dcclxxiii

a peanut painted by Picasso

sensitivity to combustibles

think like rain
           drunk on a line

sleepy

    I’ve slept tons

                                          (Fraser, Colorado)

dcclxxii

Nosy Train

head to Boston Saturday
on a diet coke with lemon

the bay is full of the blues
but in just the best possible

buncha blondhaired kids
making noises / big old group
from midwest / goddamn cellphones

stormcloud mountains
“this my first time”
shocked & happy everything
all out in the open
amicable limbo
general satisfaction dessert

maybe instead we rent a car
drive up and hike the tide pools
at Point Reyes

dcclxxi

Otto misses last 4 minutes of
The Seven Year Itch
for $800

“we’d bore each other
make bad boyfriends”
      (scrawled in a corner
      some seven years past)

dcclxx

Bill in Vermont
Cassie in Australia
Jimmy heading back to Hong Kong
Yong just moved to Seattle
Curran and Masashi in Austin

............Happy New Year
everyone goes someplace else
and I’m still here

oh well

finished up acupuncture
TMJ still a problem

hot springs okay

dcclxix

NO WASTE!
steal from the goodboys!

Otto says let’s bring the beach to us
but also pencil in Sunday January 27
just in case

calendar portends a weekful:
MLK day / Steph’s birthday /
coffee with Doug

leading economic indicators...
recession

take a shower during a snowstorm
kiss like we’re in love
then it’s over
we’re exhausted
lying next to each other
snoring the winter away

or

waterfalls roar thru the night

it takes a cottony rockslide
but Treasure Island magically appears

head back home
for damn good dim sum

dcclxviii

5am walk down Bush
orange lights pepper the skyline
morningbirds

suggestions for cubicle:
(or suggestions tossed into my cubicle at 7am:)
Sophie Ellis-Bextor
Amy Winehouse’s Valerie w/Mark Ronson (or vicee verso)
and Groovejet

at Chevy’s
off to a tuff start
sirens at odds with
Philip Whalen

autodidactic sonnets
at Martuni’s
and then off to sex

or chewing the fuck out of my lip

can’t keep up with the days

Groovejet (absolutely!)

then again

let Brahms take over
with plenty of tornado

ciao
bello

dcclxvii

Total up the times the word
“bodhisattva”
appears in certain poets’ poems.

The 1800s dissolve
into nothingness.

Then all of the disappeared people
get pissed off.
Some woman wails.

Writing wears her out.

dcclxvi

When I kiss you I become
beautiful.   It is possible.
You compare Asia de Cuba
to Eyes Wide Shut.   It is
dark, somewhat foreboding,
alienating, sexy, contrived,
warm, wooden, and tipsy.

I love it.
We concentrate
on eating slowly.   Even
when brought a giant
cake that could feed
the entire jungle.


              Perfectly still.   Focus on
              the sheeny wrinkles of
              the back of my hand.


Four year anniversary.

dcclxv

How do you feel?

I need to kill a lot of pain.   And gay.

“I’m out of one of my pills
so I really need to pick them up today.”
Let it go.

Tony’s Cable Car — TMJ — acupuncture didn’t help.

Pather Panchali instead of ferry to Sausalito (awesome!).

“When I grow up
I want to be Mandy Moore.”

Sure, I’d like out of my cage now.   Would that be possible?
The rain is stifling.   The books get soaked—words
all greasy.

My BFF says it’s impossible to experiment at 40.

Achy, and generally a mess.
Did I already say this?

                                                              —Stupid Greedy Writers

dcclxiv

Things I can be thankful for: public transportation
in the middle of the night.   Who could forget the war
with its bright floods and its blue geraniums?

I don’t like pain.   Or maybe not.
I do like some pain.
Um ... okay.

John Wieners on the bus whispering hello and
“Nothing keeps it together.”

“I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be.
And finally, I became that person.
Or he became me.”
                                    —Archibald Alexander Leach (Cary Grant)

dcclxiii

Somebody Googled Del Ray The Only Way

___________________________________
___________________________________
____________________________________________________

“In which online social networking systems do you actively participate?”
“We just get old and shrivel up, right?”

                                                                                                Unable
to describe the color of the bay.   A vibrant gray?

Water-skiing as an adolescent.   Sunburn.   Re
cede into the present (with aplomb)
to order lunch.   Not my lunch.   This me,
trying to tell a story here, aka

my rather slaphappy way to acknowledge
death as the brand new stuff.

Try explaining a stye to someone who’s never had one.
(Try explaining style to someone who’s never had one.)

“Del Ray lives in California and is a poet and teacher.”

Still no color.   Colorless.   Comfortable in my own sex.

A nice blue Serengeti sky.

dcclxii

A penchant for dancing bugs.

“I’m not looking for dialog I’m
looking for engagement.”   What does that mean?

“Attack of the muscle kiss.”

...And then the thoughts come smooth sailing, fuller, fat even.

Poetry is as important as bugs equally disturbing the light.

Danced out bugs
kissing moonlight.

dcclxi

The forest was too drunk.

Avoid therapists (all sorts).
Hard to erase.   Comes into focus
slowly, just having roasted.
Her eye star voices her bagel.

It’s January 2 and the salad line
goes out the door.   Further cliche
that I’m in it.

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.   Yeah.”

dcclx

Not enough voice.
Complaint level 5.
One leaves the dance
with nothing but
a wilted salad.
Forget word.
[Sand-covered
combat boots;
several cities
clumped hotly
together.]
Enjoy space
and time.
Cough up
another extension.
Worldwide
Viagra delivery.

dcclix

In my dream last night
I held two 40-hour jobs
simultaneous hours.

Notes to a new year:
Reword yourself.

And the last
flower from Good Vibrations:
a little buzzer thing.

What year was it?

Note to self:
40-hour blowjobs.

dcclviii

Saguaro.

A picture journal.   The “Shafter Press”
at sunset.   A bottle of Veuve Clicquot.
The sun behind a gas pump.

dcclvii

An imprint.

That first line.   Writing.

I take off a day on Friday.   Hope I’m better soon.

dcclvi

“ok.”


                   “ok.”

This is not random as a dream,
but “very hungry,”
“numbers,” “a mathematics.”

Crawled into bed for lunch,
downtrodden (head inside a pillow)
reading my own words
and hearing them repeated to me unbeknownst
by my brother.

OK.   A coup.   Coup.

dcclv

This is the end of a year.

      long space     between words.

I’m lying on a beach reading.   Next to...

phEnomenal.

lunch.   He’s really being very serious, I guess.

           distance

Scruples.   fucked, yep,

TIME,

afterwards.        today,

the last flower.

dccliv

“Sure, I’ll be discreet.   I’m even discreet with myself.”
Is it immature to still desire (require) a thorough reading
of my own work (by somebody else)?   A particularly
absurd and violent Sunday in an orange San Francisco.
Two cloves of garlic into the pot of sliced zucchini,
salt and pepper to taste.   Can’t seem to pull anything
out of the air; instead, while away the afternoon with
Jack Collom and Lyn Hejinian interview, time enough
to pick up a grocery item or two, wash the dishes,
a fragmented life.   Acupuncture consultation tomorrow.

dccliii

The cat is perched on the router again.   She’s
full of disruptive ideas.

What we’ve got’s an
increasingly apathetic public mind and I’m not ready to
end it yet.   Take, for example, the shower scenes
in Gus Van Sant’s films.   Trace the trajectory from
Psycho to Paranoid Park via Elephant and you’ll see why.

Confusion is the better part of dialectics.   (L Hejinian)
Yes.   We’ve always so much trash around.
(Picked up My Life at Green Apple on Saturday.   Now
it’s just us and the blackbirds.)

A small bottle of eyeglass cleaner stares us down
with sobering inadequacy.   Incapable
of quelling the frenetic need for
POEM.