mmdcvi

Oui! Oui! Mein Hertz!!
…for a guy who likes structure…

blueberries
blasted onto the
formica. blat!
  blat-blat!
                BLAT!!

the raspberries
that tasted sweet
to each but one
tongue
had been del-
ivered to the wrong
auditorium.

mmdcv

Reindeer:       Space

Logic → Empty Project

Option → Movie
      open movie
               “File.mov”


Media → Loops
    Sound effects

    Click & Drag
    (for sound loop)


‘A’ turns on the Auditorium
or View → Trade Ammunition


Options → Movie
                 (export audio to movie)


‘I’ = key in quick time (immediately)

‘O’ = key out
        (to delete space)

mmdciv

It Was the Laughter What Killed Him

Where is
the future
now that
you’ve
gone &
gobbled
it all up?

mmdciii

How Will I Know
(If He Really Loves Me)?

We didn’t know a riptide
from a peptide, but we
knew that we just had to
find ourselves a yacht, we
all said in unison. Then
we’ll just get ourselves
a yacht, we each
thought silently
in simultaneity.

God’s like that, said
Martha to Penelope
the next afternoon.
Men!, harrumphed
Penelope, So total-
ly off the map!

And they are, to the
very end.

It was decided,
by Martha, during
a beautiful dusk,
one day near Rio
de Janeiro (and
elsewhere, and all
at once, because
She was God, after
all!), that what She’d
been truly aching for
all these millennia
was a godchild.

It had been an
eternity, probably.
And it had never
occurred to Her
before.

mmdcii

Assumed Stasis

How do you erase
a jerk who left you
his everything, kept
you hanging for ye
ars, whether unin
tentionally or not.
Now, we’re each
just waiting around
for a newer jerk.
For one jerk apiece.

mmdci

Clematis

Late summer party for work.
Theme: Oktoberfest. Hung
with Angela, Jon, Terence,
little yellow butterflies. And
I finally ascertained the name
of the tree with the purple
flowers. “So California!”
After the party we walked
down to Polk Street, heard
some fireworks, barhopped
a bit. I called Nick, who
shows up soon thereafter
with one of his girls, flirted,
met up with Erin at Swig
with a big furry cat. And
I only sipped at a straw-
berry-basil-something-or-
other. Then we were off
to Coco Bang for Korean
BBQ and watermelon soju.
There, we also saw a
butterfly. These things, 

they all happened.

mmdc

I said I might still have been a man.


That’s wrong of me.


I am still a man.  A very broken one.


The truth is onerously painful.


I am in pain.  I am so ashamed.


What hurts the most is that which can remain neither.

mmdxcix

Jelly

                          kissed
         by a poet TYPO 

                          —Aaron Tieger

That
part
of me
is gone.

& my
heart
doesn’t
even
know
it yet.

mmdxcviii

The train stretches across the continent.

mmdxcvii

Memory’s Miserable Without You

You’re such a New York boy.
But look at me. Will I always
be craving you? (Look at me,

stupidly believing I’ll always
crave you, always cry out for
you) as I wake up with night

terrors (they’re terrible, so);
that’s what they’re calling
them now. There’s a name

for it; there’s a whole society!
I suppose I’ve never been
unique. This thought brings

me back to “Unique, New
York! Unique, New York!”
and now faster, says the

director of Much Ado About
Nothing. An anachronistic
production set in the 1920’s.

I was Don Pedro, and all I
really remember were the
quick and plentiful costume

changes (often a uniform
of any sport you’d imagine
Jay Gatsby playing). To

be playing. I just played
on play-acting for years.
But you? Do I actually

even remember you? If
only I could say “Maybe.”
If I could just say “Maybe

not.” But what if I told you
I remember EVERYTHING?
What, then, would that mean

to you? Or whomever? I
skulk around trying like mad
to be remembered for some-

thing. To forget, even. Per-
haps. Yes...No. The truth
is, if I’m so very forgettable,

then why do you try so des-
perately hard (it seems) 

to completely erase me?

mmdxcvi

It Wasn’t Wit

I told a myth.
Or wrote it.
A myth-take
happened
when I wept
all over it (
actually, I
just spilled
a glass of
water). And
from such,
whatever
remains,
comes: It
wasn’t
even a
screw.
Who
said
what
LOVE
GIFTS
are?
Like a
whinny
for a
crab-
apple,
the un-
explain-
able is
like that.
Van Dyke,
come back
you dark
knight,
come
look at
what
you’ve
done to
the daylight.
The teevees
with which I
chalk the
sidewalk
certainly
won’t be
a fit sub-
stitution.
Who
wrote
that?
I love 

horses.

mmdxcv

I guess I hope…some of my input is useful…to your
effort [breath]
                  —Stephanie Young & Juliana Spahr
                     (who note the quote is from a 2007 performance by
                      Ultra-red in LA’s Historic State Park)

Dear Voices with Words in Them,

I keep trying to find the voice that wrote this…
this thing I hear or read (in which case, the voice
is my head, or is in it). (Or) Is it in the kitchen,

cranky and cooking? One can never be too sure.
I mean nothing by any of this except let’s do lunch
sometime. I miss you and am hoping I’ll see you soon!

I guess, I. Hope

mmdxciv

A charm of hummingbirds, a troubling of hummingbirds, a hover of hummingbirds.
                               —from Common Names for Gatherings of Birds (which I found online)

Something about
duck penises
in the news.
Dick of duck,
what?

mmdxciii

During the interview
my mind was racing
to all four corners
of the boardroom,
if not the universe.
I thought of yes-
terday, how it stuck
in my mind like a bone
sitting horizontal half-
way down a throat
(mine). I thought of
tomorrow and the
next day and the
day after that, just
in case this was
a place I might
wind up spending
those days. Some-
where between
these thoughts of
future and past
was where I exited,
had existed, where
I currently sat; some-
where near the end
of a long table, on the
side facing the window
with the beautiful view
of downtown and of
skyward and of (a few
short moments between
when the receptionist
graciously brought me
a pair of bottled waters
and the interviewers
arrived) way down to
the city’s tiny pedest-
rians. To its cabs and
honking SUVs. I’d be
introduced to the three
folks who would be at-
tending (whose names
I fail to remember in
this other present
moment). But one
of the attendees,
an “interviewer”
if you will, said right
at the beginning, as
she introduced her-
self, that she was
The Observer. “I’m
just here to observe,”
she said, and that
she did, having said
everything she’d say
during the amount of
time I was there, per-
haps 30 minutes, per-
haps a bit over an
hour, right at that mo-
ment. As always, it
was theatrical; a
farce. And now,
looking back, I
wonder if she 

heard anything

that I said, saw
one thing that 

I did.

mmdxcii

A Boy Named Sue

      Damn you, woman, for making me the villain!
                      —Odin from an issue of DC Comics’ Thor

Does the thorn
feel bad about
the prick, I
wonder?
Or does
it simply
despise
the glory
of the rose
and its
youthful
death?

mmdxci

Just Call Me Susan

Don’t you see what I
mean by dreamy?

Is the hate because
of the love, or vice

versa? Do you
see what I mean

at all, Sweetheart?
Blink once for no

and twice for yes.
Don’t worry. I’ll

be waiting right
here until you

understand.

mmdxc

My Name Is Not Susan

Good evening from a dreamy
day, an ethereal evening,

and then, tonight, you ran away
with all of the mercy, all of our

photographs, all of the good
and, worst of all, you ran from

that of you who was, well, you.
Who was you. (?)  Who is you?

I mean, what I thought I knew
has to be irrelevant, miniscule,

yet you is something that, to
me, was always clear, or, well,

only occasionally somewhat
murky. Whatever the case is,

or was, whatever I knew, I know
now that I did not, no. The

new know is irrevocably no,
is irrevocably wrong, and it just

ain’t right. It’s paradoxical and
not the least bit paradisical. It’s

as wrong as a particularly jolly
Santa speaking his ho ho hos

when the vinyl is spinning
backwards, which would

be counterclockwise, I believe.
With those purported ‘satanic’

messages on certain albums
from the 1970’s. Yes, I believe

the incorrect way for a vinyl
to spin, or the correct way

to spin it incorrectly, would
be counterclockwise. But

then again, it seems
to me that I’ve

pretty much always
been wrong about

what’s right.

mmdlxxxix

Catafalque Tattersall

Mapped last weekend
as one of the most
stressful. Then I read
and wrote and napped
and whatnot. On Sun-
day, watched dim sum
at Lychee Garden. To
home afterwards. To
a nap, to nothing, to
so much of nothing
that there’s a lot of
nothing to report.
A whole lot of
nothing. Later,
we went out for
drinks to watch
barbacks do their
job. I am sure I
could say plenty
more about that,
but I’ll stop here.

mmdlxxxviii

I’m as sick as my secrets.
                 —Tim Dlugos

I didn’t try on secret-
ive until I realized
that people could
read me so easily.
“Like a book,” my
so-called high school
friends would say to
me. So I became this
character, this not me
that has become me.
Now, each corner I
turn, every face I make,
each word I choose has
me wondering about my
intention, whether it’s
me or not me who made
the decision. Was it
mere diversion? Was
it gut impulse? I won-
der about the strategy 

of it all. Don’t you?