mmdcxcv

Saturday Morning Scurvy

It seems to me, or, I have it quite
pronounced in my mind that nothing
written (and hardly anything that
purportedly happened) before the
late 19th Century amuses me at all,
except Shakespeare and Aristophanes.
While I was an academic actor and
studier of all things theatre for many
years, I always wanted a seriously
serious dramatic role. And on those
rare occasions when I would be cast in
one (there were only to be two or three,
in the end, it seems to me), I inevitably
found them quite tedious, which, in turn
diminished my desires and my hopes of
becoming a “famous” star on a soap opera,
most hopefully, of course, on Days of Our Lives,
or The Young and the Restless, both of which
I have memories of watching with my mother
at age 3 or so upward. I came to realize that the 

life of a ribald actor (even with the occasional little
death of absurd silence which would occur some 

evenings during a scene where the audience would 

be on the floor the following evening) was for me.
Comedy. The sound of gasps and spurts,
followed by uncontrollable laughter were divine.
So, being a student of theatre I’d often have to read
plays set before the twentieth century, and I’d
constantly wonder where on earth the laughter
occurred, if ever, when they were originally performed,
as I flipped ho-hum from page to page. I’d be told a line
would be hilarious to the attendees. I was befuddled. But
I’ve always considered myself a now kind of guy, if not
way too into the present, to any given present. This
explains, perhaps, why in 1991-1992, I devoted my
masters’ thesis to covering the subjects of post-
modernism, using as splendid examples (and a
colorful backdrop) the works of opera director
Peter Sellars’ adaptions of the Mozart-da Ponte
operas: Don Giovanni (set in a Bronx slum),
Le Nozze di Figaro (which was set in Trump Tower)
and Cosi fan tutte (set in a diner). I even had the
opportunity to participate in Peter Schaffer’s wonderful
stage production of Amadeus. So, not to tag on a moral here,
but, now that I think about it, it seems to me from these skewed
experiences of mine that Mozart was pretty hilarious. And he
lived well before the late 19th century. Ah, things in retrospect.
Who we become is never who we think we are, anyway.
I stand corrected.
Go figure.

mmdcxciv

                        ...emptiness is a kind of speed moving
slowly with extreme consciousness.
                  —Susie Timmons

             Obviously our heroes are conglomerating.
             Where, my dear, did I ever learn to write?
Sentences, I mean? How can anyone
appreciate me, much less tolerate it?
And to the point of gung-ho? I, too, want
to put a sign on the wall of my office
(which is also, appropriately enough,
my bedroom) with the word INFANTILISM!
Maybe I will do just that. But to what end?
To show that nobody knows a damned thing
in this world; that supposed ‘progress’ or a
positive form of ‘evolution’ is no sure thing;
or, to reiterate, that we are simply
(as a people, as a world, as individuals)
just babies. In the whole grand scheme of
what? He said something to me. Such as,
“You just gonna lie there with your money
all day?” Or perhaps it was I who said it,
both of us being infants. Nothing else 

happened for the rest of the afternoon.

mmdcxciii

Love is a pain in the ass

isn’t clear anymore.

mmdcxcii

My Own Personal . . .


                        . . Platform;
                          . . Jesus;
                            . . G a n g p l a n k




                                                         ? 

                                                         ?
                                                         !

mmdcxci

     I have pictures of the empty room. 

                              —Laura Moriarty

The surplus was at gunpoint
(mid-range) so I took stock
in fear and adrenaline (wouldn’t
you?). Half of the reason is the
$1,000 phone bill (half yours)
which you left me after paying
for well over a year and giving
me absolutely no indication
that you’d stop doing so, cold,
that day you left and never
spoke with me again. Your
ghosts keep raising their ugly
heads. Only I know who they really
are. Right? Lately, just when I’m about
to be okay, about to be on my feet again,
about to wake up, as they say.... (Did
you ever leave? I’ve watched movies
aplenty about these things: Ghost
stories vanish, too, like the unlucky
number of them that vanished into
something much more terrifying than
retrospect - into nothing; into perform-
ance? Into a game during which I was dis-
qualified in its early stages, only nobody told me so I
happily participated until it had been over for decades.)....
The four circles that made a square that appeared on a
nearby garage door have sort of disappeared, and in
their place is now a triangle (a misdirection of anger?
angular tension?). Boy, would love a massage....
The show goes on, however, as it must. It must. The show.
I’ve generally encouraged such drama (yes, did you honestly think
that I didn’t know?) clutched onto intense belief systems only to
watch them dissipate like the Andromeda. The drama. The belief.
These things happen, I know them. But do ghosts know current
events, or even care? Donald Duck is now the Emperor
of the World Federation. It turns out that the
Federation were actually the bad guys all along. It’s
a world full of surprises even for an old man who seemed
to constantly catch them like falling chandeliers. The universe,
the galaxy, whatever: Bad Guys. It’s my existential crisis, my
value judgments, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist. And
this is not cinema. At least I don’t recollect that it is. But
I do remember the cinema. It was a place we went to escape.
The reality of it all is Star Wars. Every night slogging alongside
the melee, until morning, when I keep remembering to tell you this,
only to find out that I’ve forgotten. You. This. Also, cash, the
paper kind, that which we all relied upon, sometimes obsessively,
well, I’m not sure where this came from or why I’m even telling you,
but for some reason it amuses me. And reminds. Anyway,
it isn’t green anymore. I think I’ll take that spark of pleasure
ache asking you to guess what color it is now. Or. Well.
It turns out that the future was all mine, after all. Who on
earth would have been listening to that noise? Silence. How
appropriate in a world that’s mine, but yet one which I find
no place to grab into. Perhaps it’s perfect that you are naught
but spirit – and a spiritless naught at that.... Think for a moment.
Notice now the spit and slither of spiritless spirit. Do things
never work themselves out appropriately? If. Only. You were
not such a glorious and tricky vacuum of spirit. Black hole
tricky, I’d say. And while it always breaks my heart, the month
of October never looked quite as dashing as it does this year,
unlike the bully it (and certainly other times of year)
has been in distances past. I mean, relative to the
infamous eleven months, which, (from widening distances
. . . past) at worst only dourly come and go. What am I left
with? Oh, substance. Which I actually apologize for bringing
up. Even to you. Yes, I still think of unpaid for I’m sorry’s
and What can I do?’s. But you’re spirit, I’m flesh. That is that,
the meaninglessness of logic, of sense, and most certainly
of karma. These days we learn that even the lifeless, the immaterial,
are tortured. A gas chamber for ephemera? All of it. Unlike even you.
No magician as yet has brought any of it to life. So here we are
at the butt end of a very cold November. A humiliating reprieve.
What’s left of the pretense of joy, of respite? But you must
admit that we wore October well. Materially, that is. I might
venture to admit that it still looks good on me. Sorry. Maybe
that’s bitter, too. Looks can be deceiving, anyway, right?
There are many days that, for some, are neither holidays
nor birthdays. Favorite things. October, October, October...
BOO! Oh I hope I got you again. It always makes me remember
being bowled over with laughter. But I know that you are only
here (and never here) simply to remind me that the joke
is still on me. I know because I see only one of us. Bowled over.

mmdcxc

Whatever It Is, It Isn’t

clear anymore. Furniture
that reaches out to you
in the middle of the
afternoon on a night
when you need desp-
erately to go to the
bathroom to pee
or to the kitchen
to guzzle a pint
of ice water.
“Wake up,”
laughs B’rer
Rabbit as he
dives into the
patch of black-
berry briars below,
“come along with me
this instant. It’s an
adventure!” And
then he disappears.
I’ve even the bloody
scratches to prove it.


               this poem is inspired by Susie Timmons’ “Into the Stickers”
               and the following Google Link Titles, neither of which I ever bothered to click:
           a) Brambles Gone Wild: How to Remove Blackberries – Tall Clover Farm
           b) How to Eradicate Blackberry Bushes; and
           c) How to get rid of blackberries – YouTube

mmdclxxxix

I’ve Got the Keys to a Brand New Saturday

So hop in
if you’d
like to 

ride.

mmdclxxxviii

We stare at each other like ghosts of another century
                                                      —Ronald Palmer

“It could be they are from separate centuries,” Ron’s
written word whispers to me (without ink, should I add?).
“Instead of two ghosts, say, from the 17th century, Which
isn’t ours?” No response. At least for a while. And then
I clearly hear “Hours? Two, that is precise and correct.” I’ve

not just been dreaming (I’ve said this aloud while sitting
up sharply in my weather-worn bed. In this dreamlessness –
and with this quick snap from lying prone to becoming a ninety
degree angle and with a voice I am certain – because there’s
that stolen sentence lying there without much discretion,

Tucked away amid other words in them, The solid book
held firmly within the grip of both of my hands and now,
directly above us, an epigraph, so to speak. I intro-
duce to you this, my story. Anyway, as I might’ve
already said.... Black gold sinks heavily into many

hundreds of thousands of acres of a place called U.S.A.
circa the early 2000s. This becomes the hub (and the
hubbub) of some importance at the time. I can’t be
certain why. Perhaps Ms. Notley knows (and I swiftly
scribble a note to myself to inquire something to that

effect). I’ve an infection of the pancreas. Or maybe
it’s the liver. This becomes important at the time.
I’m not sure why. Scholars of history (and, therefore,
of every subject once known trying to fit into a pair of
academia) often distributed history books as auto

biographies. This is known. This was obvious
to all but most. In a world where, nearby, say,
in the next galaxy and unbeknownst to the tepid
inhabitants of all of this rather deviant rogue
of a planet’s tepid inhabitants (which included

the fevered, the feeble, and the dead, as well as
those who most often worked at will [and a few,
legend has it, unwillingly, or at least subconsciously]
slicing and dicing the so-called earth, clearly part
icipating in its early demise ... [a small coughing sound

is heard from several audience members]) ... anyway,
as I mentioned earlier to one in particular, nearby, say
in an adjacent galaxy, who'd never heard tell of this rogue
of a planet’s surly inhabitants (the fevered, the feeble,
the dead, and the so-called ‘toiling’— all murder[er]s,

and mutter[er]s, mind you.  Anyway, as I might’ve already said...

mmdclxxxvii

  Indigestion

    (later that
   same night)

A pain in the ass
is worth two in the
bush doesn’t even
begin to hack it
until you try it!
Get it? I’m so
happy for you.
(If only I got it....)
Eating escargot
[late drum riff,
awkward giggles]
at the conference,
I thought of Rome,
where the hallway
entrance was made
completely of the
animals we and
our favorite rest-
aurant’s guests
would profoundly
digest later, during
bouts of uneasy
sleep. We would,
earlier, of course,
finally eat. Per-
haps because we
were so alive then.
It was a five-star
entrance, that
hallway. We were,
as they often say
in Bolivia, super-
duper-entranced.

mmdclxxxvi

misother brother

“don’t do that!”
he says, meaning

enter the trans
america pyramid

tower     all out
of shape     sees

worried fav
orite entry

doorway to the 

other shore