mmdcclxxxvi

Ground Round

I, myself, have
yet to serve in
any military
capacity. I
have, how-
ever, always
been fond of
ammunition.

mmdcclxxxv

Jim & I

My New Year’s Resolution,
granted, a couple of weeks
early, is to stop being bitter.
About anything. Yes, how
improbable, how impossible
this sounds, you think. You
know me perhaps (improb-
able), and there is a lot to be
bitter about; a whole lot of
junk floating around about
which to be bitter, be you
me, or be you, well, you. Of
that, am I right or am I wrong?
Normally, I am able to look at
most anything happy and heart-
ily strive. After all, there are infin-
ite angles from which to look.
Is it necessary to cultivate the
bad stuff, then allow it to inte-
grate and to potentially over-
take? Even momentarily? I know
I do. So that makes it all my fault.
Which is...okay? Am I right or am I
right? But if I have nobody to blame
but myself, who then do I finally have?
I realize now, as I walk endlessly through
this city of mirrors that I am doomed. But
when you live in a city full of mirrors, you
might pass, as I am right at this very instant,
by a somewhat familiar face that has a smile
directed right at you, a face that, as its smile
shrinks or sort of sinks into itself, belongs to
a figure that is the template, the embodiment,
it seems to me, of sheer joy. There isn’t a

speck or a flicker of sarcasm. I know this
because I check very thoroughly when I en-
counter familiarity. Also, I have a very on-
going relationship with loss. Loss I know.
So this guy appears. And what do I do?
I say “Hey there, Mister. I have a fairly
good feeling that we’ve met before.” And

I say this in earnest, as I extend my idiot-
ic arm nearly smack into the mirror’s edge.

mmdcclxxxiv

The Ground of No Ground

Four children bumped
in the air. They call this
a high five. Children
are elusive. There are
lines of impermanence,
lines of closure, lines
drawn in the sand and
lines of cocaine, where
sales have hit Ground
Zero. Brands are beautiful:
brass brands, swing brands,
junkyard brands and even
little yellow polka brands.

mmdcclxxxiii

Bloody Birth

License to
drive. A con-
gratulatory
pedestrian
files his
shame
into the
pocket be-
neath the
brand name
of his neck-
tie bod-
ice piss-
pot.
There
are no
typewriters.
There is no
“ammunition” --
no inevitable
Big Bang. But
if I told you what
they really make
the monkeys do. . . . .

mmdcclxxxii

PANDA PUNDIT

Sounds skill.
Lariat’s donut.

Hews sinking
(about sinew)!

Smoothie witch-
es Lucy biased of-

ten his awled brook.
Itches effen cauled

braid. Ah, plant it
like as if a reality

cuticle, Darlene
(Knot it!). This bee

smoothie knock
tern turned into

dust.  Knock’s
worst toward

Innie Moor.
DRove into dun

dee rooooove

right on inna

Dinah's door
(Cant tink a

rotten pink-
ing cent, dat

Thynah!). Ding
buckle it! Dirk

bugle lit! Pork
Horror Porklin’s

calomines: Ding
dang bung kit!

Den, kaput.

mmdcclxxxi

Hopeless Poet / Homeless Romantic

If it’s from the heart
it must not be homeless.

Homes have heart, right?
Even when they are

in production.
Literature doesn’t

provide the bright-
est. The eyes that

glow with the most hope
are probably not the eyes

of poets. Nobody
smells / sports / spoils roses

like homeless poets is a very
ethnocentric statement (in any

form). But nobody is lousy (not
one person is lousy) and anyone

who can speak is allowed to
speak, etc. We are everywhere.

My home is you. But there are
no beams (i.e., no boundaries).

Only surface. One surface
upon which there is no run-

way onto which any flying
object can cleanly land;

no runway to properly
showcase any of our guilt.

mmdcclxxx

Hearts & Backpacks

This lacks poetry,
but I’m sitting on
the same bed (or
the same spot) in 

the same emergency
room where Otto
(How long has it
been since I wrote
that name?) had
his heart failure
diagnosed.  You’d
think if your heart
failed it would be
easy to diagnose,
but as it turn out....
Anyway, my heart
is no longer failing
as it’s already gone.
Sorry, couldn’t re-
member. And maybe
that’s just wistful
thinking.  But 

as it turns out,
there have been
a lot of wists to
dwell upon or
inside of lately.
Like earlier today
(wist) when yet an-
other half of all of
the belongings I
possess from my
fifty-one years

of living
were stolen
away from my
clinging arms
while I was a-
sleep in a park

getting sunburnt.
This kind of thing
seems to happen
so often that I’ve
begun to think of it
as clichè (which I
keep thinking is
“so clichè!”)....
Anyway, so I
(presented to
you as nothing
but myself, who
is “so cliché”...)
was asleep in
the park this morning... ... ...