My Brain, Your Brain

This is for my brain:
1. Wake up
2. Get dressed
3. Use MOM'S bike, not YOURS, or you will DIE from not having BRAKES
4. Go to school
5. Go to Mr. Meketon
6. At 2:30 meet Keith and Bill and bike home with them
7. Force them to fix your bike
8. Meet Phil - Jobs for Justice Dinner (DON'T BE GRIMEY)
9. Go to Tosh's house
10. Drink some wine and sing some songs
11. SLEEP

This is for yours:
1. Do you hate waking up to alarm clocks?
2. Do you think about what you wear?
3. Do your brakes hang low, do they wobble to and fro?
4. Do you think that school is oppressive or liberating?
5. Do you have a wonderful mentor?
6. Do you think that bikers are cooler than regular people?
7. Do you think that my bike is fixable?
8. Do you know what Jobs for Justice is?
9. Do you think that Tosh is good people?
10. Do you think that wine and singing is a sophisticated way to spend an evening?
11. Do you love to sleep?

in my dreams i have facial hair

look look! there goes ruth in her house boat!!

The American Shrug

I hate the American shrug,
the American whimper, pout.

Why don't we wail, why isn't wailing encouraged?
Why don't we shave our heads in grief?

If we did, we could take all of that hair,
and burn it, and smell it burning,
and rub the ashes into our skin.

Mysteries.

1:46pm:
Homeless man carrying only a remote control and a rusty saw passes by.

1:57pm:
Same homeless man walks back the way he came.
Still has the saw, but instead of the remote: a blue lighter.

Two Good Arms

She has these two arms
made of marble mirror.
They hang like a string of glass
beads, these arms
with infinite joints, water arms,
that trail behind her chest
like ribbons on the handlebars of a child's bicycle.

She presses through the wind
as if they were thick waves,
her forehead is the bow of a ship,
It shines with a high ease.

We are the deranged homeless, treading
with our stick limbs, light thrashing from behind buildings
into our eyes, landing on her skin
in oval scapes, in pearls of warmth,
blessing her arms, blessing them.

And We Kept On Living

There is so much to be DOING, god
it took me an hour and a half
to read ONE ARTICLE
im going to have to learn to read faster or else
how to stop time, or else
college is going to come after me with its paws
and destroy me.

Last night was really nice, though -
Read poetry with Cara at Cafe Mocha for like 2 hours,
and then Tosh's house with the children (my friends).
His momma's gone to California
(and then the Caribbean for GOOD)
so we all drank chardonnay in the backyard
and me with my guitar
and miles on the harmonica,
and tosh on the beat box,
making songs out of the air.
Very nice. I was singing. You wish you heard my words

James Brown is on NPR. he is excellent.

WHERE AM I GOING TO GO TO COLLEGE GODDAMNIT?!!

Airport Notes (Revision)

A computer voice
turns harsh degrees on Ts,
pronounces the world
just like a real man would,
a real person with a mouth and teeth and children –

The computer voice calls for
"Hose Dell You Gas"

but everyone is watching CNN, and cannot listen,
because Brad Pitt has Jury Duty, and
a monster truck has run over a crowd, and
a woman in Pennsylvania has strangled a rabid raccoon to death.

Jose Delugas is watching the grey squares of rug
beneath him, whose details blur away and return,
as a night sky, the roof of consciousness,

the TV is a running hum on the back of his neck,
and "Sex tapes of the Stars" sounds more to him
like the erotic mixture of gas, swaying in tune to the universe, far away,
than some blond-haired movie star
thrusting his pelvis.

Bikes in Poems!

I am biking forward, toward an illusion:
The long building, all phallic (dick-like),
could be the Washington Monument,
could be a spear, the image in my textbook
of some savage flattened by a white man,
could be an extended fist and arm of victory,
always against a cloudless sky, could be
a flat road before me, high hill I'll have to push
my body up if I ever expect to get home.

Isaac Prose

Isaac is spitting blood onto the pavement. There are all of those little stones in the pavement. I keep thinking they're his teeth, I am all hunched over looking, like when I was eight or ten, I chipped my tooth at the ice skating rink, hunched over the same way. Looking for the white pebbles of lost teeth, like lost children, like chipped ice, that melt into the pavement before you can find them.

Something About Masculinity

I could hear Ben's dog pant, feel
his dizzy temperature in the air.
The push in his stomach
as he willed his heat out.

Do you know that push?
The breath-holding push,
that men don't know is like
a birth giving push, willing
the heat out, a moan out,
a pleasure-pain push.

I'll Call It: "The Fiction Peach Boathouse"

Dad and I are talking about fiction and peaches simultaneously.
"In the 21st century, it will have the ability to create social change."
Which item is he talking about?

Unless you've talked to me in the past few days, you don't know that I am completely obsessed with a new fantasy. I want to buy a houseboat. And travel the rivers and lakes of America all summer. Yes. I'm saving up all my paychecks all year (forreal) and it is going to happen. And then at the end of the summer I'll sell the thing. Or give it to mom. So I've been studying for my boating license online nightly. You don't actually have to touch a boat to get your license - kind of ridiculous. But really. This is going to happen. It is. Really.

Four Hours

There was one guy with hair that stuck so thick, if I knew his name
I might have asked to pull a comb through it, just to feel the raking.
He had thick glasses, too, (thick glasses and a skinny frame) I thought:
maybe he has perfect vision but prefers to see things blurred.

When I fell asleep last night, some old words blurred into my dreams.
I found paper in the morning to write them down, and stuck it in your shoe.
Maybe you'll put it on without noticing,
and your heavy heel will grind my words like pepper.

Pittsburgh Fudge

Woman on the Bus

Her yellow shirt clings to her brown skin as
her luck clings to itself. She is thinking about the expression:
"cling fast", the way "fast" is used, as if holding on
is something that happens quickly.

Her ache sits still
between her belly and her thighs
Her laughter hangs from her chin
like spit. Braids crawl
her back like spiders, tickle
her skin like laying in the grass.

Monday

Monday morning in the yellow kitchen. Shhh wind in the trees, the crickets and birds all like maracas. NPR - Nixon was a drunk? My nose still running! I'm allergic to summer. My sister so far so far away, what time is it in Rome? What is she doing? Walking on cobblestones? "What did you feel about Nixon?" Dostoevsky is waiting for me and my pen. Ugh.