mmmmcmlxxxiv

Match Game!

Easy.  The game show I’d be a willing contestant on
is Match Game.  Any year, really, so long as Gene
Rayburn was hosting (most especially if he was
having a particularly annoying day).  And then,

let’s see, my best case scenario to round out the panel
would be Richard Dawson (of course!), along with
Charles Nelson Reilly (most absolutely!), Betty White,

Bob Barker or Jack Klugman, depending on the day,

and Nipsey Rusell.  And when it came down to my
one-on-one, because of course I’d be a finalist,
much as I’d love to go toe-to-toe with the likes of

of Charles Nelson or Betty White, I’d go, and with not 

even a moment’s hesitation with the pro of all pros for the
final question: Our Dear Mister “Kiss,” Sir Dick Dawson.

mmmmcmlxxxiii

Fog City

I’ll do my best to turn this one into
the vaguest riddle – like something
I’d not possibly say to a Sphinx, she
being a she.  So let’s make it Greek,

switch the sex to an Androsphinx.  I
imagine a pair or three, non-concretized,
(so with actual Sphinx flesh!).  Is it working
to relay my love of something un-human that

I can’t live without?  Perhaps.  But I’ve learned to
live without most anything over the past several
years – at least in fell swoops.  Sex.  Texts.  Dollars.
Human engagement.  A domicile.  Walls.  A bed….

But one constant remains: the city wherein I resolved
so many years hence to call, and so lovingly, home.

My Sweet Androsphinxy City

mmmmcmlxxxii

Extended Steamy Limerick


I once met a guy from New Orleans

Who consistently made organic noises.

They’d go and they’d come

With yapping and thrums,

Yet when entered his

Vocal chords froze

Just as if all his sounds

Came straight from the ground of

Whichever man banged him

Most boisterous!

mmmmcmlxxxi

Excuses, Excuses!

Like why don’t I take those long
walks around the multivarious
neighborhoods in my lovely city like
I used to do on such a regular basis;

locales I’d see so often?  But now,
for so many of them it’s been years,
or as long as a decade, like the duration
it’s been since I’ve taken that short hike

over Mount Tamalpais to the amphitheater,
or driven down or up any stretches of
Highway One, felt the warm sand between
my toes traipsing Grey Whale Cove half-

naked or crossing over the Golden Gate
Bridge or the Bay Bridge. No more excuses!

mmmmcmlxxx

A Short Study of Movement


Oh, this is just great.  Love.  And Star Trek.

And the holy grail.  The Holy Grail.  At two

on a Friday morning.  Watching the stars

explode on a big television set at the foot

of my bed.  By myself.  Feeling incredibly

alone.  But hopeful.  I think?  Sometimes

it’s much harder than it should be just to

put one foot in front of the other.  When

is moving in any direction the answer?

Perhaps often.  But to stay in one spot?

I’d rather risk quicksand.  Or the wrong

direction.  Of so many erroneous ways.

I reject the error of my ways.  No.  I

reject feeling stunted in any way.  In

any way whatsoever.

mmmmcmlxxix

Gay Is Happy Alone

     Homosexuality is essentially being alone. Which is a fight against the
   capitalist bosses who do not want us to be alone. Alone we are dangerous.
                                                                                          —Jack Spicer

While reading this sonnet, you’re re
quired to wear an ass-colored bonnet.
Because being gay is being happy alone.
The fight against capitalism is just an

extra added bonus for z-friends.  And
that’s no snooze.  Snoozers lose.  So
I’ve slept a lot, perhaps, being such a
loss, but shut me up.  You’ve heard this

all before.  But only you.  Only you.  As
I was saying, bun-colored biscuits, hearts
with no tacks, no tackiness.  Or maybe just
come with me to the emergency room.  How

tacky is tachycardia?  It’s the middle of the night
and I’ve been watching too many commercials.

mmmmcmlxxviii

Isionvay of Exes Say in the Istanceday

 

This was no mere vision of love. And I 

swear I don’t astral project, but I always

fly through the best years.  And today,

I’m the only being in the entire universe.

But I’m not sparring with my captain.  I

repeat, captain is hot, and mine, even if

he is so modified sometimes, so transmog

rified.  What’s happening?  What is this place?

Are we atinLay ancingday?  Is it an ollyday?

Hey!  Complicated galaxies are our specialty.

Love is like that.  I mean, that’s love.  We know

this because it’s complicated, just as you are.

I feel less so, day after day, age upon age.  But

I do not want off this ship.  So will you wake me?

I have remained inside of this dream always or

whatever time has been alongside the vision of

you and your existence.  I’m not sparring with

the star.  No.  These years are sometimes lonely 

and they are by far the best.

mmmmcmlxxvii

A Fenced-In Life

I made a sentence

at the job appoint

ment.  It was an

assignment, like a


task.  I made a note

of it.  The note was

flat, very off-key.

But I could type


so fast it meant

something to man

agement.  Who held

a check in the air as


the breeze blew it.

I was sentenced to

a prison, poisoned

in it.  A cubicle to


cry in.  Cold meat

for a keyboard.  A

supervisor with a

mirror for a window.


This was the dream

I had before the in

ternment.  I meant

interview.  Cool swings


swaying in the syc

amore shade.  The

shady sway of the

swing beneath the


sycamore tree.  As

a child I’d swing on

a tire under an elm

and graduated soon


to the swingset which

blew beneath the.  I

was ill, I was sick, I

was swaying and the


leaves were turning

rusty and leaving.

It was cold, I blew

my nose.  We built


a fence around the

swingset and I would

call it home, call it

cubicle.  I learned


to dance the bossa

nova under the syc

amore tree after

the fence went up


and the swing went

down.  I was the

boss of each of my

relentless dreams.

mmmmcmlxxvi

28 Zeroes

loo too

boo hoo

moo new

mumu

moue glue

poo doo

goo goo

100 zoo

coo fu

ooo sue

blew slew

rue you

mmmmcmlxxv

Dirge Demeaner

Shuffle off your loafers.
Stuff your Draino into all
the holes in your apartment.

Turn your strawberries the
sweetest with artificial sweetener
and slurp each half frozen berry

like meat.  A meat meal, after all,
lasts all day, and sometimes then
some.  Furrow your brow at each

debt collector’s call.  Open the call
with extended silence like the echo
of a robocall’s mirror (hold your

open call to that mirror to make
this particular point).  Take a month
to figure out who you want to be

and then spend each remaining
month being exactly who that is.
If you get bored with that being,

take another month to reevaluate
whoever you want to become next
without dwelling on the meaning of

progress, without delving into the
well of wisdom, whatever those are. 

Be a dumdum.  Be a wise-ass.  Enter 

your next era with a confident hunger.

mmmmcmlxxiv

All Paths Take Me To Just Beyond
Where I Can See From Here Before
A Blockade Is Reached

Yes, I keep saying quartets when I mean
quatrains. I’m going through my photo
graphs, something I do in between bouts
of being actually busy, putting in proper

dates, tagging names to faces, deleting
duplicate files. I’ve been doing this for
years but now I’m up to March of 2015,
and while I never used to give away dates

this easily, I’m concerned that, since it
was soon thereafter that, let’s say, all
of my big troubles began, I’m now worried
that going through the remaining 11 years

might get a bit depressing. But so much time
has passed, it’ll probably be more, oh, I don’t
know, I don’t like to think I’m that nostalgic,
have gotten some criticism from people that

know me that maybe I should find a new hobby
since, well, the past. And I had one. And it was
pretty good up until, well, around the middle of
2015. Hell broke loose slowly after that, and in

evitably I wind up here, typing you this short
means of an escape from what that same past
has now, inevitably gotten me into. So what,
I might just learn something about myself,

I think, in rebuke of the criticism, a suggestion
clearly made by the few who know me and do
actually care about my well-being. Lately, I’ve
been thinking a lot about the fact that almost

no one I’m in contact with these days, especially
locally, knows me from before that year. Who I
was pre-2015. And that year was pretty fun, on
the whole. To pinpoint a moment where things

fell apart, still, would be toward the end of that
year, or it could go back to the previous one.
When did the good times end? What do I call
good times since? What are the reasons that

those seem to be so significantly rarer these
past few years? Anyone might say that it does
not have to be this way. But my focus has been
so significantly on bringing myself back to a

contentment, a happiness replete with pleasure,
that existed before then. But did it? As those
years and the one I exist in grow further apart,
am I losing objectivity about such things? As

an artist, I’ve adversely always been more left-
brained than I have been right-brained. And I
can see the formula that I followed for years
that seemed to work so wonderfully. But is that

just a fantasy or a mirage that my supposedly
analytical brain is giving me. False memories
or a false sense of whatever I was feeling and
whatever stress I went through back then as

opposed to that which I go through these days?
I stare at these pictures from 2015, an overly
abundant amount of pictures of me, often just
my face, selfies, and wonder, but cannot look

inside each photograph’s face to be able to
more scientifically analyze the differences
that exist due to the passing of this growing
percentage of my life’s duration. Perhaps its

time to shake up all of my routines and hobbies,
like this photograph cataloging, which I believe
eases my mind so. If it were so easy as up being
down and vice versa. I want to live that formula

again, with the edits that come from having lived
through and within it over and over. But with what
means? How can I shorten those old long-term
goals to fit within my lifetime? Is the key to feeling

like I hve it all just a mind-trick? Do I need a new
pair of glasses? What can I dredge up in order to
make any kind of substantial breakfast. How do I
get over this one last hump? I keep asking myself.

Whether or not it is the right question to ask.

mmmmcmlxxiii

Fantastical Stories

What I wanted to tell you was

that I had messed up.  I didn’t

really understand how I had,

but I had most definitely done

something horrible because I

was in this situation that comes

obviously from having really

messed up.  But I wasn’t talking

to you.  I was alone and not talking

about how I had messed up, just

thinking about the fact that I surely

must have and that it was something

horrible, the stuff of scary movies,

and I was pacing around, back and

forth, in my apartment that was all lit

up in the middle of the night wondering

how on earth I could have messed up

so horribly.  I kept picking up my phone

to call you then walking over to the com

puter that sat at the desk sometimes—

that is where it was at the moment—

almost ready to type to you that a bad,

bad thing had happened, almost ready

to hear your voice say “Hello,” and then

somehow manage to get out the words

about the situation I found myself in,

but I just could not bring myself to do

either of these things.  Instead, I just

kept pacing the apartment realizing

what a horrible pickle I had gotten

myself into but wondering like mad

trying to figure out whatever it was

I surely had done to get myself into

this mess.

mmmmcmlxxii

Empty Pockets and a Wealth of Information

Perhaps I should be sleeping. Instead, my
mind is racing at a dizzying speed, so much 

so that I cannot stop it to focus on a damned 

thing, nor sleep. And there’s much too much

that needs to be done. Yet (and for example) 

I’ve no money. There are a few pennies in a 

plastic tub in my closet, but didn’t we stop 

making pennies – can we use them anymore?

So, the persistence of being so broke. Which
indeed I am, and most especially am now. My
weekly box of food did not arrive – it usually
arrives on Monday, every once in a while on

Tuesday, but it’s now Wednesday. I’m sitting
here in the dark, and I don’t want to write
on this subject any more – even though swim
ming through my head are a million pieces of

the story of what I have already begun and
want now to end. I’m missing any sense of
________ [insert humor, taste, smell, sight,
direction, camaraderie, belonging, self, even?].

I have lived in this city for over twenty-five
years now. I’ve grown to loathe conveying
these feelings of depression, mixed always
(or most always) with some positivity, some

I can do this attitude. While the notion that
I might not be able to grows within me. It’s
that clock ticking, the fact of my age; deadlines,
which are what I’ve built a career around making

with flair, keep moving to a later date. Plans
get swept under a rug in hopes they are for
gotten. This just isn’t me. I look to my left,
searching for a good way to transition into a

better life, a way to finish what I’m saying
without having stepped backwards. Nothing
like that exists that I can see, either left, right,
directly in front of me, or (and my neck hurts

as it always does these days) when I crane my
pained neck around to the wall behind me. I so
want to laugh. I think of turning on the tele
vision, but something had caught my eye when

I first looked left to the wall beside my bed. I
look again. It’s a book’s cover art (of course it’s
a book). There’s a cigarette hanging from a dog’s 

mouth.  The book, portrait of the artist as a young

dog, stories by the the poet Dylan Thomas. I 

can’t recall having ever read any poetry by him, 

but it’s something that’s on my list (when I’d

picked this up from some Free: Take One box, 

I had assumed that is what it was, poetry. It’s 

the bottom half of the over of the book, the dog
seemingly mimicking the author (I assume)
whose picture at the top with a cigarette poked

at an odd angle into his mouth. A dog with a
cigarette dangling from the side of this mouth.
Well.  I suppose that I will go with that. And a 

hopefully somewhat redeeming word of apology

to you. Now, have I done anything at all here?
Has my dignity been regained, in the very least?
I sit a moment and make the assumption that
it has not. So uphill I must go. Or else, right?

mmmmcmlxxi

Koko Schnookums

Koko Schnookums had a name
and it was Koko Schnookums.

He carried around two pillows
(yes, he!) upon which he couldn’t

rest his weary head, should he
have had one.  Koko was baking

a strawberry pie, facing the
proper direction.  He’d drink a

tightly wound Muscle Milk just for
a couple of tightly wound muscles. 

He’d open the refrigerator door, 

which was low to the ground, so 

he’d bend over, look around into 

the cool refrigerator, and pull out

a beer.  It was something cheap,
this particular beer, like most of

what was kept in the refrigerator
that was low to the ground.  Koko

would belch around four to five
times, on average, after drinking

one of his cheap beers. And after
that fifth belch he’d likely be found

stooped over with his two pillows
at the refrigerator scrounging

around for another cheap beer.
If he found one, he’d drink it.

If not, he’d go back to the stove,
and do a bit of cooking, once again

his body facing just the right direct
ion (toward the stove) where he’d

stir a bit or turn over a few items
frying in the pan, or put some

rice on, then he’d come back to
the cutting board atop which

were a slew of vegetables and

next to which was a paring

knife, and he’d go about slicing
and dicing and peeling and once

in a while julienning the veggies
that he’d lain atop the cutting

board to be at the ready, and 

then he’d either scoop things

up and put them into a pot 

or a pan or he’d pick up the

cutting board and slowly,
using the paring knife, with

the board at just the right
angle, scrape the slices,

dices and/or juliennes into
a receptacle upon the

stove.  And eventually,
he’d carry those pillows

back over to the fridge
and bend over, just so,

in an attempt to find
a third beer in there.

And in that effort he’d
most often succeed.

mmmmcmlxx

What’s for Supper?

(This one is after Diane di Prima’s
“Prevailing Foods at Times” from
her book Dinner and Nightmares.)

Mom gave birth to four children in
three years.  It might take a beat
for you to realize, then, that there
were twins, who were two years

younger than me. Then, a year
later, came my sister. I had the
place and all of the family’s att
ention to myself for nearly two

years, that’s it. All this is to say
that when it came time for supper
(which, in Arkansas, is what other

folks call dinner), it was every 

kid to him or herself.  After first help
ings were served, there were rarely
seconds for anyone.  And there were
only a few regular suppertime meals

that my mother would prepare for us
for our family evening meals. They
were something like this:

1. Hamburgers (my dad raised a few cattle, so we always had a freezer full of beef) and French fries (from frozen sometimes, but most often from our garden’s potatoes)
2. Tuna casserole (this was my least favorite of regular meals – it had cream of mushroom soup in it – Campbell’s condensed, of course)
3. Fish sticks (frozen) with French fries (see above) or macaroni and cheese (Kraft from the blue box) and probably some green beans – I think these came from cans, but they could have been from either our garden or my paternal grandparents’ garden
4. Beef stew that sat in the Crockpot all day with potatoes and carrots
5. Fried catfish and hush puppies – this was one of my favorites, but it would require that someone went fishing and had some luck that day, and I despised fishing, a common pastime of my dad’s and his parents on weekends.
6. Breakfast for dinner – fried or scrambled eggs, toast, milk, maybe a hashbrown (from frozen) and bacon or ham. (It’s possible I’m misremembering this one, but I’ve always loved breakfast for dinner.
7. Sandwiches (usually baloney, sometimes cold ham) and potato chips (usually Lay’s regular)
8. Sloppy Joe’s – which was also one of my least favorite regular meals.
9. Chili with beef (or sometimes deer) and beans with saltine crackers.
10. Pizza from a frozen box
11. Pork chops or pork steaks of some sort, pan fried, usually with macaroni and cheese and green beans.
12. Salmon patties - made from canned salmon with added saltine crumbs and egg, fried in a pan.

I’m sure I’m not remembering one or two 

of the meals we’d have on a regular basis, 

but I can add that we’d occasionally have as 

side dishes okra (fried or boiled – the latter 

of which only me and my mom would eat), 

black-eyed peas, pinto beans, green beans, 

sauerkraut (again, only my mother and I ate 

this), and there would quite often be corn

bread – oh, and we’d also have hot dogs

for supper pretty regularly.

mmmmcmlxix

Shout Out to Who I’m Becoming

Type 2 diabetes.  How many of you in here
have type 2 diabetes, show of hands?  Did
you know that you can be diabetic for years
and then one day, poof!, you’re no longer

diabetic?  How about that?  Oh, I have a walk-in 

closet at my new apartment.  How many of you, 

you know, as a child....?  How many of you dreamt of 

having a walk-in closet?  I know I didn’t.  But boy,

was that ever a sort of merit badge of wealth we 

were taught by the sitcoms in the days of our youth, 

am I right?  I now can say, proudly and loudly, that
I have a second bedroom in the lovely apartment 

in which I live.  Crazy!  That’s crazy y’all.  And pimp
daddies!  Pimp!  Daddies!    Now don’t you have it
made in the shade?  You know I’m not kidding!
Let’s hear it for all of you pimps out there,

show of hands, we’re all friends, now come on,
seriously, raise ’em up you fabulous pimps.  We

can complain about each day until our mouths
bleed, can we not?  I mean, there’s an immeasurable

amount of bitching we can do.  But God is most definitely 

watching over us, is he not?  And that is no laughing matter, 

my friends.          That is the real deal.

mmmmcmlxviii

A Great Idea Saves the Day

Or that’s what I’ve dubbed it.  My
Great Idea.  It might sound like a
scheme, but I don’t do schemes.
Maybe you know what I mean,

but what a truly pandora’s box
of a sentence that was.  Anyway,
already I want to change the
subject.   Mostly because sud

denly I am having a run with
the nausea.   I almost said
the trots, instead, as that is
what my Grandma Hazel

would have said to anyone
within listening distance and
without a seeming care in the
world what anyone might think

of her, all six foot two of her
(she didn’t just have a command
ing presence, she demanded
it).  Not that anyone would have

looked down upon her for announcing
so boldly her bout with diarrhea.
It would have been quite difficult
to criticize anything she’d say as

she spoke with such a wry sense
of humor and with never even an
extraneous syllable (but she’d make
two out of every normally singular

syllable being from the part of the
South in which she resided at the
beginning and end of her life).  So,
the runs.  And I’ve now accomplished

changing the subject and the tone
of what began as an optimistic and enth
usiastic cabin made of words.  I mean,
it began that way and now wants to

make its final thoughts heading in
exactly the opposite direction.
So if it grabbed you by the get-go,
you’re no doubt a bit turned off

by how things seem to be winding
down.  If so, I’m very sorry about
that.  If it makes you feel any better
(and do you have Pepto Bismol handy,

by chance?) that initial fantastic idea
remains not only doable by all perpsec
tives that I can muster, but it is a plan 

that I intend to implement.  And so 

if I say stay tuned for further information,
I’d surely mean it, as the plan is an idea
most relevant to such pedantic, low-brow
activities as the one in which both you and

I are currently no doubt voluntarily choosing
to activitely participate.  So.  I would welcome
it if you to stay tuned to these pages for further
information on this thing that I call a Great Idea.

mmmmcmlxvii

Honeys, I’m Home!

[to be read or sung imagining that 

each word might mean something]

Did anyone hear that?  It’s not so much
that it was the deepest dip my psyche
has ever taken, nor that I felt suddenly
as if I’d been had—and in such a way that

there’d be no more had left to have (all
of my have being so thoroughly, severely
and singularly had)—which would be a bad
enough sensation to endure without the

act of opening one’s dry, tomorrow-less
eyes to the world that’s so swiftly disap
pearing, at which I’ve given nothing worth

while, never, not ever, not even in the least,

most certainly nothing to which any of the 

remaining inhabitants would want to cling, 

might they even have (had) the ability to 

fill an ungodly sandwich neatly with a bit

of what of me remains, a smidgeon of tough
purple sinew that, once eaten, has the bells
of the cathedral clapping so happily that an
entire countryside awakens, filled with the

steam and the stink of a passionate and
enduring swarm of quivering earthquakes, 

metaphorical bellies each and all, aquiver 

in their attempts to fill the chin to chop 

once-livered soul of a life lived ever dully
and with neon representations of what within
my last thoughts (they exist!) were of what 

the world needs now.  surely not something 

somebody dug up to smugly and mind-

erasingly protect the liberties of an already 

forgotten tender-bun to unschool us all 

with what nobody’d ever have known were

the nag-didactic foreshortened swipes of
forgetfulness.  at this point several drown, 

beings agape at such melodramatic spectacle. 

each of these winter-watered souls now real deal

gone, soupy human dinner sans dessert for the 

deep blue highway’s top-heavy bottom-dwellers, 

who’ve managed to evolve enough to belch any

remaining reminder of such talentless taste-free

fricasee, which are forgotten before being gone a 

mere minute or two by earth’s entire slew.  No

body’s last day’s for naught?  For whom, you say?  

Those gone so fast I’d forgotten to say. [Now

sounding a bit smitten] But isn’t everybody’s

everything gone?   I’m so damned sorry that I 

vanished, say the slither-slimed paper planes, 

those voiceless anti-legacies.  Whilst the motion 

of this ocean pays tribute to nonexistence by 

chewing up a charcoaled chicken leg so deep-sea

out of sight that it’s henceforth totally out of mind.  

What happens next?  Well, just imagine a fleet 

of chameloenesque lizards running like hell to catch

up with any of that tremendous yet unaccounted

for loss, but directly before their big boss (that 

conglomerate of lizard-head) dismisses them one 

and all for the remains of the weekend.  (Each poor dotty

puff of scaly slough knowing they’ll be let go at the

shittiest minute of the wee-est hour of a miraculously 

unmemorable and yet imminently up and coming Monday.)

                                    Who Was It Sung That So Sincerely?

((It Was Merely Me.))

mmmmcmlxvi

The Anti-Dumdum Protest

     A million leaves’ kimonos disrobing
       —Ange Mlinko (from The Blind See Only This World: Poems for John Wieners)

The Anti-Dumdum protest was meant to be
exclusionary, exclusive.  Sometimes class dis
tinctions are full of classlessness, and some
times they’re downright classy.  But such dys

function is nothing upon which to dwell,
surmises Del, this morning’s despondent
correspondent.  The current miniature
word berg of relevance was on the subject

of a group in the East Bay who threw a sex
party that somehow acted as a vehement
(and, of course, non-violent, except for those
in the dungeon, who never voted and were just

there for show, as it were) protest against the
hordes of recent horrid government goings-on.

mmmmcmlxv

The Rats Were Rodents,
Suspense & Suspicions
Notwithstanding

The purported murder of Punxsutawney Phil
was a red herring, a mere MacGuffin.  Long-
dead Hollywood citizens (all things being equal, 

e.g., sound designers, assistant directors,
ingenues, the extras from a nearly infinite
variety of madcap scenes, the original novel’s
author, authors of novels adapted from movies,
Pedro Almodovar, etc.) rolled over beneath
their respective [concretized handprints, side
walk footprints, looped advertisements of sway

ing breasts found from the tawdriest alleyways 

to the most commercial of the high-end drives,
tombstones, even the ones with the most
inaccurate, most illegible quotes (carved or
imprinted in fonts that can be distinguished
by a few of the most naked eyes and audibly
repeated through mouths that in the most
seemingly asymmetrical ways hang below
the egg-shapes of such alertly nude eyeballs), 

et ceteras].  So, whodunnit?  By the time
each attendee exits the low-marquee’d

cinema-plex, who all without fail, via 

reflexes both voluntary and involuntary, 

attempt to quickly bury those silver screen

tainted eggs by squinting away the after

noon sun, the greater human population 

of our divine planet would already know

the culprit was neither the sister or

either of the three adult offspring of

January, our lead character.  And yet

those social media magnates, who 

from the opening sequence to the 

closing credits paid little to no 

attention to the neo-noir-ish flick,

remain by far the most suspect.