I LIKE TO SHOP AT WAL-MART
March 22, 2004

Oh, to be a snob!
A correct snob perhaps,
and righteously end
the weekly meetings for bargains and watered-down cultural soup
at Wal-Mart!
To say, “I don’t believe in Wal-Mart.”
and to 	never
	go
	there
	again!

I like Wal-Mart.  (It’s not a matter of belief or disbelief,
I just drive into the parking lot and there it is,
massive trampolines and tiny bicycles lined up out front.) 
There may be moral implications,
less “made in the USA” than they would like us to believe.
There was the janitorial scandal (outsourcing, naturally).

But just last week I went on a trip to Indianapolis,
and before that trip, I went to Wal-Mart,
and before I left Wal-Mart I went through the check-out
and bought:  	2 liters of Sprite ($1.25)
		2 liters of Diet Vanilla Coke ($1.25)
		plastic cups for 87c
		and some reasonably sale-priced Goldfish crackers.

I can’t say I’m wracked with guilt.
You can’t accuse me of too much!
I recycle.
I vote as liberal as I can 
(but I understand:  a vote for Nader is as good as a vote for Bush, and will vote Kerry accordingly).
I once folded a lot of paper cranes, which I’m sure offended George W. Bush very personally, and shamed him, and provoked in him a momentary lust for peace.
Anyway, I’m OK, mostly.  I buy cheap stuff at Wal-Mart…

…but rarely more than I convince myself that I need,
and I dispose of any plastic wrappings or other garbage with a great deal of propriety.


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ANTICIPATING A MORNING ON THE NIGHT BEFORE
February 22, 2004

I can’t read past first lines sometimes,
I can’t wake without the first lines of the day surging through the alarm clock and the light from the window and
when I listen the birds want to fly North
and  leave the worms be.				Too much
noise from the radio; gleeful static
signals warm weather; however, one must decide

if happiness is suited best in black and white
with a red bow tie, an itchy neck.

My head to the cool spot on the pillow moves,
my mouth is dry,
I can’t wake up without counting lines from previous dreams,
dissecting the dialogue, imagining

nature the way it is when the brain creates dull yellow light
and casts its own shadows.
Surely dreams have shadows, one could not just let the sun
shine straight through.

Glowing bodies creep, fingers flutter, eyes smile.
Characters from old literature mill about,
one can never discern the true pattern of wallpaper,
the true shape and slope of the sky

but morning is the worst time to tell yourself a lie.

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The Earthen Noise
September 1, 2003

Curious: the slight sound of thought
that pulses just beyond her ear,
the screaming inaction of action, the breathed-in
realizations.  She is a tunnel.

She is not walking through this rainstorm, barefoot,
wearing a long white dress.  Instead, she watches from a window.
But of this she thinks, of this and many other
soft and feeble dreams without particular shape.

It is the noise that matters much,
the way puddles rise up from flat dirt.
The screaming inaction of action.
She could walk through these lakes
and gaze at the opaque bottomlessness,
the way the ground could go on forever
until one might melt from staring too far down.

The choices to be made are clear
from the button-up shirts, the butterflies,
the small pieces of yellow paper.

Secrets stretch for miles
and everything is so correctly defined, so pristine
in its identification of itself as, in fact, everything.

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Documentation 
May 12, 2003

there was a rainstorm in the shower
the lightbulbs blew out
and wind seemed to whip around the curtain;
the room is both in and out of doors,
the way it was when i listened to 
"across the night"
and
"across the universe"
and one fed into the other
and time fed itself in long sorrowful gulps of air, 
the give & take of breathing, the stuff of life,
what little girls are made of.


we sail on seas of lightning.
furious laughter,
bread loaf,
Christmas tree.
grey clouds whirl behind us;
i turn and take pictures.


i like the idea of a mess,
the idea of a person,
as if a person stays a person,
as if she didn't spend herself on countless pages, gardens, rages.
as if the world has not been infused
with her.


as if the names of the days of the week matter.


it was the flight that saved the day
that needed saving,
the flight from room to room,
the shoes that were made for walking.

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