dccclxxi

I like when you say “turkey on a toasted bun.”
I like when you say “I’m taking a swimming class this semester.”
I like when Rodney Jerkins says
      “I’m trying to reinvent myself with her project.”
I like the name RODNEY JERKINS.
I like when you say “gone to pot.”
I like saying “so I get three thousand whole dollars.”
I like when you say “and, perhaps, planning a nuclear war.”

dccclxx

Hi.   How can words so utterly
innocuous emerge from an
abomination such as Whozit?
We each have our own bag of
beans to carry, but I haven’t
wasted this much effort since
Postconceptualism 101.
Watch out dammit you’re gonna
scratch my MacBook!   Hey,
what size bed do you need
when you happen to have
me in it?   I do like an occasional
ice cube on my thigh, but a box
full of warm tongue is a great way
to spend an afternoon.   Somebody
somewhere will find this as
innovatingly uninteresting
as it already ever was.   You,
however, find it absolutely
hilarious, and I would really
love your autograph.   He can’t
afford to say that, can he, with his
mind so convulsed in collapsed
Colfax (as in Schuyler)?   Um,
do you happen to have a match?
Not unless you know how to
zipper, my friend, and from the
looks of things, I’d say that
iron futures are squeamish.
Which reminds me that my
favorite question ever uttered
at an underwear party is “Where
do you put your drink money?”
Sure, someday this will all be
famous, so calmly remove
your blinders and punch
the button for episode
two.   Fortunately, I
never worry too much
about giving a false
impression.   What’s in it for
anyone without an abstract
concept?   Poor sot, I have
three more words for you:
quick, put this list in your
pocket, and whatever you do
don’t listen to the critics.

dccclxix

What I do is creepy but I still feel you
through each and every explosion.
They’re usually brief—like the one
this afternoon under the PG&E building—
but oh—each are so momentous
(yeah, that’s too easy, I know).   I’ve
lived in this neighborhood for six years
it keeps vanishing and then reappearing
with slightly different smokestacks.
Today I want to give some of it back—
some of your passion (I know why you
lost it)—but you’re never at the intersection
I take a picture of every day at 5:30pm
(sometimes later) and beside the evidence
always gets destroyed.   Either I lose my
camera, the negatives are incinerated
in fires set (Accidentally?   I wonder.)
by the neighbors’ dogs, or the
      —memory—
I suppose you’d call it today, simply
dissipates into oblivion.   Fortunately,
this is one easy Thanksgiving,
four and a half hours before the train
takes off to the upper reaches of some
vapid mid-section.   It’s the last train,
I might add.   I am, as ever, the
curmudgeon with the pain-in-the-
ass pair of women on cellphones,
wound up in Rochester, sitting in the
cafe car sipping a ginger ale.   I’ve
been here before (haven’t I always?).
And I’m so sorry I left you out of
every single story but these tracks are
endless, and besides, it was all for
good reasons.   Such as I’m still too
busy watching teenagers undress for
their naps as the moon rises permanently
over Cedar Hill (where, incidentally,
a lost Macy’s parade balloon just exploded,
filling our nights with legions of fresh-faced
youths, each one looking for its very own
swish and bump on the runway).   Yep,
that’s still me, always at the ready.

dccclxviii

      Penn Station
with Dunkin’ Donuts,
the busiest travel day
of the year. Suddenly
I’m a creep.

      Not hot.

The higher I go
the dorker it gets.

            My del
      usions have
      subsided im
      mensely
      but

Swimming in a
sea of underwear.

      this fantasy
never dies – which
leaves me in the
lovely position of
Square One –

      ( ...say some
thing useful
you...)

and pleased.

      Rochester,
pretty wound up
passengers getting
on my nerves.

      This is when
he really loses it.

      The possib
ilities, of course,
rather endless.

dccclxvii

If you’re happy and you know it
stomp your teeth.   Did I just hear that
for real or in my head?   Ninety degree
San Francisco is hallucinogenic.
Also, empty is the new black.
It’s a lovely day to walk thru
Central Park to the Whitney to
see its Gift to New York exhibit –
lots of Jasper Johns, two Gustons –
get sidetracked by the Best Swimsuits
of the Season, head back out for
some shopping on Broadway and
the upper 70s (Fishs Eddy).   Do
laundry, get haircut, How often do
you get it cut?   Three to four weeks,
whenever the mood strikes.   Lunch
with Sarah at Gaylord.   Note to
self: need to work on the voice
(more sincerity, less sarcasm).
Later it’s to the Lush with Kim
for fwozen wattuhmelontinis.   Con
fidentially, nothing but sky-high
clarity; the mood barometer
up two points like the Nasdaq.
No longer Gong Show rejects we’re
the dorks next door we go on
Mexican cruises in October and
keep our slaphappy teeth in our
slaphappy mouths.

dccclxvi

“Are you trying to be hilarious?
Because it’s working.”

Barrage and Posh are
two royally boring lounges.

Spinoza in Her Youth
is infinitely better fare

while I’m eating an apple
with sore gums.   “Blah blah

soil spots on mind’s brackets
blah blah” (to paraphrase)...

“What’s doing?”   “Nothing but
filling up the tabloids.”

“And where is everybody?”
“At the Blondie concert.”

I was getting to something in
New York.   Oh, the big ’uns;

today he’s 22.   I love him.   We
bore each other into being single

and just thinking about love.
Then I picked him up,

kissed him once or twice
and threw him in a cab home.

Okay, corndog time!

dccclxv

Frost Apples (or Nothing Doing)

Reading Schuyler while waiting for
Mike makes me think of driving
through Northwest Arkansas
as a child, stopping for apple
butter in Tontitown (now home
to a grape festival and the Rollin’
Relics Car Show).   But all that
reminiscing is not for me,
with hardly an ounce (a gig?
a byte?) of capacity (like the
ginger ale, “never had it,
never will”).   It’s not for
lack of nostalgia, surely
(this diaristic process, a
case in point:   “Well,
look where I am --> the old Roasters,
which is now Torrefazione Italia.”).
Ah, more poems.   Why worry about
how it all works in together.
      Would I even like apple butter
any more?   I know I’d love
the drive, perhaps in October, a
firestorm of Ozark Mountain leaves
along the way. The problem is
a lack of focus.   I can’t just
stand in the drizzle all day
(or sit with my elbows on the sill
looking out at the drizzle)
like Jimmy did.   (Unlike me
to use the familiar that way;
I never met him, but what if I
had?   We’d no doubt have little
patience for each other’s company.)
All that struck me was the
(yes) memory of driving the
winding roads (before the new
I-540) to Tontitown.   Maybe
that’s where I was that same
dour October day when
he rhapsodized on a bluet
(“There were frost
apples on the trees in
the field below the house.”)
Who knows?   And nevertheless,
on with my own dour story and
“Oh, I see Mike – his hair is shorter –
so I’ll close for now –”

dccclxiv

Tiger Woods Sudden Death vs. A Poem about a Soccer Riot

I can’t read about golf.   Today, the bay
is aquamarine.   Ten more days of the bay.

Split pea soup for lunch, a banana for
afternoon break.   Taking a Sudafed without

pseudoephedrine.   Sneeze thrice, drink
more water.   A man sitting against a window

looks like a pinstriped shirt filled with
helium.   “Death by blunt instrument”

(imagine it was a stapler or tape dispenser).
The German books arrive, hurray!   Cele-

brate by drinking more water and
wiping nose.   Take a nap with coffee.

Had to throw away the azalea.   Makes a
royal mess but now it feels so much better.

Victoria Adams (Beckham) was born April
1974.   She does not like being called Vicky.

Sleep life away.   Approaching Schenectady,
an older man in front of me nattily

dressed in a sweater-vest and jacket.   “You
are now the proud owner of a healthy plant.

Your help is needed, however, to keep it
alive.”   Aw, triple-thanks, but I think I’ll

deal with it.   Spent the afternoon breathing.
A kiss in the hay leads to hay fever.

dccclxiii

He farted for the last time

in zero degrees Celsius
on teevee here.

Then a beautiful person
whose name I don’t even remember

stepped across the street to Kinko’s
where I sent e-mails,

Union Station,
Chicago.

dccclxii

It hurts to say your name.

To the point.
Type it here.

Beyond that:
[Omission]
Gay old time.

Lethargic
Stupors.

Perhaps redundant.
Almost.
Nevertheless.

dccclxi

When my hands show up
in the video they are the
hands of an old man.
One produces a
signature.   What is
my signature?   I have
entered beautiful
barren Colorado.
My partner
across the aisle
up all night drinking
Cutty Sark.
Guy behind me,
catty-corner,
his wife left him
after six years;
he’s moving back
to Philadelphia
with his family.
Helicopter overhead.
For obvious reasons,
smoking, incense and
candle burning are
not allowed in the rooms
(and this movie is
definitely not available
for public consumption).
Red mountains,
snow on the riverbank,
whoops and hollers
from the pergola below,
a “laughing” seminar.

dccclx

An angry wasp
is trying to escape.
They are of many clams.
A fresh roll of tissue paper
and two purple pillows
thrown at the wall (white).
A smudge of paint on the
window (also white).
The blinds half drawn.
[Omission.]   Two pastel
prints hanging bedside:
one signed “Leary 1988
Asheiah” gangly flower-petals
falling into a chalky
purple stream; another
“Lauren Leary 1992”
could be a daughter
green, mauve and brown
watercolors – a quarter-
sun emerges from
sewage in the
upper right corner
above a lute-playing
sprite on a lily-pad.

dccclix

even on blackheads and biers

The pleasure of caressing a disguise.
Ron backwards is nor.   And so
this is what I see: 5 khaki-colored
garbage cans, maple and some-other
leaves, the wildlife here isn’t very wild
(what I can hear: a brook gurgling,
a generator generating).   His finger
and thumb uplifted into a V,
he strokes the chin of his
mask.   [Omission.]
The summer sky,
pale gray beyond the
window-screen.   This
I see.   Dander fluff
floating in the breeze,
a fly and a bee
(what I can hear: the trill
of a blessed bird, a father
calling for his child).
In a loft of utmost
pleasantness, overlooking
trees, naked, reading excerpts
of Ed Dorn’s Gunslinger.
A breeze beyond description
in its perfection
rises through the trees
(through the maple and some-other leaves)
and washes over my body,
through my hair, over my neck,
down my back, artfully disturbs the hair
on the backs my legs.   The ever-slight
moan of a laptop and a harmonica
in the distance.   “In the distance”
could be China, the dander rising slowly
and making its way over a mountain,
a Pontiac whose engine interrupts Eden,
a pimple on the corner of my forehead,
an obituary.

dccclviii

we couple in the grace
of that mysterious race.
              —Frank O’Hara

#1 Businessman here
waiting for thrain
(in the rain for the train).
9:15am, hand off
apartment keys,
Montgomery & Market.
A frowzy jay
trying to get into
a bag of popcorn.
My guy
all the way
to China.

Look up.

Look up!
Get your stinking nose
out of the
spine of that book!

dccclvii

The birds are singing
about coffee to my
growling stomach.
It’s easterly to be
miserly.   Proof that
gay people are more
likely to diffuse a
tense situation
with humor
(i.e., gay!).

Au revoir, Monsieur Russert.
I’m leaving for vacation
first thing in the morning.
Tweet, tweet!

I’m a year older
than Frank O’Hara
when he died
(a year before I was born).
The city is fantastic,
but sometimes it’s just divine
to spend an evening or two
in the middle of nowhere—
a couple of miles from
Middletown, California, even—
sifting through books,
a pain in the neck from an uncomfortable bed,
waiting for a mountainside cup of coffee
as the birds welcome a new Saturday.

dccclvi

Rituals are soothing.
                 —Lewis Warsh

A doe and two fawns
have slipped back into the wood.
I got up this morning,
read a few pages,
climbed down the loft....

It has been about an hour
and ten minutes since I awoke.
It’s a cool morning.   Birdsong
I am unfamiliar with is
playing out my window.

Writing from the memory
of hunger.   John Tranter’s
The Floor of Heaven on my
table.   I have to admit I
found the whole thing
worthwhile.

Dunno his name, though.
Tall, thin, with a tattoo
around his wrist,
in a relationship (open)
with a Swiss guy who
just bought property in
Thailand,

the setting for the novel
I’m reading.   One per year.

dccclv

I think or am thinking of him who has
exploded into something different in my thinking,
listening to the geese honk,
the trickle of water go
down the hill
as the sun rises over it.

Thus I begin—
having read the best poem ever written
(“How to Be Perfect” by Ron Padgett).
Although maybe it’s not precisely
the best poem ever written
simply the best list of instructions.
Who’s to tell?

Escaping – somewhere to Chicago maybe –
I could SEE him in Chicago.
P.S.   I will be in Chicago on Sunday.
          Would you like to see me?

And then the turkeys cross the dirt path.
The fan falls from the ceiling.
My white shorts tucked into a chair
with a dead phone.

I’m really happy with my transient leanings.

dcccliv

I drank half a jar of
pickle juice last night.

A list of poets who ‘get it’
(imho): Lewis Warsh

....   There’s more, I guess.
Racquetball, sashimi (Combo A),

MOITHERPFUCKER
bit my fucking lip again

Zero Star Hotel, the pianist.
Then I decided I was over
the whole thing.

Question marks
in the form of an answer.

Plus signs as periods.

Apologetic voice mail,
sweet email.    Go thru red file.
Can’t quite shake him.

The idea of clinical depression
with Johnny Depp.

That feeling of utter confidence
sitting next to someone you once
“truly loved”.

dcccliii

Will the willow borrow
The fruit of the moon for car money?
                                            —Jordan Davis

I got a moon
for your wheelbarrow.
Shanghai chicken in the
sky with white stripes,
highways all night.
Gavin is a Libra, too.

An awkward hug
on glamorous dusks,
his brain exploded.
It was Spicer.
The bus, no money,
the saké, the wonder.
Like jumbo buffalo wings
nearly bleeding to death.

I remembered creative.
Orange yarn everywhere,
the boss with a big
smile on his face.
Boats blow through;
big tugs.    My brain
of wild willow
afterwards,

no money nor death.
Just a blue fan in the face.
A severe lotion for
age reduction and
pleasure.   A quick
survey.   You don’t
have to move.

I got fate and a
ball separator,
my glam bane.
Good night, Sweet.
You’ll bring a
variety of
dressings.