Too Clever By Half

It was one-twenty three
when I finished your cd
held my breath
pressed the button
and hoped to God it'd burn

it was one-twenty four
when I walked out the door
and thought I'd take that cd right to you

but the squirrels are climbing under the cars
and they're chewing through the wiring
I can see their beady eyes
as I try to get the engine firing

So I'd guess that walking's better
so I put on other shoes
two thirty in the morning
I hope these songs will do.

For you I pine
for you I balsam
prune alone and splinter
thus stokings check
to wringings' choke
I spine I salt I gander
neck and neck and caraway
crumbed and sulky dumplinged
I'd eye I'd sigh I'd cardamom
and allay decantered unc-ling*

(*the verb of giving in, crying uncle.)

smitten
smitten
damned
and doomed
(perils of
coarse hearts
untombed).

Maybe my problem and the one problem I should put the most effort into dealing with is those times when I am to be so unabashed as to say things I don't mean except for with my tongue and fingers. Like right now when I am driving home with one forefinger tucked in the side my mouth like it is someone else. Like now when I am wondering whether to put myself at some plea of joining, like I am willing to say, hey, meet me. And God, but I wish I had love, love in some big veined thick fingered way where movements threw themselves about like a gravitational pull was whispering at the back of their neck. Like some weaving thing, hands out at the wall, a slight wind-blown stagger as I lament lament half turned towards my stupid shallow dooms.

And maybe it hurts when I breathe but maybe I like that, the exhalation as an exhaltation of once more concurring with my past self, of the dream self that thought she was writing memoir but got wound up in fictions instead, with no one to come along and accuse me because nobody thought of the facts like that and nobody gave more than a few half-hearted sighs at its lamentable tremors of a demise. But it was more than just a dream and you can tell by the way his chin buckles a little in on itself in a photo like we've both taken on some different world's weight since then.

sharp as a button
cute as a tack
he liked me
i didn't like him back

cute as a tack
sharp as a button
i still let him kiss me
now isn't that somethin'?

    I feel like sitting down and crossing my legs at the knee and maybe laying one hand over the other, on the knee, and frowning slightly, and then trying to explain, that, well, I feel there is something deep within me that sends out a signal to be abandoned. And not the proper sort of leaving, either, where one says what one means and I am hurt irreparably but we all yell a little and work it out of our systems, no, mine is the sort of face and psyche that says to just mention you're going out for  cigarettes, and shut the door behind you gently, and I'll wave through the window down at you, and you wave back and say you'll see me in a bit, and so help me I am gullible, you can see it, stamped somewhere down by my hip so only a few can see, but they do, and you did, so you say, do you want me to bring back something for you? That's so sweet of you, I think. No, no, I shake my head, pleased. I don't need anything. And so you go, free, like I released you with just that sentence. And this is what, with my knees crossed, I will admit. That I invoke such behaviours, even in the sane. Or partially sane, more like it.

   Don't even listen to me. I spent the last two hours standing up straight as a rail, and turning my face in only what I thought were the most pleasing positions, just in case he might turn away from that girl he was standing next to and catch a glimpse of me, through the crowd, briefly, and suddenly it would dawn on him that I am ten times more interesting and like a big mystery he wants to try and detect once more.

  The great thing about ever having been with a boy who is old enough to be going through any sort of age crisis, is that later you can sneer just a bit and think to yourself that he is too old for that sort of thing.

  And it was even worse, later, when I got distracted from the real live boy (because he is not that interesting except for the fact that he was quick as hell and once corrected me in a joke) and instead the songs the band was playing started bringing up this terrible Hallmark slideshow of moments, and I tried to focus on the here and now and the lesbians that chatted me up in the bathroom, but no, instead I got a greatest hits of three years ago, of house shopping together and picking out which room would be his, and which room would be mine, and then later, a good flickering overview of this night we moved a washing machine together, down at the bottom of the stairs, supporting this huge weight with our shoulders until it landed steady on the cement, and then smiling in the darkness at each other. All sorts of that shit came up, and I would have rolled my eyes except that would have made me spill my drink, and so I didn't, I just stood there and raised my drink to the next power chord, and swayed it a little back and forth with the chorus, and hooted like a fool when he drew out the last line, the last note, the last few tweaking whimpers of the song.

are there bruises in it, I ask?
are there knees?
and are there scars where they have fallen?
(those poor weak knees)
is there a broken finger, I ask
bent back obscenely, leaking,
Or a black curly strand pasted on the side of a scummed shower?
Or, or, or, a splinter under one layer of thin ribbed skin,
or, or, or, a mole grown dark and discolored, large and erratic in its pale territory,
or, or, or, a tooth shattered and spat out in white chalk pieces,
congealed mustard phlegm from the back of a throat,
the damp flowering red of of a bloody nose,
a toe stubbed and gone purple with hurt rage
or the shard of glass ice that slides out of the bottom of a heel
all I am looking for is any of these.

I would like the meet the fiercest
(I would quail)
we breathe in black smoke together
let the blackness seep into our blood
in and then exhale
keeping the wolves at bay
I would like to be the fiercest
(you would quail)

my hands are not powerful enough
to turn the faucet knob off
my hands are not awake enough
to crush the sleeping moth
but I do and my fingers
are damp in its soft dust
but I do and the sound
in the background of my dreams
drops silent


I am the misplaced sense of danger
I am a constantly winking eye
but wait, no, it is just that speck of dust again.