mccxxvii

I’m afraid of this.

Look I went all the way down.   Did I
win yet?   Who cares about years ago?
Do you think you’re the only
pain in the ass?   Fat chance.

You’d only get more frustrated if I loved you
more.   I can’t even talk to an erection
about you.

You can redeem your frustration point
right here.   Next time get juice that’s
less sensitive.

Depressed today.   Still reading.
A hangover from too much sex.

mccxxvi

You’re a square deal.   When have I ever said
I’ve had a bad year?   Either you’re a blanket liar
or I am.

Or I am.   Which is it?   Did we win yet?
I think this is only the beginning
of our rose-tinted past.

Time’s up fairly optimistic look I want to resolve.
Wait.   Cancel your logout.

I think this is only the pink beginning
of beginnings.   I feel a new year’s
resolution: an evolved torso and a
soak before lunch.

I light up the airplane coming to get me.

mccxxv

Your kiss is such a handful
even when it won’t come;
such a pain in the hand.

Just as painful to realize
mediocrity.

I wanted a guzzle but you shot
your eyes into your egg salad.
And it was pretty much priceless.

Or am I just always
this attitude?

mccxxiv

I’m writing an uncomfortable geek
into my very own living room.   Is it
me?   My eyes are wide with wonder-
ing.

I thought I told you I didn’t want
comfortable.

(There goes my orange juice.)

Write a head full of hair out the
bathroom window.   Is it orange?

Don’t strike a head full of hair
that isn’t the proper match.
Light it up a halo of honor.

Be gentle not cold.   I told you
neither a steady rain nor a hand
full of a kiss.

mccxxiii

Pretense pretense I am not.   Nor
circles in my vast head.   I forgot
what time it was one time
vast head I am not I am not.

The first dead bird was a wild
turkey.   Or so it says here on
this outdated orange bird.

Writing is a time to reflect on
whatever it’s worth.   Pretty
much priceless.   You’re just a
geek who’s trying to make me un-

comfortable in my own living
room.   The room I live.

mccxxii

Meet me in a week.

I’m in detention, give or take.
What else is Christmas but a
lot of dating the needy.   I
think I’ll have a good

meal to frustrate sex;
you must be tired as
hell from tugging at
love.   Me, I’m having

a drink with a popular
corrective.   He obviously
likes me and we’ll be great
friends.   What else is fun

for me?   Grown-ups are
complicated and spending
all this time getting close
will pass, I guess.   But

there’s really no point
unless you’ve got some-
thing to buy.   It’s hysterical,
really.   Mergers are inevitable.

mccxxi

I ribbon my mouth.   How could you
be the hater I mentioned, midnight
kisses rolling around in a tiny bed?
A hater in a bed of lies?   If so, I’m

spoken for, so do me more than you
intend to punch.   Talk about anything but
triumph and the ribald stroke of pessimism
that causes a hummingbird’s callow

heart to skip a beat.   This alerts the
face of time, which shatters when
its best friend, the other humming-
bird, reverses course a fraction

faster than is humming-feasible.
A mouth full of dust just ate the
living room floor, snapping each
breath with a combustible camera.

Each page is welted in the middle (from
the ribbon’s bind) until I’m too chapped to
gag.   I understand each is loaded with GPS
and always able to find me.   So I’m right here,

hater.   It’s pretty clear that you have it good.
But we are never fit for it.   We are not a
pert bird’s lax heart.   We are merely
the lax heart; the triumph of a

tiny bed that shatters a
mouth full of dust.
Think you can
find me now?

mccxx

Down with beautiful.

The guy who just time-warped
has a stunning laugh.   I catch everyone
in jogging shorts.   It was time for hydrangeas.
Brand management includes time warps.

He was a burgundy magnolia.   I caught him
in another life, so I know.   Clementine does
somersaults in the pool and then pets the
potted plants while Carla feeds the horse.

I’m definitely a conversation piece.
Thank goodness not the old man this
rubber ducky forgot.   We all have to be
on something.   Unreliable hair is a moment

in time that is at best experienced by most.   Just
don’t get caught talking.   Two unmussed heads
whispering over a jacuzzi; one cosmopolitan
performing live with a Del Shannon cover band.

The mums are hand over foot with rhyme and there’s
a hiccup in the time-space continuum so we eat a bucket
of chicken for dessert.   Nobody snores.   But you wake up
uncuffed in a broken closet.              Au revoir, Iron Chef!

mccxix

Happy New Year from Harbin Hot Springs!
I’m not awful.   I represent.

Weather forecast in San Francisco on
Thanksgiving Day: Sunny, high 68F,
low 49F.   Are you addicted to
frequent flyer miles?

What a chill we’re in.   Your ice blue eyes
thaw me out.   What a chill to be unliving.

The premise: an erection of pacts; a
hard gourd; candy for the rest of us;
sending it all via fax; causes a
paper jam; grammarian quits.

Are you involved?   Get naked
and soak for about 30 minutes.

Doing yoga?   It’s rainy, yet
pleasant, peaceful.   You’re
gushing like a sloped pool.
Me, I’m down with clocking

a time-warp in a sitz bath full
of potted plants.   Come quickly!

That’s the real deceit.   And
such a marvelous hometown!

mccxviii

Smoke at Dawn

Stop.   Stop.   All I could think last night –
WHOLE NIGHT – is momentous happy
truly liberating loss that is happy me.
Lost inside this unrecognizable night.

Now me down here – going for the
scope of chaos, this relationship
that is me talking myself into
being.   Dating one of his

students.   All I could think
of.   I wonder if I’ll get to
hold his hand when he returns.

mccxvii

She torched his hand.

All the cat’s tits dropped.
I was a boy of five reading
about lepers.

We talked about him for
an hour and a half.
Ebb tide.

This is the best addiction
yet.   Number seventeen.

Hate what’s dwelt upon.
Love the ecstatic
after-effects.

mccxvi

Earthquake happens
last night with Peter.
We sway away.   First
I’ve felt I was there.

Cat opens door with
Laurence, tall guy,
41 years old and
frustrated.   The

rest was just a
text of sevens
I met on Friday
night of the

power outage
when Mezzanine
collapsed.   David
talked and Alex

doted.   I’ve never
in my life ignored
most of the week-
end with Richard.

Philip was there,
too, dealing with
fruit.   Shaping it
into something.

mccxv

The cat stretches, half in the kitchen,
half in the living room.   I stand firm
in the practice of comfort, keep smiling
at it, doing better at it.   Force down a

couple of pickles after an erotic hunch.
My new obsession is Bejeweled Blitz.
This, too, will pass or evolve, like
Southern cuisine or Polk Gulch.

It feels okay but I’m freezing.
He’s lunching out of his socks.

mccxiv

He must have wanted an invitation, but was he hot enough?
All I could think of was Japan or July, while he sat on
top of a solar panel carrying on like Cassandra of the
Oil Reserves.   I’m okay but I’m freezing.

Must.   Find.   Work.   Instead, Barbie finds an
Etch-a-Sketch in Malibu, invites all her friends
over for charades.   I’m the team with all the
foreign cinema loves to rain on the parade.

Not.   Really.   Once ditched, Ken siphons
all the gas out of the convertible.   No harm
done, though.   Prices have leveled off and
Malibu is heaven.   Meet me at the bistro on

the 28th floor?   Then I allow myself to
ease on back into Japan.   In the boudoir at
midnight on Earthquake Day.   And I feel it,
too, all the way up to 32.   So I don my reflective

orange gear and direct everyone toward the duct
tape.   Millions of people are homeless and they
all pick San Francisco.   Maybe I’ll invite you
anyway.   After all, zombies are way sexier

than vampires.   And besides, today I’m a woman for
the very first time.   I’ve an orange wig and an iPhone with
directions to Hell to prove it.   Find me there.   I’m the one in
the hoopskirt uplifting the downfallen with the very best

Giulietta Masina since the goddess herself.   And who’s
got my number?   Well, at these randy depths I’ll take
four and a quarter.   And let’s have it quick as the
circus what sunk, Marcello, before these molten

boobs are soughing in the Styx, reacquainting them-
selves with the smorgasbord of whence and wherever.
Oh I sold my girdle to Barbara Eden.   It was all but
fireproof.   I do wish it weren’t so dark down

here.   But Hell is exotic and I feel native.
Freedom is but an oily whisper*.   Om.


*it can also be a ‘whisker’ or a ‘whimper’

mccxiii

Nice bookshelf.

Turns out I like living in a box.   What’s your
sign, anyway?   Can you shrink without
multi-tasking?   Feels good and verbal,
doesn’t it?   Which is why I like talking.

I think I finally got the crush of it.   But
at bedtime?   Not fair.   And I can’t exactly
cry foul to a can of diet 7-Up, can I?   Or is it
cosmoplitan now, like French socks on the roof

of your mouth?   Quick, take your clothes off, it’s
the brand what sells.   But then you might cry wolf
and smell a rat.   Which is the exact opposite of
appetite.   It’s not just sadness rules the air-

waves, right?   That’s so neo-moronic.
Then he says something about how I’m a
bit too intense.   Don’t crush it, Mister, I like
life.   (I keep smiling at that, wondering what the

big deal is.)   The sex in my mouth remains un-
pressed, which is okay, I guess.   That’s why we go to
school for the future.   It’s only human.   If I actually had
the spare time to simply impress I’d come a whole lot more.

mccxii

My balls are a little nicer than yours,
but for a group invitation, I’d take a
worm to the head.   Casters can’t be
castinets, after all.

People die in their 40s.
That’s old, huh?

I won’t be quite so distant.   Mean-
time, you keep saying that.   Means
you’re currently not working; just a
figment of culture.   Or even couture.
I lie in a big box like a grilled cheese
sandwich.

We had dinner.
Turns out we often do.

After therapy I go on a date with a
guy who has a boyfriend.   He kisses
Tic Tacs into my mouth.   My ears ring
for days but I won’t be sad.   It’s why
I like living in a democracy.

mccxi

“What’s news?”   “Oh, I’m just
waiting to meet your mother.”   “We
went to bed around Two.”   “I’ll bet
that was a vociferous ejaculation.”

It being 12:30am, I warm to that.   Who needs
sex to stress you out?   But Royal Bitchy is
no hater.   [Attempts cold & distant.]   Let’s
go for a change of subject.   Are you tipsy?

If so, let’s cam.   In fact, I’d gotten off
with someone just snuggling.   I scored
but I could have been used.   I arrive
and walks me into the darkness,

says his friend is meeting us to
take us to his place.   “Where does he
live,” I ask.   He shakes his finger out
and writes an “O” into the stars with it.

“Somewhere around here,” he says.
Guess what WeightWatchers has
stolen from me.   Zelda from the
night sky.   I’ve still got the key.

Is that the first of your classmates
to go?   Odd seeing that he was 36.
Is that how old I am?   I think I’m
just over seven weeks now.

“A word of advice?”   “About
reducing portions down to within
reason?”   “No.   Quite simple.   Don’t
fall in love with a Simon.”