what we decide to keep

some feather
and bone
these relics
teeming with the crowds of my past
beating on me
like a shower of nails
like the dream dreamed by my eight-year-old self
strapped down to a board
stinging bees fired at my innocent body
like bullets
i hold onto them
these fossils and these dreams like
a baby's translucent finger
to almost touch her hand,
her fleshy arm, blonde eyelash,
and beating heart
a fossil i keep
because it was hers
salmon teeth and jaw she brought me from a walk up nit nat river
a snails shell
a bird wing i found
on the top of a sand dune in death valley
a blue china mug i found in his kitchen cupboard
and took because -
my memories promised me -
it was really hers
picasso's nu de dos
that hung over their nuptual bed

why save these
"companions of no weight"

the godess of small things

giant cup of coffee and several hours to get through Shelley's "Alastor" too much tequila last night and up early to drink coffee in the sun, snooze and cuddle in the hammock, and cut a garden for my bleeding hearts. sylvia helped to dig.
last night was surreal. i hadn't played a drum kit in years, but the ryhthm survived somewhat and now i will need my own set so i can learn the entire War album as i have always said i would.
a travelling poet named Joe came to my door today pedelling his wares and i turned him away. i imagine i will be recieving some bad karma soon.
both cats are in the bird bush crashing around. you look out and they look up at you all innocence, with feathers and tufts of cat hair in their mouths. sylvia sticks her head under leo and kicks his face with her back feet, a rather compromising pose. she continually takes advantage of his lack of front claws and swipes at him whenever they cross paths.
i learned that sarah slean has a blog today, which makes me very happy. through complete chance i saw an interview with her on channel 81 today. she performed one of my favorite songs "Out in the Park." she also showed us her tiny box of paints which she bought in germany from a store which only sold very small things. she had used up all the white.

eighteen degrees

drank coffee. breakfast together in the backyard then said goodbye to you gone down to washington again on yet another profitable adventure. shifted my chair with the sun, flip flopping around. she and i got thai food, picked up bookshelves for free on the side of the road, bought bleeding hearts to plant, made ribs and ate with chopsticks outside not very ladylike with our beef short ribs and peanut sauce. went respectively to our hammock and wicker chair. teased the kitties with strawberry leaves, squealed as they tossed a little brown mouse back and forth. embarrassed because the mailman saw me in short shorts. read Faulkner and dozed in the sun.


"studying" 

miss L 

did you know that strawberry leaves are an aphrodesiac for kitties? 

sylvia the great 

jbi reading

the men are seething
what are they really thinking?
their women to shield them from thinking
their fathers hanging over them like
rulers breaking
i hate to go to poetry readings in this town
they are full of old people
clapping in comfortable dementia
long grey hair daring you to
swear

the one lone soldier
who mounts the podium like a man walking on the
first crackling layer of ice
to reveal it is actually solid beneath

i love that breeze a person makes when they walk by you
leaving the room
a touch so human it doesn't even belong
here anymore
you notice it because it doesn't belong

writing words onto a paper napking with a red crayon
conserving words
i lov 2 abbreivate
the small of wax which you forgot
of crayons on napkin
which you forgot

that slow way people always read poetry
like margaret atwood
who did it right the first time
its rude to point
dont you all know that?

people staring
can they see you?
that would be
miraculous

sunday

the woman at the chinese grocery store who always asks me how to bake things, who once said with a tongue full of tenderness and sympathy "ooh i love editing!", told little one not let her ten lb bag of flour get wet in the rain or she would turn to glue, who i thought might be crazy... she lost her glasses and now she looks down squinting ringing through the groceries and she doesn't smile or ask how to make rolls anymore, and she can't afford to buy new glasses because she makes minimum wage at a grocery store. for some reason this really gets to me.

i made potato leek soup with tarragon.

dug eighteen deep holes for my dahlias this afternoon ripped apart the bulbs with my fingers. eighteen or more in the back row of my plot just the size of a grave. planted lily of the valley too. a rustling noise then a mother duck arrives on the scene, gnuack gnuack, then fourteen little ducklings barely days old follow her across the yard and through the fence over tree stumps.

napped in the middle of the day in the middle of the house with the sun streaming in on the lumb of a cat on the floor.

going to the jbi poetry slam...

ponderings over merlot infused with godknows

whats come over me? i'm acting differently, think im coming into my own if that means anything its always a phase forever changing. im amazed constantly at the perpetual transformation, i feel mine is so fast i'm always running after myself to keep up. do the effects of life speak at all to the cause? I'm in that cave where the echo sounds and the walls become a thousand mirrors of pure voice and memory. that echo comes from the place i thought i had left behind. all of these people stepping forward to claim me as part of their history, when years before they left me behind.

where were you then? that snowy night at the bottom of the railed steps, cough gripped my lungs and you kept me there, explaining why for an hour and while sure my heart was breaking all i wanted was to go inside. you talking and me watching the snow flakes in all their shapes melt against my collar. that last kiss on my step in summer. the fear that gripped you, i hated it then as i do now. why so much lament and confusion? oh the agony, none of you had any balls at all. the irony is i am now with someone twice my age and think none of it. fools, you all. and now that it is behind me you come forth with wisdom held out to me like petrified fruit. ha. i laugh. its all i can do since there is no time travel machine to play with. i cant do a thing about your regrets.

some bottles of wine and pull out some maps and we'll plan another adventure. this time it will take us somewhere new and we'll sail around in the blue goddess once more our little hole wherever we wish. rest stops and american beer and bumping our heads against the ceiling. end up back in canada where you will finally be my citizen.

the new friend is so much like the whiskey bottle and grease-on-my-fingers-swingset friend, the one who couldn't figure me...couldn't put me anywhere. will you have anywhere for me?

my backyard in april

the daffy dill path 

sylvia with bells on 

eliot's lilac 

budding apple blossoms  

wee daisies 

dandies and bug 

sun through lilac cover 

THE WHITE-BONE MOON


Memory is the lilt of time 
between seconds, the space we crave 
to enter, like a cat who twists her web of bones, 
casts off her skeleton like moonlight,
flouting time, to travel through narrow space.

                                I’m thinking of the time
I slid like snow falling into my 
dogs open, backyard grave.
My pink boots withered to black
and darkness closed in on me like panic. But I could see
my breath, which the thirty below temperature 
had transformed into something 
solid.
      At eight years old I held time in my fist 
like a stopped heart.
                     Twelve years later
this moment 
fell into a poem and I became 
that cat, twisting its bones, 
dreaming them hollow.

                     The moon 
glints, her beam a wand which makes 
time invisible, so 
we too may shed ourselves, and 
enter into that equivocal space between.

the clatter of bills in the mail box

the first hour i've been alone in this house for, probably, eight months... i'm writing, drinking coffee, eating lamb, listening for the postman's boots on the stoop. its very quiet. too quiet. i can't seem to get anything done. i never expected this... not that i ain't enjoyin' it!

hesitant

i have produced so much in the last weeks. i am in disbelief as if watching someone else, while all my selves past congratulate one another. one standing to the side, watching with distrustful eyes always. won't she walk away someday? push push ahead as if walking not wading.

there will be no avalanche if i hold time in my fist like a stopped heart.

i hold my envy like a bird with injured wing.

i let it fly and it falls.

i am stuck stuck somehow stuck on a nail in this moving picture frame. my life speeds ahead, once more i run behind it like a cat that has stepped out of its skin.

e + j = m apparantly

You scored as Hedonism. Your life is guided by the principles of Hedonism: You believe that pleasure is a great, or the greatest, good; and you try to enjoy life’s pleasures as much as you can. “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die!” Hedonism 100% Existentialism 100% Strong Egoism 65% Justice (Fairness)50% Utilitarianism 40% Nihilism 30% Apathy 20% Kantianism 10% Divine Command 0% More info at Arocoun's Wikipedia User Page...

What philosophy do you follow? (v1.03)
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