mmdlii

I Hope You’re Doing Well
         —for DR, whoever you are....

I was wondering...
when you said
that you were
“too stupid” to
be my boyfriend...
did you mean that
you’d just rather
have a stupid boyfriend?

mmdli

Regional Wealth

Today’s lesson is

I have no idea

what I’m doing

but I’m doing it,

anyway (and

amazingly so,

if I might add.

Check me out!,

etc.)...   Even

as I graduate,

enter a new

high of self-

lessness, I am

by necessity

at my most

selfish.  This

is perhaps

the only

much that

I know.

Several

years later,

he popped

not one, but

three (or it

could have

been four)

curiously

strong mints

onto his drying

tongue, let out

a whelp which

was meant as

a whoop, and

walked out

of the circle

of light to

which the

tiny lamp

had devoted

its entire

existence.

mmdl

Actual

He wore the most conventional plastic leather outfits.

                                                                    —Robert Glück

They keep laughing and snorting in my department.

Or in my general direction.  All I have to say about this

is “I am asleep.  At work.  In pain.  My foot.  For lunch.”

Over here, I should probably ask for some water.   It

probably won’t happen until I snap.  And when I do

snap, I’ll do it silently, whispering “Garçon?” as you

look at me with such distaste.  All I get a kick out of

is you.  This is so incredibly true that I fiend for just

twenty minutes (or so) on some sort of ski-like machine.

But what do I get instead?  Blisters.  In my ears.  To the

tune of When the Missiles Whistle....   The perfect boy-

friend.  I mean, seriously, is that even an actual song?

mmdxlix

Forgetfulness is entertainment.
                   —Susan Gevirtz

Orange-y orange-ish
were the dots I found
on the horizon.

General Malaise
entered the wood 

without a wood-cutter.

mmdxlviii

A Cavalcade of Paroxysms

Wending therapy session because I
talk entirely too much (clearly) vs.

not remembering optimistic follow-up.
Nor being in Cleveland. (At all!) But

remembering instead not even being
diagnosed (with Tourette’s Syndrome,

“...usually diagnosed in childhood or
adolescence.”). Which is still not

remembering. But it makes me
everybody’s favorite type of

hypochondriac: the guy who
makes fun of the fact that he’s

a hypochondriac. “Favorite”
is relative, however, and “fun”

isn’t the problem, unfortunately.
Because I’m a fun-loving guy

in whose...presents...is a joy
to be around. Do I strive for this?

Is this just it? Or is it just me?
(Or

is it I?)
                                     Well,

I used to be a hypochondriac. Which 

was not a favorite characteristic, surely.

But it was something to bring up when 

conversations hit dead silence (not by me, 

of course, but in general—or by the General, if 

he were in attendance, as if it were. He’d always 

frighten the soldier-children as if on cue. And 

whether the horror was cue or cure for the erst

while death and silence, or even for the eye-rolling,

nobody seemed the worse for it, that’s for certain...).

Perhaps that’s why I’m more summed up an idealist:
an all-the-way-back-until-it’s-just-the-whites-of-the-

eyes romantic [cough, cough!].... Will it is or
will it ain’t, I grin, realizing again that thoughts

about myself often bring me to subjects such as 

Hope and The Wondrous Beauty of Silence.

mmdxlvii

Forward-thinking

          There is a becoming

                      —Aaron Tieger

“I’m a man of the future,”

I swell.  “A future man.”