mccxcvi

Like a good lifeguard
molds and kneads
to the shape
of each breath.

Like the Big Dipper
tucked into a silhouette
of trees.

Did it ever!

mccxcv

and the fear of dying of shark
                                 —Steve Carey

Wake up without a dictionary.  It’s raining
birds down your walls, tails up, beaks down.
Outside it’s lush, you get up shortly after
four in the morning and let the cold rain
spit onto your scalp, the rest of you is
buried in warmth.  The pool is dark
but there’s a couple of blue lights
overhead.  Who am I trying to
portray that I am?

There were no rehearsals and he was
definitely bored.  Until the video loop
of him dancing when he was a kid
with his sister, naked but for a
pink scarf.

You and your blackberry trim.  Ready
for the exhalation of surf.  The pitter-
patter of rain.  Driving down the
Pacific Coast Highway in your
pink Toyota (a color you call ‘dusty rose’).

mccxciv

Space Dick

I woke at least every hour
in the rain.  It’s easy to
throw away money.

Smoke heavily warmed me.
Odd, a bit.  I should have
nothing whatsoever

to complain about.  It
was exciting to be out
in the rain at 5am on a

Saturday.  Don’t ruin
your lawn.  There was a
big splash.  It was just another

wind-up duck.  Then I graduated
without wearing a tie; I will
never wear a tie again.

I guess I’m bitter.  Which
he helped show me.  Let’s
soak in this talk over a

dead horse.  This time we’re
from Rome.  It annoys
no one; such freedom.

The man shot from the cannon
landed on my heart but bounced
into my brain.  The

performance felt good.
We showed up
like sports.

mccxciii

A Beetle

Dusk saws the light off the mountain
with a smelly skunk.  Don’t need any
glasses (for eyes or for water).  The
earth rings damp with importance
like a monster sewn into the cover
of a chair that turns out to be a grey
rose.  The stuff of the gods.  The
stuff of deep-tissue massages.

It crawls into a little nook atop the
plywood cabinet.  I had just watched
a video of two guys playing with an
anteater.  They didn’t look particularly
respectful but they played respectfully.
It’s a world of mud out the door.  An
insect somehow manages.  Squeezes
into an empty drawer.

Bugs love sex.  I imagine prison
lonely.  This is harsh, awkward,
inadvertent, sweet?  Like the all-
knowing mirror centered over the
cabinet which tilts a little after a
pre-dawn temblor.  I sleep right
through it with a hard-on, some
dream of chasing vague laughter
and slow-motion lingerie in
mesmerizing color.

This vivid fantasy dissipates
and I awaken to the beetle
clawing sluggishly into its
plywood coffin.  A few books
and a journal have fallen to the
floor, sharp light from the window,
He says he won’t go to Venice...
it’s too romantic...it’ll make
him think of me and cry....

mccxcii

Night squandered on a streetlamp
                                —Keith Waldrop

I’m leaning over the edge of the month.
If I say January was rough will
August be better?

Taking photograph of a discarded calendar,
a bronze-haired lady crosses the street
toward me, thickly accented (Eastern
Europe?) says You like the calendar?
You can have the calendar.

How much to take out of me...The
dance of importance...Wondering
about tonight...I could convince him?

Tired of thinking or worrying or talking
on a blanket of pitch. Lean over to swim
in it. The painted clouds move from corner
to corner and the whine about the shower
upstairs.   Swim into it.

A friend says he’s got two dates lined up
for the weekend. When it rains it pours.

July evaporates the bead of sweat off
Richard Widmark’s brow before it
rolls down his nose into a
crumpled wad of cellophane.

I shake his leg gently to wake him. He
jumps up. You fucking asshole, he says.

mccxci

We love a good mystery,
right?

The cat stretches
over the headboard
to peer down at
something important.

I hear the upstairs neighbor’s
phone vibrating.  (I think.)

Little boxes of pills
in the corner.
Trying to
nibble me up.

Something.

So simple as noticing
what would ordinarily
be overlooked.  (That’s too easy.)

This place is a snake.

The lens
catches a crease
the eye doesn’t.

(Claim when it rains
it
pours.)

A biography of
keep trying.

mccxc

Being porn isn’t everything.

Can you please check how many
chickens we have? I’ve gone too far,
I know, but don’t be shy about it, k?

Robots are interested in being made,
but eventually it gets tiresome. Did I
mention him trying to nibble me up last

weekend? No, weekend before last.
Why is it such a big deal,
conversation?

I’m only a partial specialist so I need
a little help with the plug. But you have
no right to be ideal. It’s the

cute music of fate, this. Sit with me
quiet and don’t spoil the coffee.
Kiss me when it’s delicious.

There, I said something.

mcclxxxix

In your eyes shampoo is a rug treatment.
                              —Alan Bernheimer

Did he just use the word irrefragably?
Now I’m broke.  Or at no money,
which is a form of broke, right?

What an awesome O!  Makes me
write for no reason, brings many a
swollen and felicitous night.

Brings new meaning, makes me
rhyme for reason.  Somebody
looking smart in a suit for lunch,

performing Who Is React?
of an evening, dancing
End-up all night,

hair smelling
all menthol
and olive.

mcclxxxviii

Bring on the gongs!  Your
fiery ears have touched each
corner of the earth.  And my
forehead.  I love you so!

mcclxxxvii

Football Music

The acoustics of the heart matter
little in hell.  That was the moral
of the bedtime story, as I recall.

Julie from band camp was no
swimmer, but she broke hearts
by the dozen.  I’m glad God

doesn’t have to worry about
high blood pressure.  The
New York School are over-

due a few men in leather.
Look!  His goatee matches
his bright orange heart.

mcclxxxvi

Everybody looks alike. Pyramids.
                           —Keith Waldrop

Ate one of his bananas this morning
and a date tonight.  Got a quick note
from the relationship: eventual.

But instead, kind of settled into the
single talk, next couple of months.
It’s no wonder you lost your prawn.

What do you call the fear of your
laptop being stolen while you’re
on the toilet?  Probably.  This town

has forgotten me.  I am to the task.
Explain over smoke the difference
between the forest and the trees.

Or something like that.  They both
occurred.  And I am not.  Now I
see what the week’s brung me.

And it is good.

mcclxxxv

Some people are
grossed out by you.

Sorry, I peed on it.

mcclxxxiv

I’m sorry you
had to get
through a
fair amount
of crummy
just to get here.

It’s never been
an honest business.

mcclxxxiii

I wouldn’t want to look at you
in my mirror but I love your
new way of being.

What’s that noise?

It’s just the refrigerator
you wore out.

So we’re back to springtime
and the springs
of hopes
and wishes.

Kate Moss looks lovely today.

That wouldn’t be my
first reaction.

I’m worn out by morning.
Morning is never the right
metaphor for the internet.

I told you looks could kill.

mcclxxxii

Must be the Apocalypse

There’s just no getting around it:
you’re a freak of nature.  Which hit

came first: It’s Raining Again or
It’s Raining Men?  Perhaps we’re

all staring too hard into the
volcano.  Or reading too many

poems about maps.  That could
be it.  Any activity may produce

music (Keith Waldrop).  Like
Joseph Gordon-Levitt on the

cover of Nylon, we all
ache for French girls.

And with those taut
red ears they each

hear us complain
about the noises the

paper makes, the
noisy blankets hidden

in closets.  And like
peevish hair appearing

on pimpled faces our
clucks emerge from

behind each closed
door:  Music, what

honeyed music!

mcclxxxi

What fine whistling!  You’re quite a
whistler!  Thoughts caught in the steam
off piss.  I’m having an average day and,
me being average, it’s not so bad.  Why

dream, anyway?  Last night I took Dodie’s
writing class and my project was to get
all the men to masturbate in the shower
together.  It was an all-male class (that’s

so me, right?).  The showers only fit
two-to-one, so everyone had to pair
up.  Somehow it was agreed-upon,
and I got Tom, my first boyfriend.

But most everyone was done by the
time we started—half the class could
see into our shower, so I was just
too self-conscious to enjoy it.  Otto

is moderately amused by the dream,
one that woke me with the thud of
relevance, as dreams can do.  Maybe
I just needed to pee.  My eyesight

is going.  Let’s backpack around
the Mediterranean.  Nothing to
wrap around that dream except
fire sirens.  Upset about a fat

breakfast, calm it down with a
trek for vegetables between
rainshowers.  Two pots of
coffee, a banana, and a fitful

nap.  Good things come
in spurts.  I’m fresh out.
Wake up to pretty coos
and the notion of an

all-day sofa.  Dodo’s
at Sugar.  We’ve a
date after class.

mcclxxx

Fear of the Waitress

That’s the problem with fiction is a
double negative. We like cancer
in our coffee, for example. What
hideous rumors abound! I’m with
the lemur, prefer toasted rice in my tea.

It’s impossible to slow down the busy
bee jokes. It’s impossible to gut this
bear of a rainstorm. I’m impossible.
Damn jackhammering, and can’t
find my inner-city facial. But

now I understand why you were
quoting the Eurythmics. No
matter, I still can’t get the
onion off my eyes.

mcclxxix

Pedal creaks. Tone rotten.
                        —Keith Waldrop

The shadow-shadow accidentally feels a
raindrop.  Is it a time warp?  Perhaps.  Oh,

how the Tenderloin has aged.  I wander lost,
one greasy spoon in search of another.  Does’

eyes tend to startle cars and freeze fists.  I’m
too cold to think sock-footed.  But the kitchen

is a mess!  Leaving on a jet plane on Thursday,
stressing about the shape of class, calling to

schedule racquetball, no instant messenger.
Cedar confirmed for the 26th.  110 more to go.

mcclxxviii

Extinguish the gingerbread as seen from a broad.

           we have unity
           in spades
           temps with perms
           the pace of a sphinx
                           —Alan Bernheimer

The rim of your mouth
is crisp to the touch.

Such is the desert on a
spoony afternoon.

I’m swallowed up.  Fucked up every-
where with a slight headache,

but angst-ridden mice sometimes find
Xanax-laced cheese.

My quest is neither
endless, nor a fight to the death.

I’m only here for the money.  Spirits
generally higher than the weak.

Sobbing her eyes out because
she lost the audition.

I wonder if they serve quesadillas
at Quetzal.  One might imagine....

Sedation is such a cautious
killer, isn’t it?

mcclxxvii

This morning I’m woozy but artsy.  Make
infinite with shower, first in forever.  Off the
phone with an ear infection on my mind.
That one sort of crept up on me.

I mapped it out where I’m the geezer.  Lost
track of minutiae, but I always do.  And
then you came along.  Guffaw.

It was all in a day’s work.  The cat’s got a
fuzzy attached to one of her whiskers,
keeps breathing it astir.  She’s watching an
airplane fly over a glass of water.  I’ve an

imprecise pain in my jaw.  Something awry
in a sinus.  Or maybe I just went to bed
with a hangover.  What a pill.

That’s me on the floor.  And brunch?  It’s
inevitable and it draws Brahms all the way
from uptight.  Slender furniture line the
room which juts like a jaw over the sea.

Perhaps we’re all inbred.  I count the
seconds after each stroke of lightning,
each number sounds unfamiliar; I’m a

bumbling, faltering happenstance.  Atop
the stairs a yawning dog crumples into
a comfortable position atop a pile of
Polaroids.  Jeez, how the minutes

creep.  I peck at the water ’til I have to
pee.  It’s nine o’clock and I make infinite
shower, a crock at rock, a tease at ease.

mcclxxvi

Hook-up: A casual sexual encounter with no future
                commitment to maintaining a relationship.
                                                 —The Internet

mighty mouse: the way we were.

carrier pigeon: a bird drunk with love and no tongue for a postage stamp.

hook, line & sinker: but I don’t even know her!

mcclxxv

Everything is such a big secret.  Why can’t we just
play out in the open?  There are such peculiar ideas
in the world.  We should go to sleep with them all.

I remember curiosity.  It strikes me like a pillow at
camp or a lazy massage therapist on my foot.  I’m
embarrassed that you’re embarrassed and I don’t

understand this game of let’s not say too much or
else he’ll know what I’m saying.  Do I do this?
It’s too much to hear.  Do we sit in the drizzle ’til

the sun rises?  I’m not even sure I have the date
correct but this is how I get my culture.  Getting a
Brazilian, for example, is an act of poetry.  It’s

a poem being unwritten.  I’m not even sure if I
have the date correct.  Apply the skin softener and
let the cat do all the work.  I can’t remember a thing

but I’m sure I’m getting fucked somehow.

mcclxxiv

I found the gap in your
attention span. It hugs a
pink bag full of chipped
saucers. And it’s cold.

Could we end it here,
before the next commer-
cial? I’ve said a million
times I don’t think so.

All of a sudden nothing
is familiar. It doesn’t
matter which lung goes
first just give it the old

heave-ho, right? Wake
at four in the morning
to a tenebrous fenestra-
tion. Get your act to-

gether. Then go nine
years without a shower.
It’s pretty easy, isn’t it?

mcclxxiii

For that matter
lint used to be your clothes
                 —Alan Bernheimer

A breezy rain takes over the week.

You’re a sensation
means something about what
being an actor has to do with self-esteem.

I think I remember what I’m doing now.

The bathroom gets done.  The cat
plays with herself.

I have to fill in the codename
but it’s really a find-a-boyfriend
project. Project Codename.

If it’s in the bag is it
decapitated?

mcclxxii

One word to make it endless.  Trace
the ignorance of bliss back to some-
thing raw.  The sting of innocence
on a stone floor.  So overrated it’s

fantastic.  Sneeze.  In an attempt to
stretch the night out like a yawn.
Sit on your face, some genetic
loophole.  It begins today.

To fill in the blank.  I saw you
on the wire.  Held you in a
million pieces.  Words are
trunks sawed open.  Half

here.  So that the pixels
actually spark.  What a
turkey, choking the air
out of the sky again.

mcclxxi

Most have secret code
near butt.  That party
only horny.  Say a
piece of gum then.

Near butt?  No,
chew.  Down
water-pipe til
chute it or

chute at it.  I
spy.  This is
normal?  OK.
Try pepper

then.  Ask
waiter hot.
Yep.  Hot
mustard

I mean.
Such
secret
horny

chew
down
butt
pepper.

mcclxx

I feel like shackles now.  Heli-
copter circling overhead.  Metal
or glass on my teeth, uncertain.
A glass of water in the distance.

Focus on going hungry.  The
dormitory’s sole webcam.
Piecemeal thoughts.  Exist-
entialism and paranoia.

Each stanza is a window
with a view of only one
tree.  You had because I
wanted.  Only that one tree.

Rainy writing.  Sleet in a
glass of water that exists.
Hungry for shadows or
Colorado.  Unshackled

focus, leaning in on
winter. Dried rinds
at the foot of a pine.
A knotted whirl of

needles.  Kneads
whorl.  Needles’
needless words.

mcclxix

I go to bed mathematician
wake up closeted heap. A
heap in the closet worth two
in the bush? Maybe. But
don’t crotchet. If wishes
fools, an apple a day, etc.

I’d cry at pop-tarts, smooth
butter my tears. Don’t
yell at me dating getting
anything but sex. I’m dis-
something. Dissatisfied,
dissipating. It gets my

goat until I’m fried. I
feel right now I have
nothing to feel guilty.
Only responsible
shackles a tundra
without lotion.

Mocks my heap? A-
wake is not always
more alive. A good
thing you walked in.
A tussle over love is

worth every scrape.
I’m no closeted met-
aphor anymore, linger
at every nib of your
sass and your coaxing.

Gentle anniversary of
my thawed-out winter
come hither. A yawn-
ing sofa warmer than
a tanning bed. My

Florida. My
Miami.

mcclxviii

A Tomb of Spaghetti

Onward, soldier! You’re looking
fist to mouth. Beware of the
worst nightmares and sick
balls of meat. Stop talking
on the verge of tears and
cue up dinner. A
big spoon of heaps
of just no good. Make things
100% lovely after speeding through
really nice and we shouldn’t hang out
any more. What? Order more belching
into the telephone. I was speechless
dating him. Call me up you can’t
even think. Done with seeing
someone Tuesday. Murder
a bloody tissue. Yeah,
I thought so Mister
Fakester, Mister
Sauce in your Cups.
And I toasted you, too.
Mister Sinister with the
woody chianti of a
bled-out heart.
I toasted your face
to the spoons of Miami
til your hide was an umber
to behold. You’re no good to
my mouth til that fizzled fist
pops it off the green. All good
oak goes to toothpick. Amen,
soldier. Amen, fizzled fist.

mcclxvii

The idea of me deeply. And treason
of the mouth. I go in the moaning
of the blue moon. Not knowing
which time zone to live. Hugging
and chattering down the street.
Passing the Starbucks bathroom
lady. Passing the all-night security
clerk who digs a newspaper out of
the trashcan and reads it all the way
home. I harness my bitch like a
jaw, the ego of me. For practice
I ask to be pictured as dog. Not only
chained up but happy, beatific. Going
to heaven on the couch with two flirts
bound by leather. Which me submits
to the deep daddy, newsless me or
trash-heap me? Flaw the record.
I’m a dark street 5am waiting
to breathe. It’s not night-time
sulks. More glistens with
attention, rapt. You take
cellophane. I tinfoil. Fold
in until it matters. Trust
develops as lightning rod.
Breathe in deep knowing
plastic pops time into
jaw-dust.

mcclxvi

maybe peanut butter would be better
                                  —Lyn Hejinian

I’m ice skating for the first time ever.
What’s my age?  Try text house.
Nobody.  I don’t want to believe
that I am disputed.  That I’m a big
disputed.  Louis returns fork to the
road.  Bummer.  Quiet evening
otherwise.  Like being kidnapped
by a murderer.  Or the world on
the brink of a nuclear war (does any-
one think about nuclear anymore?).
There were others.  They were vivid.
I stand in the drizzle in awe, which is
a mouth open to drizzle with a thirsty
tongue.  Ice skating is pretty easy.
We finish and rush back up the
hill.  Champagne for everyone.
Then we argue til sunrise.  The
consensus: I’m a dispute.  Isn’t
that reality?  I’m just a big dispute.

mcclxv

A piece of spaghetti stuck on the stove.
I give it a kissy and scrape it up. I
can’t go back to nowhere, learn all
over again each friend’s camera
boundaries. Album etiquette?
We’re all family, dammit!
Something to quibble over
on some other Thanksgiving.
Wrap it up and put it in the
fridge, where it’ll stay for a
week or so. But wait, the
disposal’s dead. What of
the rotting hamhocks and
what of the over-crocked
black-eyed peas? Let
Nixon rest under a wreath
made of iPods as the gas-
lines burst into clover-
like curlicues. Let’s
nip and tuck ourselves
into the teenagers we
can’t remember. Dig
up the stuffed swan
I won next to the
Muscle Man
tent. My-
self, a dry-
throated
swan.

mcclxiv

Nowhere.  And fast.

This is my last day of doing this.
I promise.

Here’s a salty boat of memory
and marble,

like Facebook trivia or
SuperPoke in Surround Sound.

Heather Locklear took the
gay out of Dynasty.

Quotes and misquotes are
crumpled and thrown at me

(Are they teasing?  Thrown in
disdain?  Just trying to get my

attention?).  Dad meets Jesus
in a back alley, but he’s

not the real Jesus.  The real
Jesus is at home walking across

your swimming pool into the
arms of your lovely wife.

mcclxiii

Leo explains how I’m a lucky guy
with all the eights and threes in my
numbers as I buy my third iPhone.
Leo is beautiful and I’d buy three
more iPhones from him. I would.
Then I appear onstage as Bob Hope
first time in how many years? Hit
shuffle on 442 favorite songs of
the year. Read five books of
poetry at once. The best year
I ever had.

mcclxii

Hail Mary of the Broken Thumb!

It’s another morning that lasts a week
and I’ve yet to breakfast.   The new year
is full of lost elves and I’m Mrs. Claus?

I’m having Hulu for lunch, watching the
rapture on American Dad.   Negotiate
6-year old handwriting.   Is this really

I’m fuck.   Just really Santa hate it?
Omit this memory altogether.
Upload proper zipping and

forget the bank to boot.
What’s best for a concussion,
a splinter or a splint?

mcclxi

One of my lungs is stuck in my throat.
Nothing paradisal about karaoke.
But it keeps memory in check:

               a world sated
              with white pear

Holy smoke paradisal! Pay $800 for
cacophony. Sound in Surround (trademark).

J. Geils Band: You’re Gettin’ Even
                        While I’m Gettin’ Odd

Lunch is but a bland token in a
godforsaken tundra. Then hot stuff.
Then laughter and table talk.

I’m so lonely I dance on the coffee table.

Then a pie made of six years as it
snows 10 inches in Seoul
(the heaviest in 70 years).

I love snow.

mcclx

Feeling good about myself.
It is not two in the morning.
The beach is filled with
dribbled figs (misreading
Hejinian) and I am full
of water.

great upward follows
            —Lyn Hejinian

Trying on nicknames of
little or no significance:
Professor
Jiminy Cricket
Dammit Sandwich

Can’t think no more.
Surrogate student,
already feeling like
a new decade.

mcclix

Maybe we can do something Friday.
Or during the weekend like a ghost.
Is Dr. Joyce Brothers still alive?

mcclviii

You offer me waking up with laughter
on the last day of the year.

Yo, plumed Watson, diggeth this!  And
many kinds of scruff forthwith.

You, you.  (Oh the years in warp drive!)

Called Hark the Harold last night but
haven’t heard back from him.

You!  You!  Offer me waking up.
Offer me waking up with laughter

on this fine and final day of
an all-too-warped decade.

mcclvii

i feel a fever.
i feel like fever.
feels like fever.
got a fever?
plus i stink.
but i look like christmas.

mcclvi

My mind is a milkshake. Now I understand
why she’s a language poet. People change,
though, and get dragged onto dancefloors
or out to his car to get willingly draped.
Rest of the night belongs to come home
with me. He’s so subtle under the covers.
What a mouse! We run into the rest of
the night, straightforward with no games.
Back to his car for more handsome and
somewhat vulnerable. He’s just nice
and comes home Jesus. Not like juice
or Diet Coke. That’s really the last
time I talked with him. It was
lovely and interested. What a
mousy slurry with artificial
inhibitors. I’m just the cat
the rest of the night
belongs to, the bark
of the willingly crêped.
Come home with me.
Mouse. Chest. Anymore.
Last night’s dance is this week’s
fog. Anyone? I’m straightforward,
nice, handsome with no games, and
milkshake. People change, though.
Now I understand why they get dragged
onto dancefloors and willingly moused.
It’s Sunday night with a movie. I have a
date with artificial, run it back and forth
and get rid of all of the evidence. Lovely.
Juicy. Jesus and Diet Coke. It’s two for
Tuesday and I have a date with my head.
He comes handsome and mouse with
sand and fog in Indonesia.
I called a clump of it.
But I haven’t heard back. He’s so
subtle under the covers but disappears into an
artificial slurry of air. Anyone? What a mouse!

mcclv

Cavity Search Manual

Your voice blinks as your sex develops.  It’s
Friday in the Castro of depravity.  Gone are the

Nine and the Five (oh forward slash forward slash!)
and the moth-eaten year when a spate of scrawny

Christmas trees grew crooked, up and out of the
mudded cattle-pond.  But a big hearty hello to the X

and to the resounding O.  He who was always fodder
for my peaches and cream.  Look even now how cherry-

colored jelly clumps like cavities into each Japanese
pretzel that he’s cleverly twisted (and in pencil!).

There he goes again.  And what significance!
Cut like Saturday night (with Monday a holiday!)

and wearing that soft-core grin, like he was only
just teased into showing up. Such spirit!  It’s a

good thing I gargle.  Tiny green spit-cups
line my hotel sink.  I pronounce each.

“Masatet.”  “Takato.”  “Yakeshi.”
“Katsatsu.”  Only to end this dream

of “When are we going to get married?”
with “Keep in mind the circle we’re all

part of.”  Or parted of.  “Huh?” says I,
and slap a flirt onto the Great Whatever.

Round and round like that until we find our
sticky boredom shushed and stuck in paper caps

like chewed up stucco walls.  Then we head up-
stairs to fly our plastic knives and kites.  Open

wide and step inside.  “Here’s our master
boardroom, sir.”  Blankly blink and ash a little

(as we saints often do).  “Yes [pant pant] our
boudoir, Master.”   “[Echo] Master.”

“[Echo] Master.”

mccliv

It’s a hungry dusk.  The yappy dog
barks a dank growth into our eggnogs

and the hungover elevators sulk
“They’re at it again!” to the

half-eaten ice boxes.  “Hey,
little Knock Knock, you’re no joke!”

is Eggy’s wry reply (having arrived for dinner
with nothing but a jingle bell and a starched

persimmon poached with Milky Way).
December slashes its dividends

and Christmas grimly reaps (for it is
said that those who hath not worry less).

“Yes, sir!”  Yet meanwhile, all along the
Bible Belt, ceramic snowmen disagree.

They only accede (and with icy
hearts that rarely melt) like yappy

dogs’ yapless neighbors. They glower,
however (and they glower beigely!), over

each freshly-hewn wound that blisters into a
veritable snow angel that’s been slapped all

nasty onto their various sexless middles
and their hoary throatlessnesses.

And then, with all the doughy stealth
that each can muster, they reach up and up

into their frosted bath-cabinets for a few
penguin-covered band-aids. Thus it is

(and just as thus it always will be) when
tightly screwed-on pairs of coal-cropped,

carrot-shadowed lips are caught all but
unawares and hit like a pipe-fitter’s

rock-laden stocking with a
lusty welder’s gassy breath.

mccliii

Nostalgia is memory decayed to sugar...
                     —Donna Stonecipher

“It’s just psychological,” you say,
this buzzing in my ear when I think

of you.  “What are we going to do,” I
ask, “just keep undressing each other

with our eyes?”  But I can’t take it,
this story that’s always foaming at

the mouth.  “Who said that?”
There he comes grinning,

eye contact, an erotic clash of
cymbols.  What a city, Psycho-

logy!  Its bees, its gnats, its big
hairy mosquitoes.  “Maybe I just

got too close to the smoke machine,”
I say as I crawl through an unknown

hallway leaving a cold trail of slime.

mcclii

Each line foams at the mouth.
The poem whoops and thumps
like it’s been DJ’ed right.  A
churchbell rings in the distance

fourteen times.  In a daze I must’ve
leaned a little into your boogie,
whispered into your ear how it’s
entirely too hot.  No matter what I do

I step another foot toward the door,
I step another foot toward the door,
and another and another and another.
Each step foams at the mouth

with all its whumps and bumps
that make no sense but stir a
magical breeze around our
eardrums.  No matter how

hot we get no matter how rabid
we bite I follow its sputtered
rhythm all the way it goes:
always back around again to you.

mccli

Banged my head in the noggin
just to burn his house down.

He swung his head like a bat.
“I’m a lover not a fighter,” he said.

“I give you five stars
cuz I ain’t comin’ back.”

mccl

A Meeting with Romance Ends the Romance

Twirling plates to the rescue.  A diva full of
tissues.  A mousy dervish.  These are but a

few of the rogues of excess.  Take one out
on a date with fish breath.  Navel-gaze at

architectural nodes, navels you can’t wipe
off your ass, much less your face.  She’s

the diva of navels, you might say.  And
you’re just another hardnosed ranger abreast

of danger.  You’re just abreast, so to speak,
in and out, in and out, as Friday develops.

It’s the march of a bumpkin gone city.
“Meet me at Mouthwash,” you might say,

“Third and Architecture.”  Roger that.
Roger with his butt up to the air.

“Roger, Roger!” echoes the butt.
Good ol’ jolly Roger.

mccxlix

I wish to be thankful.

Most of us had already stripped.
Here we were in the city full of
cocks on poles.

“This fence keeps you in the womb.
It’s what we call a warm room.”

So we do find ourselves thankful.

“What are you going to get?”
“Hmm, worms.”

mccxlviii

“Yes, and perhaps a paper towel
or two,” he says, trying to be

funny.  Obviously we’ve gone
too far.  Would you like to walk

down to Walgreen’s with me at
3am?  He’s still reading arguments

into the night, flashpoints of anger
and jealousy.  O’Hara, my brother,

my incarnation, I’m just a draft sit-
ting in a fixture.  I’m a few pages of

romance, a dime a dozen, trying to
breathe during a rainstorm.  I am SF.

We pocket our hotel soup and
head out before the storm arrives.

mccxlvii

But did you see what just happened?
Tyler came on Jesse’s ass and

shoving it inside of him.
I see that you’ve soured

a little bit.  Who’s the
fancypants, now?  Sure,

we wanted to see that
cute butt and stuff.  He

puts his finger to his teeth
to think about it more.  In-

spired, he traces a circle
onto his underpants.

mccxlvi

Vanity plate.

Went to the doctor for a cornmeal
abscess, says “You need a smoke?”
“Not any more, doc.”
Good to know.


Love rains in California.

With a Mercedes he’s stunning,
somewhat introspective, reserved,
well-balanced, intelligent, and I just
told him so.  Mellow?

mccxlv

Honey, can you bring me the Windex?

Our stars align.  We go all out to fool folks
with our key to the city made of gold.

I find you in the kitchen with a banana.
How can I be so cold?  I change the subject,

feeling inadequate.  Sign me up for a lack of
focus, a paltry article on Whitman, Red River,

2010, 2004, homosexual San Francisco,
attributed to Twain, my biggest problem.

Then walk away.  To auto.  Automobile.
Remember to focus on that game.

mccxliv

Nothing on earth is doable.

Some pornstar stole my name.
Bitch!  This time I’m Ron,
coming as Hercules.
Better watch out.

mccxlii

A little morning rain for the
smoke in your eyes.  You make
beefy dreams smack of makeshift.

We’ve met like this for daydreams
then you’re out the door and me
always horny for a little more.

Beefcake this, pipe dream!
You could be as much trouble
and maybe worse!  It’s why I

like you, right?  So crawl into bed
with why not, whisper how it’s
only cuz your bunk is burning.

This goes on for days over a
junket of dreamed email.  Sleep.
A junco flutters at your ear,

its pipe lit with meat sends
up a mere bacony wisp.  And
you smother it with the covers.

Outside a little drizzle turns to
sleet.  You wake to what looks as
hoarfrost, blink a bit to melt a

salty glaze, and exhale a wintry
exhaust.  I can’t get you out of
my mind.  We’ve met like this

before.  A warmth like extra
breath beneath my blanket.
A day or so passes.  I open a

door to vapor, a wisp of what
was never there.  I burn the toast
Thanksgiving morning.  This goes on

all winter.  You blink a bit.  And
January.  A frozen smokestack.  A
warm dream of rain.  Opens a door.

You enter out of nothing, real and
full of warmth, kick out all the junk
til I’m awake, and all I’m ever is yours.

mccxli (2)

Look who’s pining.  Him,
happiness.  I came home

smiling.  One more thing
on top of the night.  He

calls.  He’s finished his
shift and clearly unnerved

at my ignorance.  He walks
us out the door, maybe

smiling a little.  I say
nothing but a little

voice mail.  I’m
glad he seems OK.

But even a wisp of a
feeling can be messy.

Check my pulse but feel a
nerve, a tinkle of memory

that gropes me in an old
elevator.  A bouquet

dangles and (SLAM!)
against the cage with a

bucket of teeth.  That
old familiar feeling

and I’m back at the
arcade, slow to

swallow another
filthy quarter.

mccxli

Patrick Duffy walks Patrick
Duffy out to pasture.  Okay,

Sleepyhead, I think my head is
squished.  But this time I

remember!  He was dancing
with a guy I’d never seen

and it felt really good.  Like I
had truly completed the night.

And when he left I just
stood up and crowed.

Go to bed at seven, pass out in
pewter.  Patrick mows the lawn.

Patrick roams over the loam
and moos.  A machine

comes over, digs a pond
out of the middle.  Patrick

moans.  I walk over to him at
midnight, drunk by the moon

and Mad Dog, whistle at the
pond with a Christmas tree

sunk in the middle, remember
the duck feet I woke up to

but not how to get rid of them,
wanting to swim like Nick,

happy as a fish.  The TV looms,
rising to oppose its camera.

Patrick thrusts.
Patrick parries.

mccxl

It’s a bitch-crank hope,
this interval between
dropping and chopping.

Save it for the center,
its melting or exploding.
We crow, listening to

music.  Dancing with a
big guy who’s left of
center.  Who’s left?

Our chops, I suppose.
Whetted at midnight,
but drying in recompense.

Give a guy some butter,
will ya?  says the red hen.
Says the dead red hen.

mccxxxix

The city glimmers.  Someone needs to
teach that kid a thing or two.  You can
see how he ages from page to page, an
elegant maturation.  So why me now?

It’s Thanksgiving and God is in my
pants.  Yoga seems to have helped.
But that was years ago.  Then he was
sleepy and amazing right here in my

cellphone.  Said he wouldn’t come
home with me, come instead tomorrow.
I’m not really that fucked up but words
excite me.  Some words.  Some I still

have to teach him.  Like tomorrow.
Which can be fleeting.  Like the
solace just before dawn.  A
choking night, its gesture of

death a brightening.  Salted
with a few stars.  A cool
gesture.  The opposite
of ‘hair-raising’.

Go to sleep, kid.
Tomorrow my mouth
is sewn shut.  You’ll find
what you need as I fade from

page to page.  Oh, see me now,
an anchor to an invisible age,
with an elegant wisp of snow
atop my head?            No?

mccxxxviii

She sees my mark too late.
We’re dripping like hives
(hot as thieves).  It’s only
seven but we take what we
can muster.  I ask if she
comes here often.  She’s
pink and red stuff, growing
more concerned as the night
progresses.  “I like my work,”
is all she says.  I’m in agree-
ment, scamming like the
Gemini I’ve become.
We dance and we
dance.  Until I get
a letter from Simon.
“Fucked up and gloriously
scoping.”  Stop.  “Found
some hot Latin.”  “Found
some,” she grins?  And
gives the most amazing
blow job, rest assured.
Sure enough it is proven.
Here.  And yet again.
It’s the fourteenth of
something in the dead
of winter.  The winter
of the gutted book.
The winter of the
sweaty pockets.

mccxxxvii

Is once forever?

He wandered through the overgrowth
until he found a closet he could
cry in. Hotels are like that.

Text is want. Often without subtext.
I mean context. No subterfuge,
just GIMME.

Arriving so nice, he took what was
gotten. We go there often with
my wants. Was once

the first time? Does that make it
always? Only fourteen
is forever.

mccxxxvi

Where’s your liquid access?

It’s my secret wife. How I know
I’m safe. [He scratches his zither.]

Before that we had a gun. But
it wouldn’t listen. Too scary for

words. Then he had a hip replace-
ment, having just arrived. His

sole purpose of seeing me.
Hide what’s easy (his

hide so easily spent). My,
what a gun! [He eats his

bullets.] I spend the
rest of the night

with the
plasma TV.

mccxxxv

I threw a lighter into the sink.
It bounced back and bit me
on the leg.  Bad mojo.

Which is more tired,
threesomes or this
conversation?

I blew a hole into the week.
It wasn’t a big enough
hole.  I blow again.

I’m a ‘good boy’ because
I get up to leave before
anything ‘bad’ happens.

Throw the dog into a
corner four times.
Fourteen times.

mccxxxiv

Patrick Duffy walks Patrick Duffy
out of the picture.  Or so I thought
or so it seems something hours after.

What happened is I’m glad I’m
not him.  So far.  I realize I’m high
when I look up at the sun.  With whom

I no longer have a chance.  We’re all
back with someone else now.  And
moving on just fine.  Like the man

from Atlantis who dissolves into
pewter.  He’s through with being
someone else.  Is it a problem

of any kind?  Maybe I’m just too
watery, fall asleep on the toilet.
What did Patrick really do with

Patrick?  The word’s a lonely
hole sunk too deep into my head.
It’s way out of the picture.  Way

out of the picture now.

mccxxxiii

Terrible Delusional

But I
do like what the cat’s saying to the curtain.
“It’s a revolution at the Pilsner!” [Kisses
boss in public. “Meow.”]

Is it Adam or is it the snake? You, too,
can have a better physique
in two weeks.

“You seem really close is this thing accurate?”
“I’m sorry but my nipples aren’t working.”

Whatever you do,
don’t let his departure ruin your people skills.

mccxxxii

Who Got to Heaven?

Dismiss the hurtful and offensive
with those jewels of impertinence.

I made that up to get into heaven.
What a fat bee I am!  The past is

past, though, so I buy a new shirt.
I write it funny because I’m a jerk.

Is this your first time things
happen in huge waves like

last night?  I only jerk when
I’m sad.  How’s that,

wouldn’t it?  Try egg
formation at dusk.

Too bad it’s not
Halloween.

These bees.
These bees.

mccxxxi

Really, who asks for a screw
like that?  Say it again.

Can you hear me now that I’m
number two?  I still make lots of
mistakes.  So secretive, huh?

Here comes the doctoral
candidate with no resolutions.
He’s got no concentration
so I buy myself a new shirt.

I’m fairly simple
but it’s just my hand
to write with
right now.

Which hand made this?

I guess your secret walnut
isn’t so secret anymore.

mccxxx

My Book Is Bludgeoned

Look, you’ve shot me nearly dead
but I can see sunrise.  It’s a blanket
of guilt and not a boyfriend.  I have
no car.  Not even the girdle of moon
can reduce my spirit.  I know it made
no sense until page one thousand,
but I made it me.  This your gift.
Am I but a gift horse whose
mouth an apple was promised
neither bitten nor sinned?  Taken
back to where I’m gone?  Take
me back to where I’m taken.
Queen of the hive for a
hundred years and
nary a drone to
make butter.

mccxxix

Fairly Italy

Well that was weird.  I’m sure
they were tired of it already.

I resist your culture to facade.
I am effortless in its wake.

Step one: she spoke of
ziggurats.  You should have

known it’s just a potion that
lasts longer.  Pretense pretense

and scared.  Pipe up if you
want to mean anything.

I don’t mean you’re mean.
Fine, catch me with my

defenses down.  Some
family fallout but I’ve

got to move on.  Why
else would he avoid me?

Clearly I’m back to square
one and never more square.

Clearly there’s a bruise on my
mouth in the shape of a boot.

Clearly he was 100% guilty.
Him definitely a big ugly brute.

mccxxviii

When getting some
it’s important to play
by the rules.  Moreso
than I’ve been for a
while.  But this isn’t
time.  And of course
play on time.  The
rulebook is upset.
Some family fall-
out.  It’s import-
ant you avoid
me.

Is this real time
or is it maybe
real this time?

mccxxvii

I’m afraid of this.

Look I went all the way down.  Did I
win yet?  Who cares about years ago?
Do you think you’re the only
pain in the ass?  Fat chance.

You’d only get more frustrated if I loved you
more.  I can’t even talk to an erection
about you.

You can redeem your frustration point
right here.  Next time get juice that’s
less sensitive.

Depressed today.  Still reading.
A hangover from too much sex.

mccxxvi

You’re a square deal.  When have I ever said
I’ve had a bad year?  Either you’re a blanket liar
or I am.

Or I am.  Which is it?  Did we win yet?
I think this is only the beginning
of our rose-tinted past.

Time’s a fairly optimistic look I want to resolve.
Wait.  Cancel your logout.

I think this is only the pink beginning
of beginnings.  I feel a new year’s
resolution: an evolved torso and a
soak before lunch.

I light up the airplane coming to get me.

mccxxv

Your kiss is such a handful
even when it won’t come;
such a pain in the hand.

Just as painful to realize
mediocrity.

I wanted a guzzle but you shot
your eyes into your egg salad.
And it was pretty much priceless.

Or am I just always
this altitude?

mccxxiv

I’m writing an uncomfortable geek
into my very own living room.  Is it
me?  My eyes are wide with wonder-
ing.

I thought I told you I didn’t want
comfortable.

(There goes my orange juice.)

Write a head full of hair out the
bathroom window.  Is it orange?

Don’t strike a head full of hair
that isn’t the proper match.
Light it up a halo of honor.

Be gentle not cold.  I told you
neither a steady rain nor a hand
full of a kiss.

mccxxiii

Pretense pretense I am not.  Nor
circles in my vast head.  I forgot
what time it was one time
vast head I am not I am not.

The first dead bird was a wild
turkey.  Or so it says here on
this outdated orange bird.

Writing is a time to reflect on
whatever it’s worth.  Pretty
much priceless.  You’re just a
geek who’s trying to make me un-

comfortable in my own living
room.  The room in which I live.

mccxxii

Meet me in a week.

I’m in detention, give or take.
What else is Christmas but a
lot of dating the needy?  I
think I’ll have a good

meal to frustrate sex;
you must be tired as
hell from tugging at
love.  Me, I’m having

a drink with a popular
corrective.  He obviously
likes me and we’ll be great
friends.  What else is fun

for me?  Grown-ups are
complicated and spending
all this time getting close
will pass, I guess.  But

there’s really no point
unless you’ve got some-
thing to buy.  It’s hysterical,
really.  Mergers are inevitable.

mccxxi

I ribbon my mouth.  How could you
be the hater I mentioned, midnight
kisses rolling around on a tiny bed?
A hater on a bed of lies?  If so, I’m

spoken for, so do me no more than you
intend to punch.  Talk about anything but
triumph and the ribald stroke of pessimism
that causes a hummingbird’s callow

heart to skip a beat.  This alerts the
face of time, which shatters when
its best friend, the other humming-
bird, reverses course a fraction

faster than is humming-feasible.
A mouth full of dust just ate the
living room floor, snapping each
breath with a combustible camera.

Each page is welted in the middle (from
the ribbon’s bind) until I’m too chapped to
gag.  I understand each is loaded with GPS
and always able to find me.  So I’m right here,

hater. It’s pretty clear that you have it good.
But we are never fit for it. We are not a
pert bird’s lax heart.  We are merely
the lax heart; the triumph of a

tiny bed that shatters a
mouth full of dust.
Think you can
find me now?

mccxx

Down with beautiful.

The guy who just time-warped
has a stunning laugh. I catch everyone
in jogging shorts. It was time for hydrangeas.
Brand management includes time warps.

He was a burgundy magnolia. I caught him
in another life, so I know. Clementine does
somersaults in the pool and then pets the
potted plants while Carla feeds the horse.

I’m definitely a conversation piece.
Thank goodness not the old man this
rubber ducky forgot. We all have to be
on something. Unreliable hair is a moment

in time that is at best experienced by most. Just
don’t get caught talking. Two unmussed heads
whispering over a jacuzzi; one cosmopolitan
performing live with a Del Shannon cover band.

The mums are hand over foot with rhyme and there’s
a hiccup in the time-space continuum so we eat a bucket
of chicken for dessert. Nobody snores. But you wake up
uncuffed in a broken closet.               Au revoir, Iron Chef!

mccxix

Happy New Year from Harbin Hot Springs!
I’m not awful. I represent.

Weather forecast in San Francisco on
Thanksgiving Day: Sunny, high 68F,
low 49F. Are you addicted to
frequent flyer miles?

What a chill we’re in. Your ice blue eyes
thaw me out. What a chill to be unliving.

The premise: an erection of pacts; a
hard gourd; candy for the rest of us;
sending it all via fax; causes a
paper jam; grammarian quits.

Are you involved? Get naked
and soak for about 30 minutes.

Doing yoga? It’s rainy, yet
pleasant, peaceful. You’re
gushing like a sloped pool.
Me, I’m down with clocking

a time-warp in a sitz bath full
of potted plants. Come quickly!

That’s the real deceit. And
such a marvelous hometown!

mccxviii

Smoke at Dawn

Stop.  Stop.  All I could think last night –
WHOLE NIGHT – was – momentous– 

happy – truly liberating loss that is unhappy 

me.  Lost inside this unrecognizable night.

Now me down here – going for the
scope of the chaos, this relationship
that is me talking myself out loud – 

into being.  Not dating one of his

students metaphorically.  All I could 

think of is wonder – I won’t get to
hold that hand if he returns.

mccxvii

She torched his hand.

All the cat’s tits dropped.
I was a boy of five reading
about lepers.

We talked about him for
an hour and a half.
Ebb tide.

This is his best addiction
yet.  Number seventeen.

Hate what’s dwelt upon.
Love the ecstatic
after-effects.

mccxvi

Earthquake happens
last night with Peter.
We sway away. First
I’ve felt I was there.

Cat opens door with
Laurence, tall guy,
41 years old and
frustrated. The

rest was just a
text of sevens
I met on Friday
night of the

power outage
when Mezzanine
collapsed. David
talked and Alex

doted. I’ve never
in my life ignored
most of the week-
end with Richard.

Philip was there,
too, dealing with
fruit. Shaping it
into something.

mccxv

The cat stretches, half in the kitchen,
half in the living room. I stand firm
in the practice of comfort, keep smiling
at it, doing better at it. Force down a

couple of pickles after an erotic hunch.
My new obsession is Bejeweled Blitz.
This, too, will pass or evolve, like
Southern cuisine or Polk Gulch.

It feels okay but I’m freezing.
He’s lunching out of his socks.

mccxiv

He must have wanted an invitation, but was he hot enough?
All I could think of was Japan or July, while he sat on
top of a solar panel carrying on like Cassandra of the
Oil Reserves.  I’m okay but I’m freezing.

Must.  Find.  Work.  Instead, Barbie finds an
Etch-a-Sketch in Malibu, invites all her friends
over for charades.  I’m the team with all the
foreign cinema loves to rain on the parade.

Not.  Really. 

Once ditched, Ken siphons all the gas out of the 

convertible.  No harm done, though.  Prices have 

leveled off and Malibu is heaven.  Meet me at the bistro

on the 28th floor?  Then I allow myself to
ease on back into Japan.  In the boudoir at
midnight on Earthquake Day.  And I feel it,
too, all the way up to 32.  So I don my reflective

orange gear and direct everyone toward the duct
tape.  Millions of people are homeless and they
all pick San Francisco.  Maybe I’ll invite you
anyway.  After all, zombies are way sexier

than vampires. And besides, today I’m a woman for
the very first time.  I’ve an orange wig and an iPhone with
directions to Hell to prove it.  Find me there.  I’m the one in
the hoopskirt uplifting the downfallen with the very best

Giulietta Masina since the goddess herself.  And who’s
got my number?  Well, at these randy depths I’ll take
four and a quarter.  And let’s have it quick as the
circus what sunk, Marcello, before these molten

boobs are soughing in the Styx, reacquainting them-
selves with the smorgasbord of whence and wherever.
Oh I sold my girdle to Barbara Eden.  It was all but
fireproof.  I do wish it weren’t so dark down

here. But Hell is exotic and I feel native.
Freedom is but an oily whisper*. Om.

*it can also be a ‘whisker’ or a ‘whimper’

mccxiii

Nice bookshelf.

Turns out I like living in a box.  What’s your
sign, anyway?  Can you shrink without
multi-tasking?  Feels good and verbal,
doesn’t it?  Which is why I like talking.

I think I finally got the crush of it.  But
at bedtime?  Not fair.  And I can’t exactly
cry foul to a can of diet 7-Up, can I?  Or is it
cosmopolitan now, like French socks on the roof

of your mouth?  Quick, take your clothes off, it’s
the brand what sells.  But then you might cry wolf
and smell a rat.  Which is the exact opposite of
appetite.  It’s not just sadness rules the air-

waves, right?  That’s so neo-moronic.
Then he says something about how I’m a
bit too intense.  Don’t crush it, Mister, I like
life.  (I keep smiling at that, wondering what the

big deal is.)  The sex in my mouth remains un-
pressed, which is okay, I guess.  That’s why we go to
school for the future.  It’s only human.  If I actually had
the spare time to simply impress I’d come a whole lot more.

mccxii

My balls are a little nicer than yours,
but for a group invitation, I’d take a
worm to the head.  Casters can’t be
castanets, after all.

People die in their 40s.
That’s old, huh?

I won’t be quite so distant.  Mean-
time, you keep saying that.  Means
you’re currently not working; just a
figment of culture.  Or even couture.
I lie in a big box like a grilled cheese
sandwich.

We had dinner.
Turns out we often do.

After therapy I go on a date with a
guy who has a boyfriend.  He kisses
Tic Tacs into my mouth.  My ears ring
for days but I won’t be sad.  It’s why
I like living in a democracy.

mccxi

“What’s news?”  “Oh, I’m just
waiting to meet your mother.”  “We
went to bed around Two.”  “I’ll bet
that was a vociferous ejaculation.”

It being 12:30am, I warm to that.  Who needs
sex to stress you out?  But Royal Bitchy is
no hater.  [Attempts cold & distant.]  Let’s
go for a change of subject.  Are you tipsy?

If so, let’s cam.  In fact, I’d gotten off
with someone just snuggling. I scored
but I could have been used.  I arrive
and he walks me into the darkness,

says his friend is meeting us to
take us to his place.  “Where does he
live?” I ask.  He shakes his finger out
and writes an “O” into the stars with it.

“Somewhere around here,” he says.
Guess what WeightWatchers has
stolen from me.  Zelda from the
night sky.  I’ve still got the key.

Is that the first of your classmates
to go?  Odd seeing that he was 36.
Is that how old I am?  I think I’m
just over seven weeks now.

“A word of advice?”  “About
reducing portions down to within
reason?”  “No.  Quite simple.  Don’t
fall in love with a Simon.”