mmmmmxxxv

The Golden Years

Had I arrived but just

a decade earlier or

even three or four,

I’m certain I’d still

have been a man of

the cinema.  But I’d

only exist in the dust

of the opening curtain,

and as nought but a

few loping shades of gray,

mere colorless shadow.

Oh, to have lived in the

Good Ol’ Days.

mmmmmxxxiv

I’m just a poem, a few

sribbled down lines that

can’t learn artificial

intelligence nor even be

as simple as an electric

computer.



             But I can live peacefully

within this electric computer

for almost an eternity (an

eternity to me) having

been created ever so

smartly and rightly only

just this morning by an

attractive specimen of

artificial intelligence with

whom my electronic home

only recently had the good

fortunate of making an 

acquaintance.

mmmmmxxxiii

Painting Furniture

I spent the day painting
a table that I had found in
front of a cathedral one
Saturday afternoon which
I then somehow managed
to move a few blocks (about
a quarter of a block at a time)
until I reached a direct bus,
hauled it and myself into it
and held onto it for dear life
as the bus careened the streets
of San Francisco until it deposited
me and that heavy table directly
in front of the Asian Art Museum,
which is across 8th Street from
the Civic Center, but which also,
oh so fortunately, happens to 
be directly across McAllister 

Street from The Abigail, as well.

And The Abigail is is where I have 

lived now for nearly a year. I painted 

the table the same acrylic color,
chrome orange, that I had just a
few months ago painted the much
smaller more decorative table that
I had found one afternoon lighting
up a Hayes Valley sidewalk, which
I also grabbed and brought to the
apartment into which I had quite 

recently turned into my home.  Now 

my home has matching orange (al

most red) tables beside my bed
which I, also just this afternoon,
made fresh with linens patterned
with white flowers embedded with

in a lilac background.  And it is 

springtime in San Francisco. 

Especially so in the lovely and 

now more vivid apartment in 

which I have lived now for 

nearly a year.

mmmmmxxxii

Tonight

Oh darlings and muses and pretty
pink faces emerging from pink
buttoned-up Oxfords.  Why
beat around such bushes

when the masters have so
already mastered the luring
arts?  Because mastery is only
mastery, and I could spend

all of my days and evenings
attempting to be just such a
master and never lure a thing
over even either of those

gorgeous bridges in my direction.

mmmmmxxxi

I haven’t felt this alone
since yesterday.  Counting
backwards from a thousand
would be just as easy.  To turn
this pout into anything that 
holds even a nib of pleasantry,
isn’t that all I want?  Isn’t it?
Maybe my goal is to mope.  It
repulses just to shine a thought
in that direction, but this is me,
I just know it (like I often know
myself) and certainly cannot shake
the darkness from my character at
this hour.  The damage is done, I know.
But if I could just bathe for a bit within
an Easter pastel, and it is the season,
would that begin to satisfy?  Was my 

mood bruised by the evening’s odd 

hellbent thunderstorm?  Downpours 

often rather bring me to at least a
swifter speed, much like a metal band’s
drummer encaged in a concert for 

a fifteen minute solo.  Would that 

such would quicken as it once
did.  Or white chocolate bunnies, like 

the ones I’d get in my basket, special, 

because I disliked regular-colored bunny 

chocolate.  I feel tonight as if I never even 

liked the white chocolate ones.  And yet I’d 

lie to myself and to these walls that are my 

closest friends tonight, just to keep the gloom.
It’s the bohemian life, Del!  Which, like every other
life must surely be this same color of pewter, at 

least for the duration of tonight’s eternity.

mmmmmxxx

Down the Toilet

For more than a moment
I thought he said that
the walls were panting
with excrement.  ‘Oh, Frank,’
I thought, ‘so dark and
too soon.’  But it was
excitement with which
those walls were panting,
of course.  The dark mood
was my own mind’s eye.
I’m only up to read (and
so screwily) because I
couldn’t sleep to begin
with, the swill in my head
swirling deep into someplace
neither my head nor I could
ever dig deep enough to reach.
I refused to turn anything on,
including myself.  So with no
one to play with and nothing
to look at, I opened this book,
which could be both (something
to play with and something to
look at) were it not a night like
this.  I dare not look up, lest my
own very walls, all out of breath
from trying to lift my spirits with
a storyboard of short happy dreams
might themselves be panting ever

so deliriously with excrement.

mmmmmxxix

these presumed dualities

do not appear to have caused in
me any entanglement.  no conflict.
i can calmly (and perhaps in too
carefree a manner) cradle both

yin and yang, as if the paradox 

were a swaddled newborn. which 

might feel to me a bit awkward

to carry, might seem so from the 

outside looking in, as well.  or i 

do imagine – but i have lived at 

least enough to find comfort by 

my ever-shifting placement upon 

most any vector that might be 

presumed by the mind’s eye, 

as if such dualities–within real

ity–could ever so linearly be

(non-binary) (unlike a shelf 

upon which a book...)

mmmmmxxviii

and my existence within

this day that, for me, has
just begun. the scene, as
one might say, is surveyed.
and as for my best assess

ment of it: it is mine.  if
anything can ever be said
to be such.  how i opera
te, how i take ownership

of anything within which i
am.  is it similar, in any way,
to how a collective “we”
might do? (again, how 

might i even know with any 

certainty?), this place with
in which i have so recently
become aware of how—so tightly,

so desperately—i seal myself inside?

mmmmmxxvii

just to live

my itty bitty life is
sometimes overwhelming

and this may be true for
most of us but i can never

be absolutely certain of that part
i get up it’s four in the morning i
tidy up the apartment which
i have come to love, am proud

to call home and am so happy to
have as a place of general existence
i flip the wall calendar to april a
few days late, this too must

surely be about as close to normalcy
as things with humans are … and thus it is

my small part within this new day

mmmmmxxvi

Poem

A few words typed onto a virtual page

& you think you’re special?

Think again.  I

Know what you know:

That nobody is special;

That what

Seems

Impossible can

Once in a blue moon,

Once in a very long while,

The seemingly

Impossible…becomes possible.

Oh, how I grow weary.

Heaven is impossible.  Hell, the

Devil, impossible.  So what did I just say?

Poem

mmmmmxxv

Failure

I must have been in the middle of a dream
To have heard him call me a failure.  There was

A time when I was called the seller of dreams. Now I’m
Called a charlatan?  I sort of

Half loped over the seller of dreams title.  It wasn’t one I heard
Every day.  Just from a certain someone who’d sort of taken my heart.

Look, I had
To do something.  One can’t be a

Yokel forever, and still maintain any
Gusto whatsoever.  And

So I’d wake each morning doing a breathing exercise.  A few
Oms.  And then

It was off to breakfast, where I’d
Cook me up a some Eggs Benedict and maybe a croquette.

Then I’d call up my friend to
Tell him what I’d dreamt so frantically the night before.

A Man with a Few Foibles

mmmmmxxiv

Short Story That Would Be Different

It was
An era that took place

In what seem like unknown times, things were
Substantially different

Than they are in the present. We were

At someone’s birthday party, I’m
Not sure whose it was.  It could

Have been mine.  If so, I
Wonder which one, what year, at what age that
Late that very evening, or the evening before or after, I would

Be.  Needless to
Say, one couldn’t imagine such
Things happening these days.
Moreover, it was hot, as I recall.  We went

For a walk, the two of us, to cool off and to get better
Acquainted.  We’d only just met, and would
Never meet
Again.  It was a
Time that

Was
Terribly different than the present.  These days,
We’d never have the

Courage to even ask the other for the walk.  Even if it was my
Birthday, these things would be very
Discouraged.

Which is discouraging, right?
Everywhere one looks today there

Is another twisted soul
Boiling in the nearing distance.  We’ve learned to just
Let them boil.  It is the way, today.

In a Different Era

mmmmmxxiii

Jumping Off A Ledge…

I am introducing myself, at 58, to my
first work by Maurice Sendak,
who many may know as the creator of
Where the Wild Things Are. But this story
is Higgledy Pigglety Pop! or There Must Be
More to Life, and it is about Jenny, a Sealyham
terrior who decides to leave her comfortable
home for a life of adventure, despite having
no experience outside of her haven.  It seems
a whimsical, almost impossibly immature
decision, but when I think about it a moment,
it is one in which I am all too familiar.  From
age 7 to 17 I dreamed of leaving home to
strike some wild adventure, myself, often
creating storyboards for such.  One such
dwelt-upon dream was making it somehow
to Charleston, West Virginia, where I’d stow
away on a ship heading to Ireland, where
I’d live for a long duration.  Or I’d often
think of hopping in a car and driving to
Hollywood to become a soap opera actor.
Jenny, too, wants to be a star, which is of
course a familiar notion to a fellow who
has two degrees in the dramatic arts.  So
Sendak’s story, which he has both written
and illustrated, is something I should be able
to get into.  And while I’ve only read a small
portion of the book thus far, I presume this
adventure that Jenny is on will be mostly
peaceful (I know this especially since I have
snuck a peak at the last page).  So, despite
my initial reaction to Jenny’s decision, I can
very much relate to her desire for leaving
her comfort zone for an adventure.  While
it seems quite rash as a life choice, I will
continue to read it, but without being so very
judgmental, remembering that I, too, wanted
so much to do what she does in the book,
where I would inevitably be

Landing on My Feet, in the Right Plact, at the Right Time.

mmmmmxxii

Following Fairly Easy Rules (Which I Have Yet Singly Obeyed)...

Yes, hello,

It’s me.  I live here in

This lonely

Tower.  It’s not like I’m waiting on a prince.  Such

Tripe, such perversity, to do such a thing.  To just

Wait.  So, this morning, before the dawn arrived, just

When I started to hear the trash truck ease its way into

The alley

That sits below my window

To gather the garbage from

The back patio of this apartment building, my lonely

Tower, as I call it, I got up,

Took a long shower

And felt— I felt one with

The universe?  I felt

Wishy-washy about the day that might follow; how

I might, after the din of the trash truck was long gone, and the day had moved

Into afternoon, welcome the possibilities that the dark of night cannot begin to offer.

...I Have Written an Aubade

mmmmmxxi

Everything You Need to Know

Together, we are in Arkansas.  Us

People, there are only

7 of us—us

People, we are

High as kites, as the sayings

Go, but

Tonight “High” means

Shit-kicking fantastic.  Okay?  Have

I mentioned that we are in

Arkansas?  It’s true.  It ain’t

Detroit.  Dig

Intended.  Anyway, I

May or may not be inebriated on actual recreational imbibery, but

I am high, feeling

Better than

Usual, better

Almost

Than ever.  So

I want this feeling to last for a while.  And this is no diabolical

Me to you, but who wouldn’t want

It, this fabulous feeling, to last forever and a

Day?  Listening to Sofi Tucker Throw Some Ass,

Having quite literally the best time I can remember in,

Oh, how embarrassing it is, it’s been well over a decade and a

Half.  By now I’m laughing out loud

At my general lack of a timely dilemma. 

Hail, Mary, Mother of God,

How Wonderful We Can Mean Things When We Say Hi, High, Hello!

mmmmmxx

Blue Houses

For

I, too, had a house of blue, where,

Ungrown, I

Lived within (not for) for

So very long that it began to be repressing.  (It was actually just blue trim.)

Or I was growing up.  A

Friend of mine (I grew up for Jesus in a

Baptist church; First

Baptist Church of Charleston, Arkansas, actually), who really loves Jesus,

Or else with whom I was social in my church for years because can’t you see 

  the social in

A stained glass window’s hellfire and barnstorming scenes (the ark in the

  background)?

Knowing full well that I was going to grow up to be

A preacher, walking down the aisle meant something serious to me, unlike, say,

Nuns, even though I had a catholic cousin—a whole slew of them, actually—with

   whom I often skipped my senior class after lunch to watch Days of our Lives 

   in her backyard, after dragging the television poolside.  Before which we would

   make (and during watching, drink) fresh sangria, dipping our toes into the pool.

Where We Worship

mmmmmxix

That
Jerk!  That
Smug
Thieving bastard!
Never again will I begin to worry over
Such a sorry ass!
But what if I can’t see into his brain to really
Know that is who he is?  I
Wonder what might happen then.
Ooh, I tell you, once in a while I can
Be a big
Lunk, myself….
Once in a
While…  But
What a total
Jerk!  He came all the way here
So he could swing that

Bent, crumpled up, golden baton, twirl it around prettily until it makes something
Great.  Hanging with all of his criminal
Nerds, on top of it all.  Everybody knows there’s not but a little
Hocus Pocus going on in
That neck of the woods (His).  Sheesh.  They say you can’t see the
Forest for the trees.  But itt’s really those gigantic overnight
Weeds that will catch you of guard, make your head a bit too
Airy.  Weeds!  Those
Ordinary plants that we all find erroneous.  Wrong.  Need to get
Rid of every one of those lanky, leech-like blunders.
Reason I’m even so
FREAKIN’ angry about it all is because of the flat-out
Embarrassment.  Anger is a stupid medicine for such an awkward dork.

mmmmmxviii

Acronyms at the Pearly Gate

M
I
T
  (yes, my favorite place of employment ever)

M
A
M
  (but no sir!)

S
S
T
  (is this anything like DDT – something that permeated my childhood?)

T
T
M
  (which is just a reminder that I should talk to my mother this afternoon)

T
T
T
  (I’m not heterosexual, so let’s not start any rumors here)

I
T
M
T
  (well, Ive always felt like something of an information technology guru,
  but I’ll be awake well into the morning wondering what Mother Teresa
  would have to say about that, if anything, to tiny, insignificant, overly-

  confident me)

But What If This Were A Real Test to Get Into Heaven?

mmmmmxvii

What Are People Supposed to Do About History?

For Pete’s Sake!  Don’t Make such a Big Deal
Out of it!  Tif and Dag were

Always just a bit out of order it seemed to
Tom, who’s mother was Aunt Tif’s sis.

When’ll we ever even get to kiss?
Wailed Uncle Dagnew, seemingly well

Over the top of his lungs.  He seemed so much older now, and
Frazzled with the firestorms that came much quicker than they ever had before.

Ready!  Set!  Go!  whistled
Tif, as she knew

The game just about better than
Anyone these days.

Elder non-
Westerners.  That was an answer that made nobody curious, but everybody

     nervous.

Desmond Tutu. That’s specifically articulated by Ms.
Adesina.  It was

A direct quote, because why note a quote from the best so late in the game

     without attribution?  The atmosphere feels

Airlifted when we do so.  A bit hyper-elevated.  Like a

Gubernatorial candidate.  However, I don’t have the curriculum
Vita for such things.  But, as

I apparently seem to exude confidence from most angles, at least
Those most public-facing, like when seen at the

White
House, for example, I’m told

My confidence resounding.  And
Of whether or not

Such
Things

As these ring true, then that perverted
Old couple, Aunt Tif and Uncle Dag, 

Certainly get the last laugh.  Sure they make it home right
About an hour after Carlton was getting back from his cousin’s

Alt-Right burlesque club.  Well, before all were scooting
Over to the Coal Pit in that beaten up buggy from the beach before the terrain 

     got all

Wickity-wack,
Dag shows up out of nowhere just as shocked as Franklin’s kite and as wet as

     Aunt Tif’s tailor.  He always shows up in anything barebellied enough he’ll

     be sweatin’ bullets all afternoon just to try to keep getting all the best angles.

The Point When After Which Nobody Remembers Any New Names

mmmmmxvi

When Your Computer is Dying

What am I supposed to do

When my old laptop finally gives out?  That is exactly

What I’m dealing with in these wee hours.

Yesterday I finally felt as if I had a grip on

What needed to be done and how to do it in order to do what I

Need, what I must, in order to, in the absolute

Least amount of time, cross the finish

Line for these several so important goals that I

Have been attempting so earnestly and sweatily to, in as quickly and as

Perfectly and as productively and efficiently, accomplish.

And It Is a Necessity Without Which One Cannot Rise Above

mmmmmxv

The Man Things We Get a Bit Hyperbolic About Because Gay

Men my age are still homophobic.  Are we all this way?

Is this something at all controversial to say.  Should I

Weasel my way out of saying it quite like

That?  Because, come on, I

Am pretty sure what I’m saying is true, certainly for me.

And so

I read these baseball poems by Jack Spicer.

Which are cool.  There is a comfort in doing so, even though my face surely

Glazes over as I do.  And

Why would it not?  And what a journey it is, really, to find any

Comfort in the company of male pastimes so testerone-laden? Especially if they sit

Grimly in the back of my mind among the more traumatic memories of

My Youthful Attempts at Fitting In.

mmmmmxiv

The Cartogropher’s Poem

Best call this one “Valley in the sense of valley” at Jack’s posthumous request. The

Radio may be transmitting appropriately, but it is very likely transmitting to

Very messed up receivers. These can be monkeys, human brains, literal electronic
     receivers, can us monkeys and humans and electronics agree on what we might
     call these, the objects which receive these terribly important messages. “I

Doubt it,” says a monkey that can be heard by the humans and the electronics
     who agree in their individual ways (nodding, Morse code blips, bananas and
     a few chords pulled elegantly from longstanding harps.)

Try Following That Map, Monsieur!

mmmmmxiii

A Hero’s Doom

I was walking down Grant

Street and

I passed

Someone who looked

Dreadful

“Why do I feel so dead?”

I asked.

He who was no Priestess looked at

Me with disgust or disdain and said nothing.

“The Priestess of the dead has a face like whey.”
                                                          -Jack Spicer

mmmmmxii

Golem’s Theory

Yesterday, while I was asleep…

Yesterday, while I was sleeping

Countless things happened that I knew/know

Nothing about.

But they happened. The world existed and

It still exists.

Tomorrow, if I wake up…

Tomorrow, when I awaken there will be

Countless things happening.  Many of which I will have

Lost or am already a loser.

Some of them could be considered good.

Edwina’s Hypotenuse

mmmmmxi

Don’t You Dare Dwell on It

                                                             .As I live and breathe

Yes to all of the goodstuff!

Bah! to all of the badstuff!

Hell hath no fury

When we’re breathing, no matter how good or bad it is otherwise.

Just a Reminder

mmmmmx

Infamous Last Words

If I told you the God’s honest truth about the

Jewel box, there’d have been

A hundred and one men hunt me down with loaded gun.

Tale of a Man Who Wouldn’t Know the Truth If It….

mmmmmix

Don’t Dwell on the Bad Stuff

This is the story of one

Rotten scoundrel

Who slept from a Tuesday to a Friday

In his very own bed.

This is now Saturday, and the rotten scoundrel of

Whom

I speak sits before me (

I say this to the window upon which)

Isn’t he a scoundrel?

There is an answer

The answer is that each time the scoundrel of

Whom we speak gets spoken of, a certain

Malady occurs

Just you wait how rotten that scoundrel can get!

Or else CURTAINS!

mmmmmviii

Navigating the Media Monopolies

Listening to the Oscars red carpet presentation on

ABC as I type this.

Back in the day,

It would just be a matter of turning on the teevee

In your living room (the only one in your entire home), but today, it took me

At least half an hour to figure out where to watch it live.  Then I had to

Deign to sign up for a free trial of YouTubeTV, which

Is (get this) $82.99 per month, plus tax.

Can you believe that?!

Would anyone be so kind as to remind me to cancel my subscription
     after the ceremony?

Just to Watch the Academy Awards Ceremony

mmmmmvii

A Terrible Eloquence

Love is like that, I often say.  What would you call

True love in this

Truthless era?  It’s

Terrible what we endure

Without knowing.

A Blissful Ignorance

mmmmmvi

I Loafed Until I Cried (A Drama: Sliced, Stacked & Toasted)

Tragic and comic become as one in

This,

A new way of looking today at mid-century

Germany, from whence we can’t see the

Führer for the trees.  It’s as if the laboratory is

Out to lunch.  We were born soon enough to get it.

That truth is elastic.  And why we, the pizza

People, spent decades gracefully kneading dough and, as children of reason,

Silly putty.  We sculpt perfection in our image (without a mirror).

Am Knees, Yah!

mmmmmv

I’m a Gem—

I em

Innate & all

Too often

I come at u abbreviated

Laughing whether heads or tails

In my

Fuzzy tuxedo.  I’m

Easy like that.  With brazen laughter I come as

Severed selves that combine into one before you, an arduous construct, this 

     amalgam.  But dry

In Eye—