this week of april is mostly never too good, is it.

hi. 

maybe i'll just up and move here?  i do like the way it looks better than the other one. the therapist says i should be writing.


says i should be.


it's cloudy outside. it's saturday and i'm off work.

some yellow and red and dark

in a dream last night tim tebow taught me how to weld a pipe. i stood behind him and leaned around his body to watch him apply solder. there were a lot of colors. his shirt was short sleeved white. the pipe was silver. we worked in a room lit only by sparks and the sun outside. there were a lot of shadows. just as i woke i was thinking i can do this. also i was thinking about his amazing biceps because one of them was literally in my face. he smelled like a comforting fireplace.


acid flux.

cat littler. a littler cat.

"this meeting was different from the earlier one"  is only a first draft, so no. 


a first draft of what?  i don't know.  nothing, probably.

"this meeting was different from the earlier one"

i got married because of sex in a cornfield on well worked dirt between august height rows maybe eight or ten feet from the side of a two lane country highway. i of all people forgot insects alive in cornfields, the real reasons i never took a summer detasseling job. i forgot spider mites and grasshoppers; beetles, corn root aphids and cinch bugs. forgot my lace best white shirt pressed sinking into soft soil and forgot my lungs pulling deeply probably malathion, carbaryl and diazinon. 

wait.  this is the fucking poetry blog?

yes.  yes, it is.  i see people looking and while i'm probably letting you down, i'm more of a jack gilbert (HAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA) in terms of production numbers than, say, anyone prolific.

cast doubt on me

menstrual blood is concentrated acid.

mouse breakdown

i do tend to stick with certain people, even after they hurt me.  however, once they have hurt me, they are instinctively moved from one category of person to another and i no longer trust them.  it's not something i do on purpose.  probably it's self defense.

but i stick with them.  if you know me you know it.

currently i trust-trust no one.  probably that's sad.

wait.  i guess i actually do trust a couple of people the deep way, but probably it's because we have mutual non-expectations in our relationship.  safety.  total safety there.

one might say i should open myself to trust.  but why?  i already have a sort of "trust-lite" for probably 90% of people on earth, which is maybe more than most people have.  i do assume i can "trust" almost everyone. but to a point.  when i talk about trust-trust, i'm talking about my heart of hearts.  i don't believe you give that away to everyone.  in fact, nearly no one.

and once that kind of trust has been ruined, it's ruined.  but sure.  if a day comes where someone seems to want my heart of hearts, of course i'd be open again.  wary, but open.

probably it would end in a disaster, but i survive many times. 

i think it's where the alien hermit crab thing came from.  my shell is decorated and attractive, but very hard and mostly safe.  the alien part is just that i don't believe i really fit comfortably here with other people, but i am okay with faking most of the time. 

faking tends to be exhausting.

i don't keep anything, except, i guess, books (although i gave one of my books to tatiana when she left)  i mostly give everything away (including money) and delete everything electronic.  i keep no email.  it doesn't matter how important it was or is to me.  i don't see the point.

"words are wind" - they keep saying those words in mr. martin's books and they super resonate.


words are wind.  words are not proof of anything.  essentially, i don't believe anything anyone says to me.  but that's only because i have no proof.  and when i do have proof, i need it every day.


all of this comes from not trusting my heart of hearts to most people.  if i trusted you that much, i'd believe what you told me.  it's really simple.

and i'm extremely insecure, which has been fed by the way i've been treated.  i'm too sensitive, i guess.  is that something you can fix?  i don't think so.  besides, sensitivity is important to me.  it enables me to treat people the way they need to be treated.


o for one person to do the same for me.  eh, shippity.



an old friend told me this past week he was re-reading emails i'd written, i'm guessing, five or more years ago.  probably more like seven or eight years ago?  i'm not sure.  he noticed, while reading, that he'd spent a lot of time (i think he said it something like this) not replying to me.  and he was saying something like that was wrong of him and he was saying an apology.  and something about loving me very much.  i believe he said very much.  it was like he realized we were friends?  i think something like that.


i believe i made it clear he did not need to apologize to me and he said he was apologizing more for himself than for me.  which i understand because i do that all the time.


but the truth is he hurt me terribly, terribly, terribly by ignoring me the way he did.

i think i tried to deflect the apology because i don't like to let people know how much they've hurt me.


i'm afraid it will hurt them.  and it feels like weakness on my part.  also, i'm afraid it will not hurt them enough.


don't want to hurt.  want to hurt. 


this is murky enterprise.


argh.  i'm saying argh.


so difficult to accurately summarize a personality.  my strain of personality.   words can be cumbersome and this place is so tightly controlled.  too clean.  hushed.  we are wearing paper clothes.


anxious and running around like a mouse.  searching for the source of my human misery. 

veneer

four thirty sun warming
filthy glass and rusted screen.
voice drift under wedged up windows,
while dishes spread to clack a supper pattern.

dad at the head, mom to his left or right.
boys on one side; girls on the other.
left arms and right legs
tangle bump.
kick and pinch

later on inside, all television
mostly tuned along entire blocks
to the same program; laughs track and the father chair
at home. dad drinks falls to sleep,
and we keep still in a pool of screen light.



by me/kd 

trying to cut my own leg with the boxcutter blade didn't work.  i need something thinner and sharper.  a razor or scalpel from work.  but i don't go back till the 19th, so maybe i should just see a doc about the wood under my skin.

but probably not.

going to get coffee at bad ass in the morning, and sip it on the beach.

i hope i don't feel like this again tomorrow.  i hope the sun shines some.

by the way, kratom withdrawal is really horrid.  crank my anxiety up past my limits and feel that way for days and days.  restless legs impossible to sleep.  actually, make that restless inner body impossible to sleep.  so i don't stop taking it although i think i would like to not be taking it.  i've gone through the feelings x3 and while they are not terminal and certainly withstand-able, i just really don't want to feel that way again on purpose.  also, it would be best to go through it while completely alone and i'm never completely alone.

okay with this.

“You do not have to believe in yourself or your work. It is not your business to determine how good it is, how valuable it is, nor how it compares with other expressions. But it is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly to the urges that motivate you.

Keep the channel open… No artist is pleased…  There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction; a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.”

There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, the expression is unique. If you block it, it will never exist through another medium and will be lost. The world will never have it.”

—Martha Graham

good-bye false friends.  i don't trust you anyway.

well, one or two of you i trust, but you don't care about me.


wow.  i'm making the sun come out.

ha.

you are a lazy coward and it's no longer possible i will ever respect you.


there.  i feel no better for having said it.

a boy without a shirt is in the smoker area. he is covered in tattoos and wearing shorts and shoes and socks. an older woman who works for the hospital is lighting his cigarette. i see words in fancy script across his shoulders but i'm not close enough to read them. i think the first two letters are s and c and there might be an h and i would know but he flips around just as i get a foot away and he says what the hell is that shit. so i freeze. what shit i say because i don't know what else to do. that chinese lady, he flicks ash. she sticks these things on me and takes my blood and all that shit and when i tell her i'm gonna go and get a cigarette she says she's gonna call the cops. what is that shit - callin' the cops. that's bullshit. he is pounding his chest like a gorilla so i say call the cops because you want to smoke that's just stupid. he is very agitated and has monitor leads stuck to his bare chest. there is a band-aid on the inner bend of his right elbow, and a cotton ball underneath. it is soaked with his blood. his blood has run and dried halfway down his arm. he looks scared and angry. he looks 18. i agree with him so he will smoke and calm down. i back into the hospital and i never take my eyes off his face.

93 dogs
77 cats
65 chuck
16 sweet
60 bd

mega loser announcement of nothing much

every time i read on a blog that someone is writing a poem a day, or something of that nature, i feel sort of crabby. i can't do that.

i guess i get crabby because it makes me feel sort of failure-like.

so here is my lame announcement, which is actually not at all important and means nearly nothing:


i have the title for my next poem.


woo. i know. it sounds as lame as anything really, really lame to claim such a thing.


but normally, i don't have a title till the poem appears to be complete. i don't even know what this means; the flip-flop of the way it goes for me. i don't think i've had too many ideas for a poem come before the poem, and when i have, i don't think they turn out very well. usually, poem comes first and turns into an idea, and i switch things around or try to fix it to suit my eyes. this isn't normal for me.

and i'd told myself i'd never write here unless it was a poem, but look, i lied.


instead of stating in public "i'm writing a poem a day," i can say, "i'm trying to move toward the place where i can write a poem at all!"

loooooooooser.

almost happy

the goldfish is dead this morning on the bottom
of her world. the autumn sky is white,
the trees are coming apart in the cold rain.
loneliness gets closer and closer.
he drinks hot tea and sings off-key:
this train ain't a going-home train, this train.
this is not a going-home train, this train.
this train ain't a going-home train 'cause
my home's on a gone-away train. that train.

- jack gilbert


jack gilbert is honestly my hero.

this ain't no damn poem, no

not written a poem in months.
maybe when i move into the house.
yes. then.


by me/kd

from a poet i am nuts over.

it's just a small taste of The City In Which I Loved You

Morning comes to this city vacant of you.
Pages and windows flare, and you are not there.
Someone sweeps his portion of sidewalk,
wakens the drunk, slumped like laundry,
and you are gone.

You are not in the wind
which someone notes in the margins of a book.
You are gone out of the small fires in abandoned lots
where human figures huddle,
each aspiring to its own ghost.

Between brick walls, in a space no wider than my face,
a leafless sapling stands in mud.
In its branches, a nest of raw mouths
gaping and cheeping, scrawny fires that must eat.
My hunger for you is no less than theirs.

- Li-Young Lee, who rocks

the title is flesh and the color nude

yes! pigs can fly
yoga yoga yadda yoda
you are entering empty space,
but you are my friend, cat stevens,
and your shopping cart is empty
now yusuf islam, o


welcome to burnt tortilla
welcome to central park
the wall phone, black and
the wall street rising
with this week's prostitution
in the kama sutra temple, oy


the gun street girls are
playing the cello at the
11th hour, and it's the best example yet
as mr. endicott, mr. globalist and miss camelot
test the surfer's village status
for that strange attractor, yo


they sweat in the hot sing-sing
and come alive with sex and depression
don't fall, tart boy, don't fall
into boxes of rose quartz or saint sabrina's parlor
because there's nothing to raising hell
like a queenpin miss pork pink pussy, o

-by  k.d. /me



this poem was inspired by my favorites list. or, i think that's what happened.

godspeed you black

on the couch.
the dog over my neck
we hear
antennas to heaven.

- by k.d. /me

nine or ten

sticky resin binds the lid to the 4 oz glad container,
having been plunged with a paper clip
out through the inside of the bat.

put through at espresso speed and time into
one mix of three schwag, twigs and seeds
bring fine genetic messengers.

- by k.d. /me

Exodus

Look. I see ribbons of geese through
the window,
flying
at their patterns.
They point southwest, but who knows where they'll set in.


There's a pale orange ring around the moon; not quite a perfect circle, and it's fuzzy with lit clouds. Unromantically, I recall the troposphere, but I also think how amazing to see one single color, considering the random orientation of ice crystals. Orange is a longish wavelength of light.


Earlier, the clouds resembled fish meat
scored with
thin-bone.
Waves of birds
passed over speaking softly, while I listen and never understand.

- by k.d. /me




i don't know if this is finished, but it's probably not.

Superior

The lake is the sea.
So we move to the North Shore;
colder and deeper.

- k.d. /me

minnesota, hail to thee.

And he would say, look at me! (a penis haiku)

Penis had no eye.
But he'd move his mouth and say,
Look, I'm gonna blow!

- by k.d. /me





this started out as a much longer poem. when we were kids, my brother would pull it out for a laugh and make it talk. my sister and i were both horrified and impressed. everyone involved would kill me for bringing this up.

Priest

Yours, I come melting, broken to new.
Bind my wrists for sins,
take my body as offering.
Penetrate each layer, peeled to cleave clean.

Plumped, my soul tongues for a kiss.
Grant suckle, my grace, and taste honey's juice.
Assured with fingers,
feed the split. Hallowed stave, sheathing slick

and richly thickened, unfurl in judgement stiff.
Your refiner burns me with blessed fires
and licks life through blushing flesh.
For benediction, it pumps at friction's slip.

- by k.d. /me





it's really very funny, don't you think?

i've never had a black blog before.

i don't know yet if i'll be working things out here or simply publishing things i think might be done.

mostly i just have to get over myself.