cmlii

I’m sawblades
working against
each other, one

misbegotten attempt
after the next,
jump-starts and

broken knees, YSL
at the de Young, a
fine coat of rain;

amnesia.   I’ve
lived this moment
for months,

splitting the days
wicked smitten
with smudged ink,

staggering proof
of sexual encounters
I don’t even

remember –
the sawblades, the
rain, the Xanax,

the homosexual
subtext (fantastical
and realistical),

and wouldn’t you
know it’s a glorious
day, come together

like magic, blowing
me from one glorious
page to the next.

cmli

I think my girlfriend
actually wants to get married with me.

Sign of the times:
I now own my first pair of
prescription sunglasses.

“Whatev, Bub.”
(She’s Beelze Bub’s cousin,
for those keeping score.)

I’m less interested in devastating
than I am in a Calgon-esque
“Take me away!”

But I do need to weigh myself
on a decent scale,

preferably while breathing
the salt air as it wafts in
from the Adriatic.

Uranus is bloated tonight;
a measured gift from the sky –

this faraway sky.

cml

April 12th, my stomach sunk
even deeper.   Got the email
around 7 after running 3 miles.

Walking home, feeling good.

Immediately afterwards,
blank.

Rented Road to Perdition,
watched half of it until
the return phone call:
“Well, you can still
love him, but obviously
that doesn’t mean you
should still be together.”

OK.

Rarely have I felt so out of place
as I did in downtown Mazatlan,
until we found the cathedral,
walked inside – like taking
a dip into a pool during
100 degree heat.   Sat on a pew
near the back.   Just sat there
for a few minutes.   Then

got up, walked back into the
sunlight, the open arms of
Jesus (and a pope?).

With just such therapeutic
disorientation the city
becomes mine.

cmxlix

As absurd as 2,000 queens
on a ship off the waters of
Mexico (a niche market).

As absurd as going back
to work after an eight day
hiatus

(spent on a ship off the
waters of Mexico with
1,999 queens).

Which is queerer?

cmxlviii

And yet I disagree. The city
can exist if I work in my
“white shirt” at my small
desk in the dollar mark
of the city.   I don’t do
dollars, I just watch them
go by, along with the
city, forming distinct,
curvy S’s up and down
the hills (no matter the
grid).   All I ever wanted
was to not be bored.   In
the ennui sense, that is.
Here at Gaylord, I’m
sneezing and reading
the second issue of
Pom².   Last night, I
met Donovan for
sushi and a really
bad horror movie;
back in mode, loss
of libido, having
a good friend say
he’ll bend over
for me, looking
into my wallet
at a whole lot
of nothing.

cmxlvii

First words.   Sashimi combination B
OR the sexy Japanese guy across the way
(with his girlfriend – or without).   Find
words.   Talking in the steam room
(usually a no-no, but not this time) with
a guy whose brother is a professor at MIT.
He just got back from Chicago and his
apartment is sweltering.   Making notes.
At the beach with the little green bug
yesterday and then to shabu-shabu
with someone I’m madly in love with
but will never work out.   This way.
First something, then something else,
like Coco crawling up into my lap
and purring like nothing but sweet
love while I read Paterson, Book I,
Part III, pages 29 through 32.   A
little shaky from a triple shot –
the sun slowly burns its way through,
10:01am Pacific Time.

cmxlvi

Take refuge in a long poem.
                            —George Stanley

Buzz saw in the distance.   The
noise of the back-up drive
picking up each new word.
Downloading pictures from
the cruise to Mexico.   Dis
tracting myself from writing
by tidying up the place.
-ing, -ing, -ing.

The crack along the side
of the cylinder – mostly
empty container of
blank recordable
compact discs
(700 MB).

Just a few lines down, there’s
Write carelessly.

Hadn’t read that when I first began
but how true it is!

Thinking –
hopefully erroneously (in just some way) –
how this can’t work.

This poem fits nicely onto one page.

But then...
there are 945 others
that do the same.

Then, then,
how repetition,
repetition...

cmxlv

To invest in the inevitable.

Plunk the sentences out with
giraffish awkwardness (a
phrase stolen from William
Carlos Williams)...

not quite via George Stanley
in Vancouver: A Poem,

which I’m reading as I
get off the ship; realizing there are
many ways to delay the inevitable.
To prolong the inevitable.

The brain a snarl of death scenarios
until the Xanax fogs it up for the
puddle-jump from LAX to SFO.

We’re talking simultaneous reading
to stave off (to enhance) the
San Francisco fog.

Walking Otto halfway to work,
stopping by Starbucks for a
triple veinte latté.

What this city means to me
on a day when I don’t have to
“work” – the city –

the incessant noises of SOMA construction –
a newly forming cityscape huddled against
the west end of the Bay Bridge –
bouncing off the buildings of the
Financial District,

off the Tenderloin rooftops
and into my very own living room.
Back home with the intensity of presence
as overwhelming as this desire for
another turn of the page.

cmxliv

Roman candles bleeding into their mouths

“Let me have your attention folks, the
Albany stop is fast approaching with its
wet, red timber.   Don’t forget your
Emergency Window Removal followed
directly by your Emergency Exit
(Pull Handle.   Remove Rubber).”

Break it down to the exact moment I
realized I had to take an Ativan.   It was
at __________* – which is debilitating
(i.e. imposes a ‘lack’) for the words
and for the memory and for the
memory of words, so at some point...

walking to the Chinese Tea Garden –
“it’s free today” – is remembered
by downloading the pictures
just to get the name of the deli:

*Kenny & Zuke’s

Good thing he likes to take pictures
of words.

Anyway, I made it back up to my
room and popped a pill, then down
to Right Aid at Broadway and Alder
for Prilosec, Rolaids, and a stapler
for the holes in the back of my mouth.

cmxliii

No, I am not seeing double.

But airy, lightheaded, happy—momentarily;
I can be for now, at this moment, when it is now.

Jim just posted a dozen orgasms.

So either I have an incorrect perception of myself
or this is a digital luxury.

He calls me over the soldiers, says my
mouth is like the Golden Gate Bridge.

He’s got a million of them.

I was thinking of what that might look like spoken.

cmxlii

The self’s weakest self funnels batter as
quickly as it can, into cakes.
                                —Stephanie Young

I go out to buy an umbrella but it stops
raining.   I chance the rest of the weekend
without one.   Why fear wetness?   “People
in Portland don’t use umbrellas.”

At some point it is important to tamp one’s
conversations with oneself and release
those words on actual people.   The
word I keep using is “engagement”.
“Engagement” has become my
important word.

So I buy a red shirt covered with important
words and wear it around town, ever the
wallflower.   I am engaging even as I
break up or give distance a chance.
This is how I discover that I’m
really an extrovert.

cmxli

I’m trying to download a tree

Wake up with a slight case of nausea
in my neck.   Walk down four flights
for the best coffee known to man,
so as the rain pours the nausea turns into a
heartache which slowly dissipates under
a good book.   “It wasn’t supposed to rain
today,” says the apple tree in Rodney’s
back yard.   Darren dreamed he was
swimming in the bay and got bombed
and died.   The tree dies, becomes a
jigsaw puzzle with an image from
the dream.   If I live, I will want to
remember this moment.

cmxl

I gambled with love, and in its stead I found status anxiety.
                                                                            —Kevin Killian

What mode today?
A la mode!

With 9 clear windows
across your face.

Never use the
obvious example

unless it hurts too much
to tell the truth.

Switch gears
whenever necessary.            Some big hills.

All my life I thought I was an introvert
until I took the Myers-Briggs test.

Being a wallflower does not make you
introverted.   You are yet THERE!
You need THE PEOPLE.   (Or I do.)

But it wasn’t until I started taking
Wellbutrin that I realized how intense
the social anxiety is.

Last night when I
offered to a handsome

bike cabbie as he was pedalling me
from one nightclub to another

that “cool, we don’t have these in
San Francisco” I thought he said

“course not the difference between
Portland and San Francisco is

some big pills.”

cmxxxix

In Portland I’m going
to be very nondescript.
Twelve years later I’m
looking in the same
general direction.   Sun
shine!   I don’t want to
pick up the clock for
fear I’ll let some of
it go.   I pick poems up
instead.   The air condi
tioner rattles the rust
outside the window,
bright orange.   I’m
in the Ace Hotel in
the room with the
Best and Strongest
Ladder and wool blank
ets, military issue-esque,
that make me think of my father.
Portland rain.   The last time I
was here, he was still alive.
Yeah, that.   But I’m not
melancholy.   I’ve got a big
ladder and I’m going to climb
up to the roof and sink my
teeth into a big Portland raindrop.
Goes well with Stumptown coffee.
And poems by Kevin Killian which
in Portland seem even more romantic
than in San Francisco.   But this is
my love for Portland, Oregon.
And the little bit of sunshine
I brought with me on
the train.   And a
kiss on the cheek
to my very first love,
with whom I lived here
years ago, but long after the
cacophany had dissipated,
and whose namesake I
ran into just last night
after searching hours
for a dancefloor; a
pleasant stranger
in whom to find
that old and heart-kindling
familiarity.

cmxxxviii

I would like a little of the
sunlight to come over me
here on this bench, spectral
me.   I shot through the St.
Francis a minute ago to
see a little bit of the blue
ocean, its blue a bit Mex
ican, not like what you
might usually call the
stormy blue sea.   I see
someone I’d like, but
he’s not blue.   My
glimpse was enough,
however.   I must have
really been in Mexico.
Yes, my spirit got
caught in a loop and I
nearly lost myself.
Yet here I still am
indecipherable on
this chilly bench next
to the azaleas the
birds hide in to keep
themselves from the
city for just a minute
before stretching to
the west, losing our
shadow in migration.

cmxxxvii

A big blue crane rises up, up, up,
rises belligerently up the Macy’s
building, wants forever to stop
at the Cheesecake Factory for a
one hour wait and pastel cock
tails.   The square cafe makes a
lot of noise waking up and the
jukebox is lovelier than you
ever wanted it to be on a day
like today with 150 years of
oohs, ahhs & wows.   Otto’s
getting arrested in the subway
for possible terrorism (can’t
videotape without a permit).
Two men write a poem on
the same day (Tim McVeigh
is executed).   What comes of
each?   We are all reincarnated
inappropriately.   I’ve found
this morning in Union Square –
nothing worth writing home
about until the Sudafed
kicks in (“Look, you’ve got
the old kind,” dug lovingly
out of the bottom of his bag).
Somebody’s whistling like
Bing Crosby while a high-
spirited red-jacketed Saturday
morning playboy hoses down
around a trash receptacle; the
city abloom with the clang
of the trolley, afull of morning
joggers and pigeons, agay
with bench kissers and aloft
with dreamy purple flowers
and me.

cmxxxvi

blog fodder from the new world order
(stocks rally on halibut fears)

I’m telling you right off the bat I’m high maintenance.
I’m itching to try these new whistles you practice.
15 minutes you don’t have to sit down in front of a blank page.
Find the answer to this question and millions of others
in Mommy’s car made of plastic rope.

Okay, people, I know we’re all broken up about it.

Yeah, so these are some pics from the wedding
and the tight knot that is my stomach.
The brain can do more than just initiate a quick
retreat from the source of pain.
And this one is a dead ringer for the pancake house I worked in
while in high school.

Set it up and dismantle the tower or derrick cranes.
A vote of no confidence would make it
impossible for him to stay on the job.

cmxxxv

the sun tits

a big demo
nstration a
long love
with the
orbitz girl.
walk and
workout.
kick him
to the curb.
chase a wino
who spills
beer on you
calling him
anyone un
der the sun.

cmxxxiv

How come all meaning gets
squandered, just sort of
washes away like sand in the
shower as we approach what
is haughtily called WIZDOM?

I’m hungry.