mlxxxvi

Don’t be an obligation.

Stop beating a dead horse and
learn to be okay with not being
okay.  Masturbate with enjambment.
Don’t cut the cheese unless you’re
willing to give an inch.  Be true
to something that cannot exist.
Spread the good word.  Exercise
your right to explore the option
of an annulment.  Try on a pair of
rose-colored glasses.  Stop repeating
yourself.  Be yourself.  Stop whining
and try on a pair of balls.  Create an
alter-ego on Facebook and use it to
trumpet your anger.  Empower your-
self by eradicating the notion or even
the appearance of perfection.  Be 

somebody.  And I thank you in 

advance for the nude photos.

mlxxxv

I’m sorry I ate your balls.
I just didn’t want to be
reduced to a naïf.

They say home
is where the heart is;
and I just learned that
my name is Persian
for ‘heart’ –
as in ‘soul’.

Don’t beat off
thinking about
me anymore.

mlxxxiv

Proving I’m here begins to be
the task that keeps undermining
itself, the “gift that keeps on
giving.”

You only picked at your frog.

Realizing you’re not waking
from a nightmare, you are
indeed in love with a
Republican.

mlxxxiii

Turn around three times
when it’s too easy to
keep being the best.
Go fuck yourself.

I’m not mad at you.
I just want you to
feel miserable.

Spectators are
impressed and
inevitably reveal
awe, incredulity.

How do you do it?
What an incredible
relationship you have!

mlxxxii

the agitating husband

I’m so afraid of falling asleep
during the most exciting moments.
What’s the use if I can’t show
you off?

I’d like to give homage to the artist
but I’d rather not relive this feeling.

It’s ok to a) spend only 30 minutes
at a museum; b) walk out happy at
intermission without coming back;
and/or c) read only 3 pages at a time,

isn’t it? Why feel guilty for everything
that makes you happy?

mlxxxi

No problem, just moving on

Wake up 10:30 am,
cancel subscriptions.
Orange juice and
egg salad.

Every line emphasizes
the ridiculousness,
the mere hopelessness
of our combined
situation.

(Mine plus yours and yours
equals one, right?)

That’s why I love
reading your book.

mlxxx

I’d like a detailed justification of
your moral principles, in writing,
and without being quite so...
impactful?

Are you in a fuel mood?
Do you find yourself unable
to deactivate your blow-dryer?

Fresh from the dock
only one passenger
is blinded by
democracy.

You say “I’m about to explode.”

She’s my relation in that
she’s the sister of my mother.

That’s when he brought it all together
with his fantastic, guilt-free closing statement

(and all of the suicide bombers
reversed courses, recanted, and
henceforth went about their
various businesses with
reinvigorated obliquity).

mlxxix

Is Bruce in today? Or is today utterly
exhausted of Bruce? It’s probably
mostly ecstasy. Fuck it doesn’t feel
right. We had a long conversation.
A first after a whole year. A first
conversation. I can’t write any
more. Two lip variousness.
Smoking feelings. Hanging
off the edge of a cliff, best
mood in months—crescendos
for weeks into Kleenex. Mom’s
in New Mexico under something
aluminum. A rat attack. They’re
all appropriate with disappoint-
ment. The fawn left
the family feast.

mlxxviii

A wrinkled bruise on the back of my hand.
Office babies.  What a strange verve you
have.  Laughing in the face of deformity.
Bats on sleep.  You can see the noise in
New York City (Edna St. Vincent Millay’s
observation on her first time there).  Hello,
Sprig.  I’m decidedly stuffed and wobbly of
mind.  Be right back.  Gonna go let out some
hot air.  Blame it on the weekend Earth took.

mlxxvii

Unsafe for passage.  Erin says she might.
In shorts.  Lots of pies.  Bliss of boredom.
Retreat from Milo, Eli, and Joe!  Just
keep leaving one spam pie open.  Plus
some very disturbing things at the
Central YMCA.  Is blatant so bad?
What’s changed?  Personal econ-
omics?  Blah.  I’m supposed to
dance and party.  Tweak birth-
day corsage.  Dock the boat.
Let the birds do their thing.
Gas from air, which not
eating will do for you.

mlxxvi

Are my endings too pat?

How lovely to encounter a hard-
earned favorite, weave giddily through
lines with comfort, warmth, and the
occasional yet always unexpected
prickle of something like impending
sex with a stranger. Imagine when
less than a decade ago I’m (time spun
raggedly in all directions) fistfuls of
hair poring over each page, What
in the hell is he saying? Paid
in Full, where have I come,
what have I come to? 4 miles
on Tuesday, which was a
yesterday? Racquetball
with Fermin, 3 and a half
games (but he’s getting
better, damn!) and cranky?
I’m short-tempered, sure,
over my clumsiness last
Saturday night. Over
my feelings, sudden-
ly. Or just thinking
about them.

“You think
too much!” he
always says.

Oh, for a month
of holidays, some-
thing casual in the
air, a new and unfam-
iliar book of nonchalant
phantasies: correspondences
extricated from the ether (ahover
between here & there), whipped up
and whisked (in no necessary order)
into skillet-sized breakfasts.
Unequivocal. Telepathic.
Banter. Notwithstanding.

mlxxv

Poem!  This is so interesting,
But is it real?
                      —Bill Berkson

Indecipherable bit w/phrases
that suggest – well – I don’t

know.  OK.  But the last line
is “I wanna see u....”  OK?

Now I’m floundering on a
treadmill and the router’s in

stitches over some flaming
mouses.  Who had an affair

with Rae?  Slide lubricant
over warm link, say what

is not a What, insert Sex
and the City, Season Four.

Sex?  Check.  Afternoon?
Check.  Peaceful, calm,

and even hot (sex, all the
way to Season Six).  He’s

laid back, low-key, and
I’m really foolin’ for him,

fallin’ asleep.  I – well –
I (– indecipherable –) bit.

mlxxiv

Oh gosh okay you are unknown to me,
poem. My lunch spot at the end of a
disaster. In Oregon. An inability to
tumble into nonsense. Blue pipe
diapers. The General Assembly
is NOT your boyfriend. Clumsy
sex that always works. One
suave back-em-up after another
(watch each get replaced and
suavely). Go to hell, no-brainer.
It wasn’t really that clumsy.
Yardwork in the outbin.
Pucker up, inbox, the
Bradys are about to
chase us up one
end of the Pacific
and down the
other.

mlxxiii

I do accept this pie of pink & un-
pink, this barren votive reservoir.
I texted him my knees and fell
facedown in seagulls.  It is today.
Dinner more often than not is a
short-bed of loneliness, another
dirty martini with a blue umbrella,
this decade that has all but been
formally dubbed Razor.  I said
I wanted to crawl back into you,
Razor, alongside the corner of
Pine and Razor.  Never having
once pled cramped! within this
selfsame jagged cloud of socks
that (fortnightly) pelted a rude
sandstorm of violent nostalgia,
bruises the tops of my hands
with aluminum needles.  Razor’s
reply: ageless laughter.  Starts
with globs of sour sonnet dust
which, when deeply-coughed,
are flung taut from the tongue
to form hexagrams of laden spit
that fry unpinkly, stuck upon 

these once-pink walls and 

leave us each as dizzy as 

hunkered-out porks crying 

uncle! over a pink-bellied pi.

mlxxii

Ew, straight night at Trigger.
Not sure what’s mildewed
(maybe a cloud?).  What yet
dies while the author doesn’t,
zaps lightning into pools
of smoke we then gather
into DVD boxes (yet again
before Netflix)?  And
humidly.  Oh, that we’ll
kiss like this always, Azadi
Tower swooping behind
fuzzy yellow petals (amid
which our faces act as
miniature television sets)!
Go!  Go, like a fashionable
thief, or a gleaming orange
atop spundrift haystacks!

The ones us bent pumpkins
can never quite undance.

mlxxi

Stackable hay makes haystacks.

Hooray, I’m European; I made
tempura and it turned out great!

Milo shows up at midnight to
control me.  His birthstone

must be opal or hematite, I
forget which, what with

four to choose from.  Face-
book birthdays are ubiquitous

or ominous or piling up like
barn hay.  I’ve got mine,

too; it’s half the problem
(half again of which is 21,

bridging the gap to all these
old new friends piling up

like turtle-clumps).  Are
forgotten cousins best left

so?  I don’t know.  Makes
my head hurt just to think.

Click network and Asia’s
perfect badass on webcam

sounds more like honing the
horde down to a manage-

able, palatable few.  Get it
up just to lay it back down

or dip it in grease, de-
pending on the region.

Mine is hot to the touch and
eats like a carrot to a horse.

Just ask Natalia.  The best-laid
plans never lie like dead fish.

mlxx

Turn Off the Angel (Part 2)

It’s beautiful to stay up all night,
something brightening through
the image of the ceiling lamp
upon the window. Bluest heart
of burning brush, best not get
too close, blue is always the
hottest. Adjust laptop to best
angle. Nothing’s perfect, but
the halo over your serious
look seems like the right
size. Drink it with a glass
of water after double-clicking
the public folder. Right up the
ass is the best place to insert
the golden flames that shoot
from your tongue. Or so you
do tease. Drink more water
with your cookie, pumpkin.
Such cookie as I’ve never
tasted, and won’t yet tonight,
as fantasy reaches only so
far. Stack my heart on a
dozen trumpets bent and
twisted to hell and back to
form a kind of brass barricade,
something the internet can’t
resemble, but—like this junk-
heap—hot with Gabriel’s
throbbing tongue, a reveille
and taps blown into one.

mlxix

It’s windy in this
house full of love.
Last night happened
eerily fast, Tim’s last
swap on his way to
Canada by way of
David’s Deli with
Cassie, Jen & Steph,
cheese blintzes, and
fries. We try to
dream up snow
but it comes out
milk. Yet we fill
with loss and soon
enough iPhones,
miniature washing
machines filled with
tiny bones set on spin
cycle. The doughy
walls wobble as if
dancing with the
silt on the blinds,
a dance for 500
friends who never
call. We eat our
words, eat each
others’ ghosts,
we’re dancing
cannibals in love,
hungers sated
with nostalgia:
dirty laundry
and dead cats,
fifty dollar book-
ends, be they
orange or red,
cock or lion,
damaged in the
fire or locked
away inside a
glass heart that
whistles twice
before it shatters.

mlxviii

I brought flowers for the Chinese milk bottles
and one white rose with red edges just for you.
Six pages of blank is all it took.  Emotion, for 

me, only comes from the television or the cinema.
Family is as cold as turtles until you turn on the
lights, let me know it’s you and not somebody
I can’t advise.  That proves that relation is
remarkable.  And that there’s nothing weaker
than nonsense.  Anyway, get a grip.  Or learn
from the fruit you grip so carefully only to
fold into the crisper until it spoils.  Then I
bag it all up into the garbage.  Love is like
that, white around the outside, orange and
blue on the inside, always radiating
elsewhere until an asteroid gets too
close to your home planet, or the
milk spoils in China.  Go ahead, though,
get seriously burned.  But not before being
groped and slapped in the ass, seeing him
hard beneath his box-cut swimtrunks.
It’s a warm experience, certainly a bit
like emotion.  But it’s neither television
nor cinema.

Thank you for your passion, your
compassion, the aloe vera gel, and
the Truffaut.  All proof that I’ll yawn at
everything until it happens, only to
dream about it when reminded over
tea and the drone of dual hard-drives.
This dream, by the way, is all
emotion.  It’s warm like a
distant wave from Federico
Fellini and hard like the bland
smile of Johan Paulik.  I yawn.
I grope.  I slap.  I happen.  I love.
I cry at movies and television,
never elsewise.  I milk.  I China.
I prove I ass.  The ass of dual
hard-drives, no less, and the
love of box-cut swimtrunks and
cinematic ocean.

What is the proof that I felt something
when I dreamt of Johan and Federico?
With certainty, a bit like emotion.

mlxvii

an inspired ouch

Keeping the day as
long as possible,
totally cruising.
Ocean tattoo,
cartoon pelvis;
cartoon on pelvis
lives near the ocean.
Take me to the ocean
as long as all pelvises
are possible. Concen-
trate on Guston. Got it,
no more ocean. Pick
conch from bookshelf,
conk head with it.
Then ponder depth
of ocean off coast.
Big gay Mexican
cruise.

mlxvi

orange—a real courting color
                           —Jack Spicer

More ice cream, please. It was
childish, though, and kept me
from having as good of a time
as I could have. Because I
was actually disappointed
not to get more boot camp.
You’re stealing children’s

words right from their mouths.
What a scepter you have!
I’d take it in the mouth, too,
let it remove from me
every word I’m prone
to utter tonight. Maybe
love is like that forever.

Is a blank mind better
than a blank tongue?
Eloquence can pursue,
nonetheless. The ghosts
of salted weekends ooze
from the pores of only
the most fuckable faces.

Which is lovely, mind you.
We should do this and that
more often, even though it’s
hell today. Why even men-
tion it, this punctured skull,
another long-forgotten
experimental novel?

mlxv

When I think about him he is perfect.
I love the coffee table, so I dance on
it, 7:00 to 7:45am.  Was I ever so high
dancing the Charleston to Shakespeare
in college?  Or spread over a mound of
clover like an X looking for one with
four leaves?  Without a doubt!  Most
absolutely!  And my timing could not
be better.  The hourglass turns green,
digital cameras flash like missiles.
It’s a war to undo all evil spread-
ing like wildfire over the city.

(He wants me like
Custer at Little Bighorn,
their quivering hearts askew,
dapper as all get-out
on a Tuesday evening.)


an orange is an oval


Scene two,
look out the window
at the morning dove
mourning the
crack of dawn.
It’s as hot as I am.

mlxiv

Destination summer, like a
race with spunky Nico to the
crossroads.  Blowing my nose
on the toilet of an evening.

This vocabulary of sundials
over tea spills into the skunk-
water of afternoon.  Still
just trying to take it easy,

not giving too much
thought.  Being careful
of spinning crossroads.

mlxiii

The fog in my head has a hole in it,
all orange, looking fabulous against
the blue. Trying more for the red
page, thirsty for enlightenment, I
listen to the siren, guess which
street, feel the intensity or
the exaggeration as it cuts
intersections, piercing yet
more holes through the fog.


which is like making a sentence


The sun makes me dizzy so I
drink lots of water, lie in the
middle of Market and dream
about tanks. War is making
me horny, so I get up before
a taxi runs me over. He
offers me a ride free
of charge, slicing
the soup of night
in two.

mlxii

Some sweet massage.  Must be running
out of ideas.  Beetle Gully and Bugle
Glitter, each with forlorn syntax,
are pretty much already looking
forward to a 3-day weekend with
Broken Blossoms and bootie pasta
(light pesto sauce topped with stir-
fried Mandarin and Cantonese).


After the break-up affix bumper-
sticker (“Astronauts Give Good
Head”) and then a little more
nonsense with Nick (research
for secret blogging experiment).
Mix well, add water, let sit until
morning, then grate sparingly
over lumpy oatmeal.  Because
meat is murder, right?

mlxi

Ted Koppel’s got mustard on his lip
and the new neighbor’s drilling holes
into the wall. Please take this blue
dolphin to the 50th birthday party
and tell Beautiful Face that I can’t

get out of the bathroom. BF’s a bit
hairy, shy, talky and effeminate,
so I bow out as often as I can
and it usually goes very well
with the blood-dipped roses.

Oops, I almost slipped and fell
into the toilet, which might’ve
broken your neck! That’s
the news from the salt mine
with your hand down my pants.

mlx

Was I writing so quickly so that
I could arrive from red to blue?
I must be OK. What a relief I
don’t look fucked up (note to
self about the spoon with the

handle in the shape of a skull

hanging from around his neck). 

How come I spend so much time 

trying to convince people that 

friends are perfect? Who wants 

to sleep with a stranger? Go look 

up skull-fucking and tell me what

you find.

mlix

It was a leaky pierce. I emptied
a tiny Visine bottle and blissfully
siphoned as much of the sweat as I
could off the floor, squoze the sweat
into the bottle without losing even
the tiniest drop. We still don’t
have a microphone.

mlviii

May is the best month to
climb Mt. Fuji. What’s
interesting is never the truth,
especially when one’s fantasy
is realized. Glad to hear that
life can punch you in the nose
every once in a while. One
wouldn’t be the least bit
intrigued with it. I’m
making a grand assumption
about your tattoo as it melts,
oily drips that stagger down
the small of your back and
pool up into my belly button.

mlvii

BTW you type using bananas
             —K. Silem Mohammad

Reading along you’d think he was
never really on location there’s
nothing personal on this page.
Oh, wait, but I was there and
kissed you on the mouth
after you bit off your
eraser.

mlvi

Into my mouth a kind of oblong
secret. Trade joy with elation,
flummoxed by the hopeless
giddy drive to remain alive.

All night long and into the
next day this overwhelming
write it down in case I forget.
Every detail to the touch.

Tight shaved mouth are you
really who you are? I can’t
tell this moment. Only this
moment let’s not go back to

is it good enough for every
day. That prison I claim
to have broken out of in
order to become alive.

mlv

Dancing on love really stomping it into the
ground. It’s not another lazy dance. Din of
the bathroom stall, fiercely and for all history
overwhelms its magic mirror twenty years ago,
some kind of crazy heaven in my ears. For
better or worse, I’ll throw it away before therapy
(like eggtoss & tug of war). Having a senseless
crush on him for years, this isn’t going to be a
minor disturbance. It was even better than
anything that’s crept into my prolific
fantasies and wallops my first attempt
at power-dating into insignificance.

mliv

A Huge Clam Tree (And Inevitably, An Ocean)
(Chiefly Non-Satyrs)

Build one eponymously.

mliii

You’re such a nimrod, Mr. Verbs-Aren’t-
Usually-Funny! (Especially when they’re
semi-contractions.) Humor never had it
so good (without words).

Take that, Arm & Hammer!

mlii

“My finger keeps wanting to go inside of my
nose what should I do?”  “You’re making fun
of my poetry by mocking me showing me
how I never say anything at all aren’t you?”

“You didn’t use Google at all for this one
did you?”  Clarity is the archnemesis
of Triumph.

mli

“Jack of All Bats, are you tired
of being tired?”  An accomplished
sense of humor and pilgrimages
to Fallingwater.  Therapy Session
Number Four.  He just turned 19.
The jasmine tea is good, but a
bit too hot, and my appointment
is in 18 minutes.  “Are you sure
it’s not a grasshopper with a
little piece of dandelion fluff
stuck in its eye?”  Lonely
is relative.

ml

To sponge is to bludge. In which
OMG has no oomph, becomes
flat like West Texas. In bed
with a coin, the thunderstorm
makes air out of air and we
breathe sex into sleep faster.
Bludgeon the coins spun
from sponges.

mxlix

the enormous sauce of deep emotion

Indistinguishable noise. Critical reception
was mediocre and verged on political even
though he was not trying to be political.
Fuck work all hail poetry, etc.

Right now achy, stuffy, coughy, sore
throaty, sitting at Peet’s in Laurel
Heights thinking about last night’s
thunderstorms around 4am I think.

In bed with transition. Something
squeezable yet reduced to a pulp,
great fun, hugs, I should have
loved you more. How come

when history begins it’s
just not clear? Kick yourself.

mxlviii

I get so many submissions I simply
cannot keep up.  Sometimes I wonder
exactly what I am doing on Facebook.
After baking salmon and making a
light salad his presence really fucked
me over and he was following me
around trying to get my attention.   OK.

mxlvii

Like a Fanatic Reading Merrill

Should my lips shout revolution
my mask would be complete. “And
what a waste,” you’d say, if only for
the birds flying around like cows
stressing everybody out. Do you
want to take a quick look at
the week’s squabble, Donald?
The cukes are gassy.

mxlvi

Yellow blobs appear on each page,
smudges that float up and down
over the words, the words which,
when read, are the sparrows
singing, the sparrows, tucked in
the lethargic eucalypts. I spend
so many hours trying to crack
the secret code. What is it on
my desk that sounds like eggs
hard-boiling? What is the cat
after? Not the words or the
birds (this time) but something
utterly engaging like a drycleaning
stub or a piece of kitty litter. More
to the point, what am I after? A
more slaphappy morass? Perhaps.
An albeit familiar goal, a place
I’m good at getting.
So here we are.
A full moon passes
over Geneva and I’m caught
in the gunk of the moment.
Darker gunk than I’m used to,
though. Gunk that could use
a little bit of your moon
which, while often swollen
and always inviting, is
dim enough to avoid
any collusion.

mxlv

I Have Wawely Witten Inebwiated

mxliv

Toulouse Gardens and Scenic Railways

Hangs a little to the right
without trying to bombard
your senses. Feels a bit like
fish and chips, inspiration for
an Elephant and Castle poem
with its hair on fire. Something
on cherrywood with MasterCard,
disrupting the world as we know it.
Rain after years without it.

mxliii

Holy secular scumbag.
               —Anselm Berrigan

The idea that we’re communicating
is a joke.  You okay with unorthodox
humor?  I dream warm with addiction,
how it creeps into dreams keeping things
substandard.  Like your bank allotment.

I’ve no idea, hot dudes.  But literally,
advertising NEW LASER and MORE
RESTROOMS is totally insane and
sexy.  He’s got nice hands, very at ease
and comfy to be around.  Now it’s

Monday, that’s the round-up, sending
off heartfelt notes to yesterday.
Back in Quito.  Bye for now.

mxlii

He was 41.

mxli

I’ve been smiling a lot lately. You’re not bothered by this?
“This monastery is one of several perched on towering
monoliths of solid rock.” Attend a benefit for security bars
(for their windows?) then wander around the Castro with
someone who graduated in math (“I like art I don’t have to
THINK about.”) – turns into a 24 hour date. Where have
you been, lately? He’s got nice hands, mildly corporate,
snuggly, and comfortable to be around. Oops, someone’s
having size problems. Maybe it’s Enrique Iglesias. I’ll
forget him in another week, perhaps at Sunday’s
Australian barbecue.

mxl

Through the Ghetto Darkly

Do you have the gut to take me home?
You don’t really think that, do you?
G-U-T gut. Don’t swing your teeth
at me like that you might cause a
hurricane.

mxxxix

Backstabbing Classified

No I am not bilingual.
Get out of my
contraband. Got a
minute? Let me show you.

mxxxviii

Welcome to the North Texas Church of
Freethought where we’re overwhelmed and
underwhelmed.  Or did I just overthink it?
Was it a mistake, my everything up until
now?  A too sparse on the details mistake,
yes.

mxxxvii

a sort of patch put on a leaky fire

The mercury of universal flesh
drips eloquently down the side
of a mirror. You are somewhere
in the midst of ultimate comfort
when you notice it. You report
it as spam. At first. But it keeps
dripping, reappears, moves you
to new dimensions, seizes the
day, takes you on a picnic
and buries the evidence.
Everything’s useless,
even if we catch some
body parts. And I
don’t like my new
friends. We’re too
ashamed to show them
off. Is it our inability
to fall? Way down in my
gut I think about yesterday
and that’s when it always happens.
Not simply the airplane back to nowhere.
Just overwhelmed with complicated
and glistening matter.

mxxxvi

Casual Catfish

I’ve a pain in my elbow joint
like I did in Hong Kong only
this time it’s the other elbow.
Or walking the streets of Paris
after one a.m. looking for an
open pharmacy (to no avail).
Something was open, the word
kept arriving, but it couldn’t be
found.  Creativity obdures, it
cannot be helped.  Old remedies
become sterile.  Exactly.
Dip dry fingers into warm wax
and apply each pink feather
and quick.  No one knows
why we come back to
evasion.  At some point it
becomes the weekend but
who has the chops for it?
Happy Independence Day.
I’m not ready to talk about it
but I might be dancing
in Ecuador come autumn.

mxxxv

Who are we to become more and more
about less and less?  July 1.  Twice
daily or weekly to be more substantive?
Fuck energy.  Art is held high by the
word and only the word.  We see it
when we look out the window at
the horny dove or the black rooftops;
a barbecue in Oakland; a row of
friends at the table who will remain
friends for many years to come
(but who knew?).  Substantive?  I
need a date.  Take me to the
Pink Party, take half a hit,
wander around with Joe
who eats firewood,
meet [list of names],
go to [name] where
[name] is and also [name]
was there.  WILD.  Dance
most of the night waiting
for the substitute.

mxxxiv

I can kind of feel my brain coming back
like at the end of a _________, the fog
dissipating, four lines to a swipe.
Separately, I don’t really feel
comfortable downplaying a
financially shitty existence. And by
ass I mean wide motherfuckin’ ass.

mxxxiii

Rounding a sloppy corner,
approaching the column of ass,
bored out of time, tooting shitkickers
for the cowboys, nearer and nearer
a recommendation of whatever,
obviously the one cutie that sits
further away than usual with his
ball of blood and wire: some frenemy’s
dumb blog with pitiful dumplings
wondering if I would go this far.

mxxxii

Gonna Totally Do Something Fun

I can relate very quickly the matter with the
information, then act according to my own
judgment to solve the problem very self-
confidently.  Nimble, am not naturally
artificial, and have a strong display
ability.  And you sit there with your
racist tongue twisters.

Haha.  So cool.  I know I’m bogus
but who’s boguser, I dunno.  Maybe
by the end of this particular notebook
I’ll be able to speak in an entirely
new language.

Therapy is draining.  Everyone is at the
beach today.  I’ll be here with this latté,
then walk to the new gym at The Biltmore.

mxxxi

I write this with the frog that couldn’t be
seen in Hong Kong and the old man
who tried to sing along with the birds I’ve
only heard here.  The warmth that comes

isn’t from too much sun in the distance,
but the waves that get up and do their jobs,
the laws of physics crashing and burning
as life does, as something roasted arrives

to smash our tongues.  He’s turned me on
since 1990 and now, lying next to me
on a bird-strewn beach he does it again,
sound asleep with his tattoo on a

towel.  The birds fly off like a parade
featuring Elvis.  The Kowloon sand
busies the risky wind.  I wrote this
hard-on for the frog.  Grab the moon’s

dogs, you lecher, and tease them out of
our impossible freedom.

mxxx

Here’s your special nudge.  Something
satisfying in going to bed at 2am, getting up
at 5am, drinking a glass of orange juice.
These brush-offs come in waves, but
they’re just a pair of mawkish 20-year olds
pounding.  Horny Polynesians.  Excess
beverages with 40-something hard-ons
and orange juice for blood pressure and
allergies.  Stop nudging (lying on my
stomach as I write this).  Destroy my
line of view instead.  Find a remote
control and ask it where you belong.

mxxix

Another Arm-ache from Too Much Cyber-fisting

I’m a late bloomer.
These waves come in waves –
all at me like a portrait –
waving me down the street,
up a staircase.  Lie down flat,
Late Bloomer Up a Staircase.
Or the concrete’s too freakin’
cold but we do it anyway,
buds in winter.  Next week
it’ll be my one and only
bathroom stall.  And hot,
like it was just this evening,
skin from 25 years ago.
I would say I remember,
and I do, but how deep do I
have to go?  Just to conjure
Blondie (all mine and
ohso mortally male).
How fast did we type?
What mode of communication?
Something along the lines of a
slow sink leak.  Codes banged on
walls. “M-Y.  R-O-O-M-I-E-S.
A-R-E.  G-O-N-E.”  Over and out,
I’m over!  Plunging into
that pool so dark it
could be blood.
Warm Central.
Until security
wakes us up,
wipes us clean
like a bad disc,
something viral.
Let’s last a whole
year without a clue.
And we do.

mxxviii

Angelism

Pause to realize the value of our friendship.
He’s the most important longshot.

And now,
next month,
turn over and eat the pillow.

Pity is,
penetrating an angel is
a bit like sinking in quicksand.

Stings like a hornet
or a Google alert at 3am:
Mountain Sunk; Must Plunder Elsewhere.

Meaningless upon hopelessness,
waking up with Edna St. Vincent Millay
(and a sore throat!).

It burns.  But in a way that
melts your pants.

“Say whatever you want,
he doesn’t understand a
lick of English.”

“If that’s what you value in language.”

Angels and angels.
The tall ones.
Robust and ripe,
like big 80’s hair.

Thank God it’s gone.  Most of it.

But.  But.
Now look at me,
curled up from non-existence.
Thick.  Ready for dinner.

Reach me through Google
(another arm-ache from too much cyber-fisting).

mxxvii

I Should Like to Take a Letter

Dear Sir,

Myself regarding myself.
I find writing this.

Fuck.  And so on.  A little
expletive at myself
regarding myself.

But yet.  Business and all.
Tonight making dinner someplace.

The guy I met this weekend,
a “hook up” – says
he’d love to get to know me,
go on an actual date –

which is why I never
categorize.  A date’s
a date’s a date.

Or whatever.  And
furthermore.  Etc.

At some point, Google & Amazon
become my diary.

Check out June 26.

But he’s going abroad to his parents’
all summer.  What about his
new job?

Institute weekly movie night
starting tonight with
W.C. Fields in
The Bank Dick.

mxxvi

“Insert Quote about Love”

So off we went to an ice rink
in the middle of a fake summer.

“Did the students enjoy it?”

“How should I know?”

Too wrapped up in a
sunlamp to notice.

“But I did it for us.....

(and for my infatuation
with your friend).”

“Do retell.”

General horniness & grins.

So off we went to Walgreen’s
for cough drops and
Astroglide.

“Off we went to the
handkerchief party.”

Just to fuck you up.
Off we went,

two damp theologians,
hand-in-hand to
Sin Agog.

mxxv

From the looks of these pages
I’d say you’re lost.  I promised my
self I’d wait a week and this time
it looks like I might just make it.
The right lip of your penis is
waving at me.  Thanks.  I wave back,
happy to be acknowledged.  Do you
think I’ll remember my locker
combination after three months?

mxxiv

I’m reading the new gay bible with my
first official doctor since Doc Roberts.
And I’m not social with any of my
classmates, which is a shame, since
there are nearly 40 of us.  Am I
that much better when nobody
gives me a second look?  As a
result, I am now truly alone
on Singapore Airlines,
flying over the Pacific.
I am Big Silence.  Irretrievable
dreams floating out of the darkest window
and landing like fish food on the tender blue
lips of your chocolate ears.  Happy Easter, War is Rover.

mxxiii

Nobody is necessary after you have built your ark.
                                                  —Jack Spicer

Excellent cholesterol.  Over 50% of all gay men
have it.  Rough trade at the Rite-Aid, brisk walk to
Polk for cat food & various.  Two weeks no Netflix
turnover since, one, I was in Hong Kong and, the other,
in mergers & acquisitions.  Take a moment to feel joy
at having such a big teevee.  A pang of something:
community, or queerness.  Drink four bottles of Coke
in class (drunk on a new alphabet).  The window is
water, and behind it my mother applauds Facebook
comments.  She won’t join, but totally loves the
idea of lurking.  Today.  The 9th of something.
Stretched out in remembrance of somebody
who’s name I’ve already forgotten.

mxxii

There’s an angel in my bed
ten years before I’m born.  It’s
burning for something I’ll do
fifty years hence. Later that night,
we meet at a telephone pole.
Angels slip in and out of their
skin, melt-like, leaving your pants
oozing down the storm drain,
headlamps coming at you
from the wrong side of the road.

mxxi

I feel like I’m hurting my body really hard.

That’s your saving grace.  No need to be offset
by it.  Say a short prayer for your salad, walk
with me every morning to the gym, watch
Hulk, stretch, find someone online, 3am
(here at 4:10). nToday, sunny, nice, with
a toothache, yes, you’re a surgery bleeder,
hehe, rapt attention.  Split your asses,
morbid family, and marijuana.  Try
to hear something that is just there,
almost there, an omnipresent echo
beating your boobs until you
wake up in the morning
with a mouth-ache.  Work it out
with conversation and tongue depressers,
trade places, stick the depresser on somebody
else’s tongue, get inside of him, look around a little
til the Prozac or something kicks in.

mxx

Therapy and Theory Are Nothing Alike

I am tired of eating salad at Tempura House
on Powell Street.  See the soy sauce smears?
I’m more than a little annoyed. Why is it such

a bother that I am optimistic?  Past tense.

Some Latin guy tells me he enjoys my butt,
watches it all the time, little uncut hardon
in front of me.  Sometimes these things
just work out.  OK, OK, I touched it,

grabbed it, I couldn’t help it, and I mean
why not?  But briefly.  I saw Humberto
at Badlands talking with some big blond
and I also saw the little guy who gave me
a hickey a few months ago.  Too much

money for this.  Sumo wrestling, not pick-
ing up any of the right words around me.

mxix

Passing Theories

Do you need a theory?  First,
you must care enough to record
events to establish a score from memory.
Trouble the rubble (so to speak).

Dispense with faith (in the sexual sense).
Awaiting bailout, several big banks
halt foreclosures.  Some shitty
communication skills workshop
all morning long.

mxviii

Interpenetration

I’ve seen that done, I think.  Or
maybe I’m thinking of singing
“Row, Row, Row Your Boat”
in 1st grade; I get confused
sometimes.  As if to say
“this is how dull my worklife
is.”  Which for sure conceals
the a-bombs and f-bombs
that turn the cowgirl pin-ups
into a blight of barnacles
on the once-bright walls.
Origami the sirens into
comfort shams before 

bed.  Crippled Monday
mornings.  Generic,
perhaps, but they
both seem nice
online.

mxvii

Yes.  Coat.  Something.

Forgotten password.  A
tablespoon fool.  Please
let me know.  There’s
a sage coming.  To
rewire.  About sex.
Stop thinking of
yesterday in
the sunshine
with birdshit at
whale something.
Benches dried.
Table full.
Singing.  Single.
Studying Hiragana
on Cocteau’s birth
day.  Exhausting
bathrooms.  Birds
bundt caked.  Please
let me know there’s
a sage coming
to rewire new
cowboy motif.
Beauty’s beast
singed over text
sex.  Bridled
pigeon standing
in sludge, siren
beaming.

mxvi

All our products will be safely delivered to your door
with full pharmacy. These MILFS want you, etc., etc.
I’m lonely, come chat with me. We can make your
meat tree mighty and strong. Think Paris is too flat?
Check it out closer. Nicole Kidman is all the red-
headed girls that go crazy in bed. Britney Spears
gained some extra weight so she needs some good
meatspace to get thinner. Unbelievable savings.
Johnny Carson anti-depressants, DaVinci, more or
less without a boyfriend, choked gagged throat, you
have registered to receive special offers by email.
Orangina, pesto mayo, watch some hot and slutty
bikini-clad camel toes storming the beaches nation-
wide, and meeting babes on the beach. Do you
think I’m pretty? Don’t be perplexed. It’s all about
soliciting your attention to transfer the sum-total of
£82,000,000 from a bank here in London to the
personal account of the deceased. Follow these
instructions for successful in this business of
learning foreign languages just to understand my
culture. Stupidly and drunkenly go back to the
Castro for a make-up artist who does strippers
before they go on stage, watch Power Puff Girls
(the movie) and wank off, that’s it. Blowout
savings awake outdoor scenery, person rickety
tropics lid. Wow your pics made me horny.

mxv

Feel the juice flow and grow bigger than ever.

Get something real to divert or warp your
attention for a while.  Three girls at one night?
Really awesome power between your legs?
Will it constantly remind me of yesterday?
Why can’t a breakup be a done deal?

mxiv

Steaming hottie ready to explode.  Threatens.

Keeping your man’s hose steel
is not a problem when you’re
dancing with us!  Kill the
competition with these
growth pills.  Get yours
before stocks run out.
Disconnect 4-wheeler
collar politicians.  Large &
wide pole available for
immediate gratification.
Shocking increase in size.
Forget you love him just
DO something.  Fuck up
any quiz on Hiragana
characters this evening.
For a very limited time
get your free bottles.
Magic blue pill with
experienced but shy
ladies.  If you cannot
see this page please
refresh here.

mxiii

Forget delays and costly doctor visits,
biting lips not to scream from pleasure
for weeks.  The Arizona stalls that temper
the mid-September heat with mild
glory holes.  WHAT A GREAT IDEA
just leave your NAME & PHONE #!
Let’s move back to Japan, learn Japanese,
never sleep, no need to buy a degree,
get our free bottles of the ultimate
enlargement supplement, briefly
wait for him after class, split again,
fucking shame, HATE THAT.
There is such power against me
and my replica rolex models,
most exclusive, 1000 pieces
worldwide.

mxii

Congratulations!  The lottery committee on
TOYOTA MOTOR LOTTERY PROMO
today officially wishes to announce that
you have won.  You are among the winners
of the TOYOTA MOTOR LOTTERY
PROMO DRAW.  All participants were
selected randomly from 30,500,000
email addresses of individuals and
companies from all parts of the world
as part of our Automobile Marketing
poem-swap, as part of our Finding
Nemo, followed appropriately by
sushi, as part of our ‘housewarming
present,’ as part of our bad movie.
But I got to snuggle and serious
talk, speaking generally with
jets in the air and a dank
smell in the bedroom, like
if my boyfriend had an
opportunity someplace
far away what would
I do.  This leads to
CONGRATULATIONS
& SCARY.

mxi

Time does not fetish a poem.

          (You’re as perdurable as moping is mawkish)
                                             —Geoffrey Young

Yesterday sufficiently out of it but
not really being too sweet.  Just
distant after drinks with lushy friend.

Fun.  Why?  Tomorrow!  Damn!
First time I’d seen him in forever.
3 months?  What a work of art!

mx

Through a combination of “aged corporations”
and enhanced corporate credit we are able to
get you up to $200K in unsecured lines of
credit for your business.  164 pounds of
running, racquetball, humor and midnight,
June 8, so didn’t eat much this weekend.
Attention entrepreneurs, don’t eat much,
take yesterday off, dose on antibiotics
that affect appetite, find a name that
sounds like “russian roulette” (Rosanne
Ouelette?  Heston, Georgette?).  Here
is the solution in Japanese: poem-swap
at my place, eat a donut, and several
boiled eggs, leftover cookies from
brunch, birthday dance, eat, eat, eat,
eat, eat.

mix

Gucci totes for your loved ones.  Gucci
shoes for the high flyer.  See if you can
get in, your email address emerging as
one of three winners, hence you are
expected to make your claims immediately.

Don’t doubt, let him show you that he loves
you.  Do not break, grasp the chance to
become a real man today.  Speak to your
member.  Eliminate all body fat.  Increase
libido and sex drive.  Do not doubt.  People

really think I’m cute, generic people.  A
little dizzy, medicine, mix & match a
romantic message in a bottle for
Valentine’s Day.  Forget delays and
costly doctor visits.  I am now thirty-

six and my back hurts while I read H.D.
over sushi.  Painkillers for massive
bedroom action.  Every single med is
available here in our massive online
store.  Your discount code # is LMAO.

mviii

We live in the jungle now, catch flies
and sometimes bagels, snow-shovel
hearts off freeway ramps, first time in three
weeks.  This message may not be from whom
it claims to be, honest hard on, lope the loop.
Monday night?  Hmm.  I mention speaking,
dear gentlemen, to the morons of advertising,
flower pupils couriered to your doorstep.
Nemesis interruptus.  But I’m better than
Monday, nay, better than the entire weekend,
black, sleepy, sun like summer, shipping
worldwide.  Feel the magic in every
language, pleasuring the ladies and
upsizing your manhood.  Horny house
wives getting fucked by other men.
Wishy-washy, balking, not getting
any attention.  None.  From him.
Zero.  None.  Nada.  Keep your
dignity, double your volume of
ejaculation.  Discover the break
through secret.  Delete forever.
Delete forever.  Delete forever.

mvii

Dear subscriber.  We make
navigating the health insurance
maze easy.  Wouldn’t it be
great if you could instantly
connect with an expert one
week from tonight?  As for
Japanese, show up for your
first day of class then see
what happens?  Only hope.
Start drafting something.
Be the love poet of our
time, even feeling shitty,
but yeah, don’t sink;
surprise your loved one
with a larger organ.  They’ve
never been so easy to make.

mvi

Omega watches from replica purses.
These are the first run of the 2009
models with inner Rolex.  Only
limited to 1000 pieces worldwide
and expected to sell out within a
month.  Your only hope, to work
long time on a poem, draft some-
thing yesterday.

mv

So large you will have to
change your underwear.
Who?  Who?  My friend
just sent me an eKiss!
Perhaps you have a
close friend or relative
who you want to help
stop smoking during
lunch.  Or the cute
waiter.  Yesterday,
miserably bleak.
Go.  Meet him for
dinner in some
breezy nook.
Just act & run,
first sending him
a note saying we
don’t have enough
sex and saying he
should spend time
with your friends.
No response.  Still
no response.  I know
this happens with him.
Related story, I got the
name of a therapist from
Dr. Feldman.  Have left
a message seeing if he takes
Aetna PPO.  No response.
No response yet.

miv

You make me horny for reading.
Like a bird once manufactured
in FDA-approved laboratories.
Elusive, enigmatic, holds back,
backs off, then spurts out these
lovely things.  Anyway, we
hardly have it.  And besides,
what shit, I hate business
intercourse.  I need to freshen
up my life.  This new one
isn’t real enough.  I need
to double my volume
with proven massive
gains of more than
three inches.

miii

Every single med is available here
in our massive online store. Pain-
killers, anti-depressants, ED meds
(for massive bedroom action),
Magic blue pill (from just $1) and
many other classes of meds. At
lunch, sushi on Sacramento, the
waiter looks at me covering up
my diary. Was thinking of
Fresno this weekend? Perhaps
Santa Cruz or no place. My
weekend is his. I’m starting
to feel silly with how much.

mii

I recently came upon your website and I must
tell you that you did a great job with it! I really
enjoyed and loved it and thought that maybe my
visitors would find it useful as well. I would like
to know if I can link your website from my website
MexicoVacationTravels.com. I am trying to link
to quality websites that my visitors might get
something out of. Please let me know if this is
OK. And also, do you think my website is worthy
to be listed on your website? I brought that up
and he said it’s just that things affect him so
strongly. And it’s only for special occasions.
Well. He said he lost something very important
because of it once. And it won’t happen again.

mi

It could be.  Forever.  There’s
nothing more impressive than a
man with confidence.  Someone
special sending you a nudge.

Get powerful and enlarge your
pole easily today.  Sleep soundly.
Eat home cooked country cooking.
Delicious.  Swear you have

never enjoyed dancing with anyone
as much as you enjoy dancing with
him on a Sunday night, plopping
his arms on your shoulders,

wrapping his hands behind your
neck, putting his little checkered
cap on your head, his braids,
his glowing eyes rolling up

into his head, way back up
behind his lids.

m

Here comes the sun like a cushion full of
pins and needles.  Here comes Coco
with her new brush.  It’s too much pressure.
Dare I say I’m able to relax, concentrate
on other things?  Like thinking about
yesterday writing love, love, love, worry,
love, future, love.  He promptly and
sweetly responded, but LOVE?  I ask at
Mel’s and he says it once, “I love you
sooooo much.”  Sitting on me Friday
night, watching the holes in a stranger’s
ears, corner of Powell and Post.  To
which he replies “I need you, too” and
“I will go wherever you want, do
whatever you want, so long as we can
do this sometimes.”  The lady next to me
breathing down my neck.  Sometimes.
Maybe.  Not long as.  I fall off the couch
with too much love or panic attack.  But
I told him I wouldn’t have it any other way.

cmxcix

Splash them with twilight like a wet bat.
                                   —Jack Spicer

It’s too sunny and when I sneeze it’s like
a million acupuncture needles just slid
down into the top of my lungs from the
front of my shoulders, ping ping ping.

Slumdog Millionaire is pretty good (before
award ceremonies). I almost forgot what
this was about – the chandeliers falling,
the ones with the LED piping at the new

Dosa on Fillmore, bold enough to frighten
Tinseltown: thirty-five years of lights.
You rubbed your tusks all over me (and
came back an elephant), made tiretracks

because of the thaw. You had been invad
ed by aliens and then the aliens fell in
love with me, too. It made me love you
more. It always does.

cmxcviii

Is this a mature one?

Too bad we are silent in love,
which is the happy daddy
of being silent with no love.
Too bad so sad?  Sure!
And always silly
walking hand-in-
hand to the
Nob Hill Grill.
But first,
meet me on the couch
while I finish these five books
(okay, one is a magazine) and
blog about needing to pee.

cmxcvii

It was a bisexual joke. You only get it
if you’re bisexual.

cmxcvi

You want to verb the rivers
and scythe inestimable oceans.
Water water water water. You
want the elevator but it does not
come. Come come come come.
You want out
but you do not want
to be destroyed.
Fear of being destroyed.
Fear fear fear fear fear.

But this honey-flavored mud
you found while trolling,
destroyed by fear, in the throes
of an endless impotence,
this is what you never leave

because you want it forever and forever
and forever and forever and forever.

cmxcv

get bitter

a blue fire
behind these
eyeballs what
intimacy

a furtherance
the circumstance
of which is
lengthening

a trolley
rises to
the navel

waiting
for you

cmxciv

A sort of right

How long must I be a wind
            against my long-cheated
                        sea?
Into an overwhelmed
             thing an unknown home has sunk

I have noted the bodies, right
           and correct as rights
I have located the hands,
           correct as rights
Enjoining like a right the
            good life-blows, said by a wrong
                        reporter, have belonged
The right under the steering-wheel, its interchanges
        have been quiet


(attributed to “Del Ray Cross” in Issue 1,
“a 3,785-page document featuring almost
as many poets....The poems were produced
by a poem generator known as Erika, or
Erica T. Carter.”)

cmxciii

Missouri (today’s trivia answer)

Mom sent me pictures of
her birthday flowers, sitting
next to them on her back porch.
She’s coming in a couple of weeks
but we can’t decide when.  Otto
took all the postcards off his
closet door.  Hooray!
Single page jerks into oblivion.
Oatmeal cools on the coffee table.
                       I’m still catching up.

cmxcii

Walk past “Frank is a
Miracle” etched in the
sidewalk on Mason
between Bush and
Pine Streets. Coffee,
remembering how I
love Ibsen, wanting
to read a play. So
I grab Chuck Mee’s
History Plays (Diane’s
recommendation).
This, the first play
I’ve read in over a
decade. Page 4,
look up decoction
(ditto earlier with
diluvial, apologies).
Rainy day with no
rain, further up the
hill is etched “Mika”.
Frank, Chuck, Diane,
Mika, and the lady
dove Coco watches.
The cat furious, hungry,
delirious. The bird, a
tender rooftop, The
Nob Hill Theater,
and not the one with
go-go boys next to
Sushi-Man restaurant.
Sushi-Man, Ryosuke
Yoshioka, 59, throat
slashed without
warning at OfficeMax
by Peter Fong, 45, who
suffered a ‘psychotic
break’. Sushi-Man
opened one of the
city’s first sushi
establishments
in 1979.