proud that it was a page long.

The first story I ever wrote was in first grade. It was about an indian princess named Wild Flower. I think she was gathering firewood when she was stolen by a hunter. Her horse was left alone without her. That night, Wild Flower rescued herself by stealing this hunter's gun and boat, and rowing back home. Her horse's name was something that began with the letter "P."

I didnt know how to write a romantic love interest. I wasnt sure who should save Wild Flower. Somewhere in my head, the hunter was the lover-- but I did not leave them together. I will find the horse's name in a dream somewhere.

I wonder if all the stories we write and tell in our lives are just efforts to retell that first one.

Birthday poem

How to become a poet:

Take cold baths with bars of soap,

Gaze into mirrors until you make yourself cry,

Watch yourself cry.

Hang white laundry from your balcony so it flutters in the wind

January through April, post letters to whomever--

Develop an affinity for prescient foods:

Ice cream

Milk

Mushrooms

Snow

Keep your feet cold.

Dream of floods and ribbons

And when it comes to your twenty-first birthday

Do not look back

Do not look ahead

And most importantly of all,

Do not, do not, do not look around you at this perfect taboo moment,

Else risk losing it all: no birds lingering in your baptismal fountain--

And your clumsy hands holding naught but bathwater.

a dream

I know this town.
It has a tall building or two, arranged in a circle. I think if I traveled around this circle fast enough it'd make a whirlpool. I'd drain quick down it glurg in the tub and I'd come away from that place, just in time too tick tick boom the sonic crash itd be lost forever I escaped the apocolypse on the back of the rat in the sewer. Where will I take my plague too?

a prophesy for 2011

My friend is going to have a baby, Charley. And I am going to have a baby play. Like Charley, my play is forming and growing in my stomache; it will come when it is ready. But unlike Charley, since it is art, it will sort of be like an alien.

Happy new year.