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Dedicated to whomever’s worn, warm afternoon hands come upon

these pages—wherever you may find them—and that you may

remember that the world is conspiring for you and to act in a

manner as such.

Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass

I went to a party

I came in hot

made decisions beforehand

my mind made up

things that would make me happy

to do them or not

each option weighed quietly

a plan for each thought

But then i walked through the door

past the open concept

and saw Violet

bent backwards over the grass

7 years old with dandelions grasped

tightly in her hands

arched like a bridge in a fallen handstand

grinning wildly like a madman

with the exuberance that only doing nothing can bring waiting for the fireworks to begin

and in that moment

i decided to do nothing about everything

forever.

Bare feet on linoleum

Stay on your path Sylvia Plath

don’t fall away like all the others

Don’t take all your secrets alone to your watery grave about lovers and mother

The secrets you keep will keep you in deep like father and Amy and brother

And all of the people you meet on the street will reiterate lies that she uttered

Leave me in peace I cry

late at night on a slow boat bound for Catalina for no reason

tiny beads of sweat dot my forehead

could be mistaken for dewdrops if this were photo season.

But alas this is a real life - and it’s been a real fight just to keep my mind from committing treason.

Why you ask?

Because she told the townspeople I was crazy and the lies they started to believe them

But anyway - I’ve moved on now

And now that I’ve gone scorched-earth

I’m left wondering where to go from here.

To Sonoma where the fires have just left?

South Dakota?

Would standing in front of Mount Rushmore feel like the Great American homecoming I never had?

Would the magnitude of the scale of the sculpture take the place

of the warm embrace I’ve never known?

Or should I just be here now

In the kitchen

Bare feet on linoleum

Bored - but not unhappy

Cutting vegetables over boiling water that I will later turn into stew.

What happened when I left you

Perfect petals punctuate the fabrics yellow blue silver platters with strawberries strewn across the room

In Zimmerman with sandals on one summer dress to choose

Three girls

eyes rolled

loud laughter

dust specks lit by afternoon

My life is sweet like lemonade now there’s no bitter fruit eternal sunshine of the spotless mind

no thought of you

My thoughts have changed

my voice is higher

now i’m over u

No flickering in my head movies

projected in Bellevue

Because I captured the mood of my wish fulfilled and sailed to Xanadu

The grief that came in waves that rolled I navigated through

The fire from my wish as wind to a future trip to Malibu

now everything I have is perfect

nothing much to do

just perfect florals

green embroidered chairs

one dress to choose

LA Who am I to Love You?

LA, I’m from nowhere who am I to love you

LA, I’ve got nothing who am I to love you

when I’m feeling this way

and I’ve got nothing to offer

LA

not quite the city that never sleeps

not quite the city that wakes

But the city that dreams for sure

if by dreams you mean nightmares.

LA

I’m a dreamer but

I’m from nowhere who am I to dream

LA

I’m upset!

I have complaints!

Listen to me

They say I come from money and I didn’t and I didn’t even have love and it’s unfair

LA

I sold my life rights for a big check

but now I can’t sleep at night and I don’t know why plus I love Saks so why did I do that when I know it won’t last

LA

I picked San Francisco because the man who doesn’t love me lives there

LA!

I’m pathetic

but so are you

can I come home now?

Daughter to no one

table for one

party of thousands of people I don’t know at Delilah where my ex-husband works

I’m so sick of this

But

Can I come home now?

Mother to no one

private jet for one

back home to the Tudor house that borne a thousand murder plots

Hancock Park treated me very badly I’m resentful. The witch on the corner

the neighbor nobody wanted

the reason for Garcetti’s extra security.

LA!

I know I’m bad but I have nowhere else to go can I come home now?

I never had a mother

will you let me make the sun my own now

and the ocean my son

I’m quite good at tending to things despite my upbringing Can I raise your mountains?

I promise to keep them greener make them my daughters teach them about fires warn them about water

I’m lonely LA

can I come home now?

I left my city for San Francisco

I’m writing from the golden gate bridge but it’s not going as planned

I took a free ride off a billionaire and brought my typewriter and promised myself I would stay

but

it’s just not going the way I thought

it’s not that I feel different

and I don’t mind that it’s not hot

it’s just that I belong to no one, which means

there’s only one place for me

the city not quite awake

the city not quite asleep

the city that’s something else- something in between the city that’s still deciding

how good it should be

and also

I can’t sleep without you

No one’s ever really held me like you

not quite tightly

but certainly I feel your body next to me

smoking next to me

vaping lightly next to me

and I love that you love the neon lights

like me

Orange

in the distance. We both love that and I love that we have that in common.

Also neither one of us can go back to New York. For you, are unmoving.

As for me, it won’t be my city again until I’m dead. Fuck the New York Post!

LAAAAA!

Who am I to need you when I’ve needed so much asked for so much

what i’ve been given I’m not yet sure I may never know that either until I’m dead.

For now though

what I do know is that I don’t deserve you-

not you at your best, in your splendor with towering

eucalyptus trees that sway in my dominion

Not you at your worst-

totally on fire, unlivable unbreathable.

I don’t deserve you at all

You see- You have a mother

A continental shelf

a larger piece of land from you came

And I am an orphan

a little seashell that rests upon your native shores one of many that’s for sure but because of that I surely must love you closely to the most out of anyone.

For that reason-

Let me love you

don’t mind my desperation

let me hold you not just for vacation but for real and forever Make it real life, let me be a real wife to you.

Girlfriend, lover, mother, friend.

I adore you

Don’t be put off by my quick-wordedness

I’m generally quite quiet, quite a meditator

actually I’ll do very well down by Paramahansa Yogananda’s Realization center I’m sure.

I promise you’ll barely even notice me

unless you want to notice me

unless you prefer a rambunctious child

in which case I can turn it on too!

I’m good on the stage as you may know, you may have heard of me? So either way I’ll fit in just fine

so just love me by doing nothing

except for perhaps by not shaking the county line. I’m yours if you’ll have me

quietly or loudly

sincerely your daughter

regardless

you’re mine.

i measure time by the days i’ve spent away from you that thought occurred to me

as i watched the sky go dark from blue

The Land of 1000 fires

Two blue steel trains run through the tunnels of your cool blue steel eyes

Vernon

Rock quarry

The vastness of which has nothing on my beautiful mind Dylan

i hear Dylan when i look at you

i can see it on my arm in invisible ink like a tattoo The yin to my yang

the toughness to my unending softness

A striking example of masculinity

firm in your verticality

sure in your confrontation against all elements and duality

The sun to my wilting daisy

The earth to the wildflower that doesn’t care where it grows

Vernon

everything’s burnt here

there’s no escaping it

the air is fried and on fire

I’ve never really fallen in love

but whatever this feeling is

i wish everyone could experience it

this place feels like a person

familiar

like someone i’ve stood next to before

but never while i was standing next to you

Thank you

for being here

for bearing witness to my vastness

Through the years I’ve called you in and out of my orbit

You, in your madness

the satellite that’s constellating my World

mimicking the inner chaos that i’ve disowned

a mirror to my past life retribution

a reflection of my sadness

If i’m going to keep on living the way that i’m living i can’t do it without you.

My feet aren’t on the ground

i need your body to stand on

your name to define me

on top of being a woman

i am scared

and

ethereal

and

there are seven worlds in my eyes

i’m accessing all of them at once

one to draw my words from and my muses

another one i try and harness late at night that lies somewhere off of the right of Jupiter

and then of course there’s this one i live in

the land of 1,000 fires

that’s where you come in

You

Vernon

Dylan

Two blue steel trains

running through the tunnels of your

cool blue steel eyes

to guide me far from the world of my early days that i can’t quite make out clearly

that beckon me toward high sea cliffs

on long car rides

toward a future place

a world unknown to me

made up of something surreal and dripping

Flowers in solar systems Oversized

You Vernon Dylan

no words needed to sponge up the

dark nights

no explanation for the globes in my eyes

shoulder to shoulder in the factory light

letting me be who i would have been

if everything had turned out alright

3 alternative endings

course through my blood on ice

i thrive because i say i do

and because it’s what i write

But honestly if you weren’t here

i don’t know what things would look like

That’s why no matter what world i’m in

i navigate by satellite

Vernon

Dylan

and you in your madness

two trains running

through your cool blue eyes

Never to Heaven

May my eyes always stay level to the horizon

may they never gaze as high as heaven

to ask why

The whys in this lifetime i’ve found

are inconsequential compared to the magic of the nowness which is the solution to most questions

there are no reasons

and if there are, i’m wrong.

But at least i won’t have spent my life waiting looking for god in the clouds of the dawn

listening out for otherworldly contact

30 billion light years on

No I’ll let the others do the pondering

and while they do i’ll be on my lawn

reading something unsubstantial with the television on

i’ll be up early to rise though of course-

but only to make you a pot of coffee

That’s what i was thinking this morning Joe-

that it’s times like this

as the marine layer lifts

off the sea from the view of our favorite restaurant that i pray that i may always keep my eyes level to your eye line

never downcast at the table cloth

too nervous to share my innermost thoughts

with you

You see Joe

it’s times like this as the marine layer lifts

off the sea on the dock where we’re standing

that i think to myself

there’s things you still don’t know about me

like sometimes i’m afraid my sadness is too big and that one day you might have to help me handle it but until then-

May i always keep my eyes level to this skyline assessing the glittering new development

off the coast of Long Beach

never to heaven

Because i have faith in man as strange as that seems in times like these

and it’s not just because of the warmth i’ve found in your brown eyes-

it’s because I believe in the goodness in me

that it’s firm enough to plant a flag in

or a rosebud

or to build a new life.

Never to Heaven

May my eyes always stay level to the horizon

may they never gaze as high as heaven

to ask why

May I never go where angels fear to tread

so as to have to ask for answers in the sky

The whys in this lifetime i’ve found are inconsequential compared to the magic of the nowness- the solution to most questions

there are no reasons.

and if there are- i’m wrong

but at least i won’t have spent my life waiting

looking for God in the clouds of the dawn

or listening out for otherworldly contact

30 billion light years on

No. i’ll let the others do the pondering

while i’ll be sitting on the lawn

reading something unsubstantial

with the television on

I’ll be up early to rise though of course-

but only to make you a pot of coffee

That’s what i was thinking this morning Joe

that it’s times like this as the marine layer lifts off the sea from the view of our favorite restaurant that i pray that i may

always keep my eyes level to your eyeline

never downcast at the tablecloth

Yes Joe

it’s times like this as the marine layer lifts

off the sea on the dock with the candle lit

that i think to myself

there are things you still don’t know about me like sometimes i’m afraid my sadness is too big and that one day you might have to help me handle it

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Índice

Title Page

Dedication

1. Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass

2. Bare feet on linoleum

3. What happened when I left you

4. The Land of 1000 fires

5. Never to Heaven

6. Tessa DiPietro

7. Past the bushes Cypress thriving

8. SportCruiser

9. Quiet Waiter Blue forever

10. In the hills of Benedict Canyon

11. Happy

12. Sugarfish

13. Ringtone

14. In the flats of Melrose

15. Thanks to the Locals

16. Paradise is Very Fragile

17. Salamander

18. Haikus

Notes for a Poet

A Note on Images

About the Author

Copyright