mdcxxix

I don’t know when, but usually hardly

ever.  What?

* * *

A bench

belongs

here

Reclaim

public space

* * *

Watched cartoons

prescribed by a

Chinese herbalist.

mdcxxviii

You put a lot of birds in your poems.

     the bleeding orange of the sunset as it dawdles

     on the laptop

                       —a misreading of Albert Goldbarth

Because of honest we use words like

domiciled.  He helped Nick via tele-

phone with some computer problem/

made herb tea for his skin problem.   

and Goldbarth, precise:

     mistakenness

     is also a proper vehicle for the voice.

This day somehow goes together with

the next.  Cacophonous, asynchronous,

a perfect perfectlessness.  The cloudy

are dark.  Each day deafens another.

mdcxxvii

Houston Toe vs. Austin Sole

We put the tree together

on top of the bookshelf

in our living room.

Dear Hole in My Head,

My name is Bill ..and this

order is an individual order.  and

i like to make a purchase of a

( Shampoo chair)

Our job is to preserve

and enhance the future.

and I will be more than happy

Will it be the first of many?

Here’s a shout hello

from somewhere near

the Pacific.

I’m in a completely

new place with the

whole thing,

more like

coming to a slow

finish,

looking back

with nostalgia.

                   Lv,

                   Rugrat (only on Skype)

mdcxxvi

My usage is more violet

Mom made mine purple.  I wasn’t all

royal on anyone’s ass.  It was the 1970s,

a pretty color.  Tonight I’ll meet Yong for a

drink at the Mix.  Last night Otto and I

purchased a small artificial Christmas

tree.  And a few decorations.  Including

a rooster and a turtle.  We are emblem-

atic, like violets.  So is my tongue

tonight.  Or vaguely so.  Does this make my

tongue ironic or iconic?  “Tonight’s aperitif

will be Bedlam via [long I] Bedknobs and

Broomsticks, as read by Angela Lansbury

impersonating Dick Van Dyke (poor

Roddy McDowell).  From what faraway land

my purple blanket might have come (as I dreamed

all feminine, a routine my brother & I called

Grace & Odessa (I, Odessa).  Our bedboards

we dubbed “Springing Things” – from each of which

all things material could be conjured.  Except one.

Mine couldn’t spring a dishwasher and from poor

Grace’s, never a sewing machine materialized.

We kept ourselves awake through Carson, each night

a new episode.  One summer our other brother

played Grace’s husband.  Or, rather, Grace’s husband’s

body.  He’d been crushed by a wrecking crane.  We

snuck out of bed for an hour that night to attend

the funeral.  Somberly perching ourselves in front of

the casket.  A cedar chest.  My mother’s hope chest.

We’d learned to finagle it open without the key.  Dunk

our heads in like ostriches and inhale a forest of cedar.

mdcxxv

I’m at Borders again – a rainy noontime.

In a few, I’ll head to Kiku at The Hilton

to lunch with Kim.  December approaches

seven years.  Would wearing a bra for a

hot month (Mom said it was 108 at her place

yesterday) give me any perspective? 

Which direction do you point?  Porn

helps us understand survival of the

fittest.  Just yesterday I was using

Pavlov’s theory and Newton’s

laws of gravity to explain

religion.  My own religion,

to be clear, but they don’t call it

metaphysics for nothing (I’m

bombarded with a partial visual

of a photograph I took perhaps

a year ago – a sign in Chinatown

that says something like “No running

or jumping in playground” under which a

graffitist has unprettily scrawled the word

MIND on the sky end of a nearly vertical

seesaw with MATTER anchoring the other end of the

black-markered jagged line—representatively plank—

abutting solid ground.  The big clumsy hits paydirt

after all.  But is college in the picture?  Does

Anna Nicole even have a goal?

Recess ends.  Naptime begins.  Time to

skip kindergarten and read War and Peace

to Mrs. Renfrow.  Was she really that

impressed with her assignment:  the

first grader who read the Southwest

Times Record for breakfast?

Two months later, my first boyfriend,

the Superintendent.

mdcxxiv

Camille Roy stole my dildo! 

(a true story a fiction an homage anachronizm)

All along it was Camille!                 But no, she’s never even been here. 

Wait.                  I invited her a few times,                     and she RSVP’d “Yes”

at least once.    [Agh!  It’s just her poetry does this to me!]       I dip my head

into a bowl of tiny leftovers.  Chow fun, asparagus, sour tofu, brown rice,

and tiny chicken.  I  love my blue head.

Distracted, trying to figure out which Kevin Costner movie

Erin was in such a panic to get us to remember the name of.

Shouts of Dances with Wolves, Waterworld, The Mailman (that

was me; I remember nothing, but I remember the trailer for The

Postman vividly.  Which for some reason leads my mind to Tina

Turner and I shout – with conviction – MAD MAX!)   ?

Finally, she basically has to give it away.        “Three letters!”

                                              “In the first word?” Masashi asks.

Do they really play JFK “all the time” on “regular television”??    I ask.  I’m in

awe of television.  I wonder about it.  About what it must be.  About what it is. 

I’m up to March of 1999 tagging photos, close to when I flipped

the switch.  Off with Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.  Off with

Reality Television.  I look at each (in contrast?) hyperbolic character

(aka my closest friends) on my computer screen (where Hulu ails).

Scene: a comedy, mostly.  Abs-enhancing gutterbelly and diabolical

laughter.  Then.  Not now. 

Now I brace the back of my head with fingers-clasped-open-palms,

lean back and sort of shake-roll my eyes up into my head.  Add slomo

smile, tiny build-up (almost. no. movement) & upturned lips that warm –

like a plugged-in heating pad curtaining your ribcage – from the inside.

Who the fuck stole that three dollar dildo?  Whatever!  That winter

held a veritable dildo diaspora in its clutches of rain and fog.  Who’s the

bozo who crammed his head into every drawer, crawled into each closet

and removed everything one by one, moved the refrigerator into the

middle of the kitchen, unplugged for hours, scuffing the floors,

stirring up legendary dust.

With lips upcurled like a Stepford Wife and eyes rolling up into the

disco ball that ate my brain [my Barbary Lane] I collapse into couch,

bite tongue, breathe in the Buddha, breathe out a bloody mary into a

[MOURNFUL:]  square wheel.      It.  Was.  My.  Fucking.  Dildo.

mdcxxiii

Accolades

That makes me feel one more encore

but it’s another story, like Otto

trying to explain that the tofu

is too sour.  It’s gone bad?

I totally think it’s the intention,

what with being mixed up on

asparagus and all.  Okay?

One person’s anathema

is another’s...enema I was

going to say.  But instead

maybe waxed mustache

is closer to graduating

with honors  [honorary

charges – as opposed to

dishonorary discharges

I think].  The sound the

elevator makes when its

door closes is a four-letter

word.  It is so condensed

(in counter to the wheez-

ing yawn it used to be).

It’s enough to give one

pause.  To appreciate

language.  And this

libation I humbly

accept.  An award

I embrace and as

proud in.  I [ah] can.

mdcxxii

Thank you for the photographs.

Is that button so difficult to un-

button?  Chaste makes waste.

mdcxxi

Focus on my own

gloriously fucked-up

face in each photograph. 

Is this a way to relive a

moment?  As if I ask....

Dad’s plant smashed into a

meteor shower.  Float on a

cushion of dreams (half-

naked knights in not-so-

shining armor).  I get a

kick out of Ronald

Reagan stamps.