mcxxxvii

Is this a massage?  It certainly feels like one.

Lars lights up from smelt.  History repeats it-
self into a mister, lights up New York for the
third or fourth time.  The average cost per
monkfish is seventy-five dollars.  Look

up heartfelt.  Look up, heartfelt.  Bogey.
Noon is a tundra of government scrutiny.
Take pictures of 2nd Avenue, New China-
town.  Shower on a donut; hit a few in the

Triangle.  Monkfish hairpiece.
It’s a nice day for a Blue Angel (scream-
sung over White Wedding).

mcxxxvi

Sorry, Beijing

Words in the middle of the mouth.

Gelatin sky over sloping people sipping green tea.

Disney buys aerial wedges – four billion dollars.

Hulu Young & the Restless just to feel something.

Come over – repeat – come over and check me out (new identity).

Dusk purchase: melancholy pork scramble + Yanni.

mcxxxv

Reading just depressed me.

I’ll suffer with the dawgs of Awgust.  Let them
remember me this way, torn apart from my meat,
putting on the wrong face and forgetting to wear
a belt.  The hallway’s doused in tingly lubricant

and breakfast is nothing but a couple of birds in
the attic.  What found me there?  What lasted
a year of losing, EXIT signs pasted on molars,
beckoning?  Cater like a whistling siren, though,

bone them with any possible methodography,
and it’s breakdancing down staircases.  All
edgy.  And all edginess kills.  Who wouldn’t
prefer raindrops of toothpaste, a deodorant

that puts its money where its mouth is, literally
covers it all up?  I’m not afraid of baldness, per se,
but haphazard circle jerks?  Call me a hand-held,
but let me sink into your couch like a crying meatloaf.

mcxxxiv

One theory leans on another, takes
a bite out of narrative.  This good.
Dumb Sunday.  Scanners in love,
already tedious.  Extra serious
cereal, ongoing online snapper.
You don’t know the half of it.
Gradually punctuated wake-up.
Nude butt develops lips, instant
messages weekend.  MysticRiver
on Gay.com no hanky-panky.
Didn’t sleep much but found
someone to unwrap.  Looks
cute with stuffing.

mcxxxiii

Impersonal

Hit your heart out.  Take a
pill earlier.  Saturday sun-
glasses fall asleep on mus-
tache.  One hour snuggle.
Sense of literally bawling.
Joy and love need a nap.  Get
a grip and pass the mustard.
Shake a leg before stroking.
Scratches head and wonders
never cease.  Forty winks
else still bonkers bonking.

mcxxxii

Posse pyramid in
pee party.  Disgust it
with you later.  Poot
sirens on unchosen.
Broke down start
relationship in
Union Square.
Call column:
“Do ya think
I’m wasting?”
Exhale.  Exhale.
And I was just sunk,
sunk.  One to five.
But things get
up.  Pup-tent
blanks.  Boy oh
boy.  Not to men-
tion pops poses
in pussy piss.

mcxxxi

For and without you.
Dark circles under a
haircut.  Cat purrs
rice.  Naked head
got hurt dancing.
Mom turns two.
Have to go, by
the way.  Able
to play bizarre
work in fragile
maybe.  Best
way to put it.

mcxxx

Seagulls.  Sittin’ on his
legs in September.  Scan-
ning 1998 etc.  Recon-
ciliation.  Realization.
Except I love happy.
Definite I do.  Alone
and frugal, walking
on elimination.  Type
Tokyo in one breath.
Scan cat.  Cat scan
(breathe blood brain).
Coco’s doves with
no clothes.  Drove
us cuckoos to Vegas.
Don’t cry, Wedgie.  Get
a hyper romance.  Feel
a little like sittin’ on
September.

mcxxix

One melon rind.  Mohair
cat.  Tragic laugh stink.
Fairly morbid sucker.
But I was whatever.
OK, I didn’t.  In
pill form.  Took
off wrapping face.
Cat’s pajamas.
Butt motivation.
Took off grace
wrapping face on
Sunday.  Describe
the hands I’m
losing.  Pisses the
face I fucked.  Cat-
hedral ist October.

mcxxviii

She cokes bacon on purpose.
Also bundts the oven.  Cats
tickle mice behind ears.  Finally.
Cool breezes through windows.
Tonight’s supposed to complain
about it.  So I’ll do that & then.
At 6:30 I felt an Indian Summer
under Grandma Hazel’s quilt for
the first time.  Refreshing til for-
ever.  Go to Nico’s.  Now he’s
warming homework but
very silent.  Check for
breathing.  Suck on
ex of ex, page 2,127.

mcxxvii

Brief Shallots

Spank in English
a little better.

Especially having
drinky martinis.

Apothecary hard-ons
smell like meth pits.

Somebody’s balloon
bubble burst on the
smoking lamp.

Quell the mites.

Biscuits &
Leviticus.

mcxxvi

Tuck him in hand by foot
after dinner with Face-
book salesman and four
crab-legs.  What about
Fuckface?  Give the
straight scoop.  A
big fat F for traffic.
We to the very end.
Call me when love
gets beets.  A dry
pocket of moles over
a table of herring.

mcxxv

drink nymph barf?  oho!
well I can’t & quickly
shampooed.  fuck fuck.
dreamland seem to be-
long just today.  not
oops I barfed.
obviously seem &
hopefully took
care of. he
snore like
animal.  maybe
Christopher how much
further.  suck starting
Sunday by yesterday
distant.  that’s pretty
much the a-list.

mcxxiv

By then, you could tell I had lost
my brain.  It’s amazing the things
we take for granted.

In the red zone, another
Japanese class on the queer arts.

It’s not stasis, it’s waking up.  Period.
Every day a few new hurts.

mcxxiii

The eagle has landed.  At The Eagle,
no less!  We keep searching for glory
holes, I thought there were glory holes
here.  Some secret doorway to a base-
ment or an upstairs.  My igorance is
sometimes bliss.  But I often mis-
take it for honesty, which blows
holes in the theory I’m work-
ing so very hard on.

mcxxii

Bloopers from Bewitched

It doesn’t take a genius
to figure it out.  Big drag
soaked by queen of cham-
pagne.  Smallest dais in
outer space.  How’s your
relationship to the inter-
national time zone?  Or
the deathmarch to udon?
Call it what you will,
with your pent up salted
rim fetish.  Chain-jang-
ling rumpus at the Arc
de Sling or anecdotal
Fuji frolic.  Either way,
so fa frickin’ la, you &
your blah blankety blah.

mcxxi

Flashback

We were looking at the lake through the eyes
of a murder.  Was it simply platonic?  I feel
okay about how we spent our impasse.  Yellow
leaves, thin, small, scattered on the walk around
the plaza.  Spigots and shrubbery, some sort of
laughing bird, the plastic hunchbacks spinning
in the noontime wind.  Didn’t she get her start
on One Day at a Time?

mcxx

Say That Again With Your Tongue In My Mouth

Happy Hump Day!  I can see the Second Coming
in faces of Frank on molded glasses.  This, a dark
ruse, with rhetorical concern of high homosexual
fashion (think burning hundred dollar bills, tit-
clamps, tattoos on foreheads, exploding bottles
of Veuve Clicquot) and mushy faces of students
who need help with creative writing.  Monday
mornings when all words are misrepresented.
Two loads of laundry keep you from sleeping
with him, no joke, bigger than the Yellow Pages;
but he let me borrow it anyway, all the way
thru next week with no intimacy in either
LA or San Diego.  Tonight, bored with
simple potatoes, filled with Portugal
and mediocre screams.  The ones
that sputter among the pierced
balconies and, indistinguishable
from the muffled crickets,
make their ways into
squadrons of white-
washed homes.
Horizonless.

mcxix

Fantastic the feathers
the Fed gathers just to
think of root beer.  I
wrote a couple new
ones on the economy’s
pulse.  My heart came
out messy.  Switch to
digital pilfering.  Scour
Sonoma for an egg
cup.  Flexible enough
to flaunt inconsistency
skills and still control
the tonsils.

mcxviii

This my ulterior projection,
thought too long I’d have to be
buried. Burnt up, of course,
in San Francisco’s jonquils,
after tulips and juleps. Her
utter jonquils, no less.
Or just wow, a new me,
a first kiss on the F-train.
Or just wow, Lost in
Translation at the
Hall of Mirrors.

I say bye. Walk
up hill. Oh my
god I am drinking
so much coffee I gotta
suck a Tums at all times just to
stomach the gore. I left him a little
message on his phone, happy to
know him around 11:30 while I
was eating milk chocolate Milanos.

mcxvii

Smeeches 

(formerly Smoochies)

Scarcely heated next to the
trauma outfit....Sat on your
face where Gavin’s bride
bleeds....Override Charmin
squeeze....Sometimes only
shadow practice....Getting
emails 2am reaches over..
..You aren’t there and feel
a presence anyway....Means
I guess he means it....Moves
the planet’s butt to left field
but fakes a pass and cracks a
nut....What’s with all of the 

blank Fuzzy Post-its.......

Tuscaloosa.

mcxvi

Getting overly emotional about
an hour and a half lunch.  Smoke
rising erections.  That’s why you
need a dog on the bed at all times.

Was hot you?  I married a colorist.
                           (Bill Berkson)

I waited to take my walk, what
talk would you like to talk?

Screw US Airways.

mcxv

We Love You Internet Get Up

This is not my Bette Davis poem.
It’s about the barefoot baby that got
ousted from Burger King.  And Toby,
who wishes the rain would fuck off its
taking the piss now hehe.  You might ask

if this breaks my commitment to, what
is it they’re calling the jaded generation
these days?  What a dump!  But I’ll keep
that meter running and let you know if
anything changes.  Where was I?  Oh.

Any of you all about the beach day after
tomorrow, please turn now to the fellow
on your left and give him a good pat on
the back of his ass.  Patters and pattees,
please take immediate note of the re-

actions (yours and his) and express it in
four to eight lines, pronto. For all you
losers who left without them today,
our deacons are in the aisles now
passing out notepads and pens,

along with some coffee and hot love.
Go gentle, dear folk. They’re sick of
paperwork and they’re going to devour
each of you in two weeks flat. Which
just goes to show you should never

underestimate porn freeze. Let this be a
lesson to all of you on how much hell it takes
to dodge hired goons and lonely process servers.

mcxiv

Dark Angel vs. The Flyswatter
(aka The Casket Myth)

After all, I am The Responsible One, but
biding time for brain readjustment can be
a bitch! For example, the world is now my
oyster (or spreadsheet). So I put on a suit
and tie, go to bed at a reasonable hour, lie
there 15 minutes and WHOO I’m ex-
periencing something even better than
most dancefloors. Welcome back to
Oz! So I strip out of pinstripe and
power red (stop your niggling it’s
decade appropriate – I don’t

piss on fashion). It’s one hour since
Sunday and I’ve taken a nip,
just the weensiest sip.
It’s a magical elixir that
modestly improves my skills at
Vampire Loving Cheesecake, the
latest version of which now calls me
Daddy (and sometimes Big Daddy).

Long story short, this most culpable of
pariahs, this natty bozo, his nagging fangs
sated, now wows his fellow online crusaders
with kowtows and bow wows. Suddenly,
sunrise and all that, WHOO I’m experiencing
four times the value. And I’m two hours late.

Hot holy Garlic! I set about power-pacing
the apartment, which is some sort of disco
with nothing but nipples and feather boas
flitting about through a smoky haze. OK,
maybe it isn’t Michael Jackson in the
Burger King line, but it’s undeniable.
It’s valid! And I, Responsible One,
all groggy from fleeing deadly flying
monkeys; urgent calls from London,
Delhi and Boston; trying like mad to
get made standing up; I, dear, have had a

fabulous week so far. And how the heck are you?

mcxiii

Back to the Middle and Around Again

The codeword
is clamshell.


                             [Insert
                              picture
                              here]


Baby hollers in a field of Ritz.
                    (Bill Berkson)

Are you conscious or cous-cous,
waiting so long for easy to come?

“I come from working out.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“My brain is low.”
“No problem, let me adjust mine a little.”

Sorry about the vegetable oil,
you’re supposed to be attractive.

mcxii

How much longer is it going to take you to find yourself?

I’ve never thought non-sequiturs sad, but after reading this
EVERY SINGLE NON-SEQUITUR brings a tear to my eye.

I kid you not!

But what are we doing here?  Philosophically, I mean?
I mean life.  Like, let’s talk whenever we get back to it.

mcxi

Please wait for me to arrive it might take a while.

Please fake it for days.  Pleasant thought some
insect’s having.  Kinda like how Lyn’s Lola
really fucks with your head as you’re reading it
out loud at three in the morning.  Suddenly,
it all makes sense.  Just as suddenly, no
sense whatsoever.  Then out of nowhere,
FUCK WITH YOUR HEAD everything
so intensely un-means and you.....

Woke up this morning and wrote down
the word catharsis.  The simple life.

But wait, don’t call it a night just yet.
And pay no heed to those who whine
about the death of the attention span.

Brevity is everything.

mcx

Before our arrival at the
painted monasteries of Mol-
davia, confess me a secret:
What’s wrong with happy?

And what’s your area of ex-
pertise, anyway?  Wheatgrass?
While we’re waiting for your
answer, please perform the

following statement:
The flies like the coriander
at the Kiehl’s.

Am I not the epitome of 

creepy chic?

mcix

The cubicle is always rising

My friend describes me
better than I can. E veryone’s
either working out or complaining
how Kentucky smells like Taco Bell.
I like visiting Hell.  It gives me red satin
wings so that I can fly into and out of it.
Tuesday is the new Sunday, after all.

mcviii

Yo, Dark Planet, ride me some waves!

Don’t let me frighten you.
I’m riding this train just a
little too low, I know, but
I only like this with extra
steam.  Why’d you want a
naked pic, anyway, just to
fondle my delusion or
cuz you had a pep?
(in your step?)


Very Gemini 100%.



Oh, you’re unable to
chat now?  Fine.

mcvii

What does it mean, Dear?

The thing is we should
just pop a pill and go
to bed like right now.
I feel your presents,
know you in the al-
ready, but I’ll be
buried in Arkansas
just to belabor your
glorious point? By
and large. And grin
and bear it. Striding
your cock-certain wall-
eyed grandeur or not.
You’ve thrown block-
parties to taunt lesser
prognostications. Egg-
shells! I wanna write
poetry and my brain is
gone but you don’t
see me limiting my
self to one dead body.
Go ahead and tell me
that’s not your aiming.
My uncle’s carbuncle’s
a better sell than that
(and you’ve got the
pudding now that
you’ve friended him).
You excel in creepy
chic. I say own it
big and bonafide.
Own anything hot-
dog enough and
it swaggers with
savoir-faire. I’d
buy it a dollar
on the dime, too,
if I weren’t so damn
busy over here trying to
make my own breaks.

mcvi

Why getting words when
words was where I got
wrong.  Was starting in
the middle, OK.  OK
Bright Young Thing, if
Toilet gets empty please
replace um!  Walking
better cuz walking
causes bruises and act-
ually starts to make the
wigga wigga sense.  Like
house sense.  Like I like
exposing and some say
who didn’t.  I like for ex-
ample how she exposes her
moves, two for what they are,
and blows um into a couple
of prick-teasing billboards
humping over a field of
burning toast.  They twitch
in unison to a pre-recorded
thunderstorm.  I’m good
at all the wrong things
stop it all a you!  Stop it
all you garbled cat who’s
wet with the intrigue(uh).
Whose wet with the
trigga, the-soul-the-
mighty-trigga, who’s
blessed with the trickle
of a stinky white phlox.

mcv

the best peace

It’s nice to watch paint
fall off the ceiling while
taking a shower on a
Sunday morning.
Maybe it was the
half cup of coffee
at The Grove.
Who wants to
clean their hands
with yogurt?  Or
what the last few
empty pages of a
good book might
mean to you.  The
arguments against
objectifying are
entirely too loud.

mciv

At this time, the computer
ONLY HAS a computer.
Dancing like a slut;
the moron is the miracle.
Multi-tasked items
chemically fuse with
one another.   I
never wore those
socks.   Those were
always your socks.

mciii

I Speak Eyelash

Look, it’s a floppy dead fish
in a jar!  It’s Roger Ebert’s
glib but positive review!
I’m so happy not to turn
the channel.  Love is
Netflix, after all,
and the title on
this business card
is Pizza Nutritionist.
That’s right, baby!
Mock me and I’ll
send you to a
Fischerspooner
concert without
a date!

mcii

The Tonal Vote

“You got the safety
on?”  “Loaded poet
joke, I’ll swan!”
It’s part of want-
ing to be freaked
out, sure, yet I
went home with
him, where he
continued to
(gasp!) talk to
me!  What I
always want-
ed, bar talk in
bed.  So we
made it, I’m
letting it hap-
pen.  His words,
his face, the sin-
cerity, the kisses.
Me sober, but
so damn tired.
“Knock knock.”
“Who’s there?”
“I’ve got a
bruise on
my shin.”

mci

an already-sucked leg

You’ve got to digest.
It’s the usual for long
life.  What the hell’s
going on with us?
Okay, fine, typical.
Just racist, awkward
choreography and
our legendary wool-
iness – yet so oddly
comfortable –
like when you dance
propped up on me
some thirty minutes,
getting ridiculous.

mc

Nearly sunset in coconut milk.
                    —Jack Kimball

Working as a trailer, name-
dropping all day.  That’s
tattoo-design, for you.
My seed is such, with
its tiny cult to protect.

And thanks for Los
Angeles, Kevin,
your airport full of
superheroes and tyr-
anny.  Why not
spend $5 for a
good mood?

Rest in peace
Michael & Farrah.

mxcix

Infinite

In the dream
I’m writing
a poem
about a
dream I
didn’t have,
writing the
dream,
using it to
make a
point about 

turning dreams
into poems.

mxcviii

Sunlight Nipples

Feathery nuns
blow secretive
kisses into the
aromatic wind.

mxcvii

Witch Dial

Home is where
the hunk is.
You run into
a dream on

Church St.
Back when
the earth was
hung.  I don’t

get it, being
old-fashioned;
I’m a serious
work of

literature and
don’t need a
musuem to
prove it.

mxcvi

In Defense of Bears

That I could be reduced to a Woof!
scares the bejesus out of me.  I just
ordered a smoothie with unsweetened
soy sauce!  Link fires.  Yellow-Yellow
unscrewing a BearVault 500 in the
Adirondacks.  Finishing a book about
I don’t really know anything.  A
vacation of needing to pee.  To
mark one’s place (for posterity.

mxcv

I put too much fake sugar in it, not interested
in the perpetual coddling.  I’m sorry, did you
say something?  Send me the swoop on
Merce Cunningham.  Ocularly.

How do you know if you’re a Cylon?
Check out my niece.  It’s the
groping skeleton agreement.
That’s what rich will get you.

                             (Investigate Buddhism?  Um, right.)

mxciv

Is this rock jutting out of or entering the island?
Is it an optical illusion or another Naruto episode?
Where can I get some kombucha?
Why is it only 3:12pm? How come it’s already 3:12pm? 3:13?
Logic vs. emotion?
How many times can I already say I’m proud of you?
How many questions before I stop? Stop at 3:13! Stop!
Check balance is $216.58. Now I’m at The Grove
on Fillmore. Not a date this time, but I like it. So
I’ve parked in this area now OMG I remember
this day – three messages – three different methods
(e-, voice-, text-) to no word. This and my
correspondence with a bedrugged
yesterday, the swill of the moment,
all gone, gone, gone. Any questions
I’d be fire without now?

mxciii

I’ve been reading and writing ____,
trying to work it out with the flock,
understand what it all means, but
here I find myself a few hours later,
starting over against the carpet,
removing my shoes before
sinking into the tub. It’s
all the same, exercise for
abs, more United miles,
and it keeps us all from
having to lift ourselves
into the _____.

Let’s start over against the
carpet. Why eat for break-
fast what you already have
in your heart. Let’s remove
our shoes before sinking
into the tub and then,
no longer stanky,
collapse our toes
into a net that traps
all of the important
ingredients for the
most creative
______ of all.

Give him up
entirely! My
_____, which
is now
altogether
too _____.

mxcii

Rhyme Record with Accord

Why the appeal of dissonance? Or
why such appealing dissonance? Would
that his atonality refused me. I’m with-
drawn as if to a non-Pollack Pollack, some-
thing a magnetic mirror would exchange
with my knuckled head. And blah is the
business of it. Blah the cigarettes of
sexual internment which intend to
resist my turn-ons,
insist upon them instead.
And why should we resist? Here we
sit, right in the very front, describing
San Francisco to the Japanese. Fifteen
minutes and I have to move my car.

mxci

What a Goofness

Ford is bankrupt (Dusk settles
like a broken nose)! But I’m on
vacation at Jasmin’s, sipping
coffee through a bendy-straw.

He’s more to me than I intended.
How control-freak is that? Sip
perpendicularly (neck to torso;
bendy-straw); sip confidently

and with confidence. Dealing
with yesterday equals no
confidence. Swimming in
the ocean equals confidence.

I bet it was a sleepover!
Damn the widowered
uncle of jealousy!

mxc

Edgy Digester

At all costs, avoid saying anything
about your sexual philosophy
now that you’re the star of
your very own plush doll.

Ah world don’t sit too neatly gas-like in a dent!
(Bill Berkson)

Met a fella name of Christopher: slim,
tall & pharmaceutical.  Took him back
to the Mickey Mouse and then we
walked all the way to San Diego.

Did a lot of walking on vacation.

mlxxxix

Why can’t I write a book called Fraud?
                                             —Norma Cole

A meeting of the fraud
in whatever space this is,
living high and well on
Tuesday-the-new-Monday.
I call it EXIT with no holes,
no visible holes but a blank
to move toward, some dim
and perhaps hallucinated bubble
blown by a child with implausible patience.

mlxxxviii

In the garage of the father
waiting on time. Some
sort of 5-year long
anxiety attack. One
year I’d rather not
forget, no notes
available. Dis-
remember bath-
room catalog,
Sears, with side-
ways smile and
studio map of the
stars. Trying not
to be handsome
with evil grin and
stopped-up wink
doesn’t work. You’re
powder blue above the
rest. A kind of picnic
stapled up the side of a
Disney ride and downed
with 800 milligrams of
Motrin (no more laughing
gas). Meanwhile, back
at the ranch, the toolshed
wriggles under the thumb
of a typhoon. A set of
chopsticks are torn from
a potato salad. Dill is
in the air; an ice box
creeps across a yard
of concrete, rowdy as
a fourth quarter Tiger
touchdown at the
county line.

mlxxxvii

My feelings
just bit the
dust after a
whole year!
Yoohoo,
I’m in favor
of naughty
pisses. Just
ask your drug
problem.
Somebody
please help me
fix everything.
Remember,
sweet love is
a birthday and
I’m still alive
messing this
one up. So,
Faces with
Roses, go
do yourself
some flavors
and buy me a
Zippo. Or is
your clouds
too swollen?
Jeez I meant
zippers but
whatever,
shush and
forget the
whole thing.
Just allow me
the honor of
massaging
your beautiful
hairy legs.
Super-wow!
Shrug.

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.