mmmmmxliv

the evolution of angels

as you spiral deeper into the labyrinth
i think of all the things i have to tell you
if only i could yell loud enough. i do the
yelling anyway, even if there’d be no way

you could discern the echos from the original,
and in that way you have of taking things apart
and putting them back together in a never before
thought of fashion (at least by me), you’d likely

devise a terror-gram out of what i may or may
not have been yelling down to the depths, where
your footsteps—as if they were ever discernible.
anyone who glides their way through each day

as you do has no need for shoes or feet or placing
either upon the cold, dark ground. i wonder if this
is an example of the evolution of birds or how they
must have gotten up there by dreaming thousands

and thousands of nights about other planets and
wings, or sometimes inadvertently floating their
way into the dream of a cartographer who is only
half asleep at best, dying of scurvy and just having

puked up that last albatross, so as not to choke to
death by natural causes. later in the night, the bones
of a quail puncture his intestines. it’s one of the most
painful ways to go, i’m told, still stuck in a state

of narnia where the children i’ll never have refuse
to sleep a wink. lost at sea. lost in space. either
way, it’s always such a tragic disgrace.

mmmmmxliii

One Winter in the Jewel of the Midwest

a snow-laden heat emanated
from the radiator, which made
all kinds of clanking noises
throughout the night in the

little apartment where I learned
to sleep naked, and not only
because I was in love, but for
the sheer freedom of doing so.

It was a blip of my time in the
Midwest, but, as they say, Ann
Arbor is its jewel and, as I recall,
it was but a winter and perhaps

some of a spring.  And yet when I 

got home at night, even if I’d have
had to to drive through snow or
sleet from school, some sixty miles

to the south, I knew where my
night was, what a joy it was to
have that little place with my
new love, sitting on the two-

person couch watching Star
Trek: The Next Generation,
drinking cheap red wine and
awaiting a lovely dinner almost

every night.  The furthest north
I’ve ever lived.  And it was as
cold as its reputation, temperature-
wise.  But my heart was on fire,

and I was happy, my present
and my future feeling about as 

electric as they ever had.

mmmmmxlii

Hell Frozen Over

is it really bliss, what one supposedly finds in that
great dearth, the numbing
north star
of stupidity, that these days, with such alarming
regularity, is the source pool, are the
arbiters of taste and politics, which then makes the
necessities of those (of us?) who’ve spent their lives
curious, using that curiosity as a springboard to become ever more
educated.  Aren’t we the ones then that are left out in the cold,
     understanding the dangers of subsisting in temperatures so low?

mmmmmxli

Broken Tent

Sheridan Alley.  Relieving
Elaine at 7:02am (she’s
getting coffee at 9th &
Harrison), and I have to

let the appropriate people
into Sheridan Alley.  There
was no word on how to de
termine who the appropriate

people are.  Also, there is
Tyrone the Table Guy with the

dirty white do rag wrapped
around his head that looks

like it’s almost coming undone.
I think it’s actually a napkin.

mmmmmxl

Brains on Fire

Oh, the brain in my head,

which, when poked, folds,

is already folded, is fried.

It fries, the greasy smoke

rises from my ears, heads

directly up into the white

sky.  Smoke signals sent

subconsciously to the half-

conscious angels who no

longer watch over us.

Most bide their time

playing games, like

cards of any kind,

while we cry,

knowing full well

that even if all of

the firemen on the

coast were called,

there’d be no fire

truck with a ladder

short enough to get

any of even the most

miniature firemen up and

into one of our ears to put

that fire out.  We sniff,

getting a little bit hungry

with such an inhalation.

Fried brains smell tasty.

mmmmmxxxix

Morale Is Low

But we both use our feet
to move the paddleboat.

It beats swimming, at
least on most days, I’d

say (as I am not a fan
of swimming, although

the sun is beating us
down). Where we are

I’ve no idea. Perhaps
a pond in Golden Gate

Park. Perhaps a puddle
in Peru. These have

been murky days. But
we keep using all four

of our feet to move the
paddleboat somewhat

swiftly over the mud,
or beside the ducks.

And we are sweating.
We might as well be

in the water, we’re
so drenched. But

there are big droopy
flowers dangling from

the intermittent trees.
It’s such a summer.

We’ve both appointments
early in the morning and

must rise by 6am, even
if we choose to hit snooze.

Separate appointments.
Nothing fun. There’s stuff

to do, things that must get
done by then, our various

assignments. But for now
we paddle with low morale.

mmmmmxxxviii

Being Deprived of Your 

Own Property Renders 

a Very Special Sense of 

Helplessness

Microsoft should be ashamed (as corporations
so often are).  One year ago next month I had
my service suspended on the current $10 per
month iteration of a Microsoft Office account,

MS365, I guess it’s called.  No warning what
soever.  Since then, I’ve spent over 80 hours
online trying to get my account back, I’ve read
and reread their guidelines and, most of all, I’ve

tried very hard to get a clear answer on what it
was exactly that merited such a suspension.  I
have received no information regarding why,
except a list of vague reasons given that are in

no way even related to each other, at times.
I even had to dispute with my bank the extra
$10 a month that Microsoft stole from my bank
account for four months after they suspended

my account.  During the 80-some-odd hours
I worked with Microsoft representatives to get
access to my files in OneDrive, each person
with whom I spoke assured me with confidence

that I would soon get access to all of my files.
Except for a file that was purportedly taken out
of my drive (this I was told directly after the sus
pension transpired), which I was fine with.  What

ever file it was that so claimed my account being

taken from me (and, as if I even have the time to
do this, I will continue to fight this absurd screwing
this monopoly has so successfully given me), I’m

fine with it being gone.  I certainly didn’t upload any

thing intentionally that fits any problem in the guide

lines for storage.  Nor was I sharing any of the files in
my entire drive, save a couple of smaller files that

I shared with my partner, which only included our
own silly stuff, and all of the information we’d been
through thus far toward getting his citizenship here
in the United States so that he can live with me.

I lost all of my material possessions when I was
50 years old, about a year after I’d been evicted
from my home of 13 years.  I could no longer

pay for the storage unit that held them all—which  

was, mind you, all I could take from my old apart

ment before being assaulted by my old property
manager.  All of those possessions that I had still

managed to hold on to were then apparently auc

tioned off.  I miss none of these things much, except
perhaps the hundreds of books of poetry that sat upon the

shelves filled with the books that I’d read in their entireties.

These books always served as a backdrop behind me or who

ever was sitting on my old living room couch at any given
time.  Because, for one thing, it turns out that I’m not
that materialistic.  But, also, all of my old photographs,
I had taken and those my grandmother had given me, and 

my dozens of journals and the four or five boxes of flat 

memorabilia that I had dragged with me from place to place 

were photographed and made into electronic files that I
could keep, all of which were in my Microsoft OneDrive, 

for which I payed a monthly subscription for many 

years.  Now I have access to none of that, and which 

even after the 80-something hours working with reps 

in earnest to help me retrieve these files. A nd the

latest letter I received from Microsoft on the subject
says the decision is final.  Suspension upheld.  And I still

have no idea why.  Each person I chatted with online

or spoke with on the telephone said I'd get it all back,

these impresssions of the substance left from a life
that had lasted then half a century, now approaching 

60 years. It isn’t much. But they were mine.  They were

me.  And I (actually) trusted Microsoft, for whom I’ve spent,

or have been the primary responsible person who has helped
them accrue tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars
over the years for each product I’ve been responsible for
whomever I worked upgrading products or purchasing from 

them, as well as for each personal product I’ve actually 

used, practically since the inception of Windows.  How

does one begin to fight such a monster even over such 

vague bullshit claims, when I am just a poor man (made 

much poorer by their that heinous act). A monster with hands 

inside of my old and brand new laptops in such ways that almost 

no action that machine makes doesn’t pass through them in some 

way.  I will fight this, even though to build up to getting in touch

each time is a war I have with anxiety.  But I will keep trying, 

if for no other reason than the corruption and tone deaf customer

service that has become the standard.  If anyone has even
the slightest educated notion of what I should do next, please,

I’m an easy person with whom to get in touch.  But right now
I’m at a loss, stalling too long until my next attempt at getting
all I physically have of my history, spanning just a few short

decades of nothing but, to me, the most important details of it.

mmmmmxxxvii

My Hero, the Colorful Instructor, Teaches Color

This show breaks the mind
so as to heal it.  Don’t perform
your theories at a show in the
Hamptons.  I’m not red, but
I can sometimes feel squeezed
into navy blue packaging.  And
I am no real housewife. We do,
gauge, if we go to them once or 

twice at the very least, how to be

have in Japanese restaurants in,

say, the United States. Which isn’t

called America. America is so big.

And each person who thinks of its
importance and who thinks of
their importance, who lives in
the United States or sometimes
even spends a bit of time here,
and believes in importance, 
becomes the butt of the joke.
Have you most always drawn
your sun in the corner of your
academic work of art.  I never dismiss
the importance of yellow, not unlike 

the Beach Boys, which are a primitive
orange, but no, yellow is a thrill. (This, 

at least until orange becomes practical

beige, per our instructor; so we sit for
a moment in awe of how his words are
the truth).  He’s making fun of the most
creative color combinations.  He might
even be making fun of childlike wonder,
if innocent joy.  And I surprise myself,
thinking I’m not so worried about whether
the instructor has a penis.  But I wonder what
color it is (or would be).  So in the abstract
world, the one that makes sense, we must
always be careful to be as close to our own
truth as we possibly can (it is an impossibility
to get it 100% correct, to be our true abstracted
selves, but how close is the actual percentage to truth.
Pithy, but the best guess that I can come up with is maybe
the upper 70th percentile.  So this hero, this instructor
of mine, for which I’ve paid nothing but the cost of a
streaming service, which means since I use this service
quite often during the month, the actual price of this
instructor, of this, my guru, my poetic hero, is tiny, is
mere pennies, which, and think about this fact, is not
even a mode of currency any more.  Here in America.

I still have a bunch of these pennies. Those coins
which are a color so different than any other currency
I once used.  Is it a color I never use any more?  Because
of the feelings that might come at me, and these could
be red, navy blue, or even a color somewhere in the
vicinity of purple, best way I can describe it?  There is
fa ear that the color we might find ourselves immersed
within if we hand out these antiquated, maybe not so
antiquated yet, but how soon, how fast, just watch, how
incredibly fast before this form gets to be antiquated....
Never mind.  Before many of us forget the real and meta

phorical colors that exist within our navy blue spread

sheets, of what color copper actually might be (have been).  

This is simply one of many ways that we might get confused 

about the colors in our lives, about what colors we are when
we are feeling, what colors those feelings are, metaphorically,
in whatever controlled reality we might need for such experiments
we create in and around the colors in our daily lives.  Such lab
activity might mean less adventure in our daily lives.  Or it might
make the days less scenic, a bit less exciting, a bit less memorable, 

less...sensible?  Maybe even a lot less worthy of ever remembering.

Because Julio Torres is My Hero, and Because I Want You to Know
This.  As Always, Just Giving Small Portions of My Experience to You.
Plus, My Heroes Might Explain Who I Am in a Way That Is Purple.

mmmmmxxxvi

Concurring from the Gutter

        I could sit around and
do nothing but miss
everyone and every

       thing.  Sometimes, 

however, I surf the
gutters after an

       unusually heavy
downpour. It’s rarely

an adventure quite

       as scenic as today’s.
Which is to also say 

that I miss you, too. 

       Oh boy, I do!

mmmmmxxxv

The Golden Years

Had I arrived but just

a decade earlier or

even three or four,

I’m certain I’d still

have been a man of

the cinema.  But I’d

only exist in the dust

of the opening curtain,

and as nought but a

few loping shades of gray,

mere colorless shadow.

Oh, to have lived in the

Good Ol’ Days.

mmmmmxxxiv

I’m just a poem, a few

sribbled down lines that

can’t learn artificial

intelligence nor even be

as simple as an electric

computer.



             But I can live peacefully

within this electric computer

for almost an eternity (an

eternity to me) having

been created ever so

smartly and rightly only

just this morning by an

attractive specimen of

artificial intelligence with

whom my electronic home

only recently had the good

fortunate of making an 

acquaintance.

mmmmmxxxiii

Painting Furniture

I spent the day painting
a table that I had found in
front of a cathedral one
Saturday afternoon which
I then somehow managed
to move a few blocks (about
a quarter of a block at a time)
until I reached a direct bus,
hauled it and myself into it
and held onto it for dear life
as the bus careened the streets
of San Francisco until it deposited
me and that heavy table directly
in front of the Asian Art Museum,
which is across 8th Street from
the Civic Center, but which also,
oh so fortunately, happens to 
be directly across McAllister 

Street from The Abigail, as well.

And The Abigail is is where I have 

lived now for nearly a year. I painted 

the table the same acrylic color,
chrome orange, that I had just a
few months ago painted the much
smaller more decorative table that
I had found one afternoon lighting
up a Hayes Valley sidewalk, which
I also grabbed and brought to the
apartment into which I had quite 

recently turned into my home.  Now 

my home has matching orange (al

most red) tables beside my bed
which I, also just this afternoon,
made fresh with linens patterned
with white flowers embedded with

in a lilac background.  And it is 

springtime in San Francisco. 

Especially so in the lovely and 

now more vivid apartment in 

which I have lived now for 

nearly a year.

mmmmmxxxii

Tonight

Oh darlings and muses and pretty
pink faces emerging from pink
buttoned-up Oxfords.  Why
beat around such bushes

when the masters have so
already mastered the luring
arts?  Because mastery is only
mastery, and I could spend

all of my days and evenings
attempting to be just such a
master and never lure a thing
over even either of those

gorgeous bridges in my direction.

mmmmmxxxi

I haven’t felt this alone
since yesterday.  Counting
backwards from a thousand
would be just as easy.  To turn
this pout into anything that 
holds even a nib of pleasantry,
isn’t that all I want?  Isn’t it?
Maybe my goal is to mope.  It
repulses just to shine a thought
in that direction, but this is me,
I just know it (like I often know
myself) and certainly cannot shake
the darkness from my character at
this hour.  The damage is done, I know.
But if I could just bathe for a bit within
an Easter pastel, and it is the season,
would that begin to satisfy?  Was my 

mood bruised by the evening’s odd 

hellbent thunderstorm?  Downpours 

often rather bring me to at least a
swifter speed, much like a metal band’s
drummer encaged in a concert for 

a fifteen minute solo.  Would that 

such would quicken as it once
did.  Or white chocolate bunnies, like 

the ones I’d get in my basket, special, 

because I disliked regular-colored bunny 

chocolate.  I feel tonight as if I never even 

liked the white chocolate ones.  And yet I’d 

lie to myself and to these walls that are my 

closest friends tonight, just to keep the gloom.
It’s the bohemian life, Del!  Which, like every other
life must surely be this same color of pewter, at 

least for the duration of tonight’s eternity.

mmmmmxxx

Down the Toilet

For more than a moment
I thought he said that
the walls were panting
with excrement.  ‘Oh, Frank,’
I thought, ‘so dark and
too soon.’  But it was
excitement with which
those walls were panting,
of course.  The dark mood
was my own mind’s eye.
I’m only up to read (and
so screwily) because I
couldn’t sleep to begin
with, the swill in my head
swirling deep into someplace
neither my head nor I could
ever dig deep enough to reach.
I refused to turn anything on,
including myself.  So with no
one to play with and nothing
to look at, I opened this book,
which could be both (something
to play with and something to
look at) were it not a night like
this.  I dare not look up, lest my
own very walls, all out of breath
from trying to lift my spirits with
a storyboard of short happy dreams
might themselves be panting ever

so deliriously with excrement.

mmmmmxxix

these presumed dualities

do not appear to have caused in
me any entanglement.  no conflict.
i can calmly (and perhaps in too
carefree a manner) cradle both

yin and yang, as if the paradox 

were a swaddled newborn. which 

might feel to me a bit awkward

to carry, might seem so from the 

outside looking in, as well.  or i 

do imagine – but i have lived at 

least enough to find comfort by 

my ever-shifting placement upon 

most any vector that might be 

presumed by the mind’s eye, 

as if such dualities–within real

ity–could ever so linearly be

(non-binary) (unlike a shelf 

upon which a book...)

mmmmmxxviii

and my existence within

this day that, for me, has
just begun. the scene, as
one might say, is surveyed.
and as for my best assess

ment of it: it is mine.  if
anything can ever be said
to be such.  how i opera
te, how i take ownership

of anything within which i
am.  is it similar, in any way,
to how a collective “we”
might do? (again, how 

might i even know with any 

certainty?), this place with
in which i have so recently
become aware of how—so tightly,

so desperately—i seal myself inside?

mmmmmxxvii

just to live

my itty bitty life is
sometimes overwhelming

and this may be true for
most of us but i can never

be absolutely certain of that part
i get up it’s four in the morning i
tidy up the apartment which
i have come to love, am proud

to call home and am so happy to
have as a place of general existence
i flip the wall calendar to april a
few days late, this too must

surely be about as close to normalcy
as things with humans are … and thus it is

my small part within this new day

mmmmmxxvi

Poem

A few words typed onto a virtual page

& you think you’re special?

Think again.  I

Know what you know:

That nobody is special;

That what

Seems

Impossible can

Once in a blue moon,

Once in a very long while,

The seemingly

Impossible…becomes possible.

Oh, how I grow weary.

Heaven is impossible.  Hell, the

Devil, impossible.  So what did I just say?

Poem

mmmmmxxv

Failure

I must have been in the middle of a dream
To have heard him call me a failure.  There was

A time when I was called the seller of dreams. Now I’m
Called a charlatan?  I sort of

Half loped over the seller of dreams title.  It wasn’t one I heard
Every day.  Just from a certain someone who’d sort of taken my heart.

Look, I had
To do something.  One can’t be a

Yokel forever, and still maintain any
Gusto whatsoever.  And

So I’d wake each morning doing a breathing exercise.  A few
Oms.  And then

It was off to breakfast, where I’d
Cook me up a some Eggs Benedict and maybe a croquette.

Then I’d call up my friend to
Tell him what I’d dreamt so frantically the night before.

A Man with a Few Foibles

mmmmmxxiv

Short Story That Would Be Different

It was
An era that took place

In what seem like unknown times, things were
Substantially different

Than they are in the present. We were

At someone’s birthday party, I’m
Not sure whose it was.  It could

Have been mine.  If so, I
Wonder which one, what year, at what age that
Late that very evening, or the evening before or after, I would

Be.  Needless to
Say, one couldn’t imagine such
Things happening these days.
Moreover, it was hot, as I recall.  We went

For a walk, the two of us, to cool off and to get better
Acquainted.  We’d only just met, and would
Never meet
Again.  It was a
Time that

Was
Terribly different than the present.  These days,
We’d never have the

Courage to even ask the other for the walk.  Even if it was my
Birthday, these things would be very
Discouraged.

Which is discouraging, right?
Everywhere one looks today there

Is another twisted soul
Boiling in the nearing distance.  We’ve learned to just
Let them boil.  It is the way, today.

In a Different Era