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 of 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 Hello, Hi, High!

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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

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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

Wickty-wack,
Tif shows up out of nowhere just as shocked at 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

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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—

mmmmmiv

There’s a New Day Every Day

     We made tapes.  They were probably erased like we were.
                                                                      —Jack Spicer

Watermelon was all I was eating.  It was the evening of a perfect

Day.

What was I eating?

I queried the whistling wind,

By gosh!

Why it was cold, syrupy

Watermelon gathered fresh from the garden uphill

At dusk last evening.  That voluptuous melon had been

Resting on the shelf, the one with all of the extra space, in the garage

Fridge.  For that is where I had left it to be.  Until the heat blew up this afternoon.

At Dusk We Always Pick a Melon for Tomorrow

mmmmmiii

A Busy Morning

     Take each past, combine it with its present.
                                                                      —Jack Spicer

Arlene was licking the gloss that coated her lips

when Harold, to whom she’d never been properly introduced,

made his way from her left peripheral vision

and ever so slowly her way until, once directly in front of her, he

pivoted toward her and for a few seconds looked at her directly, and she stared 

     into the

wells of his brown eyes. Locked socket to socket, the

two of them now connecting in this awkward and sudden way, she found herself

immobile.  Then he stuck out his tongue, pivoted back and walked out of sight until he
     vanished in the opposite periphery of her horizon from that which he had appeared.

March of the Pig

mmmmmii

my mother spent years in fertility treatment just so that me—

just so that i might inevitably arrive.  and
my father.  but it was the 1960s.  five
whole years.  i was an easy birth, as she
recalls.  the arrival of the twins (my
brothers) and my sister nearly killed her,
and these facts were oft repeated in the
small house in which i spent most of my
first seventeen years.  when i began to
earn enough to live comfortably—a too
short era which i intensely miss—i would,
once a year or two, get my mother an air

line ticket to visit me in san francisco.  it

became a tradition that i sincerely miss.
on what i believe was the first of those
trips, as we were halfway up the last
block of mason on a trek to the top of
nob hill, within the shadows of grace
cathedral, she burst into tears out of
the blue, and confessed that it was
her fault that i was gay.  i laughed a
bit at first, and listened to her tell
of reading about a study of how an
above average number of kids who
came into the world after receiving
one of the treatments she had gone
through had turned out to be gay.
through her tears she kept saying
‘it’s my fault.  it’s my fault.’  all i
could be was grateful for the treat
ment that had potentially given
her a gay son.  and i told her so,
repeatedly, said i was very happy
and even proud of the person she’d
brought into the world, and could
not imagine being any other way.
and it’s true.  while nothing i said
that afternoon seemed to comfort
my mother on the subject, i kept
telling her that if my being gay
had anything to do with any of
the medical fertility treatments
then i owe her even more grati
tude than ever.  i kept saying
various iterations of ‘if so, then
thank you.’  that after all was
said and done, and the tears
were dry, she remained sad,
as if she’d created a monster,
as if being gay were a mortal
sin, a malady; that she’d not
be swayed, at least on that
one day so many years ago,
saddened me.  but it does
remain just as true that it
does not matter at all to
me why i fall for the type
of humans that i do, i
certainly would not want
it any other way.  and i
often send out thoughts—
as i do right this very
moment—of gratitude to
whatever tinctures and
procedures my parents
endured that landed me
here.

mmmmmi

mobility

years rolled into decades as

the game grew vague.  we lost count of the

times the machine was forced into a tilt,

be it purposeful or unintentional.  we stepped outside where

barley was swaying unimaginatively in

the field across the gravel road

that brought us

here.  the incessant games that had

meant the world to each of us.  to a person, we each dropped to our

knees and keened, mourning

the goals we’d never reach because of games, of endless pretense.

callous accrual

mmmmm

con

for you

i’d write 5,000

pages of text.

on each page

the text in sum

mary, a singular 

vector pointing

a different 

direction

than the each

vector summarizing

every other entry.

what endless

adventures, 

which,

however,

if summarized

comprehensively, er,

in sum, or to con

clude, i mean,

added all together

the 5,000 vectors,

and we’re back 

at zero.  our

adventure has

just begun.

fession

mmmmcmxcix

the internet is down

over the airwaves this evening,

drumbeats.  me, i’m curling dumbbells

in a bomb shelter.  so

your voice can no longer reach me.

tomorrow, i’ll dig deeper, putting off

worrying about food until the

day after tomorrow.

act now, die later,

a motto by which to stake the

greatest fortunes.

history’s forgotten klaxons

mmmmcmxcviii

needs

who’s needed are the mountains

who’s needed is the sea

i’m thirsty where’s my fountain

pen what’s wanted here’s not me

wants

mmmmcmxcvii

take the time to allow your friend

to finish what he is saying before speaking again

take a breath

and do not speak until he is finished saying whatever he has

to say,

whatever he is

trying to tell you at this very moment

take a moment to listen to your friend

the person standing with you, let him finish what he’s saying

mmmmcmxcvi

the youngest swan

dipped inelegantly and

cooed a lot

things that flappers

or teenaged swans

were not so much known for

at least up to that point

   but from that day forward

as the story goes

(because it does)

if our ears were to catch wind

of a coo or two

or if

anywhere

within

the horizons we with sight behold

catch but a glimpse

either of us

even if in the faintest peripheries

of anyone or anything

awkwardly or with even a stictch of clumsiness

diving

   falling

      swooping downward

perhaps having just been sprung from a springboard

well

we’d immediately think of

swans

we also think of

our very own tenaciously deviant cygnet

who is now

in our beloved flock

the eldest swan

mmmmcmxcv

i feel a bit

cross
-eyed
this afternoon

then i think
what?
i never do this of an
afternoon

which is a
flat-out
lie

but only because
this afternoon
i am
(as i sometimes
if not often do)

attempting
to embody
someone
not myself

this makes sense

after all
i have two degrees 

in the dramatic arts

have had a lot of fun
pretending to be
people i am not

and
(probably less so)
practicing the art of
empathy

not that i was
or am
that spectacular
at either

but it could easily
and truly be said of me
(as it could of anyone else, i suppose)
that i am a

liar

mmmmcmxciv

talk to me

i could call mom

that seems too direct, too intimate and a

wee bit too plainspoken, doesn’t it?

(an easy thing too remember ought to be that

if and when you find that there’s a lull in the conversation

simply

toss a random question; always

be prepared—utilize those

three years spent in the boy scouts—keep a list of

ten or so pre-drafted in your wallet so that you

have them with you at all times) (an idea that is

not necessary when conversations never manage to transpire in your

presence)

mmmmcmxciii

with apologies

or feeling i must

when things get this opaque

question mark /

YOU question mark /

i already did /

do you detect a pattern?

anyway, it’s just a way to make the possibilities endless

you know

when you need endless possibilities

no regrets

mmmmcmxcii

it's gonna be an abstract morning

to tighten one’s grip on

intermittent environs

takes (requires) a disciplined

stamina

how might one muscle one’s way out of

eden?

arriving at the hospital with a

heart that’s lost its rhythm (and, by then, hopefully, a will to survive)

it's gonna be an abstract day