mmmmmccxi

The Problem With Making Some Room For Hope

Reading what is surely the 100th primer on 

how to gain meaningful employment I've given
a bit of scrutiny over the past fifteen years or so.

These have been the years when, rather than having

the luxury of full-time, permanent employment, I’ve 

been that uncredited cog in the corporate machine
doing contractual, or short-term—finite—work.
Pedro Pascal, Tony Gilroy, Eva Victor and Will

Arnett are being interviewed by Justin Chang
for the new film, Behemoth! on the monster

screen at the foot of my bed. I have picked
the magazine’s first poetry submissions for

issue 42; and there now visible proof of life

that can be witnessed if one happens to find

themselves on the website today, which no

one who happened to ever visit has witnessed

(actual construction, actual change) in years.
It’s the middle of the night, as it often is when
I am at my most productive when without the
structure of a regular paid work schedule.  And

I am determined to see the upcoming daylight hours

reversing or at least easing the precarious financial

turmoil that has been unrelenting and all mine for

as many years as I have not been putting together 

new magazine issues, which I have just confirmed 

has now been a stretch of thirteen years between

the completion of issues 40 and 41.  Last week 

was basically an elongated interruption of a 

hopeful headline unexpectedly (literally so out 

of nowhere) promising at least a momentary

significant, immediate, positive change to my 

financial situation for the rest of the year, in which

a box of fourteen fresh meals that were scheduled 

to be delivered, as one has been for the past fourteen

weeks now, on Monday, yet never came, and had me
waiting anxiously for the arrival of no box, no money,

even sitting in the lobby of my apartment building being
assured multiple times over a two hour period
that the box was soon to be delivered (well past
the end of the window during which it was originally

promised).  That non-event that has had me anxiously
awaiting a bit of incredibly needed dollars that I’d
never dreamed might come, that it would even be a 

remote possibility this year, has nevertheless created 

a series of expectations and hopes, filled with a lot of

nerve-jangling hurrying up and waiting.  But the news

came to me a week ago, I am sure it was not mere

hallucination, only to be interrupted by a two-day

stretch in which I ate absolutely nothing.  So this set

of events and non-events have twisted me out of sorts 

in ways more stressful than most of this year, in which

I have been rendered inactive due to an absolute lack

of cash influx, moreso than I have already been for a

decade and a half, essentially. In short, this vapid 

lyrical hodge-podge of what I’m trying to do
to get my ducks in a row so that my focus is solidly

on making this week and the following several each

one knock-out, fantastic, productive one after another,

to the point of packing, each hopeful week with clearly
ascertainable results, the likes of which I had almost

forgotten into non-existence that will have me flying

like some fancy firecracker from the static limbo that 

has been cumulatively the shitty swamp of around

thirteen years into a new galaxy at the helm of a 

shiny spaceship that I can bend time to maneuver

up and away and out of here.  So I’m doing great,

even better, really.  I can make like a magician and

make all the depression vanish, just watch me.  If,

indeed, I do get the funds that have been for far too

long such impossible plunder. It’s Monday morning.

On top of what is going to be an amazing week.

mmmmmccx

Turning That Frown Into A More Spirited Squiggle

     When you have [big] changes in your life
     it really cleans out your ... rigid idea of who you are.
               —Willem Dafoe (from Wild Card with Rachel Martin)

I found these words to be a magnificently liberating 

notion.  A new way to reflect on a time in which I 

have up to now tended to veer into too negative 

a space; one in which I dwell unnecessarily, it turns 

out.  I think Bingo!  Why on earth has this set of
unexpected circumstances been handled so pain

fully, with such tension? Why treat it strictly as

downturn, a dramatic shift in the opposite direction

my life had moved until that point; from a sharp-grade 

ascent until that moment when it shifted downward, in 

the direction of, I often imagine, a rock bottom, that has

ever since descended, and into such depths that I think

so poorly about this growing portion of my life?  Such 

that I rarely think it living?  What a simple shift, 

that creates a wealth of possibilities, of positivities, 

a new and more mature way to treat that moment when

everything changed, when signs pointing in any direction 

were all suddenly gloomy gray arrows that sloped ever-

downward; signposts in a swampy atmosphere that, 

now with these words, create fresh perspective, concocting

a period of momentum, rife with new ways of thinking, 

turning what I had for so long thought of us a ugly and 

tragic into a space of experimentation that enables

a pivotal moment of relief, of renewal, of progress and 

radical growth filled with new ideas and fantastic, 

shifting priorities.  Just like that, a tedious limbo fills 

with electric tension and sprouts a long-flowing 

fountain from which creativity and inspiration spring.

mmmmmccix

Editing Perspective

The Arc de Triomphe as seen from
the Places des Voges two afternoons
subsequent to turning forty.  Oh, no,
you can’t take that away from me.  Or

can you?  The sandbox, being the entire
plaza, can be escaped.  Somewhere simul

taneously, the photojournalist arrives to 

snap the shot (the four of us pictured w/

in the tractor tire with Mom, who somehow
has a hand on each of the four of us, more
of a steel grip, at the scruffs of our necks?
My sister’s lopsided pair of pigtails does a

kind of see-saw balancing act as a result
of the mother’s connection.  “Sit still.  Look
pretty.  I’m no feminist, but without my
graveyard shift at the toy factory, would

this tire be filled with such fine sand?”).
This feminist fantasy goes only so far,
but what a pretty black and white photo,
the five of us never looking spiffier, four

kids in our 1970s-era hand-me-downs,
Mom somehow in one of her gingham
button-up Western shirts, circa several
years later after she’d switched from the

factory of toys to the factory of shirts,
graveyard to swing shift, carpal tunnel
problems a smoldering spark on the horizon,
like Footloose, and the glitter-laden Roman 

candles that usher in the demise of disco.

mmmmmccviii

Some Places I’d Still Love to Go (Again)

I was just thinking, with regard to the
“Again,” of Glen Ellen, of Sonoma, to
walk Sonoma Square, and tour the
Benziger Family Winery again.  That’d

be fun.  It always was.  As for places I’ve
never been, which are places I was first
thinking about, there’s Spain.  Barcelona.
Especially since it turned out I enjoyed

Italy as much as I did (I was very surprised).
And I want to go to Thailand, to Cambodia,
that’s a pretty big spread.  I’d stick to the
city in Thailand, much as I could (Bangkok,

surely?), but away from the city in Cambodia
(Angkor Wat).  I miss Los Angeles.  But found
San Diego a bit boring.  I’d go back to South
America, beyond Lima.  Uruguay, perhaps.

I’ve always told myself I’d love to go to
Mexico City.  I love a place where it’s so
easy to get lost.  I’m assuming Hong Kong is
nothing like it was when I was there before,

but Tokyo, that’s a teeming city.  Or maybe
mainland China.  I’ve always wanted to go to
Budapest.  I’d go again and again back to
Montreal.  And Vancouver.  I really could

keep going.  The more I think about it,
the places I’d love to see multiply until
it begins to be a little bit exhausting
thinking about all of the places I want to visit

for the first time, or see again.

mmmmmccvii

Way to Raise the Lowest Common Denominator

I turn the page and it’s the poem
“The Day Lady Died” by Frank O’Hara.
Which isn’t actually that surprising since
the page I turn is in The Selected Poems
of Frank O’Hara.  And I’ve mostly been
trying not to be morbid, been trying to
maintain a positive sense of self and a
hefty sense of humor with what I’m
thinking, what I’m watching and
what I’m writing this morning.
But how not to delve into the
maudlin or the morbid, me?
Is this just today?  Is it
lately, I wonder?  Have I
been this way always?  But
my first thought is my mother
just died, and she was a lady.  And
this gets me to thinking about my mom,
who recently passed.  I’ve yet to begin
reading the poem, have decided to save
it for a while (yes, I’ve read this one before,
why did I suddenly feel you judging me?), but
as my eyes come up from the page, I see this
portion of a line about halfway down the page,
“(first name Linda I once heard)” – and I think
that perhaps I’ve been this way always, as I am
suddenly reveling in the fact that my mother,
who just recently passed away, was named
Linda.

mmmmmccvi

Green Marker

we used to call them magic,
or were they only magic when
they were super thick?  oozing
ink.  I write with it the word

“Farce” in the upper right margin
of this spiral-bound notebook for
no reason in particular.  in truth,
I’m thinking of the green M & M,

of the green that is horny, the
horny green.  I played a trumpet
(a brass horn) in high school.  I
started doing it in fifth grade, so

it wasn’t just high school.  band
was a thing I revered for a while;
I was band president my junior
year of high school, and maybe

a few folks had heard that trumpet
players were excellent kissers.  this
green marker says Paper Mate flair,
medium.  which reminds me that

for most of my high school years,
I carried with me and wrote with
a blue Paper Mate pen.  I was
horny in high school.  but perhaps

no less or moreso than I am some
forty-five years later, legs crossed,
being all serious about a silly come-
from-nowhere poem.  hello from here.

mmmmmccv

“Maybe you blow them up.”

let us evaluate the comedic intent
of [in a childish whine]: “You started it.”
nasal prepubescents that remind us of
a certain teacher’s pet.  this was fifth
grade or around the time of Steve Martin.
if only.  in actuality, Cheech & Chong.  oh,
there were so many laughs.  these lies
mold our impressions about the present.
maybe they blow you up. this afternoon,
dropping by my apothecary to pick up
some more of those amazing gummies
that I take to reduce anxiety (not only
is that my cover but it is quite true), this
place that has a marijuana lounge that, as
I was noting to the cashier, always seems
to be quite busy, the immediate response
from the cashier was “yes, because it’s
Latin music today.” very exciting, but
she wasn’t finished. “but on Friday and
Saturday evenings we have comedians.”
I’m thinking, hmm, stoned while laughing.

mmmmmcciv

Don’t Let Me Predict the Future

on Sunday I had a funny
premonition that my weekly
box of food, that comes each
Monday and has 14 fresh-made

meals, was not going to arrive.
there was precedent.  but surely
I was just being a little dramatic
and there was no real reason I

should think that it wouldn’t come.
it did not.  it was the perfect storm
in which, thanks to my box not
arriving, I went forty-eight hours

without eating.  Tuesday and
Wednesday.  I used to love reading
the tabloid prognosticator’s predictions
back in the 1970s, thinking what a lovely

job, to pretend to see the future.  I
think I prefer not being able to see
the future.  let Jeane Dixon remain
Jeane Dixon.  I want no part of it,

Past, Present or Future.

mmmmmcciii

You have to find the rhythm.

Born on the Fourth of July with egrets,
which almost sounds and looks like
regrets, and in this poem that similarity
might be helpful, but is absolutely

unnecessary, at least not in mine, but,
regretfully, where I got the egrets, well,
they come from the sky, these things,
it could be while you’re cooking (I am

not a big fan of cooking, myself; I’m a
huge fan of eating, of eating well, of
people who cook, I used to surround
myself with people who do that well),

or you could be walking through (up,
up, and around) Alamo Square Park
for the first time in a few years.  I’ve
been here at least once since making

that music video, friends, former friends,
“I feel the need...” for a tirade, one of my
tirades, to pour out the heat about former
friends, but then I get wistful, wishing for

a friend, for one to appear in this instant.
Quickly looking up the country’s most
famous drink, which, as it turns out (obvy),
is a mojito.  This wavering on the fringes

of anger, that red-faced temper so familiar
during those formative years.  The abuse
we thought we endured.  Only to learn,
only to learn, decades later, that we’d

learned nothing.  No regrets, though.  Sly
tells the adept interviewer that if anyone
says they have no regrets, well, that’s a
bullshit artist.  That’s not exactly what he

said.  I keep changing the channel.  I mean,
I’m getting into long form videos, kind of the
opposite of the direction we all thought things
were going, right?  Right.  Learning something

of nothing.  I’m a photographer.  I’m principal
poet.  What is it that tells me that these words,
like laundry hanging on the line via clothespin,
airing out, as opposed to what I could spin play

ing the role of a thespian, actor vs. lyricist, actor 

vs. musician, actor vs. academician, vs. business

person (that was never in the cards, officially, 

but one has to pay rent).  Gotta pay the rent.

mmmmmccii

Mombam

campho-phenique
jars of lemon drops
noisy parakeets
a pistol under her

pillow and scads
of daily pills
an outdoor
banana tree in

arkansas
chicken coops
breakfast chef
ran the one cafe

in my hometown
her nickname from
aunt jeanne who
couldn’t say

momma van meter
my great grandmother
had quite the temper
used ‘the dickens’

as an expletive
and could often be
heard promising to
wring the neck of
any sparrow she

caught nabbing
chicken feed
vick vap-o-rub
rex the german

shepherd
a series of
strokes in
the 70s

led to this
mighty
matriarch’s
demise

mmmmmcci

Sweet Dreams

             and so he takes an orange and sticks
a lot of cloves in it and then he looks at it and realizes
that he’s killed the orange.....
    Orange is lying bleeding in my hand!
                                                        —Frank O’Hara

He’d had a bunch of vivid dreams.  When he rose
from his disheveled bed, he quickly had a pen in
his hand and a typewriter in the other.  And with
those he reproduced his sweet, cherubic dreams
of pythons and fruit, which he laid out poetically,
in as accurate detail as he could muster, the
fantastical memories fading as he scribbled,
vanishing as he typed.  But what dreams they
were, filled with the sun and with snakes and
with fruit more orange than he’d ever tasted.
Oh, harbinger of great taste and designer of
endlessly repeatable lyrics, may such dreams
come true, and with zing, which is even better
than aplomb, and sweeter and tangier, too.
Dreams that with us all, oh prophesier, are
brighter than the past and (we pray so hard)
are swifter than the future.  Quick, before
we are torn from the margins.

mmmmmcc

once again, i’ve given in

what’s a poem when
you’re around? non-
existent when there’s
you. a presence upon
which to live. what’s

a thing of beauty when
you’re around? i say
you, and am done with
that question. next
question. where are

you? it is clear to these
senses. not here. but
rather than be miserable
(where might i find you,
dear, oh where?), i plug

myself into every moment
wherein i was if even for
a split second in your fair
presence. what’s a love
poem when you are near,

my dear? i know, i know,
they shall never know,
such odious odes, for
they bore the wits right
out from your most awe-

inspiring aura.  it is non
sense to even utter a
word in your presence,
you’d yawn, or worse,
you’d frown. oh, why 

am i so suddenly down,

i wonder . . . . . . . . .?

mmmmmcxcix

scattered upon a splattering notion

not wanting to be from another time
and therefore knowing my very own
uselessness in this one. but i’ll stay
here. for history, the fly on the wall
nobody saw but you, who’d probably
swat me into oblivion if you really did.
but honestly, more flagrantly, for you,
in human form, my wildest aspiration
to inhabit your space, oh, to see you
merrier for it. and then that swat,
or a slap, or a slammed door will do.

mmmmmcxcviii

Pilfering Through My Photographs

I go through photos, tagging them, editing
the date and location of them, it’s a thing
I do.  I have hundreds of thousands in my
collection, mostly photos I’ve taken, but
there are numerous family photos, too.
Pictures from before I was born, of my
family.  One might analyze this long-
established habit, as I sometimes do.
I photograph to remember just as I
write to remember.  For most of you
out there, with memories unlike mine,
this might seem a stretch, or it might
even sound outlandish.  But it is true,
absolutely.  It’s a way to stir up a past,
to jog my memory about a thing that
literally happened in my vicinity, to me,
around me, however-many years ago.
I do it out of the desire to build a genea
logical web, my family tree.  There is perhaps 

more than a hint of nostalgia, but I never do it
strictly for nostalgia’s sake; although I suppose
the habit sprung from moments that were more
nostalgia-based, which would be any holiday my
family and I spent at my maternal grandmother’s,
in which we could always count on looking through
several of the family photo albums that were housed
in the living room.  This would transpire between a 

first and second indulgence of dessert.  Even then,
I could interject that my participation was an effort to
piece together the history of me, just the time I spend

doing so in the present is for much the same reason. 

It is building this unfinished history of the person I am

that has me most grateful for going through photographs,
makes me most grateful to have taken all of these snapshots
over the years, that I have horded as much as I can of those 

my family had or took in the years before I was able to do the
same.  This has me often pilfering through the photographs,

tagging, editing, remembering.  I could bore you more with 

how this works, like how just today I discovered who I was 

in the year 1993, which was someone and someplace altogether 

different than the person I thought I was that year.  I was literally 

missing an entire year.  And how delightful to discover this truth.

I could just say I enjoy looking through the photographs.  That 

one of the primary reasons this habit exists for me is that these 

are my keepsakes—as I’ve nothing material from before I
turned fifty, all of that stuff having been lost for
good thanks to life and its upheavals.  Or that
as far back as I can remember I have had a
strong case of obsessive compulsive disorder.
For which I’m grateful.  Whatever the case, 

as far as I am concerned, it’s a nice way to
pass the time.  And in the process
I get what I consider an 

important education.

And as long as I take

the time to go through

my pictures, that 

education continues.

mmmmmcxcvii

     Remember your family?
           —Kathleen Fraser

I grew another arm.  It

sprung out from my right

elbow, this new extension

of me.  And so I was able

to write much faster. And

so I set about spending

most of my days, at 

least for a while, on

composing a list of

things I had to do,

which I called my

to do list.

Once I felt that was

complete, my attention

was diverted.  I read a

book of poetry.  I sat in

front of the gigantic tele

vision set at the foot of my

bed and watched episodes of 

Lantern and Star Trek: Strange

New Worlds; I sat rapt in

front of season finales (Silo,

Shrinking, The Studio) and

then I took a late shower 

(very late).  I had therapy 

(via Zoom, 50 minutes). 

I looked at my bowl of

vegetables and spent

some time worrying

about upcoming meals.

I cleaned out the micro

wave and gave myself

a haircut.  My weekly

box of food arrived, 

and I breathed a 

huge sigh of relief.

mmmmmcxcvi

Brief Notes on Citizenry and Coexistence

things to reconsider and then
move beyond and then to
reconsider again....  did we
stray too far away from em

pathy?  did we distance our

selves from one another

because of feelings of 

obligation?  or out of fear 

that someone we love or 

admire or respect or worship 

(perhaps change to revere) 

will hold our unintentional 

sin against us until they 

are gone (even if you go 

first)?  never let the good 

angel of circumspection 

fall or fly off of your 

shoulder.  without 

existing endlessly 

within the confines 

of its torture chamber, 

practice the art of con

trition with regularity 

and the utmost discipline;
that apology-filled vault 

in your hard drive (or 

wherever you keep it) 

must be accessible in a

pinch and ever-expand

ing.  exercise some 

subtlety when express

ing your materialistic ten

dencies, but disallow any 

shame or guilt for having 

them.  we are, after all,

life-long citizens of these 

united states (america, 

we must however rem

ember, is the entirety of 

the western hemisphere).

having said that, it is 

nevertheless an excel
lent idea to have within 

reachable grasp a cleanly
constructed argument for
socialism, just in case 

such a need arises.

mmmmmcxcv

Monologue
Cinematography

tiny lips cave
gag swirl
a frown of
freckles ex
halation
elation

breathe
again swap
sensitive
noses tug
at earlobe
lapel tuft
of tight
air

pale ex
cavation
modern
nymph
resemblance
purses whist
whistle

tea kettle
steampunk
a halo whip
the tuft’s
undone
cumberbund

pan’s up to
zero periph
eral do not
lower slow
fetish
focus

lock on
facial
cavern
close-up
spelunk

mmmmmcxciv

Self-Imposed Solitude

it’s hard to believe that i would
do this to myself.
but look at me,
i’ve done it again:
put the blame for my troubles
solidly upon yours truly.  sometimes
i think, what a fortunate life i have,
but not usually.  not lately.

i can remember
feeling lucky, feeling blessed.
as i rise this morning from barely making it
to upward mobility and beyond.
the vector was never a straight line,
but it averaged into one with a pretty steep incline.
then came the crash.  like a stock market
or cardiac arrest.  like an automobile
that has veered off course and slammed into a tree.
some time later, 

when i had all but recovered, 

another disaster, and then yet another. 

until i was stumbling, but barely, from 

one instance of bad luck into another.
that’s just the way life goes, i suppose.
but nobody taught me how to lift myself up from such a fall.
i mean, i do yet exist.  and, granted, 

i have days much better than the past few, 

and i try to dwell on those 

instead of what i presently can’t but think are
too similar to the distinct majority of all that i’ve lived through
since that great stumble and fall. 

it’s just the way life goes, i suppose.
surely (if only it felt that certain) 

i will soon find myself back in good spirits.
it’s always happened before.
but when i find myself feeling such a
no good perspective as the one i presently have,
it’s sometimes hard to convince myself
that i’ll make it to that next rush.  oh, shush!
i audibly say to myself.  what good is expressing such?
but, dear diary, i’m so obviously ill-equipped, this heart-on-sleeve

wreck that is me, to swerve from this misfortunate path.
and so it’s the blues that get relayed from me to you tonight.
isn’t that the way life is sometimes?     i suppose it is.

mmmmmcxciii

“Here We Go!”

But go we didn’t.
Not that I can

recall at the

moment, at

any rate.  But

here they are 

those three words,
an exclamation point.

It must have been
at least six months
ago that I wrote
it in the margin

on the first page
of this blue note
book (Fabrinio,
it says, made in

Italy).  It could
not have been
more than ten
years ago.  I

say I write to
remember, and
this is true.  But
no matter how

much I scrunch
up my eyes in
an attempt to
recall when it

was I scrawled
those words,
and where it
was we were

going, I am
drawing a
blank.  But
it’s a hopeful,

generally opt
imistic phrase,
unless we were
about to take

off in a roller
coaster?  It’s
a half hour
to midnight.

Sleep will
come soon.
And I’ve no
quarrel with

myself over
reusing the
phrase.  As
a bit of en

couragement,
a bon voyage,
say, as we em
bark toward

the land of
dreams.  And
beyond.  I
do hope it’s 

smooth sail

ing all the 

way.  Here

we go!

mmmmmcxcii

Cartoon Balloon

It’s early morning on the 16th of the month.
I just drank the last drops from what had been
a two liter bottle of Diet Dr Pepper.  What was
left filled one of my medium sized sea green
colored plastic cups (I have two of them; did I
start out with three, four?).  I’ve no money left 

for the month and won’t get my tiny subsidy 

check until the first.  I could lean my head
back upon my pillow right now, unable to
sleep, but to meditate on existence with
no income.  I could let those thoughts
(that thoughtlessness) overwhelm me
with anger or into resignation, or I
could instead close my eyes and
use my mind to move time, to
either make it go faster, or to

slow it down, feeling my body,

feel it inflate until I resemble

a gigantic parade balloon in

the faded image of a cartoon

character from my childhood, 

expanding easily to squeeze

myself into the moment until 

I’ve pushed time out through 

the fringes; or I might carry

the moment along with me,

and then speed ahead of it.

These are methods of existence

I have developed in order to weave

in and out of time’s typical cadence,

a timelessness within which I might 

sway in relative peace.  Until I begin 

to remember that no matter how much

I bend or fold it in order to exist outside

of its realm, usually in an effort to cope 

with my diminishing value, inside of my 

skin-sack of nothingness, I will still continue

to age, to grow older.  These tricks are of the
mind, are mere delusion; the peace that makes its
way into the dim crevasses within my head is but the
airy entropy that I am always becoming.  I’ll fight again 

to lift my lids, to squeeze my way back out of this stasis,
all the while a polluted airiness hisses its way out of

my nose, my ears, eyes and mouth, the gassy stuff

of me.  Until I am unrecognizable, opaque,
impossible to lean into or upon.  No

substance.  Until I am a nearly 

indiscernible whistle.  And soon

I will be nothing but gone.

mmmmmcxci

Clunking Onward

     Call me with your danger
              —Kathleen Fraser

Are you ready to move this in a new

direction?  I am.  More absurdity, less 

anxiety, and no boredom.  So what scares 

me?  Fear of death.  Fear of being alone.  

An extrovert who has been ravaged by 

a decade-long case of agoraphobia.  

The fear of ending in tragedy.  

Realizing that, oh hell, if I were to 

bite the dust, to shuffle off this 

mortal coil as I slept or (scarier still) 

just as I began to go through the con

flicting process of waking up; if the spasms

began to erupt, those ripples that lure who

ever I am in dream-state, giddily and dizzily,

back toward a simpler awareness, to an 

awakened state, if this time nothing 

manages to entice me, so that instead

I lie here with my eyes closed until I have

gone cold.  Who’d find what was left?  It’d 

be nobody I know, that much is certain.

After how many days and nights?  Am I
cognizant of how disturbing—how scary—
that what I leave behind, having accrued a
few things since less than a decade ago losing

all that up to that point I had, the ephemera, 

only to replace the lot with these few pieces of 

furniture and a dozen or so reams that, individually

and in summation, are but a heap—garbage—like 

the inevitable carcass that was once me would be, at 

least to whomever would arrive to take it all away, 

to  dispense with me and my detritus.  Who would

understand what each of these relics had meant 

to me?  Who’ll consider the bias I had for each 

piece of this mess?  No one.  It’ll be someone who

arrives and makes a dispassionate, democratic
list, more than likely (surely there’s nothing here

of any significant cash value).... //  Yuck.  Damn.

Rather than find my way toward fresh perspective, 

I’ve trailed off rather morbidly, haven’t I?  At the
outset, I thought I’d work my way humorously

through the horrors of my greatest fears.  But
how bland I’ve been lately.  Perhaps I’ll put
this down, switch on the television, like I did
around this time yesterday to watch the Emmys

(in which newcomers and personal faves Pluribus
and Widow’s Bay all but swept).  How might I
diminish my fears with laughter or pleasant
thoughts?  To relax the tension between aspiration

and reality, to redesign goals so that, should I tap
into an as-yet-unfound pocket of energy, I can
meet them and move forward, ever forward,
while this life yet remains spirited.  Here I am!

mmmmmcxc

the weight of the world

who wants to get stuck in
somebody else’s doldrums?
is kind of rhetorical because
how many of us, and with

intention (good or bad),
take up residence in the
troubled neighborhoods
that are other people’s

seemingly unsolvable
problems.  oh tortured
poet that is myself, use
your own capacity to dig

yourself out of this one.  and,
until you’ve escaped in real life,
find some mind-tingling pretend
paradise in which you might

grandly research, taking copious
and effervescent notes which you
might dangle before yourself, in 

an effort to hide your foul aura.

mmmmmclxxxix

“can’t we pretend?”
(somewhere out of my head)

proceed.  we must proceed
with this fresh procedural.
don’s porcine collection
does not include porky.
hans’s motivation was 

to prevent the death 

of his best friend.  a
termination of life
was prohibited.  

how paradisical 

to live on with
no end.  the 

peculiar 

party 

of post-

graduates had
pert tendencies,

their preference of 

prevarication, “we’re 

from st. ignatius, fresh 

out from montpelier.”  they

shared a tepid parfait on the
patio.  they parted penitently,
which stretched their patience. 
to have pressed on together
would have been peril.  but

each previously pent-up perp 

was pleased to breathe a sigh

of relief.   plenty of laws 
were broken; nothing

lethal, though.  so 

(whew!) our 

dreams, for

now, endure.

mmmmmclxxxviii

What am I doing, in memoriam?
What I do to remember your death
is nobody’s business, really.  But I want
to sift through pictures of you at parties—
all the rest of the attendees gather around
your throne (your edge of the big green sofa),
everyone is attractive, participatory, filled with life—
they are mixed among other colorful photographs, here

we’re at the aquarium, here we’re sipping wine at glen ellen,
and here we’ve somehow found ourselves walking a golf course,
glimpses of the ocean appear behind your vivid hair, ornate fountains 

spew arcs that are bent by a breeze I suddenly remember (flashback to

a spirited dance toward your dark straw hat that’s been blown off
the top of your head, and to me quickly stooping to scoop it up. 

i place it securely atop your shimmering head.  What do I do 

with  such memory-soaked time?  How to best put use to 

such reminiscences, to gather perspective in relation to 

the present and uncertain future.  To, as pleasantly as

I can, take it all in, so that I might with purpose
and grace, give my best from where I now 

exist—with an unwavering awareness 

and with utmost respect—to this, 

our own living and dying.

4

mmmmmclxxxvii

i am not a grape

(somewhere out of my head)

it seems an odd time in life to be a fruit
or a vegetable.  you once thought my soul
was royal purple.  imagine my surprise

when you turned out to be so sour.  i
watch the man behind the counter
slice up a thick banana for the

circle swirl atop my açai bowl.
today, i’m getting the hanna banana,
my usual.  i do this occasionally on days 

i can, which has occurred with greater infrequency

for quite some time now.  i’m not carmen miranda, 

either.  and not for lack of vocal ability,

i might add, but rather because the fruit keeps
falling off of my head.  also, my vertigo is back.
and not just metaphorically.

mmmmmclxxxvi

readying for movement
(somewhere out of my head)

it seems an odd time in life,
illogical, trying to claw my way
out of my head into a healthier
era than i’ve been in years,
perhaps decades, even
as it has been only 

two weeks, 

maybe three 

since mom’s funeral.  

but i am indeed healthier.

so i try to be celebratory,
after all it is my health.
i list in my head all of the
issues from the past decade
or so (surgery, bad knee, etc., but recovery).
i go on long walks in the city several times a week,
first time in years.  but presently i’m destitute.  and

my weekly box of prepared meals didn’t arrive on monday as it has
every monday during each of the four or five 12-week cycles
i’ve been getting them.  tiny meal slurps, i call them.
and so i don’t go hungry.  not yet, anyway.  but
i have lost 75 pounds or so in the past year.
it’s astounding to feel this good.  to
send out applications and resumes
every day because i’m not having to deal
with whatever crisis of the moment that is too
all-consuming (it has been three days since i should have 

received a box of meals, though).  sufferin’ stagnation!
my health.  i had a mother for 59 years,
then one day, no mother.  and dad’s
been gone for 25 already.  gary 
for ten years.  but me, i am healthier
than i’ve been in years, yet still incapable of
living what i still call normal life.  whatever 

this existence is, it has long since become 

normal.  it became life.  but i cannot

see it as normal.  i hear voices through 

the window on the other side of my 

desk, but cannot make out what 

any are saying.  it is just me here.

in this dull but singular, and

now healthier, existence.  i
wonder what i can
scrounge up for
lunch.  i keep a list,
there are always items to check off,
and i have already checked several

of the items for today, just as i do

most every day.  but over time the list 

barely grows, barely shrinks.  overcome, 

as i often am, by a dizzying wealth (i can 

call it that) of thoughts swimming around 

in my head, moving too fast, too many of 

them.  straining now to focus.  

it is time to focus, time to act.  

time to rethink how to be.

mmmmmclxxxv

the life of an artist

can we just get rid of this life
okay it’s gone this life of an artist thing
but wanting to be rich did you see what i did
when i said rich was a risk?  he went all out with risqué
is kaye okay?  no she gone like whistle gone like the wind
like a windy whistle.  got something to wet your wistful (gone
west) it is a deadly thing this dehydration don’t you play
with me.  you’re having a conversation with your dead
voice voices like a wet whistle on a dry wind do you know
whether there is a term for that or weather a term as deep
and mournful as dry wind becomes wet?  oh moisture.
oh moisture thinks the mouth when how come
you can never go hungry
go thirsty how come you can
never go hungry in the desert
because
because of the sand
because of the sand which
is there.  the sandwiches is there.  see how easy it is
to examine the sand to spend your life looking for a water mole
to spend your ever day your life searching for a water molecule
clinging to a rain of sand like sands because now that is something
now you know why you needn’t go thirsty.  thirst kills
and who laughs?  how come you can never go hungry in the desert?
because you foolish mirage you are lying there thirsting to death.