What I’d really like to do with my life is this:

I’d like to wander aimlessly around the Central West End, stopping at stores with no particular purpose, picking up trinkets and just wondering what it would be like to own such a thing.

I’d like to kill hours in the basement of Rothschild’s, digging through antiques that were not nice enough to be sold upstairs.

I’d like to look through recipe books and coffee table photo albums at Left Bank Books and consider making something I found for dinner and dream about the apartment I will one day have in which I will have a coffee tables with lots of books on it.

I’d like to walk to Café Osage and have a cappuccino and read the New York Times and then go next-door to BoWood farms and pretend I have a garden that I need perennials for.

I’d like to stop in at Mezzanine and chat with the owner about how her business is doing and try on lots of things. I’d like to smell all of the Tocca perfumes and buy the perfect one after spending hours deliberating over what my new scent will be.

I’d like to walk down McPherson and the other gated streets and step on leaves to hear them crunch. I’d like for there to be a slight breeze and I’d like to be wearing a sweater and boots.

I’d like to walk past Kopperman’s and Duff’s and look at the people eating outside. I’d like to always eat meals outside for that matter and I’d like to have no other preoccupations and think only about dinner and the people I’m eating with while we're eating.

I’d like to walk past Brennan’s and wave at David and maybe sometimes stop in for a glass of wine. I’d like for the music at Brennan’s to be the soundtrack for my life.

I’d like for there to be no 3 o’clock to 6 o’clock because nothing ever happens during those three hours.

I’d like to have someone else to walk with, but only part of the time.

I’d like for life to slow down so I have time to appreciate the change in the season. Did you know- this is the most beautiful time of year? I almost forgot.

Tea, anyone?

Drink

My whiskey is
a tough way of life:

The wild cherry
continually pressing back
peach orchards.

I am a penniless
rumsoak.

Where shall I have that solidity
which trees find
in the ground?

My stuff
is the feel of good legs
and a broad pelvis
under the gold hair ornaments
of skyscrapers.


-William Carlos Williams

in the vein of Marianne Moore

Sharks have a covering of dermal dentricals

that protect their skin from damage and parasites and

improve fluid dynamics. Fluid,

their movements, through pools of ocean dew

standing still on sea plants- plants that are really animals

with murky names like zooxanthellae,

which “live inside the

translucent fleshy tissue of many marine animals

including types of giant clams, nudibranchs and even jellyfish,”

and which, for this, are considered to be

parasites.

“For that matter, I’d call a baby a parasite,”

he said, referring to the fusion of gametes

to produce a new organism-

an organism which grows in-

side the “translucent fleshy tissue” of mommies

for many months,

only to plop out one day, slimy and red-

a perturbed little body that screams

hello to the world.

“You have been deceived into thinking that you have progressed,”

into the world of man, into the world of morals and dignity-

but we who hail from the family hominidae,

we who call ourselves

Homo Sapiens are, really, just bipedal primates-

zooxanthellae with lungs.

-Julia Kennelly

A Monster Owl

A monster owl
out on the fence
flew away. What
is it the sign
of? The sign of
an owl.


.

-Lorine Niedecker

Channeling

Somewhere in East St. Louis

an old man walks

with no concern for
where he is going for he is going
nowhere. He walks

with no concern for his
fellow man for
this man has no fellows.

He walks
past buildings and houses and stores which
remind him of a distant past and

he could swear

that his old pal Bill
used to live right here
right here in this house

in this

broken down falling down
old house.

People shove by him and he wonders
where they are going
in such a hurry.

The streets scare him
the noise and movement and
the feeling that he’s missing

something scares him.

He walks
faster now hoping to get away
away from the sirens, away from the blank
stares on blank faces

he walks towards

something familiar
something he knows but

he just can’t remember where
he is going.

Things that make me happy

"Still Life with Apples," Cezanne


















"Dancers in Pink," Degas

















"Le chaîne Simpson," Toulouse-Lautrec















"Empire of Light," Magritte