mdccxxiv

Chronologically Ignorant

It’s hard to learn how to read again.  There’s

no real way to articulate.  Hello, it’s your ex-

friend trying to understand the plight of mankind.

I added a life event to my timeline with your mumbling

from last night (all I could understand was I wish you

were normal).  It was a dream of having to buy pillows

and laundry baskets.  And cologne.  Hey it’s me.  I was

calling from downstairs and I’m going to try your cell-

phone.  I’m stunned by each stunt; how Tom Cruise

is plump in unexpected places.  He’s aging so well!

Riveted by the disparity between looking your

agent acting array.  Shaking it like a tambourine.

I need to send out an update on not getting a job.

But instead I buy vitamins, Tylenol PM, shave

gel, bar soap, Kleenex, a ream of paper and

QTips.  In my dream about a monster who

tells me my brain is still delicious after

all this years.  Hi.  You don’t seem to have

a doorbell.  To add to the to do list (like

Alice’s book on Jack’s book on Donna’s

book on Hello Kitty).  I like to research

but I’m not linking to you.  With

apologies.  My grant money is

three wishes.  One is not to dance

alone anymore.  And toilet paper. 

And lots of colorful pictures

to distract the monster.  Hello!  Hello!

mdccxxiii

Somewhat imp

atiently wonder

what a real psych

iatrist would say

to me.  Or East

ern medicine.

Needles just

tease.  But

I’m too

fragile

for deep,

an em

barrass

ment fl

ourish

000

floss

floss

000

any

more

...

...

A man

icure is

a little

ticklish.

I’m top

sy tur

vy en

uff...

... ...

a ha

ughty

if you

please!

mdccxxii

Willie

Nelson

on the

Star

bucks

peakers.

Some

what

imp

atient

...

head

ing to

Curran’s

for Hoop

Dreams.

Mid

after

noon

...

whipt

around

by tee

nage s

queems.

Teased

is more

like.  A

bunch

of ga

zelles

that go

jeez.

mdccxxi

Darker Pixels Are Heavier

Rolling down the window

I read I just want to relax only it’s

not relax it’s read. 

He’s got the bladder of a

catamaran so I should’ve

brought a milk bottle.

Earlier on the impossible

bus the letters are unbearable.

It’s all talk talk talk, it’s the

age of speaking louder

when spoken to.  The trick is

to interrupt the speaker

before the thought.  Never

be spoken to.  So as.  So

this book of letters by

the most underrepresented

fellow in the New York School

just makes me itchy.  Itchy

to catch a ride elsewhere

in this age of unbearable.

Then you called.  If only

to say I love you and let’s

hitch to Vegas—in a cat-

aclysm?  Why the freaky

vibrating 50s brain that

choses sink for beautiful

butterfly stroke.  Over

stroke every time?

Summer in December

isn’t frazzled.  It’s

the heaven that Vegas

isn’t.  It never bellows.

It’s cream it rises like

angelfood cake with

wings.  Not even

frilly sextatic wings.

mdccxx

(At some point)

It becomes.  Silly

to complain about

anything.  That

dulls the brain.

That attempts to

inflate an ego.

It

becomes

dull,

silly.

The sweeping

depths of

unemployment.

This is where

politics

occur.

mdccxix

Make mine magnolia

             —Bill Berkson

“You move too much” is the

reason he gives me for blowing

too much on the steel balm.

The desire to do Beth on the out-

skirts of a long subway tunnel.

The fallacy of primacy (fall-

opian).  The who do that

you do.  It’s just a bunch of

nobody referrals if you ask me.

mdccxviii

Feeling Rockstar?

Just you wait.

Feeling illusory?

Only joking (j/k).

Life getting away?

Perhaps this is why

Mick Jagger and

convalescent home

iconography...

Feeling awry?

So now what?

Nevermind.

Trampy?

Then it’ll be

I love you.

But don’t

bring me down

tomorrow.  Take

this tomato as a

token of my vodka.

Somewhat impatient?

Can’t finish a little loud?

Remember what

a little willie

will do.  Leave

the room to

all the girls

you’ve loved.

Have that talk.  Up?

Don’t wonder such.

Cash Johnny into

Eastern medicine.

Wonder what a real

psychiatrist would.

ROCK THE SPOUSE!

Sh!  (Intro to Poetry)

Love it all night long.

Savor.  John Paul that

sucker!  Make like a candle

and blow.  Let each rise

to the occasion.

Skin sag in bold print?

mdccxvii

Give Up Hope

You and only because you.

Inadvertant Alice.  Not

least new book.  The

elevator rips you a new

one.  All is not spice in

Bedlam.  Amble anyway.

Superimpose jankety

I.  Dove Bar relapse.

Focus at stern.  Un-

der the hood with a

question mark.  Ob-

vious vector (well,

check hyperspace)....

Moments later.  Focus a storm.

Which bird is belonging.  Not

bumblebee.  He sags.  Stages

a sad.  Undeniable envelope

(Bambi lopes or Bambi e-

lopes?).  Hope finger.  Hope

on finger.  Hop on finger.

Superimpose I.  Be-

lieve in elevate (ripping

new ones).  Frogs dance in

rain after frogs rain.  Feels like

reign.  Forty dwarves in work-

shop of missed clauses.  De-

rogitory feel.  Drain shame

(pee in closet).

All a funk.  And Uncle El-

ephant noses piggy bank.

Wearing pink trunks

nudges purse industry.

Collapses like esophagus.

mdccxvi

Tag (which in German is day)

What does your comment say

about my like?  Humor,

inevitably.  I like to

remember this afternoon,

a nice visit by the

traveling smoke.  A

dual-pitched word

in the face of a

very tall sculpture.

Mountains higher.

Chiseled in honor of

the foreign.  An apex

of sweet exhalation,

a modicum of word

in parentheses.  Thru

alleyways named

Sideways Glance.

Hash home out.

Divvy demo-

cratically.  Hover

over every divvy.

Did he mean such

impossible politics.

Decide sun will preside.

Pink Conglomeration

meet Red Pillow.  And

pillow population.

Back to mile-high

face with dumptruck

of comets.  Clean

cheap tiles til blue

in face.  How book

about it glows like

Baby Worm.

mdccxv

Audio/Visual

An anonymous

advertisement.

Everything in

threes.  Neapol

itan workers on

a combine (Ra

uschenberg).

Be product-

ive.  Read a

book.  Stay

a while.

Alternatively,

panic sets in.

Night writes

lots of dorky

cuties from

the academy.

(Night wrote

things close.)

So why here?

Stress ball day.

The jazz is a

smallish room

in this loud.  I

do declare.

Frazzle love

via elevating

evacuee (va-

cant cutie look).

mdccxiv

Please gotta be.

Music is life but

words without.

Hello from high.

mdccxiii

Puffy Vitamin

Slap o’ water.

Hence.  Con-

demnation

lost respect.

Shovel meat

fence.  A

court o’

juice’ll

pester.

Gets one

revvy.  3

white

holes.

Stark

chasm.

The sauce

is clean.

Collapse

at count-

er.  Buck-

le.  Fill de-

vice with joy.

Uphill. 

Banter.

Free at

lapse.

mdccxii

Let’s just

Let’s just

for example

take one step

atta time.  A

dip in the

repetition.

Or a dump.

Long silent

squeeze.

An inter-

section do-

nut.  Or

don’t

member.

mdccxi

Look, Nonsense!

I wake up a star.  The

device calls me from

a dream.  “Hello”

Still somewhere else.

Reaching out of there

and into the device.

Which sends word.

“Star”    Red shroud.

Cool air equivalent –

Commence unwrap, un-

down.  Up.  Ghost of

lion-face from red

evaporates surely.

Pink silhouette with

eye in cloud fol-

low follow.  Breathe

compass.  Follow

what ghost.  Leo

beholden.  Elevator

of white noise

follow.  Grip teeth.

Sound of wisp.

Gel.  Blade.  A

brilliant shine and.        Fall.

mdccx

All pictures taken are free

(Barrett Watten) and I’m a

month behind the great ham.

Kids, dogs, and the black silhouette

of a mouse.     “Mickey?   Mickey?”

He’s standing in the hallway

wrapped inside a dark blue blanket

and he wants his picture taken.

Pose: awkward lean, arm up-

stretched (askew); kind of a

crumpled Lady Liberty.

You move around too much,

he says.               Meditate.

Throughout the day, a smattering

of remembrances.   Wow ... blank.

The dream vanishes  [into church bells]

... Was it exciting?

mdccix

I Found Myself

Here’s why

I should be

in charge

(pls see

attach-

ment).

Con-

fession: 

When I find

myself sitting

on the toilet

without my

phone

I get angry.

mdccviii

for drizzle

and its encourage-

ment which arrived

today.  with horny

fatality (i love taking

baths with it).  once

warmed up, ambiva-

lent.  calm to read

and write.  it arrived

today, so i might go

home with it (him)

productive, happen-

ing.  to start some-

thing in ten or twenty.

a startled soggy, so

good, now calming.

it arrived today.  like

last night in the bath.

assuredly here.  in

less than a book of

words which bleed

into the earth.  an

idea, off and on.

awkward.  yet

romantic.  for

drizzle it izzle.

mdccvii

I probably read more “daily news”

when I was five years old than I have

in recent months.  It is for certain a

lousy job I make some days of even

occupying myself.  I try to encourage

a little unusual.  I waft through trivia

in a daze; but in an attempt to rise

to the top like cream.  Towards

evening, I have a few moments

strictly to myself.  If I place the

device upside down my gizzard

still beeps.  Denied such attention,

my upright furniture is more emotive.

The end is reasonably ambivalent

though assuredly not helping.  But

the drizzle is equivalent to an erst-

while gasoline, as it seeps through

pores (hidden to the naked eye) in

the device, even if said device is

secure in its intricate, protective

web.  I probably read about this

seepage at age seven or eight,

perhaps at one of many a quilt-

ing bee.  Was I ever astonished

by the prevalence of this look-

ing backwards (time-wise, for

example, at a collage of broken

bells) to discover the mundane

truths of the present?  Not

particularly.  I held on to the

reins as the colt sped through

a forest of brambles.  I’ve no

scars to remember this by,

only a whisper the wind

sometimes revels in repeat-

ing, and the brassy bark of

a dog that always lives a

few floors down or across,

has followed me from city

to city, apartment building

to apartment building, year

to bygone year.

mdccvi

After the Bleak Is Gone

And what a joke.  I plead

ignorant almost every

morning – apologies

to Rodney, to Madoc,

for example, in the

general direction of

the wind, which is

warm and romantic.

Chatting all day with

folks never met, avoid-

ing those on the street

with whom I’m acquaint-

ed (sometimes intimately).

I’ve got it good and haven’t

a clue how to use it.  But I

slap myself in the middle

of the night (while jumping

out of bed with a bout of

acid reflux so intense I’m

afraid I’ve already choked

to death on it).  Twice in

one night.  Once in a blue

moon.  Not to mention

panic attacks in the throes

of broad wakefulness

common enough for

extended prescriptions,

although they’ve sim-

mered down as of late.

Why not encourage a

flirtatious side.  But

what misguided gripes

and somber slippages!

If taunted, childlike,

reply in kind only

for the joy of aging

gracelessly.  A

reminder of a

blank slate.

I’ve said nothing

about the sweater

I’m wearing today.

It is a colorful oddity

that glides along a

gothic retrospective.

mdccv

Exercise in Happy

     Autumn – Before I noticed, you were gone –

     like a little home dissolving on itself.

                                               —Richard Caddel

Words this morning echo off

newspaper bins and the walls of

new neighborhood cafes:  I’m

dying.  I am killing myself.

The morning is robust.  It’s

great to be under the sun (we

shift sides of the street to take

it in, a rarity for me and my

cancer-prone pallor)....