fall down.

and i could write a library about cities but i think i'd rather have just one book about how it feels to know only like five people and to be calm and quiet all the time. (sometimes.) cuz you know how we love these giant sprawling contexts and the feel of asphalt spinning under our feet, but i wonder if our whiskey-soaked salutations do more than stick us in line sometimes. what about dirt and grass and sitting still? what about rows of dull (so real) houses with cracking paint and crooked doors and beautiful rainy streets? the scenery blurs anyway when life's such a rush, such a trip. i want to fall backwards and stare at the stars with room to wiggle my toes, with no commitments (no parties!). really mostly i just want to take off these poor tattered shoes for once, ever at all, even when i sleep.

halloweenie

the weather channel.

these days we try and act like we're
mannequins on zip lines -
some things seep into yr skin
with these winter winds, i guess.
i see figures out of the corner of my eye but when i
whirl to find them they vanish
into my own crimson reflections.

no more shortcuts, no more
leaps and bounds and dismissals.
he called me to come taste the sunny day like
a drop of molasses sweet and sharp and slow
but i was on my feet for ten hours
dipping and bowing like
a marionette instead.

i crave this anonymity though i've been
bright-locked and bright-eyed for too many months
and i sort of just want them to stop saying hello.
you know how the city as a mechanosphere of
diagrammatic assemblages
keeps us sliding into each other
in daisy chain circles at night.

we used to marvel at our eyelashes but now i just
fall asleep. did i ask
yr permission or yr name?
please tell me how to drift across
an imposed terrain till i stumble on
my own dragging shoelaces and
crash slam fall into a mouthful of dirt.

these days we try and act like we're unstoppable, unstartable -
mannequins on zip lines but
i think it's time to smash some mirrors
& leap laughing into our seven years' bad luck.

fumbling distractions

i'm not even old enough to drink but i'm too old to drink these days when i lie down and the room starts spinning. let's just ride all night instead till the sun shines vaguely behind this grey sky backdrop and we can jump into crunchy piles of temptation and autumn leaves behind the veggie stand while the one in glasses just shakes his head. i think i've got crumbs in my hair and ice between my toes. i can't believe yr married. i'm ready for new staircases leading nowhere, to landings with locked doors and haunted verticality.

no, like, really, it's night after night of ripped tights and twirling, and it's easy to forget the taste of lined paper, needle in hand. dustbin treasures and yr puppy dog grin in the mirror. we spin gears and back away. (what are you going to be for halloween?) i'm ready for ashtray grimaces and tired feet and endless highways and nothing but bright colors and luck to keep me safe.

eyerolls.

and when i jolt awake in class mumbling in tongues, when i wake from sticky fragments of ludicrous dreams to find myself shivering on a hard wooden chair staring at slides, and outside it's snowing but blue-skied and those staircases are all imploding, and i'm wondering why everyone looks like ghosts with webbed hands and teeth to spare. almost everyone. let's all dress like sailors and sing chanties to these vaulted halls while those young kids drink toasts to our irreverent twisting limbs. you took off yr glasses and i thought you were something new. (but you can't fool me with that combover). shriveled insect guts and the generational divide. transposed sunny days. this codeine keeps me up and this caffeine gets me down, cotton balls and numb fingers and graffiti on the walls. we want to see stars together, fake rippling stars, but my one condition is you must clear me a path through that ketchup delusion we pretend we can't see. (i keep studying my toes, and yr wrapped in a shower curtain whispering lines of whitman to yr windowsills) time to decode, dear, time to unload.

crash bam boom

the heavy noisy quiet after a crashing storm has grumbled away, when the rain is still plummeting onto heads of passersby and the streaks of lightning are growing less frequent, and i suppose that gash in the sky must be mending. the smell of paint fumes and wallpaper remover, the dismantled sink on the porch. i used to get sore from carrying books to the library but now even sick and dizzy my muscles feel good in these following days. so many boxes. so many alleys. so many stairs. that dumpster just filled up our cabinets. how much can one neighborhood throw away? my striped shirt is sticking to my back and this quilt is bigger than my head. how 'bout i age one year real quick and you start letting me into small crowded places with loud music so i can batter my liver and my eardrums simultaneously. do we have a deal? then we just tumble tumble tumble into metaphors of flight and collapse, burrowing and lampshades. i saw yr bike on the bridge so you must have been foraging nearby, but where's yr young oh so young earnest face when i look for you? intellectual discussions where we nod our heads and try to use the biggest words we can think of but really we're all daydreaming about snacks or sex or ceramics. write a song about soggy sneakers and doodle pictures of bikes in the margins. the time is now!

maybe then

you know i don't have yr antidote and you don't have my cure, but maybe once they've coaxed the poison from yr veins and maybe once i've expelled these fears from my rattling lungs, maybe then. maybe then our downward spirals will pause or at least align. maybe then you'll visit, and we can sleep through days and ride through nights on our newly brakeless bikes shouting revolutionary slogans and painting the pavement with pearls of wisdom. and maybe then we'll learn how to unlearn these secrets behind our eyes; maybe then we'll remember how to see our own reflections in these beautiful broken buildings, broken skies, and we'll laugh at these absurd games of falling down.

feeding frenzy

i like to call this poison healing, though it might seem more like destruction, or at least distraction. erasure, and i bet the word rubber comes from rub rub rubbing out these smudges and smears and changing names so we can reuse old love notes without having to rewrite them. there's dirt in the creases of these blankets, dirt and skin and smoke, and it's been nothing but these fingers for almost two weeks. two weeks! no nose and no earlobes. i started screening my calls when i realized i didn't have that secret cave you're asking about, and i've been shoving falafel balls into the edges of my windows to block the windy reality from getting to my bare eyelashes, and it's been three songs in a row about lightning, but there's no such thing as a good storm in this part of the world. i miss hurricanes and green thunder skies. i like to tell people here stories about our pokeberry war paint and hardwood snobberies, but i can't even recall which one i am.


(i kind of miss being soft and nervous and impressible, being self-conscious and predictable. i kind of miss being bashful and wrapped.)

celebration

we're writing in the air, spelling out giggly odes to tupperware and unionization, and we're imagining vegan cookies shaped like hearts to show how we feel about all this powdered sugar glam rock confusion, and he's coming at you with a mascara wand but you just run yr hands thru yr flapperesque hair and corner the grinning dog lover to ask him his middle name while i run in circles trying to high five everyone in sight. we nibble on toast like there's no tomorrow. as serious as yr life. please know how much this is not appreciated. please sharpen all yr pencils and line up yr books on yr desk. the cymbals are too much for me at this hour of the morning, feverish pillowcase and all.

rapunzel

i feel like rapunzel - everyone reaching out for the whirlwind of my bright hair or my eyes or the way we kiss, reaching out for something to grasp onto. you want to climb up to some fairytale world on my tresses, to steal me away from my fierce solitude, my promiscuities, but i've grown a bit too fond of my high tower and my not-needing-nobody state of mind. and we can be lovers for a moment but i don't think i can save you from yr broken heart or yr routine life or the chemicals you crave; i don't think my unsturdy careless gestures are enough to prop you up for long. i'm so scared when you grasp at me like this, when i know i can't fix things the way i wish i could, the way you think i can. rapunzel, but i'm cutting off my hair.

revolve

whiskey slurpees on downtown corners. drinking on porches with nothing much to say. parks and picnic tables, alleys and dumpsters and playgrounds, playing tag and collapsing on plastic slides to lie staring up at what few stars break through this chicago smog, throwing out thoughts about bats and skies and being kids, about politics and protests and travels and places. parties, all bikes and 40s and punk bands playing, linked arms and sideways grins. sidewalks brimming with cigarettes and dogs and drunk come-ons, wobbly rides home.

people who get excited about the things i get excited about, who play games and laugh at the stars. scruffy souls. i like 'em.

gritty snitty

i'll cook you some grits - the instant kind, in the microwave - if only you roll yr pants up to show those skinny calves when you walk, and tape my ripped-up bike map back together in a way that makes everything not so far away. and if you like organic apples maybe i'll bake you a pie, or maybe not, but if you flash a grin my way i'll at least wink a promise in return. cuz i'm trying, trying real hard, to remember my what's and where's and who's, to mind my p's and q's, but mostly i want to just throw these menus and these phones up into the air down into the chicago river and never hear rings or make choices again - mostly i want you to grab me tight and save my solidity. i want to save all these bored pacing creatures at the zoo, nowhere, no nowhere, to be quiet & inconspicuous. stares get stale. you put on yr raincoat and laugh at my dripping hair, at the jeans clinging to my thighs and i laugh too cuz the power's flickering and the summer's slipping away.

sidelong

and it was that protest on the lawn, radical cheerleaders and drums and dancing and running excitedly between people i knew till hand on my back he whispered in my ear, will you slow dance with me? and it was crawling out windows to rooftop gardens and lavender between my fingers. can i ask you dirty questions? knees touching around bike repairs.

and it was long lazy bike rides in the cool dusk breezes down narrow unlit streets with me swaying perched behind the seat flapping my arms like wings while we wobbled around turns. first kisses against newspaper machines outside shuttered restaurants and grabbing hands tight. he's not ready for this but he'd be a fool to let go of my hand right now.

what's yr favorite color, where's yr history, and tell me, what's yr sign? what a way to fall asleep and what a way to wake up. & mugs of tea too bitter and morning glories blooming purple and hummingbirds in the sunshine, and he asks, one day when yr done being wild and carefree will you come back to me?

(but i remind him that without both of our imminent looming departures none of this would taste as sweet)

and it was only one night, and i could have been anyone, don't you think?
but still yr stuck in my head.

chicago incarnations

these are signs that i'm ready for a break. flying home tomorrow morning (no liquids on the plane! take yr shoes off and sneak yr dirty hair thru security without arousing suspicion!) will be such a welcome escape for a week before i'm back in this city again.

i'm not sure i like this latest revision, all sneers and slipknots and sleepy condescension, and i'm not sure i'm really better off with these x-ray eyes and illiterate agenda and impatience like toenails. i kind of want to go back to bare feet and smoldering wicks and petals stuck in my hair and my teeth. i kind of want to be scared of anyone at all again, scared into pewter poses and bashful paper airplanes.

(the bookstore floor is a-calling, and you never really have to buy.)

momentum

and sometimes the inclinations leave me. sometimes
i can only work in the mornings
toward afternoon deadlines creeping closer
sidling up seeming so sneaky and slow but
ready to slam into me like that
almost-collision yesterday -

you know, two objects in motion going
faster faster faster intent on their destinations,
two objects on convergent paths
will necessarily collide with a great deal of force
leaving a mess of me and you and we
unless we swerve! just in time.

momentum, all about momentum, and
you know, if i never stop i never have to
start up again cuz i know an object at rest will
stay at rest but an object in motion will just
go go go, and i don't think i need to explain
the manifest metaphors here.