mccxcviii

Your heart isn’t all this. Humble stinker.
Very sexual now – this is it. For a long
time. Leo by way of Oakland most
likely. He’s a flurry. Very heart all of
this, right? I guess. Taking pictures
in the rain. I’ve got the whole vacation
figured out. Two weeks in Japan. Fly
to New York, train to Boston, drive
to Montreal and across Canada.
Hop another train at some point.
Take a breath in Vancouver.

Skunked-up room. Faded quilt.
Birds killing each other. Suddenly,
boom! You twit. I’ve got it all under
control. It’s just gas. I’m the only one
in the pool, 5am. Beeches and birches.
Empathy for the enemy. One of the
massage therapists is teaching the
coffee girl how to Facebook.
Brown wallpaper. Black
and white photo of a
rock bridge under a
waterfall. One man
splashing, belly-deep
in the current. Others
sunbathing. Your heart’s
in this? Take a breath two weeks.

mccxcvii

I steal what I can care about
                         —Steve Carey

There’s a bit of ice on the deck
overlooking the pavilion. I slip
gleefully.

Off the mountain it’s going to be
movies galore and a dancing date
with Rene who’s either French or
Spanish or both.

The weekend got progressive
(it’s already Tuesday). Laptop’s
in a funk but muscles are fine.

From here we go there (maybe
we already talked about this?).

In point of fact, he’s Honduran
(nice, but very passive).

Next up, blah. What you’ve
got here is a holding pattern.

What’s the internet
done for you, lately?

mccxcvi

Like a good lifeguard
molds and kneads
to the shape
of each breath.

Like the Big Dipper
tucked into a silhouette
of trees.

Did it ever!

mccxcv

and the fear of dying of shark
                                 —Steve Carey

Wake up without a dictionary. It’s raining
birds down your walls, tails up, beaks down.
Outside it’s lush, you get up shortly after
four in the morning and let the cold rain
spit onto your scalp, the rest of you is
buried in warmth. The pool is dark
but there’s a couple of blue lights
overhead. Who am I trying to
portray that I am?

There were no rehearsals and he was
definitely bored. Until the video loop
of him dancing when he was a kid
with his sister, naked but for a
pink scarf.

You and your blackberry trim. Ready
for the exhalation of surf. The pitter-
patter of rain. Driving down the
Pacific Coast Highway in your
pink Toyota (that you call ‘dusty rose’).

mccxciv

Space Dick

I woke at least every hour
in the rain. It’s easy to
throw away money.

Smoke heavily warmed me.
Odd, a bit. I should have
nothing whatsoever

to complain about. It
was exciting to be out
in the rain at 5am on a

Saturday. Don’t ruin
your lawn. There was a
big splash. It was just another

wind-up duck. Then I graduated
without wearing a tie; I will
never wear a tie again.

I guess I’m bitter. Which
he helped show me. Let’s
soak in this talk over a

dead horse. This time we’re
from Rome. It annoys
no one; such freedom.

The man shot from the cannon
landed on my heart but bounced
into my brain. The

performance felt good.
We showed up
like sports.

mccxciii

A Beetle

Dusk saws the light off the mountain
with a smelly skunk. Don’t need any
glasses (for eyes or for water). The
earth rings damp with importance
like a monster sewn into the cover
of a chair that turns out to be a grey
rose. The stuff of the gods. The
stuff of deep-tissue massages.

It crawls into a little nook atop the
plywood cabinet. I had just watched
a video of two guys playing with an
anteater. They didn’t look particularly
respectful but they played respectfully.
It’s a world of mud out the door. An
insect somehow manages. Squeezes
into an empty drawer.

Bugs love sex. I imagine prison
lonely. This is harsh, awkward,
inadvertent, sweet? Like the all-
knowing mirror centered over the
cabinet which tilts a little after a
pre-dawn temblor. I sleep right
through it with a hard-on, some
dream of chasing vague laughter
and slow-motion lingerie in
mesmerizing color.

This vivid fantasy dissipates
and I awaken to the beetle
clawing sluggishly into its
plywood coffin. A few books
and a journal have fallen to the
floor, sharp light from the window,
He says he won’t go to Venice...
it’s too romantic...it’ll make
him think of me and cry....

mccxcii

Night squandered on a streetlamp
                                —Keith Waldrop

I’m leaning over the edge of the month.
If I say January was rough will
August be better?

Taking photograph of a discarded calendar,
a bronze-haired lady crosses the street
toward me, thickly accented (Eastern
Europe?) says You like the calendar?
You can have the calendar.

How much to take out of me...The
dance of importance...Wondering
about tonight...I could convince him?

Tired of thinking or worrying or talking
on a blanket of pitch. Lean over to swim
in it. The painted clouds move from corner
to corner and the whine about the shower
upstairs.   Swim into it.

A friend says he’s got two dates lined up
for the weekend. When it rains it pours.

July evaporates the bead of sweat off
Richard Widmark’s brow before it
rolls down his nose into a
crumpled wad of cellophane.

I shake his leg gently to wake him. He
jumps up. You fucking asshole, he says.

mccxci

We love a good mystery,
right?

The cat stretches
over the headboard
to peer down at
something important.

I hear the upstairs neighbor’s
phone vibrating. (I think.)

Little boxes of pills
in the corner.
Trying to
nibble me up.

Something.

So simple as noticing
what would ordinarily
be overlooked. (That’s too easy.)

This place is a snake.

The lens
catches a crease
the eye doesn’t.

(Claim when it rains
it
pours.)

A biography of
keep trying.

mccxc

Being porn isn’t everything.

Can you please check how many
chickens we have? I’ve gone too far,
I know, but don’t be shy about it, k?

Robots are interested in being made,
but eventually it gets tiresome. Did I
mention him trying to nibble me up last

weekend? No, weekend before last.
Why is it such a big deal,
conversation?

I’m only a partial specialist so I need
a little help with the plug. But you have
no right to be ideal. It’s the

cute music of fate, this. Sit with me
quiet and don’t spoil the coffee.
Kiss me when it’s delicious.

There, I said something.

mcclxxxix

In your eyes shampoo is a rug treatment.
                           —Alan Bernheimer

Did he just use the word irrefragably?
Now I’m broke. Or at no money,
which is a form of broke, right?

What an awesome O! Makes me
write for no reason, brings many a
swollen and felicitous night.

Brings new meaning, makes me
rhyme for reason. Somebody
looking smart in a suit for lunch,

performing Who Is React?
of an evening, dancing
End-up all night,

hair smelling
all menthol
and olive.

mcclxxxviii

Bring on the gongs!  Your
fiery ears have touched each
corner of the earth.  And my
forehead.  I love you so!

mcclxxxvii

Football Music

The acoustics of the heart matter
little in hell. This was the moral
of the bedtime story, as I recall.

Julie from band camp was no
swimmer but she broke hearts
by the dozen. I’m glad God

doesn’t have to worry about
high blood pressure. The
New York School are over-

due a few men in leather.
Look! His goatee matches
his bright orange heart.

mcclxxxvi

Everybody looks alike. Pyramids.
                           —Keith Waldrop

Ate one of his bananas this morning
and a date tonight. Got a quick note
from the relationship: eventual.

But instead, kind of settled into the
single talk, next couple of months.
It’s no wonder you lost your prawn.

What do you call the fear of your
laptop being stolen while you’re
on the toilet? Probably. This town

has forgotten me. I am to the task.
Explain over smoke the difference
between the forest and the trees.

Or something like that. They both
occurred. And I am not. Now I
see what the week’s brung me.

And it is good.

mcclxxxv

Some people are
grossed out by you.

Sorry, I peed on it.

mcclxxxiv

I’m sorry you
had to get
through a
fair amount
of crummy
just to get here.

It’s never been
an honest business.

mcclxxxiii

I wouldn’t want to look at you
in my mirror but I love your
new way of being.

What’s that noise?

It’s just the refrigerator
you wore out.

So we’re back to springtime
and the springs
of hopes
and wishes.

Kate Moss looks lovely today.

That wouldn’t be my
first reaction.

I’m worn out by morning.
Morning is never the right
metaphor for the internet.

I told you looks could kill.

mcclxxxii

Must be the Apocalypse

There’s just no getting around it:
you’re a freak of nature. Which hit

came first: It’s Raining Again or
It’s Raining Men? Perhaps we’re

all staring too hard into the
volcano. Or reading too many

poems about maps. That could
be it. Any activity may produce

music (Keith Waldrop). Like
Joseph Gordon-Levitt on the

cover of Nylon, we all
ache for French girls.

And with those taut
red ears they each

hear us complain
about the noise the

paper makes, the
noisy blankets hidden

in closets. And like
peevish hair appearing

on pimpled faces our
clucks emerge from

behind each closed
door: Music, what

honeyed music!

mcclxxxi

What fine whistling! You’re quite a
whistler! Thoughts caught in the steam
off piss. I’m having an average day and,
me being average, it’s not so bad. Why

dream, anyway? Last night I took Dodie’s
writing class and my project was to get
all the men to masturbate in the shower
together. It was an all-male class (that’s

so me, right?). The showers only fit
two-to-one, so everyone had to pair
up. Somehow it was agreed-upon,
and I got Tom, my first boyfriend.

But most everyone was done by the
time we started—half the class could
see into our shower, so I was just
too self-conscious to enjoy it. Otto

is moderately amused by the dream,
one that woke me with the thud of
relevance, as dreams can do. Maybe
I just needed to pee. My eyesight

is going. Let’s backpack around
the Mediterranean. Nothing to
wrap around that dream except
fire sirens. Upset about a fat

breakfast, calm it down with a
trek for vegetables between
rainshowers. Two pots of
coffee, a banana, and a fitful

nap. Good things come
in spurts. I’m fresh out.
Wake up to pretty coos
and the notion of an

all-day sofa. Otto’s
at Sugar. We’ve a
date after class.