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 presently

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.”

mmdxlvi

Repetition is a form
of change.
        —Aaron Tieger

When it swells again
do I fly away (like a
train)?  Nosy secrets
nudge ways back in
to our lives.  “Death
to Romance!” they 

each dully say.

mmdxlv

     Death doesn’t let you say goodbye; it just
     carves holes in your life—in the future
     and your heart.
                              —expressed by Riley, a character from Sense8

After which everything gets really
weird (highly recommended).

I remember blast from the past.
I remember lime green cicadas

and suicides or sewercides:
admixtures of each available

fountain drink at junior high
baseball, basketball or football

game snack shacks. I have to
show up tonight (I remember

having to show up tonight)
to a meeting on the subject

of A Show of Hands. Who
understands this? I remember

liking it, and wallowing in
the deep meaning of it all.

I remember remorse;
remorseful prayer.

The space where my
kidneys ought to be

hurts, or is hurting.
It’s beautiful pain,

rather than a head
full of nothing

might astonishingly be
exactly the opposite.

                —most of these words were remembered
                      after an otherwise less than memorable
                      trip to Jack Early Park on Telegraph Hill

mmdxliv

His Manners Weren’t Bedside

He was either
out of order or
he wrote “Out
of Order” – I
don’t really
recall.  Do
you?

“In the old
days, that
would have
been so new
age.”  We coughed
until we almost
chucked.

But what
we did was
chuckle, certain
that we were
being extra
shallow, that
it wasn’t just
a case of our
vertigo again.

“Nixon never
said that, you
idiot!  I did.”

Back and forth
through time it
went.  Until that
damned...hover
board, was it?

You swore that
it suited me.  I ass
umed, all-too-app
ropriately, as it
turned out, that
it’d kill me soon
enough.  “And

well,” we
cracked in sheer
simultaneity,
“at that time,
we had yet to be
come suicidal in
the slightest.”

mmdxliii

We acknowledged a passing physique,

a body that summed up what’s

happening these days.

                                 —Robert Glück

“You’re like a young Bob Glück,” I

heard someone say at the Taylor

Swift concert.  Which I did not

attend, of course.  There’s much

more to me than just seeing.

Frankly, no question makes a lick

of sense (so why even attempt to

call me Shirley?).         Is del-

usion the actual nirvana? for

example.

“For a perfectionist, you’re

much too impatient,” was

the young lady’s response.

mmdxlii

Orangeade & Peach-fuzz

Dragonflies, also.  W/no

fireflies (“he was such a

nice guy”).  They all

thought.  I thought.

5:04pm drunk with

Deer Head Nation

still on my bed.  On

my head.  Riotpoems:

The answer dear love…

Riotpoems to be

continued…………….

mmdxli

Finally

At that point
everything
we’d learned,
anything
we held as
precious or
dear, like
Sunday morn
ing service or
the champions
of the drawn-out
spelling bee,
or words, as
we’d sing at
the bees or in
to our church
bonnets, which
we’d sing or
spell in
congregational
harmony—
to live by—
so as to live—

essentially,
what we’d
finally begun
to think of us
as including,
like old magick,
an assortment of
Refinance &
Relevance (
each with a
misshaped
capital R at its
rump; each R
became struck
with short
lived but
lethal pain).
And that’s
just about
when she
showed me
her pinking

shears.  I

was but

a boob.

mmdxl

Molly doesn’t know she’s been eaten,
a humble pie, (Molly’s my great-grand-
mother), but Ahab, lemme tell ya ’bout

Ahab.  He knows a thousand tongue-
twisters and remembers the thousand
swishers from whom he heard each first.

A thousand swishes don’t make wrists
tangential.

I try not to think about it.  “You think
too much,” he says.  I try not to think
about it too hard.  Go ahead, knock

yourself in the head.  What’s thinking,
anyway?  Knock yourself out, even.
Knock it out.  Knock it off.

Ain’t it interesting, a sentence you
read just yesterday, the exact same
sentence, ain’t it interesting how
it nears something like death by

the now, the very next day.  Not
at all, right?  But it is the very
same sentence.  And today is
not yesterday.  At all.

That shit happens.
No wonder he says I think too much. 

I’ve never thought a day in my life.