(young)

Back when I was young
and the bookkeepers
where I worked
hated me
for erect nipples,
I didn’t understand.
I still don’t exactly
but have a better idea
(of the motivation).
Something lost,
often something
never possessed,
the most painful kind
of loss there is.
The way I fear remembering
what I have tried so hard
to forget that hearing
Aretha sing this morning
as I was driving home,
“you make me feel…”

patchy low clouds
size c batteries
y 2k stocking up,
my head is stuffed
and crammed

12 lanes of freeway
traffic , shiny dark sedans
merging, cell phones
in hands.

I used to dance
all the time,
I was always
singing
do wah ditty
dittty dum
ditty do

Now I only try
to survive the heat,
the dry grass
and despair
of summer,

The place where
I live I would venture to say
has the worst radio
in the continental U.S.
first of all there is
the reception, lack
there of
yes, always a lack
of reception.
But even worse the
format consciousness,
homogenized as the landscape
where no old houses
are left, hillsides
filled with condominiums.

“when I give my heart
it will be completely”
then again I may never
give my heart at all,
thcch who am I kidding?

oooh oooh ooooh .
hey hey hey.
ooh ooh ooh.

things creep up
like kudzu along
a Tennessee highway,
but not so compellling
to my imagination,
no not compelling
at all.
Which is precisely
what I am trying
not to say.

I think of grandmothers
dancing all night,
holding their grandchildren
close,
of the aching arms
the next day,
of what it was
to want something
so bad you were
willing to feel
pain for it.