mlxxx
I’d like a detailed justification of
your moral principles, in writing,
and without being quite so...
impactful?
Are you in a fuel mood?
Do you find yourself unable
to deactivate your blow-dryer?
Fresh from the dock
only one passenger
is blinded by
democracy.
You say “I’m about to explode.”
She’s my relation in that
she’s the sister of my mother.
That’s when he brought it all together
with his fantastic, guilt-free closing statement
(and all of the suicide bombers
reversed courses, recanted, and
henceforth went about their
various businesses with
reinvigorated obliquity).
mlxxix
Is Bruce in today? Or is today utterly
exhausted of Bruce? It’s probably
mostly ecstasy. Fuck it doesn’t feel
right. We had a long conversation.
A first after a whole year. A first
conversation. I can’t write any
more. Two lip variousness.
Smoking feelings. Hanging
off the edge of a cliff, best
mood in months—crescendos
for weeks into Kleenex. Mom’s
in New Mexico under something
aluminum. A rat attack. They’re
all appropriate with disappoint-
ment. The fawn left
the family feast.
mlxxviii
A wrinkled bruise on the back of my hand.
Office babies. What a strange verve you
have. Laughing in the face of deformity.
Bats on sleep. You can see the noise in
New York City (Edna St. Vincent Millay’s
observation on her first time there). Hello,
Sprig. I’m decidedly stuffed and wobbly of
mind. Be right back. Gonna go let out some
hot air. Blame it on the weekend Earth took.
mlxxvii
Unsafe for passage. Erin says she might.
In shorts. Lots of pies. Bliss of boredom.
Retreat from Milo, Eli, and Joe! Just
keep leaving one spam pie open. Plus
some very disturbing things at the
Central YMCA. Is blatant so bad?
What’s changed? Personal econ-
omics? Blah. I’m supposed to
dance and party. Tweak birth-
day corsage. Dock the boat.
Let the birds do their thing.
Gas from air, which not
eating will do for you.
mlxxvi
Are my endings too pat?How lovely to encounter a hard-
earned favorite, weave giddily through
lines with comfort, warmth, and the
occasional yet always unexpected
prickle of something like impending
sex with a stranger. Imagine when
less than a decade ago I’m (time spun
raggedly in all directions) fistfuls of
hair poring over each page,
What
in the hell is he saying? Paid
in Full, where have I come,
what have I come to? 4 miles
on Tuesday, which was a
yesterday? Racquetball
with Fermin, 3 and a half
games (but he’s getting
better, damn!) and cranky?
I’m short-tempered, sure,
over my clumsiness last
Saturday night. Over
my feelings, sudden-
ly. Or just thinking
about them.
“You think
too much!” he
always says.
Oh, for a month
of holidays, some-
thing casual in the
air, a new and unfam-
iliar book of nonchalant
phantasies: correspondences
extricated from the ether (ahover
between here & there), whipped up
and whisked (in no necessary order)
into skillet-sized breakfasts.
Unequivocal. Telepathic.
Banter. Notwithstanding.
mlxxv
Poem! This is so interesting,
But is it real? —Bill Berkson
Indecipherable bit w/phrases
that suggest – well – I don’t
know. OK. But the last line
is “I wanna see u....” OK?
Now I’m floundering on a
treadmill and the router’s in
stitches over some flaming
mouses. Who had an affair
with Rae? Slide lubricant
over warm link, say what
is not a What, insert
Sex
and the City, Season Four.
Sex? Check. Afternoon?
Check. Peaceful, calm,
and even hot (sex, all the
way to
Season Six). He’s
laid back, low-key, and
I’m really foolin’ for him,
fallin’ asleep. I – well –
I – indecipherable – bit.
mlxxiv
Oh gosh okay you are unknown to me,
poem. My lunch spot at the end of a
disaster. In Oregon. An inability to
tumble into nonsense. Blue pipe
diapers. The General Assembly
is NOT your boyfriend. Clumsy
sex that always works. One
suave back-em-up after another
(watch each get replaced and
suavely). Go to hell, no-brainer.
It wasn’t really that clumsy.
Yardwork in the outbin.
Pucker up, inbox, the
Bradys are about to
chase us up one
end of the Pacific
and down the
other.
mlxxiii
I do accept this pie of pink & un-
pink, this barren votive reservoir.
I texted him my knees and fell
facedown in seagulls. It’s today.
Dinner more often than not is a
short-bed of loneliness, another
dirty martini with blue umbrella,
this decade that’s all all but been
formally dubbed Razor. I said
I wanted to crawl back into you,
Razor, alongside the corner of
Pine and Razor. Never having
once pled
cramped! within this
selfsame jagged cloud of socks
that (fortnightly) pelts its rude
sandstorm of violent nostalgia,
bruises the tops of my hands
with aluminum needles. Razor’s
reply: ageless laughter. Starts
with globs of sour sonnet dust
which, when deeply-coughed,
are flung taut from the tongue
to form hexagrams of laden spit
that fry unpinkly on these once-
pink walls, leave us each as
dizzy as hunkered-out porks
crying
uncle! over a
pink-bellied pi.
mlxxii
Ew, straight night at Trigger.
Not sure what’s mildewed
(maybe a cloud?). What yet
dies while the author doesn’t,
zaps lightning into pools
of smoke we then gather
into DVD boxes (yet again
before Netflix)? And
humidly. Oh, that we’ll
kiss like this always, Azadi
Tower swooping behind
fuzzy yellow petals (amid
which our faces act as
miniature television sets)!
Go! Go, like a fashionable
thief, or a gleaming orange
atop spundrift haystacks!
The ones us bent pumpkins
can never quite undance.
mlxxi
Stackable hay makes haystacks.Hooray, I’m European; I made
tempura and it turned out great!
Milo shows up at midnight to
control me. His birthstone
must be opal or hematite, I
forget which, what with
four to choose from. Face-
book birthdays are ubiquitous
or ominous or piling up like
barn hay. I’ve got mine,
too; it’s half the problem
(half again of which is 21,
bridging the gap to all these
old new friends piling up
like turtle-clumps). Are
forgotten cousins best left
so? I don’t know. Makes
my head hurt just to think.
Click network and Asia’s
perfect badass on webcam
sounds more like honing the
horde down to a manage-
able, palatable few. Get it
up just to lay it back down
or dip it in grease, de-
pending on the region.
Mine is hot to the touch and
eats like a carrot to a horse,
just ask Italia. The best-laid
plans never lie like dead fish.
mlxx
Turn Off the Angel (Part 2)It’s beautiful to stay up all night,
something brightening through
the image of the ceiling lamp
upon the window. Bluest heart
of burning brush, best not get
too close, blue is always the
hottest. Adjust laptop to best
angle. Nothing’s perfect, but
the halo over your serious
look seems like the right
size. Drink it with a glass
of water after double-clicking
the public folder. Right up the
ass is the best place to insert
the golden flames that shoot
from your tongue. Or so you
do tease. Drink more water
with your cookie, pumpkin.
Such cookie as I’ve never
tasted, and won’t yet tonight,
as fantasy only reaches only
so far. Stack my heart on a
dozen trumpets bent and
twisted to hell and back to
form a kind of brass barricade,
something the internet can’t
resemble, but—like this junk-
heap—hot with Gabriel’s
throbbing tongue, a reveille
and taps blown into one.
mlxix
It’s windy in this
house full of love.
Last night happened
eerily fast, Tim’s last
swap on his way to
Canada by way of
David’s Deli with
Cassie, Jen & Steph,
cheese blintzes, and
fries. We try to
dream up snow
but it comes out
milk. Yet we fill
with loss and soon
enough iPhones,
miniature washing
mashines filled with
tiny bones set on spin
cycle. The doughy
walls wobble as if
dancing with the
silt on the blinds,
a dance for 500
friends who never
call. We eat our
words, eat each
others’ ghosts,
we’re dancing
cannibals in love,
hungers sated
with nostalgia:
dirty laundry
and dead cats,
fifty dollar book-
ends, be they
orange or red,
cock or lion,
damaged in the
fire or locked
away inside a
glass heart that
whistles twice
before it shatters.
mlxviii
I brought flowers for the Chinese milk bottles
and one white rose with red edges just for you.
Six pages of blank is all it took. Emotion
only comes from the television or the cinema.
Family is as cold as turtles until you turn on the
lights, make me know it’s you and not somebody
I can’t advise. That proves that relation is
remarkable. And that there’s nothing weaker
than nonsense. Anyway, get a grip. Or learn
from the fruit you grip so carefully only to
fold into the crisper until it spoils. Then I
bag it all up into the garbage. Love is like
that, white around the outside, orange and
blue on the inside, always radiating
elsewhere until an asteroid gets too
close to your home planet, or the
milk spoils in China. Go ahead, though,
get seriously burned. But not before being
groped and slapped in the ass, seeing him
hard beneath his box-cut swimtrunks.
It’s a warm experience, certainly a bit
like emotion. But it’s neither television
nor cinema.
Thank you for your passion, your
compassion, the aloe vera gel, and
the Truffaut. All proof that I yawn at
everything until it happens, only to
dream about it when reminded over
tea and the drone of dual hard-drives.
This dream, by the way, is all
emotion. It’s warm like a
distant wave from Federico
Fellini and hard like the bland
smile of Johan Paulik. I yawn.
I grope. I slap. I happen. I love.
I cry at movies and television,
never elsewise. I milk. I China.
I prove I ass. The ass of dual
hard-drives, no less, and the
love of box-cut swimtrunks and
cinematic ocean.
What is the proof that I felt something
when I dreamt of Johan and Federico?
With certainty, a bit like emotion.
mlxvii
an inspired ouchKeeping the day as
long as possible,
totally cruising.
Ocean tattoo,
cartoon pelvis;
cartoon on pelvis
lives near the ocean.
Take me to the ocean
as long as all pelvises
are possible. Concen-
trate on Guston. Got it,
no more ocean. Pick
conch from bookshelf,
conk head with it.
Then ponder depth
of ocean off coast,
big gay Mexican
cruise.
mlxvi
orange—a real courting color —Jack Spicer
More ice cream, please. It was
childish, though, and kept me
from having as good of a time
as I could have. Because I
was actually disappointed
not to get more boot camp.
You’re stealing children’s
words right from their mouths.
What a scepter you have!
I’d take it in the mouth, too,
let it remove from me
every word I’m prone
to utter tonight. Maybe
love is like that forever.
Is a blank mind better
than a blank tongue?
Eloquence can pursue
nonetheless, the ghosts
of salted weekends ooze
from the pores of only
the most fuckable faces.
Which is lovely, mind you.
We should do this and that
more often, even though it’s
hell today. Why even men-
tion it, this punctured skull,
another long-forgotten
experimental novel?
mlxv
When I think about him he is perfect.
I love the coffee table, so I dance on
it, 7:00 to 7:45am. Was I ever so high
dancing the Charleston to Shakesepeare
in college? Or spread over a mound of
clover like an X looking for one with
four leaves? Without a doubt! Most
absolutely! And my timing could not
be better. The hourglass turns green,
digital cameras flash like missiles.
It’s a war to undo all evil spread-
ing like wildfire over the city.
(He wants me like
Custer at Little Bighorn,
their quivering hearts askew,
dapper as all get-out
on a Tuesday evening.)
an orange is an ovalScene two,
look out the window
at the morning dove
mourning the
crack of dawn.
It’s as hot as I am.
mlxiv
Destination summer, like a
race with spunky Nico to the
crossroads. Blowing my nose
on the toilet of an evening.
This vocabulary of sundials
over tea spills into the skunk-
water of afternoon. Still
just trying to take it easy,
not giving too much
thought. Being careful
of spinning crossroads.
mlxiii
The fog in my head has a hole in it,
all orange, looking fabulous against
the blue. Trying more for the red
page, thirsty for enlightenment, I
listen to the siren, guess which
street, feel the intensity or
the exaggeration as it cuts
intersections, piercing yet
more holes through the fog.
which is like making a sentenceThe sun makes me dizzy so I
drink lots of water, lie in the
middle of Market and dream
about tanks. War is making
me horny, so I get up before
a taxi runs me over. He
offers me a ride free
of charge, slicing
the soup of night
in two.
mlxii
Some sweet massage. Must be running
out of ideas. Beetle Gully and Bugle
Glitter, each with forlorn syntax,
are pretty much already looking
forward to a 3-day weekend with
Broken Blossoms and bootie pasta
(light pesto sauce topped with stir-
fried Mandarin and Cantonese).
After the break-up affix bumper-
sticker (“Astronauts Give Good
Head”) and then a little more
nonsense with Nick (research
for secret blogging experiment).
Mix well, add water, let sit until
morning, then grate sparingly
over lumpy oatmeal. Because
meat is murder, right?
mlxi
Ted Koppel’s got mustard on his lip
and the new neighbor’s drilling holes
into the wall. Please take this blue
dolphin to the 50th birthday party
and tell Beautiful Face that I can’t
get out of the bathroom. BF’s a bit
hairy, shy, talky and effeminate
so I bow out as often as I can
and it usually goes very well
with the blood-dipped roses.
Oops, I almost slipped and fell
into the toilet, which might’ve
broken your neck. That’s
the news from the salt mine
with your hand down my pants.
mlx
Was I writing so quickly so that
I could arrive from red to blue?
I must be OK. What a relief I
don’t look fucked up (note to
self about the spoon around
his neck). How come I spend
so much time trying to convince
people that friends are perfect?
Who wants to sleep with a stranger?
Go look up skull-fucking and
tell me what you find.
mlix
It was a leaky pierce. I emptied
a tiny Visine bottle and blissfully
siphoned as much of the sweat as I
could off the floor, squoze the sweat
into the bottle without losing even
the tiniest drop. We still don’t
have a microphone.
mlviii
May is the best month to
climb Mt. Fuji. What’s
interesting is never the truth,
especially when one’s fantasy
is realized. Glad to hear that
life can punch you in the nose
every once in a while. One
wouldn’t be the least bit
intrigued with it. I’m
making a grand assumption
about your tattoo as it melts,
oily drips that stagger down
the small of your back and
pool up into my belly button.
mlvii
BTW you type using bananas —K. Silem Mohammad
Reading along you think he was
never really on location there’s
nothing personal on this page.
Oh, wait, but I was there and
kissed you on the mouth
after you bit off your
eraser.
mlvi
Into my mouth a kind of oblong
secret. Trade joy with elation,
flummoxed by the hopeless
giddy drive to remain alive.
All night long and into the
next day this overwhelming
write it down in case I forget.
Every detail to the touch.
Tight shaved mouth are you
really who you are? I can’t
tell this moment. Only this
moment let’s not go back to
is it good enough for every
day. That prison I claim
to have broken out of in
order to become alive.
mlv
Dancing on love really stomping it into the
ground. It’s not another lazy dance. Din of
the bathroom stall, fiercely and for all history
overwhelms its magic mirror twenty years ago,
some kind of crazy heaven in my ears. For
better or worse, I’ll throw it away before therapy
(like eggtoss & tug of war). Having a senseless
crush on him for years, this isn’t going to be a
minor disturbance. It was even better than
anything that’s crept into my prolific
fantasies and wallops my first attempt
at power-dating into insignificance.
mliv
A Huge Clam Tree (And Inevitably, An Ocean)
(Chiefly Non-Satyrs)Build one eponymously.
mliii
You’re such a nimrod Mr. Verbs-Aren’t-
Usually-Funny! (Especially when they’re
semi-contractions.) Humor never had it
so good (without words).
Take that, Arm & Hammer!
mlii
“My finger keeps wanting to go inside of my
nose what should I do?” “You’re making fun
of my poetry by mocking me showing me
how I never say anything at all aren’t you?”
“You didn’t use Google at all for this one
did you?” Clarity is the archnemesis
of Triumph.
mli
“Jack of All Bats, are you tired
of being tired?” An accomplished
sense of humor and pilgrimages
to Fallingwater. Therapy Session
Number Four. He just turned 19.
The jasmine tea is good, but a
bit too hot, and my appointment
is in 18 minutes. “Are you sure
it’s not a grasshopper with a
little piece of dandelion fluff
stuck in its eye?” Lonely
is relative.
ml
To sponge is to bludge. In which
OMG has no oomph, becomes
flat like West Texas. In bed
with a coin, the thunderstorm
makes air out of air and we
breathe sex into sleep faster.
Bludgeon the coins spun
from sponges.
