mmcccx

Live, from The Box

“Don’t you care how we live?”
End line— I just can’t get
into [this guy]’s poems.
I just can’t get into his eyes.

Damn.  Okay, okay.
I have an accountant for
the first time in my life.
Or am I sleeping with one?

No.  But my taxes from
years ago get paid today
with bones from the

bank.  Please let it
be less than the
bottom line.  Yes—

Glory!  Step
away from

the box.  Into
this guy’s eyes;

this guy’s
sky full of eyes.

mmcccix

Shooting a Human and Not a Quail

First, I rented a bunch of movies.
Then, Otto came home buzzed
from the Cheesecake Factory

with Joseph and Justin.  This
is sometimes seen as normal.
Then, we cuddled and he

fed me.  Or, actually, we
snuggled and then we
(loverly) fooled around

and had a hot time with
loads of rice.  Today is
Thursday.  Tonight, we

are supposed to go to
Spices II to wish
Christina a happy

surprise birthday.
I’m sipping a
lemon zinger.

It is now today,
the day the bones
go back to the bank.

mmcccviii

Don’t Double-Boom

“Yes, I’d love to,” I replied,
one warm October morning,
thinking “He’s just my type.”

Autumn gave it up for a winter
wherein we wore penguins on
our chests.  Mine, slightly hairy

and mostly grey.  Yours, smooth
as a wet whistle.  Back home, we
poured colorful gumdrops into a

tiny Spanish bowl.  “Hola, señor-
ita!”  he’d smile as he’d say.
“Would you like a gumdrop?”

To which I’d reply, “Always!” –
not knowing any Spanish.
“Forever is a mighty long

time,” we’d both think.  How
alarmed we would have been
to know during those faraway

moments that, even then,
such synchronicity already
existed between the two of us.

mmcccvii

Hooting Through the Dark

My elbows
like cream
dissolving

in the fog
until I have
no arms.

At home,
the calloused
magnum

lying atop
the refriger-
ator raises

an interest-
ing point.

mmcccvi

Hearty Hardy

Which one of us thought it a
joke? Perhaps the both of us.

     All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.
                                               —Oscar Wilde

I might as well throw that in,
like a bad bag of potato chips
or a stack of clean towels lying

still (still lying) (still lying, are
you?) in the bedroom after
last week’s wash...

...seven [lucky] years after
kneeling at his smooch-
besotted gravestone (more
like a monument, actually)....

Where were we anyway?
(Where was I, do I mean?)
Oh. On Harrison Street.

But none of us were gig-
gling. Neither of us were
giggling. But a toothless

smile spread clean across
your beautiful bespectacled
Face it, Del, you’re a hoax

hidden within a petty
theft. Within a lie you
don’t even believe to belie,

to be a lie.

P.S. All winks go to heaven.
      {Wink! Wink!}

mmcccv

Poodles Are Never Off-Topic

     We left, as we have left all of our lovers
     as all lovers leave all lovers
     much too soon to get the real loving done.
                                                    —Judy Grahn

“Last chance!” I write. I explain.
But I can do neither. Instead,
gritting my teeth, spitting out
expletives, through them, I begin
to weep. “Applause!” The neon
directive flickers to life a few yards
in front of me – a few moments
before it’s supposed to do so.
Am I really to taunt death this
soon? “Forever is a long ways
away!” The audience nervously
signal intermission. “Gladly,” I
think, gauze in hand, ready to
be mummified (or to mummify?).
By the end, everyone relates to the
disembowelment. “Disembowelment
most relatable and satisfactory,”
the critics either praise or debunk.
I sink into prayer. It is a soliloquy
most foul. I had placed myself
intentionally within reach of
this predicament, this per-
spective, for years. Was I
aiming deliberately for it?
I pray never to wish again.
The set, the entire universe,
disappears into a quick fog.

mmccciv

  1st, you need a
  reason for existence.

  I wake up one morning,
  feel like such an

*ugly human being. Do I
  care? Of course I do,

  trammeled, as it were
 (I so hate this part)

  I think, pummeled as I
  am (I so hate this part),

  with every other fist
  in every other sea
  (the great blue sea)

  along with all of the
  fishes of this heresy.

*idiot, a miserable failure,
  rotten to the very core.

  Dare I care?
  Of course I do.

  (At least I think I do.)

mmccciii

A Hundred Frothing Wolves

‘If I should die
before I wake—’

If I were too
awake / If I

were to awaken
Too awake

A dozen times
a dozen times

a dozen hours
of sleep

I do not pray
I do not pray

All day all day
I do not pray

A thousand times
a thousand

times a
thousand

visions
never take

mmcccii

Too easy
to figure
out, I am

drawn in
to the mystery
of you.

mmccci

sentiment
hyperbole

hyperbole
sentiment

mmccc

I rise at dawn and write because it’s
clear, though it’s cloudy
this a.m., the sky approaching
purple, like language in an awful poem,
making me anticipate an awful day
                                   —Tim Dlugos
         ∧
         | Put graphic of same
         | quote from The Collected
           Poems of Tim Dlugos above
           this typewritten text.
           

                                            It is a poem.

mmccxcix

          d’you think people change?
             —Martin Corless-Smith

Talk about evolution!  TGIF!
                    (:Tickle Giraffes in France!)

mmccxcviii

Remains of Jonestown bodies found in Del.
                    —news headline found at SFGate.com

I wasn’t aware of
this, but now a
lot of things make
much more sense.

mmccxcvii

          Without her husband
                she crossed every week
                        because certain groceries
          were cheaper over there
                                      —Rachel Blau DuPlessis

And also she found
a Safeway gift card
of some value amongst
all of the junk that
he had left behind.

mmccxcvi

now that i am nothing, too.

now that i am just like you,

now that i am nothing, too,

i have one thing left to do.

that’s bid adieu,

adieu to you.

mmccxcv

[or, I could use it as the postscript for the previous]

               I fear I am not in my perfect mind

               the sins I’ve sinned before cockcrow

               Did the plot matter?

                                         —Martin Corless-Smith

But there’s the obvious problem

of what makes a sin a sin?  The

video you texted me this mo(u)rn-

ing could be interpreted as such,

I am quite certain.  However,

it made me laugh endlessly

(as I rewound it again and

again throughout the

entire morning).