 Talking stuff in a violent room Platinum blonde tall and fine. She got an attitude all these years I've been singing the lyrics wrong adding my own disposition to Dorothy's a scorekeeper I keep track of how many times I waited up how many bitches I got called won't stop till I'm done and good But that day will come I tell the sky sunny on one side dark and plump with hailstones on the other I Talked with plants all day. It made me sane all work week just selling time just buying pretty and all its forms Eating it ravenously. I had to Google what healing even means the other day One has to ask when one is stupid enough to go back for more Back to one who cocoons himself in rolling papers never adapted to the real world survival of the stunted stubborn and mean as a barnacle I Always love as I imagine them never the real deal find myself here again fighting with lovers past What I saw in you not visible to the human eye is how your sweat don't stink How you palm the basketball of my skull shrink me down all soft and pliable on your tongue like juicy fruit Just like the old days nothing good about them Okay, and then I'm gonna go with super old stuff Because my dad's been on my mind what changed when daddy died I gave his stuff away Just gave it hoarders came first with pickup trucks then back with trailers attached They emptied those storage lockers at Playboy Penthouse Scientific American kerosene lamps oil painting sandal making equipment from the 50s wood boxes cardboard boxes more boxes And I had him burned in a plain wood box with his old felt cowboy hat and a hand-woven sweater his ditzy girlfriend picked Dad lose the bimbo. We'd said but she lost him instead He paid on those storage lockers for 30 some years moved all that stuff up the mountain and back down his ball and chain We turned his pistols into cold hard cash split it between us like drug dealers All the real silver had gone to drug dealers back in the 80s the cocaine years And we just gave his shit away his reason for never visiting us never moving out west with us his other daughter Unclaimed heaving heavy pieces into the arms of collectors. This is how she experienced him through his stuff It was that or his words and trust me his words were even more pervasive He was a talker is what I'm saying these junkmen they had a big barn a great big barn to put it all in Said they wish they could have met him. They liked his hoarder style I did my time clearing paths through car parts and paintings journals tractors snow plows dogs and so many damn cats Circling food bowls like weed and camel smoke yellowed the ceilings He held on to broken pieces of his Park Avenue upbringing Revealed in his disregard of it the mud-seizing chaos tracked in from the door yard Lugged in with lanterns and pee buckets to make it through the night without tiptoeing cold feet in snow And when he died that's what changed those old rounded fingernails a warm hand big soft lips Cold and dead burned up in a plain wood box carried back to the mountain Dumped into snow with Styrofoam cups by his children and our mother's red nose But not crying not sentimental us. That's what changed the hands and the money and the money changed hands This is my opinion. So please never offer me any goat cheese is an abomination The door was heavy a loop of twine as handle I often struggled with falling backwards on the wooden ramp Worrying the fat sack to gray speckled barn spiders afraid They would lower on to my head and the goats running from the barn Especially bucket with the biggest horns the meanest disposition They had goats that chased kids and adults that found it amusing at Sweepies house it was hard to get so much as a drink of water having to stand on something to pump The bathroom was the whole outdoors no outhouse or bucket no electric light or lantern Just grab toilet paper by the door and find a spot away from the goats and the spiders Which meant surely holding it in all night long and not adding bed wetter to the embarrassment each night I sobbed I want to go home I want my mom till dawn at home when I thought about spiders I loud cried till mom turned a light on here There were no lights and there was no mom sweepies mother wasn't tender like that with me She'd say why did you bring her here? She cries every time The dark was vast sleeping on the pine floor unable to see the ceilings bumpy plaster Windows framed with splintery gray wood terrible branches swaying in the pitch black night There was nowhere to run it was all fun when we left my house 20 miles away I had someone wanting to play with me wanting my company when the adults were all stoned Glazed nods of agreement when I asked could I go I'd fall asleep writing up over Eagle Hollow Rolling puppy body down tree lined roads and up up the hill a running start foot Smashing gas pedal to floor from Don's house where the mailbox is and the nearest telephone was Up the steep part fish tail and gravel flying against the car just when it seemed we wouldn't make it We'd be barreling across the flat part where the puzzle grass grew and the stone wall led to the gas tank We rode like a horse The trees parted at the door yard and the house tucked in there like a wicked witch each time I remembered the terror freshly as if brainwashed to do it again the barn spiders and the woodshed You had to walk through to get into the house the whole family her family sweepies family laughing at me The scared one just five or six years old when thirsty eyes fixed on the huge mayonnaise jars of milk I made the mistake of expecting cold cow milk Instead the gamey shit taste of goat filling my mouth causing me to wretch Inescapably fleshy and warm like their tits scary like their horns Impossible to get from my mouth the dirty taste of animals that ransacked the house Strewing clothes as they munched knocking jars of food to the floor spreading it around while shitting and giving side-eye a fuck you But more sinister I'm grown now the goat guy is my stepdad. They've long since got electricity and running water I love a thousand-day Gouda almost as much as sex, but people please what's with the goat cheese? I don't want it on my salad or looking tempting on baguette goat milk tastes like helplessness and fear Like licking the barn's dirt floor the twitching tail and shifty eye Don't talk to me about goats or goat yoga or goat cheese even if it has a creamy French name Love is unruly dark and early morning your face a rough cheek saw rough cheek soft kiss your neck I'm crying in the car on podcast the artist speaks of painting black bodies of fame and ego I think of all the colors in your skin how I long to polish the red tones sandalwood sweet The artist has the last name of a man who beat me up. You would never hurt me, but I am hurt by you Brilliant and incarcerated braggadatio should be yours art is your bone structure I think about your wrist that small mark of beauty you rising to the hoop Intelligence that transmits physically even unlike my own awkward and still you get me you got me I consider jailhouse marriage a future of separation. Isn't that what it's always been? Whichever two people locked up by fear and capitalism the artist speaks of desire you and me We see each other ageless and without shame When you left our visit after strip search back in the dorm you check on the kittens your family Inmates are eager to burst your smile wipe my kiss from your lips hating their soft turn up Eager to tell you one of your babies is dead a child molester has stepped on and killed that tender bit of mulling life He doesn't know it was the loss of a baby that brought you to the edge Flooded with your father if you're of turning into him now you live in a dorm of him Try to differentiate yourself each day tires and treat sirens Sirens and tires, there's no trees in there Squill off Fruitvale grocery bags blow sky glows from the Coliseum's light sad sack city flat and broke Streets filled with trash a sofa blocks a driveway Burnt rubber in the orangey air cornmeal between hands larding gray plastic containers Someone is keeping bees in the empty lot at the end of our street Slabs of jagged concrete stacked at the side of chain link and weeds There's hope in bee boxes someone is composting while someone else empties blunt wrappers from their car onto the ground Where they'll float into my yards, which are sweet join my chimes in the wind winds dance My neighbors started a marigold farm over the decrepit fence I reach from a ladder grab my cat his fat fur tangled in the wisteria I see the yellow flowers rose and rose of gold like a dream The people just moved out from next door to me every time it's always interesting to see who's gonna move in I missed the marigold farm Vices and virtues I was driving that old yellow Impala me and Steve when the engine died and we pushed it into a parking space We were on our way to buy alcohol the thing we did together I wanted so much more the parking space turned out to be in front of a house He lived in by chance the people came out an older couple both dreadlocked in dark skinned in a small white town We lived Steve mixed up beige and me pale and insecure the woman beckoned us beckoned us in I was worried about my car But she insisted she sent Steve to price choppers for wine sat me on her couch I did what she asked appreciating but not trusting Steve poured wine and disappeared in the back with her man She pulled out the tarot cards. I was no believer She shuffled and spread truth in everything. She said I was spooked She didn't do it for money, but she saw money behind me like a ghost dad's trust fund how it haunted him She said you were pregnant, but you lost it. No, you had an abortion recently. You're grieving I was shook looking for ways. She might have seen me at that clinic wondering if she worked there remembering my feet and force ups Vulnerable searching my brain for faces. I had seen their frantic the flowered poster on the wall and deceptic the boy whose child It was how I never gave him a say. He was still in high school. My friend's little brother I wanted to hide my tracks that drunk night when I'd just been fired slid off the road Emptying seagrams gin while wedged in a snowbank crawling back to the house on thin ice All fours to his bed where he was warm and welcome dark fat and sexy I was shamed shoved down in the secret boneyard of my gut. I was shaking my head no at the lady No, that's not true. You can't know that about me. I might as well have been bleeding on her couch I couldn't jump in my car and tear off because the car was dead out there It was out there dead till we went back the next day and it started right up the diviner lives with me There are no secrets. I never get near anyone's cards as she instructed me to be cautious I barely remember her how she lured me in how she read me up and down like the pages of a book paper thin and revealed Probably should have printed some better copies and smolder. I used to buck the system. I used to hide behind youth I used to break it off my heart Himalayan sea salt my platelets tectonic my hips shifting to accommodate babies and lovers Aking wide open and bruised where he grabs me. I keep telling him I want to know him most certainly my mistake his lips will never sink in as flawless teeth grazing the fruit of mind His length reaching soft new parts of me his baby skin surprising like his dead-ass stare Head thrown back in sleep. He'll disappoint if I push lose all the sublime Strangeness of his touch leaving a mortal snore. I tell myself leave it Like training a dog known to carry on with a bone till I've bitten my own tongue I keep dating lesser of kissers lesser liquors just to pass the time I used to piss barefoot in snowstorms walked a mile uphill and down My no look back 3,000 miles long and lasted lifetimes made of grit and maple wood my backbone the frame of 57 Chevy I'm heavy have wings and cat's eyes red lips that sink ships leave landmines behind I'll fall in love a thousand times in one late night Hate him the next day when he fails to call. I'll stand up swinging bow out quiet lower rage to simmer Spoon slowly and open my hungry shell for each of them. I'll offer pink and tender flesh so easy to ruin So difficult to repair Appeals the drunk wife of your friend tells me to take care of myself What she means is don't wait don't bother celibate and dusty. I squirm not in smile I'm drunk too, but I've plateaued Wonder how you'd feel to hear this even though she says those are your words from their visit They're not your words on mine. I'm okay. I say not really can't say I love this other man How much I've loved him since I was 17 hating him equally how much he'll gut me again with a cold viciousness After a year I walk away. I have business with him, but not much I fill up the hours that were obsessed with him by texting strangers I fill up my nights off with them too. What I am what am I worried about? I've never had a relationship last eight years. You are bound to come home to a more battered But single me even if I dive headlong even if I could not stand to be alone None of those things right or wrong like the crimes or in the crimes that caused the crimes We are all as gray as the buildings that house you peeling and old I'm having my third been life crisis still have something to prove. What does healing look like? I've asked dictionary comm a thousand times read essays about confronting about not hurting the same Got so mad I smashed plates on the front of his house. So sad. I soaked his t-shirt with tears He said nothing dark silhouette in my bed. I define my healing by replacement Replacing one silhouette for another no idea if I'll still be here eight years from now when you come home Okay, so I'm gonna read just one from collapse and leave it at that I was also thinking about this week and gun violence, and I'm just gonna give you some Jihad live tweet People on get people are getting stupider angrier my face Lynch mobbers coming out the woodwork Typing their idiocy into the stratosphere coming stewed up and strapped up to a Ferguson near you face flags and fake news reality show called election War said the world is a ghetto Malcolm said the chickens would come home to roost Push so long they'll show up on your doorstep wolves at their heels. This world is a scary place It ain't virtual, but it is playing out on a PlayStation near you all those call of duty games make good marksmen The pretty girls don't want to fuck you boot up mask up arm yourself shoot them Shoot them cuz they got more pussy or they have pussies or they called you a pussy shoot them because they wouldn't give you any All blonde and carefree all full of food sex and death metal They too bought a dream on a television set built in a prison Beamed it out to a bulldoze village sold the bulldozer and the bomb to the dictator who replaced your heroes and unions with black water Walmart factories replace your schools and yards with rebel. They will not welcome you to their land of the free They will send contractors to make more money off you while you climb from under the wreckage They dropped so much ammunition when you tripped and fell they accused you of strapping the bomb to your belly Thing is you never even left East Oakland, and they had a story about a replica pistol awfully fast I'm starting to realize the whole world is a ghetto and the chickens are coming home to roost Thank you