dxciv

Hangover so not even funny.
Sex with a French guy
but I was too drunk.
Scratch that now eating last night
haze.   If you don’t mind that would be great.
Wanting to go to bed to
sleep a fish in other offices to boot I mean.
Now eating in my future.   I can’t die.
Give me another
morning to sleep with.   Sure.   Yes.
As long as it gets communicated that’s great.
To regroup in general.
General Annette.
General Geneva.
Dad I cried for a long time last night
after the French boy left.   I forget
that I am sometimes regarded
as a poet.

dxciii

He laughed his arf off
with such beautiful hands.

Miso Sacramento
and bracelets of soot.

Bowzer and the Orange Kilt
of objects.

I’d love to live in Architectural Digest
like a racehorse surrounded by flowers.

Broke as doke
that I am forever doing nothing but thinking.

The storm that wiped the pages free.
And there is my muse.

(2nd lines by Elaine Equi)

dxcii

An airplane
takes off in my head.
I act goofy on the couch

and I’m embarrassed after
three and a half
years.   It feels good.

I hope the airplane doesn’t crash.
It’s Monday and I’m not
interested in process.

In his head I’m a lemming
about to fall off a cliff.
He laughs.   And his laptop

nearly falls off his lap.
We watch movies.   The Gift
of the Tattered Couch.   The

Scrape of the Beard.   An Ode
to Old Wounds.   A dying man
goes to visit his grandmother.

He walks into the woods
and to the ruins of an old treehouse.
His childhood is gone.

He’s bitter about that.
And then he dies.
That’s the truth of life.

The airplane flies
out of my head.
And I’m in it.

We cross an ocean for lunch
and bring home an ice cube
for a souvenir.

dxci

This is an exciting day.

There’s plenty yet to say and even more to repeat
over and over in whichever fashion is currently
fashionable (not at all).   Suddenly I don’t feel
so good, headache and disorientation over a
pesto penne salad.   Possibly from moving around
pedestal drawers on Saturday.   Or carrying the
monitor.   I didn’t really do much, so this is
no good.   Really out of sorts.   Woke up with a
backache, too.   Could it be from Jean’s radio
which was totally cranked?   At one point
there was that PLUS some horrible “on hold”
music going on at once.   Or the Nutri-Grain
bars for breakfast, one blueberry and one
strawberry?

That’s what’s missing!   Onions!

dxc

And when I’m cooking dinner doing laundry and walruses
I find “Hey can I write a poem in here?”   “Always.”   Anyways

The laundry’s boiled the egg’s on the pasta’s in the dryer
And there’s a hole in it.   I’m halfway thru 4 books.

One’s depressing one’s redundant one’s old school and one’s
Eternal.   Today’s flower is the laundered cinquefoil.

Sunday morning at the crepe place on California feeling nice
And beautiful.   Moody.   Believin’ in it.   Last night

Happy Together and today coffeecake with Equi & Kyger.
Not because of his breath.

It was phantasy with a capital L.   The alarm goes off I’m
Already stuffed and look the bowties are sticking while he’s

In the shower getting burned too. (“Do you think he said
Secret or sacred?”)   These self-aware words

Writing themselves over an organic panic attack
9am.   Once around a glass of ice water into an Ativan.

Almonds make me feel like aluminum all year long.

dlxxxix

i want to do some more to you.
i can’t tell you what i am doing
or at least make you understand
but this is what i am doing.
poem language is complicated.
i am speaking a different language
communicating to you here.
communication is complicated too.
for example you are here
are you here? can you hear me
i am here do i promise you that? i do.
right now i had a couple
margaritas and met jerry
the bartender then i went home
and read another chapter.
we dream now. the hunkypunky
evil twin of the sweet kitten
i dream of is now. are you dreaming too
a couple odd fellas?
this gets so intense can you
feel it? sure tell me you mean it.
he just realized his last name.
leave it like this do not question it
we talked okay and hey
understood each other right?
for example you are here
are you here? can you hear me
i am here? i do promise you that.
a dog in the pants is worth
two in the bone.

dlxxxviii

i lost it
at the little vietnamese joint
on washington close to the office

(my heart) plus i didn’t take claritin this morning
(both mornings)
can’t be plus

aw mix it up
plus a tribute to brainard flown half-mast got
sticky in the wind plus

i got up 11pm he’d made
chicken with celery i barely
no i never remember

is there any connection?
fuck april plus anything
so i got plants from my coworkers

a live arrangement for my new
desk (no names)
promising to reimburse

if i’d send him pictures
which i already did along with
a birthday card

and an essay on laying it bare
grief
plus good grief

dlxxxvii

i’m just not up to visual sophistication today.
a large headache fountain in front of me
small fuzzy light going off on 16th floor
could be morse code and the eternity of haze.

i love the sound of running water it
makes life’s problems go away. problems
with trips to the gym each early afternoon
like flushing a toilet.

how could i forget the argument about
my suggestion our time was ‘trite’
and my way of handling things like death?
i will just uncope with this yes

and look through the window. whose window?
in the hospital recovering. or not handling it.
in a doorway not justified. needed to.
‘up and adam’ in the old grow-up house

write some notes down get a sense this is
more than enough our union of three separate
eras. styles withdrawn contemplative. a fine
utopia with mickey mouse and donald duck.

dlxxxvi

back on solid ground at my favorite little italian place
courtesy jonathan lethem i walked off the plane alive

having reached a level of maturity never seen before

be very careful to your intercourse with strangers

prep sound & porn presentation: hey niche i’m over
halfway through killing a mockingbird (h weiner)

one in the morning singing on the fence next to the swingset
under the sycamore next to the hyacinths and azaleas

the office in complete disarray by the end of the month

i can’t stand the internet my back has been giving me
some problems although i’ve been getting over my cold

forgot to take my pills this morning trying to
reset my life in light of things with new mindset

food’s here (d cross)

dlxxxv

i want
three hours of poetry while these guys are in a meeting
all the way to lunch, i got their muffins and scones and
coffee and they are in a cage until noon, yes, also,
once again, i’m in an airplane, probably over the rockies
where we just found a little turbulence.

slam one day
right on top of another, a misunderstood chronology
like my hometown.

the parade to potts with squad cars and fire station salute
was a nice send-up and where he was put was so perfect
nestled next to the old cattle pasture and if you stand right there
you can see his land, the mountain.

today’s flower is the siberian iris.

dlxxxiv

Picked up at the Dallas Airport.   Messed around with income tax
on the front porch.   Keep thinking about how glad I am
I talked with him on Thursday night because
I’d gone to the allergist.   He said I sounded

a scratch on my wedding finger

horrible.   I told him what I was allergic to & he offered that
I shouldn’t do shots – I’d mentioned the doc said that shots would be
a last resort if the pills didn’t work.   He actually asked about

reading Ketjak

cramming and writing papers.   My husband.   If the
pills don’t work.   Talked a bit about work and
the economy.   He asked if I’d gotten
Uncle Grady’s address

soiled prose

which I had from Ginger via e-mail.   About fish.
When I called last it was the morning Aunt Wilma died
and Dad had gone to his pond to feed the fish.   I asked

the haze between here and Oakland

if he still had his 4-wheeler and he said that’s about all he had left
(after the auction of his farm stuff).   He said the docs said
his lungs looked better, that he still felt weak,
and they were still trying to wean him off the

rush to the restroom

prednisone.   And he was still having couging problems
(he coughed a bit when I first started talking with him).
I don’t remember anything else, except that I did something I

a paper cup filled with cool water

had rarely done recently which is I told him I love him.
He said I love you too Del.   Friday I went to the doctor
for a cough.   “I keep doing it again most days and it keeps doing me,
hopefully til it’s done.”

dlxxxiii

...green with the milk of nine glaciers.
                                                        -John Suiter, Poets on the Peaks

Today’s bloom, the bleeding heart.   Yes, the same thing
for years and years.   I walk all the way to City Lights,
a real break, purchase two books, Ripple Effect,
Some Notes on My Programming, sweat.   Big guy
with a bunch of kids (field trip?) asks me if I know where
Merchant Street is.   I don’t.   I forgot.   It’s somewhere.
One of the girls says she likes my shirt.   It’s pink.
Wondering if Buddhism is just about sitting.   Seems so
from this book, a nice way to forget about cubicles.
Surely it’s more complicated than that. In the air over
San Francisco, flying.   Larry will meet me in Dallas
and drive us up to the funeral.   It was Friday the 13th
when he died.   I was watching Amores Perros.   Ginger’s
in Oklahoma.   Coming down for a landing already.
Last time I fly without Xanax.   Reading To Kill a
Mockingbird.   Official state bird of Arkansas.
Easter tomorrow.   Rebirth.   Renewal.   All
four of us, dressed to the nines in the front yard,
the 1970s, tulips, Sunday School, bright as spring.

dlxxxii

Beyond sex and killing people
and trying to get into character I’m not sure what more do you want?
This one kind of a pickle?   This one

a tomato not so bad?   I’ve been craving those.

Lengthy article in the NYTimes today about why one should avoid
anti-depressants gaining speed.   Diane is pregnant she told me while
I was cooking dinner (alfredo mostaciolli and stir-fried veggies).

The ruse:
tape West Wing (which I did).   Groped in the steamroom
same theme as the day before.   Was I alive
just for that

or also for later emcee-ing at
Oakland Public Library a photo of men from an ugly match?

Maybe nothing beyond sex and death I always say
even shifting from one pickle to the next.

dlxxxi

True or false.   “Like Leung and most other working
Asian American actors, Shen has played roles with
questionable morals -- thugs, gangsters, even murderers.”   We have no right to

insist on character.   Character is simply
given to us we portray it.   True or false.   “A racially

Asian man with mental illness is automatically associated
with violent shooting sprees because Asian craziness is a factor of
one’s skin color.”   More of the same.   I am disconsolate not because of

but instead of the alternatives.   Our killer for example
channeling character soaks it up on a Tuesday afternoon scrutinizes the paper that is
no longer paper if not also news.   Headlines are

too many places.   In Oakland for example
in New York with digital camera for fat chance his best friend online saying
he’ll send some enticing pictures.   Same guy

different year not much working out but the wrinkles on forehead
true headlines.   “Seeing one black man dunk a basketball or rap a song
is proof positive that all black men are capable of such feats.”

Even fictional ones.   Sleepy eyes on everything ripped from the headlines.
My favorite character is a loser.   I am enticed.

dlxxx

“For dinner we’re having steak and salad

and buy mushrooms.”   War
in the body a pain in the neck or back acute allergies.

Acute waiter.   Acute doctor.   Confusion is
the new middle age.   The landscape is always changing.

Acute program director whoever he was smelled of
alcohol and seemed a bit of a curmudgeon
which would fit the description perfectly. Justin read

fabulous stuff Aunt Wilma’s funeral tonight
wonderful fantastical humorous and very touching poetry
about the whiff of descriptive

a lack of pulse caskets and taxidermy.

Waiting for fennel salad and pasta way too hot over here
reading Being Dead.

dlxxix

“Yeah, that’d be terrific.”

And when I go to renew the Wall Street Journal
she has now decided it is time to write about
the death. The death in duplicate

a war of souls or just a war.   I mark this down.
6’4” doctor with great taste in sushi.   She finds
various with regard to dying -- implements memories

any blatant reminder.   We went

to the ruins of the Sutro baths climbed the beach hillside where
halfway up I had a panic attack thought of Aunt Wilma

she the ocean behind me loose soil no rock or vegetation
steep.   I got to the top felt like

masturbating went home to watch the Oscars
notwithstanding dead silence
I’m getting everything confused because of the
ocean at my back.   Today is warm nearly 90 degrees

and there is war -- something about war -- today’s war.

dlxxviii

A sore on my tongue.

The movie about drowning
on the first day of spring.

Grabbing my father
by the shirt-buttons
and telling him off.

Open house
on the Broadway tunnel.

Love and leviathan.

dlxxvii

I am writing right here writing
right here inside of this box
a computer cubicle

with guys shooting hoops
walking out the front doorstep
turn west on Pine right on Polk

coughing all night top of Sterling Park
less a member of a community
on a beautiful spring day

down Geary to the beach
brunch at Seal Rock Inn
dinner Lucky Penny nice guy

sitting the booth across
Sunday Chocolat and Eliza’s
then Curt McDowell stuff

Daughters of the Dust and
Abbot and Costello meet Frankenstein

dlxxvi

Can’t stop fidgeting
Can’t sit still
This is unnerving

Aft slab (prayer pose) right hand
Not happy wherever it lies
Even mid-air

Uncomfortable in my own skin
Heartfluttering back and forth
Watching the new film by Kore-eda

dlxxv

My favorite plot-line was the
underlying tequila message.
Experience has shown that I get
more bang for the buck w/minty

when it comes to chewing gum.
It rips my heart out that I can’t be
political even if I try. Such
successful clumsiness ought

to be patented. See the wind
blowing this page? And the
city below? Golden Gate Bridge
in a haze? I’m sitting

on a fir trunk, tentacled root,
listening to Matt Johnson.
So nice, breezy, now a little
chilly. Walking through

Cole Valley with all of the
zombies (they do walk a
lot). Something moving around
in that bottlebrush tree,

more than just the wind. I
retract everything I ever said.
I’m a complete and utter failure.
“Come closer to me.”

dlxxiv

I must be dying. That’s how
I prefer to explain it. It’s my
alternate reality, so I can.
Prosecutors want Paris
Hilton in jail. It’s true,
he’s allergic to paper.
There’s only happiness
at stake and I’ll do anything
to be more universal.
Freaked out
Anders becomes Dad,
same lips and forehead,
something stern about both,
and I can’t tell if the severity
is about to shatter with rage
or laughter. Last night
Dodie Bellamy and
Michelle Tea walking
all over the China Basin
and then Tony’s Cable Car
for the ultimate
veggieburger showdown
and The Contender
proving Joan Allen
the greatest actress alive.
Dip into a lap pool
poor as fuck owing IRS
$2200 realize swimming
isn’t for me.
Universal indeed.

dlxxiii

“Getting shot hurts.”   Yeah, may you rest in peas RR.
I need a stick of gum.
Yesterday with
Anne Waldman, Bill Berkson, Barbara Guest,
Dick Gallup, Ron Padgett, and Kenward Elmslie
humbling.
Then Alice took the stage and
filled the 80s “with Madonna’s piss.”
We ate it all up.
So I’m having some issues
putting it into words; have to nudge that
gently into a poem.

                                            —Love and warmth from the fires at Fuzio