mdlv

None of the Above

Wow! Maybe his voice on the other side.
In a developing relationship. If it’s still
happening. With a fellow named Justin.

Don’t think too deep on this or you’ll
sneeze. Magically blow away. It’s a
case of the blond Octobers. At

1:44am, pop all your fingers and
promise the police I won’t fall asleep.
Did you want to play cards? At

night it’s like nothing happens.

mdliv

All of the Above

I used to shampoo with a bar of Ivory every morning.
The lighter with the black panther with a yellow-green
snake wrapped around it is acting up. A “talented and
versatile” Bay Area actress dies after “an accidental

plunge from a fire escape.” I plan to read aplenty.
Tonight alone I’ve finished three books. Bat latté.
Just no oomph. I haven’t tried the red stuff yet.
Ready for a shower, though. Is it because I had

lunch with Jamine at Pakwan’s today? Or sweets
on Sunday? Or the donut before Otto’s dinner
last night? Because now I have so much more
muscle from running. And waiting for a text

from Row. Who knows, etc.? I just don’t
like it. Starving myself on some guy with
huge, curly, rockstar hair; I’d think he was
a big woman if I didn’t hear his voice on

the other side. Again, who knows? Then
there was the woman (deaf?) who kept
not hearing her absurdly loud cellphone
blaring some (equally absurd) tune on the table.

mdliii

Cat Mist Tastes Funny

What if everything gets dreadfully redundant
and/or boring? – a perfunctory echo I’ve mis-
treated while refusing to meet friends for cocktails.
Five years later I’m looking at pictures from Boston.

The city grew by erection. I repeat the part about Sunday.
It’s Sunday. It’s six in the morning.

     “Reach in my chest and massage my heart.
      I am not dead.”
                                                  —James Schuyler

I ran after work, rather than in the middle of it. Otto cooked a
cloud for the rest of the week. The apartment is done, like the
rest of the day; a Vitamin Water in the sink. Kenneth Koch’s
glasses are upside down but the sun is almost up. The ring
in my ears is a reverie of birds. Or a flight returning from
Hawaii.

I feel lazy without my voice. The ring swarms my ears. Am I
maybe a fossil? Kevy’s posting sick links. Lanford Wilson
passed away; a soft spot in my heart for living his elderly
priest in Angels Fall at 21 years of age.

Hopped a trolley, reading uphill. Had lunch with Nick
at our Chinese place on Kearny and it turns out he had a
romantic date on Friday night. He kept saying it was surreal.

Goodbye Chinese restaurant on Kearny. With all the ugly
fish in the window. Goodbye childhood, so to speak. I get a
haircut. A reminder of the 80s (as told by the 90s). She chopped
one sideburn off and left the other. It’s okay, though. I’m the
devil for Halloween.

mdlii

Sunday Morning

This is okay, but I crave a little companionship.
A social quality is important. Laughing over
hallucinations. Surprise talk with Ben on the
phone last night. Perrin says “hi.” I ran after work
rather than in the middle of it. (Work?)

The air full of Schuyler and cat mist. I wish it were a
seedy Sunday morning. But at least I don’t hear any
rain. Sit inside for days complaining of rain, secretly
pleased to be shut in.

I’ve got lousy taste. By that I mean everything
tastes funny. By that I mean this orange juice
tastes horrible.

mdli

One on One

The worst time to sleep is between eleven in the morning
and one in the afternoon. The most embarrassing thing
should be the most visible. The latest culprit, for example.
But one good thing is almost any time we ever get testy
with each other these days I learn something—I mean
the process is productive. And rarely the three of us together
compared to times recent. Also, avoid stating (and restating)
the obvious. Stay up until 4am playing Apples to Apples
with Otto, Erin, and Masashi after watching hilariously
horrible Sucker Punch. Continue to reenforce, amend,
chronologize electronic photographs. What is the goal?
Besides get quarters, flowers (maybe), yoga instructor,
and clean blinds? Soft rain on the sofa. Otto studies
beatnik fashion for a major corporation. Spring line,
2012. Richard is at Mezzanine for Britney Spears.
I read a chapbook by a poet I’ve known for several
years. I’ve never read anything by him (as far as
memory can tell) and he’s now a completely different
person to me. He moves up several notches. On the
list. Everything is in a list, is prioritized. It takes a
lot of strategy to incorporate the random. To ensure
random. Your desk, wherever you make it, is the
bold new bloom of modern industry. Quickly copy
and paste each new email from Ron, careful not to
glance at a word, saving the savor and surprise for
a carefully scheduled time in the advance. In the
forward. Make a note; ensure it’s on the list and
properly calendared. Schedule time to flirt online.
Force yourself to brunch, starving; wolf down
waffle with hazel-nut flavored maple syrup and
chicken (add fruit and share half with Otto).

mdl

Three Attempts to Spell Bernadette

It’s all too fast to princess. I sit on The History
of Homosexuality in Film. A lightbulb thru time.
Reading a bunch of pictures. No light coming in.
Just trying to finish something. I am just as I was.

I consider this. He and Masashi are going to San
Diego for a conference. I struggle through a dream;
things that can fit into a shoebox. Shoebox appro-
priate. Wake up in a snuggle and the rain. Walking

here. Thinking they should put a cafe in the Center
and here it is. Queerest coffeehouse in San Francisco.
Well, not so bad (when you funk it up a little. It’s
a turquoise alcove...)....

My exercise program is working. It’s teeny-tiny. I’m
all over the place. It takes me three attempts to spell
Bernadette. “He doesn’t want to be read.” Succomb
to the rain. Succomb to the shoebox, a lightbulb thru

time. I did complete something. Happy as clams about
that. And the wind. And my haircut. I’ve got a
Coco. Imaginative. I’m in the Used Dept. thinking of
sex and sleep. Soft as your brow, which, when

incoherent, tufts. A happy cruise control gets
oddly jealous of, for example, yesterday,
the latest culprit. Shush the rain. The rain shushes.

mdxlix

Also, so what?!

I forgot. Or I’m the Queen of
Invisibility. Sometimes I’m the door
the unidentifiable insect keeps flying into.
Be patient. Adjust glands. Imagine someone

naked. I harp on sex and wonder if I’m an
addict. And, if so, which part is the addiction.
I wonder these things about several people and then I
talk for a while to a piece of paper. Earlier, while

laughing about how much I forget, I was reminded about
something I have forgotten. A promise I made. I was
happy to be reminded, even though it is now im-
possible for me to live up to my promise. I

enjoy the memory of the promise. It opens me up
to new possibilities. To new promises.

mdxlviii

Super High

But it gives me the cramps. I keep dialing around for a place to
breathe. Grammatically. And I keep typing “whee!” instead of
“whew!”

Works well for seizure day. So for Pete’s sake don’t get bummed!
The bloody royalty are even all into it now, so, you know. When you
park his leg like this his rawhide crawls!

Did how to cut the mustard every worry you? You’re no joke
and that’s a well-practiced sneer, drives pronouns into a
waxy heart.

I’m as happy as clams about that, though. Horizontal entertainment
goes a long way, after all. And yours rather defies geometrical.
Here, I’ve boiled you a few eggs.

I should have no trouble putting the remaining 15 hits into the
cruise control. Even if yours is Grand Central Station. And I hear
there’s a leather bar somewhere nearby.

Hey, great news: that window isn’t plastic! And you might be
interested in the pair of ghosts hovering just outside of it,
their foreheads level with the sill.

But I can just tell. There’s no negativity. It’s all about
love. The real deal. And your pet scooting her butt across your
living room carpet to get it all out.

mdxlvii

But do we really weep? And how to perpetuate lovers’
mysteries? Not miseries, which seems to crawl into pockets
like an itch, can be pervasive. I don’t get that. It doesn’t
have to work that way, does it?

But who’s to say? Anyone can say whatever they feel. Or
keep a wardrobe so full of special effects that everyone is
fooled. A heart on a sleeve doesn’t taste very good, I say.
Mine seems invisible to the naked eye.

Each echo has such blunders. But they inspire awe, do they
not? Even the hard-hearted like to give the brazen chamber a
shout out, their large hats swollen in the humid breezelessness
as if in touch with sultry. Such impossibilities.

Complete submission. And happy as clams. Research is
close to exposing a similarity in the grins of several very
unrelated species. So I decide to burn the book. Not
indelibly. That’s pretty impossible for me.

I like to look at photographs of myself and/or from my
perspective – from any moment in the past. Before my birth,
even; that is, through my parents eyes or, with love that’s
almost romantic, deep into the eyes of my grandmother.

The shadow image of my father, as each of my siblings
are – we grew up so – my mother has now taken to saying I
resemble her father more than anyone – as I get older. He was
stilted, quick-tempered, proud, easily red in the face,

and clumsy. He ran the water and sewer department in my
hometown as I was growing up. The town’s latest treatment
facility is named after him. He collected knives, coins and arrowheads
and nurtured an orphaned deer through to maturity – in a rather

small cage in front of the county courthouse. And without my
ever hearing him say it – it was palpable – he was in love.
And grateful. Even sometimes dumbfounded by his luck.
My grandmother, with contrasting grace and glory,

obviously felt pretty much the same. Some animals
and their dumb luck? I believe. Cheesy as a misbegotten
apple pie, perhaps. And you’ve got to take a bite out of it.
Hot! And swimming in butter.  Because they go so fast.

mdxlvi

Such a smooth and sensual way to curl the tongue. But first
to open it slightly over the lips. “This bit’s a hit. No worries.”

A little boy walked in from the rain with a soggy toilet paper
tube hoisted up to his mouth. Each of us are tools, but some

have better instruments. Then we went to Lucky Penny for a
skin blemish. The lottery causes this. I don’t normally participate.

Just at the Lucky Penny. Sepia the Cat is opening the closet door
now. This must be Tuesday. My laptop needs a check-up. I’m

not getting regular updates. [The pleasant morning rain starts
pelting the roof out my living room window again] I remind

Brian that it might cause more problems than not to keep two
calendars going at once. He says he’s had a lot of dates lately,

though. But he decided to take a break for a while (a bizarre
inclination which often seems to strike people and which I’ve

never understood). I discuss this with the dishes and the
laundry while Yuki sweats for hours behind my new TV.

He’s taken it upon himself to connect everything to the
surround sound speakers I’ve had for months. And make

everything wireless. Otto is working out with Nick. It’s the
summer of being déjà vu and trapped halfway around the

world. But one foot (and these have never broken and
actually walk) goes in front of the other. Cartoon steps. My

mind wanders. Sometimes one foot hangs out a bit more
obviously. My only girlfriend’s little sister used to make

fun of how I walk – she’d do so by performing it. I have
more confidence than I should have. I’m a “Challenger”

and a “Reformer” – both 100%. I took a personality test
with Otto this week. He’s a “Peacemaker.” Not me. My

peacemaking is at 55% along with my “Enthusiasm.”
We’re both fairly high “Achievers” and way above

average “Loyalists.” Which explains a lot, I think.

mdxlv

The fencerow practically belches honeydew. I’ve
started taking a fat-burner called Ventilean; a new
ephedra substitute, it has guarana and who knows
what else. Guarana tends to make my throat
fill up with bile. This is Tuesday, right?

My usual list of things to do, like laundry
and dishes, turned into a misunderstood
invitation. “Visit with you” was somewhere
on the list. There is no hierarchy of any kind,
no order of priority. It’s often nothing more than a

collage. Like the tumbled mess of brussels sprouts
and chicken apple sausage on this white plate (a
4am snack I’m still working on). I eat a sprout.
I scratch a line onto a page. A new page a day.
I look back to see lines I’m told are unusually

straight through a few items on each page.
Something happens. I’ve often sat through
drawn-out critiques of the ‘list-oriented.’
It’s raining, it’s 5:40am, I’ve a laptop open
to pictures of our trip to Paris. I turned 40

there. It was my first trip abroad. I’m so
in love. It happens every day, even with
windshield wipers for a memory. I haven’t
run in years. Nor the gym. Maybe tomorrow.
My ears are ringing. But pleasantly. I’ve

in front of me: a glass filled with orange juice,
a pickle jar half full of water, and a mug with a
moustache on it in which are left a few dregs of 

tea. Chamomile. I add artificial sweetener 

(2 Splenda) and two squirts of lemon.

mdxliv

If I’m reading this appropriately I believe I’m supposed to
accept death as an orifice. I don’t have time to look up the
descriptions of each fossil. But plainspeak is best, right?
Until one finds meaning in speaking writerly (rather, um,
onanstic if you ask me; but also POETIC. Right?).....

I go to witness the blessing of a baby. My partner’s
godchild. In a spectacle of a Greek Orthodox...
cathedral? I parted ways with organized religion
years ago and am surprised to be so calmed by,
and so in awe of, this ritual, mostly just prayers. I’m proud

of the circumstances that bring me to attend. And touched
by how it reinforces the severity, the joy, the poignance,
the responsibility, the amazement, the ever-conflicting
importance of the power with which we’re (with which
I’m) drawn to suspicious rituals (I love to use the phrase

‘ludicrious construct’). It calms me. And centers me.
I am surely more than a marionette, yanked around
by opposing forces? I’m a piece of ice used as a
lesson in memory and metaphor. I lost my home
in the north due to overly warm seasons (it is

the future); a fisherman whose family is swept
into an expanding sea. I’m a refugee fisherman
from a larger ocean. Now, the fish rule.....

But I’m a liar. I am poison. I’m a sexless blue
whale with my nose deliberately stuck into the mud of a
deep cavern—unspoiled even by the likes of you.

The water is unbearably cold. The mud I’m
stuck in is somehow warmth. The tears I am
surely and constantly weeping—right?—are like ice.

mdxliii

Don’t need a lesson, hippo.

I’ve got all night. It’s okay. And maybe you can,
okay, learn something here. Brace yourself as I
play through your home (or homeland), mangle
hopscotch (my knees, the soles of my loafers)
for your lovely chickens’ lives. They get the point
anyway, right? With dodgeball? Learning how to
bloody themselves up on the concrete basketball court
behind the elementary school, practice for being an adult
in a dry county. But where were we before we diverted to
the bathroom? Cassavetes in a nutshell? A perfect mousaka
from scratch? How to avoid herpes (or at least its symptoms)?
It’s enough, ‘verily,’ to land you in a serious spa by mid-afternoon,
a week in a terry wrap replenished every half hour or so by an
understandably-impossible-to-tell-whether-legal-or-not
(and who cares, really, right, since he’s got such obvious
skill!) towel boy—massage therapist. One who’ll (keep
it authoritative and yet throaty—as in you’ve difficulty
breathing—for this) clean your blinds all rosy-cheeked
and might even (authoritative; throaty) re-alphabetize
your bookshelf. And you’re lucky. Oh, you’re lucky.
I’m an empathist, you see. I might not look it, but
I’ve a bouquet of lean smirks right in here. I’m
no Clint Eastwood, though I throw people off,
I know. Play your bones right, sweetie.
Not like a jackhammer up and down the
avenue. Avoid the sniper in blonde
around the corner. Don’t let the
drycleaner take your measurements.
Spit-shine without a spectacle. Take
charity seriously. Don’t listen to the
big head poking its long nose out of your
living room wall. He’s selling insurance.
Avoid leather and thrift stores. Possibly
fur, but don’t be a rat’s ass about it.
A motorcycle, yeah, but never
drive it in the rain. Appear
often from thick fog.
Self-diagnose, be
clear with your doctor
and don’t let her talk you into
a contagion. Walk often through your
alma mater, chuckling to yourself
intermittently about academia.

mdxlii

Hack Soft Hypocrisy

...no time for a lifestyle...
                       —David Highsmith

The conservation conversation left me
dry of mouth. Do I complain a lot? I don’t
see myself as much of a complainer....

Avoid the tiny game inside my phone.
Avoid the music I spent hours researching
and then downloading. What’s the reference?

A collage is nothing for me but scatterbrain. How
embarrassing that it becomes a way of life? But
I meant to be eccentric at some point. Is that

why nobody gets me? When pricked, any Gemini
gushes the same, mostly. Just more rivulets,
more general directions, the gushing. How

nasal my lack of charm; so Faustian? I live,
lest I fall asleep. There’s more music somewhere.
An imagined train back home from a missed

engagement. What a wallop (not a fine
alternative to riot, but allow me a few
steps back from the obvious; though,

I am confident that you’re too savvy for 

such diversions, right?)! Engagement is 

my touted mask, my modus operandi, 

the deep well that feeds my mojo.
Or thus I cluck repeatedly
and for reals. Believe

these lips for mantra and yours
might warm my very soul before I've
[and I say this] scrambled them for breakfast.

mdxli

He’s a Pill

It’s a red liquid and it tastes like bitter bubble gum.
Also a new ephedra substitute with guarana that has
a bunch of new poems in it. This is Tuesday, right?
Sepia is opening the door now. She lives in the
closet sometimes. Flashforward to a downcast
Friday morning and Coco trying to claw her way
to the top of Otto’s asymmetrical jackets and wraps.
In March, the closet door is a green sofa. My laptop
has two loads of laundry and the lemonade is parched.

mdxl

Dinner (At My Urging)

Pollen in the pharmaceutical wind. A clump of
keyboard on the lawn. A wad of gum on the
corner of a plate. Tact on the mend. Inclement
weather is lush. The look that I’m going to try to have
is Final Fantasy VII. I also have bananas and a few
breakfast items thanks to Richard moving across the
street (a walk to Cala in the drizzle is a San Francisco
Sunday afternoon). Glitterricky. I win twice at
Fruit Ninja and top 400,000 for only the fourth time
in four years playing Bejeweled. Besotted. Let’s do it.
Working in a coal mine (going downtown). Taking a
fatburner before running during lunchtime. Alone after
lunch, a peach of a day, rain, argument, dinner in & all.

mdxxxix

Paid $10, Won $11

There was a rustling in The West. Is 

he disgusted or just disregarded? The
space between here and Trader Joe’s;
between Zoolander and Spellbound.

mdxxxviii

Sonnet to the Lucky Penny

We got up at 6:30am to head to the DMV and
clean the bathroom. She feels he’s been treating
her. Like the Bob Sinclair, et al., reggae dance-mix
CD for Naya. Scratch it off the list. I could get my

picture retaken. They somehow screwed it up last time,
which is why I never got my license in the mail. Then
to Kaiser for skin. I wish this thought presently into my
elbows. No effect. Except a muffled sportscaster’s taken

over the neighbor’s apartment. “Not the high-pitched wail,”
hands up toward God. You’re a legend for the amount of
LSD you did in college. What can I do different? Anyway,
that was a diversion. The melted reactor could be said to have

not been written. Look up how to clean blinds on the internet
and how to pay a student loan online. Password for Excel file.