dclxxxix

not exactly radio

walking into a room full of mirrors
all the jokes about sheepherding        and WHO
do YOU see?

often rakes the leaves
with windchimes

sexuality and
snow lean forward into a warbled sauce

finally an elevator
full of summer fruit salads
scrambled eggs            brusque salmon

30 minute ego
too old hat

not me

no me here       none amenable

sits in his place
sit at his place            wanna take a shower with me tomorrow?

seasonable housewarming
economy of spirit

it’s a good enough dose

dclxxxviii

blue sky                          carmen perpetuum

a grocery bag on each arm headed east

flappity-flappity-flap of a
sex-sated pigeon taking off up Nob Hill

touchdown              a goal of some sort
depending on        the sauce of
the season

walking off this language mush
and lazy television conversations

to find a way to get rid of them

moms who read (and understand)

this week’s tourism                              (up the hill)
cannot force the words out of a mouthful
of okra                such a nice breeze

                                                I meant a warbled source

ambiguous dogwalking
rude honks and buzzes

new nickels in a Mexican bowl
it’s ok as long as it has a name

what a fantastic evening

                            drawing the blinds to the fog

a grocery bag on each arm headed west

dclxxxvii

I love my job,
but I love juicy fruit even more!

                                      —juicyfruiter.blogspot.com


and the sudden gozzle
of every moment, gone
with a birthday cake
sugar rush.   Paris
on bicycles.

I guess these feelings
have always crept in
like Carnegie Hall.
still reeling with
the same zip.

but getting there....

an afternoon regatta,
a large Hockney interior,
Guston’s knobby knees,
potato leek soup,

heavy egg, wide noodle,
afternoon ‘delight’,
Jim Dine waterpipes.

friendly,
uncommunicative.

dclxxxvi

Contemporary Chinese Peanuts

I’m reading along and I get goosebumps.
Severe ones.   This so rarely happens
when I’m reading.   It’s The Grand Piano,
issue 3, Lyn Hejinian.

Which tastes better with vodka?   This
transition from state to state, sincere,
ironic, and full of shit;

I’m on the Acela heading to New York.
It’s a fast train, dizzying at first,
especially after a cross-country trip.   Eating
Beverly C’s fabulous bundt cake from last night.

Lovely out Connecticut.   Lovely Connecticut
with all sorts of guilt or hard feelings.   And how,
so that I can relax, unwind, think, read,
write,

and never know how to end, I am working on
appearance.   The intelligence facade.

I’m so funny I make me laugh.

dclxxxv

Is this growing up?   I don’t wanna.
Turn on blue fan blue like
Alka Seltzer package I
rip open for a headache and
new age metaphysical smoothies
(J Kyger).   Paint a picture
lasts longer.   Sometimes
maybe.   Brightest white streak
across the bay some young
yacht.   Fetching
from way up here.
Perhaps it’s just a ferry
sending earlybirds (the
stock market crew) home to
Vallejo.   Tuesdays.   Beautiful
Tuesdays after astonishing
evenings.   Hungover MIT
with three Cel-rays from Bill
and what a swell intro!   21 poems later
I’m up a hill and on my knees.
Flag flaps briskly
in the San Francisco wind
six years after the two tall towers sunk.

dclxxxiv

Sometimes I tell the words
writing the words
GET OUT THE DOOR!
A certain mass
remains in the writing.
Getting the door
just past midnight,
lapsed architecture
(Sears Tower
a Dunkin Donuts and also
the desert poem.   Disob
stuff I’ll shut off.   Like
light.   Watch nothing.
I am home.

dclxxxiii

I put the 5th DVD onto the list.   It’s
been a while you aren’t supposed to
notice.   In Russia they’re testing
the “Father of All Bombs”:
“All that is alive merely evaporates.”
Is this what I asked for this morning?
Reduce search and rescue
over vast stretch of land (or water),
menu-plan for the weekend,
which haute vegetable next to
coconut and kiwi,
how many miles to the moon
for after-dinner mints.   Etc.

                Sunrise in the Midwest. Breakfast
                with a family from Iowa,
                wife went to Wellesley,
                now she’s a hospital librarian
                who studied with Frank Bidart.
                A sculptor, as well.   Later, in the
                observation car it’s Sam this
                and Sam that.   I’m getting nostalgic,
                my second day without a shower,
                thinking of Bowling Green and Toledo...
                so many Sams ago.

dclxxxii

Dogberry[]will be/ the broken indicator light.
                                                                                      —Taylor Brady

That’s why he put all the little creatures
in the pot, Papa Rabbit and the whole
family.   I have to protract them.

Little dollops of mountain over
White Teeth and breakfast announcement
after jiggle (jog) with Otto

all excited about the 17,000 cranes
on the pagoda but they’re just little
whimpers of pompoms that’s all.

Daniel’s taking up both seats so I’m
back in the lounge car to give him a rest
and watch the Colorado sunrise

even pinker.   No trees but a dull
headache.   Denver.   Dusk.   Dirty
snow on the mountains and

bald eagles.   Mountain goats.
Tenderloin’s rooftops.   Slightest
wind.   Fuzzy little rabbits

hop one end of the living room
down to the other.

dclxxxi

I’ll wake up now.   On my first long-distance
train-ride to Boston.   9:20am.   Happy I
can’t even describe.   4pm now my seatmate
a good portion of the afternoon Daniel

a skaterkid going home for Thanksgiving
asks me what I do.   I say write.   He responds
“that’s tight” asks me if I have any books
and I say I’m a poet.   “That’s hella tight.”

Dinner talk.   Older gentleman going on a
“genealogy expedition” in Salt Lake City.
5:30pm reservation.   Back in dreamland
Coco comes running into the doorway

scared look on her face.   She’s been lost
racing around like mad to find us.   Try not
to drool too much on Daniel or the
fluffy Nevada clouds.

dclxxx

Tooth bone toll booth
bed good beg god aimed
at curbing chime.   I’ve
notepads on this.   Un

recognizable when
adding up each character
istic.   Alamo Square
directly to gym dog wags

4th dog that’s walked
up to me in this
short time.   Not so much
actual correspondence

the pain travelled
up the zipper and into
my back sitting in a bus
long periods of time.

dclxxix

A Big Dinner of No Cooking

Copper penis.
A hole in his shirt.
Harry Potter.
Show me yours.
But no serious.

dclxxviii

We were arguing the subtleties of
“Indian Summer” — the biggest
yogurt pretzel clump of all time.

A new blue cardigan and a broken-
into car, my diary, my train tickets,
my 2001 day planner with addresses.

It could have been worse.   Fool.
I need to lay out the map
or something.

dclxxvii

[                                        ]
                    —from a fortune cookie

Coco
wrapped around my left foot

Alice Notley
reads Tony Towle to Robinson Jeffers

in
a painting by Larry Rivers

find a penny pick it up
sex all day                (lack of focus)

dclxxvi

It is not a complete
lack of memory
peeking around the corner
and showing a little bit of face.

Realizing
at a party
how forward I am
about the lack of lust,

over and over
how it is
to read things I hate—
so important!
This

a kind of buddhism
of how to learn.
Gives people
(authors,
folks at parties)
personality.

Taking a memory,
a degenerated disk,
and showing up
happily
and with shame.

dclxxv

I’m sitting here wondering
why the waterboy isn’t naked.

Bill Berkson is in the Examiner.
Talk about living.

Happy 25 with fish sticks,
lima beans, macaroni & cheese,

and a birthday cake
with butterfly candies on top!

Why not just tear a page out
and keep it for later?

dclxxiv

9.3 / 10.30 / 6.8

I’d rather
stay in a cool room
listen to the swimming
but to hike alone?   I think
maybe a hiking buddy.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have
told her I have arthritis
in my lower back.
I’m obsessed
with watching men
meditate.   Baby
echoes me with
“why why why.”
Stephen Ratcliffe
on my birthday: “back
and right shoulder
pulled into a knot.”
I agree.
Reading’s a gas
day before Halloween
with fish tacos, Days
of Heaven, and Aguirre,
Wrath of God.   On
later recollection
remembered rain drop
ping outside window.
Made absurd
sploshes.

dclxxiii

These are the days of
oops I took the wrong pill
and wild turkeys on the front porch.
They don’t gobble much.

Then I realize
there’s NO TRAFFIC!

Of course not.   High up
this mountain of peas
and turkeys.

Even so, I can’t allow
anything but sarcasm
for six a.m. naked waterdance,
moans to the left and moans
to the right,
and the one naked hula hoopster;
can’t take my eyes off her shaved
hula hooper-oo.

Later on Craigslist,
the Air Force “fighting terrorism”
(imagine him using his fingers
for the quotes),
penis at the bar,
some sort of weird rock formation.

It’s the blue warbird
“Keep away intruders!”
and not much better a tune.

A week in a day.

                                                            —eloquentlyme@hotmail.com

dclxxii

Good morning, yogis and yoginis.

Woke up 5:54am with this phrase
on my tongue:

                [clearly]
                “If you could do a man
                half a favor:
                expect by glint
                and zoom right thru.”

....all I remember is
it wasn’t a high concept dream.

So I hopped up,
wrapped a towel around me,
slipped out the door,
and slunk into the hot pool.

Then there was the tall Arab incursion.

Sorry,
my memory was infected,

no better way,
40 years later.

                                     —Summer of Love (that’s class consciousness)

dclxxi

The bird-feeder
over the waterfall
(burbling brook)
arrayed with tiny yellow finches.
Finches?

Some cats swoop in
to check out the waterfall,
babbling burbles and all that:
apparently something’s
in there.

Nobody knows what
but the cats.

Reach over for an organic walnut,
that’s me.   What’s going on?
Well, George Stanley!
Saying he’ll send me a copy of his chapbook.
That’s fab.

Televison’s not, though.
Watch Enterprise, West Wing,
South Park (well, maybe),
Primetime Glick(??),
all down the lackluster tube.

No more teevee for a few years, I say.
Maybe invest in some books or
yoga?   Netflix?   Sunscreen (SPF 30, at least)?

dclxx

Inside a flower, a wonderful moon.

Even though it had to be the worst massage ever,
with Black Is the Color of My True Love’s Hair,
every Irish dirge known amongst the sweet Irish dirgers,
and some screaming kid running circles on the roof,

over and over, the roof also some sort of party deck
for naked people.   Naked kids and massages
don’t mix.   Two episodes of Mad Men
divided by the current issue of Adbusters

equals sitting outdoors at my favorite North Beach pasta joint
with Ken Bolton’s book.   It’s a beautiful night
and yesterday was a beautiful day
a hundred degrees in the shade.

Six thousand strewn pages,
Room 10, Fern Cabin, Harbin Hot Springs, California.

dclxix

Some Peru

It’s no use asking for a pronunciation one night
when next morning you don’t remember it.   I was
five years old then and you were 1,878 miles away.
Whales of rain in one hundred degrees of heat.

“Does he have sex with men every day?”   “Maybe
it’s just the way he writes.”   How unreasonable
to think I could get through half of this stack
of books on one three-day holiday.   Charge

battery, flip on the green fan, clean up Coco’s
water-puddles, rinse the reusable coffee filter,
strip down.   Cool evening, Alameda, Brandon,
then Julian on and along the Gowanus.   “Sludgie”?