dcccxi

Anodyne

July 31: salmon teriyaki
w/California roll at Floating Sushi,
Grant & Sacramento. Walked
to Chinatown for lunch,
office brisk.
3300 Club
w/Rodney Koeneke.
Odd venue,
old Irish pub.  Then
up Bernal Hill,
this is neighborhood.
The right motivation
finally
to move.  180 pounds
despite new form
of relationship.
All this.  Sun.
Sunshine.  Anodyne
for nearly anything.
Three prescriptions:
vitamins, lotion
and Prilosec.  Spam
from British Airways
now that I know how to fly.
March 20: cool English pea soup
and just about the
best hamburger ever.
Shades drawn,
car horns in the distance,
a panoply of open books.
Gratitude that
verges on obeisance.

dcccx

4:27pm,

I need a new pack of gum.

Wrote a David Bowie poem
and somebody put a spell on me
for a few years.

“Hey, who paid the phone bill?”

I’m still getting over it.

dcccix

How did he do this without the internet?

You can’t Google that.  (“Yes, he’s
wizzling his pizzle again.”)

The entire salmon season is “in jeopardy”
here in Califoregon:
at the intersection of
T Pynchon
N Tesla,
The Prestige
& P Whalen.

(“Holey moley, looks like Izzle’s in too deep!”)

Gesundheit, gym object.
Celebrities who smoke
eat vegetarian gefilte fish.

Sex/lust.  Unify Unify Unify!  AC/DC!

You do an even better Snoopy dance
than Charles M. Schulz.

dcccviii

Disruptive _______. ??

Ankle cramps.   Blurry sailboat.
Treadmill & jogging is bad for your knees.

Jean-Michel? Jean-Denis!
Those two guys in Paris
you kept bumping elbows with,
took us out to a bar afterwards
and there was a song came on
everybody started singing.

“I wish I knew the song.”

Don’t give me that look,
this is how it works.
You say things, I write them.

(failure)

“What, you think I quote myself?”

He’s relatively new my ears said to me.
No lemon but i’ll survive.
Span-no-hm-write it out
and then substitute a word of your choice
any one.

“My ears are problems again like Sunday.”
“We stopped at the Seven-Eleven after the airport.”
“Then along the ocean my lips hurt.”

dcccvii

Only 13 pages
before another petal falls off.

                                               Drip.

Off it went, down to the walnut.

               A swollen river over a limp flag
bursts with tedium.   (down to the walnut)

               A circuit date (restaurant,
       cafe, record store, bar,
           drink, dance,
     drank, smooch,

drunken whoopee).

He’s luscious;
                    shallow.

On Saturday — Sonoma!
At the advice of the lady in the square,
venture up to Benziger,
drink muscat under a big tree,
crackers, brie....

“Hey, is this walnut?”

On to Olive Press,
eat olives.

Then

Valley of the Moon,
the moon under an azalea bloom.

                                                       —Plunk,

dcccvi

I don’t feel that way at all.

“Why does he write like that?”
“It’s definitely not a good phase.”

Title:   Onion Tube Socks

Feel like shit.  Couldn’t sleep.
Tongue stinging.  Weird, weird,
yuck—I should just go home.

               H    A    Z    E

Crap.  Had dinner at YMCA.
Oops.  Another Sausa
lito sausage.

Pinch off and pocket
(pink) moose-shirt-matching
azalea bud.

                             —Sir Francis Onion (of the Tube Sock Onions).

dcccv

“How’d you find love?”

I hate the movies! And
always promised to stop at 31.
I’m a little too sick to stop, though.

Madame Bovary AND Annie Hall?
This must have been a last resort
before dinner. Damn!

We definitely had a moment,
though, with a capital “M”. Or
am I trying to write a poem?

Sorry, I don’t want to see you.
I mean please call again tomorrow.
The calendar is just too compact.

dccciv

The One Thing

(She likes sticking people
with her needle.)

If you and I are blobs
where is you or I? Our border
the surface where we touch
(a funny-looking wave)? I would
stick you but I am a blob.

I had Certs for breakfast
at Grey Whale Cove,
overcast and warm.
My blob on the sand
just beautiful
like the last couple of days.

Smog check today no avail.
Take ticket, find pines
like Alice Notley
(green and rust) for sticking
the truth. Rest in peace a
squirrel. Rest in peace
another wave. Misspell
squirrel like sheriff.

You are the one. Just wait
two and a half years
and you will know it.

Dream as if I am not a blob:
we smooch for thirty minutes
then have enormous sex
followed by (ack!) talking words.

Go to sleep on peach
(mistype – in peace!)
after flushing toilet.

dccciii

Trying to reconcile Harry Potter’s hairy chest

Nice day.   Felt peachy
all along.   Painted the sky blue.

“Oh, Sun,
which face shall I wear tomorrow?”

A siren in the distance puts in
a request: “Supreme Fiction,

please.”   But I’ve more a mind
for a teddy bear & a pink feather boa.

I’m gay at the gym (he was
leaving, I was coming)

looking forward to a very nice run
with a servile grin.   And then.

He walks into the bedroom
with a mohawk

just as I slobber gracelessly
toward Happyland.   This gets me

incredibly romantic and
a little insomnia.   Thus,

I pick up the television set,
or try to.   I broke my back!

Lying here in recovery.
I love the papadams and

the fish pakoras.   Lesson:
don’t you listen to no siren.

dcccii

I want you to read along with me.

I want you
to read along
with me.

I want
you to read
a
worthless moment
with me.

I want.
And read
this farce.

I want today
Wallace Stevens
and did
last night.

Like which?
And reading
and reading
along.

I want you
to read
me just escapes.

It works.
Reading this stuff
with Whitman
in Pittsburg
please.

I want you mix
you market & yearn
environmental lingo
you mantra you
arrondissement.

I want you.
(ahem)
I want you
read me please.

Like
thanks.

dccci

What You Feel

“Look, he’s taking off his pants.”  And
here we are, pondering an uncertain fissure.

Cuddles the Cat purrs an interlude,
jumps off the tv and pees on the carpet.

Pear salad, plenty of salty vinaigrette,
harsh onions, and frozen lettuce. Emergency

room accidents, including one with a 2-foot
dildo. Death by dildo. Shit happens.

Lesson number twelve: get over your ear
infection, learn to read cursive, skip the

butter, drink antibiotic soup, stop writing
couplets,

stop writing. He still has my glasses.
Let’s go to Carmel for the Bach festival.

dccc

Wake up this morning.

Everything loud
droning
like airplanes.
Cat scratching the door.
So I just slept
per instructions
til 1pm. Then
I started returning
phone calls.
Tony Burgers
again. Wake up
on top of a
new book.
Run outdoors
for Devil’s
Backbone.
Circle a strip
of park,
Panhandle.
Back on Lyon,
Nina Simone,
waffles w/
strawberries.

dccxcix

Mistake number 1 is asking for a glass of sake (rather than a bottle).
Order second glass.  Pay extravagantly.

Mistake number 2 (the night before) is asking for the
premium unfiltered.  Not sweet enough.

Busy tonight.  The waiter and waitress whistling in the wind
they stir up as they glide past each other.  Some Cajun tune,
I’m guessing.

Depressed!  Had sex twice yesterday after jazz at
Shanghai 1930s.  Not happy about that.
Silly me, I just don’t know what to do
to make things better.

Letter from Bill with Philip Whalen poem.  Poem for Whalen.
And letter from Diane (piano music overhead).  Big
dumbbell ding on bottom of iPhone
from throwing iPhone at dumbbell.

dccxcviii

And then I’ve been thinking that I haven’t been
spending that much time with you because of school and work
and I feel bad.   See we’re both being torpid and we can’t have that.
Now I’m crying.

                              Your hair will look good no matter what you do to it.
I feel like I can’t unwind
like last night. Don’t cry.   I ran from class to meet up with you
and I was trying to just relax.   Plus I feel like I have to
put aside my worries and my thoughts
in order to cater to yours.   Like when we

went to so-n-so’s new place on Portrero Hill talked about
sex all evening cooked okra, black-eyed peas.

9:38 AM Overall you’re a good boyfriend
9:39 AM Ugh...

dccxcvii

9:21 AM just hanging with friends & new acquaintances getting to know
everyone and saying how my comments make you feel insecure.

“Which ones?”
“You just mentioned the school thing – which was about missing you.”
“That made you insecure?”

July 3, Chevy’s after Anarajuat (fast runner),
first draft/facsimile – some sharpness                  TEST PAGE

9:23 AM I took it as you more thinking about yourself–

But that isn’t necessarily–
“BITE YOUR TONGUE YOU

want me to stay home you don’t like my friends
and tell your new boyfriend that I was boring.”””     How come

some of the clouds still up there

dccxcvi

I think you and I are just competing to play the victim or something.
Don’t forget the nice things like the flowers I sent you yesterday.
Nor the fact they taught me to like Jimmy Carter and then
how to love Ronald Reagan.   Pizzeria Uno with a copy of
Ploughshares, playing,
but not at my best behavior, particularly with you.
Or walking hand in hand on the sidewalk on a beautiful night
with gorgeous long hair.   A moon to die for.
How smart you’ve become lately!

That was obvious fodder for Altman, chewing on a towel,
watching the bridge lights turn orange.   Having painted over
each and every cloud.

                                                                               —Poetry on the 4th

dccxcv

I would put myself on the Kinsey scale about in the middle
between dancing and sex
                                                       —Carla Harryman

“Good boy,” he says.
The mirror says nothing,
wasn’t meant as funny,
and cannot be seen.

Being able to live again,
be reborn, saved. Cert
ainly a pleasure. But
why unwanted? I.

Value reinvention, new
ly elided plotlines (
not omitted but slurred
over). Surely that’s

NOT the word.  Mix
it up make it new.  I
wanna be loved by
you by you.  And

maybe others.  For
peanut reasons.
It wasn’t too hot
on the dance

floor.  I like it
wet.  Send me a
check next week.