At the Zoo

back when i didn't select my own wardrobe,

my father took me to the zoo, mostly to show me how

miserable the world can be.

a she- wolf traced infinity in the miserable dust

inside her pathetic enclosure.

i wonder if she was waiting for someone to call.

or trying to convince herself that anything

worth longing for ( the hunt. fresh smell of snow, distant

smell of musk or smell of condensed air outside

the panting mouth of a certain gray he-wolf whose tail,

she remembered, always swung slightly further

left than right. ) never existed.

Balloon

there was once a red, heart shaped balloon,

that said goodbye to its silver, curly string

and disappeared at once into a great, grey,

distant cloud.

the day was grey and sideways rained,

from inside a car where Tom Waits

croaked with a mighty feebleness

stone. blind. love.

pitched against the rain and marching

a man ducks into a bank

not knowing about the balloon

who embarked on its journey to nowhere

a moment ago.

Cutting Class

a three-legged dog is happier than

the woman who walks him.

the creaking, panting, anxious bicycle

has yet to be broken in

from a long winter.

whatever sunlight this is, is so defined by

these things upon which it rubs,

gently its liquid body.

Blossoms

an army of white blossoms advances, retreats, advances,

retreats

on a black wet road. they weave around the wheels

of industrious, cheerful cars. (did you know Polish troops

fought German tanks on horseback?) pink blossoms, blood.

wind's foghorn desists, and blossoms cluster in piles, sheltering

one another from nightfalling rain. a giantess' hand descends

upon the blossoms, tossing them into the air, into the light of

a streetlamp, into battle again. she dances a little, but then

the giant says "i am apprehensive about everything."

the giantess replies "are you apprehensive about me?"

silence while blossoms advance, retreat, advance,

retreat.

Ghostrain

The Family. friendly fire. so and so hearts so and so,

graffiti on the inside of the Tetanus Express. 

the T.E is situated in a soft, dead, bright field. 

a witch's bad hairday (underbrush) eavesdrops over the empty windows, 

spying on a spiderweb of broken glass. one million MEs. 

dry, dead skin peels away from the rusty bones of the T.E 

revealing various layers of it was but not anymore. 

my anachronistic sister sips sam adams on the corpse of a chair in the 

dining car. she pulls her leather tighter against her 

Monroe chest, practices breaking bottles, cringing and giggling. 

"you're a vision." she says. 

there's someone coming. a couple, all smiles and tee shirts.

they are uninvited cast, intruders in an infinite film about sisters, 

so we chuck our butts, grip the rail and jump out

of the train (as if it were moving) making a beeline to the clunk-mobile, 

peeling out like Thelma and Louise. 

The Good Girl

by the age of ten she had a PHD in neurofire and ten thousand Valentine cards she folded into paper cranes that flew over the Nile, moving Moses through the reeds. 

Envelope

sometimes poems come already written

translated and translated again 

leaving only the language of 

God I don't write them. 

not always but sometimes they come in  floating 

envelopes in dreams unfolding into words

that were sanskrit, for me and about 

ecstasy and sometimes you.

when the most ancient flashlight I know of drifted across 

my linens this morning I remembered this phrase:   

I have hands on my clock for you. 

At Rest

Christ left his cross at the bottom of the stairs,

coming in to watch women cook and 

listen to Muddy Waters. 

he's soggy and his hair hangs down.

he's tired, meaning that his very marrow

is heavy from the fray. 

the women feed him apples,

caramelized in brown sugar,

avocados, warm and

smothered in bragg's. 

To My "Imaginary" Friend -- this isn't a poem.

so your dog says to me, 

"you're not who I want but I'll settle." 

I assure him I feel the exact same way, and allow him

to recede into the back of my knees. allow isn't the

right word, I like it. 

I'd rather stare at your stuffed bunny than sleep or face the day. 

things keep moving. I'd like to be more than just dragged 

along, to do some dragging, as it were. but, the imaginary 

mermaid whose bed this is said it better. it's the youthful

path of/to elimination, and things will fall away faster than I 

can create them, as I created you. 

I have a favor to ask you. don't fall away? 

a person's life is usually too much to ask for. It is always too much to give to someone who didn't ask for it, conditioner smell/problematic eyes notwithstanding. 

peeling my skin from the sheets, I roll a cigarette cigarette fuckyeah cigarette I know it's important but 

why? 

I roll one up and step into a white symposium of birds singing 

"Phaedrus! Phaedrus! Phaedrus!"  

The Garden

Fungirls stroke each other's hair and

garden for mandrakes in secret,

when Funboys aren't there to hear the screaming of

mandrakes, when they touch Fungirls'

finer hairs, and forgetting Fungirls'

names, go off talking in search of Funnergirls,

leaving them bleeding, cooking and eating

Mandrakes.

Nightmares

                                                                 

 Dream:

After posing a series of strange questions about women's underwear that I answered with relative ease,  a carrot- topped serial killer electrocuted me because I couldn't remember the name of earth's most recent Tsunami. Tsunamis, it turns out, aren't given names. There was a sense of unfairness in the game, beyond the obvious cruelty of threatening to electrocute anyone for anything whatsoever. I didn't know, until conducting research in the waking world, that Tsunamis don't have names. But it must be that I did know, because I sensed on some level that this greasy, pimpled, tortured, ugly redhead had asked me a trick question. ZAP. Bastard. 

Dickinson:

THE BRAIN is wider than the sky,
For, put them side by side,
The one the other will include
With ease, and you beside.
The brain is deeper than the sea,
For, hold them, blue to blue,
The one the other will absorb,
As sponges, buckets do.
The brain is just the weight of God,
For, lift them, pound for pound,
And they will differ, if they do,
As syllable from sound.

On Menstruation

it lets you know it's coming 

during Toy Story 2 

a sneaky suspicion that no one, absolutely no one,

loves you.  Not even Jesus. 

at this point, even worms look appealing. 

imagine if the ones with the guns giggled

in camaraderie when they bled simultaneously

a Nazi and a Yankee died in a busted field somewhere

 saying                                         "you too? imagine that." 

In response to Rusted Moon

Dear Shams 

God's light comes careening from your asshole,

tumbling into your shoes, makes your shoes full. 

Filling your ears when you're sleeping or maybe dying,

whispering numbness and fear of flying. 

God's light comes cascading through your mouth,

splattering the side walk with broken mother spines. 

Going south, God's light explodes with vast uncertainty,

it's a whole  bedfull of eternity! 

something like the fever: 

Sunday , May 17

It would appear that I have rolled off the happy train.  Maybe I'll go to Hell, meet Cobain, fall in love and turn it into heaven. James Joyce! I must write a paper about how in a story about a girl who doesn't get on a boat, he uses language to create paralysis. Its so self-explanitory it hurts. My psychologically disturbed, obese bunny-rabbit is giving me reproachful looks. As if he has any right to criticize! Move lately, big guy? How was that trip to Spain? You're ridiculous. Headline! Girl on train to universal compassion turns rotten egg! All kinds of fucked up! 

Julia Hickey (20) girl of love and insanity turned rotten egg recently, in the time it takes for freshly-picked lilacs to get brown and icky. 

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