ccclxi

another indiscretion still just doesn’t feel

a conglomerate insomnia
grounded in Frankenstein

a conglomerate insomnia
ground Frankenstein                    still just doesn’t feel right
a lunatic superior maybe
            Robert Creeley an

other indescretion to
make everything ok again      in July

several beefy earls walk into
JP Licks for a PB sundae
and all the way around
100 California from the
slimy heat

this morning my throat
could not breathe                I finally cooled from the slimy heat

6:05-6:40am reading more meat dark like
Bacon making up words

downstairs a yellow t-shirt & one globe &

over my dead hamburger
a tense bun

                      I feel actually better
but for the salami on the back of my tongue

ccclx

no more analysis.
gear. good. gear.
gear is good.

are you testing me?
cuz I’m testing you.
we can’t both be testing each other.
can we?

check your jacket.
cuz I’ve written a break-up poem.

              the tumbleweeds
              in my head
              are starting to
              conglomerate.

ccclix

how much of what is love—a blackbird
flying by the window—down left—
benchmark: 4 oyster shooters
downed inevitably—1 more left
for conversation—this talk goes
downhill then I finish a poem—it
has a good ending—a poem about death
doesn’t have to be happy—reading
in Hayden a cosmopolitan
crow swoops down to a woman
walking the sidewalk between the
pool and the dogwood—she is
wearing a black t-shirt—a girl
in pink next to the tiger lilies—
a girl with blue flowers for a
skirt—a puppy with a blue
leash—a pink bag—cherry
blossoms over a barrel of
fake words

ccclviii

this is delicate
a full petal crimson-brown
drying in the fern

this is my connection
we sit in the same nest
winter a greenless nonsense

this del
icate con
nection abounds which

I have made a new connection
when I curl my fingertips
delicately under yours

     —maybe one or two
ever get connected—

we applaud each new description
of each new passing cloud

ccclvii

I’m on Walden Pond with

raindrops and sunshine.

I’ve been bristly all weekend,
most especially after try

ing to get my driver’s license
in Watertown and
being told I didn’t have
the proper equipment.

This morning I woke up
and saw olive oil.  It was just
looking at me.  Like it
wanted to say good morning.

A dog lopes up a hill with
two people.  A fly lands
on my book.  Six salted eggs
on Stockton Street.  The

tripod, like a spider, lands
on the soft grass next
to the blossom-dusted
cobblestone.  Its camera

finds a book about pickle
spears and salted eggs.
The bell rings.  It is
another F Train.

ccclvi

I am so tired of words. Here is some examples. Pleasance is a word.
Its fiction bends over to take a photograph of hyacinths in Levi’s Plaza.
See how the hyacinths lean in toward slimmer cameras recognizing he
likes to squeeze in his pillows and finds this interesting as you nor I do.
Seagulls needn’t worry their cherry blossoms. Grackles are all nondescript.
The paragraphs in which he capriciously stops to photograph the purple

the purple bumblebees (the miniature purple pineapples). These stops
and starts takes a blade to the jeans his jeans. Its cobblestones dusted with
cherry blossom petals only when they ripped. He stays put for a few minutes
just hugging the blue pillow. Virginia Woolf gets very little sunshine as
this business of words sounds alarms back in Berkson. Warmest ever
these tops of trees bends over the roiling river sweltering at 2:30pm.

ccclv

real fog’s haze this mourning’s
estate a thin maze’s languor
its play-by-play on each lip’s
in sway with dusk’s beleaguered
dreams
dreams of this duck’s fount

I hate this language
says the real bartender
in the Bechtel dining car

our signatures’ connections
evolved two into one
where one is this event
equals two of us altogether in
the grackles’ wanted fountain

folks like us kisses our
pillow lips jubilate as we
hugs dusk’s hacked dreams

cccliv(e)

there’s a rumor that everything is connected
(well that’s nice) I am chewing Wrigley’s Orbit (Ohne Zucker)
with Suzy’s cat (fed just a minute ago)

it’s pinkslip Thursday (yes another one) but
this time with a little bit of sleaze
she’s doing fine it’s a horrible place

the Matson boat doesn’t leave as big a wake as
the Yang Ming boat and I’m
sitting on a park bench alongside Jamaica Pond thinking of...

sipping chamomile tea with Tylenol Cold (2)
sniffle     (and punctuate)    I’m really nice and
purple     here’s to my good fortune isn’t it beautiful     (LIFE)

how I’ve proceeded feeling good love with gum & gravel
walking and reading the first novel I’ve gotten halfway thru
in over a year while at the same time (White Noise)

staving off death locked inside the blurred blanks
those boundaries between the waters and the airs locked 100%      {mimes
point to the implications of these relationships}

                                                                                   a movie
with two new fruit leaves Tsai Ming-Liang is mag
num
           dizzy exclamation point

now I think I’m having a panic attack with my filtered water
it’s summer already and it feels like
I have to put my glasses on just to see its own watery hands (mine)

my own my very own watery hands
                             who is it debunks such bunk can somebody say
I am never connected 100%

cccliii

texture of memory.
give up on words.
back to water. oases.
things got boiled down.
romantic. a bottle of
whatever the source.
in the park before dawn.
brown barechested
stairsteps full of free stuff
like: siphon. just
words. hyphenated
last name. menage.
Hawaiian shirt. visa.
glass of milk. cheese
danish. failure. Seuss.
movie. Star Wars. penis.
priest. New England.
no public restrooms.
Bergman. Roth IRA.
glass of milk. Iran.
boobies. lamppost.
getting down on your
small hands and asking
please this is my last
and final request. before
sunbathing drop keys
order in lose ID. get
upset w/o touching
computers. recreate
botany not growth but
spilling it backwards.
an excuse for a pillow
eight hours.

ccclii

THIS =
anything profound must be harnessed,
leashed. like lightning. I know
                                                          Fantasy. but
someone has to be is bouncing off
the walls
                    of the sun like the jacuzzi in the museum. making me
break. breaking free. what if he breaks
through? I’ll just

knowing. I. cannot. right
this beautiful stillspring day. or maybe I’m wrong
and it has righted itself already:
I am that wall
                             (a sunken library where we teach children how to swim
in a world full of handcuffs)
                                                        we survived
whatever made me giddy
and then died.

framed fireworks.
the frame: a ferris wheel in a rollercoaster museum. we are to
                                                                                            remain calm
               while folding ourselves up into the barrel of a cannon.

but it’s not over it’s not over this bounce.    a pair of magnets
oppose each other,
find the wrong poles,
the right holes.
                             .take back off to the sun

cccli

I will try to write it all down on the birds
singing their jubilation of a Sunday evening.
They’re finally slowing to an easy pace.
My SecurID reads 456495 tells me what
happens in my head like Joe Pesci driving us
home to the couch from dinner in the North End.
The couch is asleep with somebody on top of it.
An aquamarine stapler. Upstairs at the Indian place
in Central Square vegetarian thali dinner—I shed a
nother tear like she walks down the aisle. On TV
a misogynist in South America fighting killer ants.
Finally I find pizza—a joint called Barbato’s—IT
IS APRIL at NIAGARA FALLS although we
only allude to the transition. Mark my words
Monday I will write it all down. After blowing
bubbles on the newlyweds I drive 23 miles to
the Riverside Inn in Cambridge Springs for a
reception. I take off before the cake. My
solitude is over. I’m home 11:30 snuggle him up.
Next morning watch him graduate with Kissinger.

cccl

There’s a rabbit over there
looking down at Niagara Falls.
An officer asks me if I’m okay
here at the edge. How nice
“just to see you sitting there all
by yourself.” Stunning, no later
than 5am I feel wonderful. Slept
a bit in my car about 30 miles
east of Buffalo, drove into the dark.
Got here and now there’s enough
light for memory lane. A family
of six one early morning in the 70s,
waking up in a Pinto station wagon
to the multicolored waterfalls. We
couldn’t get into Canada because
Dad refused to give up his Derringer.
Soon perhaps I’ll get a haircut
and a wedding gift in Buffalo. Now
I’m walking the edge, all of a sudden,
whoa, a drop of lightning. Muffled
thunder and the rabbit’s off like the
birds below. A cloud on the water.
Morning brightens. Day finds me
distant yet straightforward, stirring.

cccxlix

I am now dead. check the yellow file folder {insert cellphone beep here}

and you’ll find a lighter to hold up time-off—

and yes you’ll find I’ve been eaten by a solemn duck, beaten into

the hourglass like eggs while being told to have a vengeful day

4:12. honestly it felt good except for the pain (heel of left foot). nor 4:21

the timestamp on the international waybill. check out the watch it’s huge—

it clocked our blow (conversation) when the cookies were at my new place

and I was really in love. yes yes that’s when and where I was bested best. and

(yes, in love with his desiccated couplets.) time out for (plantar fasciitis laugh attack!)

look anyway the plovers getting chased by Rover across the camera. pay heed the

commentary. its various incarnations next to the stump washed in by the ocean.

Tuesday somewhere and the moss shows up. two minutes later it’s 4:13

and the Chinese Back Dormitory gives the waterbottle a spin {insert slumpdate here}.

death feels like the one tree in the wind that blinded the forest. I loved you for sure.

                                                                 --urgent Cupid postcard at Seal Rock Inn.

cccxlviii

pickrock. tea palm
pulses. beat fist 19th.
throw down hillside
quiet rock. down hosp
ital hot palms. pinklife
beats fists 19 faces into
forgotten arbor. the lbs.
palms it. teapnook from
hospital hot. prain ardor.
230. how tup to help
rock. spend entire day
to get moved. fact add
fat keeps cut face cut.
strewn down palm
nook. hotrock it
fit. rockpick it
palm. strip curve
of shirt. 32.

cccxlvii

This poem about you
smells like an old book.
Its hair was so dark at
birth. It matured with
such dash—I reread it
often. Its ballsy opener
was never a yawn. But
it is really quite lovely
to watch it rent a
moving van.

cccxlvi

My left foot down the first step.
No pain! My hair in the cloud
that’s heading east after snapping
off the balcony. Mostly blue, the

skies take off, probably for the
last time. Today, I’m making
arrangements. Tofu-veggie
stir-fry. Gmail flashes a new

message : ‘James Blunt isn’t
that cute.’ Non? How would
I know, anyway. Got the tele-
phone order in yesterday

at a urinal in Faneuil Hall.
I ate a salad for lunch. That
didn’t come out right. I got
the telephone order in. My

chamomile tea is cooling off.
Embarcadero 4 nearly ripped
a cloud in two. My glasses are
already hungry. Dirty, non?

cccxlv

Dear Feathercloud,

I ate the past but I’m still
hung. Talked to him for 30 minutes this
horny. The crickets are getting a
dick out of it. I should come every Sunday
but here I am watching the ducks and geese
fry a lot. Not a pecker this side of the water
but the pigeon pricks. I watch him swallow it.
Damn.
Looks like another downpour spoon.

Love,
Meatduster

cccxliv

Yes I am reading ficus
on the onion. Raindrops.
Some basic America
rains drop fruits energy.
Plantar fasciitis eating
slowly downhill. Layer
graduates in two days.
So hungry to pick a
card. Wet bricks or
Zen. No more food
him. Only I probably
boats hand in handeye
to eyeroll. Pucker
the smile of an onion.
Some rains don’t have
eating slowly. Rain.
I have to go focus on
the fruits. Orange
with a splash of tangerain.

cccxliii

Here
having
wrong
is good
at
poetry.

Antidote?

Where
I’ll
please
slept in my office

Dad Dad.

Oh the sense of humor.

Keeping
you
a
breast.

cccxlii

iron fans kill
the fight is the beauty of the kill
we watch each bloodstain grow very attractive
this is how we are designed
our defensive applications are stainless steel ribs
they (we) attack the mouth of an orange river
which opens smooth and bloody like an early October morning
the hillside is on fire
forsythia
at approximately thirteen inches in length
a helicopter noses its way over a bumble bee
past its man and his orange river
everything is bleeding
this is clear from the falling cherry blossom petals
and the hungry bear who grabs another new fish out of the orange river

cccxli

i like the sound of besmilr. her purple globes
plums falling on the christian science monitor.
which animal has given him an invoice to sign, a
opossum or an ant? he must be pretty proud of
today’s major planning (penning a wednesday poem
and calling it brain science). i should probably run
but first i do some dishes and feel your hands
in the dishwater unquote. once more the
“house of the coffee woods” is intact
but for the broken network of singed ants.
our name is over the laundromat like a sprite.
i spell its words from the shapes of the feelers.

cccxl

spring clouds dump walked.
willow clouds break up.
on my back willow breaks open.
i walk over to sleep spring. our place.
three times you gave me a bunny rabbit.
over three times to wide-open-eye spring.
the willowbark breaks walk three times.
you were like proud of yourself. spring sleep.
wide-open-eye rabbit.

cccxxxix

Mozart found it hard
to live in Los Alamos.
And then there’s Columbine
on Hitler’s birthday. The
world stinks of bad news. Here,
however, it’s a beautiful day w/
the dead folks, birds twittering
in Mt. Auburn Cemetery.
Kenward Elmslie is seventy.
I walked all the way from
Harvard.
George Francis Kimball –
dead 100 years before
I was born (sneezes
across cubicle –
must be the dust).
Say everything!
Or say nothing at all.

cccxxxviii

a backlash against the dailiness
and the blogworthy. these blanks
their quiddity humiliated. breath
pours from the body. the body
lies under a cedar gateway.
we’ve got the beach with the
cedar gateway. it goes poem.
flower fluff on the waves a
plastic fork with french fries
and a napkin. fresh lunch on the
plaza wrapped in a bandana
Japanese style. a sketching
of you sketching. I sat high
above on a mound. I sat
wrapped in cedar watching you
watching the waves. I saw
a seal. this is written. these blanks
poems their multiple planes a
napkin. this breath in a box.
this box a body. this body
trapped in the scream of a sneeze
down the hallway.

cccxxxvii

what a leftist mix tape.

I’m disappointed to be dealing.

back at work a tree background in cubicle 3.

words can’t describe even spent me.

never even me. chin up. cut spinach.

throw myself toenails into a blank.

one umbrella in the mist memorization.

blue babies in the bay baby blue.

cccxxxvi

it rains the day
I know I was
almost perfect
but now
it’s Monday
ocean seagulls
are digressions
here I can’t
so much get
dizzy with
gossip but
I drink fog
and bid on
forty acres
I am Arkan
sas the sun
California
Boston
and Maine
I haven’t had
a vacation
in over a
year and
this is just

what happens

cccxxxv

this movie’s an example
of the quietness of rain
or the neighbor
typing up the bedroom window

something comes out
it turns slick garbage into plot
a cliché illustrating nothing
is it a taxi or tax day

the Premier leaves the building
operatically for China
the page he left included sex
and romance

both I don’t remember
except that I was there
and would rather have gone to Portland, Maine
which movie is this an example of

cccxxxiv

hello dream of a new month
signing a lease we blew up
its national flag flirts online with our own
greenness
Saturday night Brian the elegant nurse
Jake the sixteen year old Indian
Easter
nothing like you
our traditional walk in a pink shirt
so as not to be funereal
we breathe
he’s unimpressed so I sign the line
it gets things rearranged
but I want to think about bloom bottoms
everything frozen like the internet
in greed
disappears in a puff of smoke
each argument over religion
gets me closer to the stars
in bed
everything on the floor you fell down
making an announcement
you’re leaving for good you don’t feel safe
you want to hang it on the wall
so you can see some you there
or me
it’s too confusing
puff
over nothing

cccxxxiii

a new month another spring Bill Moyers on teevee war in Yugoslavia
a nice date he likes The Muppets and The Simpsons and also Tori Amos
he has a beard and we even smooched and snuggled after Daniel Auteuil &
Catherine Deneuve got him weightlifting gloves for the war in Yugoslavia
we had a double moon even and the sky was a smokey smoky blue then
poetry attacked my omelet for dinner and I had a lot of expense reports
stop what will I think years on down if I live to read this again
when people keep killing other people
and I won’t be here of course
I’m no good yuck
let’s dance

cccxxxii

born into the glow from within,
the moon looks at us in the shower
while a car washes into the grey evening.
somebody is born at 8:44 or so.
it is night. elaborate messages
are frozen upon each facial expression.

I am not sure how to get in touch
with my roots. which mountain
belongs to me. which lake.
I do remember swimming to the
edge, to the buoyed rope,
wondering how deep it was
and what happened beyond.

I think I find out, eventually,
but in the most unlikely places.
some are dark except for the
single ray angled slantwise.
sometimes swimming is required,
but not always. we are born. we
find our cars. we pack like cigar boxes.

we sit. we think more and more
about events that unfold and we try
to explain them. in our heads. to each other.
until the explanations grow more and more blank
as a fire builds within that either boils us or keeps us
away from any more life.

cccxxxi

The flowers are dying.
Lips like sawdust.

Mars is never easy.
Shall I meet you at home?

cccxxx

sunny day to mix it up
give birth on rewritten pages
near the tip of my tongue

here’s a little sore reading last night
our brown California puts out
especially the beloved pantoum

next is Fire + Ice before Sackler
this is a grill in a circle
it’s not so mixed up as all that

tonight I have a date
with the broken cloud
that breaks off like a boxing glove

until my shoulder hurts
like everything hurts
now The Red Room has its Cosmos

the sun shines through Taiwan’s
not so Carl Sagan-esque retirees
and Kosovo is bombing us

they slit the throats of Albanians
ah well listen to this            “she’s at NYU but
now she lives near Columbia”

“you wanna say ‘hi’ to my
daughter in
New York?”

cccxxix

and morning.
elevator talk about the
School of Quietude. and then
Outlook tells me to water my
deskplant. “I would push
your mom in front of a train
for a cup of coffee.”
                                    so what
if he gives props to his pre-
decessors. why don’t I
have a kid myself, see how
lingering life can be in
fast-forward?
                                   tell me:
how are we already here?
it’s eleven o’clock
and I have to do
the filing.

cccxxviii

here’s spring
& psychosis
Thursday and
Friday wrists
hurt wrist
hurts (right)
also edge of
ball of foot
(left) Cali
fornia eggs &
pages of do
nuts ah Zhu
we love you
      +
Jackie Brown
Tom Bonner
& Channel 4
Indian food
a Gong Show
measured in
boys fuck
grad school
2 people at
once in blue
eyes find
the redbutton

w/o worsening

cccxxvii

A bird flew up to me this morning.
“Nothing I have to say will be of any use to you.”

Scene four: St. Patty’s day in Boston.
I bought him a monkey in a cup. It’s pretty cute.

Call Site for Sore Eyes, 3:21pm. Make appointment.
Not for myself. Just listen to Nicole

Kidman: “Has anyone had Lasic surgery? Is it any good?
I can’t see. I walk around in a haze.”

I was online 3 hours last night talking to some
winterguard boy in Billerica. Maybe a date

with the pianoman on Friday? Premier Zhu’s address.
Mary Cassatt. Then the symphony with you-know-who.

He’s back from London. Yesterday he points me to the
sickest pigeon he’s ever seen.

cccxxvi

Makeshift snow again.
The tulips flash soon.
My heart sags, makes
red carpet groping no fun.
Today’s rainbow burns a
needle-hole into the
southernmost tip of the
island.
                There goes my
idea for a career change.

This day has been a coding
smorgasbord, always I’m
either just blank or I’m

blank blank blank blank

anymore.  Esp. sifting thru
the conference participants.
Pass me the Xanax.  I think
I’d rather be catty than talk
such hokum.
                       Today I blew
everything by sending
him the mail. He writes
partial sentences, which
in retrospect was of
course a bad omen.

cccxxv

“Truthfulness is crucial.” So I enjoy
Everybody Loves Raymond generously.
So I have spent today $160 at Structure.
Here I am. What have I missed from
giving up Arkansas? Why do my words
not echo, like C.D. Wright’s, that long,
lost country? Honestly, where does
she live?             “Outside Providence.”
What largesse! After small poetry,
grieve racism. Then drive. Drive to
Holliston, to Big Sur, into Obsession.

This is the table where I met him. Not
much more than the silly words that
are volleyed back and forth across it.
We still sleep with each other—on
occasion.

               Your tall poem is hard
to look at because your eyes are
so beautiful.

cccxxiv

Something still untold in my throat. It’s not
words or breath. It’s something in me you made
I never tried to soak. Could be a wrestlematch
there was enough twisting and clawing but
only if we never see each other again.

Brought the candle out of the bathtub what
time in the morning. Stopped at the orange
yellows because I didn’t want to know how
to feel this time. Only maybe the most ever.
Does ever include tomorrow?

cccxxiii

I don’t like darjeeling, rather.
This thought mulling last night’s contretemps
concerning pornography. Yes,
it’s a new word dithering about every other
day or so. Like when to be a bad boy. So as to be
IrishFrench by proximity. So as to be 6’5” and blond and blond.

          It’s been too long since I’ve seen the ocean.

Perhaps it was the soft cigarettes that quivered his
lips each mid-sentence. I’m sure I’d never think of that
with a blue sky. The movie was Night of the Hunter,
set in West Virginia, a jarring little seedpod of
many tattoos to come.

cccxxii

I can’t submit it’s
over. Green rain
falling from the sun

takes a nap it’s the
library. Fiery cloud
eats a slick airplane

heart. This poet
puts me to sleep is
why the peanut tree

leans in toward
the spin. Floating
around my empty

head like sunsets,
orange reaches,
runs away like a ballerina.

cccxxi

he picked me up from work to take me
home and then we promptly had
extremely passionate singlehood

he made it back from Montreal
in one piece cute as ever
we had a nice talk he picked me up

have I even mentioned that I
received my $1,500 income tax face
my federal face which was nearly $1,500

so my bank account was very proud my account
ate another account very full $1,500 worth
I should buy a nice pair of tennis shoes

and go JOGGING play racquetball
whatever now I’m tired also I should
just make a checklist

letter to Mom
go JOGGING
feel up a turnip truck

cccxx

my taste has always
been around twenty
and skinny and soft

I ran into Bill in
the hallway Kenward’s
opera opens today

I felt sick got coffee
and left Union Square
after only a minute

got tickets from our
limo service to see
Ragtime tomorrow night

take a vitamin he says
we should do a
collaboration being single

big tall Asian guy says
I know you’re going to
buy me a drink or

something sitting on the
floor in a rectangle of
sunlit carpet with Sepia

I did and he didn’t
drink but I went home
with him anyway

cccxix

A Pomegranatini
For a barking muscle
Ooh the dark heart departs
Bringing the fishes to the loons

Before going to Montreal on Friday
Only to never to see him again
Sulfur is so much better
(See vomit)

cccxviii

Monday needs to be single. Then to finish about the
nurseboy, I got a cheesy-ass e-mail from him
and then he had a co-worker (assistant) call me at work
just to say hello for him. Where’s the reality?
I lost a cough only on my face because I can’t get into it.
It’s the Bad News Ball-biters. Here they come.
Later that same day I just wanted to snuggle him away.

This week will be heavy busy just wearing a light jacket.
I got a bright sore on my thumb. What did I do with it?

cccxvii

One thing I can’t tell you because of
no memory it could be a dance performance.
I found a note to the “Enemy of Those Eager to Fist
for Fuel”. It might have been the former
Phillipines congressman who sieves pizza
and plays music real loud. That’s honesty!
I also went out on the town with either a
lightweight or a lush. He was fun. I’ve almost lost my cough.
What happens if I pull this cord? Six new messages
in a couple of minutes—
start or stopwatch?

cccxvi

I was just a follow-up.                        We turned into scribble.
It was such a mess.                             Tightwad.
I’m so glad I live with Buddha this week.                          Please hold this moment.
We decided we are best friends.       It’s a starting point.
He hates academia so I shouldn’t go back to school.

               >>>---Don’t mess it up->

                                                               Tightass.
Rainy accounting.                           The new bugs are cute.
I coughed on the sofa all night.   Downtown laundry.
I’m full of that today.                      Rain.Rank.Blank.

cccxv

each little white boat blacks the eyes of
the faces wakened by phone’s numbered
highways cutting rivers of deep nothing
they all argue over the phone for a while
until the sidewalk is muffled from the open air

now each puffed chest tells a sad story
clouded with snow from an argument
its face is not here to compromise
but it beats and in beating must bud
too soon to know how to bloom

brick chunks cling to each face
barren trees bicker over the boats
now each puffed chest overhears a sucking noise
checks the riverbed thrown at a window
     after the snow melts each face kills Time

cccxiv

swift. nineteen ninety-nine stud
ying like a madman for tarts. atrophied.

could be just take a nephew. nap here.
blue like the color of your skin

which I truly adore it’s all veins and
the guy a little ways to my right who’s

stuck in time. our timing is always
right. mailing libraries. I wish I

were excited about it. excitement
lost the boat. we did? something left

over. like pizza and mahjongg I
hid behind the boxes and was

watching for the puppet. generally
twist your face into a sock. then paint

it. don’t ever call me anymore. give
me your ankle. it’s darker now.

cccxiii

What words welcome whatever you
find yourself for Valentine’s—a little
bitten from a barkened


age?  This big blue gulf vanished a wealth of
Saturdays.  Look how the dry brown
birds are banging.  Some


fell in love and warmed it up.  Some
like the hounds wished our bones
into wishbones.  Some flew


into the foil.  Fly clouds.  Fly like a
rabbit into a chalkened
coppice.

cccxii

your picture looks good. I am sad lying
flat on the counter. it was good at church
drinking coffee they
read a Billy Collins poem “Aristotle.” at church?
cute guy gnawing on a bagel three stools down. I’m
not thinking about something but maybe I just want to
fall out of the window.
we watched a movie last night it was black and white
with lots of computers. big hoop earrings.
I read Lyn Hejinian poems last night including
others whose names I don’t remember I’m going whole hog.
I am an old dolt I am sad. the blue sky
winks it makes me less sad. at me.
that is an inappropriate word. here is another page. he tries
to do things that really matter but not
very hard. no snow. but
a sparkle or two if I were
only so. your picture still looks good lying.
innocent.

cccxi

Adventure. This place
doesn’t even have a
restroom. I am stoned
for it. “Art allergy?”
“Sure, how about 8.”

“Nice poems.” Inti
mate. They do have a
bathroom. Potato leek
soup’s hot. Mellow
ceiling human. Rats!

Whatever that’s worth
is less than I’d pay.
$25 an hour for the
good old world. Ho
ver over the soup.

cccx

I am looking forward to finding air but currently
I’m writing the economy, so it’s warm and can’t be
more than we expected. except even more poison,
but it’s impossible to say how many in advance.
see the blue sky? it looks perfect. but see the little
boat taking things seriously? we cannot finish our
ginger ale and omelet, including 4.4 million foreign
tourists. on Thursday I am finding new glasses. no
longer have sniffles, thankful, looking for glasses to
see. looking. looking really looking for a reason to
see anything. say about not feeling like I have none.
feelings. see. George Clooney left ER last night.
I’m wearing new shoes from Aldo. he had to know
before he could obtain a taxi license. see. breathe.
breathe unwind. as in take it easy. is it the winter?
I am telling you we should break up only to protest.

cccix

Listen to the good weekend. One long dance, three-quarters
shirtless. One long movie, Match Point, what
stress! Boyfriend looking for coded messages in my poems.

Romantic brunch on the ocean. Buy new underwear. Watch more
movies. Chasing clues across continents...

Annie Hall. The Lady Eve.
Door-to-door bar-hopping despite a little tension,
too much for no good reason.

And then there’s this: walking up the hill, hands clasped,
you walking backward,
me forward.

cccviii

All of today’s meetings get wiped
clean. Troubles, troubles, troubles, he

calls me with his troubles. He’s
doing okay, I think. But he gets so worked up!

The morning’s mist gives way to sunshine
as the day develops. No more blah blahs

on the calendar. It’s time for tea and
we’re all dilettantes. Dilettantes!

cccvii

hello from Baja
with a sickly strawberry
margarita and disco

Monday it rained
I mean it rained I mailed
a birthday love poem

he was crying when he called
to thank me as much as he does
for me that was nothing and
I’m glad he liked it

                                     speaking
of yellow there’s a yellow-
orange layer covering
the Oakland Hills
right now
from this view
making for a hazy-
dusty looking day

the bay looks
much more inviting than
yesterday tho

yellow is my favorite color

cccvi

It’s because of the drowning he’s
shirtless at the edge of the crowd.
It’s because he’s drowning I know me.
I know me. It doesn’t matter if it
takes me too long to see it. Other
worlds beckon. Will you sleep forever?

This time was strange dancing. I might’ve
found you at two or three, but some nether
soul caught my left shoe. I had tripped
but did not fall. Now his little white boat
chalks a tight-lipped line amid the gloom.
Who else did I bring to this river?

cccv

writing on the still train he
tries to cheer me up, succeeds
with new pants and a sweatshirt.
now he’s walking down Pine Street,
nondescript. a bottle of white wine
with porn and cornbread (I’m off my diet).
cruises here. cruises there. everybody
goes on a fucking cruise. the car guy
was at my gym last night. he’s never
been to my gym before. why do I go?
maybe we’re all just talk.
                                     the new guy
didn’t like my ‘y’ words but he liked
‘cocksucker’. I’m leaving the green now.
got to go give somebody a kiss.

ccciv

way up here chalking out
a tree breeze. relaxing
like the other grandchildren
of immigrants. these words
must work themselves out when we
go to Ogunquit, show that I’m
no bastard of disjunction
nor architect of erotica. lies!
architecterotica. it’s a scrumptious aesthetic
or feeling or abrasion or
whatever, intangible
until I say it, trans
late it onto his cheeky
stomach. here are the
remaining timeslots
for chair massage today:
by means of exploiting my
relationships with The Eastern and
The Western. these London-looking
buildings look like me. they know I’ve
lost 8 pounds today. p.s., hunger
is the root of all crankiness—
now I’m posing as appropriation,
bottom-heavy.

ccciii

more squirrel.  Wal
ted banana.  go2
tinderBART!—thunderBEE!
Blackberry allusions
.  shook my nuts    Googl
e it.   (sticky note)

cccii

Banana says we must remember this new kind
of cloud backing up into the sundown, a nice Perrier
of a day blocked by the Embarcadero number
{insert Japanese language}. Winter life.
Erin just sent me a parody of satire. It’s a
cadaver like a face staring out at the
naked people getting run over on the interestate.
Tell me more.

ccci

sitting here losing teeth.
sitting here with lots of my mind
sorting a new way to start and I feel lost.
I felt a lot better freezing about it.  I am feeting
and I have to pee.  although I might try to
shake it out of you.
I’ll have the fritatta and the restroom please.
something meaningful with less coffee.
you’ve come with me when at some point
words stop mattering.  maybe that’s
it—words.  they stop mutt.  I touch.  I tuck
with full effect into the meanings.  the meanings rub the wrong way
and get a foul.  why is it do you think I
always hold out my hand?  seriously do you think
I am disbelieving just to touch your
tongue?  I have had some secrets I lost.
the way to the words that are meant.  some
are for someone,
but nobody could be more.  think of the teeth.

ccc

Here’s more muse musings. Do you mind my
knowing you? Take the time.
Let’s build a birdnest,
speak Spanish (a mutual language). Well,
you know. This is a different window than
yesterday. Let’s speak Spanish. I have the
dulcimer, it’s not a critical thing (birds do it).
Big limb-like things. I want to be good, but
real? Should I aspire to such stuff? Look,
you are beautiful in poetry. Very bright
and covered in many layers. AND this
connection is yours and mine, plus better now
that I wear glasses in my cubicle.

ccxcix

Mission statement corner of 2nd, crying:
I love you very much turn off the camera.
Pick up February poetry poem in bed
all black dimly lit.  Reading beautiful snow
beautiful Charles I can’t walk.  Little v’s
of snow all along the bridge.  Snowflakes.  How 

many shapes look forward.  The schoolbus is
the wrong direction drop your pelvis.  I
watch it.  I watch the moving picture in
front of me. In front you kept changing
the best thing.  Those brown birds.

ccxcviii

it was love at first sight. I am over and done with
again and again. yet I am still unable to hold
the man I know how to in French or whatever language. I know how to
write a personal statement on Monday but
Monday night + Sunday afternoon = I rap.
here’s a memo taken in mathematics. find the equation
for love power that knocks you down. which is almost never. get it it’s important—
not everything is a real ditty. yes we got fairly decent out of it. the ages
say blow in which is impossible. impossible to look for babies two years now.
and so I change the way I feel. I change the way I feel. I hand over music. it
beats the way writing leaves. we can dance and be only as bad as it beats.

ccxcvii

seems to me I’ve been here over a year. the slothful Marlowe spirits.
queasy my curiosity always seem such
swung instant message.  swing it.  take me there into that plausibility—
I spill coffee on Union Square.  I spill coffee like a
rubberband.  this car’s going by a Massachusetts.  as did I.
did I mention the time it takes me there.  to get me four.  four crying.  step on his feet
before I fall down.  that’s when I died.  he changes every four minutes.  every
last night is every day—
a cosmic instant message.  I’ve been fucking the possibility.  it seems he
hasn’t even called in.  blue grudgingly.  this is a pre-marriage issue—
problems keeping.

ccxcvi

I turned last night into a poem which
when I got back from the dance about the loss
of a long-time ago it was one of the best poems—a cosmic
backdrop—snowy hot spring baths. I love him four times.
four times I wiped my eyes over the apples and the potatoes. I’m
your special guy. pain is all around. here for example is a picture of the
rice pudding from the cous-cous truck. I shot the wet sidew
alk here — and another time here, then I shot the firetruck. I swung him over and over, I

thank him over, over, fuck his eyes are all over. his eyes are over. fuck his eyes.
see how they shine. fuck them. I am over everyday screaming a bit. this pocket
changes me. change makes me feel united. so I write more. next is a
triple layer installation. the food is good but where’s the dick for love.
this green newspaper balls love into an upright casket. I escalated
then I felt almost everywhere. how romantic this is together. how
romantic together. notation: going on for a while. I just waive him.
I’m feeling quite indifferent. ha. I just wave at him. a cosmic wave.

ccxcv

I just fished a novel with
the above title. The spike
of John Hancock is Franz
Ferdinand (“beautiful boys on
a beautiful dancefloor”) and
nothing matters now. The window
across the river at your
face does not close. Never
closes. But it keeps changing. It
taps my spirit. It is warm-armed/fingered.
Well, it’s obvious rain for the weekend.
Why pillows always goalpost (“guitar”). 12:55.
Same bicycles in the median. Orange
coat with blond hair (sip). I am sipping
gold. One jogger passes three joggers
(the more I see the less I know).
Our wall. When we sat on that very bench what
was our explanation? No more. No way.
How we missed four holes in the cloud.
One jogger on the bridge. A squirrel with a
messed-up tail meets another at the closest tree,
runs up, runs down, digs a little, runs back up.
I love you.

ccxciv

these just words back from the blank page. I had a
great bedtime with your eyes down on me, keep waking.
floated and fulfilled, beautiful weather, are we dancing
taller? take a break from the interstate—
12:06—see the dirty windows. which costume are you now?
and just barely into Connecticut (our secret state) when—whiplash!
I am not you now (I do not close your eyes. I look up
and you have not closed your eyes like always. could this be
the tearing down of my life that I have always wanted?)!
I am not you now. beautiful weather—this blank page—MOMA. I went to the G
Bar — how many years was I there? in a little silkscreen
you show me your action figure. he is high.
your new jacket and strut—this is the life for five boys.
juvenilia. just keep track. just keep reading. I slept across the
street from Carnegie Hall. Depeche Mode was just here. your
face keeps changing (“my God what have we done to you?”).
typical-gay-materialistic-sexistic Miro. Japanese textiles
are eating the blank page—or Milk Chocolate Milano (intell
ectual) angels? what’s with the abbreviated thing? if God
has a master plan what is he doing here exactly six years and one day less?

ccxciii

I have been stopping
on this doorway, nothing went wrong
with the bridge. Our

fresh skillet finds Dove’s blue. I
paint to stay a while in that blue. I paint the big door
of your hallway, step next to the whispery night. Look,

I have not seen him in nine years so to speak.
Since then I died so to speak, screaming
on the pillow.

This is the hallway where I may see
Frank. Not you. This ride has been nice. Nothing

is wrong with the bouncing. You change. Look at
you. I was trying to shovel snow off for years. Your

face keeps changing. For years I pressed. We didn’t talk.
We escaped. In nine years or three and a half
I have been stopping or screaming. I might see you key

the mailbox. Inadvertently, this time I fell off. I got horribly
good. I showed up and started falling. You changed.

The rings. Every time you bounce
it is a different shape. I don’t try
not to make sense. The engine

has been running a while. The engine.
I have been running and falling a while
off the bridge in between the screams.
You make me run for it. The ride has been nice.

ccxcii

I need you like this dance over to the special corner.  I’ll take
every little black sports car that zips by the wet street,
dumbs the loud bright white of a half a foot of
nobody last night.  I don’t ever want that to be said.
The midday bird steps across the median and into some dumb jogger.
I have a question about your outfit – who are you today?  Two squirrels
don’t want the sidewalk—they slice through the frozen rinse above the lawn.
I’m happy for the lamppost and the new gray mountains in the distance
and the black trees as they dip mostly under the bright white that opens the world...
making their noses mock the frozen river.  $10,000 could also be for the dead turnpike.
Run over the snake.
Or peer into the crayon and find clouds flowing out to sea.

ccxci

Well, Hazel’s all fucked up bright fog.  Have
tried therapy, three saints, nothing revealed,
so maybe—as they say—sometimes it’s just good to talk.
Back to that in a minute.  But first –
No No No I’m not saying you are out of touch.

ccxc

I am number 1,240 working on the
revamping project (working holes—licking
sentences—too bad fat).  Fat and $65 on Friday.
To get thin working holes a dozen years after love.
Snow is expected tonight after Ginsberg.  My brain is a
circle.
It was mainly a cheesy lesbian love story & a couple nights of solitude.
They go together.  Are we going together?  “Get the tweezer.”
“Clip my toenails.”  Benziger’s muscat
before dinner this time.  Dinner this time an amalgam.  Mars lines up with me.

cclxxxix

What is your writing about?
Already you turn into a crab.
Here’s New Year’s & you’ve
salted your drawers. I have
this one sex here for a while.
A piece of chocolate under a
green file folder. Last night I
saw balls drop at Nathalie’s.
Then I dreamt I took LSD in
liquid champagne. Always
cautious, I only took a third
of what I was given because
I intuited the whole thing
would be too much. It was
a nicer high than LSD really is.
Count backwards from the top
window.

cclxxxviii

This year my last grandparent died.  Groundmother.  Grand Ma.
Grandma Hazel died this year.  Look up, helicopter.
This year’s glassy dishes.  This is a second full thought.
This my second full year in Boston, copy.  I haven’t.
Haven’t you wanted to be famous?  Simple that fame.
What if everything we do is geared toward fame?
I just know it is a graceless joke did we just overlap?  Did
we overlap in my calendar?  GRACEFREAK.  I know I am
not a words fountain stop concerning.
I am going back to school (almost pretending) and now
I am viewing now a sea-foam jade.  I view browser log freezer-burn.
What was your first book of poetry goddess until now?  Access?  I have
only one poem and it is not going to show up until eleven.
Did we get cheese?  Let’s copy this all down in manuscript.
He is not going to show up until eleven I just know it.
O last day of 1998—almost no depressions 2% to top it off
although a continuing overabundance of connections
of seeing my debt chirp.  Stop churning this.  It is the
year of the purple sun it is the year I see a blue sun
it is the year the fog is blooming I saw it until now
where it is no longer the year.  Look up, helicopter.

cclxxxvii

iPod this all before. In fact, iBook this before.
One plastic binder falls unto its death. There
were three survivors. Suddenly the Compaq
revs unto life. Uber-life, extreme life? Makes
much more racket than it had been making. I
didn’t do Anything. Christmas = Over. I was
worked and ready for buzz. Buzz arrived. I
didn’t. Cool, chilly, hazy, with a box full of
onions. This box smells like onions. Box =
Cubicle. It’s already 2. I unwrapped the pres
idents on Christmas Eve morning. I am on
a magnificent book of poetry. iWords with
ear-flaps. I sure am a kid. Then we stopped
@ BankBoston to make our checking count.
Officially joint. I tried to read more iCons.
Snowman salt and pepper shakers, Mister
and Missus. Here we have snowman pot-
holders. Snowman dip dish with assorted
dips. Then we eat it all and take a nap....
Then I download a computer game from
Shanghai.

cclxxxvi

Text msg.: “No worries. My mom is coming tonight for ten
days. Do not worry.” He had clothes on. He sometimes had
a dental relationship. He made all A’s on hamburgers and I
got $100 from my dad. My dad’s presents not so much. Of
the charcoal haze covered up by the drug haze which covers
my memories, what memories am I going to listen to now?
12:15pm according to my telephone. Poemnotes are too long.
Controversial. Career. Before Macy’s buy underwear. Blue
and gay experimental stripes. Fitted tanktop doesn’t fit. Ha.
This song until the very end? 12:18pm accordion to my new
shiny tanktop. The hairplane arrives at 5:54pm. I think Taco.
I don’t know the erection. Anyone? Erections? Burg moat.
Bell directives. Drives word moats and sail snuff into rickets.
Not that, too. I lost my head in the directive. It shoved me a
new power: Fistfighting Pacifist-A. Go to the Taco television
and fake sitcoms like Everybody Loves Raymond. RU happy?
Laugh at me I am the middle-aged. Televisit accordion files.
Financial Times crisscrosses jetplane smokelines, makes hash.
Makes hash happy. No fit. Donuts 10am. Career headunder.
Big harp from A’s. Hamworries. McPoem. Teletickle.

cclxxxv

Getting ready for me
to go to Bistro Burger.
“OMG you’re adorable!
Can I kiss you?” This
pouch is releasable. Why
not quote it, then? Look,
there’s a slab of bacon
on my fries! That’s poe
try. Hello from Back Bay
Station, waiting on a train.
It’s gunmetal with a dark
green face. And that’s
an issue I promised my
self I wouldn’t dwell
on this season. Bear
in mind, Christmas in
Leominster. Anyway,
I’m on the train now,
on the way to abso
lutely nothing.

cclxxxix

don’t charge my spirit.
it needed crash. lasted
on 2 hours trying locks
til dumb legs bolted. a
black heart got drunk
frying. ground evening
into a fuzzy white harp.
spirit seized cutie-pie in
to a buzz and paid for it.
on holiday after grab
bing me to dance this
dance. this dance wants
cross purposes. a melt.
let’s say let my swank
bunk boom. give booth.
drew its hands into my
hearts. what my last
coiled hearts wants.

cclxxxiii

finally winter. he’s always
an obstacle. inconsequential
deconstruction. I couldn’t stop
being hard so I put the hot dog
under the seat and I took a sip.
floating sunsets. not to read
but to listen. this story will
find itself. pardon the
boob at the top.

cclxxxii

let me grab my thoughts.  I
order a burger.  turtles and fisting.
the heart of the story lies in the
warmth beneath the surface
of what?  I’m having dinner
at the Ritz-Carlton.  attendee
list with logistics.

cclxxxi

an optomythist.  more fog than rain.
the coaster, the stapler, and the
tape dispenser.  the heat I can feel
watching this story—is it you or
the story?  nothing seems right.
nothing seems right.

cclxxx

November reminds me of her leathery
presence. I’ve agreed to be the bastion of stability.
I learned how to be a social butterfly at
his uncle’s funeral. Nothing like realizing I’m
actually frightened of having long-term friends.
She was taking prescription drugs and she was
totally stressed out. Everyone has a stick
up his butt. It’s a chilly, beautiful day.
It just started raining.

cclxxix

Tomorrow the turkey is good. Some sibling
spat, spoken in long time (l o n g t i m e)
comes to me today, this evening, after tea,
but before tomorrow. Tomorrow is good.

What have I done these past few days?
We attend a series of movies and then
reflect how each character is ourselves. Our
own characters are not that flat, but we say to ourselves
“I want to kiss him like that.” “I want to be so drunk.”
“I want to look at the clock and then suddenly
figure it all out. Like that.”

cclxxviii

Give me a couple of hours to do some work.

I did visit him last night.

I am eating this right now: “Locally roasted espresso steeped into fresh cream,
then carefully stirred into dark couverture and dipped in milk...for a strong
signature espresso au lait experience. Savor it slowly.”

It was a nice but lackluster visit and I’m not sure if I can talk about it yet.

cclxxvii

today I am not. I am not
a gray minnow writing to
what minnows. a gray
widow. sip blacken.
the ample steam of frenzy
always knew love to co-exist.
I always knew nothing to co-exist.
a blacktrack journal pours like plastic.
what downtowns me so much is
a frown to remember. not one
to puff it up or out is happy
stupid. yes I
get the emotion. yes
I beat up my old friends. yes I am stable.
doom bracken such. big deal talk is
missing.

cclxxvi

A blue forest. A hill sinking.
A sun-blasted book. So I would have

a book. Blasted by bills the
muse arrives at four. After the fugue
a sign of weakening. A com-
mittee starts at nine. Thinking
follows. Thinking fellows.

I have my nose to the soulless
file upon the bleak desk filled with bluebirds.
About what? The airplanes swimming?

Someone took a knife to the smokestack.

cclxxv

It is 4:02 and our new saint got bored so he finished a book
I hated. Meanwhile, watching the internet is like being there,
but how do we calm down without losing the explosion: insert
one aphorism after another, perhaps, until we define atrophy?
I’m doing a real lunch. Outside of the office is the real office,
but not without James Schuyler and his brown paper wig.
Then we discussed high windows at the ATM machine and
decided a leisurely drive through Pennsylvania would be lovely.

cclxxiv

a chunk of my neck is a
long hour of daydreaming.

the perp of poetry is sitting
in theatre rereading the

charcoal out of the sky.
we cannot solve it anymore

due to lack of eyewash.
this during an elm intermission.

word is word war three is over.
what flukes. it is yet possible

to punch my neck into account.
please take a book. room it

under the chalk. tell the
audience to go bi. grant

mission. be ginger
boils and goils.

cclxxiii

To do something to be
alive put real words on

top of a sofa to live
a minute. Where else

do you want a month
to go without me?

Live until the same
ideas about moving

show up beneath the
cushions with the

spare change. I’m
growing sideburns

drinking a ginger ale.
Calling all clams!

Wait a minute...

cclxxii

“Chocolate rocks
like dirt,” says
Overheard in
Latent’s wings.
“Eating a lesbian
pizza with Kirk
Douglas beats
poetry with Jello.”
That’s enough
chill to don a
jacket—the joy
of wearing jeans,
a loose sweater
full of lies. “Wy
oming?” I start
to crying. “We
have to talk,” he
says. “Bad
moon.” “Good
coffee.” “Take
care” by “sucking
guns w/Robert
Mitchum.”

cclxxi

I come this way for the fires. Downwind is
our inaugural hedge fund: “It’ll be worthwhile
under the belt with our items for approval.”
Speaking of my fiction and the very act of
writing, the show I’d forgotten how to end
was just beginning. Or, more accurately and
timely, the repartee with my newly-formed
Little Rock correspondent was just underway.
“My poetry was at Gayplace.com?” “Yeah,
well I see it right here, ‘Del Ray Cross’!” “Oh
...” It seems we need surgery to replace our
necks, are organizationally empowered by
the demands of the organization, and repeat
ourselves too much. Repetition either ensures
e-mail or ensnares it. He teaches fiction. I
finally sent him a missive this morning: “Red
may return to green after disheartening.” Is
that the act of cleaning away the heart? “My
class is fine, thanks.” “I finally got the Nobel Prize.”

cclxx

I want to share with you the remorse I felt
when I walked up the block and the restaurant with the
stir-fried salt cod over rice was no longer there. there is no
new way to render disappearance. however, try this:
tear out a piece of hair; rip the secret document in half;
sew it back together with the hair. this time
do it by yourself. to be myself in the afternoon
is walking into a non-existent restaurant, craving a
non-existent dish. hello (primarily members of the sex trade),
is everyone else this down when they die? okay then
I am going to drive to Portland,
walk around and see if I can find a bookstore.
I need a plot twist to be alone.

cclxix

a computer-generated day,
the roseate blush above the
dazzled Oakland window-fires. nothing
less real, actually; a thin taupe strip of bay
lay before the beach, its land.
forefront, the tail of an island.
more fore, a boat, camouflaged,
white. I’m not wearing my glasses
or it’d all be more there. every thing
whizzes by like surface, depthless poetry, but some things,
like background, distract. twist my head into my stomach
debating sex vs. love. note Blake’s London,
his “mind-forg’d manacles” could be the haze of the
chiarascuro’d bay. Rimbaud is in Africa –
a yellow streak across the page.

cclxviii

I’ll try (am trying).
There is no escape
but I am. Here on earth. Were I

translucence*
determined (trying)
to try new ways? Try! Try reading.

*Trees
and cloud. Rock homes. The dangers of
frienship. Be

worried about being.
Then, say, life is less sober.
Have a fries and root beer.

Then I throw a celebration
(a poem about Michael’s painting)
and everybody comes.

A season for which I
have to go home tonight,
write to become

glad.

cclxvii

what nancy can’t write text into
an erasure just to appease the
seemingly white swath behind
our five minute conversation an
open boat behind a white swath
our words have twin enclosures
one is a bruised popcorn cloud
of racist language & one is why
only these words help the body
(if she’s sick) which is why I
enjoy goading this white matter
into a debate of hopelessness
to cajole the sick words & then
beat them into a slick food the
erasure of an appeased enclosure
our bruised worms will often lie
among such determined snails
as those beneath the ever sweet
bleeps of our five minute bloats

cclxvi

I wish I’d had a little more time struggling
with science and some more tea.  I think I found a friend
in New York for a while on the ocean.  It is his
one year anniversary.  This is my first class:

-fix the kitchen drawer (Dustin Hoffman)
-fix the toilet (it’s wobbly) (Anne Bancroft)
-being hanged in Singapore (Eva Marie Saint)

I need to relax or something.  This is my next meeting:

-I need to relax or something
-my memory blows (Lee Kang-sheng)
-a one page assignment on what poetry means to me

(neoconceptual installations in Italy)

I just realized the grit among these pages is
sand from the beach at Ogunquit.  Time
to pick up movie tickets and go see James Schuyler, goodbye.

cclxv

The paper got wet
Sunday in Ogunquit
sitting here on the beach
in the rain that is falling.

There is oil on my notebook.
Australia stares out the window.
We find ourselves in the gay section
and we park ourselves

and we crouch real low.
“People don’t eat watermelon seeds
that much in movie theaters any more,
and in the future probably no one will.”

-Tsai Ming-Liang.
Is there a possibility
for life to change for the better?
I walked up and down the beach.

We walk up and down the beach.

cclxiv

I don’t know when I
can stop walking—nor
nearly the world round.
Darkness lights the face
of the Embarcadero and I’ve
wound round the advent of
autumn. The BART takes
me. I will breathe in and
cross the Charles. These
living room windows are
spotted – they dissolve day.
I can’t stop with my feet
nor the slump of watches.
When I warm my pockets
my feet are back up at the
audience, still walking
away. Someday I don’t
know poems, I’d rather
eat. On this day I prefer
a movie I argue about,
a place to be. It
tells me how flat my
life is. I don’t care.
Four books in my bag,
I walk the rain.

cclxiii

I bit my tongue until it bled.

We went miniature golfing again,
then walked Broadmoor discussing
eye-for-eye retribution and the
senselessness of media-frenzied infidelity.

I sat thinking for a long time the day
after Thanksgiving.

The flag was brilliant.
Spools of clouds
disappeared.

And then, sleeping separately,
a spectacular light storm at the 3:00 a.m. hour.