Pig and farm report

We had power for an hour yesterday power today for a while now we’re back in a blackout and the whole country is gone to sleep going to sleep going to sleep hopefully the wind is tunneling screaming whipping around large branches carpeting the forest floor it’s the end of January and it’s 57°

Stealing Wi-Fi from the bait and tackle good night kids

The incomparable Shanna Compton let us know that Closed Captions keeps referring to Lev Parnas as Love Harness. And that’s all I know of today’s senate trial except for those moments when I wandered into my room to use the bathroom and heard the president’s men droning on all those saggy hateful horrible old white wrinkled professors and teevee lawyers their lips permanently welded to tiny hitler’s nasty soggy diaper clad ass.

Such fierce panic

terrible today I baked brownies that didn’t help I just threw a quiche in the oven but I know it won’t turn out because I didn’t leave the pie shell in the freezer long enough I just dumped in broccoli and cheese and milk and cream and eggs crack crack crack crack gasping for breath gasping hard my heart hammering away and popped it in the oven made it to my room to find a clonazapam floating around in the bottom of my purse now I’ve set the timer still gasping for breath taking in way too much air and tears this awful so glad my son isn’t here if I faint again I’ll just roll off the couch onto the floor this day animal nuzzling my throat getting closer in my throat calming breath (gasp) calming breath (gasp) calming breath head buzzing (gasp) okay I finally breathed down once stupid fish


tender I leaked from my side
raspy in dreamland
the lapdog slithered
from its nasty chain passed low
over Goldbar wing tipped 
on the outside where knives
quick and sharp and quick 
I didn’t stand a chance
there was hard splendor in the hotel
a shape without air
convulsions directed the clouds
how tall was the ladder you shook
to find me how long
the milky strand

Outing

I am learning to navigate the dreaded Disneyland of CostCo. First I park a billion miles away so I won’t get hit by a car or one of those huge fucking baskets careening wildly out of control. Once inside I keep to the left of the store so I won’t get lost in the labyrinth of cheese and meat and bread and cleaning products and screaming children and goats and booze and bales of hay and coffins. Then I get what I need which is usually cheese and butter and cleaning supplies and while I’m doing this I smile at everyone. Smiling at people in CostCo freaks them out. Bad. Seriously bad. They look at me like I’m going to steal their purses or rip their lungs out with my enormous teeth. When I get to the 15 mile long checkout line I lean my arms on my basket and continue to smile. Today my checker’s name was Falcon. I told him it was a beautiful name and asked if he knew the Robert Duncan poem My Mother Would Be A Falconress one of my most beloved poems of all time. The first time I read this poem I almost fell down. I worship this poem. I memorized it right after I read it which is an old fashioned thing I still do. The poem makes my head burn like a church on fire. The checker Falcon had not read or heard of the poem so I wrote Robert Duncan then My Mother Would Be A Falconress on a slip of paper and told him to Google it when he got home. So I held up the line for almost an entire minute. Sometimes you have to do it.

SMASH THE PATRIARCHY

yes I have already made up my mind as to his guilt because he has already admitted his guilt and I have not glanced at his “team” of “lawyers” and couldn’t watch any of it because they are all old white men from nasty mitch right down the line droning old patriarchal saggy faced woman hating youth loathing white men just like Nixon and the Nixon administration during which I carried so much stress and anger and grief exactly like that they are back to rule our bodies to shove their whiteboy jesus down our throats to take away from us and to push their horrifying guilty insane leader into a reign of unchecked terror

today is National Holocaust Remembrance Day

I remember because my violin teacher Trudy told me stories about escaping the nazis with her little brother her parents already dead in the camps she talked about it all the time she burned her stories into me along with Mozart and Bach and Beethoven it was part of my lessons

Who do you remember for?

what would she think now

Outing

I think of her as my friend with sea anemones tied to her hair or perhaps they live there part of her scalp and she is simply wearing a headband to accentuate their beauty does she become another animal at night a question about my body as seen from behind prescience and glimmer. The invasion the structure the beginning of skin or lack of skin my body a charged space the poetics of healing of cultural knots complicated sagittal movement in the borderlands beyond decompression beyond crawling licking screamy. The doctor as recursive patriarch she is anxious maybe afraid of me in spite of her years working in the prison she stopped averting her eyes today as I lumbered  how my body perceives violence leans into it falls into it a riot country a burning city. Today this afternoon the third visit on the fourth month this data. I participated the process too intense so I stopped speaking and she said I can see clearly you are in pain. My pain makes her uncomfortable the way my skin sinks in my wolf-head she asked could the neighbors hear you and I told her that in this neighborhood it doesn't make any difference. The neighbors are afloat. She holds out a rubber boat with a torn bottom. I know what happens when my insurance disappears. Arrive! News about the brain! The body! It always gets down to shit and blood. I need to live bigger I need to live smaller I am terrified with the notion of sacrifice down on all fours howling. It's a burial custom gender and time tragedy comedy my annotated border. I still don't know how to behave it's exhilaration there an investigation there cigarettes and coffee a rotten landscape my territory her territory and I felt I was flying but after in the grocery store I froze the florescents flickering all at once pink and orange music a plexus institute all at once here do you want my insurance card?? no we bill you once a month. 

Don’t think for one hot second I’ve forgotten it’s Mozart’s birthday

there are green buds and sun out there it already looks like dread spring I ran up and down the hill three times this morning to see if I could bypass dread spring and force summer

It’s time

It’s time I treated this blog like my very own invention with red high heels and short black skirts and awesome rambling to put the awesomest ramblers to shame even those 1960s station wagons that always blew up right after you got over the mountain pass with everything you owned every single thing either stuffed in the back or tied with bungee cords up top including your bed and your piano new blog will be a middle aged boozy blonde who leaves lipstick marks on your cigarette and has some pot stashed in her bra new blog will get up and dance forcing everyone under 30 to flee she’ll have a soft face and you'll think she must have been beautiful once and still has really great legs but now she looks like a tired whore but she'll fool you by being smarter and funnier than most everyone you know and she'll fuck you in the back room if you write her a poem then she'll steal all your money

Happy Birthday to the kid with spark

I’m writing this in my car but my son is driving because his truck is too wide for the extremely steep winding hills and tiny parking spaces in the inner parts of The City and also because he likes to drive my little hot rod we have visited every person every beach every shake shack every crow every out of the way oddball burger joint every hole in the wall every mechanic every juke joint every gin joint every smoke joint and surf shop in this fair city and we picked up The Cake my son is known and loved and every person in The City knows him he is popular in a way I never was and can never understand we finally fetched some fries at Little Coney at Golden Gardens stopped at the Duck Blood Store and saw five literal rainbows as we drove through every weather system known to this side of the coast I saw or met 40,357 people today and they all count my son among the closest of their friends I have known many of these people for years have helped them in down times have taken them to hospital have gone to funerals and weddings with them have been there for interventions and baptisms and many of these people have been at Summer’s End but I never write about them because they trust me with their secrets and I am so glad to be that person

it was very very good to turn off the news to laugh and zip along in the passenger seat watching the sky and the city fly by my eyes and heart full

note :

Lindsey Graham left the chamber when Nadler showed footage of him giving Clinton’s impeachment speech he was the only senator who left*1

























what a chickenshit*2



















1.* actual reportage
2.* personal opinion

I am waiting for the trial to start I have watched most of it except I went to sleep at 11 Tuesday and yesterday I had to shut my brain off and go to the beach for a few minutes I am so angry and frustrated by those who have obviously drunk more than their share of the White House’s Kool-Aid including John Bolton who could testify if he wanted to and Chief Justice Roberts who needs to grow a pair of balls and remove those 16 Republicans who were wandering around outside of the chamber during Adam Schiff’s brilliant speech yesterday morning either so bored or so guilt stricken or so sure they could break the law and not have to pay for it like their evil leader that they just flung it back in everyone’s face

I’m honestly terrified for the country now which has lost its moral core shame on Mitch McConnell who made a bunch of nasty rules which he himself couldn’t follow because his crickety elderly bones would not hold up for 24 hours in a row and what about the candy desk what the fuck they can’t follow their own milky rules there is no way any of them could hold down an honest job stuck at a desk or standing on a factory floor for 12 hours a day (most of my career at Boeing included 12 hour days)

16 Republicans walked out 16 of them I can’t even believe it it’s disgusting

tomorrow is my son’s birthday he just got here and we’re going to Seattle tomorrow and god I am so grateful for his being his intelligence and grace here is that long legged beasty being something he called The Christmas Dragon all through his early childhood and I never did find out why

time to go they’re reading the benediction see you soon Darklings

Movie review revue

I have only gone to two movies since I moved here because the only theater that isn’t infested with bedbugs is in the mall in which the Cascade shooting occurred the theater where the shooter hung out and watched Snowden before the police found him and it is creepy

tonight I watched Marriage Story because I have increased my dosage of tegretol again yes again again again and I feel terrible and could not drag myself out of bed I have never been a fan of Scarlett Johansson or Adam Driver and honestly I couldn’t remember Scarlett Johansson’s character’s name throughout the entire movie but Adam Driver surprised me by being powerful and moving and I sobbed three times watching him and now I think he’s amazing

what a sad movie which did nothing to lift me out of my gummy mouthed despair and honestly the movie felt like it was half directed by Nora Ephron and half directed by the creepy and now utterly despised w.a. with music by the lesser Newman cousin Randy seriously if you’re going to make a movie why not have Thomas Newman do the score he’s brilliant also why do people have to sing in movies now both of the main characters singing made no sense to the story line the only saving graces of this movie were Laura Dern who can Do No Wrong Merritt Wever Wallace Shawn who I love in anything and Alan Alda except for Adam Driver’s character I was always aware of the acting painfully aware like OK here is Scarlett Johansson in her tall jeans and she’s acting and now she’s acting like she’s crying now she’s pretend pouting now she’s being a mom and oh look she got a haircut and now she’s a little bit blonder than she was

I give Adam Driver four stars and the rest of the movie two stars a good movie if you feel too disgusting to get out of bed and there are no reruns of House on teevee or you want to go to a haunted theater in an empty mall

















ps. last night I had a terrible anxious dream which involved a public toilet and getting lost as usual but at the last minute dream Tom Cruise drove up in a shiny little yellow convertible to rescue me from my dream self

What is your sick quest, Sunday?

I reached up to the tall shelf in my library closet and a small box of stuff fell on my head that I had forgotten about the box was full of gold and green star stickers and other stickers that I used on young violin students' practice pages it was a box full of paste and glitter and rabbits in waistcoats and I wanted to get naked and put the stars all over myself and take my photo in the mirror and I still might

addendum

I was never a fan of Fleetwood Mac because I think Stevie Nicks sounds like a billy goat a billy goat in lots of gossamer scarves and fanciful hats but this song in particular has always alarmed me because at first listen and frankly who needs more that a first listen it sounds to me like a man singing just lay you down in the tall grass and let me do my stuff

and that is just gross

also I’ve been laid down in the tall grass especially when I lived on the commune in the mountains  and I can tell you right now it made my entire body itch for days after no matter how many times I stood in the outside shower lathering up in Dr. Bronner’s Pure Peppermint Oil Soap under the watchful eyes of various cows horses and random other hippies and we were all random then and yes I still use the soap I use it for everything and so does my son

I baked a gorgeous loaf of bread tonight and every time I bake bread I remember my years on the commune with such fondness those women who were just a couple years older than I taught me not only how to bake bread and grow a garden and milk a goat they taught me how to be human and I will love them forever

Pig and farm report

the temperature rose drastically and melted the snow so quickly that I thought it was raining for two hours but it was just the trees trying to shake it off shake it off off off now it looks like spring outside except for branches and other debris flying past like green bullets wear eye protection please the weather on my weather app now looks like this I prefer snow snow snow snow to those squiggly wind lines

Prince Hal growled this morning his very first growl a deep in his throat warning to his sister to back the fuck down which she did the growl startled us all especially Prince Hal and I could suddenly see the fierce beastie he is going to become when he arrives at pure cathood a cat who will take no crap from anybody wear eye protection please

yes soft scritches

no soft scritches

I am baking today or attempting to bake bread the house is still pretty frozen inside so I’m taking my time damn I wish I had a heating pad to put under my pot but I will just let it go

I was supposed to go to the grocery store for Big Shopping which means buying the paper towels I like and olive oil stuff I can’t find on the island but I had yet another panic attack Majorca in scope the kind that makes my shoulders ache and I’m still a little iffy about fainting again in public or any damn where for that matter

that’s it for now if you see a truck flying sideways down your street or a growling feral kitten-almost-cat wear eye protection please





















This has been a Radish King public service announcement 

Saturnday

Here I am again reminding myself that there is indeed still summer that it is guaranteed as long as I stay alive that my skin and hair and toes will return to their natural order that my elbows and wrists and hands will thaw the garden will be fecund and loamy moss will return to the trees roses and greeny green grass will magically reappear I will inhale lilac and hyacinth deer will turn tawny summer dresses and sandals will emerge from my closet and my knees will emerge and become their scabby spectacular selves I need to remind myself almost daily of the summer promise during terrible flat frozen winter I say it all the time I am and will always be a summer girl a Leo a water baby and to my very soul
Amin Amin Amin

this morning the wind is crawling up again so far it’s at an easy going 20 mph I’m still in bed with two cats rereading Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential because I wanted to have his voice in my head I have not forgotten what a great writer he was before his television shows and that’s how I knew him first

“I’ve asked a lot what the best thing about cooking for a living is. And it’s this: to be a part of a subculture. To be part of a historical continuum, a secret society with its own language and customs. To enjoy the instant gratification of making something good with one’s hands—using all one’s senses.”

This is very much how I feel about being a musician that I am in a secret society a strange little aquarium of skilled obsessives closed to the outside world that the sound of rehearsals the guts of the music library their stacks ceiling high and valuable the after hour parties the competition and the ache that hours of practice brings the sharp emotional pain of having a student you’ve taught for eleven years go away to school the smell of rosin in a cold church on a Saturday morning are things that the world at large cannot gain admittance to not even the internet with its weird prying snake eyes can take it away I don’t feel that way about being a poet I never have perhaps because you can fake being a poet but you cannot fake playing a Mozart violin concerto but to be honest it’s probably because I’ve never felt like I belonged to poetryworld where having an MFA attached to your name or at least a college education is what allows you access to the top tier journals and conferences no matter the quality of your work no matter that I have published five books no matter that one of those books was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize I will never feel part of  but plop me down in any size group of musicians then I feel it always and immediately ahhhhh yes this is it this is home and I am so grateful for that strange eccentric family that accepts me for exactly how well I can play and nothing more

Pig and farm report

my yard this morning near the road



the wind finally stopped raging last night and we got more of the snow that has blanketed most of the coast for days it is still snowing and the sun was shining this morning at the beach it was 28 degrees one of things I did for my new year non celebration was to reinstate my NYT subscription electronic this time with news alerts cooking all of it I know many people are turning away from the news I did it myself especially noisy television news (except I watched Rachel Maddow for the Lev Parnas interviews) but even without teevee noise I still turned to the NYT until I hit the paywall which didn’t take long each month now I am all in with news alerts all of it fighting the urge to hide to become complacent it seems important that I hear and read and see (his body seems to be faltering? his gait seems off? hopefully?) with my own beautiful brain that big bouncing mess of wires and blood it seems important right now the way knowing how to sew or cook or build a fire seems important I did venture outside today other than my twice or thrice daily trips to start my car so the battery won’t die because nothing says The Shining  quicker than having no transportation out here in the wildgreenblue and of course going to the beach every day I went to the bank in town not much of a trip not much I know I am extraordinarily happy here alone in my house baking cooking storing away gathering preparing and I’m not even sure what I’m preparing for

it just feels important right now

Things over which I am obsessing

1. Teeth
2. Money
3. Insurance and my lack thereof
4. Wind
5. Panic*
6. Wondering when exactly I start running around all scary and naked in the woods



















*it might be true that I’m having a panic attack about having a panic attack if it is true I may have hit an all time low

Pig and farm report

Dog in possession of the last false smile

my teeth on the upper right side of my face hurt

When I saw a photo of Jeannine  looking radiant at her reading last night in the city I realized my personal color palette and I don’t mean in a 1980s Color Me Beautiful way (which I managed to escape by only wearing jeans and t shirts and steel toed boots during the day every day and at night for rehearsals and a number of floor length fancy black dresses to play during concerts because that’s what I did I worked in the factory then I went to rehearsals and played in the concert hall come to think of it the same still applied throughout the 1990s and 2000s and actually pretty much forever though I’ve abandoned the steel toed boots)

I will honestly wait until I get such a terrible headache that I can’t sit up before I rule out a brain tumor then check my credit score to find a dentist

okay my train fell off the track there after crashing into a flock of moo cows a metro bus and a player piano and you can see I tried to contain it unsuccessfully in parentheses so I will try again

it might be from banging my head on the floor when I fainted at the veterinarian’s office she said hopefully

this morning I was zipping through this blog looking for some color to appease my weary eyebulbs and except for a couple boring photos of produce all I saw were gray dark green bluish gray browns more dark green gray browns etcetera I found the same in my photos

boring photo of produce

this is the same color crave I go through every winter but the difference between now and then is that I no longer feel trapped and dead ended I know I can walk for a few minutes and the entire graybluegreen world is at my feet

I think they’re rotten I never had dental care as a child and could never afford it as an adult and I have already lost so many

what my original thought was here is that maybe the previous owners of my house who gleefully painted the inside guts with so much unbogly oranges and reds knew what they were doing and no not even three years later have I begun the Herculean task of repainting I still feel barely moved in even though everything has a place and I’ve pared down to essentials and my closets are tidy my garden is in place my sour dough starter has taken on island flavors and I have finally grown into the pulses and beats of a weather driven and water surrounded life

Dentists terrify me and feel invasive in a PTSD panicked body cringing way and rob you as they go 

I want to bake bread today and Sunday weirdoness is eating itself under my skin and bread is amazingly hard on teeth and now I want to buy a bunch of summer sweet bright yellow corn off the back of a flatbed truck at the Skagit River and I want and I want and I want

I think I just need to go to the river and have a stern talk with my mouth tomorrow then go to the Skagit co-op and fill my buskets with what ever color jumps out at me

why are teeth so shameful

at least now I have a plan which helps time to go to the beach

Hello

Pig and farm report

the wind tore across Possession Sound at frightening speeds all damned night it woke me at 4am I ran a tub full of hot water and clickwhistle off went my power I took a bath washed my hair in the tub by candlelight I left the water in the tub so I could flush my toilet with it (I keep a large pitcher in my bathroom for this very reason) until the power came back on got back into bed willing my hair to dry then at 7:30 I got up put on my giant coat my boots and my watch cap and headed out to the beach cafe the owner was there to turn on their generator and she told me any time I lose power I can come in for free coffee and sit by the giant stone fireplace and use their wifi and I thanked her and did not cry with her kindness though I took my time with breakfast that’s where I sit right there next to the kitchen you can see daylight in that window coming through the trees and the sound below and the deck chairs and tables stacked outside waiting for summer’s tourist trade

I spotted an old growth conifer that suicided on some power lines one and a half roads away from my house the tree is huge and it is still on the lines even though I passed three power co. trucks the guys in hard hats staring at the tree and at the lines I don’t blame them for leaving it they got as much as they could off the road that downed tree is going to be a big job and the power was out all over the island trees whose root balls became soaked and saturated because winter has been so dry but the dry part is over it has rained for days now flooding the rivers and culverts and sloughs and a small town just north of here Silvana and trees and of course the Old Testament force wind

I lingered at the cafe just past what felt like a proper time came back home got back into my bed to get warm and read a bit and when the power came back on I baked

And Lo! And behold! I made double dark chocolate espresso ginger brownies because I almost never fuck up brownies no matter what I do to them and She saw that it was good.

I called  the kid who is in the city where it is not snowing but surely will be by tonight and told him he should not have made fun of my apocalypse shopping list because guess who is at the store now that’s right every single damned person on the island that’s who except me haha

the moon is full and the water is high Darklings be well

100% full

This is   The bright slipstream has taken Alice away   moon

Apocalypse shopping in the Anthropocene

I took myself to the doctor last night [my son took me] late and dark we slogged through ice and mud up the hill to his truck it began snowing as soon as he started it up earlier that day I had meant to go to the library and the grocery store but I was frozen on the my soft couch which had swallowed me in its gray cushions and faux fur blanket having become its own animal mouth I did not go to the library or store because I was in day five FIVE! COUNT EM! FIVE! of a rolling panic attack and I thought I was dying my left shoulder ached which was of course a heart attack never mind that I had actually rolled off the bench onto the floor in the veterinarian’s office which I didn’t figure out until this morning I had made an extreme shopping list to restock my pantry with everything literally  everything  and my son who kept hovering offered to go to the store so out of embarrassment I whittled the list down to the four things I actually needed I transferred money from my savings account into my checking account in case I got completely snowed in or had to go to the hospital or died

Yes.

I actually thought I was going to die for five days

it wasn’t until I climbed into my son’s truck last night to go to the doctor and told him what drawer my clean underpants were in in case I had to go to the hospital with you know DEATH that I realized I was having one doozy of a panic attack he laughed at me and I laughed too and he said he had wondered why I transferred money and the whole underwear drawer conversation and I told him about my real shopping list the list for the end of the world and we laughed all the way to the damned doctor who told me I was in perfect health but I was having a panic attack and she gave me a sheathe of paper printed materials on what panic attacks look and feel like

it’s impossible to imagine this I’m pretty sure unless you’ve been inside it yourself

it snowed this morning and big snow is expected tomorrow so today I am going normal for me shopping and to the library and Wolfie is fine and Hal is sitting on my lap with a snuffly nose they both have head colds no infections I made it back to the vet with Hal Monday without fainting or dying and the world seems to have righted itself

Hello from Summer’s End where the fun never stops

What happened

The end.

I need to work through this backward please hold your questions until the end

I fell into bed reeking of dung and piss and dirt animal and human adult and child
My son backed his truck up to the house so I could walk quickly in avoiding steps
I rode home in white faced silence willing my spirit not to slip out of my body again trying to convince my son that I was not dying I just have low blood pressure while Wolfie rode in the backseat
I realized I had become urban legend every person and animal in that office stared at me as I clicked the truck’s seat back and sank out of view
I finally got up and made a slow wobble to my son’s truck knowing I could never return
She called urgent care while I insisted that I was fine that I just had to stay there for a minute that I faint all the time haha but I have never not since the third grade not in daylight
The vet knelt beside me and looked at my eyeballs with a light just as she had done Wolfie’s and pronounced them constricted I wanted to say of course they’re constricted I just fainted haha
I knew I had to lie on the flat floor before I hit it hard so I did
The low bench swam against my face my son’s knee was hard against my back so I wouldn’t fall off the bench onto the floor
I sat down hard on the low bench because the known world was slipping out of focus
I handed my son my credit card
I saw the electric fireplace flick on and took my coat off because it was extremely warm
The vet said Wolfie is fine and would prescribe medicine for her eye which was inflamed but not scratched or infected
I locked my knees while holding Wolfie on the examine table so she wouldn’t bolt while the vet checked her vitals
We waited for 45 minutes to see the vet the woman sitting across from us had a giant dog and the woman would not stop talking at us
It was warm at the veterinarian office very warm I hadn’t eaten since breakfast
Getting Wolfie into her crate was extremely difficult we ended up having to shut all the doors scare her out of one room and trap her in another a broom handle was used plus heavy coats gloves a window screen and speed

Pig and farm report

my power is still on we weren’t able to put Wolfie in her kitty carrier no she said fuck that she said then she snarled and hissed a lot and disappeared under my son’s bed my vet is booked up so I made an appointment to take her to another vet in town tomorrow I’m going to try and snag her in a pillow case in other news I tried to walk out on the dock this morning but didn’t get far my phone thinks I walked up three flights of stairs I found the tree limb that I heard snap the other day I will go after it with my Barbie chainsaw once this crazy wind dies down

I’m pretty sure all those soft white boys in red maga hats waving their guns driving around with American flags and t*rump stickers plastered all over their trucks are going to be first in line to sign up for t*rump’s nasty little war aren’t you?

Day 3 beware! beware!

halfway to Epiphany and the wind screams off the mountains spins itself into a ball across the Salish Sea to rattle us awake again and again it woke me and again I made sure my flashlights were charged and my computer was charged and my phone was charged and my Jackery was charged I pushed the button that drops the coffee and called my son to come over to help me take Wolf to the vet because her left eye is swollen and she’s been sneezing I will no longer do this vet task alone I cannot bear walking another kitty into the forest without help

remember how we never used to have to charge anything and charge meant a thing you did with credit cards or car batteries or a mess of buffaloes running toward you?

the lights are already flickering beware! beware! tiny hitler has declared war from his tacky gilded palace in Florida he did not act through Congress he did not leave his golf course to go to the war room to address the nation instead he is speechifying this afternoon at evangelical so called leaders aka campaigning which is all he does beware! beware! tree limbs and witches and kittens are flying every which way in the wind’s mouth beware! beware! here on the north 48th the sea is filling up the breams and the fields the heron and kingfisher and hawk and owl and eagle stand guard beware! beware! the Stillaguamish River and its surrounding tributaries and sloughs is flooded flooded spilling onto the road beware! beware! the children are back in school beware! beware!

another dystopian day in Terrible America and honestly I feel so right inside so healthy and shiny and capable and good and able even though I dreamed all night even though I cannot stop the dreams and none of them good

here is a handy dandy scientific Camano Island weather chart to let you know when exactly your roof will peel off your house like a sardine lid it is quite basic some people (me) might argue that it’s a little too basic

Everything in me feels broken :: an American essay

did your cow ignore the system of reality did she shit her spoons did your cow climb the steps into Liberty's arm vomit from her torch did she walk three miles to the store for toilet paper because her car was broken did your cow die in a Biblical plague did the Spokane valley reel from her death did animal rights activists rage her storms did your cow give milk at 4 AM on a mountain in northern California did she take LSD did she break her leg did a man break your cow's leg did your cow change her name kite checks did panic bend her body into a dread abiding lake did fear roll through your cow in whitecaps did she die every morning and every night to work in the factory did your cow fan dance on a hardwood milking machine were her hooves calloused was your cow a city winking awake in between lines of cocaine did your cow tattoo with bikers on Pike Street did she shame a war barefoot did your cow breast feed you in a cafe in the center of the Pentagon did your cow lose her leg to frostbite was she a calf arranged in pieces was she chuck was she bone-in was she ribs did your cow's seatbelt crush her throat did milk float her bra did she choke did a man punch your cow in the stomach did she live on a houseboat with a square cut out of its bottom did a duck swim up the hole into your cow's arms did she spit patriotic grief did she build war planes did she shudder when the B52 she helped rivet flew above her and tipped its wing did the factory floor shatter your cow's knee was her circle so small she stopped breathing did your cow spread her coat in the pasture and fuck as other cows chewed did your cow underground did hysteria chancre her blood did your cow build a camp fire then a ceremonial fire then a bonfire did she eat the forest as animals screamed out of her jaw did your cow stigmata every month did goddesses flood from her body into an American toilet was your cow a bellwether a war machine did your cow drink wine from an open bottle under the bridge did she squat in an abandoned house did she eat from garbage bins did your cow beg for money at a rest stop on the freeway did something happen to your cow in a public toilet did she walk into the American machine was your cow's slaughter drought driven did she affect herd growth grades and standards did something happen to your cow did something

The new

yesterday the beginning of 2020 the power flickered on and off (54 mph winds most of the day) and I listened to the racket (and my house being pummeled and thumped by pine cones and tree branches)  (at one point an actual crack! signaling a large limb had broken off somewhere in my woods) and I wrote (a. poem.) and read (Dana Levin’s brutal and gorgeous Sky Burial) and showered (quickly) and ran the washing machine (also quickly) and ate (red beans dirty rice cornbread) and watched a series that came out in 2014 that I had downloaded onto my computer (The Leftovers and holy shit) I did not go outside (flying debris) and the wind continued into nightfall (bringing a thunderstorm to round things out) but I slept through until morning (with weirdo dreams) and today I made it to the beach to consider the destruction (and raw power and beauty) and now I am going out into the actual known world (mockingbird wish me luck)