mdli

One on One

The worst time to sleep is between eleven in the morning
and one in the afternoon. The most embarrassing thing
should be the most visible. The latest culprit, for example.
But one good thing is almost any time we ever get testy
with each other these days I learn something—I mean
the process is productive. And rarely the three of us together
compared to times recent. Also, avoid stating (and restating)
the obvious. Stay up until 4am playing Apples to Apples
with Otto, Erin, and Masashi after watching hilariously
horrible Sucker Punch. Continue to reenforce, amend,
chronologize electronic photographs. What is the goal?
Besides get quarters, flowers (maybe), yoga instructor,
and clean blinds? Soft rain on the sofa. Otto studies
beatnik fashion for a major corporation. Spring line,
2012. Richard is at Mezzanine for Britney Spears.
I read a chapbook by a poet I’ve known for several
years. I’ve never read anything by him (as far as
memory can tell) and he’s now a completely different
person to me. He moves up several notches. On the
list. Everything is in a list, is prioritized. It takes a
lot of strategy to incorporate the random. To ensure
random. Your desk, wherever you make it, is the
bold new bloom of modern industry. Quickly copy
and paste each new email from Ron, careful not to
glance at a word, saving the savor and surprise for
a carefully scheduled time in the advance. In the
forward. Make a note; ensure it’s on the list and
properly calendared. Schedule time to flirt online.
Force yourself to brunch, starving; wolf down
waffle with hazel-nut flavored maple syrup and
chicken (add fruit and share half with Otto).

mdl

Three Attempts to Spell Bernadette

It’s all too fast to princess. I sit on The History
of Homosexuality in Film. A lightbulb thru time.
Reading a bunch of pictures. No light coming in.
Just trying to finish something. I am just as I was.

I consider this. He and Masashi are going to San
Diego for a conference. I struggle through a dream;
things that can fit into a shoebox. Shoebox appro-
priate. Wake up in a snuggle and the rain. Walking

here. Thinking they should put a cafe in the Center
and here it is. Queerest coffeehouse in San Francisco.
Well, not so bad (when you funk it up a little. It’s
a turquoise alcove...)....

My exercise program is working. It’s teeny-tiny. I’m
all over the place. It takes me three attempts to spell
Bernadette. “He doesn’t want to be read.” Succomb
to the rain. Succomb to the shoebox, a lightbulb thru

time. I did complete something. Happy as clams about
that. And the wind. And my haircut. I’ve got a
Coco. Imaginative. I’m in the Used Dept. thinking of
sex and sleep. Soft as your brow, which, when

incoherent, tufts. A happy cruise control gets
oddly jealous of, for example, yesterday,
the latest culprit. Shush the rain. The rain shushes.

mdxlix

Also, so what?!

I forgot. Or I’m the Queen of
Invisibility. Sometimes I’m the door
the unidentifiable insect keeps flying into.
Be patient. Adjust glands. Imagine someone

naked. I harp on sex and wonder if I’m an
addict. And, if so, which part is the addiction.
I wonder these things about several people and then I
talk for a while to a piece of paper. Earlier, while

laughing about how much I forget, I was reminded about
something I have forgotten. A promise I made. I was
happy to be reminded, even though it is now im-
possible for me to live up to my promise. I

enjoy the memory of the promise. It opens me up
to new possibilities. To new promises.

mdxlviii

Super High

But it gives me the cramps. I keep dialing around for a place to
breathe. Grammatically. And I keep typing “whee!” instead of
“whew!”

Works well for seizure day. So for Pete’s sake don’t get bummed!
The bloody royalty are even all into it now, so, you know. When you
park his leg like this his rawhide crawls!

Did how to cut the mustard every worry you?  You’re no joke
and that’s a well-practiced sneer, drives pronouns into a
waxy heart.

I’m as happy as clams about that, though.  Horizontal entertainment
goes a long way, after all.  And yours rather defies geometrical.
Here, I’ve boiled you a few eggs.

I should have no trouble putting the remaining 15 hits into the
cruise control.  Even if yours is Grand Central Station.  And I hear
there’s a leather bar somewhere nearby.

Hey, great news: that window isn’t plastic!  And you might be
interested in the pair of ghosts hovering just outside of it,
their foreheads level with the sill.

But I can just tell.  There’s no negativity.  It’s all about
love.  The real deal.  And your pet scooting her butt across your
living room carpet to get it all out.

mdxlvii

But do we really weep?  And how to perpetuate lovers’
mysteries?  Not miseries, which seems to crawl into pockets
like an itch, can be pervasive.  I don’t get that.  It doesn’t
have to work that way, does it?

But who’s to say?  Anyone can say whatever they feel.  Or
keep a wardrobe so full of special effects that everyone is
fooled.  A heart on a sleeve doesn’t taste very good, I say.
Mine seems invisible to the naked eye.

Each echo has such blunders.  But they inspire awe, do they
not?  Even the hard-hearted like to give the brazen chamber a
shout out, their large hats swollen in the humid breezelessness
as if in touch with sultry.  Such impossibilities.

Complete submission.  And happy as clams.  Research is
close to exposing a similarity in the grins of several very
unrelated species.  So I decide to burn the book.  Not
indelibly.  That’s pretty impossible for me.

I like to look at photographs of myself and/or from my
perspective – from any moment in the past. Before my birth,
even; that is, through my parents eyes or, with love that’s
almost romantic, deep into the eyes of my grandmother.

The shadow image of my father, as each of my siblings
are – we grew up so – though my mother has now taken to saying 

I resemble her father more than anyone – as I get older.  He was
stilted, quick-tempered, proud, easily red in the face,

and clumsy.  He ran the water and sewer department in my
hometown as I was growing up.  The town’s latest treatment
facility is named after him.  He collected knives, coins and arrowheads
and nurtured an orphaned deer through to maturity – controversially in 

a rather small cage in front of the county courthouse.  And with

out my ever hearing him say it – it was palpable – he was in love.
And grateful.  Even sometimes dumbfounded by his luck.
My grandmother, with contrasting grace and glory,

obviously felt pretty much the same.  Some animals
and their dumb luck?  I believe.  Cheesy as a misbegotten
apple pie, perhaps.  And you’ve got to take a bite out of it.  Hot!  

And swimming in butter.   Because they akways vanish so damned quickly.

mdxlvi

Such a smooth and sensual way to curl the tongue. But first
to open it slightly over the lips. “This bit’s a hit. No worries.”

A little boy walked in from the rain with a soggy toilet paper
tube hoisted up to his mouth. Each of us are tools, but some

have better instruments. Then we went to Lucky Penny for a
skin blemish. The lottery causes this. I don’t normally participate.

Just at the Lucky Penny. Sepia the Cat is opening the closet door
now. This must be Tuesday. My laptop needs a check-up. I’m

not getting regular updates. [The pleasant morning rain starts
pelting the roof out my living room window again] I remind

Brian that it might cause more problems than not to keep two
calendars going at once. He says he’s had a lot of dates lately,

though. But he decided to take a break for a while (a bizarre
inclination which often seems to strike people and which I’ve

never understood). I discuss this with the dishes and the
laundry while Yuki sweats for hours behind my new TV.

He’s taken it upon himself to connect everything to the
surround sound speakers I’ve had for months. And make

everything wireless. Otto is working out with Nick. It’s the
summer of being déjà vu and trapped halfway around the

world. But one foot (and these have never broken and
actually walk) goes in front of the other. Cartoon steps. My

mind wanders. Sometimes one foot hangs out a bit more
obviously. My only girlfriend’s little sister used to make

fun of how I walk – she’d do so by performing it. I have
more confidence than I should have. I’m a “Challenger”

and a “Reformer” – both 100%. I took a personality test
with Otto this week. He’s a “Peacemaker.” Not me. My

peacemaking is at 55% along with my “Enthusiasm.”
We’re both fairly high “Achievers” and way above

average “Loyalists.” Which explains a lot, I think.

mdxlv

The fencerow practically belches honeydew. I’ve
started taking a fat-burner called Ventilean; a new
ephedra substitute, it has guarana and who knows
what else. Guarana tends to make my throat
fill up with bile. This is Tuesday, right?

My usual list of things to do, like laundry
and dishes, turned into a misunderstood
invitation. “Visit with you” was somewhere
on the list. There is no hierarchy of any kind,
no order of priority. It’s often nothing more than a

collage. Like the tumbled mess of brussels sprouts
and chicken apple sausage on this white plate (a
4am snack I’m still working on). I eat a sprout.
I scratch a line onto a page. A new page a day.
I look back to see lines I’m told are unusually

straight by a few who go through them.
Something happens. I’ve often sat through
drawn-out critiques of the ‘list-oriented.’
It’s raining, it’s 5:40am, I’ve a laptop open
to pictures of our trip to Paris. I turned 40

there. It was my first trip abroad. I’m so
in love. It happens every day, even with
windshield wipers for a memory. I haven’t
run in years. Nor the gym. Maybe tomorrow.
My ears are ringing. But pleasantly. I’ve

in front of me: a glass filled with orange juice,
a pickle jar half full of water, and a mug with a
moustache on it in which are left a few dregs of 

tea. Chamomile. I add artificial sweetener 

(2 Splenda) and two squirts of lemon.

mdxliv

If I’m reading this appropriately I believe I’m supposed to
accept death as an orifice. I don’t have time to look up the
descriptions of each fossil. But plainspeak is best, right?
Until one finds meaning in speaking writerly (rather, um,
onanstic if you ask me; but also POETIC. Right?).....

I go to witness the blessing of a baby. My partner’s
godchild. In a spectacle of a Greek Orthodox...
cathedral? I parted ways with organized religion
years ago and am surprised to be so calmed by,
and so in awe of, this ritual, mostly just prayers. I’m proud

of the circumstances that bring me to attend. And touched
by how it reinforces the severity, the joy, the poignance,
the responsibility, the amazement, the ever-conflicting
importance of the power with which we’re (with which
I’m) drawn to suspicious rituals (I love to use the phrase

‘ludicrous construct’). It calms me. And centers me.
I am surely more than a marionette, yanked around
by opposing forces? I’m a piece of ice used as a
lesson in memory and metaphor. I lost my home
in the north due to overly warm seasons (it is

the future); a fisherman whose family is swept
into an expanding sea. I’m a refugee fisherman
from a larger ocean. Now, the fish rule.....

But I’m a liar. I am poison. I’m a sexless blue
whale with my nose deliberately stuck into the mud of a
deep cavern—unspoiled even by the likes of you.

The water is unbearably cold. The mud I’m
stuck in is somehow warmth. The tears I am
surely and constantly weeping—right?—are like ice.

mdxliii

Don’t need a lesson, hippo.

I’ve got all night. It’s okay. And maybe you can,
okay, learn something here. Brace yourself as I
play through your home (or homeland), mangle
hopscotch (my knees, the soles of my loafers)
for your lovely chickens’ lives. They get the point
anyway, right? With dodgeball? Learning how to
bloody themselves up on the concrete basketball court
behind the elementary school, practice for being an adult
in a dry county. But where were we before we diverted to
the bathroom? Cassavetes in a nutshell? A perfect moussaka
from scratch? How to avoid herpes (or at least its symptoms)?
It’s enough, ‘verily,’ to land you in a serious spa by mid-afternoon,
a week in a terry wrap replenished every half hour or so by an
understandably-impossible-to-tell-whether-legal-or-not
(and who cares, really, right, since he’s got such obvious
skill!) towel boy—massage therapist. One who’ll (keep
it authoritative and yet throaty—as in you’ve difficulty
breathing—for this) clean your blinds all rosy-cheeked
and might even (authoritative; throaty) re-alphabetize
your bookshelf. And you’re lucky. Oh, you’re lucky.
I’m an empathic, you see. I might not look it, but
I’ve a bouquet of lean smirks right in here. I’m
no Clint Eastwood, though I throw people off,
I know. Play your bones right, sweetie.
Not like a jackhammer up and down the
avenue. Avoid the sniper in blonde
around the corner. Don’t let the
drycleaner take your measurements.
Spit-shine without a spectacle. Take
charity seriously. Don’t listen to the
big head poking its long nose out of your
living room wall. He’s selling insurance.
Avoid leather and thrift stores. Possibly
fur, but don’t be a rat’s ass about it.
A motorcycle, yeah, but never
drive it in the rain. Appear
often from thick fog.
Self-diagnose, be
clear with your doctor
and don’t let her talk you into
a contagion. Walk often through your
alma mater, chuckling to yourself
intermittently about academia.

mdxlii

Hack Soft Hypocrisy

...no time for a lifestyle...
                       —David Highsmith

The conservation conversation left me
dry of mouth. Do I complain a lot? I don’t
see myself as much of a complainer....

Avoid the tiny game inside my phone.
Avoid the music I spent hours researching
and then downloading. What’s the reference?

A collage is nothing for me but scatterbrain. How
embarrassing that it becomes a way of life? But
I meant to be eccentric at some point. Is that

why nobody gets me? When pricked, any Gemini
gushes the same, mostly. Just more rivulets,
more general directions, the gushing. How

nasal my lack of charm; so Faustian? I live,
lest I fall asleep. There’s more music somewhere.
An imagined train back home from a missed

engagement. What a wallop (not a fine
alternative to riot, but allow me a few
steps back from the obvious; though,

I am confident that you’re too savvy for 

such diversions, right?)! Engagement is 

my touted mask, my modus operandi, 

the deep well turned shallow brook that 

feeds my mojo. Or thus I cluck repeatedly
and for reals. Believe

these lips for mantra and yours
might warm my very soul before I've
[and I say this] scrambled them for breakfast.

mdxli

He’s a Pill

It’s a red liquid and it tastes like bitter bubble gum.
Also a new ephedra substitute with guarana that has
a bunch of new poems in it.  This is Tuesday, right?
Sepia is opening the door now.  She lives in the
closet sometimes.  Flashforward to a downcast
Friday morning and Coco trying to claw her way
to the top of Otto’s asymmetrical jackets and wraps.
In March, the closet door is a green sofa.  My laptop
has two loads of laundry and the lemonade is parched.

mdxl

Dinner (At My Urging)

Pollen in the pharmaceutical wind. A clump of
keyboard on the lawn. A wad of gum on the
corner of a plate. Tact on the mend. Inclement
weather is lush. The look that I’m going to try to have
is Final Fantasy VII. I also have bananas and a few
breakfast items thanks to Richard moving across the
street (a walk to Cala in the drizzle is a San Francisco
Sunday afternoon). Glitterricky. I win twice at
Fruit Ninja and top 400,000 for only the fourth time
in four years playing Bejeweled. Besotted. Let’s do it.
Working in a coal mine (going downtown). Taking a
fatburner before running during lunchtime. Alone after
lunch, a peach of a day, rain, argument, dinner in & all.

mdxxxix

Paid $10, Won $11

There was a rustling in The West.  Is 

he disgusted or just disregarded?  The
space between here and Trader Joe’s;
between Zoolander and Spellbound.

mdxxxviii

Sonnet to the Lucky Penny

We got up at 6:30am to head to the DMV and
clean the bathroom.  She feels he’s been treating
her.  Like the Bob Sinclair, et al., reggae dance mix
CD for Naya.  Scratch it off the list.  I could get my

picture retaken.  They somehow screwed it up last time,
which is why I never got my license in the mail.  Then
to Kaiser for skin.    I wish this thought presently into my
elbows.  No effect.  Except a muffled sportscaster’s taken

over the neighbor’s apartment.  “Not the high-pitched wail,”
hands up toward God.  You’re a legend for the amount of
LSD you did in college.  What can I do different?  Anyway,
that was a diversion.  The melted reactor could be said to have

not been written.  Look up how to clean blinds on the internet
and how to pay a student loan online.  Password for Excel file.

mdxxxvii

Overlord in a Melting Pot

I made rice and also pommes frites.  Circle over to the
laundromat that’s turned into a fondue parlor.  Email
Kevin and water the plants.  We opened a New Zealand
wine that John and Larry had brung to the housewarming.
Tomorrow I’m to play racquetball with Madoc.  Be able

to plug laptop into large monitor.  Unparch with a Faz
glass (a mason jar) full of lemonade.  I just want to
GRIMACE at that.  What does that make me, an
interior designer?  That kind of distaste becomes
HONESTY.  We have enough space to not worry

so much.  We can concentrate.  Steph loaned it to me.
The slimness of Vincent and his engagement.  And it is
disgusting compared to Starbucks.

mdxxxvi

Warm as the bloom of a lotus
in heat.  Who knew it’d ever
cross over to the dark side?
“I did! I did!”  Rainy Sunday.

mdxxxv

You just dropped your phone. “A cross
is an X,” I remind him, before send Rachel
email, send Kim email, fix big monitor to
connect to laptop. It’s morning of up all
night. The birds are singing in the bird
sanctuary, an oasis for interior designers.
But not enough to make you GRIMACE
on top of all that. What does that make a
jealous hubby? Bend the knees by way of
death. Look up how to clean the blinds,
how to update debts and assets. “Into
oblivion,” whispers the murderer.
Into oblivion.

mdxxxiv

It has many other uses.  Like my hair.
My hair is not dead people.
                                       —Sean Malroy

Relax into it.  They’re hungry or happy as
ash out of Groucho.  So don’t pitch a fit.

Build upon that, rainy Sunday!  The start
of a book to me, saying despite the slimness

of however she feels, or the sliminess I’ve been
treating you.  How young at heart.  Preach a line

by Schuyler like Pastor Ron: “or lamb leg with
mint sauce!”  Followed by a long pause.  She

feels how he treats her.  Despite the engaging
shimmies, the heft of the lattés, the cross over

to the dark side....  A pair of socks that resembles
a checkbook.  An entire Saturday on a bookend.

mdxxxiii

Mr. X-eye Featherhead

A hundred ‘woof!’s across Ocean Island.
Cooking with the best of them and then
snapping it shut.  I still have to get over
how wide it is.  Fried eggplant with a

white sauce all over it.  Slip an abstract
project into an oily mailbox.  Feed the
cat.  Dusk never settles and you’re
morning, bright with fever.  Open a

New Zealand wine.  Stretch.  Slip some
skin on top of it.  Dust and clean the
living room and hallway.  Racquetball
before housewarming.  Clean bathroom.

Clean blinds.  Update info on 1960s.
In the morning, head over to the condo
to measure it.  Color me jealous.  HON-
ESTLY.  Concentrate on keeping and

wonderful and maintaining. Call the
doctor to say there’s no need for closure.

mdxxxii

Human Debris

If only I could ride you unpublished.  “Here’s
another $24 drink,” all smug and lustless, with
contemporary Chinese interiors.

Ron, what was the name of the sushi restaurant
after Kylie wouldn’t pee?  Toe to toe to toe for a
decade or more.  Or was it just a year?  How to

talk Cantonese?  So, they first met, slept together,
first date, etc., on January 7.  It’s October and another
French trilogy.  Completing amazement.  Unfortunately,

the hotel strikers, along with music from Heartthrob’s
computer (in the living room; I’m on the bed), having
just finished A Thousand Devils, this frazzled

Rauschenberg.  In the October will it feel oh so
new again?  Should I be disappointed with an
old swoon?  A few years later and never dull.

Not a disinterested dull. Less interested in
new leaves and romantic road construction.

mdxxxi

We was all quite a peach.

Walk to the Ferry Building market,
walk through the market, head north
and turn left on Broadway, enter North
Beach, then down Grant through China-

town so Otto can pick up a stamp w/his
Chinese name and for me a copy of
China Modern. Follow me so far?
Page 2,247, a contemporary interior.

Then Sushi Rika for lunch, after which
it’s furniture shopping. Then home
for a while. Nooo. Wait! I’m so
confused. First, we had lunch

at XYZ. Then he went to lab
and I bought Princess Mononoke.

mdxxx

Relearn More Appropriately Sonnet

Agenda rhyming with addenda, and so on.
“A little Malaysia goes a long way,” he
says all slash-and-burn.  I turned it in
with a list of all the jobs I’ve ever had.

This all seems a bit L.A., don’t you think?
I look out at Treasure Island while he talks
to his grandmother then his dad then his
mother—who tells him he sounds so

happy.  In recollection of my inner thigh
(left side) and the guy who stomped my
back flat after a mani-pedi on Tuesday
afternoon.  “The stars are not chimps,”

I lose him saying.  Scratch another item
off the list while walking Grant to Broadway.

mdxxix

anachronism is the refuge of modernity
                     —Standard Schaefer

Stayed up til 4 arguing about
making things clear.  Marvel
vs. Capcom 3, etc.  Today’s
list is horizontal lines.  Re-
learn touching, making things
clean close to him, waking up
Saturday and going to Starbucks
and The Gap for a blazer exchange.

Put the bag away for a while and sit
in the Henderson Room.  Cloudy with
a chance of purge.  Email job lady then
several friends.  Call Mom (this one on
the list for a while now).

Wake up trembling, think I hear sarcasm.
Clean all the blinds.  Or buy new ones.

mdxxviii

Music we remember to forget
                     —Michael Palmer

I can’t imagine him with a
vibrato. “It’s the Three of
Pancakes,” she says. His
head’s a computer screen
circa 1998. A headache
that blasts 80s music. A
calendar with a little in-
struction each day: Re-
member, a mediocre
effort never improved
anything. Cat’s paws
at it under a birthday
present (an office
chair replacing one
‘inherited’ in 1992).

mdxxvii

Oral Necklace

The vistas are a smiling ship on the ocean.
About to barf if I read another conversation
with yourself.   Didn’t I want to add my
voice?   We drove out past Half Moon Bay

with Curran and Masashi this afternoon to
a pumpkin patch.   To pick pumpkins.   It was
lovely in all possible ways, sitting in the back-
seat holding Otto’s hand while he slept.  Barf.

Looking out at the beautiful sky.   Passing
Spindrift Road.   Having a pie at the patch.
And oh, the maze.   I never made my way out –
could not find my way out of the lovely

hay maze.   Did someone have to come
find me?   Rescue me?   Here I am,
backwards, pestered at 4am.   Around
8:30, touching.   This is the real me.

mdxxvi

Egg Balm

That short poem is so 1950s. I like the way
you made it so southern. And so subtly.

Tonight I’m going to make like I remember
the last decade. “These are things I should be

doing for number one,” you say. Let’s do the
untwist instead. Relationship update: all is

check; easier to tell; chopped off; and the
best. There are two bottles of lubrication

in the closet. Like when you find out your
dialect is more obscure than others. I

hear you crunch Doritos in the bedroom.
I check out the window for the day. It’s

in the mail like the little egg full of lip
balm I ordered. I’m lying in our little al-

cove in our blue bedroom with clouds. Ron
Howard is definitely no Clint Eastwood.

mdxxv

Much Muck in Your Mailbox

My favorite vegetable is okra. I
watched you on teevee. My land-
lady got an e*@!ction. There’s way
too much seance in our relationship.

mdxxiv

A Rose in the Slat

Depression makes my skin ache. It’s
nine o’clock and I dip into a jacked-up
bar in the gulch, half a chin tucked into
my sweater.

It’s a grizzly-bear nation. These dunder-
heads threw in a kidney stone; two hour
flashbacks to a party of eight. Once home,
I read a love poem to the sofa.

It swoons. Lots of people chopped off their
thumbs. David left while growing striped
pants. The penguins are in the mail to
Kevin (flash-forward required).

The glass of water infected with ice.
European stains on the carpet.

mdxxiii

No More Sewage

Let’s go body shopping and get
meta-flogged. A meta-flogging.
Address is correct. Date is correct.
Vice presidential debate....

Interesting. Water pumpkins drag-
ging colored squid in quick bursts,
north, then south, along the bay.
I need a whole day of this snake

pit. Charming devils. These are
the guys who should be running
for number one. Layered inno-
cence. A thin wail. We threw

him a nice party, even though
he chopped off his thumb at 5.

mdxxii

Will this work?

It all depends on what makes you feel.

mdxxi

Another Pet Obit

Define like.  I’m doing okay
sitting on my ass, right?

I’m talking to David.  He
offered me a seat because

there are none.  Men joke
like steak knives.  It was

the first time I ever tried
to sit down.  Awkward.

The cat has a birthday.
She sits on the word

Namaste.  Does this
give her a stroke

two years later?
I found your ring

beside my bed.  The
bed is ringing.  The

trumpeters are all
puking but the

whole damned world
just keeps on ringing.

mdxx

God Men War

Is this the first book I’ve finished in months?
I wonder and I’d like to know. I have an
inclination to know. I sit on the couch
in contemplation, put my finger
to my nose.

mdxix

downcast his throat
—Guy Birchard

But I feel good when I take them. And
my experience is better than normal. But
how can you focus on the process of
moving forward and forgiveness?

The only mistake in retrospect....

We’re so negative all the time. But
I love that Cosmo centerfold you
did when you were 22.

mdxviii

My experience on Saturday better than normal

It’s time to enjoy the skin you have.  Consider yourself
comely up close.  It’s miles away from a pair of Monday
interviews.  You wouldn’t imagine it now, but they will
each last a year.  It’s a boutique investment bank and
you’re experiencing a crisis in penmanship, cover
as much of the manila as possible in blue Sharpie.
And please bring resumes.

Food’s here.  Kenta follows me to the side of the stage
yelling “Jenny Jones!”  “Jenny Jones!”  I always laugh
and wonder what’s inside that joke.  Or if I’m in on it.

mdxvii

Again with the Time Travel?

A gray evening, a caffeinated groove cut into
the name of the day of the week: Slaturday.
The heroic shape of an isolated tree, heart-

ened to be out of the city and into the sky.
Speaking of snakes and feeling blind and stupid.
A mixtape that comes in a circle; the research

involved; the evolution; what percentage
you’ve lived through. “It’s random,” a
sour niece implies, striking “dumb” and

“stupid.” A long conversation about how to
soak in pop culture. “It depends on what you
want,” whines Ethel Mertz. For me, it’s music

(the intersection of dance and pop, anyway),
movies that don’t insult my intelligence (a
cocky approach never fully realized, to be

honest), a couple of tv shows each season
(purchased on iTunes a day after aired and
ostensibly void of “sponsored interruptions”),

and The View that suffice. Kim’s list includes
staying on top of whatever’s new and buzz-
worthy in high-brow music (ok, he said

“classical” – but can it really be called such?
I mean, if truly current?) and keeping up with
trends and trendsetters in fiction. He’s hoping

to find one website that will include, so as to
succinctly cover, all of his favorite pop culture
genres. What gives you a leg up? He who wins

the contest of knowing first scores a future.
Make a list I can read nicely. But nothing
with any prescience. It wouldn’t be fair.

mdxvi

I feel shitass stupid, though...

Marcia Gay Harden said “brain fart” on
The View this week. She couldn’t remember
the name of her leading man in her latest
Lifetime movie. Also, I’m trying to

figure out how to squeeze the trigger in
his eyes. Otto’s in bed texting, knit hood
on alarmed clock—1:12. Or playing a game.
Or wasting nipples on a lame-ass movie.

mdxv

Nice Work

Happiness is hairpin, it’s hangdog.
I love the picture of us in front of the
cornfield, shortly before our first
Halloween. Two smiles on a hay-
bale in front of a row of pumpkins.
Two pumpkins in love learn to wish
on nothing. Fly in circles over a
swollen stone. October must have
graduated by the fistful. And I
don’t remember the sky, but
growing up and out. And
never another day. But

here it is November,
here we are spreading
Family Guy to the masses
(productively). Miracle of
miracles, already Wednesday
and at the fish taco place on
Piedmont waiting for Aaron
to read at Steph’s. It feels
nice to be sloppy and isolated.
It feels okay to be sleepy and
interrupted yet again, to look up

and we’re smiling, a braceleted
arm slung over my right shoulder,
a lady in pink with two children:
a boy in blue, hands clasped in
front of his navel staring right at
the camera, and a girl in white,
butt in the dirt, with arms out-
stretched in impossible attempt
to encircle an obese pumpkin.

mdxiv

Yo Eminem I’m a gnome!

A big four-footed breast on the run.  Mis-
reading the amount of sleep I’ve had,
wake up at noon, wake up at 3:30.

Dive into two books after midnight,
make poetry with a few scuffs of the
head (from doing laundry between

3:30 and fancy French dinner).
12:23 and the buzz-saw goes off,
somebody’s disposal I think(?),

goes off all hours of the day and night.
Watch the top 20 videos by Eminem
in chronological order.  Take a

happy pill talking to 5 sexy guys
(and one of their boyfriends),
la la la.  Finish soup.  Try to be

warm.  Come apart at the seams
in the Clement Chinatown.  Eat
worm.  Pinch lip.  Struggle to be

translated.  It’s a pretty little lip,
a modern banquet of the senses.

mdxiii

You’ve Got a Chip on Your Soldier

     Yearning, on dog days, for the coco locos of seaside Mexico
                                                           —James Schuyler

Let’s argue which city in Italy. Let’s take walks
between rainstorms. Let’s ride the ninja bus
to Avenue Q.

2.   (lesson: re-learn how to correspond)

Argue over drinks. Decide on the water. Summer
jam, a boysenberry, French octopi, a plateful of
ravioli halves.

I used to imagine I’d be a soap opera star. I like the idea
of thinking about what I used to imagine (thanks Guy
Birchard). I used to imagine getting out of a money crunch
by selling my stamp collection.

There’s a terribly annoying man a couple tables over
talking about how all models are lesbians.

The cat walks in. I keep saving the
end for tomorrow. Type a quick note.
Type another. Drink the fuzzy water.

mdxii

What fight?

All of you people are
wonderful.  Just so you know.
And I’m just a sleep-deprived
ditz reading bedtime stories.

It’s impossible to find
last night’s wit (& other
drunken nights).  One
date down, another

over smoke.  Recently,
a drunken evening
stroking out.  So
flirty I bought it

in the mouth.
He thinks &
feels & clarifies.
Blue plaid, sunshine.

mdxi

Retribution

He grew a new set of
weeds on his head.
Old by proxy or
hair-restoring foam?

This morning is so
nasty compared to
Starbucks.   I’m
cold reading

the man about town
circa 1964.   This
restroom sucked
my cock.   A wise

respect for a
stormy presence.

mdx

Vibrations

1.
“If you have a thing
for Buddha then I say
go for it.”

2.
“Are you the
hot pecker
of my dreams?”

3.
The last issue
of Nest magazine.

4.
“I love you.
Next time
flirt back.”

mdix

Are you really wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt?

Tonight’s the night for introspective table talk
and crushing out on rockstars.  Slink into the
sushi reception, avoiding the exhibit.  Last night
a simple life of butterfly and bird, of playing

UNO and sleeping on the floor.  Initially, it
looks like a guy and a girl dancing.  And then
you look closer and the girl has a smoking gun
in her hands; the guy a knife.  You manage

quite an accumulation of friends.  The beautiful
boy at Starbucks paused over it for a while
and said “I don’t quite understand the nature
of their relationship.”

mdviii

What’s with skulking? I like the ones
more experimental. Today, everytime
I stand (I am usually sitting), I get the
feeling I’m going to pass out. Not your

average pass-out feeling. And as we
learned on Friday night, I have never once
passed out. So I drink lots of liquids and
have the leftover wonton soup from last

night while reading Oh my chin-chin china
chow dog for graceless dinner bong hoop
(James Schuyler) [roll eyes] and send
sanka card. I’m so lunky and happy.

mdvii

I am concerned with this alcohol of approaching smoke
                                           —Michael Palmer

No.  I’m just trying to milk the present one
until its last dying breath.  This page is
out of touch with reality.  He may have been
having a little fun with someone else.  I

pour a glass of lemonade into the silence,
happy if they are happy, having a feeling,
knowing the truth.  We share an afternoon
discussing the word inconsistent.  I want

to take a bath, to clip my nails, to drink
lemonade.  I know I’m straddling the
frame a little bit.  I wonder if I’m
somewhat reasonable.  Beautiful

day of secret stuff.

mdvi

My Latest Darkness

My latest darkness is about love.
I don’t remember what I was going
to say.  Except PARTNER.  Then
coming up cold with your own
decision (i.e., counting with a

hand, counting with a foot, etc.).
I’m reading through the 1st few
pages.  I’m cold.  I’m so COLD.
I keep looking around for the pur
ported cruising, after the purported

hotness.  I do not seem to be see
ing or feeling any of it.  Just coffee &
tea with no cream or additives.  So I
move to San Francisco where it’s
always a month before the bubble

bursts (one hand plus one foot)
and a cold evening with one more
episode of Paris Hilton.  With Paris
I find myself, usually with butterflies
and birds.  This time it’s an epiphany

of BLANK.  I conjure a life-size
cardboard cut-out, this bold blank
vision, a representation of Paris
in the flesh, how far it goes beyond
representation.  Weeks pass.  It appears

as fact with no further effort from me,
my clairvoyance capacitated into the
cardboard flesh of a cut-out reality,
right in my very own living room at a
‘surprise party’.  It’s my 38th birthday

but there is no surprise, of course.  She
even and also lives in my television
all day long.  With the waif of a crooner
who’d burned holes into my eyeballs
with a voice that defied airwave infinity

in the 1980s.  For an entire decade, ghosts
of his descendants blankly cruised each
farm where pigs were bred in Alma, Ark-
ansas.  It’s the Summer of Love.  I’m del-
ivered 13.7 miles away by a drunk doctor.

mdv

Are You Interested in Marrying?

My fingers fought small fathers
in the Diamond State. No Herculean
task, I might add, like regretting this
two-bit town too much.

Water only this week. Well, and
coffee and tea – no cream nor
additives but artificial sweetener.
Troubled by others’ methods, I take

Tuesdays and Thursdays off. This
place is creepy. Fuck, I hate myself
he’s so creepy. Which is why
we should TALK & DISCUSS

these things – like last night I proclaim
I AM YOUR CREEPY BOYFRIEND.

mdiv

Everybody Been Born

I can’t believe I jumped up and
chased him down the hallway
for a telephone.  Months passed
and then I waited all day but he
never accepted me.  Great anger
gets deflated and/or the economy
sinks.  Like a kitchen.  But you

have a way with words so I
send all of the acronyms
out to find you.  We’re
Matt Damon playing a
frumpy closet-case on
the run.  We get con-
fused.  But it’s okay.

mdiii

A table for one, please.

I already said that.  Or have déjà vu or

dyslexia.  I got myself into this mess.

I’m so lucky and happy in my still life,

Olfactory Toast.  There’s enough butter to

spread a knife around so I get so antsed up I

scream into the gauzy eyes of YOU MOTHER

FUCKER!!  These are the same lozenges that

amp up the ecstasy glaze over the orbs of love.

Let’s just say I court a glaze over my eyes, and

you too, maybe a quart of glaze between us.

Who’s to see what’s skating upside down

and frozen underneath it?  These aren’t actual

lenses / neither processed with pharmaceutical

prescriptions much.  These are just plain water

with no blue poison thrown right over each

blinking heap at minus forty; & this week no

cream additives and no artificial sweeteners.

You’ve the luxury of a stool at the bar with a

pain in the ass waitlist clung to a pain in the ass

waiter in a hard winter rain.  I am such a

glaze of orbs redacted by love, so lucky

and happy in my mess.  I am so toast.

mdii

Happy Belated Birthday

The code-word is peanuts.  You’d
think we’d make more sense of it,

but I’m an online thug at a geisha
exhibit.  I’m at a talk about what if.

You’ve probably read this, but the
key is to know how to explode one;

skid row skid marks under butane
tableaux.  Get ready to Grindr.

mdi

And Because

The publication won’t stop because of
apartment stuff and I probably won’t go.
I probably won’t go if I am a dirty dance.
The latest in sexual news is shampooed
from the mezzanine up on Saturday night,

the perfect combination of dance and
shampoo with lots of apartment stuff.
I’m hungry and I don’t get up.  Except
for talking about what if.  It goes up to
five floors or something.  Then he says

no problem with me before we hear the
elevator jack off in the distance.  Go a-
head and ask him what we tend to do,
sidewalk elevator or cable car?  Really
high woman table-talking with a funny

accent.  Then he walks by online with
someone I’m dating.  He’s an exhibit
and it’s freezing so who’s the voyeur?

md

A table for one is reading a Kindle
at Toast: it’s the first book she’s fin-
ished in this year of the new space-
aged head.  Learn how to organize
in ‘partial alphabetical’ and clean
each individual slat on the six
sets of blinds.  The curtains
have de-evolved, they’ve
lost their swagger like the
rest of us uninsured.  No
culture in these curtains.

Dr. Obstacle is obviously
part of this adventure.  He
bends into yogic tantrums
morningly and noonly,
yellow with the patch.
In the lobby’s a rash of
patients, each with a
bad case of Cuba and
a gnarled fist slammed
over each ear; a pasty fog’s
filled like an air raid with the

Google’s-Gone-Down(!) Alarm
and a loudspeakered litany of
symptoms; each crackle-voiced
outburst a new acronym that
itches like hell, and, because
this is not a test.

mcdxcix

Last Night’s Need

Last night’s need dropped in on me
again. It’s the nicest shout-out I or
mine have gotten in a very long time.
By the time I’d calmed myself down
for thirty minutes, his parents of guilt,
his panic about school, and boiling
issues of commitment, she was
crowning. Now it’s pushing
play. A smile for the
wanted. So much
shame to enjoy (&
its matching
publication).

mcdxcviii

SCOLDED

I’m always scolded again.  And I’m not
complaining because this is trying to
communicate, productive.  Beautiful
day?    Scolded.  So last night’s need

for parents first thing in the morning
causes a storm of a dance.  I let him
play school with his bonus guilt,
his panic about school, and hair.

mcdxcvii

Saturday Night Housewarming Picnic

I boil this down to separating
after five hundred or so.   With
swagger.   Cute, but there’s
no need for the comma (
correspondence disintegration).

Whilst I coffee my diary with
Joey & pals, calm productive
into tears (hyphen).   Or years.
Thirty minutes of french fries
over laundry.   So every 500

I calm myself.   I read tons of
Anselm Hollo.   Beautiful stuff
for a perfect movie.   This wk’s
agenda: invite ~75 people.   Oops.
Saturday night housewarming picnic.

mcdxcvi

I’m So Full of Sorry

I wrote some apartment stuff,
actually helping.   I know I’m being
at least somewhat reasonable.   It’s okay
as a bummer excuse, but what to do in an

LTR?   That’s his word for beautiful poetry.

mcdxcv

His secret’s on the side of much
willing.  Or should be.  The
joke about the coyote never ends.

We take the depression okay, an
anxious gift full of responsibility,
capital p, and lost trust.  I know

a reasonable fence he should
err on the side of.  Ha ha.
Is this wanting help?  Okay

calm down secret.  Be
reasonable.  Life is so
important to proclaim.

mcdxciv

It’s the Dead of Winter and I’m Nearly 70

I wrote an anecdote out of shampoo,
home by myself with a hot martini
recovered from work.  Otto’s drinking
M&Ms.  There’s no trust this week.

Six and a half years ago I write something,
9:15, and decide on drinks.  I have written
hundreds of drinks about where I am.  I’m
older than Kasey.  We decide in a minute

where I am.  Oh, I’m here, arriving in the
mail along with possibilities.  I miss Nick
but worry about his return.  Gloss up the
kitchen a little bit, the masked-up wall,

doing some apartment stuff before going
out and calming down.  A somewhat
reasonable need to make up for lost
trust.  Err on the side of assure.

Err on the side of parent?  Being a
big pain in the ass?  Calm down,
secretive!  Boats wobble in the breeze
without green.  A cure for the hair of the

dog that bit you straddles the fence a
bit.  He’s such a kid about actually.

mcdxciii

Sometimes Feelings Hide

I don’t know the truth of my overdue
letter.   I’m sitting in the dining room on
Saturday night.   It’s the dead of winter
and nearly seventy.   Funny’s destroyed.
Would I move to New York?   Would I
walk him home?   I wrote one more of
course, Momo shaking her head in
front of me.   She’s getting better.
Even Robert Frost.

mcdxcii

Five Things

Across the Atlantic
Ashton Kutcher wrote a
note to Bill with new addresses
and seven deadly sins.  We’re camming
with mom’s laptop and he’s trying not
to look into the vagina.  Televised.  Hello
smooth life with family.  Back when I studied
Japanese I wrote five things which could be called
city laundry.  I bought it collected and without any
drugs and I did a load of Saturday night.  It’s easy to
lose an hour that way.  I return to the city, Saturday
night, and receive the transaction for each of my sins.
Chloe (now it is afternoon) is tall and a little bit napless,
a wakeful of Wow to the city!

mcdxci

Taxi

It was due in an hour and I
heard Mom answer it.  We
take it and we cake the
countryside with all of its
ideals.  Back in San Fran-
cisco, I return the can and
a suave draft of scribbles;
a tentatively titled life.  I
return $830 (don’t ask)
and the letter written
from a dug up draft of
Dallas and a smooth
Japanese fire.  We
know the drill—it’s
‘fixed’ with family.
A little break.  Then
five things which
could each be called
a big backlog of kids.

mcdxc

That Animal Was So Cute!

I’m sitting in the dining room
rocking chair so don’t dingle your
lance too loudly; rocking back and
forth like a ferry.  No word on the
Prius but manage a shower together.
Rick is still a bird, though the phone
just rang.  It’s Mr. Wong from Mono-
gamy.  A big thank you in the form of a
deep tissue massage.  And being parental.
Will we make a pair?

The baby’s a whiner, though.  But
life is fine out here.

mcdlxxxix

A Fevered Moon, Yeah!

     A cracked block I wish it.
                   —Guy Birchard

Careful not to fill your words
with arrogance, throw in a little
French, the 1980s.  You’ve a lap
that can’t keep a napkin and a
furrish cap that is not a pomeranian.
You’re a flutterer kicking chaste
copper to the brick.

Ask for extra Xanax, or whether
it can be repaired so that we’re
up at 8am.  The cat’s going
pajamas over the pick-
pocket paint.

mcdlxxxviii

Are You From Far Away?

It’s the first mouth of the year,
a year I want to get to know
like an enemy.   A storm of
financial stuff just passed.

You have form.   No matter
how you slice it.   I was a fool
on dad’s grave, a dramatic
sunset and visual memories

of drunken mountains.   Big
boys breaking all of the
important rules to break
on drunken mountains.

It’s not pretty.   I can’t
describe it and wouldn’t
trade it for anything in the
world.   Gary carved this

thing out of a piece of
wood and put it there.
On the backbone of
the grave.   All of our

names into the stone
like rungs up a ladder.
You’re a shirtless lump
with whom I’d walk

ten miles round the
lake, after midnight,
all three of us strange
and beautiful.   The

perfect spot for such
Arkansas weather.

mcdlxxxvii

A Bony Gathering

He’s parking his car at Dave’s
rather than have to explain to his
parents that he’s vacationing with
me.  A barista gives the thumbs up
to I’d rather be cockfighting.  What
if when I try real hard to slow time
down...?

Drink clean water from an unclean
glass.  Meddle with history.  Poke
around for inspiration.  I’m so tired
of tiptoe, less tired of tulips.  So
fed up with eggshells, less fed up
with the disposal unit.  Everything
is so urgent.

I see a menage.  Are you from
around here?  I like what drips
from your ears; your ears are
heaven; we’re wearing boots
that don’t belong together.
Waiting on a man’s word
in Paris but only if

the Prius is fixed.  FedEx your
body back to California this
afternoon so I can put it on the
porch with the hummingbirds.
I can’t remember how to
spell it out any better than
this,

the artillery rainstorm,
Fort Chaffee crabapples,
summertime felled
from the sky like a
private joke.

mcdlxxxvi

Ouija Board Blues in the grove.
                        —Larry Kearney

That’s much nicer than
this week’s bit of indifference.

House-sitting.   Studying architecture
with a new apartment.

A cool glass of water after receiving
I want to hold you really bad.

I get the impression you enjoy
yourself.   A signature

I’ve been having a little fun with.
If you’re going to deny it

at least deny it vehemently.
Serious blowouts.

A backside like smooth,
squishy clay.   A jar of May.

Someone else’s lovely beast.
A little bond over bourgeois.

Fun blowout makes a
big hole in the roof.

I believe it’s time for a
reality pick-me-up.   A little

nap in my car with Peter
Frampton, 4:30-6:30pm,

and then having to explain
to his parents.

mcdlxxxv

Social Boy

Still bod.  Cries
with his mouth.
Sweet mandarins
in a wooden bowl.

mcdlxxxiv

First and foremost, you should
pull out!

There’s a shelf-life for relationships
in terms of a marriage.   Anyway,
Kim stayed until 1am and I met
Yong for a drink at the Mix.

Be very steely about your resolve.
You mean business.   Something
will happen.   Maybe except
DATING SOMEONE at
the Bar on Castro.   Or

maybe we’re too young.
Since the almost orgy
every night I’ve been
saner, or more sane.
I like the back-door
method.   He’s sane,

a social boy with a
good therapist who
draws him in so he can
begin to work on his
“couples issue.”

Have you ever wanted to
look like a million bucks?
It’s been four months
I’ve been bonding
with my apartment,
semi-serious.   But
what a spook

shows up in the
elevator with a
wilted something-
or-other, dating
someone now.
He still talks
to the ex who
ran away when
the telephone
said I-LOVE-U.

mcdlxxxiii

In the world be everything.

Highway 1.  Potassium, protein,
and more.  Dropping the keys off
for the cat.  It has sold 80 million
copies (and by the way it’s out in
paperback, too).  Last night with
Stephanie.  Smoked a vodka
grapefruit forever (for a while).
We’re all gaga for Frank, but
I mean gaga.  Interesting
timing for a 7-year itch.
Bound to have entered a new
phase.  We’re assured that
angels are watching over
him.  Prayer and protection
and angels.  I am so in
honeymoon chat-chatting,
if that’s the appropriate thing to
call it.  My mom was the
first person I ever loved,
night before last.  I’m a
very deeply religious
guy.  I was.  I talk about
living every day and I
strongly recommend
sleep.  Then finish
packing and
learn how to read.

mcdlxxxii

Vegan Clouds

Hello, Jupiter!
Work with me.
Who’s our biggest
hero? E verybody
loves him one if
just to rip him off.

Somebody will always
be interested, though.
This is proven.  Fact
over vague clouds.

We schedule a
brainstorm, September
4, yesterday, driving
to Montclair and
fooling around
in nature.

I wouldn’t know a
cogent thought
if it hit me over the head.

Midstream we
settle on some issues.
They who argue their defense
goes their own way.  Into the
terror of commitment.  Or apace
through the Engagement Conference,

such that the rinds of the underwear
singe tight red heaves of blister
that encircle the tops of each
thigh.  Late to work changing a

diaper.  A Prius again.
Arrive thru the afternoon
in Carmel with a cake.  Or
eclairs.  Uncle Earl

shot a buzzard, proud
accident.  A Polaroid
against the law just to
prove it.

mcdlxxxi

we have here is.
      —Larry Kearney

Some cats actually bark.
Symbol this and symbol
that.  I’d bark, too!  Brian

says he really feels the
DayQuil on his nerves.
I want to pause every-

where now.  There’s
no time to think.  I
understand how

yoga sits on such a
precipice.  Something
I used to poo-poo.  Some-

thing I tried for a while
and loved.  Something
I have no time for.  Bull-

barf!  You think you’re
a fucking guy?!  It
looks like a lovely

day out.  It’s
Wednesday.
We argue about

our housewarming
party.  It’s morning
in Montclair.  The

cat, Kiko, has
warmed up
to us.

mcdlxxx

January Sunrise

This is what we do, right?  How
come I never follow the rules?
Don’t stop me now, don’t need to
catch my breath, I can go on and
on and on.

Nobody knows about this.

Death is a turd.  Maybe I’ll
restart the novel.

Fogroll out the living room
window.  A few sirens over the
hill, windows rattling.  One girl
sitting out window two windows
down (toward Mason).

Nick just sent message:
Newsflash: I am fat.
How are u?

The newest Mirage
and The Story of Late
Chrysanthemums.

mcdlxxix

A walk in the dork
with a hole in the mind.
Just a funny way to leave
an apartment I really loved.
I lived a little.  A little more.

Editor-in-Chief of HAZMAT.
There’s so little joy in Toledo,
Ohio. Rhapsody in Blue and
another cup of coffee.  A
wall of bricks.  Fake

orchids.  $0 minus $45.50
is not miraculous.  Tell me
what you think of therapy
so far.  When is the last time
you can recall not answering the

phone when you saw that it was
me?  Do you see me in your
future?  Are you afraid of
becoming your dad?  Do
you remember our

trip to the Grand Canyon?

mcdlxxviii

What a deal
when you realize
other people see teeth
in a packet of gum.  Their
very own afraid to chew teeth.
To wrap your cardigan around
your neck as a joke and get a lot of
oozy compliments.  I’d wrap the most
bourgeois girl in the world into the cradle
of my arms only to mess up on the whole
rotten apple thing.  That’s all, Pipsqueak.

Because of the act in the front yard and the
wandering beauty.  Because of a blue mug
and several pink flamingos.  Because of a
new apartment with a desk that looks directly
over the rooftop of my last apartment.  I make up
all of the past, like happy and single.  My optimism’s
bad karma.  I have a yelling match with the old guy that
lives at the end of the hall over my ‘monopolizing’ the elevator.

mcdlxxvii

Enjoy It While You Can, Restless Virgo!

Am I okay with stupid?  I look in the
mirror, stupid.  I fall on a memory,
stupid.  You’re the memory of

break my ass.  Break my ass you
stupid bossy nurse.

[Sigh.]  No more nurse, bossy!

For example.  Mom is in the
kidney stone hospital.  It hurts,
I’ve heard, but I’m afraid to embarrass
“my buddy.”

Pipsqueak over the flowers in the
hummingbird garden.  Tall man,

I think, sounds like he is speaking 

an Asian language to no one appears

Asian to me, talks and talks about his 

uni. He laughs and says “What’s up 

with you and your brother?!”

Larry asked me what I want to do in Dallas
and I said meet his girlfriend.  Humming
body over the poetry wondering about
flowers.  Orange iPhone angel from China
in the green garden.

You’ve got something when you’ve got a
word like sump.  Something in the backyard
with a new backhoe.  An excavator whose
bucket is rigidly attached to a hinged pole on the
boom and is drawn backwards practially into the 

machine when in operation.

There’s a dead bear next to me and I
love you.  There, there you dead bear.

mcdlxxvi

Reading As Ever with Mom’s
kidney stones long distance.
In the hospital four days straight
and nobody tells me.   I should
of course be grateful to the
Maven of Bolinas, as ever.

Balance checkbook and
figure out minimum require-
ment, bill payment options
and jury duty TODAY.   Job-
less on jury?   Can I plead
debt?   Gary was so animated

on the phone, about how
slow he reads, how he’s
treated as invisible in his
own home, how I should
come visit.   Virgos are
often impatient, I hear.

Getting an appointment
with a head hunter is
almost as difficult as in-
serting your personal digit
into any door of hopeful
employment.   I’m summarily

in debt.   To a very nice
piece of plastic, first time
in years & since decades
of experience in same.
It’s a good enough reason
to open up to avoidance.

Ordinarily I enjoy a
thorough misreading
of my intentions.   I’m
brutally honest, poor
at articulating anything,
much less my own es-

sence.   I’m a Gemini,
straight up, so it all
works out nicely.

mcdlxxv

The Cock in the Copse

I read something about a clock,
something about a corpse.  Every
thing conspires to become day
or night.  A valve hung out a lot.
Singapore.  Bali.  Still processing
an overall positive experience – had 

a nice time together – still do not
think.  Problematic?  Do not
think problematic but overall
listen to the birds.  And
the oil in the frying pan
on Friday, when we
travel to Arkansas
and road trip.  Much
looked forward to
(like Ikea without
a panic attack) and
filled with poetry.
And ohso comfy,
I might add.  Complain
for a while over Playstation,
taking a stab at a sore spot.
Vitriolic rhetoric needs
Xanax but the coffee is
done.  We talk jobs and
hayrides after which he
stays over.  We stay over.
Things that might make you
jealous.  Allergies in the
middle of the night.

mcdlxxiv

Like the Thimble in the Sky

The bedroom is deep sky blue
with some clouds.  The kitchen
will be something around mustard.

We’re both early risers (he’s making
coffee, though I hear no percolation).
Tonight, this room, swap a few poems,

a window out to the familiar (wrong
direction?), the eucalyptus tree, a
fellow pine [– overwhelms me

as I write it – I realize I have not
been.].  He’ll splash fragrantly
in the air....Almost none.  Good

and muddled sitting in a foreign
room.  Like Texas, a few weeks
later (or behind), in a new –

down South they call them
whirlpools – the moon
rising early.  The three of us

a steamy ephemeron.  An
Ikea bookshelf fooling around
with a sofa.  “Your grandfather,”

I’d say to the one I’m sitting on.
If furniture could speak!  Con-
templative with chilly

appendages.  Except a warm
index finger curled around a
thumb.  Rice in the cooker.

mcdlxxiii

But – I

All I know of my future – is o-
ver again?   I’m hoping – chan-
ges in Montclair; a 2000-piece
puzzle in front of us.   We’re
lit burgers in a strange bed.   I
mean and sky and tree and e-
agles ... in the Garden of G-
ood and Evil.   A contrarian
of green tape and funny no-
ises.   We were up til free-
zing.   It was the biggest
move, half-a-block to
tea (green) and cerul-
ean (partly cloudy).
Ghost of seven fini-
al fingers in a sever-
al kiss around some
mustard.   Sponged.

mcdlxxii

the storm has broke and trees are flail
and crack of light.
                              —Larry Kearney

At least don’t be so graphic. It isn’t how
to keep youth. And don’t roll over
and play dead.

New pillows, a potato peeler, measuring
spoons. Lying in bed at 860 Bush St.
after packing some & watching

The Station Agent. I still make good time.
And “love like love” – with fried rice made
with Vienna sausages (which show up

often!). Red notebook with dangling
dangle, it’s exactly three months
to the day. What to do about

5 years? About writing machine? A
wilted face over a bow-tie? It’s almost
as if I can hear the locusts buzzing outside.

Sorry for going off the radar. I’m
enjoying the company of the hottest love-
making ever. Have I moved at all

since we last poked?