not a poem

last friday night i stayed at a motel in Fairfield.
i was walking to my room (35) and on the phone.
a man heard my voice, opened up his shade.
he was naked, touching himself, staring at me.
i kept walking. i went in my room. i called my dad.
i called the police. about 20 minutes later they came
over.  one was old and short with a note pad. one
was young with a bullet proof vest on with neon yellow
stripes up his ribs.
they asked if i was a prostitute (not really but
in so many words and stared at my eye liner
that was dripping because i had been crying and
my dress and how short or long it was )
and then  they said

"well what do you want us to say to him?"






"well what do you want us to say to him?"
"well what do you want us to say to him?"
"well what do you want us to say to him?"
"well what do you want us to say to him?"
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"well what do you want us to say to him?"

"well what do you want us to say to him?"

"well what do you want us to say to him?"

"well what do you want us to say to him?"

"well what do you want us to say to him?"

"well what do you want us to say to him?"

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"well what do you want us to say to him?"

"well what do you want us to say to him?"

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"well what do you want us to say to him?"

well
what
do
you want us
to say to
him.....................................


i said
 "i'm sorry i didn't mean to bother you."
i bent down and pulled up my socks. feeling
threatened. feeling then like i was the one who
did something wrong. it was this feeling that
was familiar,  like i should shut up my female mouth
and back away from the busy policemen.

( but what that man did was a crime.
and i knew, in actuality, he should be arrested)
but i said again "i'm sorry."
and maybe i even said
 "im sorry for bothering you"

the older police man was ugly and he was mean.
the younger one just looked at me like i was his
little sister and he was apologetic for not being able
to do more to step in to say something to believe me.


and then i said, with my eyes down,
i said "tell him he scared me."

and they nodded. and they left.

i work at a vintage clothing store now, part time.

i think it's the first job i have ever been hired for

superficial reasons. like i got hired because maybe

i am kind of cute or cultured or at least charming.

i know this because i know about clothes but not

that much. 

this feels really good. because i need reassurance.

i am not cold blooded. i like when men call me pretty

and when women look to me for fashion advice. 

fuck you if you don't understand. 

this is the end

i can picture myself a small old woman
living in a lighthouse and smoking cigars.

it will be after i have gotten beyond
innocence and cynicism.
it will be when all are children to me.
i will be small, feeding sugar to ants,
wanting to renew the world, be less evil,
and pray for the people written about in the news.

i will no longer be separate from the dirt,
or the moon, or the tiny tiger lilies, or the soiled pants,
or what caused them to be soiled.
I will again be impractical, like the poets, not
pretending to be more important than i am.

i will wish i had been this way my whole life
as i blow smoke to the ocean from my ashy lungs.

for peter

there are places in America where you can see the entire Milky Way.
  i am here in the Drugstore, in between holidays, and the heat is on high.

  i am picking up a bottle of commercial pain killers;
  i am searching for tampons behind the drugists head.

i want to slip away into these aisles, into the holes of heaven.
i want to take my small Christmas parcels with me,
sit on the aurora borealis,
look down at all those places.
all those places at once.

Settlement

i asked if we could go
to the museum on a
saturday and you said
you'd rather go to the park.
this went on for six months
until i fell in love with you because
everyone else stopped calling.

after faking it for hours
our natural history
became a museum
and our bones laid
 on display against
an assumed habitat
with bright orange Lego
parts and gum wrappers
in the aritifical dirt.

i tried to tell you that most
women preferred being
eaten out to penetration
and that the finger was just
as important as the penis.
you tried to tell me i should
date women, or that i wasn't
spiritual.

now we don't tell anything anymore,
our mouths glued shut, our limbs
tacked and shellacked, our heads dangling 
under a sign that reads: Settlers, 2012

holiday

someone suggested that you move
the tree so I could see the moon.
instead you stopped the ice cream truck for us.
 life is full of such compromise.

Ladies and Gentlemen: Lindsay Lohan!

me:  I Love freaky friday!
Jennifer:  who doesnt!
LL at her finest
me:  now she just parties with gaga and eats cucumbers

sam

on the porch
your father
said a pray
for his father
and I danced
on our emotions
 with sad lyrics playing
into the fire. someone
suggested you move
the tree so I could have
a better view of the
moon. instead,  you stopped
an ice cream truck
for us .
 life
is full of such compromise.

All of them

 Touch me and know my heart is swelling
 and it's better than sun on a boardwalk
 or building a pillow fort in a hotel room
 in Los Angeles.
I am the city,  you are all the angels.

Hold my thick thighs in your too small hands
and kiss my ocean soaked purple lips.
 I am alive under you, beside you,
in you, in spite of you, forever you.
i love frank o'hara and i love lisa frank
 and I love you.

Maybe we should stand in the shade.
Maybe we should stand in the shade.
 I feel like the man I am when
 I protect you from the late rain.

Paterson

the morning
thrust upon the earth
and the tiny flowers, female,
with their aspirations of love,
littering the streets with
purity and blood amongst
the male city surrounding
their delicate, strong, natural
heads.

i find the river flows to the ocean
and the flowers fall into the gutters
and find their way back when the city
has become a memory in their absence
 and the air too rough to swallow.


find me here in the gutter, where you left
me, swimming to the creator, mending
my petals and dreams, resting again
with the flowers that were left by your
counterparts last Spring.

birthday

I can remember you standing outside of our rehearsal
and my fear in approaching you because my heart
was beating out of my chest.

Now I am sitting in the same place where you read
the line to me "am i right or am i not wrong?"


I want to drink water or cry and I almost feel scared
because you are dead and maybe you are in this
room and maybe you are sitting next to me and maybe
you are 3 million light years away dancing in the past.

h.f.c.

it's ok to still like capri sun. i know

it has high fructose corn syrup,

but it doens't hurt me as much as you do.

and that one

i was walking home from high school

and saw a boy being pelted with rocks

in the playground.

i stood in front of him. that is where this

scar is from.

business

prostitutes are the smartest.

the rest of us are just having
bad sex for free.

everything i do reads like a one-act play from 1965

i am sitting half naked on a cot in the room i live in. i tell my boyfriend that the first weekend we went out together i wanted to go to the museum of natural history and he convinced me we should go to the park instead. it's been three months since that weekend and we still have not gone to the museum. he gets up and says it's raining.

earlier i told him that 9 out of 10 women don't enjoy penetration, and would much rather be gone down on. and anyway, the penis is no more important than the finger. he said something about how i wasn't spiritual. or that i should date women. i can't remember now.

i do have bangs, and i am a writer. but i am not white "like that." i mean i've always listened to tu-pac and my parents are southern european and i would have never been admitted to a country club in the 60s or 70s and maybe not even today. my breasts are way too big; so big, that even with a business suit on i look like i am a call girl--although i recognize that some call girls wear business suits. and some call girls like the museum, too. 

the meaning of life

there is a jelly fish that is immortal.
it returns back to a prepubescent state
after intercourse.


i  like you,
and i probably always will.

the empire of not here

i can't listen to this conversation about
 the drugs these ladies are giving their 8 year olds for a.d.d.
 i want to save these children
and fly them to  the empire of not here.

lady gaga's arms looked fat at her launch for Born This Way

and now that is all i can think of.
i spend all day being mad at people for judging
other's on their body type, and all
i could stare at were her arms, how they
looked oddly plump and white, like rolled
up Wonder Bread poking out from the tight
shoulder holes of her little black dress.

she was talking about empowerment of youth on the stage
at Harvard, sitting next to Oprah,  and i was imagining her happy
with her new boyfriend Tyler in a hotel room in L.A.
eating tacos and not worrying about her work-out plan
 or double stuffed booty.

i know all of you will go now and google
"Born this Way launch" and fast forward the video to
the part when Gaga comes out and you will look at her arms and
you will, too, agree.  they look fat. fat. fat. fat.
and then you might feel bad. or satisfied.

sexism is real and it is everywhere, even in poets, and feminists,
and professors, and tibetan monks. all the people of the world
stare and declare of each other who is too fat, too ugly, too much.

all of those same people in the world
probably stare at my fat arms when i eat a cookie in public:
how dare she.
 how could she.
sugar and fat.
sugar and fat.
when i dance all they see is fat
 on the stage jiggling like
 a New York jelly roll
 and now all i see on my iphone screen
are her arms.
fatter then usual.

 i'm sorry stefani.
 i really really love you.

living social

the lady having a conversation with herself

in the library bathroom is very upset.

later i was sitting at the table with the most

sunlight, wearing a purple mumu dress and

leopard faux fur, watching the Born this Way foundation

launch at Harvard on my iPhone, noticing Lady Gaga's

 arms looked fatter then usual and that Oprah was very well spoken.

i didn't think i was sexist or racist. i think maybe we all are. 

i'm sorry.

politics

it is a sunday afternoon.
i have eaten peanut butter, bananas,
yogurt, and soy. i have to go pick up my birth control.
do you think that Rush Limbaugh will be mad at me?
i can see the beauty of your face in the revolting sun that is shining
in my astounded green eyes, shaded in the black thread
of lashes.  i can see that Duane Reade is now carrying
Cadbury easter eggs. Chocolate Cream. Please tell Rush
i am not a slut or a prostitute I just have ovarian cysts.
They hurt. You also hurt sometimes.

t.v.

has anyone seen that made for t.v. series
about internet sex offenders.

i have, once or twice.

bodega

do you ever just want to
buy carrot juice

the lights are still on and
im sleeping

45 durham street

i don't want the strangers to be strangers anymore

leap year g-chat

anna:  i wish some things were just a little bit easier
like getting paid
and being able to do things that you want to do
like running away
 Sent at 11:12 AM on Wednesday
 me:  i love u