When I write long songs I will create them out of others’ books of poetry, in this case from Refuge by Belle Waring

If your first memory was the arms of your father allowing you to be a nurse, when you grow up with alcoholism don’t tell me your sad story, I’ve got no more tears to spend, I am crystal thin and vulnerable, creating holes in stories, my memory mind a net to tear, I reach across my father to my mother, hold me I tell her, she writhes away from obligation, too many to feed, I can’t rake near you, mow the yard, who is German, tell me my ancestry, arrange the Japanese classics lessons for me, I want to learn language with you, I taught myself to read so early to escape from my father being gone, from gongs ringing to cover loneliness, the loneliness of children remembers itself years later as obsession, I cleaned your house and your toilet still got dirty, I forgot you were in love I forgot how tender love could be unlike a bruise no one sees

tries a nosedive, kamikaze, jets and dishwashing liquid all over the kitchen, domesticating memory, arranging the clogs along the front of the room, my apartment is a kitchen dedicated to being baked, back me up, the wall is a chair ridden place, an apartment is something small to clean and to bake, back me up, the wall is cheering, a cherry slut is a bread I am baking, smell my apartment, its caulked for winter, don’t tell me I’m in love with selfishness, I knew my ex-boyfriend would be along too soon

Me, I like to putz in the kitchen and regard myself as a mirror wall you created, I want to slaw myself out like a purple lettuce slaw, bring me ingredients, let me create something for you, let me allow myself to pretend myself a mother, I’m here in fifteen states, love the word for you, the grading begins, let me see your garden, our yard is sprouting, lend me your hose, I’ve got to evaluate, put it on, your neglect like an apron I can’t undon

walking east. It’s hard to forgive the horizon when it’s so hot. Hard to be here and hot with you when my memory is filled with alcohol. I rank myself as the hot confession, you saw how tedious repetition is when you don’t know the images. When I back up against the hot oven, I canned the sun, pineapple or skinned peaches, tell me does skinned mean with or without?


Today I walked here and became bored in my own words, I had to dip my face into yours and became bored with yours but ours together like a clabbered crabmeat feast had promise. If I grab you too quickly surprise me with knowing why. I can’t tell myself why too many times, from your mouth my grin spills.

babies twist in their mothers’ arms. The men forget how quickly wounds heal.

What gives—this morning the sun ceases to please and I fog myself out with prescriptions written to others. I never went to pharmacy school, medical school, law school, my only profession is warming you. I I I I I I I I I I I I am a cursor on my own screen, how amazed am I. Trick pony in my mouth, I became the news item when did I bore myself with digging. Tarp wet with all the watersports I watched, could I ignore language when the moon created the first letter. The way I research language and alphabets someone told me that trees and other natural shapes became letters, I don’t believe. I see the shapes of letters as being easiest to form, only easy languages survive.

is waking up flung cold across nothing like tile. a laminate, a Greco-roman coin, a passing of hands, a smoke through hands, the hands that wrought my being, my parents, where you live is green, and humid, mug me with thought, I can’t image all my poems, they’re too blinky, too bright and I squint at you/at them/