For $2.75 plus $1 tip nobody says hello. Uni-ball pen (blue) of times past – the nostalgia you get from running around. Ok, that’s a good phrase. How come is it that I cannot complete a sentence when I’m around him? Same as I’m in- capable of walking over to say hello to coat check guy. THIS – CRUSHES – is not the 1st monogamy in five years nearly. Q. Wd u spend $150 for a pair of shoes? A. Yes. Q. Position? A. Missionary. This isn’t quite true. I like it better when you top me – damn! – you really act like you want it. & elsewhere: “Do you like dirty talk?” and “Sex Sex Sex” (either cubed or crushed like ice).
you remind me of the seventies i don’t remember and you’re glitterbuilt like plastic in shokan new york where you’re a chameleon just like me and your new hollywood is taking a trip in a gemini spacecraft with all the words crossed thru the middle
think of me under pressure in nineteen eighty-two or four years later when my own major tom was huddled naked in the closet while my roommate made noises through the keyhole and the whole new world was mtv and almost bisexual or had been and got through it
down in space you sit beside your tall telephone in that country studio that is ackshully plastic i’m listening to you while all the birdshit on the eaves of the oldish buildings along geary street turns into cosmic goo and gee it’s lovely like an old standard
now you sing about flying over coney island always haunted i’m wondering how serious you must look in your lovely buildings past mercury
too bad i can’t be all dressed up in the moonsun like you even though you are always me like here inside myself as you float down that long stairway with all the rays shining right through you and i can really feel your space with all this lightstuff
i remember let’s dance and i hope you wear that dress when you die
worn. Hushes such as “This codicil is like a flippant sausage remark” and “Your mustard hit the target, but didn’t quite fill me up.” It’s just so so-so.
Like that ghost of an art teacher with her cheeks bitten off, “We should all listen to those who hang around on walls.” Twirling around and around,
trying to pronounce miscellany like “super-celluloid” and “carnal quavering” (just an aside, here, but I do remember one groovy jiffy
when it shook in its shoes, salivating, re-e-eally wanting out). “How does he want it?” Granted, we could sit here for ages, salad after salad,
and never get to the bottom of it. I dare you. “Honestly, it looks just like a bubble and yet has so much to say!”
“Don’t be thinking about a career move,” she whispered. Hidden behind all those regular sounds were fizz noises, fading like moons.
a red apron a cup of coffee the rattle of silverware a decanter of raspberry jam a decanter of ketchup. the sun brightens a brunette, no longer in the fog. cole garage. should i make a reservation for french speaking night? i look out to a man in a yellow shirt. he looks like several people i know. ‘i’m sorry that i left your book at the library.’ green breeze with purple buds, purple blooms in the breeze. door squawk, stroller door, blooms, clicks, wadded napkin. ‘so i’d go back in there 25 more minutes,’ click, ‘what i need is.’ click, downtempo. red pickup truck in a green breeze— look at the sky-coated pole. wadded napkin. ‘for me it’s a matter of ... it’s not every day i ....’ the door opens again and closes again. the one fellow brave enough to eat out- side takes off his beige coat. the sun is very informal. i had a look around in the green breeze, all the things i ever think about, in a new language. another mother comes in carrying a purple bundle. she is given an orange menu. ‘milk for me.’ and a barrel of pink blooms.
we lift our heads from off our pillows as houses sink beside freeways we breathe both liquid and solid we’re flush with brickwork that’s like life down a long corridor of sound all rapt and fumbling for a spigot
our minds drop and bow of heart our heart however is nothing but embarrassed of this altitude our mouths are full of soap cured by concertina (a habitat warped by longing) long mouths filled
with drowning trucks that sting our eyes to hear such a heap of sopped nothing – to tuck one coil carefully into the pile of glass that we saw fall like light out of sky when we ran the
water too hot down the frozen pane of the bedroom window
[Name Removed] says this is not real art. We’re two clouds at a party. When I ask him about our ability to make lightning, his reply is prurient. How had I thought electricity so chaste? I hover over each guest like a kite until I know everything about him or her. She is a spiral, he is an epiphany, she is gratitude, he is worms, she a cake-maker, he a purple, frozen heart. As clouds we depart with matter from each other, about the size of a minnow-bag or a child’s balloon.
[Name Removed] says the clouds are burning a hole in his jacket. I wish we had less to burn every day. There’s a russet-colored splotch near the middle of the bay that looks like the tip of a gigantic brown washable marker felled from the sky (as if
by magic, I think). See it? he asks pointing vaguely at
Treasure Island. I put my glasses on to see it better.
[Name Removed] says if only we could pull the plug on our body of water, it wouldn’t take so long for the world to run dry. How is this so revolutionary? Imagine where the rain could take us, all the way around the continent, toward inseparability? We hash over the book neither of us read. Is this revolution? Nah, this is creativity.
[Name Removed] says he feels a droplet. This does not keep the sun from careening into the bus as it bludgeons Nob Hill. Romance filters through the tunnels, perking up passers-by. It’s Tuesday and there’s a pain in my lower back on my left side. Kidney? Liver? The Swedish massage therapist? The shadowy figures burnt into my memory are gliding by the sliced strawberries, grazing the frosted pitchers, creating microclimates that follow us out the door and twist and swirl into waterwheels that scrape stories off the tops of our heads like a drive-through car wash.
[Name Removed] says the rain is more internalized in less rural settings. I don’t wonder much. Tufts of suede drip from last night’s coat pockets. Hay bales in January are not so fresh. A yellow film covers the Oakland Hills. Where am I? Perhaps I dozed off. Ah, here we are: “Carrots in the ground
and more leaves fallen. The sun in my cocktail. One bird’s always louder
With our movements we chalked out a mirage (a pencil-tip on the outskirts of prosody). I never meant to mean any more or any less. It’s just that while dancing among the vowels full of meaninglessness I tripped on your shoe. Or was it mine?
Delicately, you wheedle until you shake out your very niche. I, on the other hand, finding whimsy much too complex, shuffle off to the window to hone in for a few hours on another wet night.
I have news for you Mr. Baker, you know? If you can eat it, it’s not art. If you can say ‘I’ll have that and a cup of coffee,’ that’s not art. That’s a snack. —Fran Lebowitz (on the the bakers who refused—on religious grounds—to
bake cakes for gay weddings)
[Name Removed] says my hedge fund’s no turkey, that we should go out immediately and purchase a Picasso, move into our very own condominium
by Easter, if not by this Tuesday. The truth about beauty is that it swims in
an ocean of blandness. The offense that the sum of these contraptions of
gilded violence has imparted onto humankind is immeasurable, I say. And so,
to deal them a right gotcha, I accept each as a gift. They come in all sizes
and shapes, and most often they’re cleverly disguised, (think Trojan Horse),
and might be slung from anywhere by anyone at any time. Given the lack of
decent alternatives, I choose to make a sport of it (one must never look a
gift horse, etc.). And so I yawningly egg on the barrage of atrocities from
today’s de-evolved pseudo-sentients, with their inflated egos and sun-sucking
greed, feeling I must know each intimately at any cost, giving them the
satisfaction that they’ve put me in my place and have reminded me of who
I am, so they surely feel too clever by half, their various contributions of
blight forces me ever nearer the rough edges of surreality; to the margins,
if you will, where it’s delightfully quiet, but for the sporadic sounds of nature
and the dull hum of swiftly moving electricity. This is where I find sanity, take
refuge, here, at the outer rim of existence, where I look inward, toward so-called
civilization, from which I remain a safe enough distance away to carry on, yet
maintain the curiosity to focus on my studies. I scrutinize each drifting vessel;
watch one churl flimsily postulate that Post-its (their glaringly blank canvases),
know no limits, are to be revered; while having a bit of fun with another crank’s
forcible attempts to disrupt the swing of my “soul cycle.” Through it all, I faux-
pout and scoot further out toward the very perimeters of existence. It’s from
here that sense can be made of our godforsaken planet. So, I chip away at the
detritus, try to discover how one might coexist with dullards, or if there’s a way
to simply escape it all, to find my own singular, sustainable slice of universe.
One day, I hope to find answers, to come up with an antidote to the nauseating
mix of vitriol and boredom slung with mediocrity. Until then, if and when I wish
to have my chakras banged or bent, I’ll be the one choosing from whom. Or
this is what my inner voice, with as much gusto as it can muster, says to the
rest of me, as I float backwards, away from the chaos, closer and closer to
some ideal home, a peaceful oblivion that grows ever more desirable the
closer we get to each other. I look back, toward the demise of humanity,
wave a great big hello with one hand, and clutch my gut with the other.
[Name Removed] says that occasionally, like once a year, I’ll need a really large rubber band. I wonder if it’s because he sees that I can keep stuff together, all neat (and bound!). Or that
armed with one I can sting skin into a heckuva welt and be
back at the stove before anyone knows what hit them. Or,
horrified, I wonder if he’s referencing that my presence
conjures for him the idea of a 21st century one man jug band.
I slowly lower myself onto the couch. Without knowing how much
time’s threads have been strung, I am transported unflinchingly
into a neatly boxed future. Here in the future, I already know
the significance of hot boxes because I live in one that’s the
size of a coffin. While tucked inside future’s tidy drawer, I
remember things I should’ve taken care of much sooner,
like the squirrels in the attic, the sunlight that flickers
across the island estate, and that two-week suicide watch
I had promised a certain pair of overly enthusiastic interventionists.
What’s to be done of that now? The astonishing necessity of memory!
How inconvenient that it shows up, all too often, a mere half a
minute tardy (but nevertheless with such bravado!). Of embar
rassing note: thedeep remorse of finding oneself super-saturated
in The Future, all but settled in to the this drawer or box, agonizing
over how I am so ditzy I might stay here until sunrise. The gym
wasn’t that thirsty, I recall in an attempt to make light of my plight
(two days, one night, stuck in a dark drawer in a sunroom in the middle
of a long midwestern summer). I’m a real tip-of-the-tongue mystery,
I am. My head’s spinning violently as it slowly dawns on me that there’s
impending humidity on top of impending heat. One thing can clearly
be concluded from this all-inclusive weekend filled with now and
future: throughout any duration there’s a glaring theme: rubber
bands. I cannot escape them. There’s hardly a minute that goes by
but that I’ve not come up with yet another flimsy but possible reason he
might’ve brought them up at that particular moment. Perhaps it was a
vague Groundhog Day-type reference. You know: today mirrors yes
terday, which, in turn mirrors tomorrow. And we bounce in and out
of these mirrors as if there is something unique about a day or fac
tors of significance differentiating any one of us humans from the
others. Perhaps his passing remark was a subtle pun about time
travel. A knowing nod to string theory? Is he even fond of
string theory? I’m confidently thinking he isn’t, given physics
on the one hand, psychosis on the other. But I remain curious
to this day. And. Well. Lately, I let my thoughts move ever
so gently to the fact that once every year or two, I do attempt
to utilize a rubber band. That is, in a way that is practical,
that doesn’t cause harm to others, but instead provides
that modicum of order and that sense of inseparability
that only a rubber band might provide. They do
have a fairly distinct purpose or two. I wish that
[Name Removed] says he likes chess but says that I’m a snob. Realizing later how important it is to not be my mother, but seeing (in more than just this apple pie) that I am her. Head in hands, [Not Me] walks her from the Ferry Building to the Market Starbucks between Fremont and Beale. Yesterday a bomb was thought found in a Starbucks on Van Ness. Today they’ve arrested a man. I can see the American flag flop atop Embarcadero 4 through the whipped cream. It points toward South as I (and yes, it’s me; this fact cannot be denied) fly to Little Rock for a mild headache.
I am always writing blooded ink upon a vitreous rock; blown quartz that’s spit from the attic window like a taut cluster of crystalline hail and slipped upon after a brief boff on the roof. This is gonna sting.
Ouch! This is gonna show. Oops! This is by far the best carnival
side-show of small-town youth, mid-1980’s, hair flown back to the
warehouse in intervals: there’s Bruce in Hangar 1, here’s a big bouf-
fant from a B-52 in Hangar 2 and, catch if ya can, not one, not two,
but an entire Flock of Seagulls in Hangar 5. You’d been reminded,
of course, that it’s best not to show Edie up until eleven, even among the jaded columns where the crowd really begins to swell, with its haps, its gossip columnists and its all kindsa laughs (laughing gas, laughing stocks, the laugh riots; it’s a laugh a minute!). Now, we
all know how it goes with poor Mz. McClurg. And it—well, that was, after all, an impolite, unjust, untimely and grossly impractical joke. But.
It was one that (and from here on, no one can keep a straight face!)
has an explosively overloaded punchline—a punchline so overstuffed— and overfluffed—lest we forget it is a red herring, which—oh my god—
that fluffy carmine tickler—the one that the mistress used for the entire
duration?—on that poor, unnecessary colonel (who was just the butt of
it all, was he not?)—so that when the actual fluffer (people are barely
standing they’re so consumed at this point)—when the—actual fluffer
arrived, and lands center-stage for the real climax it all? Oh—dear—
heavens! Not only is it the “last laugh” (Wink! Wink! Guffaw! Guffaw!!),
but it’s the one that will go down into the annals of hisstory!
And of yours. And mine, too, I’m afraid. And why not?
I mean, after all, such are the sensations that
memories, ahem, unclog. Anyway, anyway,
afterwards, with all of us lined up like ballerinas
at the buffet bar (someone blurted out “bananas!”),
boy, did we fork it over, or what? And at the end
of the day, all of us, comatose, staring at that shaded tree (like always; we’re in awe of it, that unswervingly singular home to our countless
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