Anna,
Miyoxy,
Rosemary
and Autumn

Those are the names of
my boyfriends (some exes)
ex-girlfriends

Aren’t their names fucking beautiful?
These names have haunted me —
One still does

Funny story:
For two or more years
I kept my Rosemary spice in the cupboard
While the thyme, the parsley and the others
sat out on the counter
A while after the breakup I finally brought
the Rosemary out of the cupboard
Now I just get a little nostalgic when I see it
As if Rosemary and I were old friends or something

If the girls only knew how they’ve plagued me
I am certain they would be flattered
And oh how I wish I could control my feelings
How I wish I just didn’t care

I look forward to December when I can stop thinking about Autumn
I’ve noticed that people much prefer Autumn to Fall when describing the season
I don’t blame them.

There’s a lot in a name;
Not to undermine the girls beauty otherwise

Today’s day
Looks bright and inviting
But it’s not,
Today’s day is unforgiving
Today is a friends smile, faked
Everybody needs a day like today

A day like today reminds you
how to cradle yourself
Because sometimes a day like today
Makes you cry and shake to the point
where you have to literally hold yourself together

Self love is the best love
Its by far the truest love that there is
Everybody needs a day when their friends
won’t answer the phone and never call back,
Though they are alive and well

Everybody needs a day
Where they feel so completely alone
That they have to cradle themselves
To remind themselves
The worth of thy self

I’m turning off my phone
Fuck it
My friends can shrivel up
and die on Facebook for all I care

Where were you when the world ended?

Every now and then
Usually, alone
I’ll get fast food
I’m talkin cheeseburger, fries, coke
If I’m gonna do it,
You can bet your ass its not going to be
a fast food salad for me,
That shit’s nasty
Anyways, today is one of those days

As I walked through the swinging double doors of Wendy’s, I thought:
I am so not writing a poem about this
No
No
No!
And here I am.

See, its like this,
As much as somewhere deep down inside of me doesn’t want to be here,
But rather wants to be at some place eating sushi or a Greek salad,
The Mexican woman at the cash register just made me feel sooooo welcome
Like I am meant to be here,
Not at some healthier place down the road.
Although she didn’t say it, I could read it in her eyes:
Forget the “Go Healthy Cafe”..its 40 degrees out and you want a nice, warm meal, don’t you senorita? Not some raw crap..

I chose a seat in the corner
I sat and both devoured and thoroughly enjoyed my value meal
I watched people and listened to their conversations:
A teenager and her grandmother talking about bad grades (could’ve been me..)
The Wendy’s staff talking about their General Manager (they didn’t seem to like her very much)

A young, pretty girl was spraying and wiping down tables

I thought: She’s too pretty to be working here, she should be at some hip restaurant downtown
She felt me looking at her and began to slowly make her way to where I was sitting
I felt the strong urge to open up, I thought:
I should tell her what I was thinking. I should tell her what I was thinking.
She said, Do you need anything?
Her voice did not match the beauty she carried
She should embrace herself, and be more confident I thought
I might have as well been telling myself that

I tried to tell her with my eyes what I was thinking
But instead, I blurted out:
Oh, no, thankyousomuch!

That is where this poem was going to end, but then, at the last minute….

After she had nodded and left..
I stared at the poem I had just produced
I decided my work was done there at Wendy’s
Though I regretted not having told the waitress what I thought
I guess I worried that her ignorance would send her back to the kitchen to tell the
older lady employees “guess what she just said” and that they then might think “what the hells that supposed to mean?”
I wasn’t going for that
I don’t know what I was going for but what I learned was:
If your intuition tells you to do it the first time,
Do it the first time
Because next I found myself having to try at it again….

Just as I was standing up to put my hat and mittens on,
The waitress showed up in the dining room again, she approached a man eating and said
Can I get you anything else?
I thought, here’s my next chance
I started getting nervous a little like I had made too much of it
She approached me and politely took my fast food tray from my hand and asked me the same question:
Can I get you anything else?

I realized at this point the girl should be working downtown even moreso because of her excellent service and manners
Not because she was pretty, but instead of saying that I said:
Oh, I wanted to tell you…
I got real hush-like — I didn’t want the customers to hear just in case they worked at Wendy’s
I said to her, just as planned:
You’re too pretty to be working here. You should be downtown or something.
Her expression showed that she was flattered
Which, if I were to be going for anything I guess it would be that
But I did notice just a flash of pushy lesbian in her eyes
Like she thought that I, was a pushy lesbian

Finally, I left Wendy’s
….And no one was ever going to know I was there, until now

It had been a debate
Whether or not to drive south toward the smoke
Forrest and I had just gotten off work
We were headed for home, for dinner and rest
When we spotted some smoke billowing up through the trees
It was thick and dark
Oh, ten miles away

I said let’s go and check it out
He said I’m hungry
I said let’s go and check it out again.

I was driving so I won

Forrest fished out some salad leftover in the lunchbox
And started munching on that
Pleased, I turned left at Highway 199 and started heading south toward the fire

We had been driving for just short of five minutes
When a dog the color of deer
Appeared in the dead center of the road
There was a black dog and some other dog over to the right
I missed hitting them
But to my horror — I hit the deer colored dog dead on
I knew it was bad

I pulled over to the right hand shoulder of the highway
A hundred or so feet away
Forrest hadn’t been looking at the road
He asked what just happened?
I murmured back to him rather frantic:
I hit a dog
I put my car keys in my pocket and got out of the car
Shaking, I sprinted toward the dog

The black dog and the other dog promptly left at my presence
I ran to the deer colored dog
There was a large pool of blood coming from its mouth
I stayed to the shoulder as a car passed over the dog
The cars tires didn’t hit
Good

When the traffic cleared I ran to the dog
I was hesitating just a little bit as I noticed the dog was a Rottweiler
I couldn’t tell if it was still alive and I didn’t want to get bit
I looked at the dog and saw that its eyes were open and fixed
Fixed on no place in particular
A dead stare

The traffic was still cleared, but barely
I could see a car was approaching
I had one minute, tops
I patted the dog on the neck
Its teeth were broken
Neck most likely broken too
I patted its belly
I was touching it, seeing if the dog might have some life left
I wanted to move the dog
But if it were alive I wondered how hard that might be

The dog wouldn’t respond
The dog was damn dead
I shoved my arms underneath its torso
I lifted the dog up to which it still didn’t respond
God was it warm
And heavy
I carried the dog over to the shoulder
Because of the weight I sort of flung the dog, couldn’t help it

Wails shook from the inside of me
I’m always surprised when I cry like that
It only happens during a bad breakup
Or when I think of my mother leaving me long ago
And now, when I kill a dog

I scanned the roadside for the dogs owner
Just sure I was going to see some distraught person
But nobody was there

Within minutes, two different cars stopped
I was wailing, crying
Forrest was looking from dog to me and back to the dog
One car that stopped was a thin woman with big tears in her eyes
She stood looking down at me and the dog
She was dragging on a cigarette
She had the most sympathetic look in her eyes
She was consoling me
Telling me
I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry for your loss
Not…my….dog, I choked out, correcting her, I…hit…the dog…

Out the other car came another concerned woman
She told me that her and her husband wanted to take the dog in their SUV
Bury it out in the forest or something
I thought about this for a moment
I looked back to her vehicle and saw a concerned looking teenage boy hanging out a window in the backseat
They had an out-of-state license, California
— This wasn’t their business
I thought it better to call 911 (I didn’t know which agency actually took care of this sort of thing)
Forrest called for us
And the concerned women went on their way,
Though not before standing around looking sad for another five minutes or so
Amazingly, I was still wailing

The dog got less and less warm
Her spirit was leaving (I had made note that the dog was female)
Forrest and I petted her and petted her
Nobody else came around
It was getting dark
We were waiting for the state trooper — he was coming from Grants Pass

The dog was collarless so I wrapped my own bandana around her neck
A sentiment
She looked so sweet with that bandana

The way I’d layed her down her feet were crossed one over the other in the back
And in the front they were splayed out like she was running
She looked both peaceful and wild
I couldn’t help but think: Where did her spirit just go?
I swear I had been there as it lifted up out of her

The state trooper arrived after an hour or so
Needlesstosay all he did was a little bit of paperwork
I thought (for some reason) he’d be taking the dog in his trunk or something
Instead he told us that the road department would be picking the dog up sometime the next day
Then we left, Forrest and I, on our not-so-merry way

We drove south a few miles to where the fire was
But it the fire was too far off any road to get a good look at it
Sometimes you wonder: what if I’d have just gone home?

It tortures me to see him like this
Curled up on my uncomfortable love-sofa
Long legs
Bare feet
A summer night
And…Hes…Not…Happy

I thought it was sweet
How he fell asleep
Just minutes after turning the music up loud
How can he do that?
I had been washing the dinner dishes
When he reached over and turned up some reggae song
Which was pleasing to me because he’d been acting so sullen before
But he didn’t dance
He laid back on the sofa

He closed his eyes and pulled a pillow to his chest
I could’ve cried at the sight of it
I am often taken aback by his beauty
His sandy curls
Are a maze I never want to find my way out of
His body is a bed in and of itself

I watched his reflection in the window as I scrubbed and rinsed
I thought he’d fallen asleep
He hadn’t spoken for ten minutes
This would be the very first time in our relationship
That he had slept and I had not
Usually we did it together

I drained the water from the sink,
Retrieved my notebook and pen
I tiptoed to a chair in the corner
And turned down the volume of the stereo
Just…a few…decibels
I sat gazing at him searching for the first words to write

He immediately opened his eyes
Bright blue with a little bit of red in the whites
He looked like he had just woken from rest
Its suppose to be the other way around, I said
What? He replied with a certain tone, clearly he still wasn’t in the mood to play nice
You’re not suppose to wake up when I turn the music down, I laughed
I wasn’t sleeping, he told me
Oh

Just the other day, he said to me:
You’ll never understand men
(That hurt, but it was fair statement, no doubt)
I look at him now
He has barely spoken to me for the last hour
He’s hardly looked at me all evening
He acts like he’s suffering from the damn flu
But from what I understand its just depression

You know,
He’s right,
I’ll never understand men
and I DON’T WANT TO

He is a beautiful mess

On June 6, 2006 my father came for a visit
He traveled by bus and thumb a few hundred miles
Just to tell me he loves me
In person
Just in case
He said
The world comes to an end
Just in case it crashed down all around us

We’d sat at a lookout near a ski resort
Watched the sunset upon a perfectly normal day
You know, the end of the world here would be a forest fire,
My father told me as we looked out at the vast pondorosa pine forest
You’d want to head to the nearest big body of water
— Get out on a lake or something

I’d listened, nodding, and part of me
That little girl who still believed everything her father said,
Took it to heart and thought
Yeah, that’s where I’ll go when the world begins to end
Out to Lake Mary

That day, 666
I sat and remembered back to new years eve, 1999
A girlfriend of mine and I had sat in her parents backyard
Looking up at the sky, waiting for something to happen
At 14 years old we’d never before witnessed a proposed apocalypse before
We were chomping at the bit, running inside every few minutes to see if the computers had crashed
We sat, watched and waited like the Universe was going to give us a show
She didn’t

Just this year
Another proposed apocalypse came and went
I didn’t expect much
But my body woke me up in the middle of the night
And my feet took me outside just in case something was going on
I got up and left my boyfriend cozy in bed
Stepped outside,
Looked up to the sky–it was calm as the sea in summertime
I watched a few clouds pass over the moon
Went back inside, went to sleep

The new year is coming up now, 2012
A bunch of shit is supposed to go down this next year
Ive got my fingers crossed
At this point we’re all hoping, aren’t we?
That the Earth will mysteriously lose gravity
And out we’ll all go
To some place “better”
That the Earth will finally again be slammed with meteor
Oh, come on, we could use a little excitement around here
Lets all go out together…
I myself want to avoid this slow, painful death
Let’s hear it for 2012!

I’ve seen ariel photos
Of our Nation at night
The east is immensely illuminated with lights
The west is immensely illuminated with lights
But not like the east

Seeing this from a red-eye flight
Is like looking at a blemished face
Clusters of flaws
Lights tracing rivers
Like debris on a jaw
Cystic mountains of civilization
Cluttered more in the central and eastern parts of our Nation

Townships utilizing enough electricity to light an entire city
Illuminating their humble territory for all the world to see
Not a hint of mystery
Lights, from fast food chains and sleepy neighborhoods
Broadcasting to the Universe,
That Sterling, Illinois, exists

I’m not the prettiest thing in the world
But I clean up fine

Sometimes, my hair falls strait down my back
The longest layers point downward
Daring your eye to look at my derriere
Once, a former boyfriends last words to me were:
I’m going to miss that ass, its beautiful
He’d shaken his head when he’d said it
How romantic…

When there is moisture in the air
The hair around my face
Turns to curls
I feel like a black sheep of sorts

At just the right angle
I have a stunning smile

But otherwise,
I’m not the prettiest thing in the world
In fact I kind of look like a rodent
I wish I didn’t care so much about how I look
I wish other people didn’t either.

Above all of the beautiful places,
Above the deserts full of cacti with their flowers blooming pink,
Above the backdrop of Sedona’s auburn plateaus
Above the San Fransisco peaks
Above New England’s fading, falling, hardwood forest
Above Ohio’s rolling hills
There is just one place that has my heart:
The place that I call home
Where the trees are larger than whales
The air is as moist as breath
Its the place where the Pacific Ocean
Laps gently against Earths breast

My mother, my muse, Del Norte County

just because I turn from you
doesn’t mean I don’t intend to hug you
I do
I just tend to do things the hard way
I am free to close my eyes
when my body faces the wall
and reach my cold hands behind me
searching for your warm, muffin-like mitts
your lively palms
where mine are so clammy and closed
I close my eyes
because the mind does not know the difference
between what it sees
and what it remembers
so i need not look at you
I hope you do not mind
Its only that you are far too ostentatious
yes you are
what with your ravishing blue eyes
skin like an isolated shore, delicate and fair
you are too good to be true
don’t mind me as I hide here in the corner
hoping you do not notice
that my body is quite like Venice Beach

foot note: Bouvet is supposedly the most isolated island in the world.