Poem for Friday and Hillwood Gardens

Choke
By Eileen Myles

Of all the ways of forgetting
not turning the pilot on is not
                            the worst

The house is intact
you are floating
in time
buckets of it streaming through
                  the windows

youth turned it up I think
or on & fell asleep

Remembering to do.
You are too intact
the dappled sunlight on the lawn
or pots of darkness
like salt instead of depths

Still once I turned it up
the popping commenced
like applause for the present
tense
the site of my sway

Larry's new car is wide & safe
a woman's voice conducts
us left & right
she's crazy he laughs
again & again

my shrink said buy it now
about the car

I told him about my phenomenal streak
of winning & when the stakes
rose I began to bid low &
not at all
I could have won; you choked
he said.

Woof. To not choke
is I suppose to experience
to hold it in & go forth
though you need the heat

The sun had not done more
suddenly for a while

it's like we took off our skin
and said it is hot.
It's like we sold our skin
& said where did everyone go?

when the weather's too hot for comfort
& we can't have ice-cream cones
it ain't no sin
to take off your skin
& dance around in your bones

--------

I am not sure where Thursday morning went -- I was scanning photos and sorting stuff to take to the beach, Paul worked from home so I didn't put on much Olympics to avoid distracting him, Adam went berry-picking and then out to eat with a friend, Daniel discovered that Bethesda Softworks was releasing some Skyrim thing today without fanfare and was discussing this with his friends.

I had laundry to fold; Daniel told me to put on Voyager; we watched "Parallax" and "Phage," and I was thinking the former in particular was really quite a good episode, but then I watched DS9's "The Collaborator" to review and the acting on DS9 just blows all other Trek shows away. Winn asks with false humility how Sisko can possibly believe they are...and Sisko interrupts with a deadly grin, "Enemies?"

When I took a walk there were several police cars in our neighborhood; I have no idea why. Our evening was all about swimming and women's gymnastics; we already knew the results but we were happy about them so we ate our toad-in-a-hole and watched the London coverage. Here are some photos from Hillwood's gardens and conservatory during the heat wave -- it was cooler in the hothouse than outdoors!