ccxix

It’s the last page! $5 drink at One Market
today WE BREATHE it’s so damned
SQUARE we’re just hectic. Kaplunk there
goes that door again what door where
SOBER is that door I’ve never been through
that door before MY BUTT have you? It’s
unavoidable nicotine today was so LAZY
ASS hectic. Oh I said that. Short note:
I have tons of ACTION dirty laundry
there goes that door again where is that
door RUN OUT OF INK? I am PRETTY
much different any more I hope MY POCKET
I hope my KALEIDOSCOPE or LIFE
IS Emerson Hall is close I hope. When I sit
with my memories again I read four articles
from the COST OF RECOVERY POWER
TO DETAIN JUDGE RULES AGAINST
DEMOCRATIC RIVALS TO PLAY NICE
New York Times travel section April Fool!

ccxviii

I’m sweating TIME TRAVEL
too much while he photocopies
all of his PHOBIAS for the Mechanical
Engineering Department. Doctor I
guess I’ll leave him alone then to his
claustrophobia it’s the HOTTEST DAY
OF MARCH I’ve gotta run. We nail
a fennel salad, bake quiche, GAY BEAR
spaghetti carbonara – now that’s a
flashback!! I need to make a STUD dark
in liberty out of this poem from yesterday,
stop writing POEMS! They hurt! I’m
HOT dreams of thirst (even if he’s back
from San Francisco) all this babble gets me
nowhere. What’s his name from Cleveland?
ME sweatwalking from Whole Foods with
fake bacon and lemon tarts lots of sunshine
TOO MUCH not really. I changed destiny
so that I could be famous in my own mind.
It worked. Oh SHOOT the woman I used
to talk to in Geneva.


originally published in BoXoN

ccxvii

another gorgeous mushroom kisses. I’m attending a poetry
gravity and I think I ate most of it. I owe you 7 spinach kisses.
all those words I think Suzy liked it. esp. 9 red bell pepper kisses.
discovering language I was moved by all of the poems, inc. Santa Fe
and the poem about murder. he wanted a throw-away sentence like
we taped up my bedroom with montery jack cheese kisses. it felt like
I feel: tingly good and maniacal. don’t let me be dotty tomorrow.
I was driving to poetry this morning and I saw 4 fake bacon kisses.
they were on the jump-start list, chunking out phrases like Lincoln
lasagne & apolitical quiche followed shortly by Ginny O’s cheese rings.

ccxvi

gorgeous crocuses.
if I make enough of them
some of them will
become dumb.

even the sterile
campus bleeds its
dawn, a form of
heartache (forgery).

started working it
earlier. indeed, its
circumference was
staggering. smoke

bells. ten words to
jumpstart elocution:
he’s so in love with
okra now. my mood

went downhill. then
we walked up the
fillmore steps to the
jasmine glitches. he

says he’ll drop
out of school. per
haps I should walk
back to my shoes.

but then tomorrow?

ccxv

We’ve developed an eye for the
WRITING breathing. And it should take
time for it to be FUNEREAL. I just turned on
just turned on my manservant and OURSELVES
say “I think I’ll have Masto today” whatever
that is. OVERWHELMING dream about that guy
that guy with ISSUES. I haven’t really been been
consisting a lot THINKING about last night’s Fatt Dogg.
It was ok CARING. Kind of NUMBER ONE hard to eat
and messy. Long dogs. Short buns. MYSELF. And good
relish. I dreamed about about CAN’T I EVOLVE this guy.
He was bawling, terribly upset because he’d just been
dumped across the Mass Ave. I wanted to take a LONG
trip to find some some STUN some enclosure of a
couple of STUN poems. Funky flat screen TV over the
condiment stand self-absorbing pig can’t handle CNN.

ccxiv

the awkward 4pm stairsteps A LOT
a sign a sailboat up at the same cloud
where the hallway spirals into PSYCH
OSIS same staircase we pass in mornings
as each cloud in my head is another
ROBOT that has subsided the academy
the same damned number of boats each
pleasant ripple BALLING found conversation
it’s stifling and/or boring and/or my DOLLARS
of diagonal shapeshifting its one thing was
completely was writing a slime UNSETTLED
and unearthed skyscraper FEELING with yellow
window-washers sailing anyway into one another
a MEMOIR of our communications restaurants
movies saint DAFFODIL something-or-other
its peanut noodles indelible DAFFODIL indel
edible tablespoons of peanut editing eating
a DAFFODIL MEMOIR was

ccxiii

someone fell on top of the ICE glass
sculpture between our buildings.
ARKANSAN upon the concept that
sculpture is a generous term for
what it was, EYESORES do see death. do so.
just like us SYNDROMES, my legs
miss your legs. SPRING pelting the
windows between us. it’s not so
complicated and ICE as all that.
we were united yet a third time and a
RENEWAL has happened this month.
LILY TOMLIN crunch, people fall off bridges,
are trampled or thrown or suffocated
and also are DROWNED, I sit SICK
in a box for ten hours every day,
my last grandfather goes THRESHOLD,
I write nothing about the filtered
butterflies I drink, three liters every
day, nor the coaster it flutters upon,
nor the plastic bottle I fill constantly,
full of LOVE butterflies, a 31-day-old
bottle to me, I wrote about it now. see?

ccxii

got thread
bare wish
in head
ache line
at ATM
machine
its jolt
my nerve
a type
of flip
flop hope
ful mutt
er in yr
ear your
ear your ear
ring’s caught
my tooth
ache ingot
& I got no
floss it’s
fine my del
icate trick
don’t turn
your eye
no more

ccxi

I am with
the pressure
in my head. We
met with a vengeance
outside a plastics purveyor
on salt and pepper office day.
He kept me writing about it 5%
while into the vegetables. Now let
us take the plunge, be slickened like
smushed grapes (cuz making muscat
is good for a picnic). He bought new
pants and his new ass looks great!
If I can get down to 140
promise me this,
death to all
muses.

ccx

last night we
danced so
close to the
war. in Vir
ginia where
ever James
Madison
College is
last night
Kevin and
Aaron each
said a poem
to my heart.
last night we
slept in or
outside of
Roanoke. I
was teach
ing him how
to drive and
he was teach
ing me how
to skip a
beat.

ccix

we meddled once. sitting
in the front passenger seat
of my car. what are your
rules, mister? soon we’re
in Nashville, hard to know
where to begin. I dropped
my fork to look at an ass.
too many details in each
death. March falls. then it’s
the cleanest day in August.
countless birthdays doom
corporations. it’s my first
shower alone in years and
I can’t write in this car.

ccviii

I like myself writing more
corporate establishment
on the kitchen marble
with the window open
down to the dumpsters is
enriching and feels very
comfortable these waves
these incoming waves
incoming via cable
all the way from
Jamaica Pond wailing
“all the pretty eloquence
is stifling me...”

...meanwhile it’s in
the internet where I
funded those boys’ words
they founded me via the
flotsam I flung at the
stiflement via Ma vie
en rose and enriched my
peeing more trips
round the corner
to the men’s
room via the
dull hallways thru
each office door a
slumped artist with a
clean view of the bay

ccvii

this library steeped in my
head where people get
to know me if I let them
not likely for this paper
its refrigerator humming
disconsolately while no
poetry is in my soul like
a good mood no letter
in my brain no word
from Boston because
he doesn’t want to meet me
hi
we shook hands yes
terday
this room was safe from us then

ccvi

rainy day in Ca
mbridge town.
guy who reads
newspapers on
toilets the day I
get my first ever
corporate card
and drink a V-8
with shrimps and
sausages criss
crosses campus to
determine men
us. reservations
about Ogunquit.
we’re wacky for
Roger the sexy
Britlet (fantasy
vs. reality). dis
burse $670 in Lev
i’s baby brother
or sister. put it
hard on a
horse, for me
an important
process (note:
wrote a report).
sure, I’m not
a language, nor
an insurgency.

call tonight,
a lunatic.

ccv

too bad I’m not
rockstar cool but
I guess it’s ok to be
niceguy cool. this is
not about sex or
politics. let’s say
you were really
looking forward
to working for Banana
next week. am I
niceguy cool? here I am
alongside my
first corporate
fill-in-the-blank.
that sounds good.
like a dart-blower or a
martini with two onions.
I’m trying to eat
and write at the
same time. phenomenal
finalists. check. let us
kneel. check. kissing
the page. check.
remember the
quick trot to work
after losing my first
slam. check. further note:
fiercely. fiercest big
loser. fiery hearted.
hearty heart heart.

cciv

today’s fun is calendar fun!

what fits today’s schedule: think
more seriously; obnoxious destinations

like this spot: FUEL!

see the guy with the long hair who
shaved half his head off (the left half)

what does that mean?

so we grumble through the morning fog
into a pleasant afternoon, whose

reflection sits nicely upon Embarcadero 4

south side. now officially accepting
one job after another. years go by.

I am here. starting Monday.

cciii

what does he mean by
what should I put
in this poem? “you should
put something not of yourself.”

that means I’m
further in the hole
than I’d ever imagined.

that means this coffee is awful
and soften this headache.

how dare the power of repetition!
it repeats itself. this poem
I just read sixty-one
times. sixty-one
poems. sixty-one
dollars of poetry
(plus fiction).

just yesterday we dined across the street,
at Botolph’s. had roasted tomato shiitake mushroom
pesto sandwich on focaccia bread.

now we are playing
the stock market. picking
feathers out of pillows. cheating each other
with words. sixty-one. sixty-one. sixty-one.

ccii

he landed on the president in the middle of his presentation
a good fellow but his butt’s too flat

at the end of a Valentine the
bulbs blew up to grow good poems full of Novocaine

when I say blew up I’m not talking about the Crocker Galleria
I can’t imagine a poem feeling that good

my second reading was a line thru my forehead
you can fix that now in downtown San Francisco, he said

lunchtime’s one piece of chicken and one more piece of chicken
made way for eventide’s Grandma cookie (peanut butter)

no more smut for the soul but oops four more wrinkles
one Mississippi two Mississippi three Mississippi four

cci

turned around to hear my
stomach screaming at me indeed
it was ticked off by my yoga instructor “money money

money money money!” gas bills
medical insurance cellphone
vocabulary intelligence

what a bunch of words I hate words I
do believe I’m losing
my calm

where’s my lover’s ear? I lean over to put my
mouth into my grip on the
border between the kitchen and the
living room and lo he reaches up from somewhere and

the storm passes away he picks up the spills
and I lose my grip to the fleeting thunder

cc

waiting for my pinto pilaf. the snow
crackles unanimously like hailstorms.
marble windows barking. the
bay seems dull bluish, dull grayish, or dull whitish.
several boats pore over it...

I could show you my life in 200 poems.
several years’ worth. “he’d never an ounce of
credibility,” nods one profile. you can just make out
a halo over it, or swirling thru it...

got plenty of revisionist sleep last night
after arguing about doppelgängers.
this is not a diary entry. this is reality.
I took off my shirt and nearly walked out the door.

but I’ve certainly been a domestic sloth. my
heart heals slowly when there’s a need to
reach around and feel my face, its nose
tangled up in the lavender that sprung from the wall.

I’ve been trying to appreciate being alone
and I’ve been very successful. which makes
the perfect boyfriend better.
here he is rounding the hallway corner,
no more antibiotics,
a nice change of pace,
200 ghosts spitting ice.
and here we are asleep on the greenish couch we cuddle upon.

cxcix

pity I have to
prove myself
to be myself.

the Benziger pea
cocks. see them
strut. drink wine. who

can see a butter
fly from the
33rd floor

w/o experiencing
an identity
crisis? he

sketches me. we pic
nic at V. Sattui sans
naked loversoaking.

chill, I’m a star
ting to blech
really love my

job. pity.

cxcviii

I find my death
in a comic book. It
looks like a

clown dressed
as a heart. This
surprises me.

Consequently, I
lose touch with
who I am. (Death

serves vodka with
Red Bull.) In
novation is over

rated & I’ve lost
my touch. Why
are vegetables

more sincere
than meat? If
heart is broken

then death is
fervent, eager.
Problems may

arise from
heart killing
brain. Pow.

cxcvii

being his birthday and all
I get a very nasty note

these drunken notes HE
CALLS to punish me so I’m

all upset shoving
the cat off the pot

pee in here it’s better than
being upset on top of him

I tried to respond and I
did but then I unsent it

it’s so easy to lose says the
square blond kid dancing like

Archie and Jughead
I’ll give him his stupid TV