i.j.k.l.m.n.o.p.

An abecedarian geography of nonsensicalifornia starts with anxiety, beauty, comedy, darkness, euphoria, fragility, and gratitude. This is my heart and this is my attitude.

I'm washing, combing my hair. I hear a yelp in the distance, forget it in an instant. I hum along to the dissonance. No street cred for my carelessness, the burning off of innocence.

Make it fairer. Know the boundaries. See the flaws. If laws depend, are they laws? Hold ethics stamped with stubbornness. Not repentance but consequence. Is it real for all of us? Is there really justice?

One lane: the other driver scowls, a coldness creeping. I defer in sympathy. I feel you but don't know you, don't know what you're going through. Maybe your beloved won't talk to you. Maybe an illness wears on you. You lash out rather than chance more pain. I've played that game. That's why I give you kindness.

Lolling, lounging, rolling, scrolling... let me lie around a while... embrace the space for laziness.

I can't tell what that is. It's not clear or well-lighted. I don't know what's inside it. It's a place, a voice, a worldview, a choice, a lifestyle, a being, a web page you're seeing, it's something in the future--it's a mystery.

Alight in the aquarium, fish firework into terrariums, with underwater balloon dogs tugging at historians. Bubbles form in paisley; clam shells break into applause! The cash drawer squeezes oranges, the otters' paws hide lozenges, the kelp sings to the barnacles, the broom pastes the nonsensical.

I reach for authenticity and worry on my sentimentality. It's all just vulnerability. I toggle strength and shame. I want you to know my name, but without my promotion; I'm near grandeur and oblivion. I delete three quarters, then half of what's left; it's all constructed, but it's my best at openness.

I could press you, I could try you, I won't forget you or deny you. You came all the way down here, waiting your turn. Thank you for your patience.

some times even have titles

Some times aren't poems. Some times are walking too long in flats, girl, sit down.

A long time since an update of prior narratives, since cat pictures, popsicles, or pop songs.

Funny how nonsensicalifornia zoomed itself out, into the background, while summer slip-and-slided away with the momentum of nostalgia, a belly flop impact, and slowing down stopped. Lift yourself up again, meet it how it goes.

All these terms: positionality, reflexivity: I like them. And then last week, the professor asked "Is there reality?" and looked at me. I said, I don't like this question anymore. The more I looked at it, the more it twisted.

Like the day this Spring I found my water pitcher shocking. I've had it several years. Why should there be this pitcher? Why this one, out of all of them that look the same? It's unrealistic.

Or maybe not. Check if the picture is to scale. Check if you're for real.

Ancient words: The eye cannot see itself.  So of course I don't know. I'm always missing something.

Nonsensicalifornia peers into the absurd, sometimes absurdly, lifted from the same coaster as death. "What is irrelevant?" I think of flamingos. It's always the flamingos.

I get these mental pop up windows. Makes me stop and close close close, this thought, that, maybe shut it down, restart.  Wait, no machines. Just this organic being who wears clothes and carries stuff all the time. You know like tea cups and bags and cables. Organic and real, with real feet and moving fingers, dry skin on the face while yawning. The sensation of stiff joints, a real being.

onychophagia

compulsion
to peel away

sinister delusion
of a smoother side

breakthrough
a sigh

tension relieved
clarity peace
at the red

rush to dress it
try to leave it

loose
breath of peace

as destruction
builds the new

back they grew
make them go

changing them
on they grow

warping roughened
mindless this one

dreamy obsession
bizarre mundane

a drop of horror
an ounce of shame

stuck winding up
tightening

unbreathing
heart-pressuring

find texture
peel away

thirtieth birthday

on your birthday
i remember you more.

i get only so close

you're an electric burner
still glowing
i can't touch
but stay close

i work a flat sketch
of memories
a slow building image
transmuting into what?
it's not you

rachel
(lower case like you signed it)
eye level in heels
what would you say beside me?
"cake!" is what.
cake! as you called me,

cake is the right thought on your birthday
and i am here on your birthday
and i think, happy birthday,
and i think of our parents
and of hannah and violet
and i treasure
what we had of each other

all those openings and closings of car doors

and now you, electric burner,
untouchable, glowing,
thirty.

i put the kettle on for tea.

the sun box

far apart, the same realization
that childhood is gone
(i wonder how i remember it wrong)

the ceramic container reminds me--
a little box with a sun on the lid,
a sun wearing sunglasses, silly, cliche,
i was maybe 11, painting this,
and here it is still, with a few bobby pins
in my bathroom drawer,
still around after all this time

and when i painted its blue interior
green on the outside, with words etched in:
("nice sunny day!" it says, with stars and hearts)
perhaps i had pins in my hair.

i know i had my sister there,
my mother there
some los gatos afternoon

we went back to paint plates
these works fired into glossy artifacts

i mourn the distance
the gaps
of these days i hardly think of anymore

how could i dwell

focus and dispersion

i was a candle;
i flickered

i was a bright bulb
on it all

now a laser
just here

translucent curtain
soft room

a light grew,
faded, flew