s/ ladd’s addition

/I wanted to tell you I remembered that day in the roses/
 

I wanted to tell you that
I do remember some things,

I remember that night in the roses
a stranger turned friend at happy hour
with the drop of a whatever he’s having
a tweed cap and a journal to pass the time
while he waited on the lunar eclipse
scheduled sometime between
us eating chocolate, legs swinging atop a mossy ledge
and
slow dancing in the last of the wet summer blooms
confusing the steps and laughing up steam

I remember that night in the roses
too narrow sidewalks pushed us into single file,
two butts, one bike, past wiry wet lavander
I interrupted the parade to wax poetic about the Pleiades
recalling the seven sisters and other witches
while she schemed a surprise third-date-kiss,
that would feel like a first
something  a little less alcoholic to lift us, 
out of our indivudual and unspoken sorrows

I remember that day in the roses
sun glitttered the blood colored blossoms, fallen, dripping and done
a tender and light-footed pair,
we were penciling new maps, fingering mosses
through the newly hollowed structures of our past
I was shamelessly swollen and open, 
walking boldy on a half-healed broken heart
and you were somewhere between,
wrapped in new bliss and deja vu
and for the first time in two years 
almost content with I am just I
and you are just you.

homeless with money is a boring series of cafes

I am moving to a warmer middle of nowhere. I have to keep reminding myself that this is the goal.

It’s getting Cold. Cold is not a  memory, it’s a fact. And I forget every year. I remember rage, shaking hands, damning the sky and needing dry pavement like air. But I don’t ever really remember the feeling of Cold.

 This year, just as all before, autumn is a gift and my heart leaps at the thought of stretching it down the Alcan. Fall is a season everywhere else but here. Here it’s a bitter tease, a jest.

Every year I don’t have enough sweaters. Where do they go? I’ve never had a coat that seemed warm enough. I need a coat.

My dog needs a coat. She’s loosing all of her hair. One of three things is wrong with my dog:
1. Nothing
2. Auto-Immune Disease that costs $20 a month to treat
3. Auto-Immune Disease that costs four hundred dollars a month for the rest of her life to treat

But, oh yeah.. Cold.
Lastnight was Cold. I cried in the parking lot of Wal-mart because I had a really bad headache and a stuffy nose and I’m working too much and my back hurts and my neck hurts worse and my pain medication doesn’t really work anymore and they won’t give me anything stronger, not that I really want to be taking medication anyway and I know there’s a couple beers somewhere in the van underneath all the clutter, that will at least help me sleep, but I already took the pain pills that don’t work and I smell and I need a shower and laundry and my parents are out of town and I wish I could go to their house and eat and watch tv and cry in the shower but our relationship is all weird and they won’t let me have a key and whatever ’cause some people don’t have parents so fine, I’ll be fine, I’ll just go to bed and if I masturbate I’ll fall asleep faster, but I can’t even jerk off because nothing is sexy to me and I’m too cold and thank god I borrowed that sleeping bag from Aren when I did or I would be dead and I need to give that back, so I need to get some wool blankets but Wal-mart didn’t have any wool blankets but why would they and I hate Wal-mart anyway but everything else was closed by the time I got off work and I could go sit at Barnes and Noble but I don’t think I can sit up because I feel sick and I just want to lie down somewhere warm but everyone is gone or busy and nobody cares that I’m too cold and I’ve been fucking up all my relationships because I’m tired and cranky and selfish all the time lately and it’s my fault I’m homeless and cold.

So then I’m like: ok, yes, you made this decision. There’s a point to all of this and you are working toward a goal. You will get there, and it’s not that bad. Many before you have dealt with so many more obstacles. Obstacles, you are strong, you are a lion. You are a momma cat, but you are also a bird. You are smart and strong. You are resourceful. You have been through so much worse than this. Fuck everything in your way. You can do this. I can do this.

And then I just went to bed. And this morning I awoke. Still alive.

I’m going to live with my father. In November. I’m going to nanny my new baby sister, Cedar, born in July. They live in a town sixty miles from anywhere on the Olympic Peninsula. I’ll have my cats back, get a side job, walk Kote through the snowy forest, get to know my dad and have lots and lots of time to make music and art. I’ll stay as long as I want. and when I’m ready I’ll go somewhere warmer still, hot even. I’ll go to where the queers are. And I will collapse, relieved, revived, in the arms of my chosen family.

sunday prayer

I go to where the ocean meets the mud and sand
this is me I think
I am like the water lapping up against Anchorage
but the tide doesn’t assign value to how far and onto which shore it breaks
it just flows and I want to be content to be pulled by the moon

west, the Alaska range glowed brilliantly across the water
more clear than I have ever seen it before
Sleeping Lady, dusty shoulders deep in shadow
east, the Chugachs were skirted with low snow clouds
approaching that range, watching it rise up before you
I swear, it’s like praying
today the earth is showing me something like god

everything beautiful in the world is survival
the lion’s mane is there only to protect her neck
we must build whole entire lives on the bare threads of the past
melt down all that fucked up shit and turn it into infinite love
next weekend my ex-boyfriend is coming to town
and he has agreed to help me pick out a knife

the tide does not assign value to the shore on which it breaks
and I know that the most radical thing I can do is love myself
even in the face of all these undesirable experiences from my past

oct 23 2009

the mountains now only dusted with snow
trees wave hello/goodbye in the warm breeze
sun brakes golden and hazily through them
thousands of skinny leafless birches
hold a stick to them, play their dusty bones
tones will reverberate, a great harpsichord zing
a screen door bangs startling open and shut
dogs are all howl and whine
and the cat flashes her speckled coat more orange than usual

even though

even though in the city
I live at the summit of a small mountain
great lanky beasts pass my morning window
that is lined with tokens, a seed, a shell, a rail road spike
I catch myself in the mirror
so grounded, so in love with myself
so proud to have lifted this body
carried it out of places so far behind me
oh my friends, I carry you slung to my hips
when I dance you are there with me
when I move swiftly through the day’s chores
when I cook, dog at my feet catching the stray bits
everything I touch these days is old and new at once
even though in the city
I live at the summit of a glorious mountain

a walk with emily

all day I’d been feeling so tender for every past love
drunken, daydreaming, distracted
I was carefully pulling paper from the birches
all the leaves floating in the air
golden wet confetti sticking to my boots
you asked me if I had been in love with her
I said I didn’t know
I said that I had always felt it in the moment,
but when it was gone I questioned if it ever existed
we clutched our damp forest souvenirs
as we walked the dogs circled around us
tangling and untangling their leashes
and I guess that’s what our hearts do
just tangle and untangle.

satisfied

stepping over the sleepy dog
precious cup of golden coffee
the air is cooling, fall
lots and lots of asparagus
ate fish at the memorial
tattooed grandpa on my skin
good thick paper and nice black pens
cat fur mornings
travel dreams
words all stumbling over eachother
racing to burst out

look at me,

I’m satisfied!

eklutna

all week there’s been this electricity sparking out of me
any song with piano pulling at my heart
same as the fading memory of your gorgeous smile

I had to get out of the city
so I stretched the hand of my gas gage
alone

fireweed burns bold across the side of everything
I admire it like it is something I want to be

something about being on the highway really inspires me
so I sing and sing and compose all these genius lines for poems
and forget to write it all down

all the leaves will be fallen when you come back

I have lived in twenty-three homes
and I have never stuck with something for more than two years
I miss a connection to my native heritage that I’ve never known
as a kid, I too was paralyzed by my fears

I have my father’s teeth
the one who doesn’t know I’m gay
the one who doesn’t know me at all

I drive over the train tracks and through the narrow road
to a clearing that leads to a cliff opening into the ocean
I once heard whales coming up for air in the water below
I want to take you there

I’ve built a thousand walls around myself
that I secretly want you to jump

on my way back, watching the birches yellow
sudden hot tears

I want to scoop seventeen year old me up in my arms
and hold her tight
so that she can know that nothing is forever

weeping for all that sorrow
I make a sincere apology to myself
for ever losing track of the beauty in life

I am so deeply sorry
that I have ever thought about leaving all of this behind
giving up on all these chances

fireweed burns bold across the side of everything
I admire it like it is something I want to be.