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 future Lucifer
and I purchased a small artificial Christmas
tree. And a few decorations. Including

a rooster and a turtle. We are emblem-
atic, like devilish violets. So is my tongue
tonight. Or vaguely so. Does this make my

iconic tongue split ironic? “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 (Afghan) might have come (as I dreamt

all feminine, a routine my brother & I called
Grace & Odessa...I, Odessa). We dubbed our
headboards “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 

would a sewing machine materialize. We kept ourselves awake 

through Carson’s latest episode each night. One summer our 

other brother, the actor, Grace’s literal twin brother,

played Grace’s husband. Or, rather, the poor espoused’s

body. He’d been crushed by a wrecking crane. We
snuck out of bed for an hour that night to attend the
soapy 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 of an 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 beseech. 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 Durwood
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 

am proud of. 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.