Three licks to get to the center of a tootsie pop,
three sisters to pull me three ways,
three feathers to fall from the sky,
one owl to fly away and a moon so big it seemed if I jumped off this cliff I could reach out and catch it.

I don’t know where I’m going with this
life.

From a cliff to a diner, from a teepee to the city.
Can’t keep up with myself.

Flashing and flashing flash flood finding my way.
Way back.
Way Back Machine.
.
I wish I could take the Way Back Machine to another time.
See Patti Smith
in concert, 1976.
Or Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Mozart.
Imagine that, seeing Mozart conduct one of his orchestras?
That’s what I like about orchestras mostly,
the conductors.

A boy from the other side of the country wrote me a letter because he thought I sounded like I might groove on his story, which is about an evolver — someone who had it rough but came out the other side.

Maybe he knows something I don’t.

— Brooklyn 2007?

The discipline is in the order, not the action for me. I don’t know when I wrote this, I suspect right before moving to Arizona, 2006/2007, while I was leaving my husband and living in a basement in Brooklyn.