mmmmdcxviii

More Colours (lxiii)

jetsetters—do they still exist?
at almost exactly 15 years ago, i
could say i was one. i turned 40 in paris and
kept going for

about 3 years, finishing it all off with a
nice cruise atop the baltic,
docking in cities like

tallinn, stockholm,
helsinki, amsterdam, and
even saint petersburg. imagine that! me. on a

boat. to russia. after a decade and a half,
everything seems to have changed.
a lot of that is personal, my own journey.
needless to say, it’s been filled with twists, turns and
sweeping sudden unexpected
tragic (depending on how you might define that word) life events.
and now, not having been outside of my fair city for almost a decade,
luck hints at a new international trip in my future. i’m particularly
keen on seeing south america. how about next week?

mmmmdcxvii

More Colours (lxii)

to be duped by another poet. i’m
really not in the mood. so i do it again,
open the book that has landed upon my lap.
play with
its warmed innards, tickling the
cream-colored paper just
a bit. ennui is momentary.
love is eternal. or at least as infinite as i’ll ever be.

mmmmdcxvi

More Colours (lxi)

finally, now that i have
a little bit of free time to myself. what to
do? why, fill you all in on all of the goings-on. hey,
everyone.
del, here. if there are no

drastic events between now and then, in what amounts to an
estimation of days (like a week to two weeks from
now would be my departure, the beginning of my first
international trip in a decade and a half. still, so as not to jinx anything,
mum’s the word on the details for now. stay tuned and keep those fingers crossed.

mmmmdcxv

More Colours (lxii)

how am i supposed to put up with this? i choose
entertainment. which is
right smug of
me,
isn’t it? so what if i’ve kept myself locked
tight inside my miniature hotbox for what seems like

centuries? i’ve
retaken the personality test dozens of times by now,
and each time i do, i’m still way up the vector: a real extravert.
baloney. i’ve sat here so long that the box has melted onto me. i’m one with this box.

mmmmdcxiv

More Colours (lxi)

aquarius is the sign of my one
queer true love. it’s true.
unlike my current environment:
alone. alone. alone. but it’s starting to feel
real, this life that is maybe almost so soon here.
i mean in the way that it has been real now for,
uh, FIVE YEARS.
man! it’s getting so close to a story impossible to jinx.

mmmmdcxiii

More Colours (lx)

best not to get too ahead of ourselves. these are
real conversations going on in my head in
every which direction, so that they
are multiple and
they are overlapping and it’s quite
hard if not

outright impossible to
figure out which pieces go with each other. in

fact, this turns the sum of these conversations, no doubt, into the
riddle of my very
existence, or at least this is how i’ve somewhat and surely all to
self-importantly begun to characterize all this
hurly-burly chatter. if this barrage of sound were coming from literal human bodies then

a reasonable question would be how are they getting any air. then
i remember it’s in my head this is happening, so if, as i’ve said, this chatter holds the
riddle of me then maybe the solution is call an ambulance i need to be resuscitated!

mmmmdcxii

More Colours (lix)

settle down,
kiddies! squealed the voice of no
youth, the
so-called leader amongst a motley
crew of cowards standing on tippie-toes in earnest just for a glimpse of the clown, the so-called
rowdy ringleader of around a dozen, probably more like thirteen, insufficient throwbacks to
a clockwork orange anarchic fashion from the looks of ’em, but to a
person, if one might suggest such—sure, they’d just hoodwinked the hordes—but
each of them in the deepest were nervously bristling if not quivering with no grasp, no idea of
reality, no clue of the path, the gut-wrenching future, this man-boy cult had just unknowingly borne.

mmmmdcxi

More Colours (lviii)

calm down, missy!
our father was already getting worked up.
remember, after all, that he was who he was and was
not who he wasn’t.

men! calliope always resisted. two women to a man and
about fourteen men to a monster. if you could call them men. unleash
zee monster nummer unz! a clown sprung from the cannon. and that monster was no
emmett kelly. but even at such speed, such heights, the world around us was brought
      all the way down, if not further, than the ground beneath us.

mmmmdcx

More Colours (lvii)

oh, we don’t
like the word agéd to describe our
dear amateur. “these lousy,

lousy words!” could be made out,
emitted—more like spit out dry—from
a rather feral and
taut-wired (or spit-swept, and not just at the corners) mouth.
here lie the mouths of poetry. this wasn’t spoken but did seem
emcee’d directly into the, the editors don’t think
rotten the most appropriate descriptor,

but as mouths go....
oodles of awful, the non-emcee emcee’d into the dog ears of
our hero:
tethered with countless red paper hearts, that joyless 
saint bernard. and tucked like a russian doll into the water-blasted miniature 

      barrel under its goozle, trapped like a canned tuna, st. v. hisself.

mmmmdcix

More Colours (lvi)

but, your honor ... — (
our eyes meet. ) who’s the
understudy in this situation,
newbie? nope.
dumb-
ass binary. do you think that’d even
relatively be us, be
you and me?

what’s your favorite cocktail?
and make it the best story you ever
told. nah. let’s instead have the
essentials only. yeah, man, ... – we
really need to do this more often. we need more
stories. more, more, more! give me one, will ya?

mmmmdcviii

More Colours (lv)

wax lips,
i dunno, dick
lacy,
dicks van dyke & patton,

marilu henner,
uh, memory expert?!
sassafrass (from an actual tree),
hot lips houlihan,
romper room,
oompa loompas,
outtasite! dynomite! and
mustaches à la the 1970’s

mmmmdcvii

More Colours (liv)

floodwaters are
on the rise! enough to make
us start to worry alongside the
russian river here in northern california.
-
look as an
empty house crawls down
a lonely hill, drowns in said
flood tide, which, in turn

carries that home away.
lucky for the home, its human inhabitants, or
owners, were away at another ball game.
very lucky indeed.
everyone else (humans, homes, sprawling clover) crawls a little further up the
riverbank. true story.

mmmmdcvi

More Colours (liii)

shalom.
are we on the air?
let’s talk about love. let’s
move our asses on the dancefloor after 4am
o’clock all the way to at least
noon or maybe the next nine pm.

mmmmdcv

More Colours (lii)

pink
is the first color that
zooms into my head upon feasting my eyes on this chip. i’m
zoning
as the kids these days don’t say anymore. a pink, actually, that
zigs (or zags) with purple to form an even more zippy fuchsia.
zoinks! awake now, i think this quite the color.     onward.

mmmmdciv

More Colours (li)

today was tough. it seems of late that
each day gets tougher than the next. in
actuality, however, this month, if things go as planned,

let’s just say that i’ll get to
experience events more positively significant than
any i have in a
very long time. decades, maybe? and i’m not
exaggerating in the least.
so, dear diary, with fingers crossed and mind clean and focused, let’s do this!

mmmmdciii

More Colours (l)

our paint chip named “octopus” is a
cute shade of dark lavender, it appears
to me. a purple that makes me both smile and slightly salivate.
over the years my taste changes, but more than any other color
purple has been my favorite color (sometimes it’s yellow, green, red or orange). i’m
up with excitement in a bit of a jump and manage (with too much regularity) to
slam against the shelf directly next to tHe bed in my tiny apartment. a magenta

       brUise appears on My knee a few short minutes thereAfter. maybe it’s a 

       momeNt to appreciate havIng A Mere 2 legs rather than 8.

mmmmdcii

More Colours (xlix)

wasn’t gonna say it, but
i did.
lesser actions have caused me greater
dilemmas. but we all know i’m a

human dumdum. is that
understated or am i? trick question,
chump. what do i
know, though?
look at me, sitting here most
every night, spilling
buckets full of words. or
else i’m listening to them. semi-content. or
reading them aloud in near darkness (i.e., w/o my glasses)
reed moor pottery!
yep.  (but only if you wanna)

mmmmdci

More Colours (xlviii)

here is
a little story i woke up this morning wanting to tell you, my
love. there was this kid, you see, who
fell out of a tree.
-
actually there are three stories i woke up
needing to relay to you,
dear. the first one is, please know, i’m
-
here. the second one, about that kid falling from
a peach tree nestled amongst three apple trees. that
little boy climbed right back up, never broke any bones, even to this day.
finally, there’s the story about our future.

mmmmdc

More Colours (xlvii)

easier for a ca
mel to
be sliding through the
eye of some needle?
ready, set, run like hell!

mmmmdxcix

More Colours (xlvi)

how bad can this get? is not at
all the kind of question to which we want to be waking up every day,
reeling, pondering with frantic anxiety, dread and, all too often, the
very depths of despair, newly established with
enraging multiplicity. so i learn, or try to, like the ever-
swelling multitudes, inhabitants of this earth, past and present, have done,
the ones who remain, who are able to maintain, to take things in
stride with a dignified fight. no retreat nor flight. remaining prone, yet living our best

      under such duress.

mmmmdxcviii

More Colours (xlv)

said i
was
a bad boy. i lied. awkwardly yours, the
mushy
pushover

mmmmdxcvii

More Colours (xliv)

each day, if i were to pray, i’d say
a prayer for another. sometimes i do that anyway.
really. or how about: on any given
living day, or at least on some, i

go about trying to say as little as possible.
rarely. but
even if this were true....
yesterday...all my troubles caught up with me.

mmmmdxcvi

More Colours (xliii)

at this very moment, right
now, I’m editing poetry
that I wrote years ago, getting
it (nearly 4,600 poems at present) tucked into a
quintessentially narcissistic project that i nevertheless argue holds not exactly the
utmost importance but nevertheless has rather ubiquitous and therefore universal scope.
every angle an be argued, right? well, i’m doing that. presently. i am

likewise, simultaneously (or thereabouts), cleaning my tiny
apartment, making phone calls regarding therapy, taking phone
calls about jobs, applying for jobs, keeping myself hydrated, wondering about dinner. what
else? my mind seems to be wandering all over the place. and so i’m also wondering about
         the impact to each of these various tasks that this multi-tasking has. my conclusion:
         things will be fine. or maybe not. but there are pros and cons to getting one’s work
         done in such a manner. presently and summarily, i am just fine with that.

mmmmdxcv

More Colours (xlii)

to dive wholeheartedly back into television, swim into it. then,
enveloped so, experience again the feeling of losing oneself inside of it, to
reiterate this escape by
reinventing yourself as 

an entirely new

character.
one that somehow relates
to (it’s essential that you watch something of enough substance?)
the people within the show you generally love,
as well as the setting, the environment. keep at this for several seasons (needs strategy).

mmmmdxciv

More Colours (xli)

blissful trills coming from just over that
low hill. and there’s gary, he’s playing a
ukelele that flutters around and twangs against the
effervescent sounds from the
birds who seem to be wending their
individual ways further down the hill. and
right about the time we hit the incline to work our ways up,
daniel’s breathing through his harmonica just to grease the hill-song’s best effects.

mmmmdxciii

More Colours (xl)

bless this day, dear diary. yeah, right. but for crying out loud, how much
lower can he possibly sink us? it so stinks being unable to get off this ride. normally, i’d go
at him and his dastardly crew on social media. but that seems useless. so i’ve taken to
cursing them, and especially him, in my personal diary. i
know, i know, this is public, this is supposed to be poetry.

this is not the poetry
i’d rather be writing. but what are rules in such times. so, for now, most
every morning, i open my journal and i type “what a dick!” and thusly, my day begins.

mmmmdxcii

More Colours (xxxix)

baloney, mister bozo! i’d
rather just keep my mouth shut. how utterly
odd, so very unlike me to so
willfully keep it zipped. but at present,
not taking the bait seems
-exasperatingly, at a minimum-
prudent. so, the
asshole wants to fuck with california?
please! bring it on! oops. it’s
extremely hard being silent while witnessing such
ridiculous bullshit transpiring. but this country, this

place, my home since the summer of love, so long
ago, before i had memory. it’s so depressing living with this
confounding corruption,
knowing how embarrassing and how dangerous and how degrading
a time to live within. i am here alone, my jaw dropping with such
galling regularity. closed off in a box within a box as i watch
everything, my home, my life, my country, slink, sink ever deeper and seemingly slip away.

mmmmdxci

More Colours (xxxviii)

sincerest apologies, but please, please try to
understand that what this past
november’s election results squarely meant to me, resoundingly, was primarily
but one thing that i could not shake no matter how hard i tried. which is that an
unequivocal majority of the population of the country in which i was born and wherein i was
raised and have lived for my thus far entire life
simply would prefer that i did not exist. or certainly not so in
the country that has been my home since birth. and that perhaps those who voted for him
        understand this, much as i’d so like to believe it were not the case.

mmmmdxc

More Colours (xxxvii)

put your money where your mouth
is – that’s a saying i’ve always sort of followed, only
now i am seeing two problems with following that literally. 1. at base this is a capitalist notion;
essentially swerve from having values based on such. 2. words are meaningless without action.

mmmmdlxxxix

More Colours (xxxvi)
                                                  r.i.p. david lynch

severance is a comedy that i am
loving. another television show i’ve been watching is
outer limits (did you know that slow is the color of mustard, apparently?),

which i also really enjoy. comedy. drama. i sit in bed, alone, watching each, one after the other.

mmmmdlxxxviii

More Colours (xxxv)

gosh, i’m so hung over. we got a little bit carried away in
area 51 last night. we were all
revved up to see the space-people that everyone’s been
gabbing about for the past few months. the truth is
out there, remember? well, it is the
year of the apocalypse, as you know. but we got pretty
lucky. and the rumors were true. but it was so crowded i caught almost none of the game. the
earthlings beat the aliens by just a field goal, though. that part was the best.