Poems To Fist Fight With

"Grandmaster, Oh Let Me Cook For You" I will oh how I will learn to cook, and let myself go. It is just a dish, and still, so still, so I let out a cry on Sunday, "oh I will learn to cook, I want to cook for everything and everyone," It does not absolve me. I am a mosaic of the women who built me and their favorite dishes. Let me and my poor, lame hands give in and cook for you like I know I should. I will learn to cook. I would conquer the world with my food if I were any more evil. I would die with my meals if twice good, too. Even if I did not know I could, I would try for that. The meal and the mosaic behind me saying, "Come on, How many years before you can stand up and wear that earnest? I need to know soon because I am running out of years. My months, to my weeks, to my years, all need to know now." I call and call to only voicemail and later still I listen for the crickets and the frogs. I was told long ago, frogs are her favorite. I want every favorite. I was there with the firefly, the night I first I saw one, and knew, oh how I knew, I would want to cook for you. I can cook now. Let me cook for you.

"Zeros" I dance with the young woman of me. I wish I could dance as well as her sometimes. It is difficult to be free when you know so much. I dance with her on a Wednesday that I cry to an old song. I know exactly where I was, who I was when I heard it. I want to let it go and maybe that is why I chose to listen to that song on Wednesday. I knew it would remind of all the pain I feel when I look back at her, happy with nothing, happy to pick at the dirt. I know I still do maintain that peace. I enjoy the dark. I enjoy being alone, but not so much anymore. She comes back to me to dance sometimes, on her own. It takes two. If I have to dance, shes calling the shots. I am older but I still know, I knew too much from the get-go. I am the daughter of myself and the son of none. I dance with the young woman of myself if I ever forget. Sometimes, maybe, that's why I will listen to a sad song that hits too close. I enjoy the reassurance I can withstand the pain. I care less how I get there now. I know what would have killed me in the past though.

"Aegis" My body is on fire and the wind can't sleep. I let a foolish thought surround me in cataclysm, if I can confess. I am the looming dog over the pool of blood, my body on fire and drooling taking it's time with it on purpose. Why be ashamed? I don't want to think about the shame anymore. I will devour and let myself confess to what can change me in confession. I want the sex and the death and the drugs and the music. I want her to say, "you are on fire" and mean it. I want it to rain for me and the parade I did not go to. I want the butter of the world in my hands to melt down and melt down and melt down. Nothing else matters except pleasure when I need it, and pain when I want it, and a little place to write about what that means. My body burns, the shame gone and I am alight I am on fire, and she meant it when she said it. Now I want to hear it again. Once and maybe forever, and I'll know when I get there.

"Stuck" Madeline, what color are the dresses of the snowmen? How soft? I dent the gold film surrounding the place with my bite. Screw the fate that twists me if it meant I could unscrew the bare faced and wicked tie. I am not that beast. I am at least the creature of the down, and nothing leaves me more more alone and more and merry than the tamed. The untame, the simple comfort. I beg the skyline be timid upon arrival. Let us see our daughters bent to the river side and thirsty as we let the frail day cease. It is bigger than that. I want my children supported and wild. Madeline do you think some day the snowmen let themselves be accosted? A surrender in place? I think they would dip and duck to see Frosty's lair on imagination be made peaceful - no, let it be peaceful too, let their daughter's find peace in the son's attendance. I want that surrender to be as spiritual for the babies as the adults - admittance that we let it happen on purpose, whether we know it or not, where the beast does lay and groan at the thought, where the luck does root and let Madeline hang out and be a woman. She told me someday revel or lose it. Hang on the line or hang up. Just call me back when you want to try again.

"My Wheel" Sinking can feel like flying. And anxiety can feel like waiting. Even before we know what low is, we are afraid of the bottom. I think part of getting old is the moment you learn your limit in anything. It happens to you enough times to where you look around and count your blessings in a number. Line them up on the floor and document them. Put your ear to the conch and listen to the ocean. It makes you older. I found myself in anhedonia and became so afraid of feeling. I knew I had found the very bottom, littered with the things I cannot ignore. Hoards of the half-born futures that kill. Sloughs of my body's yesterday pooled up and bloating. Numb. You have to love what you do and then you have to sit there and understand it and how it made you feel. You don't get the same chance twice. At best you get all but one piece back later, or all of them, now should you pick the moment and nothing else. I found myself swimming back to the top, the surface, only then to remember now, I gotta fly. And I know I can. A matter of choices. Sinking can feel like flying. Nowadays, I do cartwheels to make sure I'm still going up.

"Open One Door" Open one door and three more shut. Even a house is helpless and what seals its abandonment is the choices we make. In the action, what lies behind our back makes three choices for our every one: center, left and right. Yours or mine? I will pick up after the party and in order to do that, I have to stay the night. It's like that. I had to breathe and leave the door open to trust someone might just help you too. If you are not out of the way you are in the way of something else. How else can you help the helpless. You make the conditions of help. Personal and consequential and at every minute born in the choice to raise what can not raise itself. Open one door and three more shut. Health is a game of chemical sum. So are friends. In the bigger picture, somewhere my structure is evident to those who love me and no one else. I stopped caring if I forget the day of the month and I really stopped caring for matters of wealth. Open one door and three more shut. I go back and bar them up.

"Dim More" Can't you hear it? Smooth goes the breeze on the play and my strings made from the dirt my hands my feet get plucking See who you were and who I was once or twice before and names memorized become indistinguishable from earth and sky lead to be in the shadow there watching the dancer in the grass Dug deep in the four It all points up if you look up We all learn when you learn the rhythm of the walk and the talk Dip into the gourd your favorite things lay with me upon the earth and the sky our witness in the shadow watching the dancer in the grass smooth on the breeze tamping her hands her feet get plucking

"Termite" I hear a distant bell strike hot iron and wake the dead again. I lament for the day wasted. It helps to look forward. I was alight in my ninth September choosing to live, and for each them my critical belief in life is that much more sore and swollen. I lament the day wasted that I will waste again. I want to let you know so badly, but I won't. So I'd chew through more wood and money digging like a dog that heard scratching in the palms of the earth. Winter does not feel like it used to. And Saturday is Saturday, and summer the few hot weeks where I can walk myself asleep in the sun and let a dream or two go and get back to myself. For what it's worth.

"Mechanical Failure Leftovers" Fed my computer shots of whiskey digital, let her blackout in my arms. Sometimes she wants to lose control too, so I let her techno soul feel the sand between her toes, yeah. I let the waves wash down the zeros and ones and everything she remembers went away for a bit. I can't program love any better than that: showing you when and where I bark with seals and a midnight fog on the sea stained my shirt for good. Techno soul love stands tall in the blackout. We feel around in the dark as I carry her in my arms. Techno soul love sings and I hum along too. My heart beat tunes to the deep four on the floor. My love on the run. My love on the run. Sometimes she wants to lose control too, so I let our techno soul feel the sand on the beach. I fed my computer shots of whiskey digital, let her blackout in my arms. Techno soul love when my computer let go and I let go too when the time came. All these little things felt impossible, but I got you singing and I hear music somewhere and I know a way to bring them together. You up?

"Kingfisher" My mind sweeps up the floor's ambitions and paper cased away in stacks; this I know predicts future survival. I am not denied sustain, I am the notes in order of harmony, as I spell myself out in the air I can tell. The fish bite different today. The riverbed aches to see the salmon leap upstream as spelled out in some way, that it goes one way and the salmon must go the other, as spelled out that I watch as a bear, too, watches the salmon, all aching along with the riverbed. I'm sure the ache does not end there. A moose does cross the interstate in Colorado to tell me, again, I may not be alone when I am invariable and resolute. There is substance in what future drips as I squeeze down in that moment, aware too of the violence and the irony we all present. There is future that is royal like a bee is royalty of the beehive: undeniable as the honey. A new chapter tears at me be real and so patiently being realized, one thing different remains between this August and the last in that I am still alive three hundred and sixty five days later. The river and the bear and the salmon are not the same, and neither am I, and neither is the aching, or the predictions or the want to predict. Act natural.

"Step" No hellfire, no weapon in my silence, no weapon and my building of a house no threat, my idle moment no less subject of judgement by fire and I will calcify in the wake, licked and licked again on the brimstone. Do not wake me when I sleep and please do not trust my sleep talk, and do not ask me why I toss and turn. I want to survive a nightmare once. Good sleep on my tongue, then further to my chest, no breathing out to let it in, until the morning sun. Rinse and repeat. Fast air and faster still the air does so gently stay away. Good sleep. Headaches from the vent. I do not give up. I will breathe. I want to survive a nightmare once. Ashes from Mt. Saint Helens, who took the walk down to meet me on the buffet after mom was gone, remember I am building a house, full of bones and sinew and crumpled pieces of paper and failed projects and half-eaten vegetables the flies leech to beg for me to know which hammer I picked when I chose to start; ball-peen, and I can't forget now. I am building a house that is no threat to me.