dcclii

The Trouble with Economics

Pleading with friends, I ask
“What does ‘career’ mean to you?”

Drink a glass of water and wait for the earthquake.

         The wind has produced much
         damage throughout the city.
         I placed the spider plant on
         the roof (which is just outside
         the kitchen window).

Ron says it’s “a game, a dual path
or a double lane highway,”
“task vs. joy”.

         Reboot. Discerning smoke
         outside windows. Mark that off.
         On the hike: scotch broom,
         society garlic, rhododendron,
         madrones (madroñas),
         cormorants drying themselves
         along the reservoir pump.

What did I want to be when I grew up?

         The red deepens. Classy.
         Ducks, one posing, male,
         another male shows up,
         several minutes pass, another,
         this one female, next another
         male, some fighting, the
         pagoda at the top of the hill.

Christmas TREE
smells nice. Yes
it’s a nice flat surface that goes bang when you slap it.

dccli

The morning is blushing like I am.
Who wants a big audience, anyway? Being
content, absolutely in love, I go to a movie
all by myself; dress up to the nines for a

solo night at the opera. Then to Olive
for dinner of mushroom pizza (w/truffle oil)
and two mojitos, after which appear with
Hap-Pea and Pea-Wee in Splitting Peas

for Split Pea Soup. Style is irrelevant.
Take that to the bank and choke on it.

dccl

Let’s say for example you wrote another one:

          You have two secret crushes
          so quit polishing.

It’s not just another poem about poetry. It’s about longing.
Don’t say it’s the same thing.

Grey Whale Cove in a little green bug. Nothing else
over the weekend except giving a massage
to a stranger on Baker Street.

And then he buried me in the sand. But

what if I pick the wrong words? Each syllable/
word/line a gender-specific jewel (he didn’t really like jewels)....
Who likes jewels? Yeah, I guess.

          Let’s try to at least lock down a date
          since it’s a limited suicide.

Because my attention span is better now,
I promise.

dccxlix

Two nudes in bed editing.
                                      —Laura Moriarty

I won’t have this window
much longer just a few months.  The chalky tail
of (supine) Treasure Island.   The glowering haze.
(The haze isn’t glowering!)  The gaze that isn’t
harrowing.

No, seriously, it’s a nice view.

I’m kind of stoked I forgot to eat.
Duh, but mildly entertaining.  Thanks, Jack.

A bottle of water in the middle of the table.
Such limitation, language; enough to drive one
into a Susan Hayward snit.    (That’s camp.)

I think you should wait a few weeks before
spending any more money – give yourself some
breathing room.  Tomorrow I might wake up dying.

dccxlviii

In this dream an older woman in a dress
short and proud a hostess at a frequented restaurant
fell onto a colorful bed (her dress also colorful
green like a conifer). Her black hair
more than tinged with silver she throws herself
onto the bed diagonally spread face upward
amorous lustful one who has never
shown such emotion in
reality?
She has a penis and she begs me to grab it. I do.
Our
realities are now intertwined. What will remain
of the word until our synapses rust with
time in some as-yet-determined
“Garden of Memories”?
How to
make this more palatable
on yet another Thanksgiving afternoon? He’s a
fanatic about coherence stayed late at work so
big death at gym. Big dearth I mean.
Supposedly have date with
TonytheTiger tomorrow.

dccxlvii

The knuckle of the world fills up
                                     —Jean Day

with knuckleheads. The cats of the world
sit on their wireless routers
and stare into the mod dancefloors
on the upper levels of a hazy metropolis.
Sources are listed anatomically.

He had a wicked day. What’s up?
I’m defeated. So debted. Yuck!
                                            But that was yesterday.

Today, TRAPPED, hello from a worm
in the Castro. I guess I’m going to Boston
on the train. What to do between now and then?

Anyway, what to do?
I am sleeveless, as expert, and
I quote... “

dccxlvi

LOUDER will make you be heard

the next line was about:
     incense
     Street Sheet
     people at parties
     marketing
     people in cubicles
     restaurants
     chimneys
     poetry
     dogs

I owe the IRS $1,300

I would like a smaller voice


(this poem not yet finished)

dccxlv

Oh in all your life were you ever teased
Like this, and it became your mind?
                          —John Ashbery

“You read well.”
“But you don’t write well.”

Talk about ‘future’...

It hurts, this wanting to give a dimension
To life, when life is precisely that dimension.

dccxliv

Don’t diss the language poets.

“Like, I look back on it all now,
and it, really, it just made no sense,
and I’m so ashamed. I can’t believe
it was ever for me.” “I know you
feel you have to tell a story, it’s
okay, just deconstruct it.” Plus
the butt guy (exhibitionist) who
has no qualms. “So when
are you coming back?”

dccxliii

Moderately Provocative Pesto

Today’s flower is
a green beehive
of expectation. -- our own
writing has taken over --
breaking news -- hence
-- feel more
____... human in shape
because you make books
more important. A piece of real wood?
This is why nobody reads
morse code anymore you make it such
a big joke like you’re so funny I don’t think so.
Sh! Step into the new room for a new you (a living room)
and it's enough to forget
everything about
writing, breaking news, human in shape.
Woodpecker gloriously
pecking away at the top of the
skystructure fully exposed with big skeeze
quick and horribly satisfying.

dccxlii

We are just Scarface.

At the continuum
little haloes
gone in order
(two pieces).
Upon these
we set wit,
verbal
gymnastics.

She gets at
what’s important
only in passing.
He was good
too, he improvised
a piano.

Grilled asparagus,
Caesar’s leaves
gleaming in the
mid-day sun.

dccxli

As the body goes,
Azalea hedgerow. Christmas
already in the
window proud
of nothing this nothing.
You spend all your time.
Yes and besides,
this only memory’s
phantasm.  The burly
bay beside a sleeping
metropolis.  Oh Sleepy,
I love you in my mind.

dccxl

Quick
Yeah she’s in Morocco holding
the earth together....

                                       You sexy
in the kitt kitchen chopping

I really have no idea
who it is You spend all your time
doing this??

everything Hy
drangea and the bulls
of the cathedral
with its cobble cars and its
wafting up, up
and further beautiful environs

ferns
and pine needles /
and being thankful, Stinson Beach.

dccxxxix

Wake up German, the sky’s
in retaliation. We, its sleep,
stumble upon the muses...
a muse stumbling. Like my own
clean hole, something falls
with the scrape of the pavement.

A dead limb, we wake up
in a wake. Hearts do things
hearts do in poems without
muses. Say it implodes,
takes its pills before the
gentrification. Rights the

skies, runs its noses. Checks
its e-mail for mortar. Dreams
are like that, they’re okay
like we are, hosed on a Saturday
morning. Defiance. Perturb-
ation. Sleek bird calls to the

rust. A pleasant scrape, a check
for a hundred sows and blouses.

dccxxxviii

Get over the body. A word
or a sentence—the curse of
the West Coast....................
....like this fog’s true gentleman
(not a curse); the sway of the
eucalypts. I can’t tell you
what a success to fool ourselves
with the pharmaceutical. This fever,
this delirium. A suit
(his first), and not
funereal.

dccxxxvii

Speech is fraud.
              —Jack Collom

Experiment with deprivation.

Very satisfied with the periphery. (“Can you see him?”)

Melton (p. 27) — a heavy woolen cloth used chiefly for making overcoats
                                 and hunting jackets.

Starbucks (corner of Kearny and Bush)

My hand is sore from the bus this morning.

dccxxxvi

Pocket change.

Imposing limitations. Checkmate
in two moves. Stifling economics.

Dentist appointment.
Fight the academy.

(List poem.)

dccxxxv

No running inside a grape.
                      —Laynie Browne

I caught myself
once
running inside a grape
with a Bollywood soundtrack
(I remember the song)
and cold coffee.
Coffee and grape
don’t match.
“I didn’t drive
to Bolinas
like I said I would,”
I said to the grape
inside the grape.
Who walks in, but
would you believe it?
We said “hi” and I thought
that would be that.
But before the night was through
we were both
drunkenly slobbering
all over each other
inside of the grape.

dccxxxiv

“...working too hard trying to do something.”

A common pre-Berrigan edifice.
Personal adds. (“You making something with this?”)
“Tête-à-tête until dawn was Frank’s specialty.” (Joe LeSueur)
Because everybody knows bees aren’t funny.

So, no news from limbo.

dccxxxiii

“And what have you done?”

The Personal
is empowerment.

All writing is restraint.

Means “azure”
in Chinese.

I turned the headache
into a gumdrop.

dccxxxii

Know better when to stop.
The aching, thus,
on Presidents Day.

Spontaneous portrait:
Green Shirt I wanna
do your homework

and crawl up your sandal
onto your big toe
for a 3-day weekend.

That’s so not true!
People do write
during readings here.

Stop Stop Stop!