Which are the lilacs

  Blooming round

  The courtyard

  Of the building

  Where I catch my car

  To go

  I wear

  A yellow dress

  YOU WERE SO BLOND

  I knew it I knew it

  But you were so blond and soft

  I forgot about all of the things I had to do

  I needed to do

  Like Sor Juana and Hannah Weiner

  Your skin was so soft and young

  I forgot about having a baby

  Or painting my nails with eggcream

  I went down to your place and thought about you in your thoughts

  Your thoughts are not plain

  But will anyone ever know them

  Could anyone be more plainspoken than you

  For a million emotions

  Oh your emotions are a million colors

  And it will take you a hundred years to find me again

  Fuck, you fuck

  I tried to make it easier on you this time

  Instead I waited and waited

  And never gave up

  You know it’s true what they say

  Poetry is a destructive force

  Your back in the photo

  That she took

  That is the thing I will always remember

  I JUST HOPE I CAN SLEEP

  I hope I can sleep and forget your name

  I just hope that we drift apart

  I hope that you stop writing me, like before

  I hope that you discount the things I believe in

  I hope that you don’t even consider them

  I hope that the rainbows go back and forth

  And you don’t stop them for me

  And that I am in the midst of the tangled rainbow

  And you aren’t even thinking of me

  I hope that when the land completely lit by rainbows

  Is my new home you forget to ask me for my address

  I hope that when the light shines on me

  I don’t look like anything or anyone

  You think that you know

  I hope that when you spot me in a field of honey

  You keep on walking, walking past the honey

  And drown yourself in a body of water

  No I hope that there is a body of water

  Which makes sense to you

  An ocean of your own making

  THE ROMAN POETS

  The Roman poets brought me to this day

  To see this thru

  They marked me when I was little

  They put the words in me

  To be here

  All the poems I’ve lost as papers I threw in the street

  If I did it all to be here with you

  If I took it all in

  To sing it to you

  Then yes love it was worth it

  Just to live this life with you as my friend

  And not a lover

  But who cares anyway

  The light was dim and drab

  When I woke up and left it

  In the light of the dawn

  When I left this glorious animal body

  To be the weather

  That empties on the purple lawns

  The end of things

  THE OPEN SOUND OF FRENCH

  Even the sound of French is open

  And the children find me very interesting to look at

  It is as if I am a TV show or supper

  All my pretty babies who paint the winter chests

  With red and gold and green

  It was on the afternoon

  In the small wooden town

  That I was so mired in my act of jealousy

  I did not pay attention

  To the beauty of the dark church in front of me

  And now you ask me

  To meet you in a park after dark

  Well it is too late too late

  I am already flying

  THE AMETHYST

  All my life

  It was a lie

  To try to go towards bliss

  But death is the ultimate blissfulness

  To be a candy or a corpse

  The world holds you on its tongue

  And no one can save you

  Not even your own children or your friends

  So have a seat with the home of the dead

  They will eat your colors

  Until you are blank

  The best thing to happen to you

  The greatest happiness

  To be an animal who is smoke

  And beyond the mouth

  That tears your bones from one another

  To be a mound of meat

  At the table of the living

  BLAZING STAR LODGE

  In the deepest part

  I still loved him

  Had gone with him

  To the blazing star lodge

  The place where

  He had worn his brown suit

  And blue tie

  And had called his sister to tell her so

  To match him, I wore my brown dress

  And blue eyes

  And painted a room inside the lodge

  His favorite shade of green

  The meal was simple

  A bowl of lettuce

  I cut the beets to his liking

  I put the snails upon the plates

  We talked and looked

  At the things

  We could submerge

  In the immobile water

  I did not commit this so as to tell you so

  I did it because I was angry

  And could not pick up the shells

  Like I had wanted to for all those years

  And he had promised

  A place to stay

  For at least a weekend

  And said he would be there

  And he was there

  He always was

  What a man in brown suit

  The neatest purple script

  In letters and notes

  Coming all the way from the coastline

  Even on my birthday

  Had packed tiny jackalopes into an orange box and sent it

  When I said for many weeks

  That I was swamped with work

  I meant I could not

  Stop thinking about him

  And in the night

  Had put

  Faces over other faces

  To make me forget

  Even through living

  He taunted me with his arms

  I saw them in pictures

  Hold a thousand girls

  And even I

  Went to the edge

  To see

  What I could find

  But nothing

  Nothing

  Ever else could quench

  This desire for him

  Nothing ever was close

  To his face

  So placid

  By the ocean

  I REMEMBER IN THE MORNING

  I remember the morning when you left me

  I remember it was midday when we left

  I remember only the driving

  All along in the half-dark and your face

  In the orange shadows your grandfather made

  And me in the mirror in the front room of the hospital

  With the faded houndstooth on the chair where I sat

  Where I called my friend

  Who said to me that I was a wreath

  And who to know what it was I did

  I never believed him but I should have

  You were so brutal

  You were never wet

  Now you come to my street in the sunrise and hold me

  There are things you want to say but don’t

  There are things I want to say but I already said them

  A year ago or two or five, when we first met

  There were times I thought you knew I loved you

  You never knew

  We never were

  I died

  You died

  That’s it

  JULY

  In July, I put my face to the window

  In June it had been a white line edged in blue,

  Now it was a grid of squares lined in tan

  A voice said to me, in summer language: Dottie, you are blessed

  And I felt the yellow light of the sun eating my face

  Then coming upon, a tiny yellow light

  So that my face was cored out

  In layers of orange-red, then red

  You know, it was then, that I had finished something

  That the people would like

  And faceless, I went in the car, pronounced:

  “The book will be called Rome”

  Men in the seats

  Thinking I was odd or silly

  But I could still break them in half

  Now it’s winter, so I do

  If they’re lucky

  These men I marry

  Creaming upon the edge of the nightstand

  Little jewels what have you

  “These are the things I had been waiting for,”

  I answered haughtily, that July

  To the sky

  To no one

  IT IS QUIET

  It is quiet when we go

  And no no

  Nothing is anything if you say that it is

  It is quiet and not a sound

  But before that: the music

  And the hats with their off colors

  Marching down the road in a line

  In a line of things

  Away from us

  FEBRUARY 21ST

  It is February 21, 2013

  My friend has just sent me a poem about traveling

  It will never be 2/21/2010 again

  I will go back and forth and never be

  As if it weren’t my task to notice but it is

  The blue trees

  As if it weren’t my task to be here but it is

  Out the window there is a man who stares at me

  From the trees

  Is it true that all trees are the same

  All houses are the same

  Is it true that all people are the same

  We eat from the same china

  And the sound is similar

  A very similar sound

  I would never for example

  Leave someone waiting

  In the cold for hours

  Again

  As I have done this man

  Outside my window

  In the trees

  They say he waits for me

  But I am confused

  As to what that might mean

  They say he waits

  But I wait too

  They say he goes

  But I go too

  Endless suffering and circle

  Long stem palm tree

  In the centerpiece

  February 21st is a hard day for me

  It is also Eric Baus’ birthday

  Eric Baus is my best friend

  There I said it again

  He very rarely sends me new poems

  But when he does

  I smile and nod

  And am as tiny as a sail

  What Eric Baus is to me

  Is white snow

  Is forest tree before the beginning

  No one wants to compare life to a tumor

  Because to think about a tumor is to go out

  To think about disease is to go out

  No one wants to go out

  They want to fly as a burning bird through the sky

  They want to forget about it

  The state of engaging with this

  With a tumor

  With that thing that is leaving me

  The state of engaging with the leaving

  Is to be shy

  And I don’t know

  I don’t want to be shy anymore

  No I want to sing

  And never stop

  And never stop listening

  To my friends

  Who easily could seem as a group

  That is everchanging

  But is never changing

  Are the same people

  I know

  And not the people in the world

  But in the next

  And when I thought about

  My friend the traveler

  No, I have known him

  I was right

  And when a new person said

  He knew me in another life and

  I thought no

  I was right

  Because what is knowing

  No

  Because I don’t know anyone

  And I don’t owe anything

  To anyone

  Anymore

  Except my self

  Which they asked for

  When they gave me this life

  To go and circle

  The endless trees

  They gave me the soft brush to contend with

  The camera spinning to shoot with

  They gave that yellow

  Purse to carry

  With dead bugs in it

  And I had to carry it

  All the way through

  The trees

  And back up to the house again

  And when I said I couldn’t believe that you came back

  I really meant to say

  This again

  Or we know what this is for

  I meant to say

  Here we go again

  Go through this thing

  I meant to say

  Thank you for before

  When you did all that for me

  And I just silently knew

  And took your coat off

  And anyway

  I guess I won’t go to sleep

  I guess I will wear a ring upon my finger

  And won’t take it off

  And it will be lapis

  And I will wear it and wear it

  And then have no fingers at all

  And if you think I am not hungry

  If you think I am not hungry anymore

  You are wrong

  I am very much so

  I very much want to eat the thing

  If you think I am not hungry anymore

  Then you are very wrong

  And I will eat and eat

  And consume you

  If you think I won’t consume you friend

  You are wrong

  It is 2/21

  And so I must go

  I must be

  With this time

  Which is yours and mine

  Which is not

  I must be in the time

  That is all of us

  And what is not

  Well I’ll never know

  I will quench the thirst of my stomach

  And eat the bitter doughnuts

  Under the blank sky

  Which we have paid for

  And what it was

  And what it is

  It is again

  THE EMPTY COLISEUM

  In the center of it all, there is an empty circle

  Where thousands of years ago the people the animals fought

  No it is only the hay where before

  They brought the sheep in

  No before the sheep they made the hay

  And forgot about it

  I am no more a warrior on the sun

  I make words

  And I made them for a very long time with acquaintances

  I hated most of all when they talked about feelings

  It was a long time if they felt me, if ever

  So I took the I as bloody as it came

  And put it on the platter for them to eat

  Now I am greying

  In the middle of my own and personal library

  What to do, was it all a menagerie

  Even when I can speak no longer

  I will make in full the anonymous I

  Or I will make you in full in the anonymous I

  I will fill the poems with great pain

  And then suck out the meat so that they are only

  Shells with only the memory of meat

  So that they are only the memory of blood

  So I will spill my own so as to make a fresh memory

  They said the clouds remember nothing

  But in the open arena

  There are only real clouds

  Not the memory of people

  Who are looking

  LILAC

  I felt empty

  As I always had

  Because in my past life

  I had burned to death

  Because in this one

  You told me I was a bad poet

  As if I cared about poetry

  At all

  As if I didn’t only care

  About the little dog

  In her bed

  Sleeping for all eternity next to me

  Lilacs bloom

  From the edge of the wood

  I walk the grass-lined streets

  To come to a lemon tree

  What a blank and edible flower

  The lilac is

  It is as if your face

  Were there inside of me

  Or on that tree

  White-lined

  And inside your heart

  A glowing purple, a glowing green

  It is as if I had made you believe

  In me once again

  It is as if you knew I was your true love

  It was as if I didn’t have to know

  In this life

  All you were to me

  Was that flower

  I KNOW THERE IS ANOTHER WORLD

  I know there is another world

  And the people with their round heads

  I know there is a sunset made of sand

  I know they count in fours just to listen to me

  They like the click click click, click

  I know the people listen to me

  On the other side

  That’s why I get the root from the left side of the dresser

  And put it in the inky water

  I drink the tea with the elephants under a taboo shelter

  To sip with our trunks

  Not really space

 

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