I did not want to be made fun of. I wanted the information to do it right, the way everyone else does, the first time.

You don’t need more food.

Poems from my Week (5/28)

i am. a penniless, schedule keeper. but i thought i’d tell you about my week

1:
The dentist took my wisdom teeth.
I had to go back to his office.
I had to be polite
To the man who caused my week’s worth of pain.
He should sell himself as a weightloss specialist.

2:
They know who I am as soon to look.
Then I have to be the attitude they’re expecting,
Because they’re waiting for it,
They’re who I’ve always wanted to be.
They’re women who knew what to do with their hair,
Because their mothers told them,
Because their moms knew,
Because their moms cared what their hair looked like,
And not that they were late.

3:
I would much, very much like to know someone who would
Celebrate a very merry unbirthday to me, to you.
I want someone to push me,
Accuse me.
Ask me why didn’t you finish that when you were told.
I put more of you on paper as real.
I’m hoping you’re the one person of whom I can say,
“She knows me, she gets me, she understands.”
You know why I need to pour tea from a watering can and cry.

4:
I want to talk to you, but you’re high.
I can’t even tell the difference anymore.
When did I become a nag?
My mother bugged people like I’m starting to.
He doesn’t love me enough to stop.
I haven’t asked.
I can’t ask.
I can’t complain about something I haven’t spoken of.

5:
You’ll know me, then be bored of me, then leave me.
I am me without you,
I am me without you.
If I see you again,
It’ll all come back,
Like driving past elementary.

6:
The skin cancer man didn’t wear sunscreen,
Until the doctor told him:
Please continue, I have two kids to put through college.
Insult to the way you handle money,
Only to be pull off by a stranger in authority.

7:
Complain about yourself.
It can’t be your fault.
Oh, the most horrible thing happened.

8:
I cussed out the woman who lives in my phone.
She directed me to three closed coffeehouses
Before she found a tea place instead.
I wanted to hold her accountable, and couldn’t,
It’d be better if I could.

9:
Remind me to tell yous –
Are remembered after it’s been lost,
And it’s raining,
And your shoes are squeaking,
And the food is cold.

10:
She called – just to chat.
I talked for an hour.
Thursday night ramblings of weekends and weeks before and things and trees and shrubs.

Last Flowers of Late May

looks like popcorn, could be because I’m hungry. a bit dutch still-lifey this is.

this seems like a photo of a tree that goes on a cover of a book. but, alas, i am no dendrologist

color over composition. this could be one of those pinterest color palette nature inspiration things. if i cared.

My Week in Review

I got stuck at 16th and Washington. I remember you telling me you missed me. I passed the doughnut shop established when this was a working class neighborhood. I remember the first time you touched my knee, drunk.

I remember one time I was describing this African woman in an old Byzantine painting for Art History class. I said, “African American woman” instead of just African.

I took my dog for a walk in the park. She killed a groundhog. It squeaked a bit before she buried it.

I can’t get any closer to you without being on heights.

I thought I couldn’t win at Scrabble because I wasn’t as smart, until I saw people using normal words. She always had to be smarter than me, until I beat her at chess, and backgammon, and poker, and ping-pong. Now I live in fear of talking down to you.

I guess you have to try to find love so you have something to go for.

Typos are the misspeaking stutters you glaze over in normal conversation.

I don’t even know why I try to be original anymore. There’s nothing wrong with derivative works.

She didn’t know how miserable I was. I can’t blame her for not trying to fix that. I can blame her for not being there though. And I do. And I will. She asked me about it once in college, and I told her she wasn’t there. She started arguing with me. Then crying. Mostly crying.

I had to find a hat to go to the baseball game. I couldn’t go without the hat.

Tell me how to tell someone they’re bad with money. To have to be so careful. To watch it pitter away.

I talked over my Dad today and I didn’t care. He has nothing on me now. Only the requirements.

I drank a diet coke. I hate diet coke. But no one listened. Then I felt awkward about my weight.

The Park in March

these were taken back in march. red trees are creepy to me, makes me wonder what color the sap would be.

if i were a person who liked to fish, i assume this would be the sense of peace i searched for

this appeals to me visually. if i explain it i think it will make the weird tree bark magic go away. i have no clue why i like this. blah, blah no accounting for tastes or whatevs.

the dead fraying bark looks like corn husks. i never thought there could be more than two shades of brown.

Poems from My Day (5/19)

i wrote ten of them. you know why.

1:
My dog led me along a thin and narrow path.
I followed her into the deep woods, into rivers
Under trees, I followed her.
We walked up a hill steep and narrow.
She yanked my arm,
Shot into the brush,
And brought me out a little squeaking groundhog.
I followed her while she buried it,
Then we went back to the car.
We had such a lovely time.

2:
She told me I have too much personality. These, hand brush, are cookie-cutters,
Like those boxes that only change from beige to brown,
You, you have too much you in you.

3:
If I wanted to,
I can find all your secrets. Anything you’ve tacked up.
It’s all still there.

4:
Who’s gonna pay for this?
Look at all this damage.
You did this to me.

5:
Tried a new place where the old Thai place used to be, had good drunken, sloppy, noodles.
I wanted to like it, for the spirit of the thing.
They showed off the same dusty black candle boxes, the same Vishnu painting with a mint tint.
The noodles were gummy and the chicken chewy.
I started singing Joni’s “don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.”
And I didn’t laugh at someone else’s joke. I’m still going through my, I want to be stoic and not laugh all the time phase.
My cheeks hurt now when I smile.
Their sweetened condensed tea wasn’t bad. One day, I’ll be on time. I’ll find the place I love and it won’t close before I’ve had my fill.
Too fancy philosophical for closing Thai restaurants? Yeah, I thought so.

6:
I drive over the limit when I’m surrounded in traffic.
But when I drive at two, after a Saturday of whatever it was,
I go the 55 exactly. I’m accountable more to myself than to the waves, then, I suppose.
I hear as my car starts to struggle with the second switch, my second switch hasn’t worked since I have to be exhausted to sleep.

7:
One of these I wrote for you, you know.
I’ll give you a hint. It was a love poem. Not that I write a lot of love poetry, or good love poetry, or good poetry at all. (I’m not fishing, don’t send me things, you butts)
I just want to talk with you. But I don’t know how to get you to open your instructions.
And if you do start talking, I don’t know what to say. I’ll say something to make you go away again. I always do. Then I miss you.
You said that to me once. I missed you. It made my day, you know? No you don’t.
I’ll be flying with my fancies over this way. Belittling myself again.

8:
I had to tell a story about something fun I did with my best friend from childhood. I couldn’t think of one.
And I started telling it and got that feeling of being boring, and made it worse.
I trapped myself, then got mad at being trapped, then made myself stuck.
We must have done something that was nice, that I don’t associate with embarrassment, shame, penance and disgust. And now I can’t think of any gleeful memory.
They’re only happy when I’m in a certain mood.

9:
So, then, big power in my mind.
I just get the one, then?
She gets me. She’s smarter, and funny as hell, I want to write down everything she says,
Mystical magical.
Same soul.
I just get the one though? I need another, please. Where do I fill out my form?
I’ll get on stage and recite lines for you. I want someone to know me.
Someone I’m not scared to hide the sections of me I only tell the dogs and strangers.
I tried to give it to someone else, pushed it, dropped, stained my floor, still there now, part of the furniture.

10:
I’ll never be good enough. Enough for me.
The competitive me wants more.
The styrofoam container kid in church, says you work for goodness.
But I still take comfort, sometimes, in thinking that the meek have something.
We’re supposed to get the Earth. I think I have that on a magic card as manna.

Taken from the Museum

i sat on this bench. this was a nice bench. then i took a photo from the bench

loose aperture ring made the edges black. we’re going to pretend it’s a technique honed from many years of study with ancient man of the himalayas

this hallway gallery smelled a bit musty. i think i would be more worried if a folk art gallery didn’t

Art Institue Poems

Chicago

Marked and stated historical building.
Black and silver desk with sad and silver women behind it.
Took our cards and gave onceovers in return.
We paid one month of my rent for a night, but got more space and coffee packs.
She called down for soap. All those fancy towels and nothing in the dish.
Way it goes.
I went supernova on the couch with coral reefs and, I’m good with this, phone.
The desk couldn’t hold my whole laptop.
But the fancy pens and embossedness had their own box in their own drawer.
I sat on the pink velvet window seat and gazed lovingly at the apartment building next door.
It was all I could see.
Who wants to pay for faster internet when you’ve already paid for sheets?
I got carded by the couple in the elevator.
“Touring colleges?”
No, here for a wrongful death suit.
Wish I had the courage to say even some of what was on my mind.

It opened at 10:30. There at 11.
Central time, central time, central time.
All, day, whole day in the art museum.
I wandered with Europeans, and felt dingy.

I met this wonderful hunched woman with dyed red permed hair next to the triptych on one of the deaths of Christ.
She told me about the catholic myths in her southern South American and told me to look at the details. Her daughter lives here in the city. We walked piece to piece, getting yelled at by guards for being too close behind the still ropes.
I made a soul-friend with a woman who’ll die before my wedding, and who I’ll never greet again.
I find myself wondering, wondering a lot actually, but in this case, wondering if I’ve ever changed the way people think so I become part of their shortcut to a memory for worse thoughts.
How scary to think I could live in someone else’s memory without permission.
What do I do up there all day in their heads?
Probably make new soul friends with passerbys staring too long at the dutch egg details.

I crashed on an unused bench in the textiles room behind the paperweights and the tiny chairs.
The guards checked on me every couple minutes.
But it was me and the patterns and the corners.
The longer I looked at the blue stamp printed tulips, the more I thought furniture.
I am furniture.
It was so peaceful, you’d get the women wearing clothes so they hoped to get photographed for fashion blogs. But it was me and whirring conditioners for thought and hooks and placards and planned space that kept me there listening for me to say I’m ready.

We experienced the naked men statues of someone called Ray something.
We surmised he was famous, used our whole brains for that we did.
Truly, too many naked men.
The spraypainted silver statues, maybe he watched too much Goldfinger,
Looked trapped and chilly.
My feet hurt. I want to walk on carpet.
Let’s go home where we don’t have to hold our heads higher than the smarter richer.
I’m imaged out. Show me empty fields without too much color thoughts.

Only the homeless guys I don’t give money to bless me by God on the street.
Your eyes are your best feature, and they disappear when you smile.
The drivers in the low-riding big headlight red sports cars drive the speed limit.
They handed me prom dresses to try with a number missing in front of the size.
Old women with part dark brains ask me how I am and mean it.
I’m going back home where I know what to be scared of.

Bird from Far Away

a little sketch of a lot of white.         (p.s. this drawing came from a photo by Davide Ragusa called “Eagle in the Sky.” i found his work on barnimages, which is a collection of cc0 photographs.)

Crying Loops

Sometimes, hormones mess with my brain. There’s no other way to put it. I can qualify it if you want. I can say: it’s not my fault, it only happens to some women, it shouldn’t impede my cognitive capabilities, you shouldn’t judge me on this one thing, it’s not just me. But. It. Happens.
So I’m listening to the radio, and the woman gives a heads up message that the next song, “Creep” by Radiohead, was banned by the BBC for being too depressing. I, of course, relate to the song. I’m already a bit teary, not, oh look a baby sniffling, but sniffly. I start singing along, “I’m a creep. I’m a weirdo. What the hell am I doing here? I don’t belong here.”
The words hit. Boom. Then I’m thinking about the last time I heard the song. I remember I was sitting by myself in my dorm room back at school listening to Radiohead for the first time, looking for something that would mean something to me, feeling all alone, unheard, and understood by no one. So I’m thinking of that, driving down a pretty busy street in rush hour. And I start crying and singing. I’m wiping my eyes, singing along with wobbly gasps, and navigating traffic. We stop at a light and I look to my right. Oh look, it’s a police officer. I’m worrying he’s going to pull me over, and I’ll hit a car while I’m trying to pull over, then I’ll have to get another job to pay for my broken car, and I’ll still be crying. So I’m frantically trying to wipe my eyes and at the same time roll up the windows so he can’t hear my shrieking. But, I went right on past. No problems.
And that made me cry, because I thought maybe he needed to fill his policeman quota, but he didn’t want to pull over a crying girl after a day’s worth of work, so now he’s having a bad day because I’m having a sad day. Then Thom finished his sadness hole, and I drove back home, flicking radio stations every minute so that I didn’t get too attached to a song with too much memory.