Final Week’s Writings

Fireflies

The Ayahuasca hit her hard
wobbling back down the concrete street,
the Amazon.
They held hands,
the bisexual the Canadian and her,
a silly white gringa with hair sapped maple brown.
She saw worms,
Technicolor worms and worlds
like never before.
The world wasn’t so fresh,
it was strange and black and it was
silhouettes against a starving sky,
lush with lights.
The lights flickered
on and off around her,
more peeping than warning.
Maybe she should’ve known.
She lay on the pavement,
reaching out to hold them,
reaching out to hold their hands,
to grasp at something.
Butterfly.
They called her.
She felt the layers of earth,
the door after door after door of
new worlds below her.
She was propped up,
she was supported by all that stuff.
And then she began to sing.

Hands
Mark’s hands were never as soft as John’s but I suppose that never was the point. John’s were round like pillows against any harm. He gestured so rapidly I suppose the wind may have calmed them, puffed them out like sails blowing towards twilight. They were the type you liked to hold and stroke and touch. John would call it sensuously, electric. They were the kind Shakespeare wanted in his sonnets, not his plays.
Now Mark’s were harder, calloused with climbing chalk and spicy from Cajun music all night. He had freckles and wore rougher stuff. Those were the ones you liked to rub to start a fire. They were the ones you wanted on you in the dark. The ones that didn’t let go so easy.

Age
I live with my books. I sit still all day. I don’t own a couch. I want something hard to sit on, an old chair maybe but nothing to cushioned. I sit with that funny hat on, one hand poised on my cane, looking at my walls, my piles of books, the mountains of dead white men. I stuff myself inside them, teetering on my moving ladder to get to the best, the one I’m really hankering for. I don’t eat much, maybe celery and cold soup, something easy on the palate, something easy for my slight frame. I know where they all are, every one by touch. I run my fingers over the spines of my friends and whisper their names, blind man. I read to her, trying not to cough when I speak. Have you ever read Eliot’s Four Quartets?

Ode to a Pear
You are my loveliest of friends
my role model
my model rotund woman.
You’re graceful and delicate and
greenyellow colored.
I love your colors,
your taste colored white,
most often so juicy and
crunchy too soon.
You don’t know your beauty
so simple,
graceful, you are
in my palm
like a woman rotund.
Shapely,
what does that mean anyway
of any shape,
a triangle has shape,
but you are the essence
the essential
the cosmic
the universal delicacy.
A crunch,
Juice,
Freckles, you are best
with a bit of cheese,
so soft and creamy.
To your golden green skin
the skin
the skin
the skin
the skin
of you
is what I most admire,
but your insides are too
so autumn crisp
bursting with spring sluice
like rain as a solid,
like a woman dancing,
pearshaped ,
and naked lovely to the world
in spring laughing.

Ode to Frances

I’d like to give you something, write you a poem, cover you with Gingko leaves (the crisp non-smelly ones) or soft music notes like rain. I could make you a pantheon of Garbage, all kinds, just for your photographic Delight. We’ll put on our laundry clothes, big sunglasses, have a drink and wander off to eat. We can dress up (banish the tears!) in sequins and you can wear your unitard, and we’ll dance, two crazy women around our toosmall room. I love those nights we find each other Awake or return together, unraveling our winter clothes, shedding our layers of night. We crawl like children into our Respective beds, shove the heaps of clothes aside. You’ll put your glasses back on and read Cribblecrabble from your sheets. Weekends we wake up roughly together and I smile, eyes still closed, as I hear you groping for your glasses, find chocolate instead and pop it in your mouth. I never want to see your eyes red-rimmed. (It’s true, we’ll agree, People suck.) I want to hear only your crazy cackling behind me as I sit at my desk. Never be afraid. Be fierce. “It is our duty to find things to love, to bind ourselves to this world.” So sleep easy, wake freshly. You told me there’s nothing for discomfort like a new day, a good Sleep. (You are wiser than you trust sometimes.) You can trust in me. I’d like to give you something, write you a poem. I’m all out of chocolate. Cheese is nearly eaten (and it was yours in the first place). My beautiful friend, let’s take a break, Tea time in the afternoon, slip on a little David Gray, (I’ll gather the snow, if you’ll get the syrup) and we can just breathe, missing everyone we’ve ever known Together.

Wednesday Morning in Marin

Frank sat  between the reeds on top of a dune. He looked up from his writing in time to see the tattered sun-streaked man pass. He wondered how old the guy was. He wondered if all the homeless people he saw looked as ageless. Frank meditated on that for a while and wrote it down. A good detail. The sun was starting to bake his forehead and neck as he hunched over his journal. This was his winter project—to write a book, or a poem, anything really. Nothing would come. None of his characters were real. None of them breathed. He looked down at the beach stretched out below and tried to understand the strangers, tried to tell their stories, tried to imagine their journeys. He knew it was crap and he had to be at the market in twenty minutes. He tore out the pages and crumpled them, throwing them to the sand as he walked away. There was something writerly and satisfying about wadding up paper and littering a beautiful place.
The two girls left the hostel when the sun was just cresting the Seus-like hill. The lean, tawny-haired one carried a yellow backpack and wore the blond one’s scarf when she got too hot. The path was smooth and long like a tongue winding through the throat-like valley. The birch woods to the left gathered enough shadow to keep the field glittering with frost. The blonde  stopped too many times to look at crystallized leaves and her friend kept tugging her to move. When they finally saw the dunes she was limping hard, leaning on her tawny-headed friend as a crutch. They climbed the tiny sand hill and down to the golden stretch of coastline. They could see Point Reyes dancing in morning fog, reaching into the Pacific. The beach was smooth and tan like a woman’s back. The girls knew they were alone, if only for the morning, and shed their layers of clothes. They walked down the sand separately, feeling the sun hit their bellies and backs and breasts and faces upturned. They picked up shells and examined small stones. The round blonde was watching the curve of her friend’s back, her slender bird-like body barely making an indent on the sand. When a man appeared on the horizon, huffing behind an eager dog, they joined hands and entered the sea.
The middle-aged man hurried behind his hairy dog, tugging desperately at the leash. He lived for mornings, a chance for peace before the family woke up. His wife always insisted he take the dog with him for exercise so she wouldn’t have to later. He wondered what she did all day while he was at the office. He figured they did roughly the same activities—sitting around, hitting a keyboard every so often, both feeling lonely and reveling in the solitude. The only difference was he took the dog for a walk in the morning, she fed the kids and got them to school, and he got paid for his day. He tried not to stare at the two naked girls splashing in the ocean in their shapeless youth. He remembered how his wife looked before she got pregnant. He remembered how he used to think her laugh, the unabashed raucous mouth-wide-open one, was beautiful. Then he thought of Karen at the office, remembering her subtle smile, how she was always willing. The leash slipped from his hand and the dog took off down the beach towards a small hunched over figure in the distance.
The young women carried the thing uncertainly in her arm. She was too young to have a child, she knew that. She couldn’t believe how small the thing was, its head fitting in the palm of her hand. It felt like a toy next to the ocean, a wiggling breathing doll. Mothers always talk about the miracle of life, of giving birth to a small person, she thought. But this? This can’t be it. This thing is hardly animated. It was born out of consequence. It was strange that she had created this thing from a one-night-stand in Las Rosas but it seemed more like a product of drink than human contact. She tried to remember being introduced to the Pacific when she was that small. She was sure her father had brought her here, held her tiny hand, introduced her to the waves. How had she held on to his hand in that salty tumult? She brought the thing closer to the water, holding it as far away from her body as possible. She didn’t see the dog coming. A blur of gold fur bowled into her, knocking the thing from her hands.
The bearded wind-torn man heard the wailing and howling, some sort of skirmish between a woman and a dog. He smiled to himself thinking this is why people keep their dogs on leashes. He carried his salt-covered blanket over one shoulder. It had been a cold night and the reeds behind the dunes didn’t offer much shelter. His jeans were ripped around his knees and ankles. He couldn’t remember any shirt besides the woolen plaid sweater he wore today and the day before and the day before that. He wondered if he had begun to smell yet, or if the ocean brine cleaned him enough. He hated the crust that built up on his skin, stretching and pulling at his back and legs and arms and neck. He liked his hair all ocean-crunchy but it felt like dried seaweed after a while. He needed to meet up with Glen at the market by noon. It was going to be a long walk but Glen always had some chronic. He fingered the last dollars and coins he kept in his fraying pocket and turned up over the dunes, away from the Pacific.

For Emily

Morning in a square window-shaped glow, sun’s anti-shadow thrust against the blue tapestry and half of her sleeping face. She’s worried, even in her sleeping there’s a tightness I can feel about her curled clutching, her thin-lined lips.
“I am doing something I learned early to do, I’m paying attention to small beauties, whatever I have—as if it were our duty to find things to love, to bind ourselves to this world.” She wakes up blind groping for her glasses, finds chocolate, puts it in her mouth. She came home crying at four am, I was too asleep to soothe her. I lost it yesterday, dropped my basket in the snow everyone around me.
She wakes up blind groping for her glasses, finds chocolate, puts it in her mouth. We fought when we finally started talking to each other. I lost it yesterday, dropped my basket in the snow everyone around me. It was a betrayal, deserted again. Abused and undeservedly.
We fought when we finally started talking to each other. She was easily swayed, too malleable.  It was a betrayal, deserted again. Abused and undeservedly. Now she’s hurting and I kiss her face at lunch.
She was easily swayed, too malleable. She came home crying at four am and I was too asleep to sooth her. Now she’s hurting and I kiss her face at lunch. “I am doing something I learned early to do. I’m paying attention to small beauties, whatever I have, as if it were our duty to find things to love to bind ourselves to this world.”
“Goodbye,” I whisper, shutting the door a little too loudly behind me. It’s winter outside, I know it but I’m always confused to see sunlight and icicles wet in the same day. It’s melting and it sounds like rain. Will she wake to puddles or ice?
Warmth

I hunger for warmth and I can
Smell it.
I woke up to his body smooth beside me—
Warm.
We tugged and pushed and pulled on each
Others bodies and
Filled the room with
Warmth.
I thrust open
The heavy window and lay
Spread out
On the flannel sheets,
Soaking in the hot sound of
Rain in January—
Warm air cooling my sweat.

I hunger for this spot of sun to
Continue.
I smelled mud on the wings of
Morning today through
The second
Floor
Window thrust open to the
Warm rain
Cooling my hot
Body watching all the
Warmth we had made
Escape
From the room.

I hunger for warmth
I am insatiable.

Recipe for Loneliness

Open all the windows
Close all the doors carefully
And without a sound
[silence is paramount]

Sit like a noodle
Spaghetti limbs strewn limp on the floor
Paint seven toenails,
Three on one foot, four on the other.
Paint them green with willow branches
[Extract]

Replace your sheets with crisped old roses
Lay on the bones of your back
Let the winter wind rustle your bed.

Put on your mom’s old nightgown
[the one with the soft pink tulips]
Sing that lullaby,
The one your mom used to sing,
Hum it through your nose.
Count every goosebump
[with disinterest]

Swallow the mugs on your desk,
The bouquets of dried Ginkgo leaves,
every photograph,
your seven sweaters,
your refrigerator of cheese and maple syrup.
Swallow your vitamins,
your weekly pillbox,
your letters,
your iron supplements.
Swallow every one of your purple-green-yellow-red-little-black dresses,
your houseplants,
your fan,
your tapestries and boots.
Swallow the blender,
the flask,
your scarves,
your backpacks [all four],
and the ceiling.
Swallow Tate
and cummings
and Whitman
and Thoreau
and Collins
and Berman
and Blake.
Swallow spring mud and summer heat,
inhale autumn and let it frost to winter
on your lips.
[eyes open, now. Don’t blink]

Now swallow the ocean,
Every drop.
Feel the thousands of tuna churning inside you
The whales groan, squeezed in your throat
And the dolphins are whining and clicking in your ears.
Let the sharks chatter your insides,
The sea urchins poking and sucking,
The oysters clapping your heartstrings.
Now drown
As the waves retreat.

Vegetable Soup

Now I smell you on my fingers, my neck, my chest, like hot onions and steaming red vegetable soup. I can hear you. You are sleeping and sweaty in your bed. I feel you, inside and out. That kiss that always unravels me. Suddenly I’m feeling pale. I sit close to my food so I don’t have to look at you. Your so-soft skin, your every thousand freckles. Your sweat. You wake up smiling and squirming grumpy like a child. I can see you a mile away. It’s making me sick.  Your eyes are brown under purple doe-lids. You’ve always been a fruit, but probably one of those fruits you think are vegetables, like tomatoes or avocados. I know your smells. Every low voice sounds like yours. You laugh from the next table, you whistle behind me walking. How it stays around me, rubs off and melts on me, like onions and hot red soup. I even taste you. You are juicy inside and stubborn. I sit close to my dinner and shovel the mashed potatoes and buttered bread into my mouth, dripping red vegetable soup down my chin. Your wet tongue like plums when you haven’t seen me in a while. Your skin is smooth and hard. You’re distracted and terse.  I’ve tasted every mood of you. You discard me in a glance that makes the soup curdle inside. Your bouncing walk and that yellow backpack and curly head. I’m trying to look engaged and focused on my food without appearing beastly and gluttonous. It’s a too-big feeling rising like a sick tide, filling my throat. This smell of onions, the salty buttered bread you dipped in my smoky red vegetable soup.

The Moore Table

You pull up to a small duplex, a one-story slant-roofed house at the end of a cul-de-sac, hidden in rotting gnarled oaks. Park your car in our used car lot—you’d think from the five cars and a dumpster an enormous party must be rumbling inside. Walk through the glass front door—no need to knock, no one will hear you, and we have no doorbell. Tread carefully through mom’s Museum Room, no children allowed. The tiles that grandpa laid down two decades ago are orange and warm from the in-floor heating. I don’t know any other house that has a heated tile floor. The whole room is vaguely peach-colored, the only place with a theme. Strangely Native American, you would think.
Then you’re in the dining room. It’s just a table in the space between the new kitchen and the T.V. Our house is practically made of glass so you watch mom’s garden and lawn while you sit down to eat. The whole family is home for a change. Ryan has moved his seat from my side, across the table beside my mom. I can’t remember when this happened. It was probably sometime in middle school to remedy the fighting. It encourages a different dynamic—now we could exchange glances across the table, secret smiles and sneers.
He sits on mom’s lap and leans back in his chair like he used to do when he sat next to me, against the big window. Mom would scream, “Ryan! Don’t do that! You’re gonna break my chair or fall through the window!” Ryan would laugh, rock hard back to hit the table then pick his nose and wipe the boogers on me or mom or the table to make mom huff or his sister squeal. Now we sit adjacent to each other, ganging up on dad’s bad humor and poor jokes with such ferocity you would be uncomfortable. The Moore family table is a battleground strewn with many a good man’s ego. Only the hearty and strong-humored survive. Don’t worry, as a guest we’ll play nice to you, but don’t expect us not to tear you apart as soon as you get up to go to the bathroom.
Mom sets the food on the table and brings the salad plates to everyone, drinks are a personal job. Dad always makes some sappy comment with ugly pleased groans, “Jen, this is company food.” Mom rolls her eyes since this is what he always says, whether it’s meatloaf or coq-au-vin. As the meaty silence fills the table mom will start, “Okay, now everyone say one nice thing that happened to them today. Michael?” My dad will grumble, “nothing,” and play lumpy eeyore. Ryan will share some nasty event or act like he didn’t hear. And my turn? I am always bursting with exciting news to share. Sometimes I’ll be a little disgruntled because a teacher didn’t call on me. When my mom asks how many times she called on me I’ll have to admit four, but my hand was raised many more times. My mom tries to cut me down to size so she doesn’t raise a smarty-pants.
Dad will steal bites of food left on mom’s plate and mom will playfully swipe his fork away with her knife. You’ve gotta be quick at the Moore table or you can kiss your food goodbye. For Christmas one year my mom gave my father an extendable fork as a joke. After one meal you wouldn’t be laughing. When everyone’s sat back in their chairs mom will ask, “You’re already done? You’re not gonna eat your asparagus?” When I tell her I’m full dad will reach across and switch our plates. Mom gives him a you’re-getting-so-fat look which dad deflects with a grin he thinks is charming. Ryan and I call him the vulture, the human trash-can. He doesn’t like that very much. He does indeed take a lot of abuse. You’d pity him, I think. If you got to your food quick enough.

Week 4 Writings

Wednesday Morning in Marin

They left the hostel when the sun was just cresting the Seus-like hill. Gia carried the backpack and wore Emma’s scarf when she got too hot. The path was smooth and long like a tongue winding through the throat-like valley. The birch woods to the left gathered enough shadow to keep the field glittering with frost. Emma stopped too many times to look at crystallized leaves and Gia kept tugging her to move. When they finally saw the dunes Emma was limping hard. They climbed the tiny sand hill and down to the golden stretch of coastline. They could see Point Reyes dancing in morning fog, reaching into the Pacific. The beach was smooth and tan like a woman’s back. The girls knew they were alone, if only for the morning, and shed their layers of clothes. They walked down the sand separately, feeling the sun hit their bellies and backs and breasts and faces upturned. Gia picked up shells and examined small stones. Emma watched the curve of her back, her slender bird-like body barely making an indent on the sand. When a man appeared on the horizon, huffing behind an eager dog, they joined hands and entered the sea.

Roger hurried behind Scout, tugging desperately at the leash. He lived for mornings, a chance for peace before the family woke up. His wife always insisted he take the dog with him for exercise so she wouldn’t have to later. He wondered what she did all day while he was at the office. He figured they did roughly the same activities—sitting around, hitting a keyboard every so often, both feeling lonely and reveling in the solitude. The only difference was he took the dog for a walk in the morning, she fed the kids and got them to school, and then he got paid for his laziness. He tried not to stare at the two naked girls splashing in the ocean in their shapeless youth. He remembered how his wife looked before she got pregnant. He remembered how he used to think her laugh, the unabashed raucous mouth-wide-open one, was beautiful. Then he thought of Karen at the office, remembering her subtle smile, how she was always willing. The leash slipped from his hand and Scout took off down the beach towards a small hunched over figure in the distance.

She carried the thing uncertainly in her arm. She was too young to have a child, she knew that. She couldn’t believe how small the thing was, its head fitting in the palm of her hand. It felt like a toy next to the ocean, a wiggling breathing doll. She wondered at the life in her hand but she didn’t feel like it was human. Mothers always talk about the miracle of life, of giving birth to a small person, she thought. But this? This can’t be it. This thing is hardly animated. It was born out of consequence. She found it strange that she had created this thing from a one-night-stand in Las Rosas but it seemed more like a product of drink than human contact. She tried to remember being introduced to the Pacific when she was that small. She knew her father had brought her here, held her tiny hand, introduced her to the waves. She wondered how she had held on to his hand in that salty water. She brought the thing closer to the water, holding it as far away from her body as possible. She didn’t see the dog coming. A blur of gold fur bowled into her, knocking the thing from her hands.

He heard the wailing and howling some sort of skirmish between a woman and a dog. He smiled to himself thinking this is why people keep their dogs on leashes. He carried his salt-covered blanket over one shoulder. It had been a cold night and the reeds behind the dunes didn’t offer much shelter. His jeans were ripped around his knees and ankles. He couldn’t remember any shirt besides the woolen plaid sweater he wore today and the day before and the day before that. He wondered if he had begun to smell yet, or if the ocean brine cleaned him up enough. He hated the crust that built up on his skin, stretching and pulling at his back and legs and arms and neck. He liked the way his hair was all ocean-crunchy but it felt like dried seaweed after a while. It reminded him, he needed to meet up with Glen at the market by noon. It was going to be a long walk but Glen always had some chronic stuff. He fingered the last dollars and coins he kept in his fraying pocket and turned up over the dunes, away from the Pacific.

Frank sat  between the reeds on top of a dune. He looked up from his writing in time to see the tattered sun-streaked man pass. He wondered how old the guy was. He wondered if all the homeless people he saw looked so ageless. Frank meditated on that for a while and wrote it down. A good detail. The sun was starting to bake his forehead and neck as he hunched over his journal. This was his winter project—to write a book, or a poem, anything really. Nothing would come. None of his characters were real. None of them breathed. He looked down at the beach stretched out below and tried to understand the strangers, tried to tell their stories. He knew it was crap and he had to be at the market in twenty minutes. He tore out the pages and crumpled them, throwing them to the sand as he walked away. There was something writerly and satisfying about wadding up paper and littering a beautiful place.

Ode to Frances

I’d like to give you something.
Write you a poem,
Cover you with Gingko leaves
(the crisp non-smelly ones)
Or soft music notes like rain.
I could make you a pantheon of
Garbage,
All kinds, just for your photographic
Delight.
We’ll put on our laundry clothes, big sunglasses,
Have a drink and wander off to eat.
We can dress up—banish the tears!—
In sequins,
You can wear your unitard,
And we’ll dance
Two crazy women around our toosmall room.
I love those nights we find each other
Awake or return together,
Unraveling our winter clothes,
Shedding our layers of night.
We crawl like children into our
Respective beds,
Shove the heaps of clothes to another surface.
You’ll put your glasses back on and read
Cribblecrabble from  your sheets.
Weekends we wake up roughly together and
I smile eyes still closed as I  hear you
Groping for your glasses
Find chocolate instead and
Pop it in your mouth.
I never want to see your eyes red-rimmed.
It’s true,
We’ll agree,
People suck.
I want to hear only your crazy cackling
Behind me as I sit at my desk.
Never be afraid.
Be fierce.
“It is our duty to find things to love,
to bind ourselves to this world.”
So sleep easy, wake freshly.
You told me there’s nothing for discomfort
Like a new day
A good sleep.
You are wiser than you trust sometimes.
You can trust in me.
I’d like to give you something,
Write you a poem.
I’m all out of chocolate,
Cheese is nearly eaten
(and it was yours in the first place).
My beautiful friend,
Let’s take a break,
Tea time in the afternoon,
Slip on a little David Gray,
I’ll gather the snow,
If you’ll get the syrup,
And we can just breathe,
Missing everyone we’ve ever known
Together.

Emily

Morning in a square window-shaped glow, sun’s anti-shadow thrust against the blue tapestry and half of her sleeping face. She’s worried, even in her sleeping there’s a tightness I can feel about her curled clutching, her thin-lined lips. “Goodbye,” I whisper, shutting the door a little too loudly behind me. It’s winter outside, I know it but I’m always confused to see sunlight and icicles wet in the same day. It’s melting and it sounds like rain. Will she wake to puddles or ice?

Pantoume for Emily

“I am doing something I learned early to do, I’m paying attention to small beauties, whatever I have—as if it were our duty to find things to love, to bind ourselves to this world.”
She wakes up blind groping for her glasses, finds chocolate, puts it in her mouth.
She came home crying at four am, I was too asleep to soothe her.
I lost it yesterday, dropped my basket in the snow everyone around me.

She wakes up blind groping for her glasses, finds chocolate, puts it in her mouth.
We fought when we finally started talking to each other.
I lost it yesterday, dropped my basket in the snow everyone around me.
It was a betrayal, deserted again. Abused and undeservedly.

We fought when we finally started talking to each other.
She was easily swayed, too malleable.
It was a betrayal, deserted again. Abused and undeservedly.
Now she’s hurting and I kiss her face at lunch.

She was easily swayed, too malleable.
She came home crying at four am and I was too asleep to sooth her.
Now she’s hurting and I kiss her face at lunch.
“I am doing something I learned early to do. I’m paying attention to small beauties, whatever I have, as if it were our duty to find things to love to bind ourselves to this world.”

Ode to a Punctuation-less Pear

You are my loveliest of friends my role model my model rotund woman you’re graceful and delicate and greenyellow colored I love your colors your taste colored white most often so juicy and crunchy too soon you don’t know your beauty so simple graceful you are in my palm like a woman rotund shapely what does that mean anyway of any shape a triangle has shape but you are the essence the essential the cosmic the universal delicacy a crunch juice freckles you are best with a bit of cheese so soft and creamy to your golden green skin the skin the skin the skin the skin of you is what I most admire but your insides are too so autumn crisp bursting with spring sluice like rain as a solid like a woman dancing pearshaped and naked lovely to the world in spring laughing

Non-Objective Impromptu

When will my ankle stop killing? It’s been four fuck months now and the silk of it is wearing off. I doubt it’s due to pressure the red cold cracking. It’s Tuesday morning in Antarctica and a round one at that. The ice shelves thrusting and crunching against the arm of the ocean like a field of stairs. Earthquakes shatter the Pacific and constitute mountains in autumn with eggs milk and flour. I’m shivering in my sweatshirt wrapped in hysteria my worries my own personal strife. What matters. Asia is alone spooning its disease with a spatula from the pavement. Mars is a speeding salmon eating mouth open the cosmos. He’s playing the violin and wearing a mustache, acting like he’s Elmer Fudd, swearing French beans over all the other paperweight magicians. Touch me. I stand in a field of snow strapped to skis and it’s the glory of lion-scented manure rising on the California tide. I want to run run run run through silk yards to yonder mountain string band, hit up Wyoming and Paris on the way. Mom will you hold off on the starvation and smog? Abigail keeps getting forgotten between tangy branches at four pm. I’m tired of standing limping crutching into your arms and my stomach is making horrible noises, asparagus sounds. You’d think I’d have eaten something non-objective, some Pollock-painted soccer match, could you hand me a Kleenex? Maybe it’s the worry. I need Kerouac I need to be on the road the smooth stretched out no worry turtle because you can’t do nothing but keep goin.’ I’ve gotta go this one alone. The smell of shit snaps me back into focus like that tree down by the river, she’s frozen brittle white mist from the fall. The ‘dacks leaning and peering over each other’s shoulders. Do you think you’re so important? You talk real big California style in front of a crowd. The lion tamer. You crack the whip and slide down the spinal staircase of my throat to land like chocolate on my heart. And the violin plays that sweet sweet song. No more anger. I’m tired of bunching all of the feeling in me like a diseased hairball. Cough it up. Away with Paris and its cigarette smog and city lights. To New Zealand now. To sharpness of mountains booming coastlines and grandeur. I want to feel your touch and remain honest. No more soul-starvation but don’t be such a gluttonous feeler, searching consuming experience. Calm breath. Live in that beautiful foreign red woodpeckers head. Don’t drive so fast. Plums now. Not so cosmic. Live in the carrot the celery. The life of Andy Goldsworthy—make a beautiful moment out of ice then let it melt. Will I ever be satisfied?

13 Ways to Make Joy

1. Lie on your back in a public place, the more people the better. Wiggle around like a helpless doodlebug being tickled. Shout for someone to help right you and set you on your feet. Especially effective if you’re wearing a lady-bug suit with antennae.
2. Get up before the sun and climb to the top of something. A mountain usually is the most breath-taking but a tall spire or lofty tree will do. Careful, this method is weather dependent. Be wary of icy slopes (like rooftops) and dress accordingly. Check the weather before hand as well (clouds can offer stunning sunrises but fog and smog are not so desirable).
3. Paint your toenails and fingers different colors, actually see if you can paint every single nail a different color. Put lipstick on in the brightest hue. Dye your hair bubblegum pink (check the box to make sure it’ll wash out, the novelty of it wears off fairly quickly). Put on every patterned colorful item of clothing and flair that you have. Socks on your arms, underwear on your head, multiple scarves. If you have no clothing of color or patterns you should borrow them from a less morose friend. Spend an entire day this way. If anyone asks, smile and reply with something simply like, “It’s Wednesday.” [This is not gender specific. In fact it might be a healthy exercise for males.]
4. Write yourself a hateful letter. Vent and let everything you’re worried about and all the qualities you dislike in yourself out. Read and accept your faults. Now write yourself a love letter, reminding yourself everything about you that is great.  See if any of the two lists overlap. That is the you-ness.
5. Spend a week logging people’s laughs. Start with friends and family. Keep a journal and describe everyone’s laugh to the particulars. Then move to strangers. Sit in a crowded place, but a happy one. Sit somewhere conducive to laughter, like a funny movie, a comedy show, or a family restaurant. Listen carefully.
6. Sneak into a loved one’s room (when they aren’t there). Cover the desk with brilliant leaves (in autumn) or flowers (in spring) or something else aesthetically pleasing in large amounts. If this person is not mess-friendly, abstain from the piles of crap. Hide notes all over the room that say silly-romantic-sincere-thought-provoking-flattering things. Don’t hide mean things. No one wins that way.
7. Make yourself bouquets of unconventional objects like dried Gingko leaves, or gloves, or toothbrushes, or chocolate, or pretzels. Pencils are an old favorite, especially right before school starts. Careful these things don’t decay and mold or melt.
8. Take the afternoon. Dress up in your favorite magenta unitard, put on some Kid Koala or Talking Heads and big black sunglasses. Dance in every space in the room. Leave no surfaced un-danced upon. Don’t stop moving till the music stops. Great exercise and endorphins. Invite a friend if you dare.
9. Put on your “laundry clothes” (anything ridiculous you never wear like periwinkle velvet pants and a moth-bitten Hawaiian shirt). Obscenely large jewelery and sunglasses are a must. Have a drink. Do your laundry. Tell everyone who asks, “It’s laundry day.”
10. Have a something-sampling test/party. Cookies work well, as do different styles of alcohol in a genre, like Whiskey. The subject will set the tone for the occasion. Have it a potluck. Everyone should bring their favorite brand of whatever. Be creative: Frisbees, toothpaste, honey, maple syrup (best with snow), jell-O.
11. In dealing with birthdays, take the advice of the aboriginal Kiwis. When asked about birthday celebrations they scoffed and couldn’t understand why one expected one day to be dedicated to their birth. Instead, they said, we celebrate every new growth or understanding in someone. So instead of spending 364 days in anticipation for something that always seems to let down, one must take the initiative and say “Hey! I’ve learned something new today! Let’s party!” At least this is my take on it.
12. Naked adventures. Pretty much anything naked anywhere is a sure recipe for great joy. Slide down a snow bank on your naked butt. (Hurts a lot but seems like a great idea at the time). Climb a mountain and perform the necessary victory trouser drop. Get a large group together and some bicycles. Ride through town or just around. Feel the wind. Ride responsibly. Wait for a full moon, institute a naked race somewhere in open spaces like Baylands. Hold hands with your nearests and dearests and run headlong naked into the ocean waves, screaming your battle cry the whole way. Just be naked for a whole day, wherever. Sun on the roof, make dinner, read a book. Introduce your body to the world, he’s been hiding much too long.
13.  Do one thing everyday that scares you. If it doesn’t turn out well, at least you’ll feel like you did something that day. Didn’t someone say the best thing to do is the right thing, the next best is the wrong thing, the worst is nothing at all? Or something like that. I think that pertains now somehow.

We just sat down to talk, you know two gals sittin’ around the pool tanning on a hot summer day. The air was sticky, I remember how our bare bottoms peeled off the bench like tape. There was a wind, though. It came behind us cooling the pool water and sweat from our backs. I shivered, I think and hugged my knees closer. Joan did the same. We were just gossiping, you know my boyfriend Glen’s been coming home later and later…I think he’s cheating. I’m sure of it actually. I guess it doesn’t matter so much anymore. So anyway we’re sitting there hunched over and Joan’s all, “Let’s do some yoga.” Naturally I groaned but she’s promised me nothing fancy, you know, just some sun salutations. So she starts showing me this ridiculous move where you stretch your arms behind your back, then inhale through your nose real fast and pull your arms over your head and look over your shoulder to get your back—nothing fancy right? So we’re in this position, side by side, and we see this creep behind us, in my backyard and, get this, he’s just staring at us. Now I have no idea how long he’d been there but he was wearing this weird robe and a funny pointed hat. I thought he was part of the KKK, he was muttering something under his breath I couldn’t understand. Then I thought maybe it was our new Iranian neighbors that didn’t get the whole “good fences make better neighbors” or something. But he was all in blue, with these ridiculous stars speckling his gown and robe and these silly big sleeves. Honestly, I don’t know where he shops. So he keeps muttering and just as I’m about to get up and tell him how we do things in California I can’t. I’m tugging at my arms and can’t move a muscle. I can’t even speak. Now I’m thinking, crap I’ve torn a muscle and I’m paralyzed. I try to look at Joan to yell at her but all I can see out of the corner of my eye is that she’s stuck too. Then the robed guy starts laughing this deep belly-roaring laugh and I’m getting a little freaked out. The sun is just beating down on us and I feel like my skin is flaking off. This smell is rising between us and I’m a little self-conscious with my fat ass hanging out and sweating up a storm. I feel my hair crisping above me in this crown and my hands feel like their crumbling to sheets. I can’t bend to look. My face is frozen and I can’t even move my eyes now. Turns out the robe guy wasn’t the Iranian neighbor but some kind of demented magician-artist. So I’m stuck like this, exposed to the world as part of a two-woman onion sculpture. Frankly I blame Joan and her stupid sun salutations. Word to the wise, lock your gate before you naked tan and do your yoga inside.