dlxiii

I (yes, me)
the streetlamps
a tercet of coffee

overlooking
humbled
pictographs

sure wrens
wending rivulets (I always liked that one)
fucking birds

the bulb
(oh now I remember)
Notley’s pronouns

not for the smoke
at the city
but air

the night
split in two

dlxii

Sitting at a joint on the edge of Chinatown
called Uncle Vito’s. Sour mood. Which
I’m going to try to adjust by going ahead to
Nathaniel Dorsky’s trio at SFAI.

Walnut prawns and chicken fried rice.
Very loud bird. Twitters and chirps.
Deadpan aircraft noises. Ziplock
reusable container, microwave safe,
dishwasher safe, patent pending (a
sorry excuse for creativity).

Prell shampoo!

I’ll just fill my days and fill my nights
with the Joe Brainard exhibit.

dlxi

Here I am again,
Shakespeare Garden. The
birds listening to Ani DiFranco
on such a pleasant day. Chirp
being the inappropriate word;
it doesn’t sound right. Then
there was the poem I wrote.
It was a nice poem in three parts.
Dusk approaches. The elevator
kicks in. The concept of bi-
location. I am there and I am also
here next to this green bag from
Tiffany. In it, a bottle of
champagne and a small treasure.
Fred Asparagus dips Ginger
into the Sea of Mustard.

dlx

the bus arrives.

draft of a poem written
while sitting
waiting for the bus.

dlix

the new wrinkles on the backs of my hands
shaking, coming home from dancing.
not understanding kitchen from dining room.
“but I know you dance I read your poems!”
January does go on
louder than expected. my favorite waiterfetish
smiles and says hello from a ways away.
he is quick to differentiate “straight” from “not straight.”
the sun!
he might come down Prez weekend and we could
gallyvant off to Yosemite or something. work work work!
a note from Diane this morning
a fantasy/critical reading of a poem I mailed her
made me laugh hard and happy. dancing.
a clove of garlic discovered in the back corner of the
bread shelf behind the moldy bread.
the yellow teapot upside down in the dish drain.
a cool breeze through the kitchen window. the sun.
the taxi stopping a couple blocks early
and I didn’t know where I was.

dlviii

Exes.  Mine was a shih tzu in a dream last night.  But first
he bought rockets.  We’d been to the moon a couple of times already.
It frightened me to do so.  But he wanted to go again.
So he gets in his car and I get in mine.  And soon the ambulances
pass us by and soon again I’ve come upon a massively devastating pile-up!
I get out and look for his car.  It’s nowhere to be seen.  Dead bodies
are surely in each smoking vehicle.  The pine trees catch fire.
I can’t help anyone.  I’m chickenshit just like he always said.
I get back in my car and drive backwards, turn off at another road,
find his car parked at his house.  He’s asleep.  The new rocket’s in his backyard.
He’s a shar pei, asleep, face down, arms and legs out, flaps of wrinkled skin
going the various ways of gravity.  The dream ends somewhere.  I’m
home by 2:30 after crying on Divisadero with Nina Simone in my ears

Birds flying high you know how I feel
Sun in the sky you know how I feel...

dlvii

Hot Wheels in the breadbasket.

Clearer now, having closed the windows,
reading the same book from seven ages ago. I put on the headphones
and go to town.

Pepper, sage and fennel. The Fennelonians. I’ve been
reading too much. This leaves me sad while eating tofu.
Avidly, too.

Her only stance is abortion. I'm never okay with a dunderhead
for president. Changed my mind. The radiation begins soon.

His lips shake when he lifts his bowl. That’s what happens.

“Funky roast nasty rat.” A cute guy in a wheelchair told me I asked for it.
The plum trees are in bloom all along Lyon Street. Heard from behind me,
“I didn’t realize it was two words. Cast. Away.” Very serious-like.

Fennelicious.

My lungs hurt. I will look into potential gateways.
Ginger has a new computer so she tells me how the
farm has got to go. I’m working on the fourth dimension. Getting there. Slowly.

dlvi

I sit quiet
as a chameleon on Walden Pond.

The title is
Now Is Going to Take Some Time.

My passport arrives, along with some contact lens coupons.

Two iPods wake up on a marble slab. One iPod says to the other...

“I am liking the apocalypse.”

dlv

at lunch a twist of the tongue (gonute)
and then we walk the drizzle down Sacramento
in which we trust (view 125%) reading Jack’s poems
1:15am after Ativan nap (7 hrs)..

it is a she we see
in brevity

                  “Trent Reznor & Prince should definitely do an album together”

                   memories of the dead hawk

                  “Cowboys” right now

                   in this bogus California

my favorite waiter is here
and also a glimpse (pseglim) from Suzy
                                                                          wherever she may be

take a short breath
put down your blue and uncomfortable shoes
fold into the power crisis

                  he doused her with a flea dose

hey we need a mop
I tweazed your FCUK shirt up from behind the washers with two brooms
(it was the first one bitten from an apple)

dliv

Half here. Billfold on tablecloth. A bowl of
pink mums. Salt and pepper for a
glass of water.

The sea just filled up with dirt.
                 My poems did this to me.

The talking shadows of two men in silhouette.

They say:
“We posted better than expected profit in the first quarter”
“Helping lift net income to $4.8 billion.” and
“The Dow closed above 12,800 for the first time.”

(They don’t say:)
“The sun were the sun”
                            —Debussy, Rachmaninoff, and Berlioz

What do I say?

((I say this.))

dliii

“Why does he have to be so gay?” they say.
And honestly I don’t know.   Am I?


Sorry, but I was only namedropping.

dlii

Years ago, just like it was yesterday,
I caught a homeless man jerking off
in front of the Erotic Fantasy. This
meant that my soul would never
find its way back home again. You’d
want the rest of the story, but it gets
interrupted, like most things. Life
is complicated like that. So I keep
walking, looking in at the young
motorcycles and parachutes. Then, I
spot a bird. It is ever so slowly flying
in from a great distance until it wish
fully scoops me up and carries me
away to Shambhala. It’s loud here,
it makes me drunk. This, another
never-ending story with quite a lot of
dust and sadness exacerbated by
the stormy weather. Please come.
It was only yesterday I was taken up,
gently, by your cool metallic talons.

dli

It is never enough.  Language
cannot accommodate.  And
we always know the story anyway.

We read, we write, and we eat.
Together and alone.  Our many selves
commingling with the parting clouds

and tidewaters.  It is clear to
no one and to all.  I write.  I stumble
and stutter.   I have no

where and it is everywhere.
I wash dishes and pick up the
rest of the pieces.  And me

a vegetarian.  I always lose my
way.  Sworn to the yellowed page.
Soldered to a lit wok.  Somebody

(we, us, you, him, them, our
selves, the passing automobiles,
gold necklace, currency,

libraries, business cards, pumpkin,
gossamer hearts, plainspoken
words, diversionary tactics)

swaggers by a tall parking meter,
spits his gum out into a swollen
trashbucket.  This, our mountain-esque.

d(e)l

My New Year’s resolution.
Fills to capacity.
He wouldn’t know a massacre if he saw one.
This cubicle in 1977.
Watching The Graduate.
To the symphony.
On the toilet.
Looking at the calves.
Wondering “Who invented this?”
Truth in advertising.
Never having been to Venice.
Watching the fireworks from Treasure Island.
Six years without a retreat.
Paris at 40.
My heart transplant.
Sometimes it comes too quickly.

dxlix

He’s got a gossamer heart, the touchstone
of human experience.   No structure.   The
various aspects of beauty.   We’re meeting at
Quetzal, 6:20 this evening.   First time in

years.   He’s chatting an awful lot, isn’t he?
Day after a nice Christmas eating sushi,
noises and pretty lights up on a pole –
no more sugar.   Of course World War 3

will be with China, so yeah, sure, I read.
And read.   It feels good.   I drink lots of
water and pay the bills.   I go to a bar and look
at everyone.   I try on a new sweatshirt.

I walk to the unfamiliar gym.   I climb
one flight of stairs, take the elevator
down to the basement, walk the showers
after pool on Polk Street.   Dad looks

down at the mountain ice, it comes in
inches. The life of a cobbler.   Tiny
matching tractors (a salt & pepper set).
The 19 bus goes by, deposits a couple

onto the glistening sidewalk.   As I was saying,
tonight we’re meeting in Shanghai.

dxlviii

Look, there’s a snail in the sky.  I’m getting dizzy
trying to read while chomping cucumbers,
tomatoes, and my 4-cheese sandwich
from Massimo’s (whatever that 4th cheese was
is oozing out of the middle & onto my fingers).
Is was.
Was is.
Then I ran into the snowbunny I slept with
and he tried to berate me for buying
a new pair of jeans.  Miss
Communication.  Now we’ve got cloud
excrement.  Which is more fun than fun.  Also,
I got a 4-page letter from Columbus.
It was a sweet letter.

dxlvii

I’m overjoyed with a headache, or
to the point of headache as blue boats
flicker on the whitewaters in a flippant
haze. Scooping up the torn curtains.

A terse Monday, better than ages. Old
friends meet all decorated for Christmas.
Us old hams entirely too serious,
hoping to be referred to something
chocolate. “Perfect, let’s do that one,” we say,

and “What a year to disappear!” Deja vu
with Bill. The seemingly most important
warmth with a charge to the florist. A
pancake head. It feels like a stomping.
Not a feeling but an impression.

Notice the Guston cigar, ask him if he’s
teaching an evening course before
slipping into the sauna (I never do that!).
Step forward into with the feminists
and wheelchair junkies. We need it

before 1:30. What I’m trying to say is
I got burnt out on it but now I’m trying
to reacquaint myself. Then he
tickled me until I bled. Nice passion.

dxlvi

Today’s flower is the iris.   Its
purple-striped tongue sticking out
at me.   My back won’t work now that
I’m up to de Tocqueville.   Jack Lemmon
on Channel 5 has Christmas with his
eggnog.   Every day but this day
we sit outside.   The occasion –
a twinge of pain back left quadrant
of my neck.   I’m due for something
horrific.   The click of the throat
as the water is drunk.   “Goodbye,
Don.”   “Goodbye, Kurt.”

dxlv

Experimental fiction
seems to make the most sense to me,
not that I want to hop on any bandwagon.

                  ...like an apparation...
                  ...after running...
                  ...a few problems...
                  ...the only white guy...
                  ...to play dress-up...
                  ...just feels faint...

I erased that line,
went for a walk to the Ferry Building,
inched my way through the crowd,
walked outside,
leaned over and onto the railing,
stared into the bay.  A white napkin
floated up into the air from somebody’s table [like an apparition],
landed on the water,
soaked
and then sunk.

                  ...in the middle of Chinatown...
                  ...having to go...
                  ...complaining all morning...
                  ...otherwise...
                  ...impending surgery...
                  ...the most powerful...

...is of course honest enough.  I’m not hiding anything.
I just want the whitecaps.  And.  Mostly.
I want want.

So do you want Monday or Tuesday?

dxliv

I was going to tell you something.
Something about being crazy in the city.

Tom Carey read a poem about going
to and from the grocery store for some

flour.   Thom Gunn read one of
Kevin’s poems.   Downstairs

some guy’s hollering
from his bench.   Saturday morning

(Sunday morning – Easter morning!)
the man in front of See’s Candy,

Union Square, singing loud as possible.
Today, five prescriptions from

Walgreen’s: for sneezing,
stuffy nose, high blood pressure,

fear of flying, panic attacks, etc.
A friend who’s dying and

wants me to execute her
(or maybe she said executor).

Strong desire to play a game of
lacrosse.   I was going to tell you

I’m drinking coffee, trying to breathe,
watching a multi-colored cast of clouds,

folding away a staple remover.   We often
go through these things.

dxliii

Today’s flower, the tickweed, a breezy
yellow tucked into a violet blur.  The very opposite
of indecorous, which is how I’d describe
another year sitting in Quetzal after the best
workout in a month.  Don’t be shattered but

I’ve got the Wednesday Mondays and it’s
only Thursday (or Sunday), bitter about the
Ft. Smith Sluts.  This is my third bout in approx.
1.5 months.  At first it inspired me to read,
like over the Thanksgiving Holiday.

But not this week, this tugboat in the mud.
I’m afraid I was inspired by Jane Kenyon
on the bus to the gym.  So later I’m crying
and throwing things all over the place
while he fixes my internet condition.

dxlii

What is the nature of reality?  The evil me
is putting the rest of me in a good mood.

“I like my doctor even though she
won’t look at my penis.”  And now I’m

settling into nothing, which includes
a new home.  And a violent mist.

dxli

I got goosebumps
a couple days ago.
What was I doing?
Listening to Nina
Simone probably.
Somebody tried
rolling glitter on
my back.  The light
cut marks all over
the bed.  He’s so
good at brain
damage.  Some
of these poems
first appeared in
the kitchen sink
with a Sharpie.

dxl

This morning has
a musical quality
on the page.  Mt.
Tam and Jacques
Barzun the Bizarre
which is fun next
to me here.  At
Massimo reading
Cedar’s lines.
Franklin Volt
aire running for
the French pro
mising myself
a new leaf and
good spirits (a
gain) not certain
how I’m going
to live up to that
promise.  Cool
air coming in
from the window.
Wet roofs and
clean trees full
of green leaves.
Move to España
single again. Art.
Vertiginous
materialist. The
echo of a bird
got wet crying
about it.

dxxxix

The vertigo is back I
can’t stop reading it.

His name should always
come first.  I’ll survive.

Up Pine toward the top
nearly the top and

I am atop.  Already
here its nice sunlessness.

The drive through the
mountains north with

cold feet.  Tender wind
swept roofs of Tender

loin.  Another plastic
bag or a leaf in one

life this town or met
ropolis I was aiming

for.  A dizzy life.  A
lifetime until I don’t.

This beast comes.  I
wanted him anyway.

Rejected by a beast
in the morning.  Over

the last couple of weeks
the sirens on Market.

High and five a.m.
again.  I wait for the

darkest sun my
drive within.

dxxxviii

A typewriter smudge.
Busy.   Which was nice.
It flew by.   A gathering.
Last night my life

was a frame.   Dissolving
in salt.   A harp.   All of it
a fortune.   One message.
It was best of all

his lines.   Time was OK.
Together.   I’ve worked
memory with Mahler.
Our vials.   Full of else.

And things.   Stolen with
whom.   In love.   Think
about it.   What luxury out
in the streets under an itch.

A psychological problem.
Inevitable.   And yet.
I don’t.   Even.   Remember.
Gathering.   Any.   Dust.

dxxxvii

Mercy.  Still spiraling
with this.  And and
the the.  Or I mean to say
slump.  A Nob Hill
excavation.  Not a star,
movie nor lump, to
show me the way.
Which is here.  Eating
away, albeit mild.  An
abandon.  A row of books
reflected in the window.
A dark finish.  I’m broke.
No lights wrapped around
the top floor.  Yellow
and blue like under
my skin until the
needle.  I never can
watch.  Being.  Tried
the night.  Cannot.
Contentment
and bored.  He
walks out the fog
and my heart gives way,
looking.  Propelled.
I like my home when
daylight.  The weather
while in Lisbon.
And mercy.

dxxxvi

Please hear me out. I am the spirit of
the stapler in a castle full of paper doves.
I do not believe my fears are yours.
I cannot move a leaf just by thinking it,
as you can. Yet I find boredom becoming
and I lie a lot. I lie among the
leaves I move just by thinking it.
But I fail at oases. Suffering
from yet another favorite on a sea
of happiness, my legs give out,
my arms, my voice, mainly because
I will it so. I cannot swim. The bird
I become flies through my eye, into the
tunnel of O
directly in front of me, and I am in
good spirits. I listen intently
to various sexual engagements
transpiring within and without. I am
asymptomatic, rearranging furniture,
trying to make new ways. I’ll be
watching a lot of this without eyes.
Having however a new tongue, in
decipherability the appropriate language.
For correspondence. My supplies
have transformed, are even less alive,
and yet more covetable. You have
been to this place or somewhat nearby.
Please let me take you with me. To where
I will not go. There. We’re here.

dxxxv

            Another day this morning on the bus
An emotional attachment to houseplants
                      Wishing me happy holidays

dxxxiv

Nothing is working and I’m floating over the rusted pipes.  Home.
How could this be?  (Use robot voice for
all italicized phrases.)

He doesn’t spell too well but I’m getting tickled
midday, flying into my other life.  It’s a nice change,
this midlife tickle.  And I was just hoping for a friend, no lie.

The window rumbles with wind.  The fog dampens the jet-roar.
(This tercet paid for by the year of the pill.)
He’s coming with coffee.  Disregard any news.

The reference here is from before you were born
so brighten up and stop worrying about
who’s my type.  Let’s play pool.  I should be the catty one.

dxxxiii

...and I’m flooded with
the I have to die.
                                     —Alice Notley

She is so brilliant she makes death seem
maybe okay and beautiful.  Many poets
try this.  Some succeed.  I never wanted
to put my head into an oven.  Honestly.
But isn’t joy of life and fear of death
kind of oxymoron-ish?

I am drinking lemon tea.  There.
I’m sitting in a cubicle avoiding work.
Avoiding death.  And then,
bam!

Every working member
of my immediate family is in the
healthcare field.  My brother has
terribly high blood pressure yet
refuses to take pills for it.
He saves lives in Paris,
Arkansas.  If I could cry

it would be for lack of ability to write a poem like hers.
I like a good story.  I wish I could tell you one.
Last night I dreamt something.  And when I woke up,
well, you probably guessed it.  I couldn’t remember a thing.
Except that I was in there.

She gets up from her chair, bends over,
stretches her back, fresh from surgery.  This is my mother,
not Alice Notley.  It’s not that I get confused,
it’s just that maybe I need a diversion.  From death.
From narrativity.

dxxxii

            I am back in familiar territory.  At zero.
            Back to where nothing works but the stars.
            To the night that knows no bounds.
            To the crickets and the frogs.
            That’s it.

He found the sweet spot but
refused to believe that plot could be contagious.  It
turned out to be very post-hip.  Then off to a snore of a reading

[Someone I was later attracted to.  Someone I would soon
emulate.  Someone for whom mere respect and gratitude
would never suffice.].

Got totally ripped.  Took a little puff on a stale spliff.
Then zonked until 5 in the morning.  If I can do that for a month
then perhaps I’ll treat myself to a baked chicken.

It used to be, even at zero, there was too much to contain.
Now I could probably crack my head open without blinking.

dxxxi

“Awake, my soul, and let there be only parades!”
(Such stature!  And yet, such vulnerability; such
lack of respect in the workplace.)  If you look at the
definition you’ll find that I was starting to get

a little tipsy by the time the reading started (me

with my cloak and dagger).  And I was more than
a little intrigued by his ear (with such clarity can
it yet be conjured).  BUT WHAT DO I KNOW?
(Nil!)  I wound up waiting an eternity for a bus.

dxxx

I’m freaked out by your indifference, I think.  And
I wrote that A DAY BEFORE THE ELECTION!
Cut to the vulnerable quick, diving into the crack
of the book; its connective tissue is what I’d rather

be. Y ou’ll never find me begging for clarity again.

I myself, however, am intrigued by the process.  I
mean, whatever.  It’s called BAD.  But it’s so bad
it’s GOOD, even though our malaise is so very RE
PRESSED.  Also, my stuttering is worse than ever.

dxxix

Story of me being somewhere else.

Water tasted good a day before the vote.

A spike on the emotion scale.  (cf. add’l story of me)

My feminine side made my teeth squawk

and increased productivity.  Now we are free.

We freed ourselves from the blood.

(As always, the must.)  This increases years.

Years later...  He likes birds driving under the influence.

And a picture of the moon with snow in my hair.

That was the difference between tepid and tropical.

Our November

                      through the whole damn universe.

dxxviii

We don’t need no education,
but we do hold onto our nihilism
like we hold onto a heart.  It
drips a little.  We get bloody.  Etc.

Best in Show, Requiem for a
Dream, and Motherless Brooklyn.
In that order.  He’s an in
terior designer, nice guy, keen

sense of decorum, shy, tall,
bespectacled.  Etc.  He winked
and I pinched his nipple.
I can’t believe it’s November.

I am insincere, indirect, unclear,
and I sound like everybody else.

dxxvii

“He was plainspoken” only looks good on a gravestone
along with something else like “He sold a lot of cars” or
“What complex eye movements!”

I rub the dandruff off the day, decide to walk to
North Beach for lunch. Indian food. Tonight
I’ll treadmill and weightlift.

Now that I have two presidents, the one in my heart
tries to understand. “The sky’s the limit
for birds,” it says.

dxxvi

I am a part of the sequence, this
lineage, a( )history.   I’m also
just as dirty as the next guy.
Last night I was fondling a stranger
(The costume party was a bit droll.
But our costume was fun.   We went
as a Pixie Stick.   I was a pixie and
he was the stick.) and I almost forgot
to step out of the dream sequence
and/or into the pink curtain
behind which other men waited
with machine guns.   Two weeks
of boring.   I need a new hobby,
something else to occupy my time.
Okay, let’s make a list:
1.    Cheer up
2.    Get rid of headache
3.    Anti-postmodernism
4.    Children playing on rooftops

Such is me.

The apartment will be clean, though.
I promise.

dxxv

Even when everything is slow,
I am back to writing what you call
the poetry.  I do it from a walnut
finish and my view is obstructed.
What I meant by walnut is
a pain in my neck.

Why are you doing it?  He sees
from this angle something
his childhood View-Finder (TM)
would not.  But almost.  Like
certain smells trigger memories,
so do certain colors, right?

I’m so tired of looking for cheap
acts and waiting around for another
train.

Boredom as method.  (So trite!)

dxxiv

I am trying to imagine (so as to enact)
a feasible means of nourishment.   Imag
ination can be more than fantasy,
can it not? I am no different.   This just
happens—I let it go.

Today’s flower, the lily.   A pesky cold,
the business cold.   Around my table—
horrible boring talk about violence.
Violence to papers and sexism.   Five
hundred years of Western civilization,
and what’s better to discuss?

Every cloud a pompous biography.
Every bruise a hospital system.

dxxiii

I saw/heard
Creeley read
last night.
Full house/
Gershwin
Theater.   My
neighborhood.
Poems about
household
furniture.
Today my
calendar has
a sunflower.   I
want small
yellow roses,
try telling a
truth of things.
Someone
asks Suzanne
if she’s lying.
She says no.
Then decides
maybe, yes,
sometimes.
Even trying
not to.   My
head rings.   I
drink a gallon of water every day.

dxxii

Jack Valenti had a stroke.
People die sometimes.  Food is everywhere.

Like Brent writes, “Anyone could have written this.”
And indeed.  What is Brent?

Being in bed.  A baby.  Waiting for sounds.
Witness:  Clouds.  Earth.  Swivel chair.

Two sailboats.  Midnight Cowboy.
I felt a little trashy afterwards.

I belong nowhere.  I’ve already said this.
I’ve already said everything.

dxxi

What makes happen more news
(quantify)? Please
take everything I say at face value and
with a breach of confidence.

I am dizzy. Oh yes I thought this was me.
Hello from Pizzeria Uno.

dxx

The clouds play shadow-puppets
onto the baywaters.   A goose turns into a lion,
that sort of thing.   It’s quite dramatic,
which is nice on a boring Tuesday.

[I had this line in the elevator
but now it’s gone.]

Kit Robinson’s fragments
stitched during sleep
are not my fragments.   In what we might call last night,
I dreamt of sexual encounters in an amusement park
and in the rocky shallows of an ocean beach.

There were spectators.   Former supervisors
and colleagues, quite random.   But the encounterees
were anonymous.

Pesto slathered over a pale chicken breast.
Always good for the blood.   But
leaving no time to think.

dxix

This poem is for a poem by Lewis MacAdams.
His poem is called “To Mark It In Time”.

It is October.   On the television is a
documentary about Cassavetes.   This time I’m
onto something.

A hummingbird.
How it approaches the window
several times a day.   Stops.
Looks in through the tinted window?
Eye level on the 33rd floor.

A new box of kleenex.   Water.   Sunflower.
Making some change.   Make some change!

I take it back.   It is not good enough.

This poem is for the blue-handled pair of scissors
that sits underneath the gap between
my two flat computer screens.

dxviii

I can’t catch up with myself.   Trust me.
Suddenly this is the only thing
representative.

You want to whiten your teeth with the whitecaps?

Or ask a question without a question mark.
People go lifetimes like that.

These things can’t help but rub off.
On you and me.   Our clothes feel different.

I just met a nice lady named Denise
on the N train.   And ran 4 miles.

Here’s a moonrock, a little dirty
straw, strewn cones, and thistles

[This is when I really started writing.].

dxvii

Ephemera.

This line ends here.

Waterfall in my head surrounds me.

(Surrounds.   So silly.)

The myth of regression.

dxvi

I am thinking of many different ways to change my
person.   Catherine writes great.   Let us
further examine this punctuation mark            !

. Needless to say, sometimes it’s fine to be straight up.

We saw
Alvin Youngblood Hart at Biscuits & Blues. The exam
was very hard, tricky. But now I have to order
an original birth certificate.

The wind is
chopping the water into
whitecaps.  I will turn 40 in Paris.  This statement
one of many bilocated uncertainties involving
passports.  Good morning.  I don’t care.  How are you?

Olson’s comeback.  Namedropping at parties.

I should be doing more of this.  My first
official threesome.  And though it was
somewhat comical, it was a lot of fun.
It’s all too normal.

Vulnerability in performance.

dxv

Some dates Joanne writes several
somethings-or-others.   Well,
it’s 7pm and our court is reserved for 8.   Speci
ficity in 28-year-olds.   Leads to
anniversary present.      Aw come on.

I wasn’t upset at all, was happy to give him

something.    Awkward boundaries.    Restock
the fridge.

An ocean      (and its floaters, and its flags).

I really couldn’t even afford all that,
but it was well-deserved and it made me
happy to do such.    Wait,
we forgot today     (and its pain in the neck,
and its eyeball headaches, and its
printer cartridges).

dxiv

I am a San Francisco
something-or-other. Well,
that wasn’t exactly a very small
anniversary.

Control your cleavage with portfolio margining.

You are mature beyond your years. But
it is nice out this evening. I’m not sure what to do
after pizza. There’s another heatwave.

dxiii

It was dull and gray
looking at the island
through a Perrier bottle.
Undergoing this to recreate
the memories of what
made us love them
in the first place.
Right now there is a
pretty big heatwave.
The ice machine is
completely drunk.
Are we going to see
any of your family;
destroy my commitment
to detail?

dxii

ears ring
hypertense
my head
jerks up

September’s
big blue
muffle
(a muscle) or

something
soft an
apocalypse
of (“hush!”)

sailboatsss
you treat
me like
sterling

yr cutesie
fingers on
my silver
zippers

dxi

Finding the French in it,
the building bows its head.
“I love you” after a long silence
in front of the SF Fashion mag; the
white wake-like summer,
its flag limp, a haze, a few bugs
and a fingerling cloud. The
sausage factory
blown out of proportion,
ere its associated mysteries.
“But I’m happy!”
“Think of it.” “It’s
really a swell life.”
“What’s going on on your floor?”
I understand the blossoming
of all hell breaking loose. Licking
one finger and pointing it
at the moon. The moon blinking.
The moon sitting down to take a little break.
A gap through the grape’s bruises,
bluer than....
Apricots, pineapples, asparagus.
And a fresh bowl of marbles. Gouttes
d’eau sur pierres brûlantes.
How much of a prick
most artists are. Esp
ecially to their spouses.
“It’s not really that bad.”
“No, it’s not really that bad.”
“I didn’t think so.”
Namedropping at dusk.
Leaving no stone un
touched.

dx

a red hair in the ocean
would
vehemently and at length
solve all my problems
I’m the same

over a fruit salad
the sky is not
the same group of kids
and tables
I must be craving a new language (you speak my)
(“Probably somewhere down here.”)

after the treadmill
upset
last Sunday
felt like sleeping pills
the new buildings slow at rising

a product
(“Because he’s stupid.”)
just hit me the right way
like someone touching me how

dix

what is the writing
whose own answer is
multiple love (I have a)
never at peace
I am as poor as the rest

have you ever
made me cry
in an Italian restaurant
drinking a diet coke
(“Do you know the way to the immigration building?”)

read this book
he poses
for the generations
to come (and come again)
it is a contrivance (the music

the fingers of clouds)
they pick me up
before I know
it is Japanese
or lost in stone

dviii

I have the habit of twisting my tongue into knots
and sucking on the contortions. Side effects appear to be
increased anxiety and a ringing in the ears. People
have been asking me why I’ve been doing this for so long

and I concur. Drinking a smoothie between the words
fire and flower. After my workout today, I was 171.
This morning I was 168. A week or so ago I was 174
in the afternoon and 175 in the morning. Most of

downtown is usually a riot. There’s a big fire in
Oakland or probably Emeryville. I can see the
flame with my glasses. Ignorance is only bliss
when you are ignorant, so why bother mentioning it.

dvii

We’re not relying so much on oxygen anymore.
I write like an insider. Hooftrack to hooftrack.

A friend wishes he were a poet, writes lines like:
and to profoundly deepen the understanding of the

enormous capacity of love to forgive and accept.
Quick note from a Korean restaurant on Wash

ington Street. A lovely summer day. And
over here another contrived collapse.

dvi

It’s all happening downstairs. Our arms are
up in the air, but still below sea level. My poems
aren’t resolute, but they keep returning to water,
jostled love and baffled memories. The
same words in different combinations.

The sky looks like the 60s. How could I
ever know? Hello from September, it’s
December. October meet August.
I felt an earthquake all the way from
the other end of the world, Napa Valley.

Then we went to Santa Cruz, its amuse
ment park along the beach. We were amused,
laid in the sand until a seal popped its head
out of the water. I used to eat at a place called
Baxter’s. I don’t remember it.

Francois Ozon was born five months after me.
It’s a hard act to follow. Now that I’m in the
doghouse, I smoked a bit on the rooftop of
someone who knows Maxine Hong Kingston.
He got a little weirded out about the

whole thing. I cried buckets at the end of the
movie. Wait...maybe it’s all coming back to me.

dv

The need for an analysis of this exploration:
Beautiful day – horrible morning; car wouldn’t start,
it being parked on a streetcleaning side today,
so was trying to move it in lieu of getting

I have it on my calendar and will come by the office then.

strange financial disaster nightmares. Bus late.
Picked up Moby-Dick after touring the Embarcadero YMCA.
Couple minor blunders in the office. 175 pounds.
Guess I should sell my car.

I don’t even remember the word I was going to use.
It just wants the paper. Not the news. It forgot
the texture. Anything that gets lost in translation.
This is and was relevance. Ennui.

div

Forgot collapsing beneath the weight
of him. And whether I took a pill this morning.
How to argue. Forgot the little room. The
old yellow Ford pick-up (a smoked-up truck).
Forgot the motorcycle wreck, the sanding down
of the palm of the hand. Forgot cellphones.
Forgot the living wage law. Forgot infinity
and all of its bodies, their hands and faces.
Forgot the bus. Maroon. Woven baskets.
Forgot how he fit into the curl of my arms
as I entered. Forgot breaking loose.

diii

Love in the middle of the night.
I wonder about survival.  I turn over—
curl up—face the wall.  I imagine
the wall’s existence—its quality—
I don’t touch it.  I turn over—
curl up—face my love.  I imagine
love’s existence.  My love’s existence.
Can I feel it?
Same day
at the California Culinary Academy
on the dessert crew—no one seems
to care about books.  I will join the
YMCA.
Ozu.
Olson.
Palmer.
Spicer.
Whalen.
Intensive care.
Hot Chip.
Clash of the Titans.
Basic tales from a slate-gray summer.
This method of removal doesn’t work.
Back when there wasn’t any artifice.

dii

elm
lying on the carpet with bee-stings

tiger
the beautiful boy on the motorcycle

secret
hung the moon

truth
getting old is inevitable

moon
it’s a heartache

childhood
the beautiful son of the tiger

embrace
lying on the carpet with bee-stings

father
died young

di

speckled human lights
under big eagle godlamp
more like glowworm
I’m talking about the color of a sky over a city but gads the psychologist
wants me to slow down
ohm
close my eyes and listen but not listen
to everything and nothing

he seems to want to stop making rapid rapid
to stop making the chop chop

oh the waters under an august sky
august like majestic
even though it’s actually the rosiest January
there I had to tell you

so now it’s time to take a little break
and define productivity
and then debate creativity versus perfection
never stop with this
simple
only

I don’t want to break his spirit
nor look out the window down the hill
where comes the man with the hose
to wash down the parking lot

d

Filmic,
a limpid word.
I neatly drove into the concrete barrier
—those concrete barriers they put up during construction—
Toledo, Ohio.  They’re talking about putting him
on a ventilator.  Not the muse
but the father.

This from a befuddled uncle.
The guys next to me are talking about airplane problems.

I’ll be better.  As human beings
we find ourselves in a strange situation.  (Dorsky)
Then we walked within the foggy city.  The muse
took me to something like a weekend on top of a dune
where if there hadn’t been fog I could have seen
all over.

I bought a new jug of detergent,
only I had a whole jug I hadn’t used.  I forgot I had that.
The same brand.
The same scent.

cdxcix

Close your eyes and listen to the sounds,
concentrate on each one. Count the corpses in your head.

Close Count Concentrate Corpse.

A fine day. Another partition. Another
evocative hint. That’s a lazyass way of looking at it.

I’m always to be in fact. Like purple
blossoms in the courtyard and Philip Whalen on the bus.

cdxcviii

Without saying a damned thing
important to nothing. Real important
to nothing but the roses.
Roses listening to birds. Birds through the trees.
                        Eliminate the swing;
reduce the amplitude of the wave. The big bird wave...

...woken up this morning without birds. Having
finished waking up this morning without saying a damned thing.
Having never woke up with Guston Kyger Whalen
until Woke and Woke and Woke.

        Start some more. Finish naught. Along the
        green words in the park: Mt. Tamalpais,
        two sailboats running late.

cdxcvii

Grab a kleenex, I’m drowning my headache
in a latté, tracing an index finger
all the way around my left ear.
The boys from Texas are in town
with big fuzzy red socks over
filled with PopRocks and kisses.
A taxicab pulls up in under the cloud
where the “No Parking” sign floats aslant.
Over my very own hillside. Two men in suits
swivel their chairs around to face the winter,
point their fingers up at the sky. I watch a man
fill a pothole with black pitch, go to bed
dreaming of death like those across the street
dream of living. Sepia the Cat is interested
in my dreams. Each night she tries
—apparently with some success—
to burrow a hole into my head.

cdxcvi

This is not plot
although the date is important.  Headache
all day and into the Ferry Building
where a duck gets shipped
professorially.  Flags at half-mast
for Jerry, also the name of my pet rock,
who I picked up in 1970
on Highway 217 North.
What a prognosticator,
me.
Meanwhile,
and the two-headed cat
trying to slurp her food,
I am at Caffé Proust
sipping out wine and acting risotto (or whatever),
where the sky isn’t buttered,
but stippled,
and less patient.

cdxcv

            mauve clouds

Clark Coolidge at Moe’s Books

            salmon patties

and movie-less movie nights

cdxciv

Stoned hills
Mission to Castro
on 21st. Including a
nice veggie on Valencia.
A face like a happy fish.
Nicholas keeps pointing
out apartment buildings
I pretend to see. Interiors’
derangement of art-egos
on Sunday night. I could
write just for fun. Sounds
terrible coughing.

cdxciii

Where my mind is
a long poem called
Did You See the Sky
This Morning? I’m
not used to feeling and
this has nothing to do
with the grand tradition
of filtered water. More
executions are planned
tomorrow.

cdxcii

The quietest hour here is 5-6am.
I walk into Starbucks with
these typos in my head.
They are divine and I’m in the
mist, actually jogging at
first. Every morning
when I get to Battery
the temperature says 56°F.

Then
I write seven pages.
For some reason I am doing this
to forget about honesty.
I can’t roleplay. It’s Tuesday
and I miss proximity.

cdxci

Friday evening after drinks
we take in Croupier
and then hike the Presidio all day
some nude sunbathers and fishermen

now he’s all wet
jogging up the Embarcadero and back
food here is phenomenal

at the Blue Bar
I couldn’t even tell you their names
except this one specializes in Spicer
or Schuyler doting on Elmslie
and whichever other names
are the names of the men with manes
solid men with packages waiting
all wet and white and fleshy (fishy)

there’s always an audience that wants to be counter to the norm

slept nearly 13 hours
while he watched Bresson’s Pickpocket
and applied a yellow coat of paint
to the bookshelf I dragged off the street

must do aplenty
like anxiety/depression this Friday
and having trouble with a foot again
it must be on its last leg

received a swell letter from Mom
including photocopies of Bucky and Papaw
one of Mombam very informative
and the other when I caught that 5 lb catfish 

at the Durham’s pond

cdxc

The best kind of melancholy.
Not even a teardrop with a trombone in it.

I misread it in your voice. That’s how these things work.
We become new creatures on a page.

I could frame it
and place it on the yellow wall next to the banana
with an overcoat. (After all these years
I just noticed he was wearing a skirt.)

First, though, I would need to print it out (or off).
Which reminds me of our discussion about
the physicality of music. And then onto another moment

Is it physically or emotionally?

That wasn’t misread. It wasn’t even misheard.
In fact, each syllable was precisely clipped
and exactly the same decibel.

After I fell asleep standing up
I finally answered that it was physical.
But who can be too sure?

Certainly not someone with an eye for yesteryear.

cdlxxxix

Realizing at last that it is honesty
that counts the most.

The rumpling snowplow and the
storm windows...stacked on the beans of the garage.

And then there was nothing unique
about it.

                                   Picture the day
in the park I found off Hayes Street.
It was a time when everything was new.
And then you had to move again.

If evolution equals hypocrisy vanishing
then America is a caveman.

Here’s to keeping a list of
all of my favorite mistakes
which, if you are to trust those in the know,
collectively are my mission statement.

And now I’m off to the next destruction.

cdlxxxviii

Misreading can be the best.

The wind is thrashing at the gnats
where the sun fails.  Or

I’m drinking a giraffe.

This morning I finally finished
putting the kitchen away.

People seem cool, in general,
but I’m beginning to wonder.

This experiment keeps happening.

We’re walking down Geary
and I realize you’re a stranger.

I guess that makes sense.
I’m always drawn to the strange.

cdlxxxvii

Question about e-mail lists:
Do you add a new column for ‘deceased’
or just remove them from the list?

How about a temporary moratorium
on contemporary poetry. Back to basics.

The whirlwind won’t stop. I make friends.
I try to live up to the bargain. I try to reduce my
blood pressure. I contemplate the significance
of longevity. Here at the office

full of wonderful, bizarre people; I got the
assignment—to bend something. Now
she is eating it. See,

it’s not just that each citizen has lost
its attention span (nor its lack of proper antecedants).
I took two pictures of each list
and I’m sure they will need an interpreter.

Is that the main problem?
Get back to me soon with your answers.

“Well, yeah, but it’s some good emotion.”

cdlxxxvi

I have no idea where you keep your gloves
and I really don’t think I have the capacity
to remember the names of most of the blooms I love.
Winter is winter.

“Oh it is inescapable kiss.”

To quote or not to quote when
words really don’t matter anyway. Is that the question?

It’s hilarious how I romanticize. I’m on a rock in Yosemite
and I wanted to write something down
but I forgot it already. Maybe next time....

cdlxxxv

Dear My Obsession,

I have a new position.
Six years ago I got
half of this, so everything’s
justified. I just wanted you to know.

Also, don’t forget what level you are on.
Although I don’t mind the stars. I got heart
insurance, too.

I will go to Yosemite for the annual office retreat.
There’s a new guy. I think he’s from Chicago.

Would you like me to
shut this up? I know you don’t like coffee

nor The Hotel Wentley Poems
but you must give me some allowances.
We will go to Santa Cruz
via Palo Alto

and never wind up anywhere.
Do this. Trust me.

That’s that,
Older Still

cdlxxxiv

Later in terror

What a heart is
I cannot scribble.

A presence; the
awareness of.

Feeling nothing
but THIS.

I can’t remember
what I was thinking

but I know
I was warm and

full.  Not hot
or cold.  Nor empty

but of the breath
we watch

swirling unto the
stars.  Another kiss

that makes me stupid;
that’s where logic

loses its luggage.

cdlxxxiii

Their names escapes me.

Good morning from the promenade level
of the walkway between Embarcadero 3 and 4.
Sun’s up.

Coffee in Oregon
cup, green and clayey. Some fog is rolling.
Something being pounded into the earth
nearby.

It’s the first day of summer. An umbrella
next to the cupboard. Water pills.

Not much to do, but I’m sure I’ll be
a bruiser. Could mull over poems,
my whole story.

Couldn’t sleep last night between 1 and 4-something.
After a nightmare where all I remember was
an apartment full of insane people
and I lived there.

And everyone carried a gun. I had a shotgun for a while.

I’m reading the new edition. Thinking about
butterscotch. You’ll know what I mean.

This drilling is giving me a headache.
I danced too much. We walked around.
I kept having to hold somebody up.

Those pictures on level 7. I would make even more of them.

It is cold and clear.
I guess only I know what that means.

cdlxxviii(b)

we’ve moved our getting closer to myself
so that from the Bayshore it was more options
and on Saturday he was pretending
to be our dearest pile of bones

I’ve been especially on in the kitchen
which is where we’re interviewing
here’s the grand piano we got down

then into a visual debt which I will try to make a
pretty decision about and also
I should breathe a little in ownership
or at least its attendant authorship

the arrival time on this telephone where
I seize the apple core of it if I can get one
we’re doing so good now compared to ever

cdlxxxi

This is not peripatetic.
                             —Los Angeles

WE HAVE AN (palm tree)!
I HAVE A (ocean)!
$1,395 per month.  I’ve been awake
since 5:30.  Or just decided to
coffee, so here.  Oh I’m still calling
this walk is the face of rain walk. Its clean
family history my excitement
like my boyfriend’s (at his age)

three weeks into a vacation of fog.
Embarcadero Center and nothing
in my paycheck because we (APARTMENT)
are in limbo (JOB)  (!) . . .

cdlxxx

I have overdue library books,
brownies in a box, individually wrapped,
flavors like “Peanut Butter,” “Caramel,”
“Espresso Nib,” and “Coconut,” a
snowball stressball (I didn’t lie),
a green dragon, a pee-colored
waterbottle, a postcard with a Hockney
portrait, a postcard with a Rauschenberg
combine, 103 degrees at the Carl Hotel,
Blue Moon (employment agency),
interview at 101 California, sirens
in the distance, flared tempers,
a Terra Vista rental deposit, but no
apartment yet, exhaust, Swingline
stapler, Blackberry, two portraits by
Otto, another postcard (Arthur Dove),
a San Francisco streetmap, two
calendars (different years),
two journals (over six years apart),
fog...

cdlxxix

It’s a snowball and a stressball, all in one!
I’ve been having pain shoot up my left arm
these past few days.  Homeless for over
two weeks.  Little did I know, it turns out.

Just my luck.  Another sharp pain, this 

time in my bottom front teeth, the very 

tips. 9 o’clock comes and then what? 

He’s writing in his red diary, moving 

his lips to every word as he writes.

cdlxxviii

As I get older I know more [Flash] [Flash] [Flash].
I’m at the Reverie Café on Cole Street with the letter A.
Last night we went margarita-hopping.

City Lights. Bottlebrush.

cdlxxvii

Here and now atop Russian Hill
with the singing birds. But these birds sing
differently....

[June’s inevitable blowjob. (cf. ProtectYourBanana.com)]

Not like the hollering birds at the diner
on the way back from L.A. Nor like the quiet blue ones
in Big Sur, those pilferers of aspartame.

So begins the San Francisco period.

cdlxxvi

Inflicting this disjunctive neonarrative
is not a bandwagon I hop on without a pogo stick.
Flip on the proto-hippo, shut off the monitor.

Dolores and June’s inevitable jobsearch.
This apartment is exhausting. In it we have the most

stress-relieving panic attacks or something.
Fourteen years ago I put on my glasses
and wait for him at Chow. [Picture this trip]

Now I accept your meeting planner. I give mine
to the Spirit and the Spirit accepts it, and in return
I get a cup of minestrone.

I walk down 20th or whatever. An ice cube with a picture of us inside of it.
Finally, we’re in the Garden of Eden.

cdlxxv

These are the ideal bullet points. These twelve bullet points. Sign here.
Peaces on Earth.

Hockney has arrived. He lights up the bay with Hockney colors.
Walking pale Los Angeles as through the corridors of a bathhouse,
as monotonous as anything else. We have arrived in San Francisco.

The People’s Cafe, Haight Street, Day 2 with Aussie neurosis. Walnut finish.

One-third of a photogenic head peeking around a boulder, Central Park.
I would love to be able to write all of this down. Ooga Booga
in Chinatown, for example, where I spend approx. sixty dollars American.
A build-up of haze in front of the Oakland Hills.

Here at the Carl Hotel we are a bit overwhelmed. We’d love to be able to
[snapshot of BART].

Seagull in the cloud. Four black 2” 3-ring binders.
Airplane at eleven o’clock. Boats and seagulls. Here come more of the clouds.

cdlxxiv

Do you think they can talk around 7am? Starting to feel pretty good.
Hays, Kansas. Sitting at a Pancake House next to a Motel 6.
4th night or 5th morning on the road. Boats finding their way
out onto the pink and blue water. An airplane and its orange rind.

Oh and the clouds this morning were red
and looked like infinity, or a representation thereof. Out toward the Pacific.
One roiling red fluffy ∞ after another.

We’re heading to Denver.
Cutting down on coffee.
Stepping around the artpieces.
Building a giraffe.

The black lamp is cozy with the headset. Nice folks at
Kryger’s Auto Glass—Eastern Kansas is beautiful. Write a few postcards.
Denver.

Timothy at 45 degrees, one ear on the floormap. What an eyeball!
Federal Boulevard and I-70. What at first seemed a heaviness
now something soothing. Not light. Serene though.
Off to do a little laundry.

I’m kinda drained. No clean underwear tomorrow.
Tom Cruise in Kansas, brushing his teeth. My teeth [snapshot of
perfect-bound book]. Altitude sickness. Dentist advert on a Post-It.

cdlxxiii

Motel 6 in Columbia, Missouri—
waiting for U-Haul to call and let us know where to take the truck
to get its window fixed. The passenger side door window having fallen

down into the door and shattered.

Last night we spent in a Motel 6 right before the Illinois line in Indiana.
Oh, Terre Haute.
Sepia was restless yesterday morning. She was crying a bit
and wanted to roam around. Twenty degree angle downward pose.

Another dragon. Very humid and ninety degrees here. Literature

in front of a Pasta House. Louis Vuitton. Plagiarism on the sidewalk
in Illinois. I think he’s just kind of insecure.

Fellowes rubber wrist-rest sidles up to Timothy and the Kleenex.
We want something cold. I put all the birthdays into the calendar.
Most people are in their 30s and 40s. Several black binders
and an MIT marble coaster. A heavy patch of rain at Walmart.
Supermagnets.

cdlxxii

The tape dispenser from Indianapolis
at a Cracker Barrel. Shoots the green dragon
in the foot through the heavy rain after Columbus.
Sprinkling now. We talked about bringing in
a snowcone machine. How early can we come
set it up?

Then he got out of the elevator. [Snapshot of elevator]

“Thank you very much. Nice to meet you.”
These words under heavy clouds — the clouds getting
heavy because it’s supposed to rain. We drive through the rain
and breathe.

[Snapshot in front of the new Gehry building] Road construction.
Walking through rain and gravel on the side of the road
where the candy cooked. Used to cook. No more valentines today
with the early clouds getting big and heavy.

[Snapshot of the green dragon] The tape dispenser from
Napa courts the favor of the pee-colored water bottle.
Timothy has two teeth. He likes snowcones (aka Sno-cones). [Snapshot]

Predict the exact time of the first raindrop on Treasure Island.
Plug it in here. Put the new supermagnets on the refrigerator.

cdlxxi

We’re off to San Francisco.
Sepia is on my shoulder.
She was just watching a bird eat a dragonfly.

Now we’re in New York
in a field behind the first rest stop.
We just bought two “free” lemonades from the Boy Scouts.

cdlxx

Several months pass.  I am
surrounded by straps of paper,
armed with a cellphone
and a new camera.  An Elph.
I got my hair chopped off
one last time at Sal’s
this afternoon.  Also,
my new pee-colored
waterbottle.
The sky is blue,
the haze is pink,
the bay is pink and blue....  Now
I am walking around Russian Hill.
Everything is the same.
Except it is cold.

cdlxix

The curtains are billowing
androgynously. He is very peaceful.
Somebody says “book an hour.”
Another person (he is full of names)
is wearing a gray sweatshirt
and a pair of bluejeans he’s had on forever.
I know exactly where he’s taking me:
my old apartment with lacy curtains.
A wheezy chime from the direction
of the belltower. Capricious time.
Everybody loves that.
There is nothing that special
about a hamburger panic attack
except that I won’t be eating any more hamburgers.

cdlxviii

I had a salad for lunch.  The aunties are moving to Alabama.
I get extra sugar from Carmen.  She says it’s a magnolia.
I invented a new word: nonmonogaphobia.
Plus there’s now a better rate of return on given-away phone numbers.

We’re both breathing.  He likes Fritos and he fills up a notebook like I do the white one.
The uptight air is salt air.  People die but telephones don’t.
Last month was chicken in cucumber.

I slept in a trailer two nights in a row, a silver one.
“Like the prow of a ship,” she said.  It was cold.  I slept hard.
Water dripped.  I had to close the door.  The door got stuck.  It was also dark.
There was a squirrel or a bird on top of the trailer sometime after the sun came up.

I was dancing.  Paid time off.
I forgot how to do this.  No I didn’t.
We met in a wine bar.  In the future.

cdlxvii

I’ve chosen to sit in the library
very late in the afternoon
having not taken a lunch break.
I gave my notice today too.
Hydrochlorothiazide.
Okay I’ve taken a break.

cdlxvi

I cannot — am I mad? — I cannot make myself do
anything I should.  I want to shut down.
Indefinitely.

What’s a kiss solidify?

People’s voices out the window, indeterminable words.
Undecipherable.

Also, I don’t have any gray hairs.