mmmdcccliv

Chips

I’ve had a few chips on
my shoulders over the
years, but I have never
really had any stifling

issues with authority (pol
itics aside). Perhaps this is
in no small part due to a
few aspects of my childhood:

e.g., having a stern (dominat
ing) cop for a father, a Baptist
upbringing in the rural South,
was too often accused of being

teacher’s pet, I’m a Gemini, etc.)?
But I do seem to have a few prob
lems following the rules or adher
ing to basic social structures.

Often one to buck the system
or look at common things in
such ways that those around
me never quite seem to get.

But who knows, really? What’s
more interesting to me are
these conflicting ways of
existing – authority: fine;

rules: not so fine. Who’s to say
why I am the way that I am?
It could have gone either way,
I suppose. Not all such discrep

ancies can just be glossed over
and excused by the fact that,
say, I’m a Gemini, surely? But
wouldn’t it be nice if they could?

mmmdcccliii

Things Are Looking Up

I have it on authority
that things are looking
up. For me. Well, the
vector is definitely in

positive territory, with
the numbers growing
(I’m halfway through
my fifty-fifth year, so

there’s no arguing with
that, no negotiating
with it, either). So I
guess that’s pretty good

authority. Things are
certainly looking up.
What else might be
coming my way? I won

der. I’ve no real way of
ascertaining, try as I might
to brighten my own horizon.
And so...I keep looking up.

mmmdccclii

Painful Outlook

I have it on authority
there are members of
the family addicted to
the opioid crisis. Well

tequila. An ardent re
spite from the sanitor
ium. Are black widows
the ones with the red

hourglass? Or is it a
violin? The ones with
abusive dispositions
stepped forward.

Liquid nicotine. Red
Man with Juicy Fruit.

mmmdcccli

Exigencies

He has a snappy way
of talking about death.
“Had,” came a correction
intent on bringing us all

back into the moment.
Or healing it while all
owing for the feeling
of it. The security team

held rigid. Some could
barely make out the herd
that lumbered across Para
dise Road in the distance,

just beyond the blowing
snow. Elk? No, elephant.

mmmdcccl

Should We Call This an Emergency?

Stand up straight! Hands to your sides!
‘All we need now is a ten hut,’ thought

Sebastian. He was graceful, and the
eyes of several in the unit were on his

unit. Those eyes included the eyes of
Carson, whose hands would normally

be in his pockets. ‘Alright, you sweet
potatoes!’ shouted the sergeant, who

was glowing with charge, ‘let me see
those digits.’ All present presented

all they had. Except Skeezer. But he
was half blown, had been for months,

and nobody questioned it, nor seemed
to even care. ‘Take it easy on the

manicures there Fitzhauser.’ This was
a game that would go on all morning.

When Carson’s section was dismissed,
he slowly put his hands deep into his

pockets and stood for a minute in the
spot he’d been for what seemed like

hours by now. Then he swiveled as
slow a swivel as his tronic boots

allowed, until he was 180, then
with the slightly fizzly and upper

registered ‘whoosh!’ Sebastian
watched his backside as his body

rose a bit above the dust, and he
didn’t unlock his focus until Carson

had disappeared in the distance,
which was quite a while, as Carson

kept his skids on a speed about that
of an old school, backwoods airport’s

long flat escalator. The one you’d see
your mother arrive on, twice a year,

never bothering to lift a foot to make
any extra speed either coming or going.

Or where you might meet your lover of
seventeen years just at the crook between

Christmas and New Year’s once every two
or three of the same seventeen. Sebastian

lifted a digit or two in salute to Carson and,
in doing so, felt the rush warm up through

his legs and hips and up into his head, which
once reached, his eyeballs did a little jittery

but relaxing little flutter. This flutter would
log the vision of Carson’s disappearing back

side, archiving it for later, just as it had every
morning for nearly two and a half years. ‘Tuck

your pants in, rookie!’ came the Sergeant,
glaring Sebastian down, or perhaps the more

appropriate way to describe the look was that
he was screwing holes right through him.

Sebastian just winked at him and curled up
his hands into little fists like a kid ready to eat.

mmmdcccxlix

He’s But a Whimper of Who He Once Was

“We’re working our way up to number one
in Billboard’s list of ‘The Ten Greatest Fears

of All Time.’ It’s a hot one hundred degrees
Fahrenheit out in the city today. And on a

more serious note, isn’t it a damned shame
what happened to Kasey Kasem?” And I con

cur, knowing that’s why I haven’t even gone
home for a funeral, at least not my little bro

ther’s a decade or so ago. And when Mom
goes, I’m pretty sure I’ll do the same – which

is celebrate her life in my own private way,
here in this city to which I ran away from home,

albeit circuitously, arriving over twenty-two
years ago. And, sure, I despise the family

politics and bickering and greed that shine
brightest in families around funeral times.

That’s a beacon I’d truly rather just avoid.
But is that the real reason I wouldn’t go back?

Haven’t in over a dozen years now? I did get
my siblings (well, Larry afforded his own, but

Ginger and Gary I treated) tickets to come visit
me after Gary’s first scare (or was it his second?).

That few days together, the four of us, were divine.
Just the best. A couple of years later, no less, and

Gary passed, asphyxiated in his truck after passing
out in it late one evening after he’d said he was taking

off. The story goes that he was obviously too drunk to
drive and so my Uncle (or cousin, or some relative, he

had been spending his time at Aunt Patty’s) was having
none of that, connived the keys from him as each of the

adult family members made their ways to wherever work
was with all of the kids, who were no doubt dropped off

at school. And so Gary, in the truck with no keys, rolled
up the windows, feel asleep or passed out, and was gone

by the time folks started arriving back home from their
various jobs and schools. Maybe I’ve embellished this a

bit, but the truth is, I wasn’t there, I don’t know what
happened, all I know is that he left this life, I was very

sad, knowing that one of my little brothers was gone so
soon, but also happier than ever that I had gotten us all

together in San Francisco for those few days a couple of
years previous. At that time I certainly didn’t have the

means to get back to Arkansas. That was the beginning
of what I hope I’m approaching the end of, the most

difficult years of my life, which included a surprise dis
appearance by a partner of 10 years, a long bout with a

grief so huge that it could be characterized as an overly
long illness, which was followed by a great chasm of

depression (or a continuation of the overly long illness),
an eviction, two years of homelessness, six months of

which I was working while literally living in the streets,
the other year and a half of which I lived in a total of

two shelters and, with help from a therapist, just to get
a roof over my head, a brief stint at a rehab facility be

fore finally transitioning back into the shelter (the only
one in which one might stay within nearly 24/7—except

for the one day in the month when pest control came)
I had left, thinking I had a place to stay and a job (the

job remained, the place to stay retracted their offer
when they found out I’d been evicted – and this was

an SRO – hence the necessity of living on the streets
while holding the cubicle job best I could for the duration

of its six month contract), and then, FINALLY, transitioning
into a home of my own after I had been unhoused almost

two full years, in the place where I now type this up to
toss into the wind in hopes it will get to you. I’ve been

four years here, but I should be in a better place soon.
There are plans in the works, and hopefully a domino

effect of good news that will follow after that happens.
But now I’m sitting here in a bit of limbo, a limbo in

which I’ve become so familiar, knowing how to sort of
ease time along to keep myself from going totally stir

crazy. This limbo was brought about by a sprained knee.
And is it ever painful. I only sprained it a week ago, though,

cleaning my apartment of all things. Oh, the stuff I’m leaving
out of the story which would make this sound so horribly tragic,

but indeed it’s such a normal story these days. And I’m one of
the lucky ones, thus far, which is hard for me to fathom, as the

obstacles have been so overwhelming in getting to here from
there that I find myself amazed all to often, wondering how

anyone does this, and thankful for what I do have, what I have
had, hat I will have, etc. It seems almost as if this took a wrong

turn somewhere, but actually, now that I look back up at where
we’ve been thus far, this is probably where I meant to go tonight.

And I just skimmed the surface, like I said. Because who’dbelieve
me? Because it’s just too depressing or tragic-sounding? I don’t

know for sure. This is more than I usually tell, these days. And
you’re pretty much all I have to share with at present and, well,

for quite some time now. But one thing seems finally all but
certain, and that is that my near decade in the trenches is

soon coming to a close. It refuses to go swiftly and silently,
continuing to create these annoying obstacles, even at this

late date, but I assure you, unless something so unexpected
that it doesn’t bear even being mentioned, I’m about to be

back in more familiar and more economically and socially
feasible territory again. And while I’ve always held onto

such hope, and perhaps have painted such a picture once
or twice before over the years, this time... This time....

I mean, sure, I’m a bit melancholy here by myself on a
Saturday night. And I’ve come out surely, as objective

as someone like me can be, a better person through this
hellish set of trials and ridiculousness. And I have a few

things to show for it. But just you wait. I wonder though,
who’ll be around when I do finally make my way back to

that old familiar life. Or will it be familiar? And will any of
you even recognize me? If not, it’s probably for the better.

Who’s lucky enough for such a fresh start again, anyway?

mmmdcccxlviii

          I just like living,
          only like living.
                   —John Ashbery

I’d think he thinks there was a
joke he planted about reading
these lines, his words, after he
was gone. But then, I really do

not know. I’ve grown quite ac
quainted with what I think of as
his humor, which is generally,
or more often than not, pretty

bleak. A funny thing, certainly,
to be able, with some feeling of
authority, to think of him at all 

as if I have even a general idea of

what he was doing all along, with
the sidewalks of words he built as
he walked. Sometimes someone
else might pour a bit of concrete

or lay down a square set of nailed
planks into which to pour this salad.
I project this upon the man who wrote
a grand sum of these sidewalk collages

from which I glean clear stories seen
by endless angles, or become hard-set
on how absolute the narrative of some
of these “stories.” You might think him

my favorite poet, but he’s not. Frank’s
snacks, Jimmy’s elevated lines of obser
vation, these are more my cups of tea.
Although I don’t drink tea much, unless

chilled with Splenda. Lately, I’ve wanted
to put in some lemon juice, so I just this
moment took a break to ask Alexa to add
lemon juice to my grocery list. Maybe I

should switch it to fresh lemons, but there’s
no need to involve my new roommate in
that idea. I need to take an inventory of
what books of his I have yet to read. Even

as I poopoo his my-cup-of-tea worthiness,
each next time I read one of his poems or
one of his books, it gets better. And there
are hardly that many memorable poems

(though endless memorable moments).
That’s heresy to no small few of you, or of
those who read him anywhere near as much
as I do. But what I was going to say is that

even if for me his tomes don’t hold what I
would consider my favorite poems of those
of his spare and problematic ‘school’ – which
of course I’ll admit has had a most profound

and expansive—over any other group’s or school’s
or cotery’s—influence on ME and what I present
in this multitude of virtual pages, and elsewhere—
save for perhaps my own personal poem-swap

compatriots (I so miss you all, from my elders
in Jamaica Plain to my colleagues on those many
weekend mornings at Anza Vista to the swaps at
my short-term bachelor pad on Bush to the decade

plus of regular swap-meets up the block and catty-
corner at Pine and Mason—and how could I mean
these many important diversions to not only divert
from what I’m trying to say but muddy it up, this

truth I feel I am divulging, to cast doubt on it, but
that would be silly of me to do, wouldn’t it? Esp
ecially since John Ashbery’s bricolage of stanzas
and sentences DO, surely, more than anyone or

anything else, catalyze so many of these that I
fold up into little paper airplanes for which to
bombard you with such regularity. Which is a
bit of a sullen if not just downright offensive

metaphor, I suppose. My pieces as airplanes
that crash somewhere onto your body. Enough
so that you can feel it, so that it makes an impact.
There would be casualties, then. Let’s make a pact

that those who don’t survive the impact are just meta-
metaphors, like the worst lines that I happen to write.
Don’t kill them all off, please. Well, how nice it would 

be to have given you a little of me or at least some 

thing that is somewhat real, that you might keep— 

if for no other reason than to remember me by.

mmmdcccxlvii

I Hate to Disappoint

Essentially, this begins around the
expected ending of the middle period,
although expectations are a truly rough
head screw (just between me and you)—

but what am I even saying? Give me some
one who is not at most moments, with little
respite, aware of this beast we ride from the start
and, yes, to the finish, in this, surely our singular—

our one and only—existence. Blah, blah, blah. While
wearing our costumes of today, beigey taupe, and to
morrow (and tomorrow and tomorrow), taupe-tinted beige.
And it’s once again from the start, back to the middle and

around again. I’m gonna be there ’til the end. And then
once more, but all shifty-like: I’m gonna do this once again.
Hope is hope, folks, and let me tell you now kiddos that 100%
is never enough. What I meant to say is I hate being disappointed.

mmmdcccxlvi

Ode to the Joy of Youth and Insects

So tired of the
sleepless fumes of
nearly breaking legs

off of dreams (of cock
roaches casting their
spells like Hogwarts) of

Kafka, until nothing but
the lack of any pain re
mains. Not even a screw

ball bug squirming in the
mutated hollows of an
accumulation of antiquated

novellas gives me the slight
est itch any more. I listen to
the stragglers left scratching

through the handwritten
memoranda left within
gnarled miniature ledgers,

all of them cowards like
me, writhing around within
this faded pink comfortor,

coddling its soft, poofed-out
curls while worrying about
microbes and cryptology.

Us poor things! All of us
so confident in impen
ding national incidents.

We settle, sketchy and un
comfortable, into the doom
as if it were just another day,

all but insignificant; at the
dawn, perhaps, of yet
another global pain crisis.

mmmdcccxlv

All Dreamers Are Queer

You really should have seen them
scurrying about from one research
office to the next, etc. Kinsey wanted
everyone to only be studying the

bumps under each of the sleeping
subject’s slippery eyelids. He’d say
bi. But heresy arrives regularly wear
ing wildly varying disguises. Man

Ray sleeps with Basquiat, and so
on. Herbert Hoover and the rest
of the vacuum cleaner clan build
their Hoover Dam. All of the

regular beavers, as well as the
Leave It to Beavers, build beaver
dams. And the boys and girls
would not stop singing that

repulsive lullaby—the one
about how much wood the
overachieving woodchucks
upchucked on any given—

it was all enough to damn
even the grooviest night
mares. Chuck, the head
woodchuck back in those

days, always insisted upon
telling a different story.
It was just that dopey song
that always stayed the same.

mmmdcccxliv

How to Remember the Name of This Story?

After all that has happened since
then? It’s impossible to fake the
kit, much less the kaboodle, when
there’s such a distinct lack of noodle.

mmmdcccxliii

Going Long

He went sifting through
the foot fetish section
when he came across
a game-changer: football empowerment!

All the carpets on floor forty-four
shifted to the din of astroturf on
that day. No winy hues, no Blue
Boy blues, just the iridescent

color of plastic grass. So it was
that this kid whose game had so
whiplashingly changed that he 
fell flat on his ass. But he picked

himself back up, piece by piece,
is how he'd later describe how it
seemed, ran down forty-five flights
and without a moment for a first

thought on these or any other
matters, he purchased himself a
subway token and then immediately
hired himself an official spokesperson.

mmmdcccxlii

Hospital, Hospital, Make Me a Cure

And it did, of course. So our now
healthy hero bought himself a long
round of golf. And, as these things gen
erally go, it was quite an expensive round.

Our hero nevertheless made a valiant attempt
to remain upbeat about his health and the
round of golf. This was a celebration, after all.
However, things were really starting to get to

him. The course was too coarse for his taste,
for example (but I’d suggest that you trust a
narrator when he states that our hero never
tasted that great, anyway—so it was what it

was). Also, on this particular day, all of the golf
carts had been replaced with horses, which were
to be saddled by each sad golfer. And our dear
hero had never been to one cinema in the great

Southeast for to see a double feature Spaghetti
Western, much less a single feature Western of
any cuisine or flavor whatsoever. So no golf
carts and no saddled subsitutes. “Things are

getting a bit sticky for a celebration,” thinks
our hero. And that is just when it was found
that every golfer’s balls were at least a little
bit mildewed; and none moreso than our hero’s

poor balls, which were irreversibly gunked up
with green and gray muck. “What rotten luck,”
thought our man of the hour, the earlier pekid
but now perfectly healthy yet quite distraught

once-upon-a-hero. Who was now, it would
appear, making his way swiftly toward an exist
ential crisis of some potentially invaluable
relevance to his erstwhile ordinary life. And

so it was. A gamechanger for a real live human
being was most certainly about to transpire.

mmmdcccxli

The Music I Didn’t Got Me Here Anyway

The misadventures of my youth
included tons of melodic ad
venture: brass mouthpieces
freezing my lips off, fingering
chopped and screwed Scott
Joplin chords in record-break
ing slow motion, faring Ol’ Joe
Clark farewell in chamber chorale
on many an evening or afternoon,
sometimes with disappointingly tiny
audiences and other times with the
arrhythmically tachycardic panic attack
anxiety and sweat that comes when you’re
on a tiny stage with four or five other tiny
humans amid throngs of mostly drunken
festival attendees with nothing for ammo
or armor but your vocal cords. I took piano
lessons that were paid for in hard-earned
fashion and almost never practiced for any
of these weekly outings (these lessons took

place mostly at the mid-sized town of Fort

Smith, Arkansas until I graduated from high
school in an even tinier enclave in a sprawling
bit of Ozark rural-suburbia that existed a couple
dozen miles away from Fort Smith, and then for 

three more years at a gem of a liberal arts under

graduate school a few miles from Little Rock, where

I also took a couple of years of voice lessons!).
As I let this sink in to my own little head, allow
me if you will to pose as an educated guess that
during all of this time the average amount of weekly
practice these fingers had each week between those
piano and voice lessons: cumulatively around fifteen
minutes. Plus, I sang for and with puppets that I some
times also puppetteered, performed in many church
musicals, tooted a trumpet and tinkled the ivories a
bit for a jazz band, played xylophone for an award-
winning half-time performance at no less than two
dozen high school football games for a percussive
interlude that was a version of (for real!) John Denver’s
Thank God, I’m a Country Boy which took place be
tween our marching band's performance of the theme
from Rocky and our grand finale, a version of On
Broadway, during which I had an improvised
fluid high-pitched swift-paced (ta-ta-ka ta-ta-ka)
brass solo. I was even the senior high school band
president. It was my junior year. Somehow, musically,
I’d go on. Three years of choir tours at college, hitting
all the “larger communities” of Arkansas (and some that
were even a wee bit beyond). I played Reveille while
marching for a couple of miles in a Veteran’s Day parade.
I did organ and grand piano solos, vocal solos, duets or
special choir performances, usually when the plates were
being passed around, at the Baptist church in which I
practically grew up. I sang a duet of Bette Midler’s
The Rose with another strong-willed and lovely
redhead whose name was Kim Burton at a Valentine’s
Day Banquet when I was thirteen or fourteen. On
several occasions, I’d be the adult choir director
and/or the Sunday morning service music director
at my church, also as a teenager. I played the piano
or sometimes the organ or sometimes sang at more
weddings and funerals than I can count, again, mostly
all as a teen (this I sometimes think is the primary
reason I began to slowly exit the musical performance
scene that had always played such a large part of my
young life). I played Nathan Detroit in pretty swell
community theatre production of Guy & Dolls the
summer I turned twenty-one, and a few years later,
in the early 1990s, I pretended to be Elvis (more hip-
shaking than singing, this gig) in front of hundreds
of people in Bowling Green, Ohio during a summer
theatrical production that I thoroughly enjoyed.
I wrote my master’s thesis on a postmodern
opera director of some renown. And I was
piano accompanist for a 2nd grade version
of The Nutcracker and (clearly the most
amazing—and most amazingly impossible—
accomplishment) was two of the four-handed
piano accompaniment to many of Brahms’
Liebeslieder Waltzes night after night and day
after day for the Hendrix College Choir’s spring
tour during my junior year in attendance there.
So you first might imagine how in the world I
did all of this, especially the piano performances
without much practice at all, or certainly not enough?
I’ve really no idea. But what I do know, as I listen
with giddily to my “Discover Weekly” playlist on
Spotify this week (and do they ever have my
algorithm, my list most always being a motley
assortment of the most bizarre but generally
upbeat ditties that a beat can be found within
but yet the songs otherwise would most all
have some difficulty finding homes in any
of even the most newfangled genres,
I’d call it a bunch of happy synthetic
and organic noise combinations that
exists on whichever week’s most far-out
fringes of whatever might be called pop),
is this: that whatever my commitment,
whatever my patience or my discipline
has NOT been in the study of music, the 

education of music, and the almost no 

practicing on my own before so many musical
performances that I always found myself
doing, music has been an integral part of
my life, and for as far back as I remember.
But I’m not a musician. Maybe a bit of an
afficianado. But. I am always more than
happy to spend whatever time it takes
to put together a few lines like these
to tell and/or retell such seemingly
inconsequential stories or collages,
pastiches such as this one that 

I am presently overdoing, for

example. This is what I DO:
spend my time practicing, with disc
ipline and commitment, as my friends
here on the bookshelves around me
can at least attest, this is a thing
about which I have made quite
a point to set aside the time for
a long-term, ongoing education
and practice. Which means I can
spend hours on it pretty much
every single day, often humming
a few bars of some tune or another
as I go at it. Relatively speaking,
for me, it is this act that seems
to be my one indefatigable passion.

mmmdcccxl

I Hate to Disappoint

The misadventures of yesteryear
and its phone service. Maybe I
meant that I hate to be disappointed.

Swerving in other directions, I need screws
for the television stand; to connect the new
tv to its v-shaped legs. Also, more plastic

boxes (so the children can suffucate?). Also,
also, also, stop being so dramatic and pick up
some dishwashing liquid and some laundry

detergent. I can scratch new iPhone off the
list (reminder), but also, add new laptop. Oh, and
don’t forget to get milk (always) and murder spray.

mmmdcccxxxix

Dozed and Confused

Essentially, the middle of the
night is the top of the morning.

Also, sleeping habits are very
genetic—unfortunately. They

can also be downright contagious.
I can write, however, at any hour,

when I’m not currently working
a job that (oh, so importantly)

pays the rent. So, like my 80-
year old mother (who remains

a woman who seems to rarely
ever sleep, unless in her chair

while watching the television
at whatever hour of the day),

without the structure of a paid
nine to five or so gig, I become,

despondently, a creature of the
night. Who else happens to be

spry, alert, and on the job, no
less, at these dwindling or bur

geoning hours (depending on
how you look at them)? My

siblings, who are both graveyard
shift nurses. One is an emergency

room nurse. Talk about taking
the whole nocturnal thing too

seriously. Me, I’m a morning
person. And as noted above,

morning is also the middle of
the night, by definition, but

when I say I’m a morning
person, that means that I

prefer the early hours after
I’ve had a night of sleep,

of some sleep, at any rate.
And while I can write at any

hour of the day, I mean, if
one were to call being a poet

my profession, heck, there is
no hour that it cannot be done

and with some ease (but, yes,
always with a modicum of dis

cipline, sure). So here I am,
stuck awake without having

yet slept, at eight past four in the
morning, putting words in some

silly order on a screen. To feel
feel like I’m being productive,

or perhaps just because that’s
what I do. Pacific Time, of

course. Because that is the time
zone in which I live. As if that even

matters. Since it’s always morning
somewhere, right? But, while that’s

related, like genetics, I suppose,
that is a whole different subject.

mmmdcccxxxiii

A Day and a Thumbtack

That was the day that I had. And
entitlement, if I am being real
here. But isn’t entitlement
sometimes just craving a tiny

break from being beaten down
(says the white guy)? I’m generally
the odd one who’s rooting for the
underdog. Is it so wrong to admit

that I’m tired of this underdog
decade? It may sound a bit too
Gemini—does that always have to
mean hypocritical—to say in one

breath that I miss the pre-diminu
tive canine era and with another get
passionate and empathetic about in
equality and the lack of world peace? I

was a poor kid. For the longest time, the
closest I got to a school of hard knocks
was getting through graduate school. And
yet I got through it. With a bit of encourage

ment here and there, but otherwise on
my own. And I’ve known success, lived
wonderful years that were replete with
the blessings of love and friendship

and frolicking and no small bit of the
heartache that goes with it all. So if
I say, as I peek my eyes just slightly
over the fog that’s yet to lift in this

decade of dog days, “Hooray!” it could
be I finally ditched those assholes at 

T-Mobile. And got an upgrade to an i
Phone 14 Max, to boot! Oh, and may

be mention that I followed that with
a burger, fries and a milkshake after
wards.  Does that make me entitled?
Probably. Sure. But what are we to

do when we lose the celebration
of life? Is it really any conundrum,
the answer to that question? Be
nice. Do good. Give it away on

occasion, if you have it give. But
celebrate all the life you have anytime
you can. How else can we loosen the grip
of unfairness and inequality? Be aware.

Find your happy. Spread some love. And
maybe save getting pissed off until tomorrow.

mmmdcccxxxii

Dreaming with Idiots

     The moon’s backwash is like a deeply incised
     hairnet against the stadium.
                                        —John Ashbery

You can’t control the airwaves. And
don’t even talk to me about the neighbors!
In this place? You can’t pick your neighbors
here. Forget about it. And if there is some

sort of hairnet in the sky, as you might
imagine, what you experience when it comes
to night visions—or even daydreams for that
matter—are all caught in a communal feedback

loop. So let’s say you’re one of an endless
bunch of bodies stacked like sardines into a
massive complex. And that the whole gang
of said sardines were degenerates. Now you’ve

really got a complex. Dreaming and redreaming
the dreams of a gargantuan tin of dumb sardines.

mmmdcccxxxi

On the Way Home

     Bats drool into the gutter.
                —John Ashbery

And so do you. Or you
used to, anyway. You
were always looking for
bats. I take a couple

more twirls around our
mini-park of yore, remin
iscing over your various
fetishes. I have no re

morse, so this gives me
some delight. What was
it you used to say, “Dare
the devil to care?” Yes, that

was what you used to say.
Heading home. No regrets.

mmmdcccxxx

Pulling the Wool Over the
Eyes of Almost Everyone

Phil was having none of it
today. “This could be your
worst book ever,” he practic
ally spat, once he got Jay all

to himself at the donuts table. “I
know,” he drawled with a devil-
may-care grin and half a donut
on his tongue while somehow man

aging to twirl his mustache, all this
while exhaling that fake Alabaman
accent that had so captured our
Phil back in the days before the two

had slipped into their own personal
world war. “But could you not see
how closely I held onto them with
my every word?” Phil was practically

beside himself over what next to say.

mmmdcccxxix

Diary Entry #I don’t know (10,000-something?)

I can’t write about this. Because *. When is the
last time this happened? Perhaps when i took a
Xanax and went dancing with a massive box of
overcrowded straight people (that’s my judgment,
as well-educated as it is or isn’t; an indication for
you to judge me, okay?). I’m rereading Pet Sounds.
This is relevant only because it’s what’s happening.
I want to accrue diaries again; write them; read
them. I wrote a piece a few days ago to put in
mine, which for years has been electronic, an “app”
that I never add to, but one that automatically,
inserts all of my so-called social media posts in
to it. Mostly from Twitter and my Anachronizms
blog. As I post them (boom!). I only ever tweet
to tout, to advertise, to, what did that guy on
Facebook call it yesterday, to self-promote. “I
haven’t self-promoted in a few weeks,” he noted, “so
[and here he inserted a self-promotion].” To which
my initial reaction is to at least verbalize the word
retch. But why? And isn’t that just utterly ridiculous?
All I do on Twitter, yes, I said this, is self-promotion;
and I’m thinking of this because it was that which in
me produced such an eye-rolling from me as I read it
yesterday. And then if you ask me if market my work,
if I do marketing, if I “self-promote,” I am more than
pleased to proclaim that I do. Isn’t that just pride? And
the joy of running a little magazine (in case you’re not
aware, it’s called SHAMPOO – and you can find it at
shampoo-poetry.com, which is not the original URL,
but that one I WILL get back, eventually, I swear.
That very slow, almost interminable, yet all-too-
swift thing called time, said as if it were nothing
but a censored curse: “T!#3!”). This has to come back
to Pet Sounds. Is that my rule, my primary desire, because
I’m doing the typing here? Sure. But look at me now typing
“subversive marketing.” What is that and what was it ever—
let’s hear it; anyone? Anyway, it’s just my loaded and hypo
critical question. But feel free to send me your answer to
it – Google me. Send it to my Gmail address. I don’t really
need to know. Might it change my mind? Sure, anything’s
possible. But I do not do guerilla. (Catch me in a lie, it’s fine
if I’m the one setting the trap, right?) And I’m persistent.
Not with finding an audience. Should I be? Don’t answer that

question. But I do like my marketing subversive, to a degree.
And I’m fidgety, so it keeps me doing something. For example, I
do this (that) (which is take out my trash in San Francisco).
Notice I’m differentiating where I’m doing that something?
Then I do something else (this) (I sit a while to write a few
more lines of this poem seemingly about everything and
nothing). One of the joys and sadnesses of any Oulipian
limitation is that I cannot write every single thing all
at once (quick, what are you thinking right at this
moment?). I’m not asking you to exert yourself that
much. I’m only just wondering who you are, where
you are in time? It brings me much joy to wonder,
to be curious, to contemplate that question.
Sometimes that becomes overly difficult, even as it
is obviously impossible. So then what I get instead of
joy is consternation; there’s a negative context to that,
right? Aha, you might be incorrect. That can’t be good.
But isn’t it all relative? No matter what a master dictionary
(or a master dick) demands? Where was I? I do love that
question, so often posed, of course, both to myself, and to
you (who may actually exist!). I don’t know that I feel I
need you to exist (me me me!). There seem times I
need to at least believe that you do. Exist, that is.
But so what if you don’t? I’m serious, I think. But it is
nevertheless a legitimate question, I suppose. So. I’m
starting to reread a lovely book by a person I know dearly.
Her name is Stephanie Young and it’s called Pet Sounds.


*I must really get a job.
  With a postscript to Stephanie: Yes, I picked up another copy.

mmmdcccxxviii

The Death of a Very Close Friend

          A cup drips air,
          peanuts fester.
                —John Ashbery

and a difficult one at that. but one to the
end, i can say, which felt like abandonment
moreso than a passing, as these things often
must surely seem. but this being the first of

such of its kind, perhaps even the last, which
was brought about by the literal end of a life,
how am i to blather on with any authority about
that solemn notion; all of the rest of mine

have come to terminations much less mortally
and more metaphorically. either way such an
ending is physical, visceral. but when i heard
of his passing, all i could think was how he’d

been the one friendship to which i had found it
once necessary to finalize. and yet, fortune of
fortunes, until the sad day of his demise, he in
stead remained cordial, empathetic, understanding,

and with that familiarity that comes from the
hundreds of hours one puts into these things
we call the real deal. even as all of the others
disappeared in the wake of a path of some del

usion, of some destruction, as far as i still know
(don’t ask me to do any further research, however),
they’re all still out there, cold hearts bumping away
at someplace out of my periphery, which, sure, is

another way to be dead. but this one, who is
gone for real, not just dead to me or dead spec
ifically for me, is actually gone. and i miss him.
and that familiarity. and take comfort in the

hard fact that i could never simply slip into an
abject avoidance of his existence, even after
our unfortunate but necessary ‘falling out.’ it
remains one of life’s greatest mysteries, to me,

how anyone could even, would even, find that both
feasible and possible. friendship as a capitalistic in
vestment, perhaps? a metaphor, really, but a real
way to see it. more as that which sustains. have

mercy on those who see humanity as anything else.
and on those of us who see it as so big, these bonds
so irrevocable. but more than anything, a deep
gratitude for this friend, and of his rare choice of a

palpable if not yet a mostly performative permanence
against the definitive transience of life, this existence,
which, in reality, of course, sure, is nothing less
than—and nothing more than—ephemeral.

mmmdcccxxvii

Tall Tales

i did get lost in that woods,
a forest of sorts. i’d read all
the stories, but you never think
this could be me, so i didn’t mark

any trees, left no trail of bread
crumbs. and if i’d never found
my way free, if i hadn’t made it
through the thick of it to this place,

well, i wouldn’t be telling you this
story, now, would i? what a laugh!
because i’m such a liar. aren’t i?
i mean, of course i am. i’ve probably

been sitting here in this cave for a
decade by now. just you and me.

mmmdcccxxvi

Now This Tale Is True

     This is a fact that only those who do not know do not know.
                                          —Kim Hyun in Glory Hole

i rode him bareback for a
while through the brambles.

got all scratched up. the
brambles of potato hill, or,

the brambles of fort chaffee.
lying on the hood of the car

we both looked up and saw the
same shooting star. which wasn’t

a star, of course. like a pony is
never anything but a horse

(unless you’re a drinker or
a well-rounded thinker).

mmmdcccxxv

Well, Here’s the Thing

my mom turns eighty on
monday. i find that fairly
astounding. and then i
think of other numbers,

like seventy or ninety,
and they start to all
sound the same. like
fifty-five, which i find,

in general, to be a pretty
nifty number. that’s my
age. which i thought was
two years younger than

when my dad died. but i
counted a few days ago.
i mean i did the math and
he was actually fifty-nine.

then i imagined my father
at eighty. which, as imagi
nation goes, was a bit insur
mountable, or at least surreal.

while i can’t imagine making
it to eighty myself, i think i’d
like to dig this up and read
it if i do. how old are you?

mmmdcccxxiv

What About Memory?

what is it about memory
that keeps it from being
remembered. if that
makes no logic, what is it

about the speed of time?
is memory locked or blocked
depending on the speed at
which time passes? either

way, or whatever the case,
how does one go about
getting it back? this so-
called memory? is it

the treasure that i’d always
hoped for, yet never found?

mmmdcccxxiii

Mickey Mouse on a Platter

when i think of the word
splatter i find within myself
a pang, a metallic taste in my
mouth that is not at all pleasant.

i have a few things going on. i’ve
been wet. it’s been rainy. these
things wash away memories. but
my memories get washed away

anyway, despite preventative
measures. did you know, by the
way, that i write in order to remember?
not that everything i write is ‘true’ –

but also, do i write to forget? do i
wish the rains would come and
wash the city clean again and again?

mmmdcccxxii

In Defense of Everything

     for Peter Gizzi

          (a send-up of his poem “In Defense of Nothing”
           in which the first two words of each line are
           the same as in each line of his)

I guess it is a big weather day today here in the San Francisco Bay Area.
I guess that most businesses are closing around 3pm when the storm is
     expected to arrive.
I guess the “bomb cyclone” is not affecting Tu Lan which, fortunately for me,
     is where I shall grab a late lunch.
The present can be regifted; history repeats itself (we just had the wettest
     day on record only a few days ago).
It’s hard when one is living as I am to say that any of this is bad news.
This sky looks ominous, but the sun is shining just as much somewhere behind
     the darkening of it.

mmmdcccxxi

The Endless Cycle of White Noise

aging strong, at its highest speed,
because i can better function
with the din of white noise,
whether awake or asleep
or attempting to find my way
to one state or the other. as long
as the noise is at least as indecipherable,
as avocal or as non-verbal, as radio or
television static without a station in the world
coming and/or going. these small machines,
the three fans and the air purifier, are
almost always on, although, once in a
while, say every three or four months,
but that depends, i flip one or more of
the dials to off in order to allow for a
more exaggerated silence. radio
silence. so that i may hear the “noises”
in my head (let’s call them thoughts),
which have been accumulating over time.
the white noises stopper them,
keeping them muffled for a duration
until they become unmanageable.
this tactic works. the noises in my
head do not divert my focus,
almost never. they do not
become a distraction.  this
cacophony of various noises 
which can be separated into
stacks, into types (i cannot but
help to do that if and when made aware of them)....
so, inevitably this clamor fills my head
to a point at which it must,
of course, be drained, swollen
as my head becomes. my friends,
when i had any, found this telling.
maybe they understood my feelings
about intelligence. maybe not.
‘intelligence’ is a generic example
of what lies in the head, however.
and this cacophanous pile-up
dulls whatever smarts i believed that
i had, makes much more difficult the
very act of differentiating, of existing
in some sort of normalcy (at least one
that normal folks might suggest is so;
so much is relative, so normalcy, while

theoretically calculable, is difficult to pinpoint).
and so, once the switches have been
turned off, the excess noises semi
identified, and at first put thematically together
to note for further evaluation at some probably
distant point, and drained, then the three
fans and the air purifier, those mechanisms
that fill a tiny home consistently with inert
(untranslatable, indecipherable)
sounds, my precious white noise,
this motley crew of more distracting
and, oftentimes, disturbing noises can
then be dealt with,
which means they then begin
to slowly make their way
down my insides. they
get filtered as they
make their way through
my throat and my left heart
until one by one, group by
categorized group, they
dissipate, evaporate, 

and finally extinguish themselves 

as they make their ways individually
down (the muffling white noise having
kept them stoppered in my head and
“inaudible” enough, for a time, but
inevitably there are too many of
them that accumulate, and
they have to be dealt with,
let go), so that by the time
all of these distracting jumbled
clumps have reached somewhere
around my knees, i am free of this
cacophony, and each buzz-whimpering

thought is free of me. once drained
of them, the switches of each fan
and of the air filter can be flipped

back on so that my momentarily empty 

head is therefore stoppered, and the hubbub
of distracting noises can
begin to accumulate once

again, without diverting
my focus, until
it is time to
drain and filter,
to cycle out these
“noises” once again.

mmmdcccxx

Introductory Notes

now it is completely silent,
but for the white noise, the
sources of which are: the three
fans that go about circulating the
air (which is usually warm, but is
today soothingly cool) around in
this place, my miniature home
(a doll’s house), and an air
purifier that was stolen
from a hotel several years ago
(does it matter that it wasn’t
by me?)—how if i’ve no friends,
not even local acquaintances,
at some point the local might
become the only bunch of idiots
who could be more than acquaintance.
am i still speaking of friends? so many
definitions are in order. STOP STALLING.
the easy exceptions are the one that are
not here, the ones (one) which i have on
going, regulary, almost a sort of constant
rapport and conversation, i can see, out
of something that seems no less than an
amazing surreality – a surreality that
doesn’t seem some sort of dali landscape
but just surreal by virtue of being impossible
to understand how it could be, another hemisphere
away for three solid years, nothing that seems abnormal,
everything that seems LOVE, so much that seems, here we
can also call it surreality. something that can be suddenly
and stiffeningly doubted, this can’t be, we should be in the
same room, we can’t get beyond a plan that can be believed,
two parties, never having met, proclaiming LOVE so soon,
legally stifled, hell, i was essentally homeless until four
years ago, this four years in an SRO has been fraught
with reminders of the impossibilities from which one might
at one point emerge. so. look at me, i’ll look at you.
know that the plan is the thing. know that i hear
myself in furture tense. is it the same with you
from me? how else can virtual not remain
virtual? when does a breakdown or a
realization occur? so. we still can
motor along, but how strongly this
motoring, the speed, the removal
of the virtual, the unreal, into the
smashing into each other. break
some bones. to feel a bone
broken by slamming into
each other would be truth
that is too alarming.
but how else might
we know we have it?
i know that i am a teasing
pacifist. but is the world
not teasing us? am i really
only a retailer of dreams?
we both have to KNOW.
we each must KNOW.
i do. i do. i do. do you?
maybe you do. ten times
ten times ten times ten.
so laid back about death.
such vague, if non-existent,
pain. whisper, darling, the sweet
nothings that, when whispered,
satiate. feed me. i don’t mind
if it is a drug if i can taste your
finger. drugs and fingers are real.
they get me from here to there.
give me a rock to bite into. or a belief
to believe so strongly that even if
it is not believed by you nor any
body else along the way it will be nothing
but firm to me. concrete, no con. a plan
that becomes a planet. a plan that is
more than just a mininiature universe.
one in which universes, mostly believed
by me, from all aspects of my past, meet.
the plan of today meets nothing but reality.
shoot a cannon into an unclear tomorrow and
there may not even be a noise. place a
bomb of destruction or celebration inside
a small non-virtual can was, say, reality.
how can i say this: tomorrow is real?
how real it might be, will be, is.
come on over. the water is wet and
it cleanses indefinitely, peeling off
layer after layer of skin. i promise that
i can possibly get you out of the water
before we both disappear.

mmmdcccxix

The Stand-Up Routine at Ditzy Jerry’s Lesser Laugh-o-Rama

there were several
comedic as well
as electrical and social
miscalculations. ‘it’s
new year’s eve,’ herb
insisted, in his usual
performative upbeat
fashion. he was always
good at emphasizing
the obvious. ‘do
you have any
resolutions?’
‘yeah,’ this
response came
from margaret—
the person with
whom herb was
infatuated, always
and obviously had
been; she was,
in fact, even when
he was doing his
routine, no doubt
keenly aware that
his focus never strayed
from her—‘revolution.’
sandy, a maudlin comic,
who’d just delivered
her two or three
bits onstage before
the current performer—
not that anyone would
have remembered
her routine or anything
about it, even by now, really—
giddily proclaimed ‘it’s new
year’s eve!’ she, too, was
always effervescent in
her emphasis of the
obvious. ‘do you
guys have any
resolutions?’
what folks never
realized is that
she was never
quite as ditzy
as she generally
appeared to be.
‘yeah,’ this one
from margaret,
and as if she was
a month ahead of
everyone (groundhog’s
day, to be precise),
her response remained,
‘revolution.’