mmmcxxxv

heathenesque 

       —i.m. David Bowie, Rex Ray

you remind me of the seventies i
don’t remember and you’re glitterbuilt like
plastic in shokan new york where you’re
a chameleon just like me and your new
hollywood is taking a trip in a gemini spacecraft
with all the words crossed thru the middle

think of me under pressure in nineteen eighty-two
or four years later when my own major tom
was huddled naked in the closet while my
roommate made noises through the keyhole
and the whole new world was mtv and
almost bisexual or had been and got through it

down in space you sit beside your tall telephone
in that country studio that is ackshully plastic
i’m listening to you while all the
birdshit on the eaves of the oldish buildings
along geary street turns into cosmic goo
and gee it’s lovely like an old standard

now you sing about flying
over coney island always haunted
i’m wondering how serious you must
look in your lovely buildings past mercury

too bad i can’t be all dressed up in the
moonsun like you even though you are
always me like here inside myself as you
float down that long stairway with all the
rays shining right through you and i can
really feel your space with all this lightstuff

i remember let’s dance and i hope you
wear that dress when you die

mmmcxxxiv

Cosmonauts

I’d sure ask him if I only had the noive. He walked swervily
underneath the artwork and toward the cash register

while we talked of better salads; a stuffed basset hound eyeballing me,
wearily. “In Venice there’s plenty of water,” she yawned.

“Does it matter if I’m only here?” With its radii, its parameters,
its conglomerate, its concrete assumptions, “It’s

raining, dear.” I gave her the ticket to another boat. I’d read it
right off the menu (it sort of walked out of the thing,

while Pilsner-head was pouting over a soda). My heart
is like a moth, and you know what they do. I could clamp onto

every single cliché just for a piece of that pie. Ooh, I’d sure ask him.
I’m told the bitterer the better but, boy, with what I’m reading, well, I’m

worn. Hushes such as “This codicil is like a flippant sausage remark” and
“Your mustard hit the target, but didn’t quite fill me up.” It’s just so so-so.

Like that ghost of the art teacher with her cheeks bitten off, “We should
all listen to those who hang around on walls.” Twirling around and around,

trying to pronounce miscellany like “super-celluloid” and
“carnal quavering” (just an aside, here, but I do remember one groovy jiffy

when it shook in its shoes, salivating, re-e-eally wanting out). “How
does he want it?” Granted, we could sit here for ages, salad after salad,

and never get to the bottom of it. I dare you. “Honestly, it
looks just like a bubble and yet has so much to say!”

“Don’t be thinking about a career move,” she whispered. Hidden
behind all those regular sounds were fizz noises, fading like moons.

mmmcxxxiii

A Restaurant in Time

a red apron a cup of coffee the rattle
of silverware a decanter of raspberry
jam a decanter of ketchup. the sun
brightens a brunette, no longer in
the fog. cole garage. should i make
a reservation for french speaking night?
i look out to a man in a yellow shirt.
he looks like several people i know.
‘i’m sorry that i left your book at the
library.’ green breeze with purple buds,
purple blooms in the breeze. door
squawk, stroller door, blooms, clicks,
wadded napkin. ‘so i’d go back in
there 25 more minutes,’ click, ‘what
i need is.’ click, downtempo. red
pickup truck in a green breeze—
look at the sky-coated pole. wadded
napkin. ‘for me it’s a matter of ...
it’s not every day i ....’ the door
opens again and closes again. the
one fellow brave enough to eat out-
side takes off his beige coat. the
sun is very informal. i had a look
around in the green breeze, all the
things i ever think about, in a new
language. another mother comes
in carrying a purple bundle. she is
given an orange menu. ‘milk for
me.’ and a barrel of pink blooms.

mmmcxxxii

hot springs

we lift our heads from off our pillows
as houses fall of their freeways we
breathe both liquid and solid we’re
flush with brickwork that’s like life
down a long corridor of sound
all rapt and fumbling for a spigot

our minds drop and bow of heart
our heart however is nothing
but embarrassed of this altitude
our mouths are full of soap cured
by concertina (a habitat warped
by longing) long mouths filled

with drowning trucks that sting
our eyes to hear such a heap of
sopped nothing – to tuck one
coil carefully into the pile of
glass that we saw fall like light
out of sky when we ran the

water too hot down the frozen
pane of the bedroom window

mmmcxxxi

This Energy.

[Name Removed] says this is not real art. We’re two clouds
at a party. When I ask him about our ability to make lightning,
his reply is prurient. How had I thought electricity so chaste?
I hover over each guest like a kite until I know everything
about him or her. She is a spiral, he is an epiphany, she is
gratitude, he is worms, she a cake-maker, he a purple, frozen
heart. As clouds we depart with matter from each other,
about the size of a minnow-bag or a child’s balloon.

mmmcxxx

The Telephone Order.

[Name Removed] says the clouds are burning a hole in his jacket.
I wish we had less to burn every day. There’s a russet-colored
splotch near the middle of the bay that looks like the tip of a
gigantic brown washable marker felled from the sky (as if 

by magic, I think). See it? he asks pointing vaguely at 

Treasure Island. I put my glasses on to see it better.  

Yes, that works, but I can’t think of any words. 

Another cloud opens its mouth to eat us. 

[Name Removed]’s not afraid of death. 

Toward the giant magic marker a gray 

boat inches, like a shuttle about 

to dock at a space station.

mmmcxxix

Jarring Little Seedpod.

[Name Removed] says if only we could pull the plug on our body of water, it
wouldn’t take so long for the world to run dry. How is this so revolutionary?

Imagine where the rain could take us, all the way around the continent,
toward inseparability? We hash over the book neither of us read.  Is
this revolution?  Nah, this is creativity.

mmmcxxviii

Slick Airplane Heart.

[Name Removed] says he feels a droplet. This does not keep
the sun from careening into the bus as it bludgeons Nob Hill.
Romance filters through the tunnels, perking up passers-by.
It’s Tuesday and there’s a pain in my lower back on my left
side. Kidney? Liver? The Swedish massage therapist? The
shadowy figures burnt into my memory are gliding by the
sliced strawberries, grazing the frosted pitchers, creating
microclimates that follow us out the door and twist and
swirl into waterwheels that scrape stories off the tops
of our heads like a drive-through car wash.

mmmcxxvii

I Mean It Rained.

[Name Removed] says the rain is more internalized in less rural settings.  I
don’t wonder much. Tufts of suede drip from last night’s coat pockets.  Hay
bales in January are not so fresh.  A yellow film covers the Oakland Hills.
Where am I?  Perhaps I dozed off.  Ah, here we are: “Carrots in the ground

and more leaves fallen. The sun in my cocktail. One bird’s always louder

than the others.”

mmmcxxvi

Chronicles of Scuba-Dancing.

With our movements we chalked out a mirage (a
pencil-tip on the outskirts of prosody). I never meant
to mean any more or any less. It’s just that while
dancing among the vowels full of meaninglessness
I tripped on your shoe.
Or was it mine?

                       Delicately, you wheedle until you
shake out your very niche. I, on the other hand,
finding whimsy much too complex, shuffle off
to the window to hone in for a few hours
on another wet night.

mmmcxxv

The Scrumptious Aesthetic.

      I have news for you Mr. Baker, you know? If you can eat it, it’s not art. If
      you can say ‘I’ll have that and a cup of coffee,’ that’s not art. That’s a snack.

                  —Fran Lebowitz (on the subject of the bakers who refused—on religious

                                                              grounds—to bake cakes for gay weddings)

[Name Removed] says my hedge fund’s no turkey, but that we should go out

immediately and purchase a Picasso, that we should move into our very own

condominium by Easter, if not by this Tuesday. The truth about beauty, of
course, is that it swims in an ocean of blandness. The offense that the sum 

of these contraptions of gilded violence has imparted onto humankind is

immeasurable, I say.  And so to deal them a right getcha, I accept them 

each as a gift.  They come in all sizes and shapes, are always in disguises,

often rather ingenious ones at that (think Trojan Horse), and might be 

slung from anywhere by anyone at any time.  Given the lack of decent

alternatives, I choose to make a sport of it (one must never look a gift

horse, etc.).  And so I yawningly egg on the onslaught of atrocities that

today’s de-evolved pseudo-sentients, with their inflated egos and sun-suck-

ing greed, feel I must know, intimately, at whatever cost.  I give them the

satisfaction that they have put me in my place and have reminded me of 

who I am.  No doubt thinking themselves too clever by half, their various 

contributions of blight “force” me ever nearer the rough edges of surreality, 

to the margins, if you will, where it is delightfully quiet, but for the sporadic

sounds of nature and the dull hum of swiftly moving electricity.  As it turns

out, this is my sanity, it’s where I take refuge:  here, at the outer rim of

existence.  As I can look inward, toward so-called civilization, from which

I remain a safe enough distance away to carry on, to maintain some

curiosity and to focus on my studies, I scrutinize each drifting vessel.  I 

watch one churl flimsily postulate that Post-its (their glaringly blank

canvases), know no limits, are to be revered; while at the same time

having a bit of fun with another crank’s forcible attempts to disrupt the

swing of my “soul cycle,” all the while I faux-pout and scoot further out

toward the very perimeter of existence. It is from there that sense can be

made of this all but uninhabitable planet.  So, I chip away at the detritus,

trying to discover a way, if one is out there, one might coexist with it 

(or adjacent to it), or if there’s a way I could simply escape all of it, to 

find my own singular, sustainable piece of the universe.  Maybe someday 

I shall find the answers, come up with the antidote to the nauseating

mix of the violence, the vitriol, the boredom and mediocrity. Until 

then, if and when I wish to have my chakras banged or bent, I 

will be the one choosing from whom.  Or this is what my inner 

voice, with as much gusto as it can muster, says to the rest 

of me, as I float backwards, away from the chaos, closer

and closer to some ideal home, a peaceful oblivion that 

grows ever more desirable the closer we get to each 

other.  I look back, toward the demise of humanity, 

wave a great big hello with one hand, and 

clutch at my gut with the other.

mmmcxxiv

Blackberry Delusions.

[Name Removed] says that occasionally, like once a year, I’ll
need a really large rubber band. I wonder if it’s because he sees
that I can keep stuff together for a little while, all neat (and bound!).
Or that, armed (okay, palmed; thumbed and forefingered) with one,
I can sting skin into one heckuva welt and be back at the stove
before anyone knows what hit them. Or, horrified, I wonder if 

he’s referencing that my presence produces what is for him an

idea of a 21st century one man jug band. I slowly lower myself 

onto the couch. I am a 21st century one man jug band.  With-

out knowing how much time’s threads have been strung, I am

transported unflinchingly to the beginning of a planned exercise

(or indulgence) wherein I am folding myself neatly but sternly into 

the back of the bottom drawer of our fancy chest of drawers (the 

one we keep in the sunroom), quite purposefully, in an effort to 

better concentrate on the future. Here in the future, I already 

know the significance of hot boxes. I live in one about the size of 

a coffin.  While inside the dark drawer, I remember things I should 

have taken care of much sooner, like the squirrels in the attic, for 

example, and the sunlight that flickers across the island estate.  

And also there’s that two-week suicide watch I had promised a

certain pair of overly enthusiastic interventionists. What’s to be

done of that now?  The astonishing necessity of memory! How

inconvenient that it shows up, all too often, a mere half of a

minute tardy (but nevertheless with such bravado!).  Of embar-

rassing note: the deep remorse of finding oneself super-saturated, 

right at the moment that I’m all but settled in to the (now en-

closed) drawer, agonizing over how I am such a ditz that I might 

probably could suck down nearly a dozen bottled waters before 

sunrise.  The gym wasn’t that thirsty, I recall in an attempt to 

make light of my plight (two days, one night, stuck in a dark 

drawer in a sunroom in the middle of a long midwestern 

summer).  I am a real tip-of-the-tongue mystery, I am.  My

head was spinning violently, as it began to slowly factor in 

that there’d be impending humidity on top of the impending 

heat.  One thing can clearly be concluded from that weekend:

throughout the duration of it there was one glaring theme:

I could not escape that fleeting sentence about rubber bands,

and there was hardly a minute that did not go by but that I had

come up with yet another flimsy but possible reason he might

have brought that up at that particular moment.  So incredibly

out of nowhere, as it were.  Perhaps it was a vague Groundhog 

Day-type reference, how today mirrors yesterday, which, in

turn mirrors tomorrow as we bounce around in each and all

as if there is something unique about a day; or, along those

same lines, as if there were any factors of significance dif-

ferentiating one of us humans from any other.  Or maybe

his passing remark was a subtle pun about time travel.  

A knowing nod to string theory?  Is he even fond of

string theory? I’m confidently feeling a negative on 

that idea, given physics on the one hand, psychosis 

in the other.  But I remain curious to this very day.  

And.  Well.  Lately, I have let my thoughts move

ever so gently to the fact once a year or two, I do

attempt to utilize a rubber band or two.  That is, 

in a way that doesn’t cause harm to others, but 

that instead provides that modicum of order and

that sense of inseparability that, and this should 

go  without saying of course, only a rubber band 

might provide.  They do have a pretty unique

purpose.  Or two, it would be argued, if you 

could ask my dear grandmother to chime in 

on the subject.  Whatever, daydreams! ’’ 

What ever, you inferences from references 

and you referenced inferences!  We must 

get back to the story of the summer I 

beat myself up with a bobby pin. I’d 

not meant it to be funny, it just was.

mmmcxxiii

A Dozen Years Of Good Luck.

[Name Removed] says he likes chess but says that I’m a snob.
Realizing later how important it is to not be my mother, but
seeing (in more than just this apple pie) that I am her. Head
in hands, [Not Me] walks her from the Ferry Building to the
Market Starbucks between Fremont and Beale. Yesterday
a bomb was thought found in a Starbucks on Van Ness.
Today they’ve arrested a man. I can see the American
flag flop atop Embarcadero 4 through the whipped
cream. It points toward South as I (and yes,
it’s me; this fact cannot be denied) fly
to Little Rock for a mild headache.

mmmcxxii

Deepwater Champagne.

[Name Removed] says the picture of the first story I ever wrote is 

super sexy.  Which, of course, is super sexy.  And to think I was

just seven, writing a super sexy story about a rooster whose
‘owners’ leave him alone on a farm.  They’ve gone to greener 

pastures.  And I might as well have, I think. Our memories 

are always mostly buried. Or is that just me?  Last night

I dreamt [see below].  All I remember are vague tidbits: 

strewn canvases half-covered with dull media, water-

soluble adhesives, hallways from pre-millennial 

horror and suspense movies, a deep-dusk fog.  

“These overly long halls, their maudlin walls 

half-filled with draped, rustling half-glued 

paper, are each filled with an impene-

trable, charcoal-colored fog.” [Name

Removed] brings me grimly

back (to where, exactly?), 

screams into my head, 

Go Away Dream!

mmmcxxi

From Bolinas to Montego Bay.

I am always writing blooded ink upon a vitreous rock; blown quartz
that’s spit from the attic window like a taut cluster of crystalline hail
and slipped upon after a brief boff on the roof. This is gonna sting. 

Ouch! This is gonna show. Oops! This is by far the best carnival 

side-show of small-town youth, mid-1980’s, hair flown back to the

warehouse in intervals: there’s Bruce in Hangar 1, here’s a big bouf-

fant from a B-52 in Hangar 2 and, catch if ya can, not one, not two,

but an entire Flock of Seagulls in Hangar 5. You’d been reminded, 

of course, that it’s best not to show Edie up until eleven, even among
the jaded columns where the crowd really begins to swell, with its
haps, its gossip columnists and its all kindsa laughs (laughing gas, 
laughing stocks, the laugh riots; it’s a laugh a minute!). Now, we 

all know how it goes with poor Mz. McClurg. And it—well, that was,
after all, an impolite, unjust, untimely and grossly impractical joke. But.

It was one that (and from here on, no one can keep a straight face!) 

has an explosively overloaded punchline—a punchline so overstuffed—
and overfluffed—lest we forget it is a red herring, which—oh my god—

that fluffy carmine tickler—the one that the mistress used for the entire

duration?—on that poor, unnecessary colonel (who was just the butt of 

it all, was he not?)—so that when the actual fluffer (people are barely 

standing they’re so consumed at this point)—when the—actual fluffer 

arrived, and lands center-stage for the real climax it all?  Oh—dear— 

heavens!  Not only is it the “last laugh” (Wink! Wink! Guffaw! Guffaw!!), 

but it’s the one that will go down into the annals of hisstory! 

And of yours. And mine, too, I’m afraid.  And why not? 

I mean, after all, such are the sensations that 

memories, ahem, unclog.  Anyway, anyway, 

afterwards, with all of us lined up like ballerinas 

at the buffet bar (someone blurted out “bananas!”),

boy, did we fork it over, or what? And at the end 

of the day, all of us, comatose, staring at that
shaded tree (like always; we’re in awe of it, that
unswervingly singular home to our countless 

elevens).  Ah, elevens—elevens’re always gettin’ 

into such mischief.  Well, then.  Swim, how?

mmmcxx

The Silver Anchovies.

[Name Removed] says when the chirping of the pom-pom birds rises into a
dithering wall of sea-foam’s when I enter the beach-front gravity (with my
mom all discomfited). Here is the other word that I meant to have been.

If you’re asking instead of a disco ball.  Because I can see it swimming 

in front of her head until there’s a whole bunch of ’em. 

He read that all what a wuvwy wood. It was very intense.  And so it

was decided that if one were to add us all up we’d have finally been like

a great big mixing bowl. Or we’d be at least throwing one (doink!).  Any-

way, I’m an intricate but gaudy decorative one at the very least.  Beg 

pardon?  Hm, can I think on this for a minute?  It’s been so long.  

I’m a...decoration?

[A thousand islands later...] How about we’re all, like, opposites attract? 

Yes!  Like, two hot naïfs in one tiny (intricate) fish-bowl.  Ooh, I 

think I’ve got this now!  I mean, were it not for you, like, how on

earth would I have ever known what a sedative this gift will be?

mmmcxix

luffly 

            ...trucks, cabs, cars...
                  —James Schuyler

i found a car in Cleveland...(!)
no,  no,
[...]it got away....

sniff,  sniffle,
“look, a used matchstick in the cobblecrack!”
(“see?  right next to those faded funnypapers?”) ...

“stick this little card in your wallet” ...
“well...and the cardiovascular...”….

mmmcxviii

twisted-off flat fortune cookie cut-up

during my first charity auction 

i never act, make a peep, raise

a finger but just try to witness 

which leads of course to

daydreams about somber

chores, about needing to 

wash or clobber a draft 

of an odd sonnet written 

on an even day while my 

dead publisher yells at me 

like a nuclear reactor (i just

cannot find that comfortability

with death that everyone else

seems at peace with)

now it’s the weekend
of a bunch of firsts.

am i the only charity

here?  it’s the first first 

of a bunch of stuff that 

will probably come after 

each first a zombie piling

onto the other stiffly-

quickened quackers. 

so what’s it going to 

2 B? i ask myself as

if i am always and

forever in love. 

black-eyed peas and
Middle Eastern sides

which hopefully can

have bacon (can they? 

i am suddenly doubting).

i could fry catfish (cat

fish?  but yes, i am 

from arkansas, so fried

catfish!) with uber

handsome uberteer

by the bay? 

or take my chances

and smash my
kisses over strangers’
modern studios 

(also by the bay)?

i sure hope one

comes ready for

apologies and has
at least as nice a
view as mine.

mmmcxvii

Shelter from the gale force winds.

We had a good reason to seek shelter.
But at that point, the emergency responders
had been long-shadowed onto the sunny-skie’d
horizons. East of the Skerries, too: no outliers, no

“meanies.” Nobody’d predicted any real tough stuff was astir.
Local emergency managers were concentrating as far away
from “the news” as possible, pinning down timelines, gridded
and chaptered by quadrant, of the transport of the “shelter population”

up and into the newly upgraded hotel caverns alongside and directly
abutting the range’s continuous line of cliffs. In the strongest part
of the front, offshore winds were being blown into the blue glass
in front of temporarily amused children (homework blew before their 

noses like maple leaves; with synchronic slaps of fresh sea gull doo doo

popping like paper flattened against each full window). Mostly unpersoned

kitchens, kitchenettes and breakrooms downtown piped out baritoned 

“with occasional sleet,” “some snow off the Peninsula,” and “thought to be

the harshest in this region in a decade” as the same were invariably

noted/unnoted.  Bitterly cold and wet conditions emblazoned 

the tops of cartoon hemispheres like choruses of scrunched-amuck, 

bright-colored aurorae polaris that formed solid embankments (or, 

as one daredevil proclaimed) “simultaneous explosions” all the way to 

The Great Wall of China.  These tidbits were caught in the corners of a 

few eyes that were “always on the aware” (mostly those of mothers).

Offshore, six ferries and other carriers were parked knotted each to the 

next in order to provide possible shelter to residents in both neighboring 

countries (neither population in the nail-biting business, as it were).   A

hurricane was recorded and then disregarded Down Central, and the arrival

of gale force winds. A system of shipments from the frontier somehow 

survived “completely intact,” it would be noted in several sermons dotting 

the rural areas a couple of stiff days later, including a vessel carrying 

plutonyum [sic?].  This got the kids, bundled goofily in god knows what, 

all titters again. The officers will soon be released from duty to seek shelter

themselves. The center of the storm: a public school or other structure, 

parts of the Old Country, or off the coast where everyone had begun 

speaking Portuguese (just because of it being “such a beautiful

language.”)  The talking heads persisted.  Items they meant all to 

consider included, as possible shelter: a bathtub, an inside room, 

a closet, your school or “any embankment at least twice taller than 

yourself,” alongside other repetitions such as cutting snow, snow

caves, Bantry Bay, the death of more than 50 pigs and 17 young

dandies (all on the same farm); ice and snow as far as eyes 

will have it and, as Mawson says, “our own makeshift 

driftwood shelter," which some take to mean 

entire kegged hallways full of gin.

mmmcxvi

a brief account of some of my travels

underneath the subway
is the soul/or so I thought/while
filching soldiers at fort dice 
where ice as cold as

Montreal had a hot heart
nice enough for crust! 
and I didn’t jump
even with my face

in the sand I’d shiver
with delight at
the pelicans of Boca Raton
or an aluminum tequila

I can only say I’ve glunked 
with a punk from Chalk Bluff ,,,
ah, to remember the birches
cleanly swooning

mmmcxv

short list

SFMOMA Eva Hesse last day architecture art 3-D plexiglass
perspectives Macy’s 4 videos going at once something like
“sampling” mostly remember Marilyn Monroe

rainy dim sum at Yank Sing waited 35 minutes with beeper
and waterfall in mall where you can “take a shower”

“Stranger than Paradise” with bad acting but it was
Jarmusch’s first film on student budget or somesuch
with Hungarian emigre changing out of her ugly dress
in an alleyway

4 seasons in one day rainy San Francisco what would be
springtime anywhere else but wintertime here then the
windmills on I-580 like on some other planet and

snowstorm in Yosemite Valley looking for a bear because
they “are a problem” out our window and up to Upper
Yosemite Falls which roars all through the night over
the snoring

sunshine before the second snowfall and a V-8 in the
cafeteria with the chess-players whose purple caps make
them look like they just came back from some
medieval festival

poems by Christian Langworthy read underneath
Lucille Ball calendar the “Passports” episode

panic attack in the Coit Tower elevator

rockslide blocking way out of the park for a while but
breakfast at Wawona Hotel to cut the morning in
half with class suck breath at 6000 feet around
snow-curves “it’s nearly June”

some pride walking San Francisco hills while “tourist”
friends out of breath stop in front of Ritz-Carlton with
cinnamon lollipops so we can take a picture

long limo rolls by we don’t wonder who’s inside