Medieval Troubador Songs and Dances in Upper Manhattan

without a top-floor

southern exposure

slice of pie in

evening light you might as well

give up, why be political

without a clean apartment

why be anything when you

only have 40 years to decide

to be a tambourine virtuoso

a weaver, or luthier

a piper or whatever the shorter

your life the higher the stakes the

longer the life the harder the choice;

will you remain radical if you

start now, will someone yell at you

is your home too dark to look outward

your problems so small you can't choose

from among them the dinner you ate

too late at night and not with family

the way the screen looks when you want to work,

the work too worthless to inspire,

responsibility for a life expectancy blessedly

going down, not all of us will live 

that long, so

make a choice, the right one, which means

never

Resistance

Remember: the resistance WITH joy not OF joy, Allison
keep it straight! You've had a pile on before the mind
in panic mode coming from outside in now but if you
can manufacture it out of nothing you can get around it
out of something. It's a neural net you know too well.
But of course you've been in the valley so long, old
cowboy maybe it's home now. No, you're out! You
Mountaintop gal you! Queen of the hill you see
the valley now you SEE the valley now tell them:
He's just doing what a panicked brain does, a disembodied
organ, barely used! And what helps? How does it always
end? Well that's the trick. That's the secret. With a pill
or a change in diet or the sun. Or just me tricking back;
tricking the brain back into submission, now, with JOY!

Tuesday Blues

A sharp frustration does the trick but rather ever is it dull, each minute forms another thud.

(I peruse the list of dead this day throughout the years)

The energy the almosts the books so nearly read at once but I forget the facts so fast.

(no one noted on this day one hundred years ago, no worthy death)

Be vigilant! Look at me! Outside the window smiling, here I am! The day is done.

Pity

Old man going crazy breaks my heart
on tv

how he trembles how low his brow

the sorrow of his wrongs a life ill lived and yet

these old men without music leave me cold

where is the violin to stir my pity now

on lunch breaks fist raised at the fantasy
dark tower

and now this rain again without a drone
to guide it

this rain this rain reminder of some terror
soon to come and come again

old men so wavering, weak, and wrong

Mushroom Soup

Oh Sunday feeling mortal.

The sandwich I ate and the soup I made.

Eating righteous mushroom soup;

hello small friends, you'll help us, won't you?

To eat most things feels violent but mushrooms

plan for it; to be consumed is a near-religious

ecstasy or at least a rite of passage.

Would I were more mushroom,

mere mortal mushroom that I am. They're like

the internet, right? The internet of trees?

I am constructing an internet of guts

within me and whoever else will

let me in. Bellyful of signals.

Ah Sunday such a morning passed to evening

with no purpose but to eat, spend time

and eat. Tomorrow will be better, and yesterday

was too. But Sundays I am mortal, I am small.

Holy Shit

Antenna tv a beer my mother called worked 11 hours in the kingdom of mistakes I hear well "i do that all the time" fine but do you want to?! Millions of people who hate themselves standing between me and a moderately less irritating life which is, can you imagine, not so wild, you know me, I'm not wild, born under a prim-ass moon was I, so mannered, and what good is it, Kat was in the bathroom going nuts because this institution, born of women, hates us, can't be bothered, it's women our age who need a hero, a princess, a 40-year-old princess, two beers antenna tv network facade of calm reflection freaking out is fine, it's time, the empire of mistakes I hear we've done it wrong again, it won't ring through, spend twenty minutes sorting nothing I could work forever youth is over that's fine, it's time, 11 hours like a lawyer like the future like the prim-ass moon that blessed this wretched coast with fossils of the fathers of the fathers who thought it sweet to suffer and of course with me, with me, who can name all the solutions but can't take all my vacation like this century of plenty moving slowly towards the simple loss of time that I have earned but am too American to use. I am too American to use. Too American to use I am too American to move I am too American to do, too American to...

Advice

If the grocery store is burdensome, do not go.

Eat other stuff. Eat trash. Look, now is a time for excellence.

Are you counting the hours to prove they're not enough?

Don't count. You know. There is no time. You're done.

Don't talk to me about the night's tasks. Do them or don't, but don't.

Give up. Flip out. We spent 12 years training for 6 hour days and endings

for a reason. Look, call tech support. They'll know what to do.

Tech support told me to shave just one leg and scream at those I love

but you'll have better luck. Tech support said "if you don't gnash your teeth

well

they won't believe you!" And they were right. How I gnash.

I beat my breast! A flourish; I too can troubleshoot, I too re-boot.

Did you call? Get gentler advice? Tech support calls me sometimes,

a super-user. A tester. Go on, get another beer. Want, but do not act.

A new era. Nevermind. Act, but do not want. Be chill.

They're setting up new phones tonight and when tech support calls

it will say "unknown" so you have to answer, it could be fun!

Apocalypse

Nothing like a fresh jewel; adorn me now
defend me later.

After the war we all went around trading our
fresh jewels. Anything could be a jewel
to the right person.

I remember it like it was twenty years ago,
the grime of coins dissolving, we laughed
"all is lost all is lost!" we laughed all night

Darling Matthew and I stockpiled, we knew
so did most people we knew
so an economy of objects started up
in no time.

People loved the jewels with stories
at least two layers of belongings, a death
or anniversary a little girl most secretly beloved
that sort of thing

I am the sort of historian who doesn't deal
in dates or names so I became a liar
though the jewels I swear were real and
so was I and Darling Matthew too and all
the stuff we passed between us

Resting Hours

Two days asleep and where am I
on the footbridge through the cemetery belt
or closer and closer to the power station
through the chain-link fence at Ridgewood Reservoir
or in the unlocked trucks with Tyler
I am not one to take a risk but the performance
of risk by proximity to industry is a prayer
maybe, if I knew I'd be a mystic I'll
be a mystic when I'm forty when I
run for city council I have the whole
of the years I still remember over again
for that, but for now, for January, I must sleep
while I still can, while I'm still too young
to be a poet

Feelin Shitty

it's time for the ultimate body

seated as long as it can, being

its ultimate self just waiting for

inspiration the ultimate body gets

inspiration from everywhere its

phases are brief it's always 

dropping off the cliff about to be

less ultimate so any encouragement

moving towards the ultimate is 

welcome its hard for the ultimate body

to sit but only the ultimate body can

sit like this 

it's time for the ultimate mind just

suspended in jelly able to

process even with so little input

its having ultimate thoughts its

planning for the future and yet

understands nonlinear time its

just that ultimate it remembers everything

the ultimate mind can only get better

until it just stops only the ultimate mind

can sit like this

Having fallen asleep again on the couch

When at a loss I return, of course,
to the Rip Van Winkle History Trail
ah dreamy Dutchman, palest present
map with points of interest

do I repeat myself? I hope I do.

Women's Party

my eyes my eyes the office dust this weekend past my god if years had passed

it would have been no worse the time has changed the clock has changed and changed again;

January 10th of 1917 twelve women under purple, white, and gold, and what of all the things will stick

was it a thing, or no? What is the current picket, am I in it? I'd never pick a color can't distinguish

white from cream or gold from green the fonts on all the banners on our side from the others

or these years we spent together or the kitchens or the clothes my eyes or just my hips inside my body

each day a different picket in the middle of the main and all for what and will we end it on an up

End Times

abecedary,

bestiary,

losing the ocean, 

getting married.

a primer, a grammar, a grimoire.

I'm going down the gullet of the sea.

no awe no more what's done is dull,

a treatise a treaty a tree.

oldest cities, circle stone

the branch that bears down on the house

the stone age the sun, the travellers tales

things never have been or be

oh god oh god what have we done

a mistranslation from the Greek

this Western mind, eroded beach

Praise Poem

It is I, I am the screaming neighbor
not the only, but the best
of all the screaming neighbors in the sea
of neighbors my screams are most
elemental, cosmic, as in
ordered, the opposite of chaos
supremely complex, mathematically
divine cosmos of yelps vibrating
in terrible harmony the dissonance
of an unknown culture, mine

Training

Someone says
"Lavinia's catering" and
everyone laughs it's
hard to understand because
Lavinia's a professor, respected;
I'm 12 and get asked if I'm
7 I understand that now a
person in "the arts" can't tell
how old a child is with all the
connection to the inner child
going on they might say
"are you an enlightened 40"
is what he meant, he was
feeling 7 as a person "in the arts"
I'm sorry Lavinia I'm sure
you're a good cook I guess
"catering's" an inside joke
between everyone when I was
12 my feminism was
uncompromising now I
see nuance so maybe it wasn't
disrespectful after all
I'm just an office slob
"in the arts" the nurture of
inner children in the art office is
rote at best everyone there might
think I'm 13 because I look
embarrassed in the bathroom
but it's my art practice being
vulnerable that way maybe
Lavinia wasn't as vulnerable
anymore being a professor so
it was an acting exercise everyone was
doing the kind that deconstructs
the ego so everyone can be
7 like i should have been but
that's why people like me, my mother
turn away in the end but maybe I'll
be able to retire some day

Sailors Take Warning

I'll die before I noise-complain, the silence
is my enemy if I can't lock my door before
the bottle hits the street the click won't feel
so sweet, my god it's quiet here and I
hated my father
then for pulling me towards noise it felt
like worms my god I miss it now my god
the click my heart last night my god
I felt the warmth, the lock, at last,
and I, alone, in bed, behind
a door, and safe, perhaps
I heard a plane? Or someone yelled,
I hope, a car or horns the sound inside
the hive and I awoke, somehow
I never do, but did! And then
A moment, then, through mellow blinds
at 6 am a city almost, nearly one
a raging red, repressed no more
so soft and tense like all of us
in Queens arose and seeped above
the low brick homes and I
alone and safe, to see it
fell
asleep...

My Blog

Planning a surprise writing assignment
you're going to love it's
about telling me why something you like is
good, that's a hobby of mine like
"this movie is good I'll tell you why"
I'm here to be entertained, that's my
unique quality, my special something
I'll like what you do, I've never seen
a bad actor, except if you are a man
with a certain look like a repressed
memory then I'll bark it all over town
"I hate him" but I don't have other words for that;
it's not good, I'm not cute, I'm getting
emptier and emptier, more and more
entertained but closer and closer
to the memory, but still loving
all the shows if you say you don't
like something I won't believe you or
I'll think you're flirting with me like
"oh check you out" and trust me
you're not flirting with me you
hate the shows but I think there's
no reason, check you out

Fantastic Careers

Negotiating star to earth is like "look it doesn't matter" for some people
who just want to see how the words land, watch the callous dominos
ripple through the room, you can't play dominos in space, dudes
so maybe it does matter, maybe you're not that smart but then "space is
so the answer" is not the answer or like when you have to reflect on
major changes and you ask an astrophysicist they're too ready,
too happy, like paleontologists and ancient historians and anyone else
with a relationship to bigness; too round and tranquil up there, forging
connections zooming in and out like a cheap hand-held microscope on a scab
without the urge to pick.

Light

How many cycles lived before a cycle seen?
television softens in the center and spreads
like a bath, the tub just clean enough
is it threes, I wonder, the unit, or fives
my particular biology, cells, the screen is warm
such early memories, it's art, a path
to stillness, a place to eat or sit for cheap, a fire
for several seasons, I have several seasons in
each series but the cancellation shocks me
I think it's threes, we're trained for fours
I'm starting now to see when I was 23
I had one the age of me, a gift, of all
the ways to watch light the one I miss
the most

Warm-up

every year the bed seems best

to represent the state

of future, past, and present

the murder of the moment

self asserting sense

but not this one.

Lately in the winter I take the toll of summers

the first, the second, five years past

this unconsidered march of that-was-thens

my friends

But it's the Januarys holding like a bowl

my cat, 9 years, a child, but my whole life

the first poem is a first it's been so long

and each considers itself and hopes to move on

from there perhaps my age, my loves

the happiness of years that do not split

no flight of birds two thousand and eleven