asbestosmeadow

[asbestosmeadow]

"My earliest memory is of holding up a sparkler High up to the darkest sky Some Fourth of July spectacular And I shook it with an urgency I’ll never ever be able to repeat"

[asbestosmeadow]

Peanut Butter

I am always hungry & wanting to have sex. This is a fact. If you get right down to it the new unprocessed peanut butter is no damn good & you should buy it in a jar as always in the largest supermarket you know. And I am an enemy of change, as you know. All the things I embrace as new are in fact old things, re-released: swimming, the sensation of being dirty in body and mind summer as a time to do nothing and make no money. Prayer as a last re- sort. Pleasure as a means, and then a means again with no ends in sight. I am absolutely in opposition to all kinds of goals. I have no desire to know           where this, anything is getting me. When the water boils I get a cup of tea. Accidentally I read all the works of Proust. It was summer I was there so was he. I write because I would like to be used for years after my death. Not only my body will be compost but the thoughts I left during my life. During my life I was a woman with hazel eyes. Out the window is a crooked silo. Parts of your body I think of as stripes which I have learned to love along. We swim naked in ponds & I write be- hind your back. My thoughts about you are not exactly forbidden, but exalted because they are useless, not intended to get you because I have you & you love me. It’s more like a playground where I play with my reflection of you until you come back and into the real you I get to sink my teeth. With you I know how to relax. & so I work behind your back. Which is lovely. Nature is out of control you tell me & that’s what’s so good about it. I’m immoderately in love with you, knocked out by all your new white hair

why shouldn’t something I have always known be the very best there is. I love you from my childhood, starting back there when one day was just like the rest, random growth and breezes, constant love, a sand- wich in the middle of day, a tiny step in the vastly conventional path of the Sun. I squint. I wink. I take the ride.

[asbestosmeadow]

Barking

The moon comes up. The moon goes down. This is to inform you that I didn’t die young. Age swept past me but I caught up. Spring has begun here and each day brings new birds up from Mexico. Yesterday I got a call from the outside world but I said no in thunder. I was a dog on a short chain and now there’s no chain.

[asbestosmeadow]

#vizpo #hello

[asbestosmeadow]

are you ready for this? / black cat scurries followed by disaster / dawn do you think we'll get out of here / because it's getting dark and there's a rain / barely make it across the bridge / before i peter, peter out / i have no telephone, not even a flashlight / it's a full moon / full moon / well there will always be good people / "yes help will be there soon" / so many times i drive these woods alone / but this drive / this drive / this drive belongs to the full moon... (repeat repeat repeat--) / tow truck man comes to rescue me / imparts his wisdom "& some say when you see a black cat, you gotta spin..."

[asbestosmeadow]

when i saw the end coming / on the rocks i laid / visibly alone but all the ones i love were with me / running through my blood / and the dream of flying / transformed into the comfort of dying / but this night i shall not be taken / nooooooo / for my earthly duties have not yet been forsaken, no / and the comfort of dying transforms into the truth of lying / and the truth in my lies becomes the part of me that flies /////

[asbestosmeadow]

oh golly. here. 

[asbestosmeadow]

I had a dream last night about a firefly She came into my room and my bed sat by I asked at once, "How in the world do you burn so bright?" She laughed and said she learned from watching the stars at night And she cursed the robin that eats her young And lies in every song he sung And insults her at every turn And her only wish to him Long may you burn, long may you burn, long may you burn... I plan on going home and starting life anew Maybe even have ourselves a kid or two I'm almost there, I can feel the heat Of horses breathing down my neck And serpents wrapping 'round my feet And oh the talons digging in Breaking bones and tearing skin The moon looks on without concern And my only wish to you Long may you burn, long may you burn, long may you burn...

[asbestosmeadow]

[asbestosmeadow]

AMENDMENT

trouble is

resemblance performs

an autopsy

pronounces me out of body

then nothing fits back in as it did before it was

taken out

the bones I know hunt for me in someone else's rind

[asbestosmeadow]

AM for PM / or, magic in any winter-spring

[asbestosmeadow]

Red Shift

Here I am at 8:08 p.m. indefinable ample rhythmic frame The air is biting, February, fierce arabesques on the way to tree in winter streetscape I drink some American poison liquid air which bubbles and smoke to have character and to lean In. The streets look for Allen, Frank, or me, Allen is a movie, Frank disappearing in the air, it's Heavy with that lightness, heavy on me, I heave through it, them, as The Calvados is being sipped on Long island now twenty years almost ago, and the man smoking Is looking at the smilingly attentive woman, & telling. Who would have thought that I'd be here, nothing wrapped up, nothing buried, everything Love, children, hundreds of them, money, marriage- ethics, a politics of grace, Up in the air, swirling, burning even or still, now more than ever before? Not that practically a boy, serious in corduroy car coat eyes penetrating the winter twilight at 6th & Bowery in 1961. Not that pretty girl, nineteen, who was going to have to go, careening into middle-age so, To burn, & to burn more fiercely than even she could imagine so to go. Not that painter who from very first meeting I would never & never will leave alone until we both vanish into the thin air we signed up for & so demanded To breathe & who will never leave me, not for sex, nor politics nor even for stupid permanent estrangement which is Only our human lot & means nothing. No, not him. There's a song, "California Dreaming", but no, I won't do that I am 43. When will I die? I will never die, I will live To be 110, & I will never go away, & you will never escape from me who am always & only a ghost, despite this frame, Spirit Who lives only to nag. I'm only pronouns, & I am all of them, & I didn't ask for this You did I came into your life to change it & it did so & now nothing will ever change That, and that's that. Alone & crowded, unhappy fate, nevertheless I slip softly into the air The world's furious song flows through my costume.