mmmmmcxxiv

The Downside to Peaks

We’re always told to
reach as high as we
can, to strive for the
tippity top. A life has
its ups and downs, we
are also told. Chin up,
nose to the grindstone,
get back on that horse
that threw you to the
curb. These things, in
incarnations, we also
often here. Or I have.
We hear about spiraling
and we hear about rock
bottom as well. But one
thing I have heard much
less about, at least in any
detail, is what falling really
feels like, what a rush it is,
how dizzying, we lose our
composure, but yet there’s
the thrills, the excitement,
the outright fear. Reaching
a peak. Missing a stop at
the very top. Falling off
the bluff. Oops. That’s
no fun. Unless maybe
you have a hang glider,
or (if it happens to be
an extra long fall) a
parachute. A minute
ago I was reaching
for a goal, wishing
to reach that peak
barely discernible
on the horizon.
Now I am in
freefall with
no way to
float through
it, no parachute
to make the landing
livable. Hey, all you
cheerleaders! What
should I do? Is there
an upside to freefalling?
And what, I ask, if but one
more inquiry, was so special
about the peak I made it to,
the one from which I just
now fall?

mmmmmcxxiii

Wishes


I close my eyes and wish

really hard for one thing.

Two things.  Maybe three.

I close my eyes and wish

as hard as I can for what

seems like several minutes.

Maybe it was only a minute.

But I wish.  I wish with all

that I have, with all that I

am.  I don’t really have

much of anything.  I am

not really much of any

thing.  But wishes.

mmmmmcxxii

Dorky Park

It was a beautiful day. I was
strolling through one of St.
Petersburg’s most prominent
parks. Yes, it was a tourist

attraction. I was a tourist.
On a two-night stop on a
Baltic Sea gay cruise, if you
can imagine that. I like to

imagine it. Even though I’m
pretty sure I was there. I
have photos. And the port’s
architectural skyline burned

into my brain. So it must be
true? Anyway, if it was, as we
were strolling through this
tourist area in St. Petersburg,

suddenly there was a bit of a
louder set of vocal noises coming
from the sidewalk that our tour
guide has us strolling down,

toward some magnificent desti
nation, I’m sure. I turned around
to see if I could determine what
the hubbub might be and all I

noticed at first was that there was
a group of people of various ages
and heights, women and men, it
seemed, dressed perhaps a bit

differently than the rest of us, and
they were hauling ass down the side
walk in, around, amongst us naive

foreigners. It all happened quite

fast, the group sped through and
were gone. It was only shortly
thereafter that there were murmur
ings of pickpockets – my gay cruise

tour through the middle of St. Peters
burg had been targeted by a professional
gang of pickpocketers. The stories of
what had been taken started circulating

around – they had done quite a bit of
damage to our little group. They got
nothing from me, though. I had been,
as is my habit, walking with my hands

in my pants pockets with my left hand
wrapped around my wallet, which I had
for many years been placing in my front
pocket, for fear of it being pickpocketed.

I wouldn’t have had that much in it. Much
more, I suppose than I’ve carried around
in a very long time, I’m sure, but for a
foreigner in Russia on a guided tour, not

a lot, relatively speaking, I’m sure. For
a long while, back when I had friends,
one by one they each began getting
mugged in my city, here in San Francisco.

That was a rite of passage I wanted nothing
to do with. I’ve no second thoughts about
wandering the city, even some of its most
traditionally shady areas, in the middle of

the night or very early in the morning
before the sun rises. It’s not a city that
is up all night, the kind I thought would
have been for me, but there is something

calm and comforting to me about walking
at night through a quiet, sparse metropolis.
But I generally stay on the street when I
walk, and move swiftly, always aware of

what’s going on around me. So, I suppose
fear has been a huge motivator for me. In
general. And probably is for many of us.
But in this age of bullying and fearmongering,

dispensed for power and money, I find myself
growing complacent. Perhaps this is a personal
protest to what has changed most significantly,
to my eyes, on this planet we inhabit. The

pickpocketing gang was more of an amusement
to me at the time than anything else. But the
pop of a firecracker or the initial rumblings of
an earthquake are enough to make me jump

and run around in a frenzy in search of whatever
I impulse has me think of as safety. Or safer. I
don’t want to die a tragic death. This seems like
a universal desire. But maybe I’m headed there.

Sixteen years ago I was on a gay cruise on the
Baltic. I visited Russia. I haven’t been outside
of the San Francisco Bay Area but once in the past
fifteen years. I know I’d take the onrush of that

gang of thieves over complacency, over another
ten years of complacency, or just to have another
ten years, just to know, just to force myself back
out into a perhaps more dangerous world, just for

a few more international adventures, maybe
walk the entire night through the streets of a city
that is abuzz at all hours of the day and night. How
to build such actions back into the realm of the possibility,

that’s the question I’m realizing, with a lot of sadness,
that I have at the moment. Forcing a soliloquy on the
distinct possibility of a lack of hope for such an outcome
is worth a try, I suppose. I hope. Sure, why not?

mmmmmcxxi

Reinvention

The older I get
(I’m just going
to make this
about me), the

harder, in some
ways, it is to change.
True or false? People
think I’m nostalgic,

true or false? It
would certainly
make sense.
But would

you believe that I
live mostly for now,
with an occasional
glance at the future.

But you have so many
goals, you might
mention, with a
somewhat puzzled

look (suspension of
disbelief: people care
and they go deep),
which, it is true,

I list or organize
or reprioritize on
a regular, often
daily, basis.

mmmmmcxx

The Puzzle

So this is the devil’s dance?  Well I was born to dance.
                                                      —Frank O’Hara

I dove into the river
from the puzzle table:
the table upon which
me, my mother, and

my sister put together
a 5,000-piece puzzle.
It’s around Christmas,
2010.  This was the

last time I was home,
the last time I was with
my family in Arkansas,
the state in which I was

born.  The state in which
I became an adult.

mmmmmcxix

Waves

Like the seemingly infinite
radio waves coming at me,
entering my body, having
their way with me, possibly,

and perhaps leaving its (my)

confines at some point in the 

future, a future based upon  the

present,, when the waves of

unknown frequency entered.  No

tice that I have yet to describe what
these waves do to my state, to my
emotions, upon entry (and they

ALWAYS enter) (are constantly
entering my body) (I love radio)
(waves are fun, too) (music...
makes the people...come together).

mmmmmcxviii

For the Death that
Comes at an Indeterminate
Speed on the Afternoon of July 5th

I dove into the river.
It was cold
and it was deep.

Near bedrock I hit
the current.  It was
swift and resolute.

I am not much of
a swimmer, it was
frigid and I shivered

for what seems a
thousand miles or
maybe one, I had

no concept nor did
I have any context.
What at first felt very

real soon felt like
cinema or dreamscape.
I stayed tucked below the

water, could hold my breath
for a long time.  That should
have been a hint that this whole

scene was but unreal, that, as
I noted above I dreamt it,
though I shivered wet with

something, maybe fever
that constrained me as I
was a sort of large and

frozen bullet, a pellet of
life as if a swift, low-flying
airplane hovering just over

the ground, or the bed below
the fast-moving river,
traveling at breakneck

speed above a floor
that lies murky beneath
my body as it

floats through at such
high velocity.  Why am I
here?  What possessed me

to dive into the river in such
a rushed and jerky movement.
From what was I running?

And how can this current that
no matter how fast it is traveling,
and how bitter cold this vein

of rush is, be anything but a
way for me to slowly drown?
Unless I can figure out, and

with haste, why I am here,
from what I’m running,
what my life might have

been before that fated dive.
And speaking of fate, is this
all that my life has been gearing

toward, its only direction, toward
a goal at which I was destined
to arrive?  If I can get myself

out of this vein and up through
to the surface, in four...three...
two...one... Did I make it?  Is

this the air tfrom which these
lungs might take breath, into this

feeble, lost and bruised body?  What

of my sopped soul?  Have I simply
dreamt my way back to the surface?
Aside from the life force of water,

which is what, presumably this
river is overfilled, am I the only thing
alive in all of its miles, in all those

I just traveled for a reason I cannot
fathom?  Fathoms?  Am I now truly
at its surface?  What is this echo I

hear?  And that captivating warmth 

I can literally feel from within
the pit of my gut as it moves, 

that warmth, as it moves like

the cold current (from which 

I might but now have 

escaped)?  A warmth that

flows in every possible direction

from my besotted lungs.

mmmmmcxvii

Fine, Because Why Not?

I’m all but caught up, at least on the
scribbling of googly-cadenced sentences.

Quick, of whom did Frank O’Hara say this:
“Long may you illumine space with your

marvelous appearances, delays and
enunciations, and may the money of the

world glitteringly cover you as you” &c., &c.
I’ll give you a hint, because there’s a chance

that if you just think about it without one (a
hint, that is), it’ll come to you in a jump scare

(for someone, anyway):...Richard Barthelmess...
Jeannette MacDonald...Sue Carroll...Ginger

Rogers...Fred Astaire...Eric von Stroheim (I want
to go on and on as my hero does)...The Tarzans

(“each and every one of you”)...Mae West...
Rudolph Valentino...Norman Shearer...Miriam

Hopkins...Joel McCrea...Clark Gable...Gene
Tierney (gawd, I just don’t want to leave any

one out, what a list for the tomes of hist)...
Allan Jones...Kitty Carlisle...Harpo Marx...

Colonel Wilde...Merle Oberon (which is not
Merlin Olsen, as I’ve misread some five times

in the last fifteen minutes, all giddy with this
incessant list of names—sure, cry “Lazy!”...

cry “Easy Poem, way too easy, Del!” [that’s...
Del Ray Cross, btw...]...Marilyn Monroe...Joseph

Cotten...Orson Welles...Dolores del Rio...
Gloria Swanson...Jean Harlow...Alice Faye...

Myrna Loy....William Powell...Elizabeth Taylor
of “George and Martha—sad, sad, sad” and,

in the very same play turned film, the Elizabeth
Taylor, neither being Elizabeth Taylor, Martha,

nor Bette Davis, proclaiming “What! a! dump!”
(does one sic punctuation marks, asks the poet

to his readership...all 2 of you...I will never be
able to even attempt an appropriate expression

of gratitude), speaking of which, hot jump through
a parenthetical’s inside to its outside here (Is there

a grammatical term for this besides incorrect but
loads of fun sometimes?), you can thank me now

or later for this list, which is unlikely to even be
more easily read than picking them out of the

very long stanza of Frank “To the Film Industry
in Crisis” O’Hara’s just under a page-length stanza,

if that is what we are calling them these days.
True or False: Is my only regret after finishing this

piece the fact that I did not finish the extra long quote
I began that describes who appears in that list of names

in a sort of toast?  If true and if not not false, a quick
glance for “under the kleig lights” should be of significance

in order to glean such discernment. Further hint: look toward 

the end, which you’ll only get if you got there in this one.

mmmmmcxvi

Happy Pop Dance Music
with Big Bouncy Enlivened
Beats Is Back Week

You should hear what I’ve just heard.
I’m here so you don’t have to be, though.
Thank me now, because guess what?  For
a few years now, a little known old-school

saying became all the rage. Yes, I’m talking
about Get thee to a nunnery!  Now that I’m
thinking about it that sounds so right it has
to be a misquote. T he problem with conver

sations about William S. Burroughs is that they,
when occurring somewhere in vicinity, stop
you so hard that you immediately forget every
thing yur your own giddy conversation gang has

heraled.  Thusly the score for the latest in a rather
hot spate of dance parties you’ve hosted begins.

mmmmmcxv

Three More

dollars in my pocket,

please, i should maybe

cross my fingers.  no such

luck.  hours in bed?  sleeping

is such a waste of time, though.

three more moves and we shall

see who won this game.  all of

the rest of us have already

lost.  we’re all losers.  years

of living life in this particular

manner and it will be the

end of me.  it’s one thing

to have the constant

regression of human

rights, the growing

disparity between

the haves and

myself, the

growing

insecur

ities.  is

it that some

things come in

pairs, but these

come in threes?

no, it’s just the

intersection of

exhaustion and

an inability to

sleep.  how

many words

will you donate

to this debate?

the stakes are

high and yet

I’ve not a

a dime nor

a dollar to invest

in that lottery.

mmmmmcxiv

The Tattered Cabbage of My Will

is all that is left of my discipline today.
This morning, it was red and fresh, almost
willing itself into a soup, or pickling itself

kraut-wise. Earlier still, it was a game of
cribbage.  At present, the tattered and bruised
wet or slightly rotting vegetable is gone, there

isn’t even a memory of the bold power that it
might become, and perhaps did; to repeat, all 

of the power and the focus are gone.  And I am

gone, sitting here refusing to pick up the fancy 

pen lying next to my fancy notebook, but rather, 

taking umbrage at all of the potential  that is now

gone forever from this nearly vanished day that,

when it began a few short hours ago, was nothing

but endless potential  To repeat, this day has 

turned from potential-laden into nothingness, 

thanks to general laziness and my otherwise 

frittering away of the entire day, which has 

now completely been engulfed by the darkness

of night, the darkness of me sitting here, brain

full of regret, at night, surrounded as well by all 

but darkly recognizable images conjured by windows 

and phones and such, nothing to keep an attention 

long enough to even be sure if the darkly somewhat

familiar looking blip was a remnant of one of those

physical things like a window or a phone or was an 

simply the eflection of an something physical like a

window or a phone.  And so I sit aknist in an

obsidian of darknesswithout a thing in the
world to show for what earlier had been

the beginning of a day that had so promised

to be one of efficient accomplishment.

mmmmmcxiii

Ginger’s Shop

On a video call with Ginger last nigh
she gave me a tour of her shop. It was
a few Christmas lights, dimly lit in red, white

and blue. I had called to speak with
Mom, who had once again had a couple
of nights recently spent in the hospital for

some reason (this happens, the reasons have
been numerous). Mom was there at Ginger’s
house a few miles from rural Charleston, in

Arkansas, where we all resided from when we
each were born until we left the home of our
parents. Mom was there at Ginger’s place, too.

She was who I initially attempted to call,
eating her supper, which consisted of some
combination of chicken and potatoes, followed

by dessert, which Ginger kept stressing
was a bit of a mistake in that whoever had
made it, or however it had gotten made,

it had gotten made rather than with cherries,
which I suppose were in the recipe, and for
some reason it would have “made more sense”

with the cherries, this dessert, but the red
fruity splotches that were in the heart of this
odd-looking cake-like dish were not cherries,

as it is noted that they should have been, as
if it it should have been obvious (wink wink) that
it should have been a dessert the red chunks

of cherries, but some wiseguy like character,
seemingly, had instead put in strawberries.

Somone mischeivous and wrong but yet slightly

naughty in that good sort of way, this all from
the different faces Ginger made as she kept
repeating apects of the story of how it had

become so, had gotten the bright idea to put in
strawberries (and some Cool Whip, and, for good
measure, sprinkles of slightly browned coconut,

as well). Oh, and Ginger’s shop turned out to be
much bigger than a few dimly lit red, white and
blue patriotic lights slung somehow slightly into

the wood next to which Ginger lives. There was
a huge warehouse filled with exotic-looking
vacationing automobiles and RVs, wherein

there had also been some recent time put
into adding a first facsimile of a second
floor room. And there was a warehouse-sized

open space that had a concrete floor with a roof
over it (no walls), a roof which I imagined as cover
to a large open shed rather than a shop, within and

outside of which there were potted plants with
nestling cats (one was named Betty and Betty
was quite a tiny cat) and there were otherwise

fountain-schaped sculptures of live plants
scattered about as if to mimic flowing fountains
from which came splashes of leaves and blooms

from the various plants within the “sculpture”.
These plants resided within the open-air shed
and were not actual spouting waters cascading

from elaborate sculpted spouts or spewing
from the lips of, say, metallic fish of various sizes,
around some sort of fountain periphery. Those

qualities would have made it an actual fountain,
and there yet may have been some of those somewhere
around what Ginger called her shop, which were

actually a rather elaborate set of spaces, slanted and
flat, walled in or open-spaced, wooded or more domecile
in nature, all of which apparently made up Ginger’s shop.

mmmmmcxii

Once I destroyed a man’s idea of himself just to have him.
                                                       —Frank O’Hara     

That was back
then, though,
when I had
what seemed
limitless alter
native ideas
always at
the ready.

mmmmmcxi

I embraced a cloud,
but when I soared
it rained.
—Frank O’Hara

I embraced a rainbow,
and slid down its length
getting rich from gold
until I fell into the
boiling cauldron
at the end of
that rainbow

So I came out pretty
injured as a result of this
particular hug, this unlucky
get rich scheme. And I won’t
but go down screaming awaiting

the catastrophe that is my
personality to seem like Frank’s
typical beautiful self again, but it
suddenly blooming into something
interesting, or even modern (like
perhaps I once would seem from
some angles), is really pushing it.

mmmmmcx

Rowdy Clowns with Hearts Painted upon Their Cheek

     Come to the Club, come in to the Club of Love
                     —Madonna, ”Love Without Words”

Or that’s how I heard it come out when I
accidentally—or inadvertently—found my way catching
the entire brand new album, the first one she has released in
six or seven years, I believe, and a sequel to one of her most
popular albums ever.  So, before I even know it, I’ve listened to the
whole of today’s newly released Confessions II.  And like the lyrics of the
3rd, 4th and 5th best songs on either of her albums, I find myself at times
laughing at her silly lyrics.  But also, all the while, and especially with this album,
I am one hundred percent on board, in this case caught up in each subtly
complex, hippy ditty, even and esecially the silly, particularly Madonna-esque

turns of some of the dumbest-sounding lyrics.  One after the other, all of the songs pop up on my YouTube, each song playing in its entirety, as I just listen, in awe of how the album is so smartly and tightly and thematically put together, 

how poignant her lyrics are, how crisp and deceptively-layered each tune is.  Several songs have sparkling resonance with individual songs from this album’s prequel, her Confessions on a Dancefloor.  Much as I do love her and her music and how she’s steadily flown through the zeitgeist ever since I was a teen, 

there are some very integral aspects of a dance-pop tune that she does not have

a lot of talent in order to maintain these standard qualities, some of the most importnt ones she seems incapable of even pulling off.  And yet, her albums are most often brilliant successes.  I am not here to explain this mystery, just point it out.  As noted, it can be debated with ease that she cannot sing, that her lyrics are ridiculous, that it is not that easy for her to focus on a central theme for any album, simplicity rules over muli-faceted parts coming together with the delicate attention or coming together at all within any album or even song, and much of her notorious repetitions within songs and albums come across as redundant or trite for the sake of redundacy and cliche.  So this album sounds literally too good to be a Madonna album, I keep thinking.  But it is (too good and a Madonna album indeed!).  Somewhere in here, there has to have been a joke upon which some clique is rolling their eyes at us in disgust at our ignorance.  But it appears that this lovely collage of dancefloor pop is no joke.  It’s a masterpiece, I think.  A

masterpiece?  From Madonna, who has given us so much, how could we possibly deserve a Madonna masterpiece.  It is not something I ever thought
might come, even though one could argue that several from her decades in the
business have been.  While she might have at times simultaneously been the
butt end of a few jokes during her thus far amazingly
illustrious career.  Again, it has been six or maybe even
seven years since she even put out an album.  And
no one is more representative of each dancefloor’s diary
over the past nearly 50 years, of my lifetime.  Her music has dominated,
with iconic hit after hit filling the radio airwaves, television and internet music
videos, awards ceremonies, cinemas and dancefloors the world over for as

far backas I can remember up to present day.  All the while her controversies and causes could be found discussed in abundance from these and fro other more news-like talky venues. She’d ride the fence that lies between being loved and

hated masterfully, often having a hand in creating whatever was trending at any

particular moment, and doing something that would simultaneously thrill her fans while creating venom and spite among conservatives and other haters,
popping up so often just to seemingly turn something upside down or inside
out, instantaneously repopularizing her own self, paving the way for new 

scrutiny on each hot potato subject along with a devotion to many personal

charity ventures for folks on the fringes, craving something risque or

humanitarian, etc., with many such moments changing how a general populace would forever view a subject matter.  So today is that rare day in pop music history that will likely be once again such a turning point.  And to make things even more riveting (at least to me) it seems that everyone in the industry came

out and did their best, as if simply in celebration of or to ride her coattails 

during the debut of her new phase.  Madonna. It has caught me so off-guard, which I love.  Once again the granny of pop is holding on to the zeitgeist as if

it were the reigns to an elaborate stagecoach.  And I am happy about it.  Happy

for us. For where it takes us.  And hopeful she will gain innumerable new fans in the process.  I am indeed so happy for her.  And I am very much 

looking forward to inhabiting a dance floor again soon.

mmmmmcix

And While I’m

showing the world,
my ever so tiny world,
how rough around the
edges that I literally am, 

he (can we call him Frank?) 

is, by the way, and next up, 

certainly got me wondering 

who my Mayakovsky might

be (not to mention who

and whom our hero’s
was, both to said hero’s

mind’s eye and the world’s—

of then and of present day, say).

mmmmmcviii

The Whole, Entire Quote

For the record?  Anyway, it goes this way:

       It is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so.  I admire you, beloved,
     for the trap you’ve set.  It’s like a final chapter no one reads because the plot is
     over.
                         —Frank O’Hara (from “MEDITATIONS ON AN EMERGENCY”)

That is how I just typed it up, anyway.  Or that’s the way it reads in my Donald

Allen edited O’Hara Selected.  Which is, of course, saying something, but, these

days, is really saying something.  And that’s not a good thing to say (as in No

way!).  Is what I suppose I should really at this point relay.

And let also say that I am taking this stanza, this paragraph, completely as if it

were a (and couldn’t it easily be?) standalone.

But BEAUTY?  Pah!  I’m trying to envision it another way, but I can’t in his words
imagine it but being his.  Which would not only be so very different from mine

(and surely different from anyone else’s, I suppose, if one supposes such things),

but would also be some kind of IDEAL, his, if an attainable one.  I imagine he

had a few candidates for such an ideal, idealist that he was, able to at any

seeming moment conjure up one of his muses.  

I’m no scholar. I just have my big, awkward movements in that area. Which,

without picking up anything except, again, this particular Selected,

has me thinking O’Hara had in mind as representative of beautiful that 

New York School muse that we would often him dipping his metaphorical

ink into,Jane Freilicher. Or it could be any number of such muses.  But Jane,

The New York School muse.

But O'Hara was gay, I might point out (as I do, and surely others have made 

a note of this as well.  Or have they?  This is how much I am NOT a scholar. 

I’ve made it loud and clear so often over the years, that he’s my favorite poet 

out of all of them, yes, the audacity, and I stand by it) – oh, if I could even be 

a smidge as dishy and pithy and have even a tenth of whatever must have 

generally floated around behind that tall young forehead.

So, beauty; back when it meant something.  Perhaps towards the tail-end of 

when it might have, just to add that, as if it were something that we knew. 

But those three sentences.  That singular paragraph (I love to imagine that

final word, over, as it stands by itself on its own line, as intentional 

enjambment; form might have been something that was beginning to also 

lose meaning, by this time, which I say as if it means something, but as far 

as I can tell, scholar that I ain’t, it still was a veritable ruler, a stick that 

might be, ahem, shoved up something, and surely often and (even today)

sometimes  happily.  Someplace.  It seems so ... and would he not have

appreciated the word that just came to mind ... ineffectual?

But a philosophical bent seems clear to me, in that he wore his ideals upon 

his sleeves, if you ask me, but why would you?  AND he was gay, so any 

concept of beauty he goes on to reduce in whatever way gets fractured 

in so many of the ways and means of BEAUTY, at least to this small reader, 

when it comes to how to interpret what the writer literally meant when HE 

wrote the word.

But the simplicity of how those three sentences can, for me, indeed, conjured,

perhaps in pieces and parts deliberately Doctor Frank’ened (har har!) hap

hazardly together, building someone in particular I’ve never met, or just  as

easily suggesting a particular half a dozen or more with whom I am at least

acquainted.  How EASY that lovely paragraph can mean.  And if that is what

happens when I read it, it would likely be just as magical to anyone else

who does.  Try, it.  You can, you know.  Let me know if it works.

If so, just look how many of us are getting presently all bent out of shape,

getting giddy within our own recollections or collections.  Our own selections

conjured from just a few lines in this particular selected poems, by my favorite

poet all time (I will keep being on the record just to say that much).  A quote

that appears in one of my favorites poems by him, “MEDITATIONS ON AN

EMERGENCY.” 

I mean, (Call 9-1-1!), who else but the man who not only put New York City 

on the postmodern map, but turned it into an ideal—a place in which I’ve 

never lived, have but taken up space within for no longer than a week or 

two at a time.  Such a beauty.  (“Aw, shucks!  Really?”)

But yet from a distance of all of the vast expanses from him and his words to 

here, he can yet today have an unscholarly hick sitting in San Francisco 

seeing BEAUTIFUL, seeing BEAUTY, as if truly knowing seeing it appear before

him in Cinemascope.  Loud and clear.  And that’s sincere.

mmmmmcvii

Caveat Avant

In light of the news I’ve been
delivering of late, because of
these recent developments
in syntax simulation and

emancipation sybillation,
parenthetical arousal and
invariably dancing around
but not over subject matter,

which often causes twisting
sentences in a whirligig in
such a way to tease the
subject matter out for

only moments at a time,
like curious gophers who
then disappear down into
tunnels that surely wend their

ways into far out labyrinths
that reduce us each to gopher-
like goldfish whose only
experience is a consist

ently cavorting cadence
and swiftly evolving
effervescence, swimming
kaleidoscopically through

all the most vivid colors
with maybe a few unex
pected dips into some
that are dimmer, grayer,

and yet even more
cacaphonous, well,
while I want wish
fully to brim with

stories that play
like recess in a bevy
of childhood brains,
punching a stead

fast staccato of a
tale that smooths
the moods of those
whose memories

of childhood center
around story hour,
imaginations run
wild, and straight

a-plus semesters,
flirting with first-
place bees filled
with spilling letters

to spell words (and
with such eloquence!),
the etymology of which
leads with inevitability

to the most absurd
caverns on language’s
fringes that the now
grown children not

only nostalgically
relive but treat each
open-mouthed moment
leveling up, creating an

ocean of meaning within
musical trills, alongside
intermittent plosives
until the mind’s gophers

have expanded each skull,
finding new ways to sway
simple sentences ever so
subtly into complexly

and perfectly diagrammed
ones that become so true
to intention, filled with such
evolved meaning that a

new authenticity is reached
with each rich sweep
until it’s back to the
cavern for us gophers

to rest up and ready
for the most thoroughly
choreographed utterances
turned revelations that

any of us word nerds
have ever heard.

mmmmmcvi

Recent Developments

I want to say they disengage,
eradicate much-needed focus,
but I’ve been trying to determine
whether or not I’m the catalyst

that pushes such events to 

the fore intentionally, or sub
consciously so.  If it is my fault.  

But then that’s a lot of thinking 

to do when the focus has

all but dissipated.  Recent
developments remind me
that I miss developing,

which has me working harder
to create more.  To develop
faster.  Isn’t that evolution?
But with rigorous evolution,

I mean with keeping those
developments happening,
which, isn’t that what I’m
doing, making things hap

pen?  Well, then, what’s
there to do but to try to
multiply such catalysts,
make them rev and boom

with hunger.  Turn the
much-needed evolution
that I’ve been missing
for so long into revolution.

mmmmmcv

Biding Time

There’s nothing worse.  And I do it well.

Halting everything, including the movement

of time until I’m to a particular goal, a date and time

that must be reached before I can move.  It’s like stalling

until a paycheck arrives in my hands and is then cashed,

when there’s no cash on hand, won’t be for weeks,

and no bank will even have you as a customer.

That’s what I’d call biding time with a lot of

unknowns, which creates an even more intense

inability to move, to literally move, much less

make any necessary arrangements that might

make things go smoothly and more quickly

once the check is in hand, or even before.

It’s just a stasis.  You’re a mannequin

living alone.  Immobile.  Asexual.

Unable to leave the apartment,

refusing to get out of bed unless it is

to walk down the hall to the bathroom.

There’s nothing to eat, a life event that,

taken by itself, would insist upon

such a stasis, but is usually, of

course, accompanied by a few others,

like, once again, the lack of cash, of any

credit, of anyplace to get a meal.  Or it’s

stifling hot, you’ve nothing to stir the air in 

whatever place you’re lucky enough to be existing,

and it is humid, and the forecast says this weather

will transpire for a duration.  Or it’s pouring

sheets of rain, for days, say, and you’ve

no umbrella nor anything with which to

protect yourself from the onslaught.  Or

you’ve bummed up your knee by trying to

clean the dead cockroaches off the top of your

closet in your tiny apartment, first hopping up upon the

sink to do so (you’ve no bathroom, no stove, just a sink

and a closet and a bed and maybe a desk), and you turn yourself

in just such a way that you fall in a twist or a split second before

intended and hit the floor and there’s such a sharp pain you are

sure that you’ve busted your knee, but it’s just a sprain, yet you

can’t walk up or downstairs or even upon a sidewalk without a whole

lot of trouble, hopping on one foot, stopping to rest every chance 

you get, so why bother?  Or if you are ill or recovering from surgery, say, 

or have a case of Covid that you are pretty sure you will live through – 

only that doesn’t belong in this category because it’s the kind of 

rest that feels deserved, that feels right, even good, no matter how 

much congestion or fever you have, and so there’s no guilt to 

accumulate just for staying in bed for a week.  Or two.  And then 

there’s depression, simple, easy to ascertain, you’re down, 

and you’re going to stay down until you’re not, which will not

likely happen—and here we might as well say we’ve gotten to the root of 

it all, the root of all evil, even—until you get your next paycheck, it simply

cannot be helped.  At times you’re unsure of the general timeframe after

which the money will even arrive.  Or perhaps the check may not even be a 

sure thing, and if that is the case, one must avoid the stasis if one has the 

will-power to do so, because there are urgent matters that require

movement, a plan to procure some cash, so if you have not resigned into

it, biding must be avoided until money can be definitively and with 

confidence expected)—so let’s say, rather, that you expect some 

promised or earned money will arrive on some assured date—at a time

at which one can be as sure as is possible about such things—and so it is

coming in a week, two weeks, a month, then, what is there to do but

bend time, to force yourself into that timeless stasis that mostly involves

sleep, or staring at walls until you are able to sleep for as long as is

humanly possible, or mindlessly playing games on an electronic device,

should you have a working one, and you do this until the day arrives 

when you get that cash, until you recover from that surgery or that 

bum knee becomes operational without too much extra assistance, 

it is then that you can, at least for the length it takes you to 

find yourself in another similar predicament, snap out of it, 

you can find a bit of contentment and perhaps even happiness,

some focus, you can remain alert enough to get things accomplished, 

you can stay awake, be okay, at least for now.  The time will surely come

soon enough when you must transport yourself once again into your

time-bending stasis, when you must, until some specific moment

in a future to which, with enough determination, you can bring yourself

with a bit of almost magical speed by, as they say, biding your time.

mmmmmciv

A Hot Shave and a Frozen Candy Cane

Does anyone know the real story

of Ol’ Saint Nick?  No?  Well, I

just happen to know someone

who knows someone who is

pretty good friends with Prancer.

Prancer the famous reindeer.  And

by way of that reindeer I have been

entrusted with this: it turns out that 

our dear Santa only lived to the age of a 

hundred eighty-seven.  Yep, the story 

goes that after decades of dealing with

that itchy, scratchy, rash-inducing

beard, jolly and warm-hearted

as he from whom it billowed must

surely have been, Mrs. Claus had

had enough of it one year, and

asked Nicholaus if he’d be so kind

as to get rid of it.  And so early 

one winter, Santa reluctantly

trekked over to the only barbershop

on the North Pole and nervously

asked not just for a trim, nope,

but he wanted a warm shave

and an above the shoulders

haircut.  Well, from here

the story gets a bit sketchy.

Some claim that the one local

barber never got much business,

and therefore hadn’t had much

practice, so it was an innocent

slip of the thumb.  Others go further, 

say it was not so innocent at all, claim

the barber was actually a disgruntled elf, 

who for decades had worked a conveyor

belt in the world’s most famous toy 

factory.  To cut to the quick,

so to speak, the coroner’s

report (and yes, while there

aren’t many deaths in the

North Pole, there is indeed

a lone coroner) reads,

quite simply, “Cause of

Death: Freak Shaving

Accident.”  The big man

bled to death on a barber’s

chair.  At least according to

the coroner.  But I happen

to know that Mrs. Claus

had a thing for a certain

monstrosity of a snowman.

And do you know who, for

the past several centuries

now, has driven that sleigh,

directing those famous

reindeer and magically

dipping himself (without

melting somehow) into

chimneys worldwide to

deliver all of those annual

gifts (and a modicum of

coal chunks) to all the boys

and girls?  You guessed it,

the Abominable Snowman

himself.  And I am also told

on authority that the old lady 

wore white so bright to her 

dead husband’s funeral

that the elves could barely

make her out, what with the 

swirling snow and ice.  And that 

to this very day, she has a

certain lighthearted swagger

for a woman of her, uh stature.  

Oh, she still smells of cinnamon, 

sure, but while before the death 

of her long-espoused Christmas

hero, she’d been a bitter woman

with a salty tongue who’d been

in trouble more than a few times

for harassing those factory elves,

nowadays, word has it, she never

manages to publicly loosen 

the overly perky grin that runs 

between those rosy circles upon

her jowls, and she’s got that light-

hearted pep in her step that 

many call a swagger.  I hear, as

well, that more than just a few of 

the citizens of the North Pole

are extra cautious when she’s

in their vicinity.   Indeed, almost

none of them ever believed it was a 

freak shaving accident after all

that brought about the 

demise of Santa Claus.

And if you think this just

conspiracy, then when 

was the last time you've

heard of a glass of milk

being emptied overnight

on Christmas Eve.  The

Snow Monster is allergic.

Oh, he eats the cookies,

but never takes a sip,

even just to down an

extra dry gingersnap.

And if you look at any

of the letters he writes

to the hundreds of

thousands of kids (and

a bunch of their parents

as well, given that he 

answers every single

piece of mail that comes

his way, just like the jolly

old man would do), you’ll find

the ink smudged almost

to illegibility, as if it were

written by a sobbing lover

or a distraught mother, or

an extra large snow monster

that has gotten a bit too 

close to a warm hearth.

Anyway, so now you know.

But do not tell a soul who

you heard it from, please?