Pamifesto

2012-02-08T23:32:00.002-05:00

You’ll be nothing then, nothing but an average lawyer who went to an average school who lives an average life.

confession.

2012-01-26T10:30:00.001-05:00

Sometimes I want to just be a little woman. And I want you to be stronger than me and calmer than me, and I want you to be bigger than me and know more than me and be able to just sort of handle me. I want you to help me open a jar or a heavy door; I want to be unable to do those things without you. I want you to take care of me. There. I said it.

2012-01-25T22:21:00.000-05:00

"Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life."-SJ

2012-01-20T16:20:00.002-05:00

2012 is all about blondes from faraway lands.

relationships.

2012-01-08T23:04:00.000-05:00

So may relationships to work on in this life. Your relationship with food. Your relationship with alcohol. Your relationship with your body. Your relationship with your work. Your relationship with yourself.

At the root of any functional relationship, though, is love. It's actually that simple. If we could just be mindful of that always. If only. . .

Such a pretty boy

2012-01-05T23:09:00.001-05:00

I could come up with so many excuses for why I acted the way I acted, because I’m not like that, and you’re just a kid, and I’m like, in a different category than you and like, ha, that is just absurd, you know? Like totally fucking absurd. I’m all a lawyer and you’re like, a child and like, I’m all fancy and you’re just an adorable dork. Like, wow, like, I must have been wasted because there is like, no reason I would act like that.

Like wasted. And I didn’t eat. And I was just trying to make friends and fit in and this place is so hard and life is so hard and I should maybe talk to a shrink because I’m not acting like myself.

But…here’s the thing. Here’s the fucking thing I fucking realized today. If I quiet my mind and I quiet the world and I just shut the fuck up it’s actually quite a lot simpler than all of that: I like you. That is all. I fucking like you a lot. That is why I acted the way I acted. I like your smile and I like your soft voice. I like the way you trip over your feet oozing in sincerity. I like the soft way in which you take total control. I like the way you apologize profusely when I spill coffee on myself. I like your mind.

It is mind-blowing and cathartic to admit that I am just that simple.

2011-12-29T21:54:00.000-05:00

I’ve abandoned writing lately. It’s been a crazy year. High highs, very low lows. The kind of year you’d think would be a perfect canvas for all kinds of cutting and bristly poems. All kinds of prophetic and poetic revelations. And yet. Nothing.

Nothing because, as I’ve realized, feeling the urge to write is a luxurious feeling. It’s a delicious feeling. It means not only that you feel, but that you feel inspired, and that you feel as though there is something about that feeling that is worthy of being shared. It’s braggartly, if you will. Poems are so pretty, so ostentatious. Even the poems about heartbreak. Especially the poems about heartbreak.

Writing means you endorse your thoughts.

---

"One of the things I've repeated to writing

students is that they should write when they don't

feel like writing, just sit down and start,

and when it doesn't go very well, to press on then,

to get to that one thing you'd otherwise

never find. What I forgot to mention was

that this is just a writing technique, that

you could also be out mowing the lawn, where,

if you bring your mind to it, you'll also eventually

come to something unexpected ("the robin he

hunts and pecks"), or watching the FARM NEWS

on which a large man is referring to the "Greater

Massachusetts area." It's alright, students, not

to write. Do whatever you want. As long as you find

that unexpected something, or even if you don't."

--Ron Padgett

Forgiving myself. Finally. And completely.

2011-12-12T21:28:00.001-05:00

I love my innocence. And I love that the harshness of the world still shocks me. I love that I stupidly trust people who shouldn’t be trusted. I love that I see the sexiness in the most abhorrent of men. I love that when I drink too much, I tell everyone how much I love them. I love that I fall asleep at bars. At work events. I love that I tell men that try to help me home that they are a “jerk,” and that I can take care of myself. I love that I fall down a steep flight of stairs immediately afterward. I love that I refuse to believe that the world is a bad place. I love that, despite everything I have in this world, I sometimes still feel so inadequate that I drink myself into a stupor to feel comfortable. I love that I cry in front of strangers. I love that I sometimes need a man’s attention to feel good. I love that I can’t do it all alone. I love that I need you. I love that I need God. I love that I need hope. I love that I will find a positive way to spin even the worst of things. I love that I can’t admit that I feel alone. I love that sometimes, I do feel alone. So alone, that the aloneness suffocates me. I love that I will not give up on the goodness of life. I love that my body doesn’t look like everyone else’s. I love that my hair doesn’t look like everyone else’s. I love that I have only been with one man in my life. I love my cellulite. I love my round cheeks. I love my big ass. I love my beat up, pretty little feet. I love the two dimples at the small of my back. I love the big bruise on my left arm. I love the blemish marks on my cheeks. I love my fleshy knees. I love my theatrical, obsessive, dramatic personality. I love my openness. I love that I love too hard. I love that I’m afraid that everything will fall apart. I love that something deep within me truly believes that it won’t.

2011-11-17T21:35:00.000-05:00

Person A: I just don't understand why I can't meet anyone.

Person B: Because you hate yourself.

Person A: Oh.

2011-11-17T21:32:00.002-05:00

water water everywhere, and not a drop to drink

2011-10-03T23:52:00.000-04:00

just put on a white tee shirt and get on top of me.

parfait parfait parfait

2011-09-13T23:09:00.001-04:00

There is no perfect you. There is only you you. And you are perfect.

understanding this poem in a new way tonight

2011-09-13T23:05:00.000-04:00

Tear it Down

Jack Gilbert

We find out the heart only by dismantling what
the heart knows. By redefining the morning,
we find a morning that comes just after darkness.
We can break through marriage into marriage.
By insisting on love we spoil it, get beyond
affection and wade mouth-deep into love.
We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars.
But going back toward childhood will not help.
The village is not better than Pittsburgh.
Only Pittsburgh is more than Pittsburgh.
Rome is better than Rome in the same way the sound
of racoon tongues licking the inside walls
of the garbage tub is more than the stir
of them in the muck of the garbage. Love is not
enough. We die and are put into the earth forever.
We should insist while there is still time. We must
eat through the wildness of her sweet body already
in our bed to reach the body within the body.

A piece of advice

2011-09-13T23:02:00.003-04:00

Let it all go. All of it. Just let it go.

Rain.

2011-09-07T22:21:00.003-04:00

I wondered if he wondered what was so great about me, after all.

Then I realized that I was the only person wondering that.

Word.

2011-08-23T18:16:00.001-04:00

"There's another problem. Anger has become one of the trendiest emotions of all. In moderation it can be a righteous force for constructive change. But its hackneyed omnipresence means the vast majority of outbreaks are trivial. The paucity of colorful obscenities is aggravated by an abundance of frivolous fury."

-Rob Breszney

2011-08-23T10:44:00.003-04:00

Let dead things die. Make space. It could blow your mind, what fills that space.

2011-08-23T10:43:00.002-04:00

Don't say something you don't really mean just because you feel the need to say something.

monday blues

2011-08-15T11:08:00.000-04:00

It depresses me soooooo much that a woman is judged primarily on whether, and to whom, she is married. OH, and her looks. Let me not forget that one.

sonnet 814

2011-08-14T21:43:00.001-04:00

The people in my life are my fuel. These conversations are my nourishment. They keep me alive. And they are delicious.

2011-08-14T21:36:00.003-04:00

Be in love with yourself.

Dancing Warrior

2011-08-07T20:41:00.002-04:00

So, I am struggling. I know this. You probably know this. I'm having a bit of a rough go at the moment. I am simultaneously trying to break through to a new way of thinking (one of positivity and gratitude), and the juxtaposition is tricky if not downright manic.

I just got to thinking about the second series of postures in yoga, called the "dancing warrior." I think that is it. Be a warrior -- be strong, be formidable, be capable of protecting and defending yourself, but dance through it. Dance through the fight of life. With grace, with ease, with joy, and with gratitude for the unshakable strength rooted in your core that takes you further and deeper into your practice, into your life, than you'd ever dare to have dreamed.

So that's it, friends. The dancing warrior. Let's do this.

X

2011-07-30T13:04:00.000-04:00

I miss the sound of your voice and I miss your eyes. Not really the sound but the way you would say things. Your words jumped and they seared. I keep telling myself that it's your energy, not your eyes or your voice and that I have your energy with me always because energy traverses all space and dimension, but it still doesn't feel the same as having it and seeing it and knowing I could touch it if I needed confirmation that it was there. Thank you for calling me lovely and terrific. Those words are trite and I would always think I am too good to use them but keep them in my pocket now. They keep me warm and they keep me awake and they keep me dreaming. At night I sleep on them like they are your chest, even though I never slept on your chest, but it sure felt like I did, didn't it? Weren't you holding me at every moment? Even when I told you I didn't need to be held and I was stronger than anyone you knew. I would still collapse in your arms and you would lull me to sleep. Didn't that occur? It was lovely. And terrific.

Transition

2011-07-29T11:04:00.000-04:00

So you mustn’t be frightened . . . if a sadness rises in front of you, larger than any you have ever seen; if an anxiety, like light and cloud-shadows, moves over your hands and over everything you do. You must realize that something is happening to you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall.

Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don’t know what work these conditions are doing inside you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming from and where it is going? Since you know, after all, that you are in the midst of transitions and you wished for nothing so much as to change. If there is anything unhealthy in your reactions, just bear in mind that sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself from what is alien; so one must simply help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and to break out with it, since that is the way it gets better. In you . . . so much is happening now; you must be patient like someone who is sick, and confident like some one who is recovering; for perhaps you are both . . .

--Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

2011-07-08T09:09:00.000-04:00

"Longing, we say, because desire is full

of endless distances"

-- from Meditations at Lagunitas by Robert Hass

2011-07-08T09:07:00.000-04:00

She felt melancholy today in several acute and inarticulable ways. Ways that reminded her how much the good things hurt. How much gratitude and longing are intertwined. How much work there is left to do.

2011-07-08T09:05:00.000-04:00

"Occasionally, she dreams of Italy. She dreams of cheese shops, persnickety Fiats, and very fine leather goods."

--from the card that fell out of a Kate Spade wallet

2011-07-08T09:02:00.000-04:00

"For every high thing I think, I think a low thing. For every high motive I have, I also have a low motive. I guess my rule is: Honor the high and the low. Doing this will perhaps save me from the worst extremes of hypocrasy."

--John P. Shanley

Odd but true realization after another blase date...a haiku:

2011-06-20T00:00:00.000-04:00

All I want to do
Is work until 3 a.m.
and fuck Hugh Jackman

(what a freedom to realize this! sorry mom and dad)

2011-06-16T23:05:00.000-04:00

"Be pretty if you can,

be witty if you must,

but be gracious if it kills you."

-Elsie De Wolfe

Directives.

2011-05-31T21:57:00.000-04:00

Three tips from the universe today:

Love yourself.
Wear pink.
Be tan.

weird dreams lately.

2011-05-15T00:20:00.002-04:00

In the dream, we were walking through an airport. It might have been a library. Actually, it felt like it was an airport that, as we walked, transformed into a library. We had just reunited in some way. I was trying to link my arm with yours but you were too tall; it was too awkward. I joked with you about how tall you were, asked you if you were wearing "lifts," in your shoes, because I had known people your height and I could link arms with them. You laughed, and muttered something about your shoes, and as you did, I unhooked my arm from inside yours and slid it down your back, until I was holding the small of your back. And then I wrapped my left arm around you, and clung to your waist with both arms while we walked. I looked like a Koala bear clinging to you like that but something about it was so sweet. And so inevitable. Then we were at the front desk of the library, if it was a library. It looked a bit like the public library of my hometown, but not entirely. There was a man in a yellow sweater milling about in the back but he wasn't paying any attention to us. You hit the little silver bell on the counter to get someone's attention, although neither of us really cared. I had my back to the counter, facing you -- you were facing the counter. Then you leaned in, edging me to lean against the counter, and then I let my head fall back on the counter and you started to kiss me. A first kiss upon reuniting kind of kiss. It flowed, as if there was nothing more natural than for us to make out on the countertop of a library/airport at that moment. We were in public, and so I felt bashful, but I wanted to kiss you so fulsomely. But still, I felt timid, and I closed my mouth at first but you didn’t, and so it was like you were sucking my closed mouth. It was funny. But seeing that you weren’t prey to any inhibitions, I then opened my mouth and then we were really kissing. These soft, buttery kisses. And your body melded into mine and everything started to ache so deliciously. The way it only does in those first few times you touch someone that you are falling in love with. Then we walked out of this place, into a parking lot, into your car. My friend from work was there all of a sudden -- I'm not sure why. I sat in the back. Subtly then (I didn’t realize the transition until I awoke from the dream) you transformed into my ex-boyfriend, the way faces and places so oddly but so seemingly naturally transform in dreams. And then my heart got heavy, and I started to hurt. This felt so good right now, so gooey and so right, but it would not feel good after a while. You would forget to remember me. You would stop caring as much, I would get stale to you, everything would be less exciting about all of this. I would want you so much more than you would want me. You would drift away from me. And I start to sleep and awake with an acute and incurable ache in my body. In every finger, and every toe. As we drove along I felt depleted and defeated; I felt dread. At some point, my friend from work, who was sitting in the passenger seat, made a joke about me moving to "New Jersey," which is where I guess this dream took place, I guess where she lived, and by the mischievous tone of her voice, where you lived as well, but where I did not. As if to say...you guys will be together forever. You didn't much respond, other than to laugh, which hurt me deeply. No moving for a for a man unless he loves you unequivocally, I decided. You are 30 now, not 25. Then your face transformed into the face of my brother, who looked at me through the rear view mirror, and seemed to nod in agreement.

2011-04-22T01:04:00.000-04:00

my new life is rife with uncertainty, fear, dread and debasement, but loads of fun, new experiences, dancing, wine and joy.

2011-04-21T00:19:00.001-04:00

A lie for a lie. A truth for a truth.

2011-04-19T23:32:00.000-04:00

I am like one big, open wound and it is a salty world.

2011-04-17T12:03:00.000-04:00

"I mean, my great shame as a writer is that I'm just this suburban kid with good parents. Y'know? I was fed, clothed, carpooled. Hardly Dickensian, y'know what I'm saying?"

--Sam Wexler in happythankyoumoreplease

2011-04-11T14:02:00.002-04:00

I've never been much of a writer. Or a lawyer or a photographer.
Even writing this poem, I'm trying to sound like someone who I think
you'll want to hear
I don't sound like anyone actually and this makes my life
complicated in ways that are mostly not fun.

New York Notes

2011-04-07T15:48:00.000-04:00

by Harvey Shapiro

1. Caught on a side street in heavy traffic, I said to the cabbie, I should have walked. He replied, I should have been a doctor. 2. When can I get on the 11:33 I ask the guy in the information booth at the Atlantic Avenue Station. When they open the doors, he says. I am home among my people.

There is so much joy available.

2011-03-31T00:08:00.002-04:00

2011-03-30T01:27:00.001-04:00

You fell in love with someone who wasn't real.

This is a Sunday night kind of poem

2011-03-27T23:30:00.000-04:00

The Manger of Incidentals
Jack Gilbert

We are surrounded by the absurd excess of the universe.
By meaningless bulk, vastness without size,
power without consequence. The stubborn iteration
that is present without being felt.
Nothing the spirit can marry. Merely phenomenon
and its physics. An endless, endless of going on.
No habitat where the brain can recognize itself.
No pertinence for the heart. Helpless duplication.
The horror of none of it being alive.
No red squirrels, no flowers, not even weed.
Nothing that knows what season it is.
The stars uninflected by awareness.
Miming without implication. We alone see the iris
in front of the cabin reach its perfection
and quickly perish. The lamb is born into happiness
and is eaten for Easter. We are blessed
with powerful love and it goes away. We can mourn.
We live the strangeness of being momentary,
and still we are exalted by being temporary.
The grand Italy of meanwhile. It is the fact of being brief,
being small and slight that is the source of our beauty.
We are a singularity that makes music out of noise
because we must hurry. We make a harvest of loneliness
and desiring in the blank wasteland of the cosmos.

If I was Frank O'hara, I wouldn't be a lawyer.

2011-03-26T01:31:00.003-04:00

not water.

2011-03-23T23:07:00.001-04:00

oh, I loved you for that while, I did. And you know what that means? Your face will always jar me. Oh, your face.

Something to get us through this rainy Wednesday...

2011-03-23T11:21:00.000-04:00

Nocturne

Frank O' Hara

There's nothing worse
than feeling bad and not
being able to tell you.
Not because you'd kill me
or it would kill you, or
we don't love each other.
It's space. The sky is grey
and clear, with pink and
blue shadows under each cloud.
A tiny airliner drops its
specks over the UN Building.
My eyes, like millions of
glassy squares, merely reflect.
Everything sees through me,
in the daytime I'm too hot
and at night I freeze; I'm
built the wrong way for the
river and a mild gale would
break every fiber in me.
Why don't I go east and west
instead of north and south?
It's the architect's fault.
And in a few years I'll be
useless, not even an office
building. Because you have
no telephone, and live so
far away; the Pepsi-Cola sign,
the seagulls and the noise.

“What Do Women Want?”

2011-03-20T20:08:00.001-04:00

BY KIM ADDONIZIO

I want a red dress.

I want it flimsy and cheap,

I want it too tight, I want to wear it

until someone tears it off me.

I want it sleeveless and backless,

this dress, so no one has to guess

what’s underneath. I want to walk down

the street past Thrifty’s and the hardware store

with all those keys glittering in the window,

past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old

donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers

slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly,

hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders.

I want to walk like I’m the only

woman on earth and I can have my pick.

I want that red dress bad.

I want it to confirm

your worst fears about me,

to show you how little I care about you

or anything except what

I want. When I find it, I’ll pull that garment

from its hanger like I’m choosing a body

to carry me into this world, through

the birth-cries and the love-cries too,

and I’ll wear it like bones, like skin,

it’ll be the goddamned

dress they bury me in.

Gemology

2011-03-20T17:28:00.006-04:00

I am affected by the moon

And agate and the way my mother looked at my waist that day and

the way you laugh and maybe don’t love me the way you once did even though

I didn’t want it then; don’t even want it now. I don’t know what I want actually or anything but

I’m sad

My poems came back to me covered in red ink

Or maybe those were someone else’s; they forgot to read mine I can tell

I only feel alone when I’m with people like you

see all the cobwebs but refuse to hold me

Or maybe that was me that refused to be held. I sweat too much at night

It’s because I don’t want to be cold. Never want to be cold.

There is no place to go but this moment; I’ve tried everywhere but keep running into walls and now my head is covered in bumps

I want to be more beautiful than I am.

2011-02-26T09:38:00.003-05:00

"For a minute there, I lost myself."

2011-02-25T14:08:00.003-05:00

“There is no blue without yellow and without orange.”

— Vincent van Gogh

forever Valentine

2011-02-14T00:06:00.000-05:00

Self-love, self-love, self-love. Why are you so unattainable.

Now, your life begins.

2011-02-05T10:02:00.001-05:00

World.

Crack me open.

Blow my mind with what

I can be

He can be

There can be

Show me light and darkness

Yet undreamed

Show me we’re not always wading

Through life but sometimes

Floating through it and even

Above it

Disrupt me

Terrify me with the way you manhandle me

Laugh at me with condescension when you show me that everything I’ve known is small

Break me

In half

Or in smaller pieces and

Don’t bother putting me back together

That’s my job.

2011-02-05T09:48:00.000-05:00

Pause for a minute and consider the possibility that the decisions you have made have been the right ones; that you are exactly what you should be, where you should be, and with whom. That you're not broken; not even flawed.

2011-01-31T16:58:00.004-05:00

Your head is sad, but your soul is happy.

2011-01-30T01:01:00.000-05:00

"Once in a blue moon you have a conversation that is unlike the others. You feel doors opening and a long sought relief. It's like when a book falls open to the page you need to read. It's like being welcomed home. I could use one of those conversations about now. I pray one comes to me."

--John Patrick Shanley

notes.

2011-01-28T20:33:00.001-05:00

Everytime I think I have you, I lose you again.

The prescription

2011-01-26T00:31:00.000-05:00

In the words of our beloved Mary Oliver, "live simply, and with a lyrical heart."

Revenge.

2011-01-23T11:51:00.002-05:00

I keep having all of these beheading fantasies. Not shooting, not even stabbing. But beheading. I’ve always known I was born in the wrong era.

2011-01-21T10:39:00.001-05:00

Dear Bliss,

Where the fuck are you?

Thanks,
Pam

2011-01-18T23:03:00.000-05:00

"You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things."

-- Mary Oliver

2011-01-17T10:51:00.002-05:00

Keep calm and carry on.

2011-01-14T23:24:00.001-05:00

Kick me in the face; I will not be defaced.

2011-01-12T14:46:00.000-05:00

"Take some idle afternoon and walk through the Museum of Old Infatuations. What could be more instructive? More comic? How many times have you been certain of your feelings? How many times has your enthusiasm fled to a new object, idea or person? It is like being naked to walk through this place. No mirror tells as much, nor leaves as much unanswered."

--John Patrick Shanley

A directive.

2011-01-11T12:05:00.002-05:00

Relax. Enjoy the deliciousness of possibilities.

2011-01-09T11:40:00.001-05:00

Stop looking at me like all I am trying to do is complicate my life. I've decided I WANT a complicated life. So these conversations are moot.

2011-01-09T11:29:00.002-05:00

"A long sleep and a good laugh are the best cures."

2011-01-08T23:16:00.000-05:00

I remember starting to write this little poem a few years ago...right around the time a very dear friend of mine was moving to California. I don't think I got past the first stanza, though. At some point I must have, because tonight I found what appears to be a completed poem on my computer!

I must be writing poetry in my sleep.

Nostalgia

It is always just before the new days

That we remember the old days.

Irritating mannerisms

and the shrieking creak of an old train

Are a paradise we slept through.

And there is no way to fix this.

Part of everyday

Is incapable of enjoying itself.

Belonging is chains and

Freedom is the black abyss of an untethered existence

Moments of love are a blind betrayal of self

Moments of self are … selfish.

Every morsel devoured

Reminds us of sin.

In this era of numbness

We make smallness

Out of things unimaginably unsmall

Spending a few minutes on a Monday, for example

With someone who laughs in this way that warms up your insides like hot tea

And yet we are supposed to shrug when relating this story, say something like “Well, I'm so dramatic, I know.”

Tell me something about yourself you think is ridiculous and I’ll raise you ten.

Tell me why we’re not allowed to do anything

That would mean anything.

Tell me why we only dream in our sleep.

--PS

2011-01-07T13:24:00.000-05:00

I've posted this poem like, 100 times. But it is SAVING me today and so I'm posting it again. You can thank me later.

How lucky am I, by the way, that one of my best friends is one of my favorite poets?? I say that sincerely and without reservation.

Anthem

for Shelly

Sonia Mukherji

We dance to feel closer to trees.
We celebrate the city’s first snowfall,
summer’s first street fair orchids, and
uneventful wednesdays with equal amounts of Prosecco and fervor.

We switch dresses for Paradou brunches,
convincing periwinkle ice-queen or rustic radiance
into each other.

Let light play
hide on our skin, we seek sun on dandelion
rooftops and deep house discoteques.

not unlike fireflies,
flit between decades, silent-film 20s being
a recent Thing.

Coy heroines of films we assume
on dates.
Tonight it’s Bertolucci’s Isabelle or Closer’s Alice,
Ray’s Charulata tomorrow,
Sophie of Jeux D’efants fame guilefully does them in but
we’ve vowed to reserve her for only the most
devilishly charming, the ones we fear might do us in.

we used to freak at the onset of these technicolor films,
Stepping out of cab to meet Mr. fallinlovewithmenowthanks
at quaint west-village authentic-type eateries.

Now we laugh.

We love.

Break me, we challenge, summoning Ella Fitzgerald and
crisp, leafy sepia afternoons,

Not like it’s not been done before.
Not like we won’t break you before you get the chance.

We were born to love men but have fallen
Infallibly hard for all women everywhere.

We know Darvin was inspired by his first malfunctioning
heart when he penned Survival of the Fittest
and we owe him big-time for it.

We dream of having breakfast on a lover’s patio, naked.
We have breakfast on a lover’s patio, naked.

No person or thing in this universe has been spared
a toast from our raised flutes, not past bastards,
idealized professors, Emmas and Mercutios,

not even the mailbox
On 43rd and 9th.
Nor the one on 27th and 6th.

We make gardens of fire-escapes and
agree to blasé dates just to spin them
into unbelievable stories later.

Other nights we spend just us dancing,
transforming the skyline,
becoming it.

We know this unadulterated high will end.
We pretend it won’t.

We don’t dislike normalcy, we just think it tastes
too much like chicken.

Rigid, endless careers have us, and that’s all we’d
like to say about that.

We can’t ever make up minds, others or ours.
We move furniture, then move it back.
same goes for apartments, lovers, moods, red versus white.

we, not the stars who have died a thousand deaths,
seen from your terrace shivering a resigned wonder.
we, the insistent moon, who at dawn’s first
breath of unfolding pleads,
“no! please! but I just arrived.”

Wednesday Quote!

2011-01-05T11:30:00.000-05:00

“Since my earliest childhood a barb of sorrow has lodged in my heart.
As long as it stays I am ironic -- if it is pulled out I shall die.”

-- Soren Kierkegaard

2011-01-04T23:15:00.001-05:00

"Shiploads of thuya are what my body wants to say to your body."

--JG

2011-01-03T15:15:00.000-05:00

How SERIOUS are you? To what level of hard-core can you take it? is what New York asks us, day after day after day.

2011-01-02T00:22:00.000-05:00

My bliss is coming.

Noted.

2010-12-19T22:59:00.002-05:00

The holes are what we see because they are more tangible than hope. Black is easier than gray; defeat is a way of being settled. Mixing spices and sweet tea I find a place where I can learn to sit uncomfortably. Desire is endless. We want to be hungry; the meal is a foregone conclusion; deprivation is a way to stay alive.

2010-12-19T02:12:00.002-05:00

I think the point of all that was to show me that I am not broken. The effect lasted about 4 hours.

This one pulsates.

2010-12-18T11:54:00.002-05:00

V.R. Lang

Frank O'Hara

You are so serious, as if
a glacier spoke in your ear
or you had to walk through
the great gate of Kiev
to get to the living room.

I worry about this because I
love you. As if it weren't grotesque
enough that we live in hydrogen
and breathe like atomizers, you
have to think I'm a great architect!

and you float regally by on your
incessant escalator, calm, a jungle queen.
Thinking it a steam shovel. Looking
a little uneasy. But you are yourself
again, yanking silver beads off your neck.

Remember, the Russian Easter Overture
is full of bunnies. Be always high,
full of regard and honor and lanolin. Oh
ride horseback in pink linen, be happy!
and ride with your beads on, because it rains.

2010-12-18T11:47:00.000-05:00

As Planned

Frank O'Hara

After the first glass of vodka
you can accept just about anything
of life even your own mysteriousness
you think it is nice that a box
of matches is purple and brown and is called
La Petite and comes from Sweden
for they are words that you know and that
is all you know words not their feelings
or what they mean and you write because
you know them not because you understand them
because you don't you are stupid and lazy
and will never be great but you do
what you know because what else is there?

2010-12-08T23:41:00.000-05:00

"... and so I say, "You're nothing. You're average. You're an ordinary, average, fat piece of shit. You have no self-control. You're a stupid, fat, disgusting dyke. You ugly, stupid, bitch." As I reach the bathroom and wipe away the last of my tears, I'm alarmed by the silence; the voice has stopped.

When it's quiet in my head like this, that's when the voice doesn't need to tell me how pathetic I am. I know it in the deepest part of me. When it's quiet like this, that's when I truly hate myself."

-Portia de Rossi, Unbearable Lightness

2010-11-29T22:05:00.002-05:00

"The way you think about your life IS your life."

-- John Patrick Shanley

2010-11-23T13:42:00.000-05:00

Going There

Jack Gilbert

Of course it was a disaster.

The unbearable, dearest secret

has always been a disaster.

The danger when we try to leave.

Going over and over afterward

what we should have done

instead of what we did.

But for those short times

we seemed to be alive. Misled,

misused, lied to and cheated,

certainly. Still, for that

little while, we visited

our possible life.

2010-11-16T00:34:00.001-05:00

The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart
Jack Gilbert

How astonishing it is that language can almost mean,
and frightening that it does not quite. Love, we say,
God, we say, Rome and Michiko, we write, and the words
get it all wrong. We say bread and it means according
to which nation. French has no word for home,
and we have no word for strict pleasure. A people
in northern India is dying out because their ancient
tongue has no words for endearment. I dream of lost
vocabularies that might express some of what
we no longer can. Maybe the Etruscan texts would
finally explain why the couples on their tombs
are smiling. And maybe not. When the thousands
of mysterious Sumerian tablets were translated,
they seemed to be business records. But what if they
are poems or psalms? My joy is the same as twelve
Ethiopian goats standing silent in the morning light.
O Lord, thou art slabs of salt and ingots of copper,
as grand as ripe barley lithe under the wind’s labor.
Her breasts are six white oxen loaded with bolts
of long-fibered Egyptian cotton. My love is a hundred
pitchers of honey. Shiploads of thuya are what
my body wants to say to your body. Giraffes are this
desire in the dark. Perhaps the spiral Minoan script
is not language but a map. What we feel most has
no name but amber, archers, cinnamon, horses, and birds.

2010-11-14T22:13:00.000-05:00

Tear It Down
Jack Gilbert

We find out the heart only by dismantling what the heart knows. By redefining the morning, we find a morning that comes just after darkness. We can break through marriage into marriage. By insisting on love we spoil it, get beyond affection and wade mouth-deep into love. We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars. But going back toward childhood will not help. The village is not better than Pittsburgh. Only Pittsburgh is more than Pittsburgh. Rome is better than Rome in the same way the sound of racoon tongues licking the inside walls of the garbage tub is more than the stir of them in the muck of the garbage. Love is not enough. We die and are put into the earth forever. We should insist while there is still time. We must eat through the wildness of her sweet body already in our bed to reach the body within the body.

Release it.

2010-11-14T22:07:00.002-05:00

Dear Universe,

Please bring me what is best for me. I’ll leave the rest up to you.

With love and trust,

Pam

2010-10-25T23:57:00.000-04:00

He tastes like a scoop of ice cream. He makes me feel like a scoop of ice cream. He makes me feel like the world is one big ice cream shop and we can taste flavors all day and love them and hate them and order them and throw them away and order more and feed each other and laugh about it and try everything and then ultimately decide on ice cream cake. He makes me crave vanilla.

Solace

2010-10-25T00:28:00.000-04:00

I wish I could alleviate your pain, but I can’t. But what I can be for you is a warm, soft cushion where you can rest your heavy head.

2010-10-22T00:16:00.000-04:00

"Proving yourself is a waste of time."

2010-10-19T22:12:00.000-04:00

Funeral Blues

W.H. Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone.
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling in the sky the message He is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever, I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun.
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

2010-10-19T15:53:00.002-04:00

Rain
Jack Gilbert

Suddenly this defeat.
This rain.
The blues gone gray
And the browns gone gray
And yellow
A terrible amber.
In the cold streets
Your warm body.
In whatever room
Your warm body.
Among all the people
Your absence
The people who are always
Not you.

I have been easy with trees
Too long.
Too familiar with mountains.
Joy has been a habit.
Now
Suddenly
This rain.

Becoming

2010-10-19T15:49:00.000-04:00

It is the color of candor -- it still looks pink

a hand under slipped under a jacket and

unsafe conversations cloaked in vanilla

as if to validate our ability to sleep

Why you are able to resist me mystifies me but also

confirms everything I know about the world to be true

Grey is so easy.

I like missing things. Remembering the taste

of a blueberry morning

that could never recreate itself; longing is

so caramelly and warm.

Lessons Learned in My Twenties

2010-10-14T23:38:00.000-04:00

(I'm turning 30 in 30 minutes. Obviously, this is oversimplified, and obviously, this is but a morsel of what I have learned...but, here it is, nonetheless)...

At 20…
…that life, and the world, is so much BIGGER than all of that...

At 21…
…that it is usually right before you leave a place that you begin to value it

At 22 …
…that you will rise to the occasion, even when (especially when) people around you are banking on you not doing so. [that people actually do bank on such things. sigh.]

At 23…
…that falling in love is the most incredible feeling in the world.

At 24…
…that love hurts

At 25…
…A LOT

At 26…
… that no matter how many times we get kicked in the face, our spirit is unbreakable

At 27…
…that life tastes GOOD.

At 28…
…that life FEELS good

At 29…
…that I taste and feel good, too.

To be continued…

2010-10-10T00:52:00.000-04:00

The Journey
Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

More old musings

2010-10-10T00:46:00.003-04:00

(I may have posted this before)

Trust Life.Addicted to

adrenalin

stress

blood-thirsty anger

exquisite bouts

of poetic madness

love.

Don’t hold me unless

it will taste a bit

like paradise.

walking a line

between

sanity and insanity

smelling tulips and skipping down a street block

in pretty purple shoes;

complaining to the sky; yelling in my apartment

when no one is there.

consolation in

suede shoes

and distressed leather

blurry kisses and

velvet wine.

“when it’s good it’s fucking amazing,”

I say, sipping slowly

defending.

thinking:

there is no defined space

between heaven and hell.

2010-10-10T00:45:00.000-04:00

My poor, lonely blog. I've been neglecting it. Here's an old musing...circa fall 2008.

we peddle through hours with Herculean efforts

legs burning, arms weak from carrying

bundles of things

that don't matter.

I tried to write a song for you last night

but I'd write a line then try to sing it

with a little flair

but it sounded so ugly

that I stopped.

I tried to look sexy today

I wore a pencil skirt and a pearl necklace

to be the girl from Impanema

with a briefcase and glasses--

woman of your dreams.

This room feels like a jail cell

I have the key

hanging around my neck

It's gold plated.

but I sit.

2010-10-03T22:56:00.000-04:00

"not hating your body is a revolution that you have to commit to every day.
it's okay that some days are harder than others."
(thanks, N)

Cleaning up.

2010-09-29T00:59:00.000-04:00

I am moving in two days and so am rummaging through piles and piles of CRAP that I've collected and hoarded over the course of these four crunchy and delicious years. Buried in the stacks was this stunning poem that was handed out at a poetry reading of Sarah Gambito, a brilliant New York poet who is also a good friend of a friend (who is also a brilliant New York poet.) Anyway. It's too good to hoard in my stacks. Enjoy!

"I had a dream. Just you with a dream like a farm tool in your mouth.
And when you speak of systems of gathering and leaving.
The poorer women would follow after and gather the left pieces of grain.

Ruth said to Boaz your god is my god. I will follow you (or was that to Naomi)
but they fell in love. "Falling into delicious snow."

I woke up in a panic. Thinking I was in Manila and I didn't have a choice
and I lived in Manila and Manila was my address and that's what happened to me.

To want to be where you are. To feel the museum chilling through your body.
What is blue to blueviolet? That I need you across this terrible divide.
I need an experience of myself as it grows older. Less remembered. More agile.
Taking on its own hazel eyes. Assigning themselves to different parts of my body,
my family. You were the one who was left you. Were the one who left."

Sorry for the re-post

2010-09-15T01:02:00.000-04:00

but this is saving me tonight.

Wild Geese
Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

movement.

2010-08-29T23:34:00.002-04:00

I feel the North Wind coming. I’m terrified and bored and excited and sleepy.

2010-08-29T23:29:00.000-04:00

Old Dominion

Robert Hass

The shadows of late afternoon and the odors
of honeysuckle are a congruent sadness.
Everything is easy but wrong. I am walking
across thick lawns under maples in borrowed tennis whites.
It is like the photographs of Randall Jarell
I stared at on the backs of books in college.
He looked so sad and relaxed in the pictures.
He was translating Chekhov and wore tennis whites.
It puzzled me that in his art, like Chekhov's,
everyone was lost, that the main chance was never seized
because it is only there as a thing to be dreamed of
or because someone somewhere had set the old words
to the old tune: we live by habit and it doesn't hurt.
Now the thwack . . . thwack of tennis balls being hit
reaches me and it is the first sound of an ax
in the cherry orchard or the sound of machine guns
where the young terrorists are exploding
among poor people on the streets of Los Angeles.
I begin making resolutions: to take risks, not to stay
in the south, to somehow do honor to Randall Jarrell,
never to kill myself. Through the oaks I see the courts,
the nets, the painted boundaries, and the people in tennis
whites who look so graceful from this distance.

2010-08-21T00:35:00.002-04:00

You need to cry. Everyone needs to cry. Not only is it ok, but it will be the reason you survive. Trust me on this.

2010-08-15T21:35:00.000-04:00

You feel like butter. Butter in my hands and through my fingers. Hands coated in shiny, warm remnants of you.

2010-08-08T12:30:00.000-04:00

In Dispraise of Poetry

Jack Gilbert

When the King of Siam disliked a courtier, 
he gave him a beautiful white elephant. 
The miracle beast deserved such ritual 
that to care for him properly meant ruin. 
Yet to care for him improperly was worse. 
It appears the gift could not be refused.

2010-08-08T10:22:00.002-04:00

It is more than friends, but less than "it." So it cannot be.

For J.

2010-07-26T22:06:00.000-04:00

I don't care

if I never see you walk

or never hear you talk

but I need to know

that your heart will be happy

and I need to know

that you understand love.