#1 'LEARNING'

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Not wanting to stir up the dust

Until she is ready

For all of it to echo the last time

End evaporating like the light

In a travel magazine, foreign places

And false advertizing;

By the time you’ve gotten there

That same sun is gone.

Even memories get grimed and scratched

Exposed to so much blinding negativity

That they flare out, fade, spontaneously delete:

She wants to save them to last

Indefinitely, is the string on the monkey’s leg

Dancing, and begging for coins—

In the foreign light.

And here you do things

you

would never do

Because you are somebody else:

Simple logic, simple rules.

----

New rules, but similar

Learning again like the kindergarten writ large

And the kindness much like light;

The smell of warm cookies

And a herd.

All your life, you never forget the smell of milk cartons

[Or the faces on them.]

Or wet clover.

----

Other little bodies

Like your own:

Safe, protected,

All together

But not at all.

Inside your mind you are as far away

As the twinkle-twinkle stars

Cool, icy, intricate and clean

And ceremonious, representative of bigger things.

Like being on the other side of the glass

Just wanting

To

Touch someone.

But they will not trade their warmth and you cannot give your stars.

-----

You accept it now

(What else can you do?)

They will understand it later.

Until then, they will grind you under their heel

Calling you a snake,

Laughing because they think they are stronger and greater than you

Because they play games with other little girls.

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#2 ‘This one yours?’, or ‘Shipment from Venus’

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Don’t know what to do with us:

Too many features for our own good

Instruction manual lost in the mail?

There isn’t one for everything. Where’s

your

store tag?

Commodity, drudge or plaything?

Oh look, it’s a girl in a box.

Wonder what she’s been thinking

All this time.

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#3 'Lege