mcclix

Maybe we can do something Friday.
Or during the weekend like a ghost.
Is Dr. Joyce Brothers still alive?

mcclviii

You offer me waking up with laughter
on the last day of the year.

Yo, plumed Watson, diggeth this! and
many kinds of scruff forthwith.

You, you.   (Oh the years in warp drive!)

Called Hark the Harold last night but
haven’t heard back from him.

You!   You!   Offer me waking up.
Offer me waking up with laughter

on this fine and final day of
an all-too-warped decade.

mcclvii

i feel a fever.
i feel like fever.
feels like fever.
got a fever?
plus i stink.
but i look like christmas.

mcclvi

My mind is a milkshake.   Now I understand
why she’s a language poet.   People change,
though, and get dragged onto dancefloors
or out to his car to get willingly draped.
Rest of the night belongs to come home
with me.   He’s so subtle under the covers.
What a mouse!   We run into the rest of
the night, straightforward with no games.
Back to his car for more handsome and
somewhat vulnerable.   He’s just nice
and comes home Jesus.   Not like juice
or Diet Coke.   That’s really the last
time I talked with him.   It was
lovely and interested.   What a
mousy slurry with artificial
inhibitors.   I’m just the cat
the rest of the night
belongs to, the bark
of the willingly crêped.
Come home with me.
Mouse.   Chest.   Anymore.
Last night’s dance is this week’s
fog.   Anyone?   I’m straightforward,
nice, handsome with no games, and
milkshake.   People change, though.
Now I understand why they get dragged
onto dancefloors and willingly moused.
It’s Sunday night with a movie.   I have a
date with artificial, run it back and forth
and get rid of all of the evidence.   Lovely.
Juicy.   Jesus and Diet Coke.   It’s two for
Tuesday and I have a date with my head.
He comes handsome and mouse with
sand and fog in Indonesia.
I called a clump of it.
But I haven’t heard back.   He’s so
subtle under the covers but disappears into an
artificial slurry of air.   Anyone?   What a mouse!

mcclv

Cavity Search Manual

Your voice blinks as your sex develops.   It’s
Friday in the Castro of depravity.   Gone are the

Nine and the Five (oh forward slash forward slash!)
and the moth-eaten year when a spate of scrawny

Christmas trees grew crooked, up and out of the
mudded cattle-pond.   But a big hearty hello to the X

and to the resounding O.   He who was always fodder
for my peaches and cream.   Look even now how cherry-

colored jelly clumps like cavities into each Japanese
pretzel that he’s cleverly twisted (and in pencil!).

There he goes again.   And what significance!
Cut like Saturday night (with Monday a holiday!)

and wearing that soft-core grin, like he was only
just teased into showing up.   Such spirit!   It’s a

good thing I gargle.   Tiny green spit-cups
line my hotel sink.   I pronounce each.

“Masatet.”   “Takato.”   “Yakeshi.”
“Katsatsu.”   Only to end this dream

of “When are we going to get married?”
with “Keep in mind the circle we’re all

part of.”   Or parted of.   “Huh?” says I,
and slap a flirt onto the Great Whatever.

Round and round like that until we find our
sticky boredom shushed and stuck in paper caps

like chewed up stucco walls.   Then we head up-
stairs to fly our plastic knives and kites.   Open

wide and step inside.   “Here’s our master
boardroom, sir."   Blankly blink and ash a little

(as we saints often do).   “Yes [pant pant] our
boudoir, Master.”   “[Echo] Master.”

“[Echo] Master.”

mccliv

It’s a hungry dusk.   The yappy dog
barks a dank growth into our eggnogs

and the hungover elevators sulk
“They’re at it again!” to the

half-eaten ice boxes.   “Hey,
little Knock Knock, you’re no joke!”

is Eggy’s wry reply (having arrived for dinner
with nothing but a jingle bell and a starched

persimmon poached with Milky Way).
December slashes its dividends

and Christmas grimly reaps (for it is
said that those who hath not worry less).

“Yes, sir!” Yet meanwhile, all along the
Bible Belt ceramic snowmen disagree.

They only accede (and with icy
hearts that rarely melt) like yappy

dogs’ yapless neighbors.   They glower,
however (and they glower beigely!), over

each freshly-hewn wound that blisters into a
veritable snow angel that’s been slapped all

nasty onto their various sexless middles
and their hoary throatlessnesses.

And then, with all the doughy stealth
that each can muster, they reach up and up

into their frosted bath-cabinets for a few
penguin-covered band-aids.   Thus it is

(and just as thus it always will be) when
tightly screwed-on pairs of coal-cropped,

carrot-shadowed lips are caught all but
unawares and hit like a pipe-fitter’s

rock-laden stocking with a
lusty welder’s gassy breath.

mccliii

Nostalgia is memory decayed to sugar...
                                —Donna Stonecipher

“It’s just psychological,” you say,
this buzzing in my ear when I think

of you.   “What are we going to do,” I
ask, “just keep undressing each other

with our eyes?”   But I can’t take it,
this story that’s always foaming at

the mouth.   “Who said that?”
There he comes grinning,

eye contact, an erotic clash of
cymbols.   What a city, Psycho-

logy!   Its bees, its gnats, its big
hairy mosquitoes.   “Maybe I just

got too close to the smoke machine,”
I say as I crawl through an unknown

hallway leaving a cold trail of slime.

mcclii

Each line foams at the mouth.
The poem whoops and thumps
like it’s been DJ’ed right.   A
churchbell rings in the distance

fourteen times.   In a daze I must’ve
leaned a little into your boogie,
whispered into your ear how it’s
entirely too hot.   No matter what I do

I step another foot toward the door,
I step another foot toward the door,
and another and another and another.
Each step foams at the mouth

with all its whumps and bumps
that make no sense but stir a
magical breeze around our
eardrums.   No matter how

hot we get no matter how rabid
we bite I follow its sputtered
rhythm all the way it goes:
always back around again to you.

mccli

Banged my head in the noggin
just to burn his house down.

He swung his head like a bat.
“I’m a lover not a fighter,” he said.

“I give you five stars
cuz I ain’t comin’ back.”

mccl

A Meeting with Romance Ends the Romance

Twirling plates to the rescue.   A diva full of
tissues.   A mousy dervish.   These are but a

few of the rogues of excess.   Take one out
on a date with fish breath.   Navel-gaze at

architectural nodes, navels you can’t wipe
off your ass, much less your face.   She’s

the diva of navels, you might say.   And
you’re just another hardnosed ranger abreast

of danger.   You’re just abreast, so to speak,
in and out, in and out, as Friday develops.

It’s the march of a bumpkin gone city.
“Meet me at Mouthwash,” you might say,

“Third and Architecture.”   Roger that.
Roger with his butt up to the air.

“Roger, Roger!”   echoes the butt.
Good ol’ jolly Roger.

mccxlix

I wish to be thankful.

Most of us had already stripped.
Here we were in the city full of
cocks on poles.

“This fence keeps you in the womb.
It’s what we call a warm room.”

So we do find ourselves thankful.

“What are you going to get?”
“Hmm, worms.”

mccxlviii

“Yes, and perhaps a paper towel
or two,” he says, trying to be

funny.   Obviously we’ve gone
too far.   Would you like to walk

down to Walgreen’s with me at
3am?   He’s still reading arguments

into the night, flashpoints of anger
and jealousy.   O’Hara, my brother,

my incarnation, I’m just a draft sit-
ting in a fixture.   I’m a few pages of

romance, a dime a dozen, trying to
breathe during a rainstorm.   I am SF.

We pocket our hotel soup and
head out before the storm arrives.

mccxlvii

But did you see what just happened?
Tyler came on Jesse’s ass and

shoving it inside of him.
I see that you’ve soured

a little bit.   Who’s the
fancypants now?   Sure,

we wanted to see that
cute butt and stuff.   He

puts his finger to his teeth
to think about it more.   In-

spired, he traces a circle
onto his underpants.

mccxlvi

Vanity plate.

Went to the doctor for a cornmeal
abscess, says “You need a smoke?”
“Not any more, doc.”
Good to know.


Love rains in California.

With a Mercedes he’s stunning,
somewhat introspective, reserved,
well-balanced, intelligent, and I just
told him so.   Mellow?

mccxlv

Honey, can you bring me the Windex?

Our stars align.   We go all out to fool folks
with our key to the city made of gold.

I find you in the kitchen with a banana.
How can I be so cold?   I change the subject,

feeling inadequate.   Sign me up for a lack of
focus, a paltry article on Whitman, Red River,

2010, 2004, homosexual San Francisco,
attributed to Twain, my biggest problem.

Then walk away.   To auto.   Automobile.
Remember to focus on that name.

mccxliv

Nothing on earth is doable.

Some pornstar stole my name.
Bitch!   This time I’m Ron,
coming as Hercules.
Better watch out.

mccxlii

A little morning rain for the
smoke in your eyes.   You make
beefy dreams smack of makeshift.

We’ve met like this for daydreams
then you’re out the door and me
always horny for a little more.

Beefcake this, pipe dream!
You could be as much trouble
and maybe worse!   It’s why I

like you, right?   So crawl into bed
with why not, whisper how it’s
only cuz your bunk is burning.

This goes on for days over a
junket of dreamed email.   Sleep.
A junco flutters at your ear,

its pipe lit with meat sends
up a mere bacony wisp.   And
you smother it with the covers.

Outside a little drizzle turns to
sleet.   You wake to what looks as
hoarfrost, blink a bit to melt a

salty glaze, and exhale a wintry
exhaust.   I can’t get you out of
my mind.   We’ve met like this

before.   A warmth like extra
breath beneath my blanket.
A day or so passes.   I open a

door to vapor, a wisp of what
was never there.   I burn the toast
Thanksgiving morning.   This goes on

all winter.   You blink a bit.   And
January.   A frozen smokestack.   A
warm dream of rain.   Opens a door.

You enter out of nothing, real and
full of warmth, kick out all the junk
til I’m awake, and all I’m ever yours.

mccxli

Look who’s pining.   Him,
happiness.   I came home

smiling.   One more thing
on top of the night.   He

calls.   He’s finished his
shift and clearly unnerved

at my ignorance.   He walks
us out the door, maybe

smiling a little.   I say
nothing but a little

voice mail.   I’m
glad he seems OK.

But even a wisp of a
feeling can be messy.

Check my pulse but feel a
nerve, a tinkle of memory

that gropes me in an old
elevator.   A bouquet

dangles and SLAM!
against the cage with a

bucket of teeth.   That
old familiar feeling

and I’m back at the
arcade, slow to

swallow another
filthy quarter.