February 13 - act

act out act

read the riot  act

class act of war

act of god

stage act the fool

act hostile

caught in the act your age

act surprised

act of lunacy

criminal act on impulse

tough act natural

act accordingly

act in good faith

act of parliament

(act of insurrection)

act against, act natural

CIRCUS act

act of mercy

act innocent

disappearing act the part

play act funny

act friendly

act innocent

get on in on the act

act high and mighty

hard act to follow

February 12 - There Was A Lot of Silence

There was a lot of silence
I was confused
by the look in your eyes
when you told me nothing I needed to know
          and everything I didn't

You loved me
(you were repulsed by my body)
You wanted me
(you wanted my mind)
You needed me?
(far from it)

So when our Friendship turned to silence
there was too much
and I look at your smile
and wish for the time you lied.

February 11 - What do You Mean When You Ask for Wit?

What do you mean when you ask for wit? or for courage? I will comb my hair back again and look at the assignment with an eyebrow subtly raised that will not say to you, my English Teacher, that I think this assignment might be a little silly.  I have better things to worry about than analyzing fiction with wit an courage.  And now I stare out the window and dream of the gentle wind (not breeze) that brings a false summer morning cold through the leaves of a Japanese maple that I misidentified as a crab apple tree (it might have been the other way around) in fifth grade because I did not trust myself.

February 10 - Blanche and Me

I used to imagine that if I sang the right songs someone would hear the lyrics and realize that it was a cry for help.  Not that I had the right songs (which might have been the problem).  There aren’t songs for an overly anxious 16 year old.  The kind of 16 year old who falls in love like Oscar Wao and copes with that love like his sister Lola.  That’s something most people don’t know about me. I usually say it’s because I have trouble holding down the emotional side of a relationship, but actually it’s because I don’t even know where to start with the emotional side.  I mean, what can you do about wanting to bend unconditionally to the person to whom you are unequivocally devoted?  Anyway, it’s complicated.  But now I just spend all my time with my new best friend.  We agree on so many things it’s remarkable.  Well, “able to be remarked upon” is an entirely inadequate statement but this is English, and I’m a teenager; so it’ll have to do.  The thing is, Blanche has a lot going for her.  I wish I had her figure.  Maybe if alcohol was my vice – not food – I’d be that lucky, but I’m not.  But she had a thing going for her when she started her “hydrotherapy”.  There’s nothing like sitting immobile in a bathtub with the water running from the shower on “hot as a thousand fiery suns” and not moving.  For half an hour.  It’s great.  And I think she figured out something when she said that the opposite of death is desire.  I won’t quote her, because those weren’t her exact words, but she had the idea and I did steal that.  The opposite of death is desire.  So now I guess I just quote her when I want people to realize that I need a Shep to take me sailing.  And I guess I’ll just tell people in my will that I want to die at sea, so that they can tip me into the azure waters in a perfectly white blanket to be embraced by the waves.  

February 9 - PROVE YOUR IDENTITY (qed)

Write your nature in sinusoidal terms
Multiply by your reciprocal
(that guy, you know the one,)
(who would fit perfectly into your curves)
(as you would fit perfectly into his arm)
Look at your identity...
         Is it what we expected all along?
Rip yourself apart - into factors of your being
Raise yourself to a new power
Are You common?
         You should be..... half anyway
         AND perhaps monomial
Finally, combine.
         After all, you're not that different anyway.

February 8 - Cosine

Sometimes I get bored in math class.  When I get bored, I write poetry.  When I also have to study for a test, I write poetry about math....


look for the setting sun,
drawn in red marker
stark against the white
        of the board,
watch that you don't cross beneath the
waves cast in the same red ink
and enter the domain of the leviathan -
which we arbitrarily define so that the
        arc is a function -

Take a sip from a wine glass filled with
a radian - t liquid,
watch it doesn't spill when you shift and stretch - ripping it away
from its prescribed borders according to the "d a b c"s
Inverse, arc, secant, cosine - they're all the same to me.

All a wretched mix of graphs and angles
TAUNTING me with a poisonous liqueur...

February 7 - The Gospel of Desire

On the corner stands a woman preaching the gospel of desire. 

Her sacraments: the laying on of hands, and legs, and lips, and love for an hour

She opens her hand for an offering turned over for salvation from the sin of wanting

            in exchange for the sin of lust.

And past her walks the kind of person who was once told that looking twice at her would mark him as debauched

            or worse a man.

And so he walks past her glancing at a hand and a leg and her lips

            and imagines what might be.

Leaves blow across the street on a current of a grey winter wind in teardrop eddies of regret and loss

She feels the sting of converts

He feels the sting of a wife and child who do not know what he needs and who cannot help him

They walk home.

He to a lonely house full of suburban saints

She to an apartment

            in which her scriptures are written in the cracked ceiling and stained sheets