mmccxxiii

40 minutes on treadmill

1.5 mile run at 6.5 mph

uphill to the 35 minute mark

make Hamburger Helper™

(1st time in 35 yrs?)

exercise: 40 minutes on treadmill

1.3 mile run, uphill, total 3 miles

then riding bike easily for 20 minutes

mmccxxii

optical illusion

can’t fit into the

story anymore

but yet it’s

impossible

to display on

a single page. 

with what...

complexity...

this day-to-day.

mmccxxi

small town with a huge marquee.

water and sewer superintendent

of the 20th century.  star football

player enters dramatic theatrical

foray: plays lead male in senior play

opposite gramma.  whom he barely

knew.  except with whom he had

(for a variety of unrelated reasons,

reportedly) often found himself red-

faced in argument.  dapper red-face

often contorted into a look of utter

bewilderment.  could skew more at

stupefaction.  for numerous reasons.

but who, gramma, in the play, would

say something (more strict from the

script but, pointing finger, to the tune

of) ‘i’m gonna keep my eyes on you, mister,

even if i have to stare at your face from

across our kitchen table every breakfast-

dinner-supper every gosh-durn day for the

rest of my life.’ seventy or so years later

she meant those words script-free,

all inside her body and especially

way down into her heart, no longer

just in character in some small-town

production.  even  though her 1940s

were now tucked neatly into a dime-

store novel that could only be reached

by beckoning the airwaves.  even he’d

been gona already for a decade.  of

that grand story and its long run

on east main street, sixty years of

no small-town marriage, she’d be

happy to remind anyone who cared

until she repaired her crooked joints

down into the sunken bed beside him.

mmccxx

Yes I’m a maniac when I’m touching the earth.

            —Hardwell (from Call Me A Spaceman)

extra shrimp dumplings. 

a little joke, but true.  we

were truly schnookered.

[return carriage]

mmccxix

If it were the hour of the bird

you’d open and know

the eternal moment

                        —Orides Fontela

                          (translated by Chris Daniels)

...hoodwinked into eating

at a big red restaurant

full of white people

and waiters & waitresses

who insisted we order

way more than we wanted...

...extra spring rolls (free)

for the tableful of nuns...

...he stops [as always]

to examine the dead

pigeon; reckons it

could be what’s left

of the howling from

the night before...

But what use is the bird?

                        —Orides Fontela

                          (translated by Chris Daniels)

mmccxviii

Birds

return

always and

always.

                        —Orides Fontela

                            (translated by Chris Daniels)

Loyal as the day is long,

he found his way home

wearing nothing but a

pair of Twister^® flip-flops.

mmccxvii

bring me your youth in a jar

                         —Kevin Killian

If I were to relate this to myself,

as I sit here next to a bright red

package of 20 hypoallergenic

Wet Ones.

Words...evoke inarticulate things.

                   —Rachel Blau DuPlessis

I’m sort of putting words in her

mouth.  Just by leaving a few out.

So to speak.  Or maybe not.

It learned to hide from the hungry ones.

                                    —Shel Silverstein

Which is more to the point.

So bring me your mouth, youth! 

Bring me all of your words in a jar.

mmccxvi

If Dr. Henenberg had been

the Chair of the Poetry Department
(does such a department exist?  I
admit I don't even know.), rather 
than the Chair of the Theater

Department.  Let’s say.  And if I,

the overly-confident and determined

undergraduate junior, had made an

appointment with her, and on that 
appointed hour had then walked 
into her office with the pro-
clamation that my one true goal

above all other goals in my life

was to someday pen a poem that

would someday find its way into a

very important compendium of the

sort that is often touted as a

compendium that houses

several very important works

(of this or that poetic nature), 
well,     I can hear her say to me 
as if it were this precise moment:

        “But young man,

what do you know of Poetry?”

She’d know, of course,

that I had been a chemistry

major for the previous two

years.  “What you’re telling me

certainly isn’t Poetry.  Talk to me

about Poetry.  You must most

certainly know that you are not

reciting for me a Poem.  No.

What you’re telling me now is

nothing but a silly & ultimately
penniless dream.”  And she’d 
bite this part off through

teeth that are clenching the

spindly end of one of the

thin, golden, ear-hugging arms 
of those Ben Franklin specs,

“And it’s not a very 
effective dream,
I might insert.”

mmccxv

as once I wanted to write for the soaps, Santa Barbara, One Life to Live.

                                                                                    —Kevin Killian

If I were to relate this to myself

it would be easy.  I have two

degrees in theater.  I caught

the acting bug early, but

hemmed and hawed my

way through most of

college (a chemistry

major, mostly), before

one very determined

visit to the head of the

Department of Drama.

My goal was simple

(“If they could do it,

why couldn’t I?” I

logically surmised):

I wanted to land a job

as an actor on a daytime

soap opera.  That was it.

Putting aside for the moment

whatever I must have been

thinking, however I must

have arrived at it, I do

distinctly recall the

clarity of vision, the

that is my one true goal. 

She kept trying to see it in me,

I could tell.  She was squinting,

leaning back in her roll-around

chair, looking me up and down

through her tiny circular Benjamin

Franklin lenses. She had friends who

made a living doing exactly that.  My goal. 

So I figured I had come to the right place,

and had expected a cheery vote of confidence

and encouragement. 

What I got, instead, after

all of her apparent consideration,

was a simple “But you don’t look the part.”

I have never once appeared in

any televised soap opera.  But

like I mentioned at the top,

I do have two degrees

in the dramatic arts.

mmccxiv

Not showing up mostly didn’t show up.

                               —Stephanie Young

Like a kick in the guts.  Or.  No.

Like a bullet to a tongue.  But.  Then.

mmccxiii

everybody feels vulnerable I think.

                               —Stephanie Young

I’ve been finding it just fine

playing games on my iPhone

while in the shower — for

months now I do this.  Not

every shower.  But most?

Today, therefore and

however, I am mostly

troubled by the fact

that I cannot do the

same with a book.

With a real book.

mmccxii

less willow more buffy sounds

beautiful. i roll over and back to

sleep.  think good thoughts much

as they can be thunk.  (no need

not to.)

nighty night for now.

mmccxi

How to make sure that seeing

anything is not seeing oneself?

                                   —Etel Adnan

My assignment stayed

extremely busy.  I am

staring into a blowing

electric fan.  As if

face to face in love.

Stuck on repeat,

my assignment

never lazes,

leaves the room,

blown by the

sound of the

howling wind,

which eradicates,

as if face to face,

the love, the

howling, the

echo of the

blown

electric

fan.

mmccx

forty-seven years ago today

i was supposed to be born.

but instead, i’d already

been around for three

whole days by then.

mmccix

but you said, didn’t you

say to me, that this was

a moment when i could

start completely anew?

a time i could start

fresh, could liter-

ally reinvent my

self?  and were

we not just

agog with

all of the...

possibility?

mmccviii

 [insert comma here]

            Even activists must freak out sometimes about how little we’ve done.

                                                                                                  —Kevin Killian

I’m not exactly sure how to put this, but

it’s Tuesday morning.  I have no idea

how to say this, but the potpourri really

stinks.

We arrive on motorcycle, all black &

white.  It’s Easter Sunday.  The aunties

arrive on motorcycle, dressed to the

nines, circa 1959.

The tenants began to grow suspicious

when the scaffolding remained up

for longer than a month.

mmccvii

Word Battle

Scupper

Dimmest

Ably

Male

“You’re such a person!  Such a person!,”

I thought (“You give everyone just the

right imagination to be less than

bland...”).  And then, as if it were

1975 all over again, I

actually attempted to

hang up the phone.

Scupper

Dimmest

Ably

Male

mmccvi

5 Ways to Move

You verbally acknowledge

nothing, ask “Why do

goth people all look

so sleepy?”  I shudder,

wondering on which side

of the fence you meant

that to be.  The creepy

slide-show has been

such a gas, but we’re

both exhausted and

hankry (as you say,

being both hungry

and cranky).  To

get here, I’d limped

the entire way, half

a block behind you.

Whew!  A San Fran-
cisco taxi-cab oasis 
isn’t a mirage.  
Cab-light on or 
off, it’s always

a gamble.  You

were waving for

miles; refusing,

however, to show

a lick of leg.  Fetish-

wise, that’s how the

cookie always crumbles.

My sigh is just a little too

audible, seems to cook the

spirits of the glazed-over.

“A ratchet, a whisper,”

again, just barely into my

ear—a feather duster,

not a french tickler—

“another ratchet,

another whisper.”

mmccv

Maybe I got so angry because secretly, stubbornly, and in exhaustion,

I couldn’t see any other way to proceed, to fail until something

changed.

                                                                      —Stephanie Young

Will the narrator ever fly again?

                            —Michael Burkard

I’m more mixed up than ever before, going

back and forth among different eras, landing

in multiple time zones, sometimes seemingly

all at once.  Here I am, an iris.  Here I am, a

dahlia.  There I was.......                a begonia.

mmcciv

Your Independence Is Killing Me!

Yesterday, I stopped at my checking account,

but apparently I got lost after that.  Did I

a) clean the apartment considerably?  It

could be that I considered cleaning the

apartment.  That is, on a scale of 1 to 10,

extremely messy at the moment.  This,

and given that 10 equals b) should be 
your biggest clue.

I like that I live here.  Also the immediate

retort (or often more like a snort) of

“Snob Hill” ('more like', simply, an upturned

nose, as if directly after becoming ill, or ill-
informed, someone just gets it).  Beams

all strange, but, you know, beams,

walking with the students on Pine Street,

which is most of the faces I ever see.

Those and dogs called pugs, who are

probably mostly students at the Academy

of Art.

Would I really know?  I only speak with

Tony at the cash register down the block,

and with cabbies to and from.  Not the

block.  But, basically.

One could draw out a pretty long argument

about most of the students of the Academy

of Art, of course; it’s never too early to

cast your case.  I’ve taken to verbalizing

this and other probabilities when my

lower back is so tightly wound with pain

that I can’t even walk away from formality.

I’ve been rudely informed that it’s time.

For me to sit down a bit.  Or if I said

“for a spell” – you know, rather than

“a bit” – this chronic lover that speaks

of nothing but pain.  “Bring him his chair

full of cake and rubber you

colossally glum sacrum; you

bitch-hound of an art-

hritic coccyx!” 

“In absentia.”

“In absentia.”

mmcciii

I Never Saw It Coming

I spilled the entire box of

cotton swabs onto the

bathroom floor this

morning while

listening to my

new favorite song,

which is called,

appropriately

enough, The Rising.

And I was feeling

so much more on

top of things, too,

having won nearly

every round of

Word Battle

that I’ve played

this week.

I should learn

to scrutinize the

evidence much

better, because

later, after what

I thought’d been

a successful attempt

to rally back my mojo,

I go to meet Otto for

dinner at Sam Wo’s

in Chinatown—in honor

of the Chinese New Year—

and wouldn’t you know it

but Sam Wo’s is closed.

For Chinese New Year.

mmccii

Stand Up and Be Counted!

It’s like being on the toilet.

You don’t know what’s

going to come out.  But

it usually does.  Imagine

that getting lost in

translation.  Say it

like you mean it,

then!  (riding

a stationary

‘bicycle’ easily

for 20 minutes)