mmdccix

Cover Letter

I wad it up,

unawed by it
It's amazing how

useless every

thing becomes.

I suppose most

things were al

ways useless.

There is a glint

of giddy calm

in my heart.

Yes, mine

belongs to

me (this

has to be

the new

me, app

arently).

HOURS

LATER...

Feeling

ever so

moody.

No more

internet.

The phone

is gasping

its last

breath

as if it

realizes

this is likely

worse than

losing a liv

ing member

of the family

if not a long

term pet.

The drama.

Oh.  I am

to get an

eviction

notice to

day if not

tomorrow.

mmdccviii

Automatic Arithmetic

This laundry facility
in my apartment
building will
now close daily
at 10:00 pm
and reopen daily
at 9:00 am. (Find
your honesty. Be
a good person.)
I wrote
a poem
in 4th
grade.
It was
called
“Math,”
and my
5th grade
teacher, un-
beknownst to me,
entered it into some
sort of scholastic state-
wide contest. I don’t know
if I have a copy of the poem
presently, but I remember many
of its lines (the first two of which
were “Math is hard, very hard/
Addition, subtraction, division.”)
which, for me, is pretty unusual (to
remember a line from anything, that is,
and it rhymed: ABAB, ABAB; the word
hard was paired with guard, division with
supervision, etc.). When I was in 7th grade
I learned that the poem had won, that it had
been published in the winning anthology. I
thought it was cool, but I had pretty much
moved on from poetry by then. All of my
science and math teachers were also coaches
(football, basketball, gymnastics, etc.) when
I was in 7th grade. Mainly coaches or Primarily
coaches are two phrases which immediately come
to mind. We students even addressed them as “Coach
[so and so]”. When I was in 7th grade, my science teacher,
the high school football coach, turned beet red with anger
(at something I cannot remember) and threw an entire desk
(complete with the chair, like the desks in pretty much
any classroom of that particular era) out the window
and onto the grass that grew next
to the building that housed the high 

school which I attended.

mmdccvii

         The exotic collection of dumplings recipes.

                                            —Amazon via Facebook

It’s abrupt and absurd

the way I try to quickly

introduce myself to people

whom I don’t know at the

moment yet want to know

in the future.  Perhaps it’s

intoxicating on some level

to the stranger; often,

certainly, it is an exit

interview.  I don’t

want to remain like

this: almost gone.

The tarred rooftops

work like magnets

to my exhausted

eyeballs, soak

in the warm

winter sun.

mmdccvi

Vague Notes to an Ungathered (& Vague) Public

vague notes sent away to an even more vague and perhaps mythological or fantastical “public circle” (i.e., the people who read any of what i write (here -- or anywhere) as it relates to a ‘reality’ - or as a timestamp or a milepost pinned into this ‘reality’ and use it for some ‘perspective’ both in present & for and from future (and hence perspectives past as they pertained and pertain in retrospect to a present and possible future)....to locate:

perception vs. perception
perception vs. ‘reality’
‘reality’ vs. ‘reality’
etc.

these matches can run individually, on a 2-3 person acquaintances or close friendship or more profound (to whom among the core?) relationship of some kind. does smaller scale (for me) loom so much larger in lifetimes of relative peace? i’ve known no hardship. so i make mountains out of molehills. molehills are my mountains. there is a certain control.

compare and contrast to larger scale.

and to reactions to various of these fights (versuses).

fight vs. flight

to run away (escaping reality and ‘reality’) or to confront (in hopes).

and especially as this pertains to “survival of the fittest” (darwinian, real), vs. psychological, per se (start, for example, with freud’s continued prevalence, the sexism etcetism inherent; the seeming ridiculousness and yet assimilation into modern culture which makes up ‘reality’?),

‘reality’ and ‘perceptions’ about both small and large group occurrences (a few friends, a country, the world, how we make it all palatable somehow, etc.)...

then: reality. then, why poetry? duh. would be a relieving way to end this journey of thought before starting again. and again. until you never get it right.

mmdccv

Love Is a Pain in the Ass

isn’t clear anymore,

not like the furniture

that always reaches out to

grab that pain and tuck it

neatly away.  She had lots

of leeway, that Bette Davis. 

Her eyes (and it’s no wonder

Kim Carnes not only sang the

song about them [enormously

more successful, in fact, than

Jackie DeShannon’s original

version which came out in 1974];

that song, Carnes’ version, was,

per Kasey Kasem, the biggest hit

of 1981, spending a whopping

9 weeks at #1) could fluctuate

instantaneously between whip-

poorwills floating in and (mostly)

out of them and spinning nails of

ice being shot at deviant, even

lethal, speeds emerging from her

tiny black pupils.  Did you know,

by the way, that Nathan Lane

(for whom I’m often mistaken,

as you well know) stringently

studied under the original

Nail of Ice, who, sadly, died

yesterday after suffering (but

briefly) from a horrible squirrel-

bite that had left a rather large

hole in the middle of the top-

less bar tattooed under

his left forearm. Nail

was a fairly unknown guy. 

Nutty, though, just like Lynch,

who’d just cast him the new

season of Twin Peaks, which

was nevertheless released as

originally scheduled (just

as the poor, dead Ms. Palmer

had assured those of us who were

alive enough to stick through to

the end of the beginning, which also

transpired...and, sadly, quickly exp

ired...in the early 1980’s) in 2017 on

Showtime.  But, boy, what a show the

original was, much to the chagrin of all of us

when we gleaned that Nail of Ice’s death was but

a red herring lain to keep the gaunt actors who played

the aging agents from discovering the truth (any truth at

all, in fact).  A glance at one of those very herring’s ear

rings literally twisted Alfred Hitchcock’s gait.  He was 

filming a glass of wine and, immediately, like a corkscrew 

turned from the camera and walked hastily away ——

in precisely the opposite direction of his camera’s gaze.

mmdcciv

mmdcciii

The People I Don’t Meet

I should be having

guilt-free fun.

Curran was asking

me last night if my

journal writing has

changed over the

years.  Keeping a

diary is just a

silly way to get

something out of

me and onto some-

thing else, often so

that I can swerve

away from my

current direction

into a new one.

More importantly,

I can honestly

still say, it's a

way to recover

memory, and there

fore a means of 
gathering
perspective. 

Things always

change.  I've

been doing this

a very long time.

mmdccii

Gravity Always Has to Fall

Most everything goes down better

with humor (done with proper

flair, of course; no need to

insult my intelligence, un-

less occasionally, perhaps

when it deserves it; a

spoonful of sugar and

all), a hint or two of non-

chalance (the subtler the

better), and as much

cheekiness as can be

mustered.  And, most

importantly, these in-

gredients are not just

important in the delivery,

one absolutely has to live

them.  It's like method acting

only British; but a performance

that never witnesses even a half-

yawn.  And of course it’s got to

have snark; and a spectrum of

ticklebone that ranges from

intermittent chuckles to ROFL.

mmdcci

It was like getting a cat
thinking it would act like a dog
                              —Ruth Lepson

It’s the British invasion here.
And that's cool. Even though
I was supposed to bring left
overs from home for my lunch,
which certainly would have
been better than the turkey

sandwich from Quizno’s.
Plus I have popcorn hulls
stuck between my teeth
and this is happening in
two different dimensions.
I mean time zones.

Coco wants out. She
hates me, now more
than ever. Coco the Loco.
Sepia the Cat, on the other
hand, was a dog in a cat’s
body if ever there was one.

She loved every breathing
thing, wasn’t the least bit bi-
polar, and if a dog, per chance,
dropped by to visit, and, no lie,
the larger the better (and we
seemed to know a LOT of

very large dogs) she’d just jump
up and down nipping at its neck
and playing with it like it were her
sibling. Those poor dogs. It seemed
they never knew whether to run
or gobble her up like a very small

appetizer (the real expensive ones
that are often served on very tight
budgets so the sit-down dinner price
is considerably less pricy, often with
out the guests feeling anything but
slighted. Tricks of the trade....).

Back to meanwhile, or to that thing
I escape these days that’d be called
“The Present” (I like to think of my
escape a matter of life and death.
How fun, right?), Coco claims territory
and more than a bit of terror. She

growls now, quite often, when I approach.
Me! The one who’s always kept her food
bowl at slightly less than empty! Sepia
would by now be here in bed with me,
her dogless catbody completely under the 

blanket dozing somewhere between ribs and hip.

mmdcc

Flippers Blisters

Next time

I swim

w/o them.

mmdcxcix

Sex, Love or Both at Once

     SKIN
     TWICE
                —graffiti found in Amsterdam

HOLD ON!
Incorrect!
How might I
make the best
of a bad situation?
Remember that the
ones that seem worst
aren’t always so.  Any
way, a lot has happened.

Everyone went to bed, for example,
and forgot all about me. And that
nightmare (this one very much a reality)
of the jealous cellphone ringing incessantly
that I can’t help but listen to; voice messages
I obviously shouldn’t be hearing. But I’m the
crazy one. I’m the bad boy. Always have been 

(well, ever since a senior in high school when
I did a complete about-face from goody-goody). 

What did I do about it then? Headed straight in the 

opposite direction. Drive for miles like I’m heading 

to California to realize my dreams.       Years later, 

when I am convinced they’ve been realized--my dreams--

I head straight away to the stress (back home). Well, I am 

home. Or at least I always believed myself have one--

a home.  Somehow, I slept a little bit. This part never 

had a hint of danger before. But now? Now, I’m a

“chickenshit?” Maybe so, but not in the way in which 

that accusation is pelted at me. The irony keeps ring

ing in my head and I spin around for years wondering

when the vertigo will ever go away; if I’ll ever know

the firmness of reality or the moist breath of honesty.
Such things have never existed for me.  Perhaps I was 

born into the wrong era. Or I skipped the day they 

covered chickenshit in high school (which would, 

of course, have to’ve been during my senior year,

after my one-eighty). Was I something 

different before? Was I really better?

I feel as if I’ve been split from my toes 

all the way up to my head in an extra large
cheese grater. Silly, silly, heart that acts like rubber;
takes forever to damage, even just a little bit. But a little bit
is all it takes. Now that’s complete erasure, I think.
But really, which me do you think was better?

     silly rendition of human behavior...
            —Marlon Brando on the Dick Cavett show, shortly after he 

               refused his Academy Award for The Godfather

mmdcxcviii

      If my legs aren’t long is no
     see how long.     a crowd.
                       —Susie Timmins

My mother cannot walk
the way she used to,
perhaps like most of us.

And I haven’t been able
to afford to get her a
ticket to visit me

in something like five
years. When she’d
visit regularly, she

seemed to really
love it (Who wants
to travel constantly

back to Arkansas from
San Francisco? Especially
when one’s first trip abroad

was at 40 [and to Paris!!]);
we’d walk up and down 

the seven (or 48) hills.  

Or, during more recent

visits, we’d hold soirees
for her in the apartment

(the one in which I’m 

currently sitting). Any

thing could act as an 

excuse to have one (e.g.,
"Hey, everybody, Mom’s 

here!").  We’d taxi often to 

brunches, lunches, dinners 

and suppers.  And there was 

always the "day trip" — often 

to Sonoma and/or Calistoga. 

Or we would head down south

for some fresh strawberries,

gotten roadside, over which
she never tired of swooning.