On the occasion of my late paper

I should probably budget my time

and sit it down to a meeting with consensus

building on the agenda. As Straus suggests,

we could define our roles and identify

other participants like dinner, two-year olds,

the Press Citizen coming to interview my husband,

and the green heart of the Randstad.

Then there’s the game of shoving-

everything-into-closets-and-drawers.

The game can come to the negotiation

and maybe strengthen its BATNA with a little joint

fact-finding venture with the unopened mail.

They could work together creating value

as they go along taking up space.

But this space is really time if you think

about it. Personality tests also take

up time, but is it up to you or time?

Time likes personality tests. True

or False? Time likes poems.

True or false? Poems like time but not so much

as they have to exist in time rather than

out of time. Right now,

it would be mutually beneficial for time to agree,

as walking out is not an option.

VOTED most likely provide excellent protection from zombies.

Okay this is insane but I think there is a poem here.

This is also inspirational

But then I guess you could just troll here.

Poem ideas are everywhere!!!

dinosaur sex

next poem subject, ladies and germs.

Zoned

Our streetscapes display our obsolescence
empty parking lots like punched out teeth, in our city
library an Ivy league architect tells us we’ve betrayed our bustle.
He is not talking about the death of the corset industry, he is talking about
the way we have split our waterfront from our downtown with a thick and tender highway.

This architect breaks my heart
with his architect’s glasses and his white hair
with his passion and his broad intellect and his readiness to prostelytize
about the fatness of our nation. Let us blame it on urban design for cars! Let us blame
no one but ourselves. In the library we a joined by a mayor and developers
a former economic development director and urban proponents who parked
their saabs on the streets of this city hungry for their commerce. Nothing but saabs for new urbanists!
I alone am heartened by the architect's trolley promotion, I alone have a space in my heart
for those abandoned tracks lying beside the cobblestones, nestled like steel arms under the pavement.
I alone have trouble growing passionate about zoning re-writes, though I know they matter. I want only to fetch the nearest jackhammer so I might liberate our nation from the tyranny of car transportation.
I can’t find a soul in the place who will join me.

Yes we can

Hold babies and report that America is a nation where abe was offered chairs for the train ride home, the man was so popular. Abolition was like fever, fried oysters were heavenly? And Abe, what to make of the lock of your hair in the collection? And Abe, what to make of the theatre actress who stole the bloody flag, and Abe, what to make of our man OBAMA who made me cry with the photographs of his American experience, complete with the residency in Hawaii and Indonesia. I want so much for us to embrace him like we embraced you, Abe, but without assassinations, Abe, and this discussion is nearly a party joke these days, Abe. Look at the VPs--that's who will be running the nation. Who do you vote for, Abe? Are you WIDE AWAKE? Will my great-granddaughter visit a historical collection that houses Barack's basketball and please let it be the basketball he used after his successful presidency, Abe, please let this be a nation that can support a candidate who doesn't talk down to me. And please let it be a president who chooses, in fact, to NOT invade Afganistan.Please let it be a president who can hold babies joyously and who can navigate us out of the waters of oil and into the waters of trolley traffic. That is my dream, Abe. Can you let me in on yours?

Zoning

Zoning

The sky, with its pimped up lights, is zoned

for serendipitous crossings with moon.

Please—zone it in a little closer.

Please stranger—I’m pretending not to like you.

Like you know the difference between a good duct-cleaning

and a bad bottle of wine—

like you’re trying to house a horse

in an RS-12 zone—

in a perfect storm of limiting factors.

Mixed-use urban renewal is out by the pond

killing flies instead of fishing. My neighbor’s purple C-cup,

dangling above the dirt, is zoned in a historic overlay district,

custody of the Historic Preservation Review Board.

Please—let me cry and learn to self-zone.

Bring in the BB gun—and later the welts.

mush mush

According to Wikipedia:

Mushing also can be used to describe the kneading behavior of domestic cats when they are content or are preparing to settle for a nap.

Can you write a poem about mushing? Or the Paris Review?