mclxxxvii

Writing with Manners

These are some thoughts on etiquette.
Write something mean or write what you
mean; something that means something.
That you cannot believe and is terribly
difficult to convince.   Don’t cut and
paste (for example, do you actually
purchase and send a card with
someone else’s words)?
For what it’s worth
say something also
specific.   Which means
you can ramble as much as you want,
just specify.   However, don’t be filmic,
that’s for cinema (if so, for example,
put your laptop in a drawer
and go to the movies).   If you
make a living of words, don’t go on
NPR and poopoo the whole thing.
Take a look around.   Pick one thing
that is impossible to say (to your lover).
Write it down, if need be, but remember,
there is music for almost any occasion.
Say aloud: “Am I philosopher or poet?”
One serves its purpose well while the other
is neither a recorder nor a vacuum cleaner.

mclxxxvi

Metafiction

I’m not sure if that’s exactly
like the bland resolve of
taking a shower in the
middle of a poem.   But it
is like what I said yesterday
about there being no more
tomorrow.

How do I know
what you like?
I know it’s
not a triangle.
Nor humor
(which is all about me).

“What do you think?”
says the relationship of
good writing to bad ambition.
Sounds like I’m preaching
a la nonsense, right?
Stamp an “H” on it
(which, if it falls down,
becomes U).

mclxxxv

Disinterested Missive

Like walking into the fog of hairspray.   Walk
into another dimension (too many channels,
20 new posts).

You lie!   I AM thinking of two things at once!
The pre-existing West Coastness of the poet
and the fog.

I am West Coast hairspray fog.
Baked salmon is not a metaphor.
Do you think I can handle that particular choice?

Cleanse (lather, rinse, repeat) only by choice.
I pick the coast of no coast
(this fiction).

Lastly, walk INTO the alarm.   Grab
the bag and bake like a
dead metaphor.

mclxxxiv

Someone’s crying
on the fire escape.
With full knowledge
of I am, Friday, as
suggested with a glass
of persuasive leather.

I resemble a strangle.

After that, a suggestion
that I take “2 deep tokes”
as an answer perhaps.
Is an evolution like
the Castro evolves.
Far from I think so.

mclxxxiii

Intimacy

If I go to the moon
with you in my hand
after a 3.5 mile run
into an earthquake.
I mean try to find it,
the moon, in terms
of a simple vodka
tonic.   Alone all
month, the cat
stares at the
wall.   Can’t
this vague
memory,
perhaps
that of a fire
alarm, happen
when I only read
poems from women?

mclxxxii

A Robust Wilderness

Walk hand-in-hand with the night.
Everything is niche-marketed,
just act like you’re going somewhere
(not because of the night).    Don’t be too
lavish about the moon.   Make a pan out of it.
Log the odd misty-eyed moment.   This list,
your bridge to the witch’s cottage,
becomes instinct.   So you’ve got a thing for the
hairy leg of night?   Grab hold of it like a magician.

Filmic ogre, nomadic culture disappoints the rabbit
and dissolves uniformity.   Turn down the oven
and wave the radar to wake the radar.
I am not dead.   I am not dead.

mclxxxi

Method Is Singular

Shake shit up
writing about fog
in fog.   Be
destructiveness.

(Would
that it would flip a noodle.)

Pray instead
to the god of
career development

when the canary in
the ambulance
annoys the crap out of

breathing.   Halt.
Modular.   Penance.

(There’s
lots to remember
in New Zealand.)

Sweet thick
pea soup.

Resin.   Resin.
Rainbow.
Summer.

mclxxx

A conservative
laxative.   This,
the last bitch of hope.

Lie here on your ear.

Pause
halfway down
the stairwell
after work.

A whole minute
maybe.

It was never
interesting
in the first place.

Down the chute
I lie
in a tube

like a glass of water.
Palatable dope.

mclxxix

The hackneyed use
of hunger as
motivation.
A flirty wave-
off.   And barely having sex.

It works
and then it doesn’t.
The deadpan stapler.

My heart
is a pain in the neck
and does not have

signature authority.
The vendor is aware of this.

What a nancy
box.   Fold it
into the bend of a body

(say an armpit) –
in such a way
as to....

Makes you
redundant.   Which
is

completely unnecessary.

mclxxviii

A broken face in a
fluted box.   Barring
unforeseen circumstances.

Behold.   I spent most of
my youth hailing
a cab

in Taiwan.   Discuss.
Some
do not believe

in lube or tercets.
All hail _____
and _____....

This
makes me
permeable.

Every single written
or spoken word
is dishonest.

Outfox the cinema.
Make
believe.

mclxxvii

That joke
is out of the loop.   A
series of questions
about inevitability,

DSL and cable television
for Christmas.
“Stay away
from me, I’m an asshole.”

Like a knock knock....

Mind the dial tone
tornado.

It lost its
sprockets.

mclxxvi

Seduced by a paradox,
someone
much younger.   But

I’m trying
to get it all down.   Oh, God,

my business card is all wrong.
Hoist it up
like an emergency pennant.

The wonders of modern technology.

Sorry I’m
so miserable.
How are you?

The gargoyles who protect our
economics
are stone.   Stone.

This
dream
piped in
                              from....

Living through it
by
writing it all down.

Sorry if I’m miserable.

On the elevator door
someone wrote
“I am not dead.”

mclxxv

I am the most
depressed I can remember.   Is this
a hint, your listening
to him read
a poem?

Why take the time
to figure it
out,

making no sense
with your heart on your sleeve?
The telephone refuses....

The ache of the mountain
on each page.
Twitch
and flail, yet

keep yourself broken
off.   A cad
with
a party hat.

Hand swollen over
correction tape
ready

to
roll
the dice.