“I don’t think the world would be this big or weird if we were meant to do just one thing. I think when people start doing that they become obsessed with functionality instead of whether it is beautiful. I’m not ready to be functional.”

today we are at is not self seeking
but i still need a
way out.

“but I’m an open book!”
I twirl.

open to page five,
point to a word:
(did you recite them out loud?)

vituperative
is the word.

im laughing,
thirteen inches taller,
knife on my lap,
towel drying it–
they think I can control
my ire.

and somewhere a light flickers.

I’d say with a curt assertion,
she’s probably mad.

“ARACHNE”

freedom,
as with any other illusion,
is a cage; square
of smudged windows

 or
slowly cracking doors,
screened porches and you’re
watching the kids chase the wind
into the gulls at the shore.
brick walls with a hole in the
mortar and you’re peeking
through the cracks of your
latest lover’s absence,
trying to catch sight of
the tips of their nails
for the synesthetic trail
down your  breast or
the scourge and
when settled
and mended and feeling
very tall,
broken glass on the sidewalk
as you leap from your
place:

burning, indelible
in char.

doors #12

revenge is a dish best
served lest it twist and
fester into thorns
that shimmy up your spine
like vines and take over
your mind, your
tongue, you have the most
petulant mouth, dear.

“stay here.”

—responses from God during meditation, April 13, 2014 3:01 pm

you cough loudly
without covering your
mouth as if you
don’t already have my attention.
but I am also outside
listening to the sparrows.
we both rustle on top of
the afghan briefly
and separately.
I am heavy-eyed and
smothered grief.
you are wide awake
pretending to
sleep as I trace
the pattern of moles
on your back
into a mountain.
crumple underneath that
and reposition
so all of my useless body
is touching yours.
crumble underneath that.

remember when I made you all those CDs?

breathe
between your shoulder blades
so the question slides up your
neck.
I know every way to turn you
on
and back to me
but you just
shuffle,
uncross your ankles
and a dog yelps,
someone screams, a car backfires
and so does every other
fucking thing.
every day my block is
in uproar over something
and I’m just cowered
near the door.
you tell me not to sob
for show, and I’m just
slumping by the door
waiting for a year to pass.

my old record heart sits away
from you buried underneath
my dry nipple,
soon to be mounted and wet with
saliva and soon to be cold
and grasping soon after that  
remembered as
cradled by a hand that once
was open palm,
an unsteady hum,
unsated.
you look at the ceiling.
you look through something.
you look heedless,
like you did a year ago
slithering out of my place
leaving a trail of choler
and cry like 
slime and someone outside yells
at their child.
you say:

the only one that still works is How to Talk to God.

 “how to talk to God”

Corollary:

n.

1: a proposition inferred immediately from a proved proposition with little or no additional proof
2a: something that naturally follows : 
… love was a stormy passion and jealousy its normal corollary.— Ida Treat

b: something that incidentally or naturally accompanies or parallels
A corollary to the problem of the number of vessels to be built was that of the types of vessels to be constructed.— Daniel Marx