There are many people to meet--the years to forget that you do not need them at all until the very end right before you:

a frog pool is very confusing in the toilet 

5 minutes to tell the child that the frog is not swimming

however, in my head i did not know at the time

i thought it was lonely without the sun 

why would i lie about it until all the way to the top frogs were stacked 

nobody belonged there and neither did you

remember when we were a little more
stupid and a little more thin, when we fought over
who would be the least likely to
work in a cubicle and who would
marry last and who hated the most
people in the realest way and
 who would die first due
to the poorest lifestyle choice?

everyone wanted the title of Craziest Aunt.
we all settled for I Hate Kids, I'd Never Have Them
Anyway, They Just Poop and Sleep, Don't People Know
We Have an Overpopulation Problem. we had malthus fever.

we stripped headphones, shirts, pants in public parks
 and read our classic novels on benches, always with
 the title visible to passerby--
gum bubble nabokov cut-denimed summer,
men looked at my naked legs and i looked at the
page without reading it.

we laughed about it later like, What a creeper.
nine someones said that summer, I guess you could
say I'm old for my age, blew smoke rings in parents'
backyards, we were ancient, we were fossils. we imagined
 ourselves ruins of fallen shopping malls, It's weird, right, people
think I'm in college but I'm only seventeen--
we broke into swimming pools and someone always
 slept next to the toilet when we drank.

feel nostalgia for a chain coffeeshop, summer
specialty iced mochas they sell in every town.
 none of this ever belonged to you in the first place.

folk punk song

i'll write a list of charges and read them over the phone, if you ask me
you can admit to all of them if you want and apologize, i suppose
i'll check them off one by one and try to keep my voice steady
you might check the sincerity of your tone and i'll hang up eventually
and we'll both soon find that neither of us feels better, and never will

love poem about the musician from New York who asked for my number today

your apparently once-gaged ear scars
match that pimple I keep picking at that's
turning into a weird scab on the side of my mouth

poem about love i think

humans in the aboriginal stages
they accept this blazon fervently
if the ache aboriginal develops, that is,
there may be no affection at all

when her blight advances
the affection may become apparent
if that affection is empiric

the alone should argue with her physician
the alone should again backpack outdoors
and proctor tests to acquire or abide there

whether she, alone, accepts breast blight or doesn't

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all day i wake up to the
fecal familiarities
of shared living space

tiny indignities and filthy
little sins you can't
use my car you can't
shit right now i'm shaving and
the dishes, always

always
always
the dishes