ruckus
clay's touch a lingering tender insistence was so perfectlyhusband by proxy

the birds fly above the reflection of the ceiling

I understood now some twenty years later how they'd thought I was making a short sighted ill thought out decision which these twenty years later proved in fact not to be the case but just the same could have been if you know what I mean but fact is it was my decision to make was and is the point

...we are all just fine now but unlike the rest of them he & I still talk to one another

it'sthesmallthings

she shaved little squares
in her already very short brush cut right where the horns would grow using a razor she'd stolen and squirreled away from prying snooping cannibal eyes robbers of the universe for just the right occasion a visit from her family
another had a birthday party but ate all the cake herself
& missmouse in the meantime becomes less frantic feeling more herself the medicine she said is like putting on justright glasses, thankyou

but we can only get extra large pajama bottoms with ties the better for some to hang themselves,

this is a big problem

there is comfort in things with shape and form like sheet rock to be measured and cut and put up that turn framing into a room and lo these many years later the cheap paneling peeled back we're privy once again to the unmistakable unforgettable smell of the mud of the 95 flood we will leave a different treasure for the next person who redoes the walls perhaps silver dollars or a bottle of jack or a march 2003 newsweek or marbles or a river rock or picture of paul and me or maybe my last nerve & some gray hair

dialogue
sitting in the cold march sun on the deck philip glass tracing the edge of hope wind sneaks through the branches of the pines while my head is turned
the cat chases a tumbling leaf the juncos play while she is busy mothers fetch their children at schoolI drink tea with lemon my feet in wool socks the end is foretold in the beginning
It is not he spat
Says who?
You're a jerk you don't even believe that
How do you know the shape of my Gods?
I don't know what you're talking about he said sullenly

looking forward to the zebras in the pasture on the way home

driving is fundamentally a looking forward to exercise even in the minute&staying in the now and even the darting backward glances and the side ways scans are in service to the looking forward to the man in the ghilotti truck who bullies and then passes me every morning the slowpoke who annoys me in the canyon on Saturday mornings the woman driving the powered by this bitch honda and the two zebras pastured with the holsteins on the way home

god I hate it when I miss them

looking forward to the unknown in the pasture on the way home

driving is fundamentally a looking forward to exercise even in the minute&staying in the now and even the darting backward glances and the side ways scans are in service to the looking forward to the man in the ghilotti truck who bullies and then passes me every morning the slowpoke who annoys me in the canyon on Saturday mornings the woman driving the powered by this bitch honda and the totally unknown pastured with the holsteins on the way home god I hate it when I miss it

beating a dead zebra & other animals

fact is there are zebras in that damn holstein pasture pretty as you please pretty as they please & just the same it's the gift of the how fuckin' cool is that like noshit man there are zebras like it's nobigdeal but it is--just the wow there are zebras man!--where in fact one would only expect and therefore no longer see the justthe damn cows coming home dayafterday with their tails dragging behind them...it is the mysteries--the dress off the shoulder the flicker in the eye--that are the cat's meow

subvocalizing

I went to the hospital because of my burns see and I told her--she asked you know--what I was thinking and she said whoooah you can't be telling me that shit you're crazy and now I'm here I'mgoingtodiesoon I was just remembering some things some bad things that happened to me Iloveyoufuckyouleavemealone no I'm not going to hurt anyone Ihope no I wasn't trying to hurt myself areyougoingtohurtmedoyouthinkyouknowwhatotherpeoplearethinking I was trying to get my tatoos off when can I leave I want to go play baseball go to Ireland and fish that'sjustadream can I have some juice

cool

so I dreamt about timmurphy being a rampant slut murraylapin and his wife who was having hip surgery that she didn't know about until the last minute and jude biting the hand drawing blood that feeds all in the same scene and again phone calls that never went through & speaking of presumptions

what if we didn't presume gender

I was flounced yesterday panhandled as it turned out by a sweet person flouncing&presuming familiarity as a woman does with another woman and honey when that didn't work flouncing&presuming familiarity as a man does with a woman it was stylin'...way

dump Monday

made a dump run today saw the regular Sunday fordschevydatsuntrucks but it wasn't like Sunday takethefamily to the dump day when it's rowdy with wives&kids&thedog nope it was seriousdoings day at this unincorporated -cosm...with fridges at attention in one neighborhood yard debris in another paper in the northend tin to the south plastic across the tracks...and in the center of town yesterday's homework & carpets scofflaw ragpickers making deals the mayor in his rock&roll push shit around bigscooptractor and strutting & pissing in the corners and on your shoes the real cock of the walk Buster the peacock

by any other name revisited

I thought of it first as anxiety with its all too familiar freefloating dis ease but thumbing through the rolladex a 2nd time looking for the thorn I thought ohme--me mistress of just the right word--it's not that at all...true not peaceful or resting on the laurels of contentment and yes activated but dreading false unsettled uneasy true but more as if...for chrissake...looking forward to (ha!) not anything in particular but uh...excited anyway...sort of a (yes!) free floating excitement and like wow that it was so easily mistaken for anxiety

well at least everyone had the good grace not to say it's part of the job

and like before the sense of outrage...of dis-grace hijacked me and like before it took time to unfold and not until I was away from the maddening crowd did I recognize how the shapes get to change given choice given a degree of separation and time to remember that I nurse because I like it because I want to because I'm good at it and fact is in the end being nursed by me is not a right...I filed charges and left

so what about captive is as captive does no what about accountability about blameworthiness
it was not a thought disorder not about reality misconstrued it was a disorder of impulse not unlike any other generic fuckyou&idon'tcare
it was I can do whatever I want
which is true which is why she is there because the people who have to live with it don't like it no feel helpless in the face of it

themdamnchickens coming home to roost, we lo those many years ago decriminalized mental illness thinkingbelieving there is a difference...fact is Bucko there is
best be lookin-out

flashback

the cat is disturbed by the possibility of the blue jay
far away as tomorrow

you are my servant he'd said you do what I tell you and bam he hit me he'd walked purposefully toward me to hit me because he couldnot didnot intend to tolerate my insubordination & he thought it a perfectly ok way to communicate his displeasure

but he is crazy he is psychotic

and I'm an old lady

fact is he may be psychotic in thinking that I am his servant (not) but psychotic or not he imagines it perfectly ok to hit his servants

March rains any way you look at them market them hype them talk about them are not like December rains weatherman's whimsy notwithstanding as in you don't need a weatherman...it's told by the osprey overhead the hummingbirds flying in packs fresh mole trails and the smell of the earth by the camelias & crocuses narcissus & daffodils blooms on the oldfashioned rosebush quince blossoms peony buds green tips on the liquid ambers tender leaves on the japanese maples Lolly in her garden Micheal's new lawn chairs bids for the roof and my heart which is taking on the shape of hope

vigil-ance
it's a bird it's a plane no it's a man insane it's our president...gee dub ya another texan gone mad...we shall overcome ain't gonna study war no more where've all the flowers gone gone to young girls everyone where've all the young girls gone...we were a gray haired group last night...gone to young men everyone one when will we ever learn...it was a sweet spontaneous guernevillian moment that had the lesbian women raising their candles to that...1234 what're we fighting for & so it's 5678 open up them pearly gates we're all gonna die

between the lines or less is more part 2

so then I get
subj: out
heard you crossed tj
I was in oh canada skiing
but I do believe it is saddam that needs to go.
dc
dang me but I was oh so sorely tempted to send
subject: meow
and I imagine and trust you are getting a big fucking shitty grin out of all of this...j
but demure being the better part of valor I sent a simple well couched
subject: re out
I seem to have...trusting it was a great ski trip, j

and parlez-vous

soap opera on the side

so I'd sent along the vote to impeach http://www.votetoimpeach.org/ site to allouroldbuds & him at their joint mailbox and got back keep your politics to yourself I don't care to read them whuh I thought on the one hand way to go so stand up and all & on the other hand wow we really wouldn't have made it good on me anyway & immediament i sent back
subject: fair enough
sorry, j
and even given the history of our very short and brief briefs I was put out to not get even some one letter rsvp...

refuge
she was from lewiston I grew up in pullman I said you're kidding she said my mother & father met while they were in college at the university of idaho...I graduated from washington state university great rivals you know, but we'll overcome...Yeah she said tearing up San Francisco all of a sudden not so far away from everything familiar
she had come instead of driving off highway 1 the other rather than jumping off the gg bridge during her spring break and the third had fled washington dc convinced there was a terrorist plot afoot to poison her

counting rhymes revisited
handel suites orderly reserved coffee blue sky and in the background the reverberations of bombs my bombs your bombs I'm afraid I had said of what he wanted to know of war man's inhumanity to man bush violence just seems so wasteful so close...of the great wrong we are doing is the real answer of hatred and fanatics fighting religious wars of arrogance and bullies of isolation of one stupidity justifying another...my god and your god were hanging up the clothes my god punched your god right in the nose what color was the blood?

charades

she was annoyed put out put off by the gathering storm in the room by the accumulated distress the war had brought to bear thinking it false and akin to mass hysteria thinking it not any different than before the war thinking it yet another created distraction thinking there is always a surfeit of suffering tragedy horror...she couldn't align herself with the angst experiencing it as exaggerated Sturm und Drang and disingenuous tumult
it was a miss though; a perfect recapitulation adding yet another layer of artful politic

I thought of mirror mirror on the wall and Schadenfruede

reality testing

so one bound her anxiety in misinterpreting and tangential jibes another in the baby steps of what do you mean and the other folded her arms before disappearing and I jumped squarely into the fray into the concrete into the practicalities the cloak and buffer of politics notwithstanding of why now of why I would be seen&heard and counted as one of the many against this just war

and then ever so demurely valor not called for suggested that when she pulled her head out of her sandy ass maybe we could talk about whatever was up there

PenHouseInk
our books are done! & damn they're good in spite of their shortcomings...talk about cloak&buffer my version being allofasudden unhappy with the transitions in simply sonoma county fling and BW allofasudden worried about what his mother's friends are gonna think about his using the word fucking...but fact
is though they took waay longer than expected the timing is perfect, June Bugs out of Season couldn't be more in season

JaneLisaBarry:
happily schepping naches relentlessly joyfully clucking with pleasure & great hosannas...herewith is your copy of June Bugs out of Season...wishing you were here to share our toast

wife's lot
so I dreamt about retro-feudalism & lot's wife I saw her standing in statuesque glory heard her say without a grain of remorse "...it isn't what you think it was never what it seemed...I saw what I saw and by god turning to salt could never change that..." eyes keen she stands-to unmoved by the dissing of the others at the stream and unswayed by the clucking and gossip, knowing that she dared--yes that she dared that she without a name dared what others would not, dared without whining or simpering without groveling or bargaining--to choose

to go against the grain

preferring to turn away to cleave to take a stand make a mark to reap what she sowed and not be succored instead trading one nameless existence for another to see what had been wrought by lot and his cronies by abe and his henchmen in yet another feudal wetdream and we remember don't we lot's wife more so than the freeloading coattail riding nebesh who never hoed any damn row
but his daughters instead

and we--the sisters of Lotswife, the mrsjohndoe's of the world--would be tricked
thinking she did a bad thing

hey

-didja hear about lot's wife...serves her right dumbbitch
-do ya think
-she coulda had it all, been fixed-up, lot tied to the abe-man hell he had it worked out for them to disappear, witness protection no pain and a shitload'a gain done the crime with no time
-nothin was gonna change for her, she ain't as dumb as you think
-hey I'd follow my man anywhere
-yeah and he'd disrespect ya anywhere too...ain't nothin' worth that
-do ya think
-maybe it takes one to know one
-what're ya sayin'
-bitch is as bitch does
-do ya think

home front
I don't get it at all not that I got it before but what the hell are we doing there? And talk about lessons we didn't learn the last time, dissenters are not by definition unpatriotic or unamerican same way that soldiers are not by definition babykillers &mother rapers gotta say embedded reporters makes me real nervous and talk about slick work arounds march madness aired on sister cbs cable stations & mirror mirror who's the craziest of them all local froggyfm92.9 who put the dixie chicks in timeout for a day because of naughty words uttered...
uddered
shuddering

using him shamelessly as a foil

hey he said theyallsay I took a different tack not thepriceof disobedience but being faithfulenough to let go of the past and i lotswife's sister say preachon brother wondering all the while howthehell since the deed to ourfatherwhoartinheaven is in your name you imagine that my acts our acts lotwife's acts of faith would could look the same as yours and what convention for that matter demands they should but that's the point ain't it
what if bucko it was she who entered into convenant so that we may infact remember
a woman's lot

the painted sheetrock is skin to the walls the window is cased & framed in oak the cork tiles are a floor one door is framed--two to go--but all three are transited with proper from here-to-there gizzes and there's moulding wanting doing but today we go surfing it feeling like it's not hanging as heavy like there's more behind us and less out front, it looming smaller at this point than our mental health deficit
in early celebration & good cheer we sat in the quietempty room and shamelessly drank a reserve dry creek chardonnay good to the last drop

on guard
they were running in packs the kinds who take up the most space and by definition are necessarily a bad mix the no boundaries no skin what's yours is mine and what's mine is to be flaunted and exposed the not only transparent but totally porous edges butted up against those who hunker&bunker and need&demand clear rigid marked membranes and know no such word as permeable and by definition are always high-hairtrigger-strung ready not to mention poised to defend till death the spot that spot your spot that is that might that should be their domain nomatter what

thefix
I spoke to her mothersister who was beside herself worriedinvolved wanting desperately to do the rightthing not having a clue what that mightbe who'd been phoning every step of the way to find out how she was this minute moreso wanting to know what fixing her was going to look like

it depends I said--as we've a wont to say--on what needs fixing but I'd justthesame say it differently I'd say that no matter what we'd offer a variety of ways to particpate in--with--whatever it was sothat she could live herlife as she saw fit