the heart is delirious above all things 

vanity table as my witness the romance of a woman and her instruments 
linger on a future reflected in someone else’s past

admiring in glass, the porcelain pill dust, a powder puff, on the precipice
of a great reveal:
the fruitlessness of all human endeavor

a golden comb and mirror
shifts the song into place what’s so woman about that

the mirror reflects only the present
before it slips away
continuously

a sense of self is deceitful above all things

reclined nude
trying for further emotion
as if what I see doesn’t see me

a  linear interiority is only a hoax
and a hoax is just a joke

I am the present’s babygirl
I belong to the present and the present alone, alone for an instant before slipping again
to become property of the past

made to sit for a self portrait of us how would I pose
dripping with faux excess, staged motherhood, nestled with jewels, the figure of certain death

I angle and still my body
in unrest call up my earliest past

each instant a continual striving
in the moment then in its memory an entire existence defined accidentally
triggered by perfume

as a child my internal monologue came in the voice of an adult male

I grew up very much alone and afraid of anything sexual 

The Adult Male Voice taught me how to read in a truckstop bathroom  on a machine promising Her Pleasure, Tickler, Tingler, Tease her, Pleaser, Glow in the Dark next to the image
of a female nude the voice like a past life slipping away

I knew to be afraid
not of the nude but of never being alone
not even in my mind

It’s too bad  I mean
how just as your voice gets warmed up
they don’t want it anymore
how were we supposed to know
middle age was meant to be a luxury

lingering on the mirror its reflection a continual becoming 

short of being

the infinity of time and space contrasted with a body finite and
“female” posed at the dressing table take the selfie and
add it to the void

I dream again of houses     

my subconscious knows interiors 
so secluded as to evoke 
meadows unending
sectional overspilling

it’s calling,
who me?

A response comes easily,
perhaps by weather
by light and mist

The house says
“Yes”
The house says
“of course”

Awake in piles of receipts, laundry, vitamin jewels,
more difficult to hold onto 
than one’s own life

Truly, 
I am good at shopping
someone who all his life
was never considered
one of the boys

When approached I pretend
to not know my bag is open, 
but my bag is open, 

I know it’s bad luck
to leave a purse on the floor

It’s just rude
browsing without want

in likeness unmade or made 
a house is ever
an angle of excess or need

diffuse light
patterned tree

What sort of a house likes to be looked into?

I don’t agree with my excess
I don’t agree with my need

night blooming with the sound of it

perhaps one day life’s maintenance will come easily

I know the four legs of a dining table

I know of expectations absorbed maternally

I know comfort shouldn’t determine one’s actions 

that you can have love or money
but not both

yet,
now I’m told I should’ve saved 
and not enjoyed it

I long to refuse
I long to say, say
no thank you

I know
it’s easy
to lose writing

when it can’t house you

how many nights the moon has spent

people lose it everyday

I know myself completely

moon bathed in bed
the sun spilling 
over spacious layouts
for permanent living

mid-sky no part left out

but who can make
this forever