dccciv

The One Thing

(She likes sticking people
with her needle.)

If you and I are blobs
where is you or I?  Our border,
the surface where we touch
(a funny-looking wave)?  I would
stick you but I am a blob.

I had Certs for breakfast
at Grey Whale Cove,
overcast and warm.
My blob on the sand,
just beautiful
like the last couple of days.

Smog check today no avail.
Take ticket, find pines
like Alice Notley
(green and rust) for sticking
the truth.  Rest in peace a
squirrel.  Rest in peace
another wave.  Misspell
squirrel like sheriff.

You are the one.  Just wait
two and a half years
and you will know it.

Dream as if I am not a blob:
we smooch for thirty minutes
then have enormous sex
followed by (ack!) talking words.

Go to sleep on peach
(mistype – in peace!)
after flushing toilet.

dccciii

Trying to reconcile Harry Potter’s hairy chest

Nice day.   Felt peachy
all along.   Painted the sky blue.

“Oh, Sun,
which face shall I wear tomorrow?”

A siren in the distance puts in
a request: “Supreme Fiction,

please.”   But I’ve more a mind
for a teddy bear & a pink feather boa.

I’m gay at the gym (he was
leaving, I was coming)

looking forward to a very nice run
with a servile grin.   And then.

He walks into the bedroom
with a mohawk

just as I slobber gracelessly
toward Happyland.   This gets me

incredibly romantic and
a little insomnia.   Thus,

I pick up the television set,
or try to.   I broke my back!

Lying here in recovery.
I love the papadams and

the fish pakoras.   Lesson:
don’t you listen to no siren.

dcccii

I want you to read along with me.

I want you
to read along
with me.

I want
you to read
a
worthless moment
with me.

I want.
And read
this farce.

I want today
Wallace Stevens
and did
last night.

Like which?
And reading
and reading
along.

I want you
to read
me just escapes.

It works.
Reading this stuff
with Whitman
in Pittsburg
please.

I want you mix
you market & yearn
environmental lingo
you mantra you
arrondissement.

I want you.
(ahem)
I want you
read me please.

Like
thanks.

  

dccci

What You Feel

“Look, he’s taking off his pants.”  And
here we are, pondering an uncertain fissure.

Cuddles the Cat purrs an interlude,
jumps off the tv and pees on the carpet.

Pear salad, plenty of salty vinaigrette,
harsh onions, and frozen lettuce. Emergency

room accidents, including one with a 2-foot
dildo. Death by dildo. Shit happens.

Lesson number twelve: get over your ear
infection, learn to read cursive, skip the

butter, drink antibiotic soup, stop writing
couplets,

stop writing. He still has my glasses.
Let’s go to Carmel for the Bach festival.

dccc

Wake up this morning.

Everything loud
droning
like airplanes.
Cat scratching the door.
So I just slept
per instructions
til 1pm. Then
I started returning
phone calls.
Tony Burgers
again. Wake up
on top of a
new book.
Run outdoors
for Devil’s
Backbone.
Circle a strip
of park,
Panhandle.
Back on Lyon,
Nina Simone,
waffles w/
strawberries.

dccxcix

Mistake number 1 is asking for a glass of sake (rather than a bottle).
Order second glass.  Pay extravagantly.

Mistake number 2 (the night before) is asking for the
premium unfiltered.  Not sweet enough.

Busy tonight.  The waiter and waitress whistling in the wind
they stir up as they glide past each other.  Some Cajun tune,
I’m guessing.

Depressed!  Had sex twice yesterday after jazz at
Shanghai 1930s.  Not happy about that.
Silly me, I just don’t know what to do
to make things better.

Letter from Bill with Philip Whalen poem.  Poem for Whalen.
And letter from Diane (piano music overhead).  Big
dumbbell ding on bottom of iPhone
from throwing iPhone at dumbbell.

dccxcviii

And then I’ve been thinking that I haven’t been
spending that much time with you because of school and work
and I feel bad.  See we’re both being torpid and we can’t have that.
Now I’m crying.

                         Your hair will look good no matter what you do to it.
I feel like I can’t unwind
like last night.  Don’t cry.  I ran from class to meet up with you
and I was trying to just relax.  Plus I feel like I have to
put aside my worries and my thoughts
in order to cater to yours.  Like when we

went to so-n-so’s new place on Portrero Hill talked about
sex all evening cooked okra, black-eyed peas.

9:38 AM Overall you’re a good boyfriend
9:39 AM Ugh...

dccxcvii

9:21 AM just hanging with friends & new acquaintances getting to know
everyone and saying how my comments make you feel insecure.

“Which ones?”
“You just mentioned the school thing – which was about missing you.”
“That made you insecure?”

July 3, Chevy’s after Anarajuat (fast runner),
first draft/facsimile – some sharpness                   TEST PAGE

9:23 AM I took it as you more thinking about yourself–

But that isn’t necessarily–
“BITE YOUR TONGUE YOU

want me to stay home you don’t like my friends
and tell your new boyfriend that I was boring.”””  How come

some of the clouds still up there

dccxcvi

I think you and I are just competing to play the victim or something.
Don’t forget the nice things like the flowers I sent you yesterday.
Nor the fact they taught me to like Jimmy Carter and then
how to love Ronald Reagan.   Pizzeria Uno with a copy of
Ploughshares, playing,
but not at my best behavior, particularly with you.
Or walking hand in hand on the sidewalk on a beautiful night
with gorgeous long hair.   A moon to die for.
How smart you’ve become lately!

That was obvious fodder for Altman, chewing on a towel,
watching the bridge lights turn orange.   Having painted over
each and every cloud.

                                                                               —Poetry on the 4th

dccxcv

I would put myself on the Kinsey scale about in the middle
between dancing and sex
                                                       —Carla Harryman

“Good boy,” he says.
The mirror says nothing,
wasn’t meant as funny,
and cannot be seen.

Being able to live again,
be reborn, saved. Cert
ainly a pleasure. But
why unwanted? I.

Value reinvention, new
ly elided plotlines (
not omitted but slurred
over). Surely that’s

NOT the word.  Mix
it up make it new.  I
wanna be loved by
you by you.  And

maybe others.  For
peanut reasons.
It wasn’t too hot
on the dance

floor.  I like it
wet.  Send me a
check next week.

dccxciv

cut-up #15

page 1,967, year of my birth (summer of love)

Wonderland (a euphemism)

eggy eyes (from too many roosters)

new stripy pillows from Crate & Barrel (displace attention from horrid couch cover)

“I heart U2, Hubby” (a tulip verging on tragic, but gloriously so)

Monday afternoon silence (beneath which to wax euphoric)

“You make me so happy” (eyes three-quarters closed)

screams downstairs (Coco waiting at the door for you)

YOU (my LOVE)

dccxciii

Walking SoMa 5 in the morning

Dancing too hard makes me feel good
but it’s my karma to stare into the eyes of the crazed
(if only because I give it back).

Turn the corner at the W,
who’s up in New York at this hour?

Praise the advent of 24-hour Starbucks.


Some time later, still caffeinated yet blowzy with Xanax...

Small, beautiful, bright crevice cut into the bruisy cloud
that covers the day.  Jesus can arrive through it,
land on one of the new uprushed condo buildings.

Street canyons almost drown out fire engine noise,
sent to put out another condo fire.  Condo prices linger
in the Netherlands.  A condo of the mind.

Four and a half hours of work on holiday,
President’s Day.  What I give for my country.

It’s the disruptive life for me.  The sky now one perfectly solid bruise,
a complete wound,
bright suture gone.  No hope for a divine spokesperson at this hour.


Later still...

Postcard stamps now up to 23¢.

dccxcii

O grey bay
why do you look at me
that way?

Why even
look at me
at all?

dccxci

All stories of deception are empty.
                          —Alice Notley

I am speaking to the poem.
There is no meaning.
Therefore...

I have tried different things
like putting together sentences
with and without punctuation

and the last couple of days
scrambling the lines
after throwing them together quickly
(some clumped
from 2 or more portions of the ledger).

My sense are diminish.
The steam off roofs come.
Cloud the days like this one.

My soul real narrative
arguing around a table of grapes.
An apparition.  An apparition
are great.

dccxc

HEAVY LIKE A FIRST DAY PERIOD
                                            —Janet Jackson

And then it comes,
rinsing the stars from the sky
while you’re stuck weeping floors
and she’s
found something unnameable
at the end of a crayon.


                 Thirteen dumbbell curls
                 during Roman Holiday.


“Who likes communist poetry, anyway?”
he asks, earnest enough.

“I dunno,” says she,
nibbling the pure end of the crayon,
“but it has to be fun somewhere,
right?”

“I’m not in this
for the money,”
says the relaxed pelican.


                 Dr. “Liver” Akagi
                 sprinting down a dirt path
                 in his white suit
                 and boater hat.


And then I bought a tiny box
in a small wood
and spent the rest of my days
trying to find a way inside of it.

dcclxxxix

I think my property keeps me from living on the street.
                                                                            —Alice Notley

That sailboat is a bit fuzzy without glasses
but it has a little red in it. And cuts quite a swath
into a lovely day like today.

It’s a matter of breathing
and continuing to breathe
and eating someplace you haven’t eaten before.

And riding in a sailboat. Having catfish & chips (Cajun)
writing 5 poems in 24 hours but cheating
writing cut-ups while he’s partying all night
cutting up the carpet and the cat’s litter box
cutting up the little plants by the window
(watching the two turtledoves)
thinking violently...

               PoetryCubicles

...repeating words and phrases
“when I was on the fence I was”
about sex and government censors
(government scissors)
somehow relieved (really stupid, isn’t it?)
with Steven
a new object of his affection.

How romantic I’ve made it out to be.

Walking up to the poet full of sweet potatoes,
black-eyed peas and fried catfish
and pulling the house right out from his pants.

dcclxxxviii

Death means
you keep going,
only now you’re a zombie.
                                             —Jack Kimball

Got to put on some gum
and eat a lip balm.
And carbuncles.

Step out from behind the screen and

                      Can you have a translator in real life?
             Yeah, and I hope my memory comes in today!

Blam!  Feckin’ A!  I am able to spit nails because of a
printer cartridge because of a stupid magenta printer
cartridge.

Two turtledoves.
Two turtledoves in love.

I didn’t write this (in a cantina) it isn’t me.  Not me anymore.

dcclxxxvii

phta, phtaoems

He aged me in his head
and it wasn’t pretty.  Besides,
he never even met my father
(only 17 more years to go
if I go when he went).

Sexual congress.
Restless leg syndrome.

Last night after some
correspondence and
Diamond Mine I
cooked dinner
(rice, stirfry,
and chick-peas)
for the both of us

then we watched
Betty Boop episodes
until my eyelids
got heavy.

I think he’s thinking
of some other father.

dcclxxxvi

Ugly Milkshakes

Hooray for the day
getting nicer
on the inside.

And for Atonement;
lush, moody.

And Beagle Mania and
dental health insurance cards.

My left elbow itches.  And
the scar on my shin (right)
where I fell off the bed
(jumping, age 5). And 

the family of tarantulas
in our bedroom.
(onto a cedar chest)

And the swallow
swooping over the flag.

And the sparrow that just
squatted and shat
right next to me.

And for the
best milkshakes
in the whole world.

And for Blackberry
outages.  Time to get back to
Tree of Smoke.

dcclxxxv

Beyond Elevator Talk

All this scuttle about who’s cutting edge
is bunk!  How NOT to be
partisan.

I didn’t know how much
I would miss you
dancing on a giant “M.”

Nothing original to toss into this lake,
my eyes.

Traipsing in circles....then lost
concentrating on a urinal.

                    (Hiatus)*

Does the idea now that I’m writing poems from
THIS ledger make me POSE more with my words?
SURE.

Bob the Builder is on my birthday cake.

*after Philip Whalen, yet again

dcclxxxiv

There Will Be Blood
is the best film of the decade!!!

“Woody Allen Caught in Kinky Vid”
today’s headline – but

imaginary weekend at Sai’s,
loud and grumpy...

What?

I drank your cup of coffee
an hour ago.

Mean, tired, just want to feel... – but

the imaginary flag of my heart
has capsized.  Flattened, weighing less than a dime,
ballasted by a string of paper birds.

I’d rather the rattle of lungs
than the ringing of ears.

“Quick, out the back door!”
         whispered: “Thanks.”

dcclxxxiii

The tea-green palace.

I’d like to walk up Twin Peaks
but instead am mesmerized by Momo,
his head tipping back and forth
in lush mid-morning sunshine.

The cat decides to choose an ink.
Once chosen, slathered upon each paw,
she slips through a donut hole.

Momo’s head.
Momo’s head.

The raindrop triptych moves an inch toward the ceiling
and another inch toward the powdery carpet,
thus extending its sovereignty.
Try winter.

Sushi,
two new red shirts,
and tree identification booklet.
She bent my finger back.

Waiting for the perfect time
at The Luggage Store Gallery, 6th & Market.

dcclxxxii

Like condensation on the chocolate milk bottles
at the front door of childhood –
seeking warm concrete (w/ very, very distant jetplane).

Breaking up?!  Pity.  I didn’t get her e-mail address
nor anyone else’s.

Making lists:
     -boiled eggs
     -yogurt
     -glass of water
     -sunshine

Catch-up has been fairly intense.  Making lists,
message from David, doing the laundry Sunday morning,
watching doves fall in love, getting a massage, Basement Jaxx,
hair’s getting longer, should I go see my favorite bartender tonight?

“Oh, I’m sorry, I must have been woolgathering....” (Philip Whalen)

Spent so much on this trip to get everyone together for a bash
at Banana Republic I canNOT believe the BRUNT of my purchases!
However, there was birthday cake upon arrival

                                          & Kelly Osbourne doing Papa Don’t Preach.

dcclxxxi

A Scam Wherein Pace Is a Well-Fortuned Fate

After an all-night movie on
the breast-and-butter machine

...having brushed my teeth in the nasty traintoilet...

walk in to work, shower at the Y,
new big backpack accommodates nicely.

“Hooray for California,”
says the dullard.

dcclxxx

Goats Get Dressy at New York Fashion Week

I took the sud.
And the sud was good.

And, after buying a new book of poetry
(The Nevada Sunrise), decided I’m already corporate enough –
so Why should I attend a poetry business conference?

“Hey, throw the garbarge!”

And there was moonshine in the water....

dcclxxix

Icecream isn’t toes
                                     —Philip Whalen

Two turtledoves are necking on the banister.
Otto saw them first.  Now they are parted,
individually preening, tail to tail.
They saw us watching.  Shy doves.

Mixed bag last night, good to hang with you briefly.
Just remember “palimpsest / pentimento” —
that’s all.

Reconcile Gerrit Lansing on the train NOW
w Eileen Myles and Philip Whalen (also NOW)
meeting each other (and Bill Berkson) for golf.
What a foursome!

Sitting in the dining car listening to folks regale o’er
conversations of various trips: trains, ferries.
Now I’ve a seatmate, a very happy guy
bothering me a bit.  San Francisco
tomorrow night; looking forward
thru the long tunnel.

dcclxxviii

Mackerel sky.
Two deer
on a fresh-plowed corn garden.

Rolling Iowa hills.
Cows.
Big round bales of hay.
Congratulations of self self self.

Something died for these words.

Overwhelming
if not morbid.

Overwhelming
if not maudlin.

dcclxxvii

No more than a page.

Really curious if, as expounded by Whalen:
“most of [MY] problems will disappear if [I] sit
still (privately, i.e. in solitude) 1 hour per day
without going to sleep (do not speak, hum or whistle
the while)”

...

“I do not put down the academy but have assumed its function
in my own person, and in the strictest sense of the word—academy:
a walking grove of trees.” (Whalen again, after an hour or so)

Repeat the next sentence seven times.

Toward(s) a philosophy or having convictions (in earnest,
or by virtue of living earnestly?).  Waking up one day
and having one.  Is impressive.

The train is huge now, we picked up New York.  Boston makes me happy
I live in San Francisco, but happy!  I mean I love Boston.

Strange couplets at the bottom of a page:

                  “wordspity
                   don’t kiss me”

                  “Charles Bernstein
                   no beep”

                 “a stroke of luck
                  a lack of fuck (not true)”

South Station.   Nice cabbie drove me from Machine last night
picking me up at 12:10pm.  Feeling a bit jittery due to birthday cake
and coffee.                     Owen has decided he wants to eat mushrooms.

dcclxxvi

Last day @ 34

Having forgotten, you know,
everything.

Take that thought further
                    And that’s how a Cheez-It gets its flavor

Blow that happy feeling (like a poet)
trying to have my
“Quiet Day”
or
“Regroup Day”
or
“Living Day”
or
“Happy 40th Birth-Day”

I’m a rainbow tube.

dcclxxv

That’s a grand assumption.

Rain for days in San Francisco,
sheets of it some days,
just a hulk of anticipation others.

Funny like Sausalito (or so via
Sal Paradise). Nostalgic
fingers on keypads. Brainless
watching The Matrix.

I read so much on the train (past tense,
cousin to hor tense) and was
much lulled and time stopped etc.

So do you like the CD I made you?

dcclxxiv

So the long rain waves drain
                                       —J Ashbery

...and we lost the days like severe pains
draped upon our shoulders...or like an
anxiety attack in Nob Hill Valley,
Coco under the sun...

I want to be out on the pier, 5:45am again,
wondering if they can see us from the
Bay Bridge...

extracting software for the umpteenth
iPhone update, the joys of peppering our
assorted wares with brief energy spurts...

...bruising letters...misrepresentatives of
corner, blackmail, concrete...

on a train to Philadelphia....
missed connection in Chicago...
everybody’s pissed on Pebble Beach...

dcclxxiii

a peanut painted by Picasso

sensitivity to combustibles

think like rain
           drunk on a line

sleepy

    I’ve slept tons

                                          (Fraser, Colorado)

dcclxxii

Nosy Train

head to Boston Saturday
on a diet coke with lemon

the bay is full of the blues
but in just the best possible

buncha blondhaired kids
making noises / big old group
from midwest / goddamn cellphones

stormcloud mountains
“this my first time”
shocked & happy everything
all out in the open
amicable limbo
general satisfaction dessert

maybe instead we rent a car
drive up and hike the tide pools
at Point Reyes

dcclxxi

Otto misses last 4 minutes of
The Seven Year Itch
for $800

“we’d bore each other
make bad boyfriends”
      (scrawled in a corner
      some seven years past)

dcclxx

Bill in Vermont
Cassie in Australia
Jimmy heading back to Hong Kong
Yong just moved to Seattle
Curran and Masashi in Austin

............Happy New Year
everyone goes someplace else
and I’m still here

oh well

finished up acupuncture
TMJ still a problem

hot springs okay

dcclxix

NO WASTE!
steal from the goodboys!

Otto says let’s bring the beach to us
but also pencil in Sunday January 27
just in case

calendar portends a weekful:
MLK day / Steph’s birthday /
coffee with Doug

leading economic indicators...
recession

take a shower during a snowstorm
kiss like we’re in love
then it’s over
we’re exhausted
lying next to each other
snoring the winter away

or

waterfalls roar thru the night

it takes a cottony rockslide
but Treasure Island magically appears

head back home
for damn good dim sum

dcclxviii

5am walk down Bush
orange lights pepper the skyline
morningbirds

suggestions for cubicle:
(or suggestions tossed into my cubicle at 7am:)
Sophie Ellis-Bextor
Amy Winehouse’s Valerie w/Mark Ronson (or vicee verso)
and Groovejet

at Chevy’s
off to a tuff start
sirens at odds with
Philip Whalen

autodidactic sonnets
at Martuni’s
and then off to sex

or chewing the fuck out of my lip

can’t keep up with the days

Groovejet (absolutely!)

then again

let Brahms take over
with plenty of tornado

ciao
bello

dcclxvii

Total up the times the word
“bodhisattva”
appears in certain poets’ poems.

The 1800s dissolve
into nothingness.

Then all of the disappeared people
get pissed off.
Some woman wails.

Writing wears her out.

dcclxvi

When I kiss you I become
beautiful.  It is possible.
You compare Asia de Cuba
to Eyes Wide Shut.  It is
dark, somewhat foreboding,
alienating, sexy, contrived,
warm, wooden and tipsy.

I love it.
We concentrate
on eating slowly.  Even
when brought a giant
cake that could feed
the entire jungle.


             Perfectly still.  Focus on
             the sheeny wrinkles of
             the back of my hand.


Four year anniversary.

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.