mmmdcclvii

.the takeover.

i remember
my city
she said
as the fog
filled it in

mmmdcclvi

Baloney Halloweenie

Burt never bled.
Or that’s what
he said. Least
ways through
his best bub, Fred.

“Burt doesn’t bleed,”
says Fred through his
grinning, big-chinned
schnoz. “Okay, okay,”
think the rest of us

no goods. Then one day
late October, yeah,
by which I mean All
Hallow’s Evening, Burt
and Fred are all candysacks

in front of the Skeetz house—
the Skeetz bein’ the ones
who twine up their treed-
up yard all tight at dusk
on every single Halloween.

Dumb-ass Fred and coocoo
Burt don’t know this, though,
or leastways don’t remember,
and manage to coast down
the Skeetz driveway and ringading

the doorbell, adding “Tricker Treat!”
The scariest “BOO!” ever came
back at ’em and Fred and
Burt ran like hell right through
the (unknown to them) tight fisherlined

treed-up Skeetz yard. Or partways.
Next thing everybody in the neighborhood—
well, town—knows is Burt’s (Sshpp! Sshpp!
Sshpp!) been sliced into ten
maybe eleven pieces, clean as

a loaf a baloney—only each piece
sprouts a pair a legs until there’s
purtnear a dozen Burts
running like hell clean up to
the edge of town. As for

Fred, however? Well, he bled.
In fact, all they ever found
a him was a couple a cloudy
red splotches in amongst the auburn
leaves of the Skeetz place next morning.

mmmdcclv

De-evolution

A cretin
Creatine
Accretion
Creation

mmmdccliv

The Salience of Schuyler

My cousin
Wasn’t
Talking.
He’d had it with

The strokes:
Brush, breast
and mini.
Marvelette

Knew just what to do.
Without a word
She picked all the
Violets

In the pasture.
“Here, m’dear,” said she.
The euphoria of
Murderous silence that ensued.

mmmdccliii

What Doesn’t Quite Change

is how much i have to say.
all the things i want to tell
you evolve, lovingly, like
a revolver. see? that’s me

trying to be all bullshit. do
you hope? well, i dream. and
what’s more bullshit than a
dream, right? then again, is

psychobabble just another slice
of the baloney? do those who’d
say so have a soul? what matters
about a soul more than our expres

scion of it? the act of deciphering
psycho with all of this babble?

mmmdcclii

He Had a Habit of Abusing the Utility of Logic

We’re all pretty good at doing at least one thing,
but this fetish for nonsense is so distasteful and
leaves me at such a loss (clinging quite literally
to nothing, gasping as if there were any air left).

Oh, Pinocchio, how little did we ever know!?
Meanwhile, at the sermon on the luxury of an
expansive vocabulary, or it could have been on
the expansive vocabulary of luxury, during which

he sat, this much he knew, for the entire duration.
Let the record show that he really did. And yet. The
one and only thing he could remember about it at all
was when the preacher said “Can it like a salmon,

Sweet Lips!” Which was surely the butt of some
awful joke. This is what he must have thought, only
a few days later. Most assuredly. And yet. He could
not afford the luxury of remembering anything but.

The butt of some red-faced, fire-and-brimstone preacher’s
zinger. By which he had neither the courtesy nor the
memory of being offended. He was ever the disappoint
ment. Such an utter disappointment he assuredly was.

mmmdccli

Nature (Selfless) vs. Nurture (Selfish)

If you think that’s twisted, I suggest you
turn around, walk away, and forget every
thing I’ve ever said in your presence. Or
stick around like a sore thumb. What sick

logic nonsense can be. What could you
possibly ever learn from me? You’ve
heard me suggest that I’m a late bloomer
dozens of times, but have you ever seen

one single flower? About my person?
Besides back in the days of my floral
bouquets, I mean. I’d arrive triumphant,
bearing a tangled wad of decapitated

blooms, spending the next hour or
two arranging them in various vases
for the walls and for our desks and for
the living room table (which I’d almost

immediately transfer to the floor beside
the couch when on went the teevee), all
ballooned up until bowled over by pride
over each and every vibrant floral fricassee.

mmmdccl

Poverty Is a Total Idiot, and a Dreamscape
Filled with Nostalgia When It Comes Full Circle

Are you ready for a bit of a double feature? 

I feel like blowing myself up inside of a
pie in the sky sort of thing. Peach, pecan
or my mother’s apple, it wouldn’t matter
to me as long as it was one of those three.
Or a cobbler. Cobblers aren’t pies in the
sky, though. Shut up about the diabetic
fact that my favorite dessert is blackberry

cobbler, about twenty-five minutes or so
out of the oven, with Breyer’s vanilla
bean ice cream that has been sitting out
side of its frozen home for about fifteen. I
don’t know where my mind wants to go.
Rolling Stone’s interview, “Enjambments,”
slices and dices the interview process until I
quit reading, get up and leave the shed, this
hotbox, my coffin of mass destruction. Then I 

slid into the alley, and trumpeted. I trumpeted
just fine, please remember that, was it forty
years ago today, nearly? It was a guess but
if I got it right what would my prize be. A
beebee? A bee sting? Be careful not to hit
the notes all staccato, Mister Davis, the
director, would say. It was still the age of
smooth and this was my very own solo in
the marching band’s performance of On
Broadway. Then again, don’t take them
too seriously, the notes. I always did.
But it wasn’t for trying. My goal was to
sound like honey. And while everyone
else in the band was standing stock still,
holding out beneath that bird’s eye fermata
while I got my little twenty second cadenza,
my improvisatory spotlight, how was I to know
what to do or how to handle such things? I just
wung it, as they say. And sure enough, my takata-
takata was all Sugar Lips rather than Chuck Man
gione. The syncopated bubbles I blew into the dull
silver mouthpiece slid into a trumpet full of honey.
That’s the way I remember it. And the applause.
Mister Davis was always trying to get me to re
lease the spit, the snot with which the instrument
would fill so to the brim that by the end of the
solo I’d be nearly drowning in it, chugging big
gulps of it until I nearly gagged every time I
took one of those super-swift inhalations near
the end of the cadenza. But somehow I came
to, cleared my lungs all professional-like, did
a quick puff into the mouthpiece while oh so
surreptitiously holding the water key and then
squeak those last few routs like a coloratura flit
ting away in the upper registers and then I would
finished off the ditty with an extended note held
with such extreme duration, the vibrato smooth
ing out into a whisper, almost, but the parents in
the bleachers where so quiet they could hear it go
on and on, not a one of them taking a breath either,
Eddie the tuba player surely was about to pass clean
out, and then the bird’s eye was gone, my solo was
finished, and it was hep right hep right (applause,
applause, applause, if lucky) into whichever forma
tion for whatever song came next. Probably Thank
God I’m a Country Boy, in which I’d switch instrum
ents because it was a percussion interlude in which
I’d have a duet on the glockenspiel with Amy, the
conductor, who was our class valedictorian and
played the piano much better than I did, a fact
of which I was always reminded as she’d sub for
the organist at our church sixty percent of the
time for those three or four years before high
school graduation (aka, The Great Escape).
She played the much sexier marimba. Occ
asionally it’d be the other way around. We
were easy like that, me and Amy. Either way,
it was during those half-time performances
that I’d, every once in a while, feel like a
virtuoso of some sort, rather than another
snotty nerd wannabe in smalltown Arkansas.
We won the regional championship that year.
I got some sort of honorable mention for my
mucked up, drowned out solo. “They say
the neon lights are bright on Broadway.”
I’d find out sooner or later, I thought,
sometimes while emptying my brass
horn of whatever came from me that
was dead set on drowning it. And it’s
true, I did. Find Broadway, that is. In
fact, I’ve done quite a lot since then.
But I haven’t picked up a trumpet or
banged on a glockenspiel or a marimba
or a piano in something like 20 years.
Performances are perhaps meant to
elicit progressive thought of some
kind or another, but more than any
thing they’re meant to be enjoyed.
This one comes to you directly
from the hotbox. With me an
endless feedback loop atop
a stuffy room’s broken bed.
Whatever you do, don’t bring
up the road not taken. And
by all means have yourself
self a most pleasant and
a most peaceful night.

mmmdccxlix

Bigger Digits

Inches pinches length and girth
Circumference and height at birth

Job job job job job job
Bite bite bite bite bite
Ages wages pages cages
Cages pages ages wages
Piano thumbs piano fingers
Wingspan of my hand
Addition not subtraction
No division whatsoever
Multiplication sounds the best
Exaggeration Hyperbolic
Twins Triplets Quadruplets etc.
Inches pinches length and girth
Circumference and length at birth
Innuendo
Magnifico!
Unmoored from reality
Age before beauty

mmmdccxlviii

My Friends, the Poultice

What a difference a day can make:
a year, a letter, a home, a lifetime?

Please allow me to introduce not
myself. Hey, would you like to

meet my friends, the poets? I
might should warn you, it’s a

crowded room, this party that’s
filled with me and my friends.

Hey. Hi. How are you? I’m Del.
We’ve never met, but do you

read? We might’ve. But probably
not. Most likely. I was just on my

way to a party. It’ll be packed,
but you’ll be in good company,

I swear. It’s just up the hill a ways.
No, turn left. What I mean is you’re

welcome, you’re more than welcome,
you might even enjoy it, you’re most

definitely invited. Hi, I’m Del. You
seem a bit familiar, we might have

met a time or two. I know you don’t
know me, but I’d very much like to

invite you to a party with a bunch
of my good friends. Most all of

which are pretty swell, great friends,
really, some of them, a bit too famil

iar at times, but that’s friends and 

family for you, right? Oh, hey. Come

on in. This is my place. Turns out I’m
having a party at the moment. But you

are more than welcome to join. You’re
always welcome. Oh, don’t you worry.

And thank you. Thank you so much.
Come on inside, it’s my place, we’re

here. It’s not much, my place, a bit
small, sure, but the party is really

happening, you’ll see. Well, hello
there. It’s great to see you. Let’s

just leave the door open a bit, as
it’s pretty stuffy. And what a fun

gathering this is turning out to be.
I’d like to introduce you to my pals,

the poems. Feel free to come in and
say a word or two. Stay a while,

won’t you? Oh, look, you made it!
Come on in. I hope you stay the after

noon. But watch your step as there
is a bit of a crowd today. Please,

allow me to introduce you. Man,
if these walls could talk. Make

yourself comfortable here near
the bookshelf, a place so full of

friends you just won’t know what
to do with them. Make yourself at

home, comfy as you may. While here,
revel in whatever you happen to do.

mmmdccxlvii

Hey, Everyone, My Main Job Is Poet!

Don’t look to me to say anything of any
importance here, though. Or anywhere
else, for that matter. But I do think my
self important enough for all of us put

together, surely. I do other things, too.
One thing I used to do quite a bit was
bring income. My hopeful aspiration
is to do a bit more of that, and soon

(please!?). In fact, I’m a bit in a hurry at
the moment, just taking a little break from
sending out resumes to spin a few short lines.
Because times are tough, as they say, folks.

Although, in truth, they don’t look too
shabby from this perspective. I mean,
there are quite a few shabby things, sure,
but in this realm, things look pretty swell.

mmmdccxlvi

Stan of the Glistening Winds

          I’d like to introduce you to a sense of joy
                                   —Edmund Berrigan

Dear Edmund,

were you not in The Chronicles of Narnia,
like, and not as the good guy? That’s a
joke. And don’t you go by Eddie normally?
That not a creepy juxtaposition or anything.

Sorry. My name is Del and I would like
to introduce you to some asteroids, even
though I almost stole that line from you
and have spent the last twenty-five minutes

trying to find it the first time because
I could have sworn I’d read it earlier
in this mustard-colored tome (tbh,
it could be my mustard, unless mus

turd generically belongs to us all) (btw,
this happens on occasion, I’ll pick up
one of the books I’ve been reading
and the bookmark is dozens of pages

behind where I am; I’ll often read each
of those pages thinking I’m doing so
for the very first time, which says a
thing or two about myself that gives me

mixed feelings). Dear Eddie, we may
have met one or two times before, but
you don’t know me. Yet as I begin to
get to know you better, it becomes clear

that you’ve had a few profound experien
ces, and I’m here to tell you. Boy, am
I here to tell you. As far as profundity
goes, I guess that what I’m attempting

to express is gratitude. To you and yours.
Your words have me wishing to know you
even more while also making me feel much
better about not knowing much of of anything.

Also, there are fantasies of substitute families,
being misplaced at birth, substituting the pages
of a book for people that are either long gone or
never existed, which sounds more like an illness,

that one. But kindred spirits is what I’d stress,
express; a tenacity, a pensive and whiplash bold
ness, a vulnerability, a slightly more than vague
and hopeful understanding, a tense and tenuous

but very real relationship to reality, and so much
more. All of which has me up early to send a big
bunch of thanks, a gratitude from deep within,
from places that I either didn’t know ever

existed, or else thought I’d lost forever. I mean
to say that I’m thankful for you, Eddie, your
family, mustard (in general), all of the Asteroids
(I’m so glad you introduced me to them), for this

Monday morning case of I feel ya, man.  That is,
in essence, all I’m trying to do here. Not to be
creepy, I hope—there’s already too much of that 

going around these days, but just to celebrate, in

virtual camaraderie. That’s pretty much it. Let’s
do this again sometimes, perhaps? Which, I guess
also means please keep writing and sharing. And
keep your worries at bay and your joy as close

to your heart as you can carry it. Yep. I think
that’s about it. I’ll be signing off now.

peas&lub,
dx

mmmdccxlv

Try More Dancefloor

          Dance halls bang the pavement till dawn...
                                                 —Kevin Killian

is what I didn’t do last night. Regrettably. This 

morning is what I might as well be saying. Have 

been saying. Time goes by. So slowly. While read
ing Kevin’s book in all of the 101 California

elevators. Time goes by so slowly for those who
wait. But for what? If I speak of the various in
sects crawling around in my periphery, would I
simply sound nihilistic? Fine. Kafka off! The grid

work of pavement that surely exists on the other
side of this bolted door my ear’s clung to all night 

is a map that sings to my synapses until they

collapse and all of my organs unfold to cover my

decrepit desk like the fanciest of tablecloths. Which,
look, has explicit instructions inscribed rather indel
icately upon its dingy fabric re: how to astral project
to all Frisco discos still aflicker, be they present or past.

mmmdccxliv

War Games

So much happens in the world that I am not
privy to. Once, and this was during peacetime,
you spoke to me of a game of hide the warhead.
They were everywhere, you said. Except where
you might expect one to be. And not that difficult

to find. A human metropolitan Philip K. Dick land
scape was just one Where’s Waldo set in which the
where, with its pointed head painted red, had imaginary
glasses from one angle that were a lucid optical illusion

from another. How you taunted as you taught with a glint
of this could most definitely be true in your eye. Mere man
or limp-fisted ape of a scam? A cocky concoction in which,
with your long-striding and very particular off-kilter gait

one critic might find a brilliant performance of intellectual
introvert cum zozo that in retrospect seems much less drama
and more twisted and skewed by the truth of an impossibly-
storied past, unfathomable until now. Now, when I’d give gold

or, having none of that, my very all for those neo-noir maps you
must have carried with you in that trench coat you’d never be seen
without, your San Franachronism, I called it, as a tiny fracture cut into
the corner of your lip, the side of your face that barely moved, and yet

for a second or two slid like a rut into the half-crook of a smile, even as
the rest of your face went slack-jaw—as if only you were in on the world’s
most sinister joke in which the clueless rest of us would’ve by now evaporated
ten thousand times into the mushroom-shaped punch line of anti-matter laughter.

mmmdccxliii

Spot the Words

brought to you by Spotify.
In truth, just tell the world
you’re doing something
physical. Move your body

back and forth, for example. As
opposed to the words in this book
of poetry: which, while reading,
had me looking up ‘tourmaline’

and, would you believe it, ‘argot’ –
is this why I write? One of many
reasons. It must be Halloween, what
with all of the LVCRFT in my release

radar playlist. How they write all year just
for this short season. To be on a dancefloor
right this moment, caught in the middle of a
hot bop between MFUM MFUM and Schlut.

mmmdccxlii

Folded Brain Sandwich

My head has a whole lot to say to me
lately and it does so, quickly, like by a

(more) silent version of pressured speech—

a phrase I just learned from my psychiatrist; 

apparently it’s an affliction that I have. 

Which, like Diane suggests, is nice to know, 

nice to put a name to, but it’s just another 

problem to be fixed. Just another malady to

constantly counteract. Another battle to counter

attack. One more thing that stands as impediment
against my getting myself across correctly. And
I don’t have to tell you how much of an obstacle

that can be. Is. Oh, woe is me. I’m hungry.
My head hurts. And nobody knows who I am.

mmmdccxli

Team Oval

This is a kvetch about a
certain funk ump any. A
word of advice: Ovoid ’em
at all costs. They’s (y)uck!
Truss tape owe it & heed.
Sizzly. 

Piece, lub, 

oh verandah haute.

mmmdccxl

P.S. Much as I still love Depeche Mode, the closest
      I have ever gotten to being goth is right now.

She held out her hand for 

the skin graft. Or that’s what
Batz called it. “Time to get
branded,” he said. Everything

seemed copacetic. Another
word we overused in college.
Like anything Monty Python
or Benny Hill. Everything’s

either a matter of taste, of
opinion (ignorant or educated),
of perspective. She looks at the
wingspan between her right thumb

and forefinger now and thinks
about the gloomy affair she had
with Batz, about suicide, about Missy
Misdemeanor Elliott (a reprieve)—

the circle never quite closes around the
“X,” her own cross to bear, she thinks,
which makes her chuckle a bit. A titter
that tastes like distance. And Jägermeister.

mmmdccxxxix

One Farmer’s Firm Handshake

He held out his hand
for a kiss. What tran
spired was more a blow
than he’d ever beheld.

So not true. I mean
he’d beheld a lot of
blows. Even a few
kisses. But the man

on the other side of
the fence grabbed it
like he’d never let
go. Making the split

second seem like an
eternity. It was hay-
baling season, so that
eternity was a hot one.

Once released back to
its typical limpness,
the hand just sort of
hovered there, arcing

over the barbed wire
of the new neighbor’s
pasture. Wendell was
not even able to con

template that heat, which
emanated from the entire
surface where his palm
and fingers had been

squinched practically
bloodless by the new
neighbor, as if from
first being splayed out

beneath a high noon’s
sun catching every pos
sible ray of it, but then
spreading impossibly

throughout all of his
innards from there,
almost like when he
was coaxed into taking

a colorful pill that was
practically candy-looking 

from a shot glass full of

them that one unforget

table night during the
one semester he attended
university, before coming
back home to tend to his

dad and the farm. When
that warmth got right into
his heart, Wendell realized
his new neighbor bore

a pretty significant
resemblance to Jackie
Gleason. Wendell
hadn’t paid hide nor

hair of attention to Mr.
Gleason’s profile before,
really. But he did remember
the loud laugh that would

have surely awoken
most every soul in the
entire countryside who’d
already been asnooze, or

at the very least startle
the daylights out of
those who were at
least halfway there.

Which would be
most of the pop
ulation of this
countryside,

given its cit
izens’ direct
correlation to
cattle and chick

ens and such.
Early birds all,
awakened by
the guffaws of

Wendell’s long
gone dad every
single time he’d
hear Gleason belt

out (in quite a
colorful black
and white), Pow,
right in the kisser!

mmmdccxxxviii

Cheap Renovations

     Happiness is never overrated.
                          —Justin Chin

In trying to make my room more habitable,
I spill a bunch of milk chocolate—you know,
the kind you squeeze into milk to turn it into
chocolate milk—behind what I call my book

shelf, which actually does harbor a few books,
but also has boxes of tiny items that have come
from electronics such as computers and phones
(also one folded keyboard protector), it has a

stack of clean clothes of various types, it has
all of my coffee and lemonade fixings, and it
has a little tub filled with things I use to clean
things like spilt milk chocolate, like Mr. Clean,

like a can of air, like a spray bottle of water, and
for reasons that are not logical (exactly) it has a
plastic container filled with colorful blank notes
(no sticky on these notes, they are not Post-Its),

as well as a spray can of Glade freshener, which
I think advertises that it smells like lavender, and
which I’ve used quite a bit lately, mostly because
I’ve been doing my laundry in my tiny little place,

and the odors that come from that tedious process
are quite hideous to me. This tub sits next to my
dustbin and my horsehair brush, which I use as a
broom, and all of that fits in one of the six cubes

that this “bookshelf” has within its plywood
architecture. On top of this shelf are the books
that I’ve read, the ones I’ve read since I lost all
of the books I read up until a certain point.

Which was basically sometime shortly after
I turned fifty. There aren’t very many, but
the width of the the books on this ‘bookshelf’
is growing, and eventually, maybe, I’ll have

another large bookshelf, maybe even two 

or three like I did before, that housed all of 
the poetry books alone that I had and had
read at least once at one time or another.

Well, I’ve pulled this shelf away from the wall
where last night I halfway cleaned up the milk
chocolate. Guess what I have to do this morning?
Yep, clean up the rest of the mess of milk chocolate

that is still splotched next to my bookshelf and desk,
against the eastern wall of my little hotbox, which is
what I call the little place I live. But what am I doing
now? Well, I’m stalling by reading poetry, of course.