dcclxv

How do you feel?

I need to kill a lot of pain.  And gay.

“I’m out of one of my pills
so I really need to pick them up today.”
Let it go.

Tony’s Cable Car — TMJ — acupuncture didn’t help.

Pather Panchali instead of ferry to Sausalito (awesome!).

“When I grow up
I want to be Mandy Moore.”

Sure, I’d like out of my cage now. Would that be possible?
The rain is stifling. The books get soaked—words
all greasy.

My BFF says it’s impossible to experiment at 40.

Achy, and generally a mess.
Did I already say this?

                                                              —Stupid Greedy Writers

dcclxiv

Things I can be thankful for: public transportation
in the middle of the night.  Who could forget the war
with its bright floods and its blue geraniums?

I don’t like pain.  Or maybe not.
I do like some pain.
Um ... okay.

John Wieners on the bus whispering hello and
“Nothing keeps it together.”

“I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be.
And finally, I became that person.
Or he became me.”
                                —Archibald Alexander Leach (Cary Grant)

dcclxiii

Somebody Googled Del Ray The Only Way

___________________________________
___________________________________
____________________________________________________

“In which online social networking systems do you actively participate?”
“We just get old and shrivel up, right?”

                                                                                             Unable
to describe the color of the bay.  A vibrant gray?

Water-skiing as an adolescent.  Sunburn.  Re
cede into the present (with aplomb)
to order lunch.  Not my lunch.  This me,
trying to tell a story here, aka

my rather slaphappy way to acknowledge
death as the brand new stuff.

Try explaining a stye to someone who’s never had one.
(Try explaining style to someone who’s never had one.)

“Del Ray lives in California and is a poet and teacher.”

Still no color.  Colorless.  Comfortable in my own sex.

A nice blue Serengeti sky.

dcclxii

A penchant for dancing bugs.

“I’m not looking for dialog I’m
looking for engagement.”   What does that mean?

“Attack of the muscle kiss.”

...And then the thoughts come smooth sailing, fuller, fat even.

Poetry is as important as bugs equally disturbing the light.

Danced out bugs
kissing moonlight.

dcclxi

The forest was too drunk.

Avoid therapists (all sorts).
Hard to erase. Comes into focus
slowly, just having roasted.
Her eye star voices her bagel.

It’s January 2 and the salad line
goes out the door. Further cliche
that I’m in it.

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.  Yeah.”

dcclx

Not enough voice.
Complaint level 5.
One leaves the dance
with nothing but
a wilted salad.
Forget word.
[Sand-covered
combat boots;
several cities
clumped hotly
together.]
Enjoy space
and time.
Cough up
another extension.
Worldwide
Viagra delivery.

dcclix

In my dream last night
I held two 40-hour jobs
simultaneous hours.

Notes to a new year:
Reword yourself.

And the last
flower from Good Vibrations:
a little buzzer thing.

What year was it?

Note to self:
40-hour blowjobs.

dcclviii

Saguaro.

A picture journal. The “Shafter Press”
at sunset. A bottle of Veuve Clicquot.
The sun behind a gas pump.

dcclvii

An imprint.

That first line.  Writing.

I take off a day on Friday.  Hope I’m better soon.

dcclvi

“ok.”


                 “ok.”

This is not random as a dream,
but  “very hungry,”
“numbers,”  “a mathematics.”

Crawled into bed for lunch,
downtrodden (head inside a pillow)
reading my own words
and hearing them repeated to me unbeknownst
by my brother.

OK.   A coup.   Coup.

dcclv

This is the end of a year.

      long space     between words.

I’m lying on a beach reading.   Next to...

phEnomenal.

lunch.   He’s really being very serious, I guess.

           distance

Scruples.   fucked, yep,

TIME,

afterwards.        today,

the last flower.

dccliv

“Sure, I’ll be discreet.   I’m even discreet with myself.”
Is it immature to still desire (require) a thorough reading
of my own work (by somebody else)?   A particularly
absurd and violent Sunday in an orange San Francisco.
Two cloves of garlic into the pot of sliced zucchini,
salt and pepper to taste.   Can’t seem to pull anything
out of the air; instead, while away the afternoon with
Jack Collom and Lyn Hejinian interview, time enough
to pick up a grocery item or two, wash the dishes,
a fragmented life.   Acupuncture consultation tomorrow.

dccliii

The cat is perched on the router again.   She’s
full of disruptive ideas.

What we’ve got’s an
increasingly apathetic public mind and I’m not ready to
end it yet.   Take, for example, the shower scenes
in Gus Van Sant’s films.   Trace the trajectory from
Psycho to Paranoid Park via Elephant and you’ll see why.

Confusion is the better part of dialectics.   (L Hejinian)
Yes.   We’ve always so much trash around.
(Picked up My Life at Green Apple on Saturday.   Now
it’s just us and the blackbirds.)

A small bottle of eyeglass cleaner stares us down
with sobering inadequacy.   Incapable
of quelling the frenetic need for
POEM.

dcclii

The Trouble with Economics

Pleading with friends, I ask
“What does ‘career’ mean to you?”

Drink a glass of water and wait for the earthquake.

         The wind has produced much
         damage throughout the city.
         I placed the spider plant on
         the roof (which is just outside
         the kitchen window).

Ron says it’s “a game, a dual path
or a double lane highway,”
“task vs. joy”.

         Reboot. Discerning smoke
         outside windows. Mark that off.
         On the hike: scotch broom,
         society garlic, rhododendron,
         madrones (madroñas),
         cormorants drying themselves
         along the reservoir pump.

What did I want to be when I grew up?

         The red deepens. Classy.
         Ducks, one posing, male,
         another male shows up,
         several minutes pass, another,
         this one female, next another
         male, some fighting, the
         pagoda at the top of the hill.

Christmas TREE
smells nice. Yes
it’s a nice flat surface that goes bang when you slap it.

dccli

The morning is blushing like I am.
Who wants a big audience, anyway? Being
content, absolutely in love, I go to a movie
all by myself; dress up to the nines for a

solo night at the opera. Then to Olive
for dinner of mushroom pizza (w/truffle oil)
and two mojitos, after which appear with
Hap-Pea and Pea-Wee in Splitting Peas

for Split Pea Soup. Style is irrelevant.
Take that to the bank and choke on it.

dccl

Let’s say for example you wrote another one:

          You have two secret crushes
          so quit polishing.

It’s not just another poem about poetry.  It’s about longing.
Don’t say it’s the same thing.

Grey Whale Cove in a little green bug.  Nothing else
over the weekend except giving a massage
to a stranger on Baker Street.

And then he buried me in the sand.  But

what if I pick the wrong words?  Each syllable/
word/line a gender-specific jewel (he didn’t really like jewels)....
Who likes jewels?  Yeah, I guess.

          Let’s try to at least lock down a date
          since it’s a limited suicide.

Because my attention span is better now,
I promise.

dccxlix

Two nudes in bed editing.
                                         —Laura Moriarty

I won’t have this window
much longer just a few months.  The chalky tail
of (supine) Treasure Island.  The glowering haze.
(The haze isn’t glowering!)  The gaze that isn’t
harrowing.

No, seriously, it’s a nice view.

I’m kind of stoked I forgot to eat.
Duh, but mildly entertaining.  Thanks, Jack.

A bottle of water in the middle of the table.
Such limitation, language; enough to drive one
into a Susan Hayward snit.  (That’s camp.)

I think you should wait a few weeks before
spending any more money – give yourself some
breathing room.  Tomorrow I might wake up dying.

dccxlviii

In this dream an older woman in a dress
short and proud a hostess at a frequented restaurant
fell onto a colorful bed (her dress also colorful
green like a conifer). Her black hair
more than tinged with silver she throws herself
onto the bed diagonally spread face upward
amorous lustful one who has never
shown such emotion in
reality?
She has a penis and she begs me to grab it. I do.
Our
realities are now intertwined. What will remain
of the word until our synapses rust with
time in some as-yet-determined
“Garden of Memories”?
How to
make this more palatable
on yet another Thanksgiving afternoon? He’s a
fanatic about coherence stayed late at work so
big death at gym. Big dearth I mean.
Supposedly have date with
TonytheTiger tomorrow.

dccxlvii

The knuckle of the world fills up
                                     —Jean Day

with knuckleheads.  The cats of the world
sit on their wireless routers
and stare onto the mod dancefloors
from the upper levels of a hazy metropolis.
Sources are listed anatomically.

He had a wicked day.  What’s up?
I’m defeated. So debted. Yuck!
                                             But that was yesterday.

Today, TRAPPED, hello from a worm
in the Castro.  I guess I’m going to Boston
on the train.  What to do between now and then?

Anyway, what to do?
I am sleeveless, as expert, and
I quote... “

dccxlvi

LOUDER will make you be heard

the next line was about:
     incense
     Street Sheet
     people at parties
     marketing
     people in cubicles
     restaurants
     chimneys
     poetry
     dogs

I owe the IRS $1,300

I would like a smaller voice


(this poem not yet finished)

dccxlv

Oh in all your life were you ever teased
Like this, and it became your mind?
                          —John Ashbery

“You read well.”
“But you don’t write well.”

Talk about ‘future’...

It hurts, this wanting to give a dimension
To life, when life is precisely that dimension.

dccxliv

Don’t diss the language poets.

“Like, I look back on it all now,
and it, really, it just made no sense,
and I’m so ashamed. I can’t believe
it was ever for me.” “I know you
feel you have to tell a story, it’s
okay, just deconstruct it.” Plus
the butt guy (exhibitionist) who
has no qualms. “So when
are you coming back?”

dccxliii

Moderately Provocative Pesto

Today’s flower is
a green beehive
of expectation.  -- our own
writing has taken over --
breaking news -- hence
-- feel more
____...  human in shape
because you make books
more important.  A piece of real wood?
This is why nobody reads
morse code anymore you make it such
a big joke like you’re so funny I don’t think so.
Sh!  Step into the new room for a new you (a living room)
and it’s enough to forget
everything about
writing, breaking news, human in shape.
Woodpecker gloriously
pecking away at the top of the
skystructure fully exposed with big skeeze
quick and horribly satisfying.

dccxlii

We are just Scarface.

At the continuum
little haloes
gone in order
(two pieces).
Upon these
we set wit,
verbal
gymnastics.

She gets at
what’s important
only in passing.
He was good
too, he improvised
a piano.

Grilled asparagus,
Caesar’s leaves
gleaming in the
mid-day sun.

dccxli

As the body goes,
Azalea hedgerow.  Christmas
already in the
window proud
of nothing this nothing.
You spend all your time.
Yes and besides,
this only memory’s
phantasm.  The burly
bay beside a sleeping
metropolis.  Oh Sleepy,
I love you in my mind.

dccxl

Quick
Yeah she’s in Morocco holding
the earth together....

                                       You’re sexy
in the kitt kitchen chopping

I really have no idea
who it is You spend all of your time
doing this??

everything Hy
drangea and the bulls
of the cathedral
with its cobble cars and its
wafting up, up
and into further beautiful environs

ferns
and pine needles /
and being thankful, Stinson Beach.

dccxxxix

Wake up German, the sky’s
in retaliation. We, its sleep,
stumble upon the muses...
a muse stumbling. Like my own
clean hole, something falls
with the scrape of the pavement.

A dead limb, we wake up
in a wake. Hearts do things
hearts do in poems without
muses. Say it implodes,
takes its pills before the
gentrification. Rights the

skies, runs its noses. Checks
its e-mail for mortar. Dreams
are like that, they’re okay
like we are, hosed on a Saturday
morning. Defiance. Perturb-
ation. Sleek bird calls to the

rust. A pleasant scrape, a check
for a hundred sows and blouses.

dccxxxviii

Get over the body. A word
or a sentence—the curse of
the West Coast....................
....like this fog’s true gentleman
(not a curse); the sway of the
eucalypts. I can’t tell you
what a success to fool ourselves
with the pharmaceutical. This fever,
this delirium. A suit
(his first), and not
funereal.

dccxxxvii

Speech is fraud.
              —Jack Collom

Experiment with deprivation.

Very satisfied with the periphery. (“Can you see him?”)

Melton (p. 27) — a heavy woolen cloth used chiefly for making overcoats
                                 and hunting jackets.

Starbucks (corner of Kearny and Bush)

My hand is sore from the bus this morning.

dccxxxvi

Pocket change.

Imposing limitations. Checkmate
in two moves. Stifling economics.

Dentist appointment.
Fight the academy.

(List poem.)

dccxxxv

No running inside a grape.
                      —Laynie Browne

I caught myself
once
running inside a grape
with a Bollywood soundtrack
(I remember the song)
and cold coffee.
Coffee and grape
don’t match.
“I didn’t drive
to Bolinas
like I said I would,”
I said to the grape
inside the grape.
Who walks in, but
would you believe it?
We said “hi” and I thought
that would be that.
But before the night was through
we were both
drunkenly slobbering
all over each other
inside of the grape.

dccxxxiv

“...working too hard trying to do something.”

A common pre-Berrigan edifice.
Personal adds. (“You making something with this?”)
“Tête-à-tête until dawn was Frank’s specialty.” (Joe LeSueur)
Because everybody knows bees aren’t funny.

So, no news from limbo.

dccxxxiii

“And what have you done?”

The Personal
is empowerment.

All writing is restraint.

Means “azure”
in Chinese.

I turned the headache
into a gumdrop.

dccxxxii

Know better when to stop.
The aching, thus,
on Presidents Day.

Spontaneous portrait:
Green Shirt I wanna
do your homework

and crawl up your sandal
onto your big toe
for a 3-day weekend.

That’s so not true!
People do write
during readings here.

Stop Stop Stop!

dccxxxi

I recall your celebrity tuna.

I think I’ll make a turkey soup.
His bliss trees surround me.
Absence makes a good love poem.
Champagne pop on the dim sum.

Cupid should know better
while I’m in the bathroom.

dccxxx

“Being skinny puts me in such great spirits!”
(A trick is great pony.)

How do you
comb your hair
with that beautiful watch,

wearing the streets of
pinot grigio? Brings to mind of

how many minds
are we. I like
the curve of the ceiling,

the way you Photoshop it,
then down the hatch
with a latté and a San Pellegrino. Hello

from Caffé Prague
with David (a little over-arching)

and Chris (that bad toad!).
Today is beautiful like me.

dccxxix

A Soup of Zucchini

Thanks
for those Mediterranean spices
Mr. Collom, Mr. Brit-Flag Purses,
Mr. and Mrs.

I Don’t Have No Big Words.
Sunday comes
with its churchbell swishes
and the candy clovers

I meant to translate
for you. Dim sum
snakes instead,
and demin-jacketed,

no tie-clasped
monkeys
make room for more monkeys (French lyrics);
squabs for more squabs.

Lots of salty kisses on
chunk concrete.

                                                        -Kiehl’s on Fillmore

dccxxviii

I can see the chandeliers of the Carnellian Room
eastward on Pine to home
Otto singing not to the
monotony of homework

nor verse
but to mushroom clouds under the birds
           eventful few days
Eva Hesse’s giant traumatism

she sings at her baby from modern trees
the eastward leaves purple for royalty

dccxiii

The joint venture places several of the nation’s most
recognizable beer brands under a single concern.
                                            —nytimes.com

Sometimes it works
and sometimes
we have to pour it all down the sink.
Smoky apparitions hover at or near the ceiling in witness.

Then we frolic from hillock to hillock,
straightening our hunchbacks along the way.

A glorious turn of events, waking up
covered in sweat:
it’s the fear of monotony. The ennui-swathed alarm
plays a new song by Madonna. We dance ourselves
out of the bed and into the shower,

dawn. Another minute and we’re late for yoga
or something. Who remembers?

But the nice part
is how the fork got stuck in my head.

“Who needs hope?”
“Why, we do, silly!”
“Shall I send a revised meeting planner for the full ninety minutes?”
“Absolutely,” he smirks,

placing his laptop on the corner of the sofa,
the most comfortable corner.

dccx

Fits

& then starts.

Writing an hour a day. Deciding how serious.

Tinnituses (mom’s, son’s).

A normal person couldn’t have done it.

Of course happiness isn’t funny.

But so is Frosted Mini-Heartattacks.

dccxxvii

Beautiful Sloppy Pecker Dish

He’s deft.
Full of secrets.

“Yes,” he said.

“Plus,
he owes.”

Sad,

bluesy.

dccxxvi

....of ever more sensitive blemishes


                                 FOG


salmon patties, gnocchi & green peas
on Pacific & Battery


a patchwork that turns into a series of segues, or
                                                                      eventually

                   non sequiturs


a festering sweetness of red lollipops (W.C. Williams)


one postmuddern clump after another


too much pecan pie & cheesecake, etc.

dccxxv

When I Was Alice

notice Michael Palmer
lotsa readings in the late 70s
hm

Collom enjambment
needs to breathe I guess —
experiment is key

numb teeth nest

02/02/02 in library after gym
also witness 5 men jerking off
one kinda cute

cup of pretzels, diet coke
and clam chowder with 2 english muffins

English Coke
many Jordan almonds

“what’re you really good at?”
not diarist, not poet, not editor
brain gone to the birds

and extreme computers
(breathe I guess)

* * * *

When I was Alice I counted the cars
one after another
in front of Walmart
intersections

pulled at my dress
wet my panties
at the intersections in front of Walmart
in the late 70s

hid piece of puzzle
Lil Abner psychiatrist
something melodramatic

along with a kiss in the moonlight
up several flights
tear open a blue jeans

dccxxiv

What I’m doing now is write.
                                     —John Ashbery

A lot of coming

and, I suppose,

going, on this
paper here.

India, Philadelphia,
Colorado, Los Angeles.

Fell on a dork.
Outside swishes

now smile, an acorn.
Is that your answer

ain’t funny. Oh, but
I was so ready to leave,

to sleep. To rap it, love.
.... Rabid love.

Wrap it up in a poetry
security. Play with it

more (“...rampant ...rampart...”).
Came on the couch;

comely, rapid. Calypsos,
what a trip! Came

more than went. Collapses.
What an oaky mesh!

dccxxiii

Dear Bill,

lover of baseball
and Whalen, I tried

to celebrate your 65th
(a little late)
with Red Sox & Rockies, but, but,

this glass of water
and Jack Collom, 10:01pm,,,

and Erin,
house-sitting when the cat died,
(Mem’ries!)

Paolo’s party

at Massimo’s
another reddish day

postcard poem: The Seven Seas
inspired by C&C
getting high after
Radiohead

Blue Planet,
which was a trip
in and of itself,
really fantastic

Claritin-itis

Wayne’s heart really bad
but better

Tammy’s white trash
dissertation

The Police
at Starbucks
Synchronicity

Happy Birthday
Bill and everybody!

dccxxii

No date on Friday night then
(HORROR)
a kidney stone at Kaiser.

House a mess,
off to Duboce
for feckless sex
(goes well with TV).

Mom speaks with dogged
neighbor who replies!
First words
in three some years.

Baked potato vigil
2 points (joined
Weight Watchers!).

$662 roundtrip to
Hong Kong a temptation
I am resisting.

Drive instead
into fire,
Southern
California.

dccxxi

“Wildlife” and “Wildfire”
look very much alike
in headlines next to one another.

Issue 10 cover –
Curran, sideways,
head lopped, no feet,
wearing FOOL t-shirt,
BRECK painted across body
with white-out.

Wrote to tell Tom
how time passes oddly
in dreams
which remind us
to say hello
to long-ago friend.

Death is a booger.

dccxx

The prison of the page,
a pain in the neck.  Lost beauty
like city starlight.  Another meteoric
deconstruction.  Sleep when I die
mentality; a small break between miles.
The steam room out of order.  First real
bag of groceries in forever.  Sirens,
smoking bus, the rain clears into a
sunny afternoon.  At home spend two hours
washing dishes.  Some redneck movie.
Heading to post office for electronic postcard stamps.
Can we maybe have maidservants clean our apartment
in the nude?

dccxix

dirty bittie if it’s not indie
it’s no damn good
dumdum got grey tryin to be a style

what cooks here baby??

ooh ramen ugh!
ooh ramen ugh!

ah too freezin too fuckin cold
dumdum bitty should get up and leave
fuckin for the last 5 days or so no good up in them cabnets

but one thing cool we got the swiffest influx ever

ooh ramen ugh!
ooh ramen ugh! and ugh!

dccxviii

West Hollywood Winter

Fathom a market of goldenrod (and
not the genera that take batteries).

A secret garden for them, outside a bed 

& breakfast, perhaps. 8 in the morning.

Glowing French Toast with orange rinds,
chunk cantaloupe.  Neon sex.  Walk

to Grauman’s, split stars for an hour
(because we’re so damned grumpy),

curl up inside a toaster oven.  Somalia,
Diebenkorn, and Baziotes.  A botched

attempt at a door (1960s). More on 

this later, I think, as I straight fail to 

go unnoticed while bristling at the

stunted pussy willow upon which I

am pissing.  I coffee down and perk

up, snatching the buzzes all the way 

through the Golden Globes Era.

dccxvii

The sun torches deeper than thought

Cerebral hemispheres of nonexistence
caress the nibs of your neck, that exquisite
hump on your shoulder. And not a Gizzi in the house
(harrumph!).

All told: the Abbey Cafe, its lists, the ghost of
Hockney on Mulholland Drive, so L.A.!
Whisper something clever to me, kid.

dccxvi

Goodnight sliver of moon,
a goodnight distant carrier
jet! Night and night! An opposite

to learning. Sit on my ass and be
lazy, lazy, lazy. Hit ‘send’ – the
computer’s entrails hot as lava
(an exclusionary hot). I like him

but there are a lot of ideas I enjoy, too,
like my own apartment.

Miserable nipple ring!
Klimt, Lauder, and
utmost exhaustion!

dccxv

In this dream I was in grad school
with Dharma and Greg. I’d
failed to check my school mailbox
for months (years?). It was
overflowing and I obviously
wasn’t making the cut. That’s
all I remember. I never
watched Dharma & Greg,
but I did read somewhere
that Dharma’s character was a
yoga instructor. Perhaps it’s
because I’ve missed yoga for
several weeks now......It’s so
quiet here today, and I can’t see
a thing out of the window.
Total fog/rain/nothingness.

dccxiv

Make Your Money Do Good Things

Super Viagra.
Sex without borders.
(How green my banana.)
Philosophy of a hairy chest.

Pinching from whatever page
(web or otherwise) happens my way.

Writing is dead.

              Make Mom a hair appointment, her first color ever,
              Wicked Salon, October 2007. Dinner at Via Veneto with
              Gary, Nathalie, and Curran, $100 wedding present, January 2002.
              Amelie, 2001: A Space Odyssey (twice), Apocalypse Now (Redux),
              and ingredients for See’s Chocolate.

I’m on the ‘machine.’ The clouds part and I see his face.
Love, marriage, sex...who knows what order
a heart should be in? Finding a good conversation helps.

I really loved the gargoyles in Paris.

                                                                                 —Whimsy (of course)

dccxii

Kubrick Is So Freakin’ Precise (Chapter 7: Dementia)

Marriage.  The presumption
that you can be bothered,
that you’ll laugh when I laugh,
that I tickle you...how insecurity
and self-bloating go hand in hand

with mediocrity,
manic waves of hither and yon,
a few words thrown at mirrors
for good measure.  “We had
our good days,” and then it’s

open your book,
hands to the table
at the Squat & Gobble,
yesterday’s
mad dash at another broken record.
And there he goes,
wearing his lazy suede jacket
in reverse.  It was a nice sauce.

dccxi

“It’s depressing.” “Then why do it?”

Out sick yesterday, slept most of Monday night
to this morning. A sole
banana looks good on my desk. Last night
Mom sliced up a cantaloupe that looked
banged and bruised, had been keeping
in the bottom of my refrigerator
for a couple of weeks. It was
knock-your-socks off delicious. Mushmelon,
indeed! A ferry’s bright, white stripe of wake
slices a diagonal line halfway between
Treasure Island’s northernmost tip
and Embarcadero Four, there it goes,
fading like the patriotic exhaust
(red, white, and blue) behind the
Blue Angels during yesterday’s air-show,
Mom and I on the rooftop watching what we can
over Nob Hill, the occasional eardrum-popping,
low-flying passes directly overhead. Like we didn’t
hear those birds day-in, day-out while I was growing up
barely a mile from Ft. Chaffee land, bombs and flares
omnipresent on humid summer nights,
the window over my bed facing south to Potato Hill,
so wracked with “war practice”
it’s amazing it kept its perfectly conical shape,
didn’t flatten into a field of oblivion
between Lake Charleston and the Ouachitas.
But no, there it still is,
one giant blue tit in search of another.

dccix

I am in the chicken

reading the newspaper, when it dawns on me,
Jim Dine’s second reading in 40 years!

Then I remember that I was not supposed to like the Metreon.
But who knew there’d be all these tourists. Stop, drop, and roll

into a Starbucks just to start over (I didn’t like me then
and I sure don’t like me now).

                                                                     Whew, we’re a little better

now that the dragon has climbed hisself back up to the top of the cliff.
The air’s a little thinner up there, his little blond mohawk starts to

frizzle. But I think he’s okay.
Sociability does take its toll.

dccviii

I am now a heavenly body.
                 —George Takei (after an asteroid between Mars and 

                                        Jupiter renamed 7307 Takei)

What has your short attention span done for you today?
Mine brought me donuts.

The act of putting pen to paper
in order to build a record of existence.

The rain has stopped momentarily and the fog has come, thick.
Averse to change, yet always craving it,

wannabes at The Museum of Physical Therapy.

dccvii

First time with a new year.

How much
hiding behind the mirror;
how much the mirror
and its thinly-silvered ass?

Never you mind.
Take whatever you see
and slap it into the machine,
turn the crank and be done with it.

Yesterday’s joe was pretty good
but didn’t make a whole lot of sense.
The tape dispenser popped the stapler
a good one

and the little green dragon
fell off the cliff, knowing full well
how things can come up
unexpectedly.

dccvi

It was time for the fire moil.

It’s a symptom of reading too much.
And it’s really no fun when you’re 40.

Now it’s the keyboard mouse bum
sucks the juice out of every living thing on the desk,

the dogs bark under the warmer lamp
and the weatherwoman says

rain starting back up this evening
and lasting a couple more days.

Yes, the wasabi helped.

dccv

There’s a parrot-sized hole in my life.
                   —Dr. Irene Pepperberg (on the death of Alex the African gray parrot)

The world has changed.
Oh Mr. Fresh Face it is so
hip to be seen and “nobody to
turn to for advice.” (Ashbery)
Am I sorry?

Strategy: a travel reservation!

And an echo in the ears,
not quite settling in to the dizzy.
The settling into of the dizzy.
The dizzy us, the dizzy we.

Yet.  The fog fumbles.  We live on.

Time’s always
getting lost inside the fucking echoes.
Like diving into Cool Whip
for the fell swoops.

Oh the world has changed.  It can’t see through
to its next thought.

                                  Its next thought
was a sandwich, a pasta salad,
and some iced tea.

dcciv

Dish at the Feet of Sandwich

(wait four weeks)      I shall not fall
at the feet of a sandwich
get a fish a philosopher fish
with fries and wait
til all of your dishes are done

and fish! I just ate a Big Cookie
with fries
a Big Cookie and
joy in the mail for Xmas

I just want your Big Cookie
Just wait til all of your dishes are done

I ate Big Cookie
so passe

Joy in just you wait
the SF blue gloom SF blue Xmas for
(wait four weeks) gloom
got it Big Cookie (BC) ??

I shall not fail you
wait for the fry and fall at the feet
of the philosopher

Do you read your emails?

I shall not
I shall not ate

I shall not fall at the feet of
philosophers (there is joy in the blue
gloom)

I ate Big Cookie

dcciii

Short of worn shorts

Avoid permanence
Avoid perfection

“I’m sorry about your hair”

“Well, have fun in Vegas”

dccii

Two women at Starbucks
watching a big man with a hammer
throw his yellow bag out into the middle of Market
right in front of a bus. The bus stops.
The man runs around
shaking his hammer in the air.

Headache. Magnolia
at Masonic and Haight
after shopping for memories. Box from Mom
with 500 minutes phone card, 4 pairs of socks,
and a Trivial Pursuit calendar.

Haircut by a lady who says
“Your mother didn’t let you sleep too much”
referencing my well-rounded head,
“rounded real good.”

dcci

Never end with a bang.


       [               romance



        Sometimes it just takes longer to get there.

dcc

A Social Turd

Do you have anything
for Saturday after say around 3?
The following week?

He dangles better than most;
catches it in his hip pocket
before a slow-moving suicide.

No, I’m serious, somebody who’s
NOT FUNNY AT ALL
decides to make a joke,

writes a funny poem and it REALLY CRACKS ME UP!
WHAT a PLUM!  Existing home sales slump
again this month, what’s going on with you,

and why are you making fun of Denise Levertov?
Actually, no, lemme take the 5th at 10.

dcxcix

Special Ketchup

Clay Theatre, 6:30pm, forward,
but try to remain laid back.

It’s process, the stapler smacking its lips
(a pure-spoken lesion)....


              Filberts in the afternoon.


Speaking of sex, oxen sex.

dcxcviii

working with anger now let it usurp all faculties
art is not madness it’s clarity art is
vanity means romantic or action

our date has been put off until tomorrow

the new universality of gargoyle hip-hop
yes I did

dcxcvii

your life of mine

airhead vs. sweet, confusing and frustrating
December prissy and pronouncing things funny
you’ve got a right to aristocracy star-fucker

I just got a scholarship of living in the library
it pays well and doesn’t come with a telephone

not mad at anyone but myself vs. the sofa
the spilled glass of nostalgic inkwater ugh
go home you’re wasting my time

get in line for a migraine
twenty-seven dollars at Walgreen’s
yeah you knew

dcxcvi

How far out on a limb
do I go?  Fuck posterity!
(It had to be said.)  But
who has enough lava
to singe new ruts?  What
should I do now go home
and take a nap?  Probably
so.

dcxcv

When has there ever been
a lack of “alienation and

purposelessness” (Kit’s posit:
What are the rules of

the game [poetry, whatever]
and what would it mean

to break them?)?   I see.
Then where are we now?

Unduly sweet and moody
whitecaps with spindrift.

dcxciv

What to do with [history]
when everything is NOW
& nothing is remembered?

Smart moves don’t always
have to be incoherent.  (Must.
Up. Lift. Spirit.)  Self-

important drivel, blah blah
blah, running races around a
few words just to forget (or

remember) them.
  -a rainy San Francisco
  -what twisted taste he has
  -tapping a beat with Kenneth Cole
  -turn on the blue fan
  -tap tap tap

Notice I am addressing you
as This [Nothing] That Is?

dcxciii

a small blister of hope

The window looks tri-sected, an optical illusion
Tall bird, three pounds
Wacky book Christmas party
Piddling away time on solid ground
Anti-academic white trash thesis proposal
Remove staples        i——i      i——i      i——i
Little clots of blood form on human-shaped apertures
Why aim for the mundane
              when it’s cheaper to get a cigarette in Chinatown

dcxcii

the moonstone      that’s a piece
of cheese fell out of the moonstream
                                   —Robin Blaser

Stocks are up after the Fed cuts interest
half a point.  Coco the Loco watches me
snip nails next to the bathtub.  Next is you,
my love, a panoply of opaque sliver-moons
into a wet trashbasket.  A haze over the bay
doesn’t take it over, just relaxes it.  3-
ring notebooks, computer notebooks,
logo’d pens and gargoyle postcards
litter the desk.  Not to mention the
poems.  Vacation dwindles into
history, snow-capped Rockies
flatten into a rainy desert
with great suspense.  A
conversation about how
unhealthy it is to forget,
strictly held via instant message.

dcxci

here we are
December

flashing gizmos
(Coco Loco
and the Digi-cam)
in Colorado

snowdusted
with a serious
breathing problem
(cf. yoga)

supersaturated
coterie or no

                   it’s a
different kind
of prolific

dcxc

top of the class, I’m sure

some horrible snore
that goes on for hours
several seats up

taking a pick-axe
to a cello
surely

sold out night train
the frosted-over windows
in the observation car

“0000000” (Coco walking
on my laptop at home)

Yankee Doodle Dandy
plays over the announcer
on the 3:10 to Yuma

Cagney’s stiff
upturned ass
as off he prances, stage left

dclxxxix

not exactly radio

walking into a room full of mirrors
all the jokes about sheepherding        and WHO
do YOU see?

often rakes the leaves
with windchimes

sexuality and
snow lean forward into a warbled sauce

finally an elevator
full of summer fruit salads
scrambled eggs            brusque salmon

30 minute ego
too old hat

not me

no me here       none amenable

sits in his place
sit at his place            wanna take a shower with me tomorrow?

seasonable housewarming
economy of spirit

it’s a good enough dose

dclxxxviii

blue sky                       carmen perpetuum

a grocery bag on each arm headed east

flappity-flappity-flap of a
sex-sated pigeon taking off up Nob Hill

touchdown           a goal of some sort
depending on      the sauce of
the season

walking off this language mush
and lazy television conversations

to find a way to get rid of them

moms who read (and understand)

this week’s tourism                           (up the hill)
cannot force the words out of a mouthful
of okra                       such a nice breeze

                                                      I meant a warbled source

ambiguous dogwalking
rude honks and buzzes

new nickels in a Mexican bowl
it’s ok as long as it has a name

what a fantastic evening

                            drawing the blinds to the fog

a grocery bag on each arm headed west

dclxxxvii

I love my job,
but I love juicy fruit even more!
        —juicyfruiter.blogspot.com

and the sudden gozzle
of every moment, gone
with a birthday cake
sugar rush. Paris
on bicycles.

I guess these feelings
have always crept in
like Carnegie Hall.
still reeling with
the same zip.

but getting there....

an afternoon regatta,
a large Hockney interior,
Guston’s knobby knees,
potato leek soup,

heavy egg, wide noodle,
afternoon ‘delight’,
Jim Dine waterpipes.

friendly,
uncommunicative.

dclxxxvi

Contemporary Chinese Peanuts

I’m reading along and I get goosebumps.
Severe ones. This so rarely happens
when I’m reading. It’s The Grand Piano,
issue 3, Lyn Hejinian.

Which tastes better with vodka? This
transition from state to state, sincere,
ironic, and full of shit;

I’m on the Acela heading to New York.
It’s a fast train, dizzying at first,
especially after a cross-country trip. Eating
Beverly C’s fabulous bundt cake from last night.

Lovely out Connecticut. Lovely Connecticut
with all sorts of guilt or hard feelings. And how,
so that I can relax, unwind, think, read,
write,

and never know how to end, I am working on
appearance. The intelligence facade.

I’m so funny I make me laugh.

dclxxxv

Is this growing up? I don’t wanna.
Turn on blue fan blue like
Alka Seltzer package I
rip open for a headache and
new age metaphysical smoothies
(J Kyger). Paint a picture
lasts longer. Sometimes
maybe. Brightest white streak
across the bay some young
yacht. Fetching
from way up here.
Perhaps it’s just a ferry
sending earlybirds (the
stock market crew) home to
Vallejo. Tuesdays. Beautiful
Tuesdays after astonishing
evenings. Hungover MIT
with three Cel-rays from Bill
and what a swell intro! 21 poems later
I’m up a hill and on my knees.
Flag flaps briskly
in the San Francisco wind
six years after the two tall towers sunk.

dclxxxiv

Sometimes I tell the words
writing the words
GET OUT THE DOOR!
A certain mass
remains in the writing.
Getting through the door
just past midnight,
lapsed architecture
(Sears Tower
a Dunkin Donuts and also
the desert poem.  Disob
stuff I’ll shut off.  Like
light.  Watch nothing.
I am home.

dclxxxiii

I put the 5th DVD onto the list. It’s
been a while you aren’t supposed to
notice. In Russia they’re testing
the “Father of All Bombs”:
“All that is alive merely evaporates.”
Is this what I asked for this morning?
Reduce search and rescue
over vast stretch of land (or water),
menu-plan for the weekend,
which haute vegetable next to
coconut and kiwi,
how many miles to the moon
for after-dinner mints. Etc.

               Sunrise in the Midwest. Breakfast
               with a family from Iowa,
               wife went to Wellesley,
               now she’s a hospital librarian
               who studied with Frank Bidart.
               A sculptor, as well. Later, in the
               observation car it’s Sam this
               and Sam that. I’m getting nostalgic,
               my second day without a shower,
               thinking of Bowling Green and Toledo...
               so many Sams ago.

dclxxxii

Dogberry[]will be/ the broken indicator light.
                                         —Taylor Brady

That’s why he put all the little creatures
in the pot, Papa Rabbit and the whole
family. I have to protract them.

Little dollops of mountain over
White Teeth and breakfast announcement
after jiggle (jog) with Otto

all excited about the 17,000 cranes
on the pagoda but they’re just little
whimpers of pompoms that’s all.

Daniel’s taking up both seats so I’m
back in the lounge car to give him a rest
and watch the Colorado sunrise

even pinker. No trees but a dull
headache. Denver. Dusk. Dirty
snow on the mountains and

bald eagles. Mountain goats.
Tenderloin’s rooftops. Slightest
wind. Fuzzy little rabbits

hop one end of the living room
down to the other.

dclxxxi

I’ll wake up now.  On my first long-distance
train-ride to Boston.  9:20am.  Happy I
can’t even describe.  4pm now my seatmate
a good portion of the afternoon Daniel

a skaterkid going home for Thanksgiving
asks me what I do.  I say write.  He responds
“that’s tight” asks me if I have any books
and I say I’m a poet.  “That’s hella tight.”

Dinner talk.  Older gentleman going on a
“genealogy expedition” in Salt Lake City.
5:30pm reservation.  Back in dreamland
Coco comes running into the doorway

scared look on her face.  She’s been lost,
racing around like mad to find us.  Try not
to drool too much on Daniel or the
fluffy Nevada clouds.

dclxxx

Tooth bone toll booth
bed good beg god aimed
at curbing chime. I’ve
notepads on this. Un

recognizable when
adding up each character
istic. Alamo Square
directly to gym dog wags

4th dog that’s walked
up to me in this
short time. Not so much
actual correspondence

the pain traveled
up the zipper and into
my back as I sat in a bus
for long periods of time.

dclxxix

A Big Dinner of No Cooking

Copper penis.
A hole in his shirt.
Harry Potter.
Show me yours.
But no serious.

dclxxviii

We were arguing the subtleties of
“Indian Summer” — the biggest
yogurt pretzel clump of all time.

A new blue cardigan and a broken-
into car.  Taken: my diary, my train tickets,
my 2001 day planner with addresses.

It could have been worse.  Fool.
I need to lay out the map
or something.

dclxxvii

[                                    ]
                 —from a fortune cookie

Coco
wrapped around my left foot

Alice Notley
reads Tony Towle to Robinson Jeffers

in
a painting by Larry Rivers

find a penny pick it up
sex all day               (lack of focus)

dclxxvi

It is not a complete
lack of memory
peeking around the corner
and showing a little bit of face.

Realizing
at a party
how forward I am
about the lack of lust,

over and over
how it is
to read things I hate—
so important!
This

a kind of buddhism
of how to learn.
Gives people
(authors,
folks at parties)
personality.

Taking a memory,
a degenerated disk,
and showing up
happily
and with shame.

dclxxv

I’m sitting here wondering
why the waterboy isn’t naked.

Bill Berkson is in the Examiner.
Talk about living.

Happy 25 with fish sticks,
lima beans, macaroni & cheese,

and a birthday cake
with butterfly candies on top!

Why not just tear a page out
and keep it for later?

dclxxiv

9.3 / 10.30 / 6.8

I’d rather
stay in a cool room
listen to the swimming
but to hike alone?  I think
maybe a hiking buddy.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have
told her I have arthritis
in my lower back.
I’m obsessed
with watching men
meditate.  Baby
echoes me with
“Why!  Why!  Why!”
Stephen Ratcliffe
on my birthday: “back
and right shoulder
pulled into a knot.”
I agree.
Reading’s a gas
day before Halloween
with fish tacos, Days
of Heaven and Aguirre,
Wrath of God.  On
later recollection,
remembered rain drop
ping outside window.
Making absurd
sploshes.

dclxxiii

These are the days of
oops I took the wrong pill
and wild turkeys on the front porch.
They don’t gobble much.

Then I realize
there’s NO TRAFFIC!

Of course not.  High up
this mountain of peas
and turkeys.

Even so, I can’t allow
anything but sarcasm
for six a.m. naked waterdance,
moans to the left and moans
to the right,
and the one naked hula hoopster;
can’t take my eyes off her shaved
hula hooper-oo.

Later on Craigslist,
the Air Force “fighting terrorism”
(imagine him using his fingers
for the quotes),
penis at the bar,
some sort of weird rock formation.

It’s the blue warbird
“Keeps away intruders!”
and not much better a tune.

A week in a day.

                                                   —eloquentlyme@hotmail.com

dclxxii

Good morning, yogis and yoginis.

Woke up 5:54am with this phrase
on my tongue:

                 [clearly]
                “If you could do a man
                 half a favor:
                 expect by glint
                 and zoom right thru.”

....all I remember is
it wasn’t a high concept dream.

So I hopped up,
wrapped a towel around me,
slipped out the door,
and slunk into the hot pool.

Then there was the tall Arab incursion.

Sorry,
my memory was infected,

no better way,
40 years later.

                                  —Summer of Love (that’s class consciousness)

dclxxi

The bird-feeder
over the waterfall
(burbling brook)
arrayed with tiny yellow finches.
Finches?

Some cats swoop in
to check out the waterfall,
babbling burbles and all that:
apparently something’s
in there.

Nobody knows what
but the cats.

Reach over for an organic walnut,
that’s me. What’s going on?
Well, George Stanley!
Saying he’ll send me a copy of his chapbook.
That’s fab.

Television’s not, though.
Watch Enterprise, West Wing,
South Park (well, maybe),
Primetime Glick(??),
all down the lackluster tube.

No more teevee for a few years, I say.
Maybe invest in some books or
yoga? Netflix? Sunscreen (SPF 30, at least)?

dclxx

Inside a flower, a wonderful moon.

Even though it had to be the worst massage ever,
with Black Is the Color of My True Love’s Hair,
every Irish dirge known amongst the sweet Irish dirgers,
and some screaming kid running circles on the roof,

over and over, the roof also some sort of party deck
for naked people. Naked kids and massages
don’t mix. Two episodes of Mad Men
divided by the current issue of Adbusters

equals sitting outdoors at my favorite North Beach pasta joint
with Ken Bolton’s book. It’s a beautiful night
and yesterday was a beautiful day
a hundred degrees in the shade.

Six thousand strewn pages,
Room 10, Fern Cabin, Harbin Hot Springs, California.

dclxix

Some Peru

It’s no use asking for a pronunciation one night
when the next morning you don’t remember it. I was
five years old then and you were 1,878 miles away.
Whales of rain in one hundred degrees of heat.

“Does he have sex with men every day?” “Maybe
it’s just the way he writes.” How unreasonable
to think I could get through half of this stack
of books on one three-day holiday. Charge

battery, flip on the green fan, clean up Coco’s
water-puddles, rinse the reusable coffee filter,
strip down. Cool evening, Alameda, Brandon,
then Julian on and along the Gowanus. “Sludgie?”