Packing Tea for Donald Hall

Dearest David Hall
of Kensington, Massachusetts,
I packed your tea today
thinking you were Donald Hall,
esteemed poet.

I watched every leaf and stem
and imagined how they would open in your cup,
and how you would think of words to describe them,
such as "flowering" and "rain-wet".

Perhaps my tea
would appear
in your poems!

I filled your bags delicately,
all of those hearty Keemuns,
and chest-heaving Yunnans -
What are you doing
drinking such dark teas,
Donald? ... David?

I was going to copy down your address
when I noticed that you are David Hall,
perhaps a distant cousin of Donald's,
a painter, or perhaps a Massachusetts man
with no relation at all. Whoever you are,
I gave you a few Christmas cookies.

College Applications

i know my own name
and my social security number
and my address (permanent and mailing)
and my parent's names
and the name of my high school
soooooo well.

A Poem About Cell Phones?

(Brainstorming the things
you could be doing instead
of answering my phone calls)

1. Killing someone
2. Painting someone
3. Making a sandwich
4. Lost somewhere

It is no longer
the lattice edged ring,
not the ear against heavy black plastic -
Bogart's ear, and his cigarette teeth,
and his eyes pointed down suspiciously.


It is not even
the same grip, anymore.
There's really not much
to hold onto
at all.

There is no pleasure of waiting
by the telephone, no "expected" call,
no magic in the science
of wires, only

Why aren't you answering your phone?

I'm calling you because I'm on the bus
and my phone is in my hand and I have nothing
to say.

AP Biology

Explain your body, held
in its own hands -
Who does it need and
how does it occur?

Father is cooking

"I was born in a house with Thelonious Monk on all the time."

Places That Are Difficult To Find

I don't want
to call your skin
transparent -
it is less glass
than tracing paper.

But I do imagine
finding things
in your veins -
dogs or candy bars,
such things as we find
in clouds.

But let's forget
the familiar -

What can you tell me
about the brownish corners
of my lips, that look
like the syrup residue
of a hot chocolate?

Self Aware Poem (cut short)

Hello you are reading a poem starting now,
Do as I say.

Write poem on your index finger:
Po-knuckle-em.

Hook the thing around your belt loop on the side,
and stand with all your weight on that hip and just
stare past the man walking by who wants to ask you to dinner,
you know, just ask yourself to dinner.

Take yourself home, too, flatter and flirt with yourself.
Push your own breast into your own chest.
Push this poem into the soft hair of your genitals,
and curl them around this poem, let them learn it.

HamburgerRuebenChickenSaladSquash!

kind of wanting a fixed gear.
kind of for the snob appeal.
but also:

"I still feel that varable gears are only for people over forty-five. Isn't it better to triumph by the strength of your muscles than by the artifice of a derailer? We are getting soft...As for me, give me a fixed gear!"
--Henri Desgrange, L'Équipe article of 1902

i kind of want to be that guy.

then again, may be dangerous.
especially considering that
all i think about while biking
is food.

Fame!

looklook magical gianna drew mah character:

Sister

Sister
I can't wait to see you
and remember how our brains fit together
like snuggling,
I was just thinking about how we would share
new writings with each other
and know just
what the other isn't remembering
to think of.
Twin! I missyou.

Am I Too Far Gone? (College Essay Intro?)

We are taking our senior class picture: One hundred and fifty kids on the front steps, arms thrown up like a roller coaster ride. But the reality of graduation is stuffing the screams, for me, it is all muted. The let-down of our "legacy" is holding fast the camera's clicks, wrapping the school bell in a silent ring.

A ring that is a mosquito stuck in my skull, as a mideival torture device, a bell rung in an ear to drive one mad. Or, it is a ring that I wear in marraige with this high school experience, a heavy and permanent reminder, as the coffee ring on the table, from hours of reading and drinking and reading, looking up to see the ring around the moon, the day gone by.

(ring --> city)

You see, the city lights spell out truths at night. They do. I've stood on rooftops reading them. They say: "It is all in here", "it is all elsewhere". In a constellation, they spell the words of Robert Creeley: "It is, rather, that there is no relief, no solution or ending to come to. Only place itself can offer a place to be, a chance to recognize the world with whatever one has brought to it."

You see, the city lights reflect a thousand twinkling moons into the river, enough little moons for us all to drown reaching for. A person can pay their whole body and mind for that thought. And a person can drown in it. The secret is to stand firmly in balance, frame wide, and to begin and end with questions.

he is god.

Susan M. Williams, Nashville, TN: Robert Haas, what is your favorite word?
your least favorite word?
What turns you on?
What turns you off?
What sound or noise do you love?
What sound or noise do you hate?
What profession, other than yours, would you like to attempt?
What profession, other than yours, would you not like to participate in?
Finally, if heaven exists, what do you expect to hear God say when you arrive?

Robert Hass: What is the necessary word?
What are the least sufficient words?
What turns you in?
What turns you out?
What species of New England bog berry do you love, regret in the pulp and the sky ashy?
What animal insolence, what bell of what round in the contest between anguish and delight provokes you?
What feather of the winter cardinal would you like to attempt?
What taxi cab meter, measuring the fare uptown toward coffee con leche or the hurt dance of recalcitrant marionettes would you not like to participate in?
Finally, if poetry exists, what do you expect the grass to say, Susan?