mcdxciii

Sometimes Feelings Hide

I don’t know the truth of my overdue
letter.   I’m sitting in the dining room on
Saturday night.   It’s the dead of winter
and nearly seventy.   Funny’s destroyed.
Would I move to New York?   Would I
walk him home?   I wrote one more of
course, Momo shaking her head in
front of me.   She’s getting better.
Even Robert Frost.

mcdxcii

Five Things

Across the Atlantic
Ashton Kutcher wrote a
note to Bill with new addresses
and seven deadly sins.   We’re camming
with mom’s laptop and he’s trying not
to look into the vagina.   Televised.   Hello
smooth life with family.   Back when I studied
Japanese I wrote five things which could be called
city laundry.   I bought it collected and without any
drugs and I did a load of Saturday night.   It’s easy to
lose an hour that way.   I return to the city, Saturday
night, and receive the transaction for each of my sins.
Chloe (now it is afternoon) is tall and a little bit napless,
a wakeful of Wow to the city!

mcdxci

Taxi

It was due in an hour and I
heard Mom answer it.   We
take it and we cake the
countryside with all of its
ideals.   Back in San Fran-
cisco, I return the can and
a suave draft of scribbles;
a tentatively titled life.   I
return $830 (don’t ask)
and the letter written
from a dug up draft of
Dallas and a smooth
Japanese fire.   We
know the drill—it’s
‘fixed’ with family.
A little break.   Then
five things which
could each be called
a big backlog of kids.

mcdxc

That Animal Was So Cute!

I’m sitting in the dining room
rocking chair so don’t dingle your
lance too loudly; rocking back and
forth like a ferry.   No word on the
Prius but manage a shower together.
Rick is still a bird, though the phone
just rang.   It’s Mr. Wong from Mono-
gamy.   A big thank you in the form of a
deep tissue massage.   And being parental.
Will we make a pair?

The baby’s a whiner, though.   But
life is fine out here.

mcdlxxxix

A Fevered Moon, Yeah

     A cracked block I wish it.
                      —Guy Birchard

Careful not to fill your words
with arrogance, throw in a little
French, the 1980s.   You’ve a lap
that can’t keep a napkin and a
furrish cap that is not a pomeranian.
You’re a flutterer kicking chaste
copper to the brick.

Ask for extra Xanax, or whether
it can be repaired so that we’re
up at 8am.   The cat’s going
pajamas over the pick-
pocket paint.

mcdlxxxviii

Are You From Far Away?

It’s the first mouth of the year,
a year I want to get to know
like an enemy.   A storm of
financial stuff just passed.

You have form.   No matter
how you slice it.   I was a fool
on dad’s grave, a dramatic
sunset and visual memories

of drunken mountains.   Big
boys breaking all of the
important rules to break
on drunken mountains.

It’s not pretty.   I can’t
describe it and wouldn’t
trade it for anything in the
world.   Gary carved this

thing out of a piece of
wood and put it there.
On the backbone of
the grave.   All of our

names into the stone
like rungs up a ladder.
You’re a shirtless lump
with whom I’d walk

ten miles round the
lake, after midnight,
all three of us strange
and beautiful.   The

perfect spot for such
Arkansas weather.

mcdlxxxvii

A Bony Gathering

He’s parking his car at Dave’s
rather than have to explain to his
parents that he’s vacationing with
me.   A barista gives the thumbs up
to I’d rather be cockfighting.   What
if when I try real hard to slow time
down....

Drink clean water from an unclean
glass.   Meddle with history.   Poke
around for inspiration.   I’m so tired
of tiptoe, less tired of tulips.   So
fed up with eggshells, less fed up
with the disposal unit.   Everything
is so urgent.

I see a menage.   Are you from
around here?   I like what drips
from your ears; your ears are
heaven; we’re wearing boots
that don’t belong together.
Waiting on a man’s word
in Paris but only if

the Prius is fixed.   FedEx your
body back to California this
afternoon so I can put it on the
porch with the hummingbirds.
I can’t remember how to
spell it out any better than
this,

the artillery rainstorm,
Fort Chaffee crab apples,
summertime felled
from the sky like a
private joke.

mcdlxxxvi

Ouija Board Blues in the grove.
                        —Larry Kearney

That’s much nicer than
this week’s bit of indifference.

House-sitting.   Studying architecture
with a new apartment.

A cool glass of water after receiving
I want to hold you really bad.

I get the impression you enjoy
yourself.   A signature

I’ve been having a little fun with.
If you’re going to deny it

at least deny it vehemently.
Serious blowouts.

A backside like smooth,
squishy clay.   A jar of May.

Someone else’s lovely beast.
A little bond over bourgeois.

Fun blowout makes a
big hole in the roof.

I believe it’s time for a
reality pick-me-up.   A little

nap in my car with Peter
Frampton, 4:30-6:30pm,

and then having to explain
to his parents.

mcdlxxxv

Social Boy

Still bod.   Cries
with his mouth.
Sweet mandarins
in a wooden bowl.

mcdlxxxiv

First and foremost, you should
pull out!

There’s a shelf-life for relationships
in terms of a marriage.   Anyway,
Kim stayed until 1am and I met
Yong for a drink at the Mix.

Be very steely about your resolve.
You mean business.   Something
will happen.   Maybe except
DATING SOMEONE at
the Bar on Castro.   Or

maybe we’re too young.
Since the almost orgy
every night I’ve been
saner, or more sane.
I like the back-door
method.   He’s sane,

a social boy with a
good therapist who
draws him in so he can
begin to work on his
“couples issue.”

Have you ever wanted to
look like a million bucks?
It’s been four months
I’ve been bonding
with my apartment,
semi-serious.   But
what a spook

shows up in the
elevator with a
wilted something-
or-other, dating
someone now.
He still talks
to the ex who
ran away when
the telephone
said I-LOVE-U.

mcdlxxxiii

In the world be everything.

Highway 1.   Potassium, protein,
and more.   Dropping the keys off
for the cat.   It has sold 80 million
copies (and by the way it’s out in
paperback, too).   Last night with
Stephanie.   Smoked a vodka
grapefruit forever (for a while).
We’re all gaga for Frank, but
I mean gaga.   Interesting
timing for a 7-year itch.
Bound to have entered a new
phase.   We’re assured that
angels are watching over
him.   Prayer and protection
and angels.   I am so in
honeymoon chat-chatting,
if that’s the appropriate thing to
call it.   My mom was the
first person I ever loved,
night before last.   I’m a
very, deeply religious
guy.   I was.   I talk about
living every day and I
strongly recommend
sleep.   Then finish
packing and
learn how to read.

mcdlxxxii

Vegan Clouds

Hello, Jupiter!
Work with me.
Who’s our biggest
hero?   Everybody
loves him one if
just to rip off.

Somebody will always
be interested, though.
This is proven.   Fact
over vague clouds.

We schedule a
brainstorm September
4, yesterday, driving
to Montclair and
fooling around
in nature.

I wouldn’t know a
cogent thought
if it hit me over the head.

Midstream we
settle on some issues.
He who argues the defense
goes his own way.   Into the
terror of commitment.   Or apace
through the Engagement Conference

such that the rinds of his underwear
singe tight red heaves of blister
that encircle the tops of each
thigh.   Late to work changing a

diaper.   A Prius again.
Arrive thru the afternoon
in Carmel with a cake.   Or
eclairs.   Uncle Earl

shot a buzzard, proud
accident.   A Polaroid
against the law just to
prove it.

mcdlxxxi

we have here is.
   —Larry Kearney

Some cats actually bark.
Symbol this and symbol
that.   I’d bark, too!   Brian

says he really feels the
Dayquil on his nerves.
I want to pause every-

where now.   There’s
no time to think.   I
understand how

yoga sits on such a
precipice.   Something
I used to poo-poo.   Some-

thing I tried for a while
and loved.   Something
I have no time for.   Bull-

barf!   You think you’re
a fucking guy?!   It
looks like a lovely

day out.   It’s
Wednesday.
We argue about

our housewarming
party.   It’s morning
in Montclair.   The

cat, Kiko, has
warmed up
to us.

mcdlxxx

January Sunrise

This is what we do, right?   How
come I never follow the rules?
Don’t stop me now, don’t need to
catch my breath, I can go on and
on and on.

Nobody knows about this.

Death is a turd.   Maybe I’ll
restart the novel.

Fogroll out the living room
window.   A few sirens over the
hill, windows rattling.   One girl
sitting out window two windows
down (toward Mason).

Nick just sent message:
Newsflash: I am fat.
How are u?

The newest Mirage
and The Story of Late
Chrysanthemums.

mcdlxxix

A walk in the dork
with a hole in the mind.
Just a funny way to leave
an apartment I really loved.
I lived a little.   A little more.

Editor-in-Chief of HAZMAT.
There’s so little joy in Toledo,
Ohio.   Rhapsody in Blue and
another cup of coffee.   A
wall of bricks.   Fake

orchids.   $0 minus $45.50
is not miraculous.   Tell me
what you think of therapy
so far.   When is the last time
you can recall not answering the

phone when you saw that it was
me?   Do you see me in your
future?   Are you afraid of
becoming your dad?   Do
you remember our

trip to the Grand Canyon?

mcdlxxviii

What a deal
when you realize
other people see teeth
in a packet of gum.   Their
very own afraid to chew teeth.
To wrap your cardigan around
your neck as a joke and get a lot of
oozy compliments.   I’d wrap the most
bourgeois girl in the world into the cradle
of my arms only to mess up on the whole
rotten apple thing.   That’s all, Pipsqueak.

Because of the act in the front yard and the
wandering beauty.   Because of a blue mug
and several pink flamingos.   Because of a
new apartment with a desk that looks directly
over the rooftop of my last apartment.   I make up
all of the past, like happy and single.   My optimism’s
bad karma.   I have a yelling match with the old guy that
lives at the end of the hall over my ‘monopolizing’ the elevator.

mcdlxxvii

Enjoy It While You Can, Restless Virgo!

Am I okay with stupid?   I look in the
mirror, stupid.   I fall on a memory,
stupid.   You’re the memory of
break my ass.   Break my ass you
stupid bossy nurse.

[Sigh]   No more nurse, bossy!

For example.   Mom is in the
kidney stone hospital.   It hurts,
I’ve heard, but I’m afraid to embarrass
“my buddy.”

Pipsqueak over the flowers in the
hummingbird garden.   Tall Asian
talks and talks about his school.   He
laughs and says “What’s up with you
and your brother!”

Larry asked me what I want to do in Dallas
and I said meet his girlfriend.   Humming
body over the poetry wondering about
flowers.   Orange iPhone angel from China
in the green garden.

You’ve got something when you’ve got a
word like sump.   Something in the backyard
with a new backhoe.   An excavator whose
bucket is rigidly attached to a hinged pole on the
boom and is drawn backward to the machine when
in operation.

There’s a dead bear next to me and I
love you.

mcdlxxvi

Reading As Ever with Mom’s
kidney stones long distance.
In the hospital four days straight
and nobody tells me.   I should
of course be grateful to the
Maven of Bolinas, as ever.

Balance checkbook and
figure out minimum require-
ment, bill payment options
and jury duty TODAY.   Job-
less on jury?   Can I plead
debt?   Gary was so animated

on the phone, about how
slow he reads, how he’s
treated as invisible in his
own home, how I should
come visit.   Virgos are
often impatient, I hear.

Getting an appointment
with a head hunter is
almost as difficult as in-
serting your personal digit
into any door of hopeful
employment.   I’m summarily

in debt.   To a very nice
piece of plastic, first time
in years & since decades
of experience in same.
It’s a good enough reason
to open up to avoidance.

Ordinarily I enjoy a
thorough misreading
of my intentions.   I’m
brutally honest, poor
at articulating anything,
much less my own es-

sence.   I’m a Gemini,
straight up, so it all
works out nicely.

mcdlxxv

The Cock in the Copse

I read something about a clock,
something about a corpse.   Every
thing conspires to become day
or night.   A valve hung out a lot.
Singapore.   Bali.   Still processing
positive experience – had a
nice time together – still do not
think.   Problematic?   Do not
think problematic but overall
listen to the birds.   And
the oil in the frying pan
on Friday, when we
travel to Arkansas
and road trip.   Much
looked forward to
(like Ikea without
a panic attack) and
filled with poetry.
And ohso comfy,
I might add.   Complain
for a while over Playstation,
taking a stab at a sore spot.
Vitriolic rhetoric needs
Xanax but the coffee is
done.   We talk jobs and
hayrides after which he
stays over.   We stay over.
Things that might make you
jealous.   Allergies in the
middle of the night.

mcdlxxiv

Like the Thimble in the Sky

The bedroom is deep sky blue
with some clouds.   The kitchen
will be something around mustard.

We’re both early risers (he’s making
coffee, though I hear no percolation).
Tonight, this room, swap a few poems,

a window out to the familiar (wrong
direction?), the eucalyptus tree, a
fellow pine [– overwhelms me

as I write it – I realize I have not
been.]   He’ll splash fragrantly
in the air....Almost none.   Good

and muddled sitting in a foreign
room.   Like Texas, a few weeks
later (or behind), in a new –

down South they call them
whirlpools – the moon
rising early.   The three of us

a steamy ephemeron.   An
Ikea bookshelf fooling around
with a sofa.   “Your grandfather,”

I’d say to the one I’m sitting on.
If furniture could speak!   Con-
templative with chilly

appendages.   Except a warm
index finger curled around a
thumb.   Rice in the cooker.

mcdlxxiii

But – I

All I know of my future – is o-
ver again?   I’m hoping – chan-
ges in Montclair; a 2000-piece
puzzle in front of us.   We’re
lit burgers in a strange bed.   I
mean and sky and tree and e-
agles ... in the Garden of G-
ood and Evil.   A contrarian
of green tape and funny no-
ises.   We were up til free-
zing.   It was the biggest
move, half-a-block to
tea (green) and cerul-
ean (partly cloudy).
Ghost of seven fini-
al fingers in a sever-
al kiss around some
mustard.   Sponged.

mcdlxxii

the storm has broke and trees are flail
and crack of light.
                                    —Larry Kearney

At least don’t be so graphic.   It isn’t how
to keep youth.   And don’t roll over
and play dead.

New pillows, a potato peeler, measuring
spoons.   Lying in bed on 860 Bush St.
after packing some & watching

The Station Agent.   I still make good time.
And “love like love” – with fried rice made
with Vienna sausages (which show up

often!).   Red notebook with dangling
dangle, it’s exactly three months
to the day.   What to do about

5 years?   About writing machine?   A
wilted face over a bow-tie?   It’s almost
as if I can hear the locusts buzzing outside.

Sorry for going off the radar.   I’m
enjoying the company of the hottest love-
making ever.   Have I moved at all

since we last poked?