poems 2008-2017
The Eucalyptus Gave You More
Red to green memorial interchange
All i want is alcohol and to stay private and an old radio
The archer school for girls
The Jewish women’s council
Persian ice cream
The thrift store
The mother's let down
The chipped nails
The affluent curve in the road
The techno music
The way you ended up here
My first and second grade teacher what was her first name… Mrs. Melton.
I had the same teacher for both grades.
I was jealous of her daughter, she named her Mackenzie.
She was a few years younger than me, probably more like 8.
Shelley, Katherine, what was her first name?
I think my mom probably was aware of how much I loved her.
Plastic covering dirty things, tarps of brown and dirty grey blue, thrown over mounds of unwanted resources. All neat in a row along the highway.
No sunset tonight.
The homeless people were kicked out of Marmion way, near the train tracks, on their underground alley that they had created, the tent city that they lived in. we saw their shopping carts lined up in perfect straight line-order with the pile of mattresses right next to it.
I saw it late last night but you saw it two days ago.
When I started, the neighbors had had enough techno music, the way I used to dance always avoiding strangers unless I am in control and I say things first and then probably scare them away.
Crying in Los Angeles.
The curves to Malibu.
The way the money changes.
Persian ice cream.
Iranian people.
I guess I am just like any other alcoholic now trying to numb out my feelings trying not to feel anything trying to quiet my mind and not have to hear the next sentence coming around the corner
Perfect landscapes
Copper details on my dream house
The law of attraction
What brings things to you
Honey hive
A wolf kiss and you go by a bee hive
A whale sign
A pile again
Dirt covered again in the same old whale sound
An old radio I found at a thrift store at the Jewish women's thrift store where is that thrift store
The canyons
The sun again
Landscaping to route dripping bougainvillea
Every single flower what is that medicine , that flower medicine again
when will I press it in my Copper kettle
let it's essences flow in to my face and my nostrils
let the eucalyptus
let the eucalyptus
finally do it's work
the work that it's been trying to do
it shows itself when it hangs over the freeway lines
the medians, the tunnel, it throws itself out to you
it knows it's free to take, do you realize how much medicine it has and how tall it grows?
I'm driving past it now it's next-door to Will Rogers.
Will Rogers got a name,
Will Rogers got a street named something, what, why, did Will Rogers get that street named after him?
The eucalyptus gave you more.
I'm determined to find a use for Oleander but I'm too tired most days to try.
I wonder if that's how the prickly pear feels?
They're everywhere they're rambling but they're always laying flat I want to be flat again that's why I drove for 40 miles to come out
to come all the way out here to the beach and lay flat again
I always wonder when can I just get flat again
The heliotrope
The liquor store
The pepper tree
-May 28, 2016, at 5:40 pm
Untitled
It's too close it's too fucking close I am not even close enough
not even when I'm laying on top of you I want my arms to push all the way through you can never get close enough
I can't think of a more comfortable
of a more uncomfortable feeling
there's a ringing in my pelvic bone
there is a burning in my belly
there is stinging
and my shoulders
there is ringing in my ears in the deepest part of the inside of my years
and all I want to do is put you on the way inside of me
your entire body does it fit? Does it fit?
I tried to go the fastest I can around the tightest corners on the freeway to mimic the feeling of what it would probably feel like if I were to pass through you or you were to pass through
become transparent
become invisible and filled up at the same time
the heaviest smoke
silent wait that never existed
The heaviest and most silent wait that never existed
-August 9, 2016, at 7:18 pm
Untitled
You are a woman, too
and to the mansion that her tide rises
let it rise to the highest point
Let it rise rise to the hills to the highest point
Before the morning glory closes again
And the twisted vine of the grape gets stuck in the chicken wire fence
The train rushes by inside the
Dying think so clear
As day and deadlines
We seem as loveclean as the seeds falling through your hands
When we hear the mystery bear calling from the tips of the dirt mountain we untrust it like we don't recognize blood pink flowers that unfurl
Too early
-August 3, 2015, at 6:58 pm
Untitled
One day
I will paint pictures and be done sleepwalking
in the glowing shadow
I wish I would have been able to accept your love
back then I would have
known
-July 30, 2015, at 6:09 am
Untitled
Holding on to a whale who is dying
Holding on
Holding onto a whale who is swimming and dying at the same time
Holding on by a thread to a swimming whale who is also dying
Swimming while dying people lose their freedom
so easy you will feel
the darkness I leave behind
-August 15, 2015, at 11:55 am
Untitled
I found the owl’s lair
Something has happened here
There are feathers scattered everywhere in golden salt cedar needles and silken spiderwebs
Then a skull
What was there before is still here
I was shaking when I arrived
Are you looking for me?
I'm looking for you
I sat then and said her name to myself
I'm not sure it helped
Anything can happen here
If you're soft
A talented reminder
-August 13, 2016, at 5:21 pm
Untitled
It's the day after the Fourth of July, Independence Day.
I'm in Los Angeles I'm driving on the highway.
I don't know the name of it, it's going to be turning into the 101 soon.
I'm listening to my teacher Tara Brach. I skipped work today and I lied about it.
I told them I had been in an accident, which was not a lie, I was in an accident for a third time. First, I broke up with Kerby, then I broke up with her again when I found out she was sleeping with Anna, I'm breaking up with somebody who named herself after the sky.
She was presented to me and I met her and I was loving her and then I was hurting myself by loving her and she did hurt me. I am recognizing where I'm at and I'm seeing where I am
and I am trying to stay there with me in this moment
every moment
let it
It is becoming more difficult. I cry so deeply I have to gasp for my breath. I have to gasp for my breath when the tears come they are coming from such a deep spot in my earth.
I'm listening and I'm driving and I'm always watching.
Eating grapes from Laura's mom's tree listening to her tell me that I can't say that I hate my life, listening to this guy tell me that I can't kill myself, that it's not OK Listening to her tell me about her life stories and the patterns and the white supremacy and all of the programming and all of the ways that I didn't know that I have become insensitive to people’s histories and race and the inequalities that we oppress each other through, for and during all this but I am driving on this unnamed highway on this dangerous place and the car in front of me says “Cars can kill you” and I think I want to run my car off of this highway and then I look over and there is a memorial on this highway and the memorial on this highway is covered in in sunbleached tinsel and it is draped all over the fence the industrial fence that lines the highway, someone got out and made a serious memorial a memorial covered in sunbleached tinsel and things from the dollar store like fake flowers and pinwheels and streamers and now I am thinking, what will save me? what can I do to stay alive again today? and the only thing I can think of is to take a salt bath and then make a painting of all of the different memorials on the freeways all of the different handmade death shrines that everyone has ever made I want to paint please I want to make a series of freeway shrines freeway memorial highway death shrines the remembering, the honoring, the grieving place and space from the dollar store the space in the world that somebody got out of their car and made the decision to memorialize their loved one who died on this freeway
-July 5, 2017
Givers Who Give
Third eye ravens and Nicotiana glauca in Elysian park
these are the ribbons of gifts that open when we walk together
Spare ribs and rosé
Portal walk to heal the black dahlia house trauma
because whoever was murdered there, wants to come hang out in your bedroom and we can’t have that, we both felt her or him or them sitting in the corner of your room as we made love that night, we called it Grey Guy
So we exorcise her sad spirit and send the pain away with Frank Ocean songs, a red bottlebrush flower placed on each side of the steps, crazy laughter, wishes of dragons, and plenty of cuddling on your brown leather couch
You feed me ice cream there and and buy us a bunch of meat so I can cook for you.
We make kelp noodles and sausages and cuddle on your couch watching funny ancient stories that hold the symbols of things that we already saw together, like ravens and crows and hands and torn up pieces of linen and cotton.
You say I make you feel an electricity in your trunk, in your heart chakra.
Your whole family are taureans. Your mom is a seeker, you say that we can talk about philosophy and the deeper pools of things. We switch in middle of sentences to describe feeling, and depth, and wonder.
I feel handsome and romantic again. You kept your candle lit for me. You bring me a magnolia flower that you picked from your tree, you tell me how hot I am.
You fix my wounds for me. We are givers. We are givers to give, we are givers who haven't been used to receiving, but are learning. It's only been a little bit of time but there's a timestamp that you placed on me along time ago and it is coming into fruit and when I look at you I do future trip, it's too bad, and I'm sorry that I do it but I can't help but see everything with you, it's scary and I'm not gonna say it to anyone except for to this note on this phone and on this computer but I'm saying into the universe and the universe already heard me, it's in motion .
With you I know that I have said things I wanted but it's my new attempt at a new lifestyle, new adult way of teaching, learning, and beginning again.
To talk to you
It's important and then we laugh and crack up in between trying to be serious because everything is funny and we know what's next. I am telling you about how I want you to touch me I am telling you about what has worked for me in the past but it's really easy because I do.
You make me feel safe and I don't need to feel safe but it's a really nice thing to have in my back pocket. I saw pictures of you and your mom, I saw pictures of you, I saw pictures of you when you were little and I can see fast eyes, chill times, laughter, confidence, a seeker, and also someone who just adores to exist in this world with no extra baggage and I think that you have shared a lot. There's a comfort because I can see how much weight you have already shed that isn't necessary to the remainder of your path. You are doing a good job and so am I. We will do it.
Togetherness
I had a Chanel shirt
And then I saw on your mom's Facebook page she called her horse Rubicon
And I named my cabin that
And saw it for weeks on the cars
The next morning
Kindness
Love making and stories of poems
You make me butter coffee and play me songs I've never heard and become obsessed with and then share them with my friends
Our bands are Wicker Halter and Brothel Fire
This poetry is happening
Dagger Moon
Romance Candle
I'm lost in music again
Dream lady she dreamt of me and it was nice
Archery
Los Feliz is a feeling
And a street
I'm okay and
I'm okay
And I need to keep healing the sacral
Inglewood
Spare ribs
Your names in mine
I saw the golden ribbon of light connecting us
My magnolia
Haven't recorded any new synchronicities since end of July so here are a few new:
On Rowena now in her new house
After the ghost house
And New Order happened
And I hear it all over the city and more 80’s songs
And the music feels
Alive again
Her mom's horse’s name is the same as my cabin, Rubicon
And she reminds me of both Meredith and Chris at the same time
Sagittarius rising
This day I found out her mom calls her Lou like my Lou in Portland, my sweet little twin soul
I can't remember all the cool little synchronicities and times I've felt some sort of feeling of being home finally
We danced last night and ate chicken wings at Ye Olde Rustic Inn and the radio played Temptation and Ceremony for us there, the songs always haunt me, no matter what
So much love making my body is vibrating
Carnelian
Coffee
I want to buy her a present but nothing’s even good enough
Carlton Burger Figueroa and his older more suave brother, Lee Sycamore, two of the funny voices of silly characters I make up to make you laugh - they’re awkward older well meaning men, one is a BBQ chef fantastico and the other a professional brick maker who likes only brown paper towels in his house, and he confesses, that he’s only trying his darndest to figure out just how to attract a woman, a good woman, a kind woman, a high quality woman he can call
home
-August 18, 2017 at 4:58 pm
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