mlxxiii

I do accept this pie of pink & un-
pink, this barren votive reservoir.
I texted him my knees and fell
facedown in seagulls. It’s today.
Dinner more often than not is a
short-bed of loneliness, another
dirty martini with a blue umbrella,
this decade that has all but been
formally dubbed Razor. I said
I wanted to crawl back into you,
Razor, alongside the corner of
Pine and Razor. Never having
once pled cramped! within this
selfsame jagged cloud of socks
that (fortnightly) pelt a rude
sandstorm of violent nostalgia,
bruises the tops of my hands
with aluminum needles. Razor’s
reply: ageless laughter. Starts
with globs of sour sonnet dust
which, when deeply-coughed,
are flung taut from the tongue
to form hexagrams of laden spit
that fry unpinkly on these once-
pink walls, leave us each as
dizzy as hunkered-out porks
crying uncle! over a
pink-bellied pi.

mlxxii

Ew, straight night at Trigger.
Not sure what’s mildewed
(maybe a cloud?). What yet
dies while the author doesn’t,
zaps lightning into pools
of smoke we then gather
into DVD boxes (yet again
before Netflix)? And
humidly. Oh, that we’ll
kiss like this always, Azadi
Tower swooping behind
fuzzy yellow petals (amid
which our faces act as
miniature television sets)!
Go! Go, like a fashionable
thief, or a gleaming orange
atop spundrift haystacks!
The ones us bent pumpkins
can never quite undance.

mlxxi

Stackable hay makes haystacks.

Hooray, I’m European; I made
tempura and it turned out great!

Milo shows up at midnight to
control me. His birthstone

must be opal or hematite, I
forget which, what with

four to choose from. Face-
book birthdays are ubiquitous

or ominous or piling up like
barn hay. I’ve got mine,

too; it’s half the problem
(half again of which is 21,

bridging the gap to all these
old new friends piling up

like turtle-clumps). Are
forgotten cousins best left

so? I don’t know. Makes
my head hurt just to think.

Click network and Asia’s
perfect badass on webcam

sounds more like honing the
horde down to a manage-

able, palatable few. Get it
up just to lay it back down

or dip it in grease, de-
pending on the region.

Mine is hot to the touch and
eats like a carrot to a horse.

Just ask Natalia. The best-laid
plans never lie like dead fish.

mlxx

Turn Off the Angel (Part 2)

It’s beautiful to stay up all night,
something brightening through
the image of the ceiling lamp
upon the window. Bluest heart
of burning brush, best not get
too close, blue is always the
hottest. Adjust laptop to best
angle. Nothing’s perfect, but
the halo over your serious
look seems like the right
size. Drink it with a glass
of water after double-clicking
the public folder. Right up the
ass is the best place to insert
the golden flames that shoot
from your tongue. Or so you
do tease. Drink more water
with your cookie, pumpkin.
Such cookie as I’ve never
tasted, and won’t yet tonight,
as fantasy reaches only so
far. Stack my heart on a
dozen trumpets bent and
twisted to hell and back to
form a kind of brass barricade,
something the internet can’t
resemble, but—like this junk-
heap—hot with Gabriel’s
throbbing tongue, a reveille
and taps blown into one.

mlxix

It’s windy in this
house full of love.
Last night happened
eerily fast, Tim’s last
swap on his way to
Canada by way of
David’s Deli with
Cassie, Jen & Steph,
cheese blintzes, and
fries. We try to
dream up snow
but it comes out
milk. Yet we fill
with loss and soon
enough iPhones,
miniature washing
machines filled with
tiny bones set on spin
cycle. The doughy
walls wobble as if
dancing with the
silt on the blinds,
a dance for 500
friends who never
call. We eat our
words, eat each
others’ ghosts,
we’re dancing
cannibals in love,
hungers sated
with nostalgia:
dirty laundry
and dead cats,
fifty dollar book-
ends, be they
orange or red,
cock or lion,
damaged in the
fire or locked
away inside a
glass heart that
whistles twice
before it shatters.

mlxviii

I brought flowers for the Chinese milk bottles
and one white rose with red edges just for you.
Six pages of blank is all it took. Emotion
only comes from the television or the cinema.
Family is as cold as turtles until you turn on the
lights, make me know it’s you and not somebody
I can’t advise. That proves that relation is
remarkable. And that there’s nothing weaker
than nonsense. Anyway, get a grip. Or learn
from the fruit you grip so carefully only to
fold into the crisper until it spoils. Then I
bag it all up into the garbage. Love is like
that, white around the outside, orange and
blue on the inside, always radiating
elsewhere until an asteroid gets too
close to your home planet, or the
milk spoils in China. Go ahead, though,
get seriously burned. But not before being
groped and slapped in the ass, seeing him
hard beneath his box-cut swimtrunks.
It’s a warm experience, certainly a bit
like emotion. But it’s neither television
nor cinema.

Thank you for your passion, your
compassion, the aloe vera gel, and
the Truffaut. All proof that I’ll yawn at
everything until it happens, only to
dream about it when reminded over
tea and the drone of dual hard-drives.
This dream, by the way, is all
emotion. It’s warm like a
distant wave from Federico
Fellini and hard like the bland
smile of Johan Paulik. I yawn.
I grope. I slap. I happen. I love.
I cry at movies and television,
never elsewise. I milk. I China.
I prove I ass. The ass of dual
hard-drives, no less, and the
love of box-cut swimtrunks and
cinematic ocean.

What is the proof that I felt something
when I dreamt of Johan and Federico?
With certainty, a bit like emotion.

mlxvii

an inspired ouch

Keeping the day as
long as possible,
totally cruising.
Ocean tattoo,
cartoon pelvis;
cartoon on pelvis
lives near the ocean.
Take me to the ocean
as long as all pelvises
are possible. Concen-
trate on Guston. Got it,
no more ocean. Pick
conch from bookshelf,
conk head with it.
Then ponder depth
of ocean off coast.
Big gay Mexican
cruise.

mlxvi

orange—a real courting color
                           —Jack Spicer

More ice cream, please. It was
childish, though, and kept me
from having as good of a time
as I could have. Because I
was actually disappointed
not to get more boot camp.
You’re stealing children’s

words right from their mouths.
What a scepter you have!
I’d take it in the mouth, too,
let it remove from me
every word I’m prone
to utter tonight. Maybe
love is like that forever.

Is a blank mind better
than a blank tongue?
Eloquence can pursue,
nonetheless. The ghosts
of salted weekends ooze
from the pores of only
the most fuckable faces.

Which is lovely, mind you.
We should do this and that
more often, even though it’s
hell today. Why even men-
tion it, this punctured skull,
another long-forgotten
experimental novel?

mlxv

When I think about him he is perfect.
I love the coffee table, so I dance on
it, 7:00 to 7:45am. Was I ever so high
dancing the Charleston to Shakespeare
in college? Or spread over a mound of
clover like an X looking for one with
four leaves? Without a doubt! Most
absolutely! And my timing could not
be better. The hourglass turns green,
digital cameras flash like missiles.
It’s a war to undo all evil spread-
ing like wildfire over the city.

(He wants me like
Custer at Little Bighorn,
their quivering hearts askew,
dapper as all get-out
on a Tuesday evening.)


an orange is an oval


Scene two,
look out the window
at the morning dove
mourning the
crack of dawn.
It’s as hot as I am.

mlxiv

Destination summer, like a
race with spunky Nico to the
crossroads. Blowing my nose
on the toilet of an evening.

This vocabulary of sundials
over tea spills into the skunk-
water of afternoon. Still
just trying to take it easy,

not giving too much
thought. Being careful
of spinning crossroads.

mlxiii

The fog in my head has a hole in it,
all orange, looking fabulous against
the blue. Trying more for the red
page, thirsty for enlightenment, I
listen to the siren, guess which
street, feel the intensity or
the exaggeration as it cuts
intersections, piercing yet
more holes through the fog.


which is like making a sentence


The sun makes me dizzy so I
drink lots of water, lie in the
middle of Market and dream
about tanks. War is making
me horny, so I get up before
a taxi runs me over. He
offers me a ride free
of charge, slicing
the soup of night
in two.

mlxii

Some sweet massage. Must be running
out of ideas. Beetle Gully and Bugle
Glitter, each with forlorn syntax,
are pretty much already looking
forward to a 3-day weekend with
Broken Blossoms and bootie pasta
(light pesto sauce topped with stir-
fried Mandarin and Cantonese).


After the break-up affix bumper-
sticker (“Astronauts Give Good
Head”) and then a little more
nonsense with Nick (research
for secret blogging experiment).
Mix well, add water, let sit until
morning, then grate sparingly
over lumpy oatmeal. Because
meat is murder, right?

mlxi

Ted Koppel’s got mustard on his lip
and the new neighbor’s drilling holes
into the wall. Please take this blue
dolphin to the 50th birthday party
and tell Beautiful Face that I can’t

get out of the bathroom. BF’s a bit
hairy, shy, talky and effeminate,
so I bow out as often as I can
and it usually goes very well
with the blood-dipped roses.

Oops, I almost slipped and fell
into the toilet, which might’ve
broken your neck! That’s
the news from the salt mine
with your hand down my pants.

mlx

Was I writing so quickly so that
I could arrive from red to blue?
I must be OK. What a relief I
don’t look fucked up (note to
self about the spoon with the

handle in the shape of a skull

hanging from around his neck). 

How come I spend so much time 

trying to convince people that 

friends are perfect? Who wants 

to sleep with a stranger? Go look 

up skull-fucking and tell me what

you find.

mlix

It was a leaky pierce. I emptied
a tiny Visine bottle and blissfully
siphoned as much of the sweat as I
could off the floor, squoze the sweat
into the bottle without losing even
the tiniest drop. We still don’t
have a microphone.

mlviii

May is the best month to
climb Mt. Fuji. What’s
interesting is never the truth,
especially when one’s fantasy
is realized. Glad to hear that
life can punch you in the nose
every once in a while. One
wouldn’t be the least bit
intrigued with it. I’m
making a grand assumption
about your tattoo as it melts,
oily drips that stagger down
the small of your back and
pool up into my belly button.

mlvii

BTW you type using bananas
             —K. Silem Mohammad

Reading along you’d think he was
never really on location there’s
nothing personal on this page.
Oh, wait, but I was there and
kissed you on the mouth
after you bit off your
eraser.

mlvi

Into my mouth a kind of oblong
secret. Trade joy with elation,
flummoxed by the hopeless
giddy drive to remain alive.

All night long and into the
next day this overwhelming
write it down in case I forget.
Every detail to the touch.

Tight shaved mouth are you
really who you are? I can’t
tell this moment. Only this
moment let’s not go back to

is it good enough for every
day. That prison I claim
to have broken out of in
order to become alive.