cclxxxii

let me grab my thoughts. I
order a burger. turtles and fisting.
the heart of the story lies in the
warmth beneath the surface
of what? I’m having dinner
at the Ritz-Carlton. attendee
list with logistics.

cclxxxi

an optomythist. more fog than rain.
the coaster, the stapler, and the
tape dispenser. the heat I can feel
watching this story—is it you or
the story? nothing seems right.
nothing seems right.

cclxxx

November reminds me of her leathery
presence. I’ve agreed to be the bastion of stability.
I learned how to be a social butterfly at
his uncle’s funeral. Nothing like realizing I’m
actually frightened of having long-term friends.
She was taking prescription drugs and she was
totally stressed out. Everyone has a stick
up his butt. It’s a chilly, beautiful day.
It just started raining.

cclxxix

Tomorrow the turkey is good. Some sibling
spat, spoken in long time (l o n g t i m e)
comes to me today, this evening, after tea,
but before tomorrow. Tomorrow is good.

What have I done these past few days?
We attend a series of movies and then
reflect how each character is ourselves. Our
own characters are not that flat, but we say to ourselves
“I want to kiss him like that.” “I want to be so drunk.”
“I want to look at the clock and then suddenly
figure it all out. Like that.”

cclxxviii

Give me a couple of hours to do some work.

I did visit him last night.

I am eating this right now: “Locally roasted espresso steeped into fresh cream,
then carefully stirred into dark couverture and dipped in milk...for a strong
signature espresso au lait experience. Savor it slowly.”

It was a nice but lackluster visit and I’m not sure if I can talk about it yet.

cclxxvii

today I am not. I am not
a gray minnow writing to
what minnows. a gray
widow. sip blacken.
the ample steam of frenzy
always knew love to co-exist.
I always knew nothing to co-exist.
a blacktrack journal pours like plastic.
what downtowns me so much is
a frown to remember. not one
to puff it up or out is happy
stupid. yes I
get the emotion. yes
I beat up my old friends. yes I am stable.
doom bracken such. big deal talk is
missing.

cclxxvi

A blue forest. A hill sinking.
A sun-blasted book. So I would have

a book. Blasted by bills the
muse arrives at four. After the fugue
a sign of weakening. A com-
mittee starts at nine. Thinking
follows. Thinking fellows.

I have my nose to the soulless
file upon the bleak desk filled with bluebirds.
About what? The airplanes swimming?

Someone took a knife to the smokestack.

cclxxv

It is 4:02 and our new saint got bored so he finished a book
I hated. Meanwhile, watching the internet is like being there,
but how do we calm down without losing the explosion: insert
one aphorism after another, perhaps, until we define atrophy?
I’m doing a real lunch. Outside of the office is the real office,
but not without James Schuyler and his brown paper wig.
Then we discussed high windows at the ATM machine and
decided a leisurely drive through Pennsylvania would be lovely.

cclxxiv

a chunk of my neck is a
long hour of daydreaming.

the perp of poetry is sitting
in theatre rereading the

charcoal out of the sky.
we cannot solve it anymore

due to lack of eyewash.
this during an elm intermission.

word is word war three is over.
what flukes. it is yet possible

to punch my neck into account.
please take a book. room it

under the chalk. tell the
audience to go bi. grant

mission. be ginger
boils and goils.

cclxxiii

To do something to be
alive put real words on

top of a sofa to live
a minute. Where else

do you want a month
to go without me?

Live until the same
ideas about moving

show up beneath the
cushions with the

spare change. I’m
growing sideburns

drinking a ginger ale.
Calling all clams!

Wait a minute...

cclxxii

“Chocolate rocks
like dirt,” says
Overheard in
Latent’s wings.
“Eating a lesbian
pizza with Kirk
Douglas beats
poetry with Jello.”
That’s enough
chill to don a
jacket—the joy
of wearing jeans,
a loose sweater
full of lies. “Wy
oming?” I start
to crying. “We
have to talk,” he
says. “Bad
moon.” “Good
coffee.” “Take
care” by “sucking
guns w/Robert
Mitchum.”

cclxxi

I come this way for the fires. Downwind is
our inaugural hedge fund: “It’ll be worthwhile
under the belt with our items for approval.”
Speaking of my fiction and the very act of
writing, the show I’d forgotten how to end
was just beginning. Or, more accurately and
timely, the repartee with my newly-formed
Little Rock correspondent was just underway.
“My poetry was at Gayplace.com?” “Yeah,
well I see it right here, ‘Del Ray Cross’!” “Oh
...” It seems we need surgery to replace our
necks, are organizationally empowered by
the demands of the organization, and repeat
ourselves too much. Repetition either ensures
e-mail or ensnares it. He teaches fiction. I
finally sent him a missive this morning: “Red
may return to green after disheartening.” Is
that the act of cleaning away the heart? “My
class is fine, thanks.” “I finally got the Nobel Prize.”

cclxx

I want to share with you the remorse I felt
when I walked up the block and the restaurant with the
stir-fried salt cod over rice was no longer there. there is no
new way to render disappearance. however, try this:
tear out a piece of hair; rip the secret document in half;
sew it back together with the hair. this time
do it by yourself. to be myself in the afternoon
is walking into a non-existent restaurant, craving a
non-existent dish. hello (primarily members of the sex trade),
is everyone else this down when they die? okay then
I am going to drive to Portland,
walk around and see if I can find a bookstore.
I need a plot twist to be alone.

cclxix

a computer-generated day,
the roseate blush above the
dazzled Oakland window-fires. nothing
less real, actually; a thin taupe strip of bay
lay before the beach, its land.
forefront, the tail of an island.
more fore, a boat, camouflaged,
white. I’m not wearing my glasses
or it’d all be more there. every thing
whizzes by like surface, depthless poetry, but some things,
like background, distract. twist my head into my stomach
debating sex vs. love. note Blake’s London,
his “mind-forg’d manacles” could be the haze of the
chiarascuro’d bay. Rimbaud is in Africa –
a yellow streak across the page.

cclxviii

I’ll try (am trying).
There is no escape
but I am. Here on earth. Were I

translucence*
determined (trying)
to try new ways? Try! Try reading.

*Trees
and cloud. Rock homes. The dangers of
frienship. Be

worried about being.
Then, say, life is less sober.
Have a fries and root beer.

Then I throw a celebration
(a poem about Michael’s painting)
and everybody comes.

A season for which I
have to go home tonight,
write to become

glad.

cclxvii

what nancy can’t write text into
an erasure just to appease the
seemingly white swath behind
our five minute conversation an
open boat behind a white swath
our words have twin enclosures
one is a bruised popcorn cloud
of racist language & one is why
only these words help the body
(if she’s sick) which is why I
enjoy goading this white matter
into a debate of hopelessness
to cajole the sick words & then
beat them into a slick food the
erasure of an appeased enclosure
our bruised worms will often lie
among such determined snails
as those beneath the ever sweet
bleeps of our five minute bloats

cclxvi

I wish I’d had a little more time struggling
with science and some more tea. I think I found a friend
in New York for a while on the ocean. It is his
one year anniversary. This is my first class:

-fix the kitchen drawer (Dustin Hoffman)
-fix the toilet (it’s wobbly) (Anne Bancroft)
-being hanged in Singapore (Eva Marie Saint)

I need to relax or something. This is my next meeting:

-I need to relax or something
-my memory blows (Lee Kang-sheng)
-a one page assignment on what poetry means to me

(neoconceptual installations in Italy)

I just realized the grit among these pages is
sand from the beach at Ogunquit. Time
to pick up movie tickets and go see James Schuyler, goodbye.

cclxv

The paper got wet
Sunday in Ogunquit
sitting here on the beach
in the rain that is falling.

There is oil on my notebook.
Australia stares out the window.
We find ourselves in the gay section
and we park ourselves

and we crouch real low.
“People don’t eat watermelon seeds
that much in movie theaters any more,
and in the future probably no one will.”

-Tsai Ming-Liang.
Is there a possibility
for life to change for the better?
I walked up and down the beach.

We walk up and down the beach.

cclxiv

I don’t know when I
can stop walking—nor
nearly the world round.
Darkness lights the face
of the Embarcadero and I’ve
wound round the advent of
autumn. The BART takes
me. I will breathe in and
cross the Charles. These
living room windows are
spotted – they dissolve day.
I can’t stop with my feet
nor the slump of watches.
When I warm my pockets
my feet are back up at the
audience, still walking
away. Someday I don’t
know poems, I’d rather
eat. On this day I prefer
a movie I argue about,
a place to be. It
tells me how flat my
life is. I don’t care.
Four books in my bag,
I walk the rain.

cclxiii

I bit my tongue until it bled.

We went miniature golfing again,
then walked Broadmoor discussing
eye-for-eye retribution and the
senselessness of media-frenzied infidelity.

I sat thinking for a long time the day
after Thanksgiving.

The flag was brilliant.
Spools of clouds
disappeared.

And then, sleeping separately,
a spectacular light storm at the 3:00 a.m. hour.