mcclxxx

Fear of the Waitress

That’s the problem with fiction is a
double negative. We like cancer
in our coffee, for example. What
hideous rumors abound! I’m with
the lemur, prefer toasted rice in my tea.

It’s impossible to slow down the busy
bee jokes. It’s impossible to gut this
bear of a rainstorm. I’m impossible.
Damn jackhammering, and can’t
find my inner-city facial. But

now I understand why you were
quoting the Eurythmics. No
matter, I still can’t get the
onion off my eyes.

mcclxxix

Pedal creaks. Tone rotten.
                        —Keith Waldrop

The shadow-shadow accidentally feels a
raindrop.  Is it a time warp?  Perhaps.  Oh,

how the Tenderloin has aged.  I wander lost,
one greasy spoon in search of another.  Does’

eyes tend to startle cars and freeze fists.  I’m
too cold to think sock-footed.  But the kitchen

is a mess!  Leaving on a jet plane on Thursday,
stressing about the shape of class, calling to

schedule racquetball, no instant messenger.
Cedar confirmed for the 26th.  110 more to go.

mcclxxviii

Extinguish the gingerbread as seen from a broad.

           we have unity
           in spades
           temps with perms
           the pace of a sphinx
                           —Alan Bernheimer

The rim of your mouth
is crisp to the touch.

Such is the desert on a
spoony afternoon.

I’m swallowed up.  Fucked up every-
where with a slight headache,

but angst-ridden mice sometimes find
Xanax-laced cheese.

My quest is neither
endless, nor a fight to the death.

I’m only here for the money.  Spirits
generally higher than the weak.

Sobbing her eyes out because
she lost the audition.

I wonder if they serve quesadillas
at Quetzal.  One might imagine....

Sedation is such a cautious
killer, isn’t it?

mcclxxvii

This morning I’m woozy but artsy. Make
infinite with shower, first in forever. Off the
phone with an ear infection on my mind.
That one sort of crept up on me.

I mapped it out where I’m the geezer. Lost
track of minutiae, but I always do. And
then you came along. Guffaw.

It was all in a day’s work. The cat’s got a
fuzzy attached to one of her whiskers,
keeps breathing it astir. She’s watching an
airplane fly over a glass of water. I’ve an

imprecise pain in my jaw. Something awry
in a sinus. Or maybe I just went to bed
with a hangover. What a pill.

That’s me on the floor. And brunch? It’s
inevitable and it draws Brahms all the way
from uptight. Slender furniture line the
room which juts like a jaw over the sea.

Perhaps we’re all inbred. I count the
seconds after each stroke of lightning,
each number sounds unfamiliar; I’m a

bumbling, faltering happenstance. Atop
the stairs a yawning dog crumples into
a comfortable position atop a pile of
Polaroids. Jeez, how the minutes

creep. I peck at the water ’til I have to
pee. It’s nine o’clock and I make infinite
shower, a crock at rock, a tease at ease.

mcclxxvi

Hook-up: A casual sexual encounter with no future
                commitment to maintaining a relationship.
                                                 —The Internet

mighty mouse: the way we were.

carrier pigeon: a bird drunk with love and no tongue for a postage stamp.

hook, line & sinker: but I don’t even know her!

mcclxxv

Everything is such a big secret.  Why can’t we just
play out in the open?  There are such peculiar ideas
in the world.  We should go to sleep with them all.

I remember curiosity.  It strikes me like a pillow at
camp or a lazy massage therapist on my foot.  I’m
embarrassed that you’re embarrassed and I don’t

understand this game of let’s not say too much or
else he’ll know what I’m saying.  Do I do this?
It’s too much to hear.  Do we sit in the drizzle ’til

the sun rises?  I’m not even sure I have the date
correct but this is how I get my culture.  Getting a
Brazilian, for example, is an act of poetry.  It’s

a poem being unwritten.  I’m not even sure if I
have the date correct.  Apply the skin softener and
let the cat do all the work.  I can’t remember a thing

but I’m sure I’m getting fucked somehow.

mcclxxiv

I found the gap in your
attention span. It hugs a
pink bag full of chipped
saucers. And it’s cold.

Could we end it here,
before the next commer-
cial? I’ve said a million
times I don’t think so.

All of a sudden nothing
is familiar. It doesn’t
matter which lung goes
first just give it the old

heave-ho, right? Wake
at four in the morning
to a tenebrous fenestra-
tion. Get your act to-

gether. Then go nine
years without a shower.
It’s pretty easy, isn’t it?

mcclxxiii

For that matter
lint used to be your clothes
                 —Alan Bernheimer

A breezy rain takes over the week.

You’re a sensation
means something about what
being an actor has to do with self-esteem.

I think I remember what I’m doing now.

The bathroom gets done.  The cat
plays with herself.

I have to fill in the codename
but it’s really a find-a-boyfriend
project. Project Codename.

If it’s in the bag is it
decapitated?

mcclxxii

One word to make it endless.  Trace
the ignorance of bliss back to some-
thing raw.  The sting of innocence
on a stone floor.  So overrated it’s

fantastic.  Sneeze.  In an attempt to
stretch the night out like a yawn.
Sit on your face, some genetic
loophole.  It begins today.

To fill in the blank.  I saw you
on the wire.  Held you in a
million pieces.  Words are
trunks sawed open.  Half

here.  So that the pixels
actually spark.  What a
turkey, choking the air
out of the sky again.

mcclxxi

Most have secret code
near butt.  That party
only horny.  Say a
piece of gum then.

Near butt?  No,
chew.  Down
water-pipe til
chute it or

chute at it.  I
spy.  This is
normal?  OK.
Try pepper

then.  Ask
waiter hot.
Yep.  Hot
mustard

I mean.
Such
secret
horny

chew
down
butt
pepper.

mcclxx

I feel like shackles now.  Heli-
copter circling overhead.  Metal
or glass on my teeth, uncertain.
A glass of water in the distance.

Focus on going hungry.  The
dormitory’s sole webcam.
Piecemeal thoughts.  Exist-
entialism and paranoia.

Each stanza is a window
with a view of only one
tree.  You had because I
wanted.  Only that one tree.

Rainy writing.  Sleet in a
glass of water that exists.
Hungry for shadows or
Colorado.  Unshackled

focus, leaning in on
winter. Dried rinds
at the foot of a pine.
A knotted whirl of

needles.  Kneads
whorl.  Needles’
needless words.

mcclxix

I go to bed mathematician
wake up closeted heap. A
heap in the closet worth two
in the bush? Maybe. But
don’t crotchet. If wishes
fools, an apple a day, etc.

I’d cry at pop-tarts, smooth
butter my tears. Don’t
yell at me dating getting
anything but sex. I’m dis-
something. Dissatisfied,
dissipating. It gets my

goat until I’m fried. I
feel right now I have
nothing to feel guilty.
Only responsible
shackles a tundra
without lotion.

Mocks my heap? A-
wake is not always
more alive. A good
thing you walked in.
A tussle over love is

worth every scrape.
I’m no closeted met-
aphor anymore, linger
at every nib of your
sass and your coaxing.

Gentle anniversary of
my thawed-out winter
come hither. A yawn-
ing sofa warmer than
a tanning bed. My

Florida. My
Miami.

mcclxviii

A Tomb of Spaghetti

Onward, soldier! You’re looking
fist to mouth. Beware of the
worst nightmares and sick
balls of meat. Stop talking
on the verge of tears and
cue up dinner. A
big spoon of heaps
of just no good. Make things
100% lovely after speeding through
really nice and we shouldn’t hang out
any more. What? Order more belching
into the telephone. I was speechless
dating him. Call me up you can’t
even think. Done with seeing
someone Tuesday. Murder
a bloody tissue. Yeah,
I thought so Mister
Fakester, Mister
Sauce in your Cups.
And I toasted you, too.
Mister Sinister with the
woody chianti of a
bled-out heart.
I toasted your face
to the spoons of Miami
til your hide was an umber
to behold. You’re no good to
my mouth til that fizzled fist
pops it off the green. All good
oak goes to toothpick. Amen,
soldier. Amen, fizzled fist.

mcclxvii

The idea of me deeply. And treason
of the mouth. I go in the moaning
of the blue moon. Not knowing
which time zone to live. Hugging
and chattering down the street.
Passing the Starbucks bathroom
lady. Passing the all-night security
clerk who digs a newspaper out of
the trashcan and reads it all the way
home. I harness my bitch like a
jaw, the ego of me. For practice
I ask to be pictured as dog. Not only
chained up but happy, beatific. Going
to heaven on the couch with two flirts
bound by leather. Which me submits
to the deep daddy, newsless me or
trash-heap me? Flaw the record.
I’m a dark street 5am waiting
to breathe. It’s not night-time
sulks. More glistens with
attention, rapt. You take
cellophane. I tinfoil. Fold
in until it matters. Trust
develops as lightning rod.
Breathe in deep knowing
plastic pops time into
jaw-dust.

mcclxvi

maybe peanut butter would be better
                                  —Lyn Hejinian

I’m ice skating for the first time ever.
What’s my age?  Try text house.
Nobody.  I don’t want to believe
that I am disputed.  That I’m a big
disputed.  Louis returns fork to the
road.  Bummer.  Quiet evening
otherwise.  Like being kidnapped
by a murderer.  Or the world on
the brink of a nuclear war (does any-
one think about nuclear anymore?).
There were others.  They were vivid.
I stand in the drizzle in awe, which is
a mouth open to drizzle with a thirsty
tongue.  Ice skating is pretty easy.
We finish and rush back up the
hill.  Champagne for everyone.
Then we argue til sunrise.  The
consensus: I’m a dispute.  Isn’t
that reality?  I’m just a big dispute.

mcclxv

A piece of spaghetti stuck on the stove.
I give it a kissy and scrape it up. I
can’t go back to nowhere, learn all
over again each friend’s camera
boundaries. Album etiquette?
We’re all family, dammit!
Something to quibble over
on some other Thanksgiving.
Wrap it up and put it in the
fridge, where it’ll stay for a
week or so. But wait, the
disposal’s dead. What of
the rotting hamhocks and
what of the over-crocked
black-eyed peas? Let
Nixon rest under a wreath
made of iPods as the gas-
lines burst into clover-
like curlicues. Let’s
nip and tuck ourselves
into the teenagers we
can’t remember. Dig
up the stuffed swan
I won next to the
Muscle Man
tent. My-
self, a dry-
throated
swan.

mcclxiv

Nowhere.  And fast.

This is my last day of doing this.
I promise.

Here’s a salty boat of memory
and marble,

like Facebook trivia or
SuperPoke in Surround Sound.

Heather Locklear took the
gay out of Dynasty.

Quotes and misquotes are
crumpled and thrown at me

(Are they teasing?  Thrown in
disdain?  Just trying to get my

attention?).  Dad meets Jesus
in a back alley, but he’s

not the real Jesus.  The real
Jesus is at home walking across

your swimming pool into the
arms of your lovely wife.

mcclxiii

Leo explains how I’m a lucky guy
with all the eights and threes in my
numbers as I buy my third iPhone.
Leo is beautiful and I’d buy three
more iPhones from him. I would.
Then I appear onstage as Bob Hope
first time in how many years? Hit
shuffle on 442 favorite songs of
the year. Read five books of
poetry at once. The best year
I ever had.

mcclxii

Hail Mary of the Broken Thumb!

It’s another morning that lasts a week
and I’ve yet to breakfast.   The new year
is full of lost elves and I’m Mrs. Claus?

I’m having Hulu for lunch, watching the
rapture on American Dad.   Negotiate
6-year old handwriting.   Is this really

I’m fuck.   Just really Santa hate it?
Omit this memory altogether.
Upload proper zipping and

forget the bank to boot.
What’s best for a concussion,
a splinter or a splint?

mcclxi

One of my lungs is stuck in my throat.
Nothing paradisal about karaoke.
But it keeps memory in check:

               a world sated
              with white pear

Holy smoke paradisal! Pay $800 for
cacophony. Sound in Surround (trademark).

J. Geils Band: You’re Gettin’ Even
                        While I’m Gettin’ Odd

Lunch is but a bland token in a
godforsaken tundra. Then hot stuff.
Then laughter and table talk.

I’m so lonely I dance on the coffee table.

Then a pie made of six years as it
snows 10 inches in Seoul
(the heaviest in 70 years).

I love snow.

mcclx

Feeling good about myself.
It is not two in the morning.
The beach is filled with
dribbled figs (misreading
Hejinian) and I am full
of water.

great upward follows
            —Lyn Hejinian

Trying on nicknames of
little or no significance:
Professor
Jiminy Cricket
Dammit Sandwich

Can’t think no more.
Surrogate student,
already feeling like
a new decade.