mmmmdlxxxii

More Colours (xxix)

if i were to
reverse course somehow. that’s
offal.
no no no. how to forget this day while

gearing up for something
altogether new, special. some way
to refresh the soul and
energize the spirit. is this all i ever attempt to do?

mmmmdlxxxi

More Colours (xxviii)

i don’t like feeling down. depressed.
let’s say love. let’s say
loverboy. whatever.
ugh. listen to
me. hey!
i’m right here.
nobody likes being down,
all in love with what,
the end of the world? let’s
invent something new. regenerate
ourselves into an idealistic
notch. no cliffs. no burial.

mmmmdlxxx

More Colours (xxvii)

prithee,
love, but i do
yearn for thy
mouth to be
outright
unreservedly upon mine own. further
to that, with fiery desire, to
have your heart o’er mine would send it

ricocheting within until the very
organs housed inside my feverish
carapace were bruised and broiled like mutton, a stew-
kettle of which would sear an entire colony inside out with a rabid covetous thirst.

mmmmdlxxix

More Colours (xxvi)

pretty,
our
love
lies languorously of an
evening. but during the
night turns us into giddy demons, quivering and hungrily asynchronous.

mmmmdlxxviii

More Colours (xxv)

ideally, there would have been a ton more
resumes going
out from me this week. but there were
not that many that did. all that i will add to that is that i blame the rodents.

mmmmdlxxvii

More Colours (xxiv)

how might

i best really

go for the gusto, make your

heart skip a beat or else

list a bit to one side or the other—

i’m thinking now that that sounds a bit mean. i

guess what i’m trying to say is i do try to

have an effect of some sort. whether

that means to jiggle a tickle bone or two so as to

elicit a chorus of sincere belly laughs, maybe at something silly, or to

really get in your head and have it grind on something of import. or both.

mmmmdlxxvi

More Colours (xxiii)

del (flutter!)
ray is my name.
anachronizms are my
game. to you, i suppose that might be
obvious. poetry isn’t obvious (that’s silly to say) (& for that matter,
nor is it a game). 6 lines in & i’ve given you statements that are either obvious or
flat-out false. what should a poem (or i) rather do (or say)? find something you
love and just keep doing it. that’s something.  & also, be
yourself. learn to discern the obvious. distinguish the truth from what’s not. (& fly!)

mmmmdlxxv

More Colours (xxii)

please tell the sommelier that
i’d like another bottle of that delicious pinot
noir. i don’t consider myself much of an
oenophile...i mean, don’t get me wrong, i love wine...but i have neither
the taste buds

nor the memory to be such a connoisseur. but given what a pleasure being
out with you has been this evening,
i’ll take anything i can get to jiggle these clumsy synapses just so i maximize my
remembrance of as many specifics of this fine evening as this dim noggin can hold.

mmmmdlxxiv

More Colours (xxi)

today, on this subject, i’d like to focus on the
healing power of this genre of american music, not the part where we languish
excessively in the sorrowful, sometimes grief-striken or inconsolable aspects woven into the

blues, generally speaking, but more on the complexity, the divine and the sublime aspects
leading one out of those more down-trodden stereotypes of the genre itself toward catharsis.

under the spell of the blues, one, to put it simply, when the
experience is as it can be, when one wants an escape from the morbidity of depression, one

soars through the maudlin, up and up, near heaven or near enough nirvana that one feels,
         perhaps, quite literally as if one might burst. not of sorrow, but of joy. to do so, one
         must really experience the depths, and then settle in, receptive, ready, for some
         soul-sculpting, life-altering blues.

mmmmdlxxiii

More Colours (xx)

don’t you just love these paint chips? they are so
eccentric. i’d never
even heard of a deep-sea vent before, and rather than
problematizing things by looking up what exactly one is, the hyphenated part of this so
-called word makes it pretty
simple for me to imagine the color itself, some sort of 19th century
elementary school chalkboard hue that, i want to imagine has some sort of
a

very slight glow. dark and
eerie for sure, but something maybe comfort to someone who has
not until arriving at said vent decided for certain
that the impending suicide he feels necessary can now be planned with conviction.

mmmmdlxxii

More Colours (xix)

personally,
i’d rather
not talk about all of the
stress, all of the

anxiety that is swirling around within me right
now. it’s enough to make me
dizzy (and i’m already a ditz) and i really

need the
energy and focus to get a lot of things done. and all of it
enthusiastically. so what am i
doing? mostly just
lying here with my
eyes closed on the verge of
sleeping. because i’ve less anxiety when i’m asleep.

mmmmdlxxi

More Colours (xviii)

i will not tell you
now how

your eyes
often make my heart flutter. that, as if
under some sort of a spell—and they’re impossible to
resist when they are in front of me—my

entire body, beginning with the area of my heart until i am engulfed, invigorated
yet weakened to a point where my body is, in
essence, nothing but sheer potential, vibrant,
so ready for flight that for the rest of the day and into my dreams, i am soaring.

mmmmdlxx

More Colours (xvii)

underwear-
loving
twenty- and thirty-somethings these days seem to really
revel in their undies fetishes within public
arenas (w/easy ogling access: social media, leather fests, underwear parties)—they’re
very
into these eye-popping skimpy skivvies,
often discovered with no backside—
let’s call those brilliantine jockstraps—wow—sometimes i, myself, get so
enthusiastic about this craze that this fifty-something wants
to form an alliance with those exhibiting hotties...but then think better of it.

mmmmdlxix

More Colours (xvi)

gosh! as i read more of these to you, i am
realizing how
anxiety-ridden they are. or this bunch
seems to be. certainly are.
so i get lost in thought wondering what to do about

such a
tedious epiphany. maybe this is less of
an aha! moment than
it is a
nincompoop one.

mmmmdlxviii

More Colours (xv)

recently, i’ve been working tenaciously to try to
understand what people mean when they say
be
yourself.

sometimes i
lie. i suppose i do this quite a bit,
i do, just as i’m confident most
people that aren’t me do, as well. also, i’m a
perfectionist.
essentially this tiny truth is
revealing only when i add that one significant reason i am
still writing these daily poems is they’re an easy exercise to force out a few
public.       #maintaintinghumility

mmmmdlxvii

More Colours (xiii)

twenty-five years, or almost, it’s been that
i have resided in
california. these have included my best times and the most
kick-in-the-nuts hard times that this
lovestruck loser has
ever encountered. so i endure. this mixed bag
does not mean that my general

positive outlook and the love of my state and city have diminished. but
i might should say that it has certainly evolved. i do hope i don’t come across as a
negative nancy, countering what i have laid out in the lines above. if i do, that
knowledge would rip at my very foundation, for i’ve too much to do and i’m
                    giddy as can be to get it all done.

mmmmdlxvi

More Colours (xiv)

vilifying an
individual, for whatever reason or reasons, does
not necessarily or even usually
take care of
any of the alleged problem(s), does it? but is it strictly not a
good idea to do so? i mean how might we best
eradicate

the
underlying problems posed by any of these
rascals, wherever they happen to fall on the
quite
unavailable (but nevertheless can we get one?) scallywag scale?
oh, i don’t know. but at some point, people like me, at least, must
ignore them for a
stretch, if for no other reason than to refresh, to
energize enough that we go back at them with clearer focus and renewed vigor.

mmmmdlxv

More Colours (xii)

be well, on this, the 82nd anniversary of my dad’s birth,
ripped from the world too soon, as they say and, please
understand, i
say it, too. were he still around, i wonder what
he would think of his weirdo son now. pay attention long
enough to anyone and you’ll begin to
detect their flaws. even the charming idiosyncrasies might be

adequate enough to lead to a downfall, a crisis that
looms largest in the overall trajectory of a life.
understandably, these
may also lead the victim of these faults to
inevitable betterment, but
no matter whether it’s from the outside looking
upon or literally experiencing it in person, odds are that
many of these self-defeating characteristics can be chalked up to genetics.

mmmmdlxiv

More Colours (xi)

he’d tell the story
every time the extended family held
a gathering of any kind. he’d been a
rowdy kid. and a sleepwalker. he’d work from sun-up
to sundown at the ranch that was
handed down from his grandpa to his dad, and it was expected that
soon it would be his, being a full-fledged
teenager now. and while of course that was a fate worse than death,
one night he dreamt he was in hell’s belly and he was furious to escape. the
next morning he awoke on the grass just a few feet away from the
embers of the home in which he’d lived his entire life. up until then.

mmmmdlxiii

More Colours (x)

the story of christmas
it now seems clear to
me, has been, will always
be, a story of fallen trees. and power. take, for
example, i mean, surely you know the name if not the purported reputation,
remember that no matter how dear that good king

wenceslas may have been, he was
out of his realm, to put it poignantly. and he was never anything but a
lumberjack. actually, the ones i knew should have, could have toppled the old
fart. and they’d have done so with ease, precision and grace.

mmmmdlxii

More Colours (ix)

 quietly, we played our parts
 under the broiling sky. when
 asked what we were doing, we’d make
 rather vague motions with our heads.
“redecorating,” one of us replied. we each cradled a baby
 yew, the roots faintly moist, so delicately that neither of us broke a sweat.

mmmmdlxi

More Colours (viii)

                 And then the crunch. Luncheon is served.
                                                —Bill Berkson

can we just not with the bang?
only i heard the anecdote more than once, or
not. at least in my imagination, where wires are incessantly
crossed (something to do with my name, for a buck).
really, can we not, if i say this is more a demand than an
entreaty? regionally, we crossed paths in bolinas. not.
to thunderous applause, several times a day, he enters and
exits. in other words, i only exist. here, take this chunk of mirror.

mmmmdlx

More Colours (vii)

boyfriends are not what i’m supposed to be talking about this go-round, rather
extolling a subject at hand, or creating more fictive fun narratives. keeping it
frivolous and relevant, in
other words. to basically
reiterate in a straightforward manner, the device of this
era of acronymic poems based on the plethora of color chips i have left is

thus far trending less romantic, less thematic, more one-offs based on the
here and now. or whatever it is that this (may i just say, my, rather than boring,
eccentric brain concocts the moment i sit to write one. These seem more

relaxing, a way to wind down, but it is an
almost an impossible task not to bring the hero up now and again. (
in this one, for example, he floated me $90 so my bills don’t bounce. in a pinch.)
night falls. it’s nearly christmas. if this one’s a bit flimsy is it a good or bad thing?*

*if one has to clarify something within the explanation of a series segment’s
  schtick, wouldn’t the easy response be “his roundabout way of saying what
  he’s currently writing about in one of his series sections with the larger pro
  ject, i mean, having to include a footnote, especially, but yet still different
  iating fairly specifically between two seemingly similar series-within-the-
  projects seems such a confusing meta, i have no idea what to call it, a
  clueing in the readers, should there be any, ever, of what is transpiring 

  might just be a way to create a life that isn’t there. does this, then,
  eradicate or further allow it to remain stuck in his subconscious so as to
  not really talk about anything? but i dare you to suggest i talk about
  nothing. in general. i didn’t say it was relevant. i just argue it isn’t
  nothing. that this might be a life that is worth recounting in some way
  presently and/or in the future, should, again, one choose to read any of
  this. many authors might call these particular meanderings juvenile. in
  general. in the way they are presently presented. go ahead. you may if
  you want. preferably, to my face. the joy that would bring, as i imagine
  it, is no doubt exponentially less than that which would be true were it to
  actually happen.

mmmmdlix

More Colours (vi)

     ...but who wants to hear about my identity?
     I see two hands raised in the back row.
                                                                         —Ronald Palmer

see dick rethink language in everything they take in (
money might be everything): every song by Dire Straits, every
opera, even the ones they wrote that master’s thesis about, every film. all
knowledge somehow just stops and gets rewritten. but seriously? they’re
elder, this has to be something like dementia, like

alzheimer’s, but with such mind
numbing speed it’s more like, say, a stroke?
dick’s worst possible scenario is feeling like

a stupid idiot, slipping toward the median, if not lower.
suddenly, there are no apologies for how they were raised.
hegemony! dick’s brain-blown by the ramifications of evolving. and at this hour!?

mmmmdlviii

More Colours (v)

are the embers
faint or are
the
embers still that bright
reddish-orange?

take some comfort in the
heat, of course.
embers are deadly, yes, they are

fire in one of its more resonant forms.
i’d say mediocre,
rather, but one must present a template of
example for whether we want to be pyro or protector.

mmmmdlvii

More Colours (iv)

now i wonder about quality. about
improvement with age. i’ve
gone through a few sets of these.
how for well over
twenty years i’ve been working on this

one project. a project
which, each night, i
lean further into, linger upon, wondering about the ridiculous.

mmmmdlvi

More Colours (iii)

i know what i think sometimes. the revolution,
now, almost at its nexus. it’s the most

terrible thing to be lying on the floor. to
hear with your very own
ears how

disgusting those without paychecks
are. while the
rich
keep getting richer.

mmmmdlv

More Colours (ii)

 energized by the mood of the family gathering,
 lawrence felt it was finally time to push the
 envelope and spill the beans about the entire
 prickly subject he’d been unable to bring up thus far.
“hey,” he’d stood up and started walking
 around as the rest of the family were interacting with each other,
 not paying attention in the least. realizing this, lawrence’s head spun, he was 

 teetering toward a breakdown as his uncle lay unconscious in the basement.

mmmmdliv

More Colours (i)

“ready, set, go!”
  ally thinks to herself before picking up her
  iphone. she dials. they’re waiting for her. she
  nods and begins to
  sell her experience.
  this goes
  on for about an hour. the next morning, she’s
“ready, set, go!”
  maybe. but, also, maybe not.

mmmmdliii

Do It Again

I said I was going to do
something else, so tired
I was of doing the same
thing over and over. Well,

here I am again in typical
repetitive mode. I wonder
how often I’ve said this very
same thing with completely

different words. I imagine
I’ve performed the selfsame
function utilizing alternative
choreography. As I lose cog

nizance, I wonder if tomorrow’s
sentient creatures already exist.

mmmmdlii

Identity

As a kid, I’d hope so desperately for preppy,
well aware that I didn’t have what it took:
money. There’d be ways to get away with it,
as I would find out inevitably. I never wanted

to be normal, though, or plain, and sought to
confuse the look with something off-kilter.
Which had me at times come across a bit
Elvis-y. Which was cool. Then uncool.

Before it got cool again, I hung out with goth
kids, wanting not to look like them, but instead
to sponge a bit of that punk attitude. Did anyone
notice? There were also the tattoo boys with their

ears and noses pierced. I so wanted ink or just one
hole, but portrayal is pretense and I’d be no wannabe.

mmmmdli

Some Partial Responses

Sometimes throwing up is not
not part of the answer. Listen
to Holding Out for a Hero (the
best part is when the guns

start going off toward the end
of the video) and once you are
thoroughly grossed out allow
the behind the scenes version

of the video of Bonnie Tyler’s
Total Eclipse of the Heart to
randomly play next. That’ll
really get your day going. Re

fuse to attend any funerals.
Celebrate life and the lives of
those lost alone while watching
the tide roll in and then roll out.

mmmmdl

Unprecedented

One might say without hyperbole
that each morning we manage to
wake up to begin another day, much
if not most—or, really, all of what

is experienced each hour of that
couple dozen hours, should we
make it through, is unprecedented.
As we cross the threshold of any
new moment we’re going through

something so unique it has not been
done before. There is such meaning,
poignancy we can take from each.
This routine can take on a normalcy,

in that it is so familiar, so constant.
And then, holy shit!, there was today.

mmmmdxlix

Diary Entry – No Way to Encapsulate via this Writing Method
(Hence, I Keep Writing The Whiplash Sonnets)

My step-father, Rick, unexpectedly died a week ago.
I didn’t go to the funeral, which was Monday, in Arkansas,
of course. There are so many reasons for this not going,
some I’d rather not list here now, but mainly I cannot afford

to. So, same as usual, the successful smarty-pants now can’t
even be at the funeral of his mother’s husband, so I make it about
me, about my insecurities. Sure, things are tough for me, too,
at the moment, with too many things I have to take care of here in

San Francisco. But now I worry about what’s going to happen with
Mom now that Rick is gone; Mom, who’s been ailing for decades,
cannot get around on her own, and Rick worked full time plus, so
that the bills were payed and he could help her around. Mom has

relatives who help, which gives comfort but does not rid the guilt.

A sonnet can’t tell this story well or at length so I keep them going.

mmmmdxlviii

Is What I’m Doing Whiplash?
What I’m Doing Causes Whiplash.
What Was I Doing? It Gave Me Whiplash.

When stuck inside a labyrinth, turn
what takes you over into nonsense—
one way out is via laughter. But laughter
is unpredictable and impossible to

elicit (without bias) predictably. Who
sees eye-to-eye? The vectors between
each of us always evolve and slope.
And with such shifting gradients, any

attempt at locking eyes with yours
gives my eyes spasms, causes gnarly
head[aches]trauma. So then what, be
elitist? Submit? Absolutely! Scrape

those bloody knees and elbows clean!
(I’m not quite sure if I am even joking.)

mmmmdxlvii

The Whiplash Sonnets

I feel ill-equipped to explain
what I’m doing here. Even and
especially if I had no constraints
whatsoever I would not feel com

fortable it would take forever and
in the end I’m pretty sure I’d be
saying nothing. While initially I
meant how these sonnets are

particular, different, specific, even

though I sonnet a lot. I do what I 

call sonnets, have made so many. 

But now I could be talking about

the whole thing, the entire project. 

Do I mean academically? Legitimacy.

mmmmdxlvi

Whiplash (part 2)

Exploring the possibility that I’m meta
phorically that I’m in a matter of speaking
(writing) expressing academic insecurity with
regard to what I do most every day and have

for over thirty years (splaying words as purported
lyrics) (and publicly) and versus (verses, ha!) (of
those lines stacked in totality) how many of them,
per page (let’s say virtually or otherwise) (no, let’s

not, that’d be aging myself) (I give too much away) 

are sonnets; and, well, what I infer if not with seem
ing confidence present as sonnets. Because, and,
yes. I have two academic degrees (while I dare not

speak for anyone else?) in disciplines one might call
poetry-adjacent. The impossibility of encapsulation.

mmmmdxlv

4:30am

Is this kind of positive energy
generational because I really
need it not to be I need it to
be more like evolution skips

a generation more like a rev
olution or something? His mind
is racing too fast and he knows
this he always knows this his

psychiatrist calls this pressured
speech only he’s not speaking to
anyone but himself in his head walk
ing home late yet again no so quiet so

dark sweaty gorgeous early from the
party his abso-favorite time of morning.

mmmmdxliv

Political Farts

How does the word crazy
fit into your vocabulary.
When Jerry married Mr.
Nomenclature, she had no

idea what she was in for.
Eleven seasons of Ms. Pro-
Nunciation. Take this test:
Are you an Archie or a Jug

head? I did. Mine came out
Egghead (tax credit!). Don’t
laugh now, class, because
next up, we’re all going to

learn how to bark like cows.
It’s called a reversal of fortune.

mmmmdxliii

The Gone Generation

Here be the Isn’t Enough Time Left
section. Making sonnets during
this era leaves heads spinning (if
interested; if not disinterested)

with ambiguity and incompletion.
At what is this bozo pointing
with such pretend precision?
ain’t anything that matters, bro.

The magnets moving civilization
in the generic direction of evolution
done broke. Ker-blam! Imagine
it that. You won’t make it to the

pop. Weasels of the hemisphere
unite to tip-toe final seismic tightwire.

mmmmdxlii

The Wrong Generation

The world’s coming to an end.
Or haven’t you heard? I’m only
stating the obvious, just a little
exposition to place us somewhere

around where we are. Don’t put
off until tomorrow what you can do
today is emblazoned over a socially
anxious media’s second cousin (act

ually first; was I attempting to in
crease the distance?). Symptom:
increased mesmerizing via infant
ilizing. That might be all we need

to know. Things get so damned hot
we’re finding it impossible to breathe.

mmmmdxli

The Last 72 Hours

Finished A Man on the Inside in nearly
record time – I never used to finish shows.
I either lost interest or refused to finish
them (getting slower and slower until I

just hit pause forever) if they were super-
fantastic. Started Killing Eve, finally – wow!
And Skeleton Crew, which literally soars thus
far. Canceled a trip abroad, sadly, due to a

family emergency. Lost a sibling (he’s still
alive, but is, in that final straw way, lost to
me) reaching out to him due to losing our
step-father (no longer alive). Text mess

ages bandying cardiac arrest, intubation,
anoxic, ICU and, lastly, tonight, extubation.

mmmmdxl

How To Get Unstuck

Urgently evaluate whether you’ve stepped into
mud, quicksand or swiftly-drying concrete. Either
way, use every ounce of energy until and unless
you’re two-thirds up your calves in whatever

wants you to die there. Before that, attempt
to remove the leg closest to what appears to be
the most solid ground (best if you can note and
utilize the last step you took to get here) and once

it is removed (if so) place it on that spot, by any
means. Before that, however, scream from the top
of your lungs: “Help!” “I’m sinking!” “Quicksand!”
and “I’m dying!” Do not wait for help. While struggling

to survive, pray hard to whatever higher power in
whom or which you might believe, should one exist.

mmmmdxxxix

Weird Time

Dumb little portals
of memory. Best
friends you’ve never
met. Boyfriends you’

very good looking. I
saw you there, sitting
at that desk, pencil-
tip to mouth. Or was

it eraser? Funny how
Erasure is a band. The
electricity in the brain
goes limp, hurtles; inside

the skull-cum-galaxy. The
people you really know.

mmmmdxxxviii

Diary-esque

November is a pretty safe month. Overload of
the art films I used to watch – voluminous! Well,
these days it’s the beginning of the – I should give
it a name – something unswimmable – words that

are debatably not words are words. I could call this
6-7 week period The Titan, after the submersible that
imploded last year. Nicknames are stupid (something
Julie on A Man on the Inside says, or I’m paraphrasing –

I’ve watched several episodes this afternoon). Wait a
minute. What I mean is I’ve this habit of randomly
suggesting who will get Oscar nods (yet the flicks I
watch these days are so few). Like an arthouse auteur,

he thinks, he’s in his head again. From 2005-2010,
the scores of art films watched from my own couch.

mmmmdxxxvii

premature elegy
           —Stephanie Young

I was going to call this The
Calamity of Family, but I’ve
not got one. Calamity, that
is. I’ve 3 remaining immediate

family members: my mom, a
sister and a brother. Dad and
Gary are gone. Do we just defy
death each day? I wish I could

say that I was anxiety-free. I
put two toilet paper tubes up
to my eyes for the long view.
The mid-view? I’m out of paper

towels. No projectile vomiting
in nearly a year. Isn’t that dear?

mmmmdxxxvi

Oddly the Gratitude Takes Me Over

It’s Thanksgiving, early afternoon, thus far spent
by myself (and that will be the day, I’m sure).
Would you find it morbid that, rereading poems I
wrote about my father’s death and the family

correspondences to the funeral made me feel warm
inside, tickled me, made me feel grateful to have
experienced it, a rare set of sublime moments with
blood relatives? Clips on the internet led me to turn

on Jim Gaffigan’s new comedy special. I had it going
while I tried to dry out the pond in the middle of my
apartment made from defrosting my refrigerator. Doing
my buckets of laundry, cleaning up, heading out in a few

before the darkness takes over, feeling awake (a rarity
these days) and happy (also a rarity). Anticipating. Ready.