Tool A Magazine/Reb Livingston

Reb Livingston

What Doesn't Do

Trolls took my terry clots and I don't like to drive when a long poem kicks me in
the shiver chambers making me hallucinate experts and loving Shiva.  Am I the 
flesh that's lost her way?  Or full of graves, wasting, washing the back of my 
neck in case he goes there rather that than getting naked or installing that new 
furnace?  Have you seen the moon tonight?  Apparently it's enough, for a night.

Things Get

To wax the instant - things get rhapsodic, slash - deepen - enigma - things get
trusty, so little to celebrate - the topics pervasive - things get apparent - and I
never dreamed I'd get buttressed by you, my status quo goes throes, tell me
more about the perspective of that female character, my ulysses goes soft - 
things get close - drags me east, let's ward off voices - tabulated - destabilized 
- gleefullized spurned and provoked.  How om became counter culture in the 
first place - I do not know.

Frankness and Light (or I am in Love and You are Not)

you before sunrise

you not singing "Here Comes the Sun"

me not thinking it's alright

me missing syllables

me staring at your arm

slung like it belongs

you looking for lark

you with too many

you with that anglo-American

quality, practically one of us

but improved, with that added world

perspective that makes girls go Italian

go to the video store, go

on explaining their facial expressions

in case you're considering

their eye color

you mention jade

you're squinting

your glasses are gauze and I

bleed like sunset

no, shine like moon, a shine

getting fierce

a shine dimming

the shine you see through to see

her, maybe all of them

how many more?

I'd like to know

you holding the pearl

you swallowing the clam

me so

dizzy, me looking back

long time

seeing plaid

seeing it soft

seeing daybreak

flash, burn

I should be blind by now

Yes, I really should

Poem for Make-Believe

Your poems are not maps and

I'm lost

on a bus in France hauling bags

of cabbages

little cabbages, cute cabbages

cabbages with meaning

I'm not privy and I will

not eat and I will not boil

I will carry them home

plant them in my tendril garden

and ignore the urge to gag

Inept Photography

Arch your back
clicked the camera lens
which makes sounds, but
doesn't and
that makes sense

when it's unfocused

Found your apologia under the pillow
Pulled out all the verbs
you left me
with this:

kosher 		principled	elixir
	pipe		porcupine
tasteful		darling

Writing means
very little

I only sing when I'm desperate
or drunk

My song is fool and flash and a mouthful of
crooked hairy toes (if only it ended there)
The backdrop:  blowing  curtains and dust bunnies and
wrinkled sheet and candle waxed headboard

The harder we kissed, the more pointless you
became
the sloppier
my chin
(shiny, kind of drooly)
your shadow, my torso

most unflattering 
angle