stuck on a doormat doing the door math (who’s so welcome he knocked it right down?)
here’s a few hank’rin’ words dot com for a day spent hunkerin’ down low— some door-downin’ hunk
shows up at this so-called chronic coffin all right-izm
wrong-izm right? it’s a day so
super & the pan dim lucky’s
been done gone (or so mouths
sez i hears), and you in a big-
heaved yell over a helluva
stretch of land, says H OW many more can you be here? and don’t just
glare say the DAYS strung
out right down to the knock- knock-knock in my ears pult so into this door of
you, plumb now till ya
pound down its fleur de lis
points to the pure-dee ground
so who sits all prettily shuts my lips and moves his pouts out down to the cliff to the other big end of a suez canal where we live we’re alive but we’re on the wrong side of hell stay alive says the curtain as it goes up & up just as
certain times coattails
drown pine cones in cups
i’m down to square down
to all that’s a’wedded
right here, oh how m
uch more used knots are to spare me the glib ‘ready ribbed everywhere becuz when’s you gonna cum? they all ask every day and to me little me when’s the day? when’s the day? well you henny hen hens just you wait you dears
can’t ya see he’s a’comin’
he’s a’comin’ yes sir i’ve
been set real free as i told
you before he’smy hunny-
hunny-bee. that i do well
declare (a big ditto from
the dark) oh so please
woncha please why yes
if ya care will ya fly if
you could just this one more july oh with two
or three advil (or four) til the devil’s own june once or so we’ll around we’ll around round the bend in a diabetic lump clump of pills in our hands, poor hands run the stairs all the way to the door what a ham- footed ham holy hell holy damn nah it’s holy toledo and we’ll boogie til the birds of the disco do their rhyme chill their chirp shrill their trill and who’ll care what the hell when the car squeaks around all the way up the bluff which upon lives a man hear the car shimmy up hear the door’s big kathunk which is no car door no this here thunk’s up a chunk up there on that floor just a like it’s at us as we’re down
on all eight (that’s two sco
res of dunka-dunk dunk
dunka-dunk) and no less th
an it is and what’s more it
is four. yes a four that’ll
guess at the who or the what (it’s absurdly a whom,
septembranizm (out of place be cause it’s one for the ages.)
you’re too sweet to pull that off right this moment. but give it a bit of time, and not only will you give me a run for my money, but you'll be king, queen and dictator of us all. —me
here’s a few notes that are quotes from yours truly,
which are not anachronistic at the moment,
and perhaps never will be because the whole of it is grounded in the now,
or in time lessness; which is to also say that they’re steep ed in univer sality:
scale back on the honesty, honey. step away from straight forward.
that notion i’m always beating like dead meat,
the one in which i ar gue the c ase that i do nothing
if not work incessantly at being. exactly who i am
—all around, no matter w here or under whatever circ umstances—
well,
while that is 100% truth, it is just as equally also butter ullshit.
+, if it were not true, an d if we we re even ca pable of ca lling the dogs dogs,
and being infi nitely (& mort ally), straight forwardly truth ful,
it’d either be a boring world or everyone would have murdered everyone else by now.
i mean (previous ly, that same era), as strongly as i a void self-censors hip or whatever—
meaning general ly, with the exce ption of being a total dick about
it—couldn’t it be said that in every area of (my) life, almost everything we do and say and write or whatever is
inherently so obvi ously layered in a complex set of curt ains and codes?
and all of that pos turing, that mask ing, that fibbing and such,
couldn’t it just be called levity—at least just as eas ily as it might co rrectly and right
fully be called ly
ing or faking it or
being hypocritical?
is it just me, or am i gotten? and if i’m so had, isn't that just the funniest rub ever?
the older i get the more twist ed i am, wall owing as i do in my doe-ey ed confusion. would you ex pect anything less from such a bifurcated soul? twinkle twinkle star-crossed gem ini, what are we ever gonna do with me? of course i’ve al ways got plenty of bright ideas, because duh, there’s a ton of fun stuff i can do with myself. because there are so many of us. of course what i mean is, even though we, either of us, never know who we’re gonna be when we wake of a morning (or afternoon, or evening), but, al as and alack, as they used to say (and some of us still do), it’s really just the two of us. but, honestly. why should that be such a bore? because, well, because be cause why have just us when we can always have more. that’s the because. no mat ter how many of us that i can be, it’s always more fun when there are at least three (meaning one of us has please oh please got to not beme.) (amen!).
come to terms w/ never for get why abstract is alway s an op tion. do nut be an imp ossibil ity. eat a bagel for brea kfast in berlin. determ ine to f ind no way to avoid t he real deal? is you an i ssue or is you a n ain’t?
sure there is the occasional season of personal suck. but what a nice thing to pop on a sweaty head set and find my self dancing down the sidewalk to the hits of the summer of now or then – and it’s no differ ent on this fine foggy day, on the evening before the advent of autumn, because autumn has an advent just like the spring that sprung out of the noiseless ness of isolation just a few months ago. or was it years. i really don’t know, i won der, or
wand er, mov ing my ass to t he m usic t rippin g into my ear s, in my new mar malade outfit, b ouncing down fol som like a bowl of jelly (my ass being so thorou ghly conn ected to t he rest of me). boom boom boo m, hahah, lololololol.
A lot can happen. Just last week I like it that way, Bruce’s ankle, eek, the beautiful the beautiful. —John Ashbery
a pretty beautiful tragedy just flew out of nowhere and now it’s tickling my face with its cute little jaws and its weency dancing claws and – nope – it appears to be hungry the adorable little devil and that’s – clearly this creature – to which in just these tiny moments of first contact, if what feels, perhaps given the times, in this undeniable moment, like no moment of intimacy, unlike, it could be an act of in timacy like none i have ever encoun
tered, i’m seriously just so, really so mag
netically drawn to this brilliantly colored little creature, what is it, a bird, a reptile, it is such a little cutie unlike any other, yes, that’s what it is isn’t it, i wonder if it already has a name,
or should i perhaps give it one, but man, look how cute it dances all over my cheeks and my forehead, it’s becoming so soothing, and not nearly as ticklish as it was, not ticklish at
all, it’s like it’s giving me a massage, i feel like
i’m at a spa with this thing, my new pet, and trust
me, it will be mine, it is mine, i am just loving this,
this – is it – ouch! – it seems a bit peckish, i mean
this thing’s hungry, you’re hungry aren’t you, you
widdle biwdie, you’we – ouch! – no, i’m, hey, can you see what it’s doing over here, it’s taking it’s little really really sharp and very agile claws and its leaving marks, little red slits, i’m not, i feel like, is there, am i bleeding over here, hey, is this thing – OUCH! – this motherfucker just took out a chunk of my cheek and – SHIT! – it’s – there’s a hole right thwu my cheek hewe and it’s got its slendew jaws inside my mouth it’s doing something to my guwms – OUCH!! – can someone get me a mirror i think this varmint’s trying to eat my entire face off it’s got quite a voracious appetite and it’s – that fucker has omigod! omigod! omiGOD! [shrieking now] IT’S EATEN HALF MY FACE OFF THIS THING – IT’S – I HAVE NO FACE –
I CAN HEAR IT CHEWING MY FACE IT’S DIGESTING MY ENTIRE
FACE I CAN HEAR IT LOUD AND CLEAR BECAUSE IT’S NOW IT’S – IT’S AT MY IT’S EATING MY EAR OFF NOW IT’S HEEEEEELWWHHH!!!
let’s have a show of hands, who can’t take their eyes off the television? ears, i mean. i have been usurped by all of the air waves, all of the noise, all of the babble, all of the blurbs being strewn about so messily and so dis
tressingly. am i really so easily distracted? shut up!
yes, i am so easily distracted. by the shape of the airwaves swirling about in my coffin-sized apartment? yes. there’s the company of words. i don’t have to let them just . . . take me over. they can instead seduce. they could inspire. they might educate, if i learned how to discern one channel over the rest, if i could make only one of the air waves the dominant airwave, and go from there. either way i’m ready to be taken. i’m ready to be diverted, to be dominated, to become all of the words, or a few of them. one or two. how do i sound? do i feel what i’m saying? i move my chin over my right shoulder to make sure that my lemonade is still there. it is.
he gave me his vulcan hand and i pressed my human one against his in like fashion. it seemed a bit bar baric to me, with its simpli city, and yet it was also very sensual. we’d wait ed for so many years just for this, our first contact. that’s how it is when you’re a couple of love nerds light years from one ano ther. we left the space ship hand in hand and stayed that way until i dug my key out of my pocket to get into my, now our, holodeck, where we collapsed in supreme exhaustion. and never once did we leave, like, not ever. and thusly we lived our fabulous future, which is to say we lived long, we prospered and, it should go without saying, quite happily ever after.
My heart, the small one I made all by myself, then put into a small black frame, which once held a photograph, is hung on the wall against which the long side of my bed abuts the right side, that is, if I am lying on my back, which is how I usually lie (I don’t believe this was al- ways the case, but I digress); it is just above my pile of pillows, flat against the wall, my heart, which means that when I’m in my bed, that is, if I am lying down in it, my heart is just a small distance above and an even shorter distance behind, my right ear, every time I sleep, which is most nights and a fairly good percentage of the day- time hours, truth be told. So usually my heart is right there, over me, every time I sleep, wherein ofttimes I dream, sleeping and dreaming, dreaming and sleeping, my heart, my pinkish paper heart, with its blue background, silently hanging, flat against the wall, wrapped in its black frame, it’s there, behind the small rectangle of glass, where once there was a photograph, just above my ear, right next to my bed, where I spend most all of my sleep, and an awful lot of the time when I am awake, every night, every day, for over two and a half years now, my pinkish heart that’s cut from crinkled paper that gives it the look of a small, heart-shaped map of the terrain of some pinkish locale, and it looks down upon me as I sleep, and as I dream; as I sleep and dream, dream and sleep, my heart, as I write these words, words that are written with penmanship so horrid, so quickly strewn across the page, that I’ll scarce be able to de- cipher them (of this I can now assuredly attest), that heart, that pink and crumply heart, is now, for the very first time, at least that I have ever not- iced it doing, that pinkish, rough-hewn, topographical heart is – it’s smiling at me, it is literallysmiling at me, and it has a nose, even, that heart, and it’s, well, it was just smiling at me, I swear it was. But when I look at it now, which I am, and I am looking at it intently, scrutinizing it, staring hard at it, all focus is on my pink heart that is framed in black with a blue background, and which sits flat against the wall above the head of my bed, as I look at it now, I kid you not, but that heart is no longer smiling! in fact, that pinkish, amateur-looking, roughly- surfaced heart has now, now has, a very prominent and pronounced frown upon it’s dimpled and pointy-chinned face.
mutters, whiffs Junie’s doobie. Trish’s mad isthmus knows no lawn. “Manure for spawn?” Kicks brakes
(10 fecund and smoothied buns summarily stiffen, then relax). Penny’s on it. “Must never not ever not want to be alone!”
“Not ever!” go the chorus; Dot’s after Di’s hobbled lips. Enough to sink ships, Dot thinks, way too far gone. “Boo!”
Junie’s knit vest, taut as it seems, flows along with the Pacifica Breeze. “You...,” starts Junie, all startled, but’s stopped by Di’s big wet mouth full of
lips planted smack over that next word. Nobody hurried for the bake sale entrance. The pies cried out, as always, once they went in, or at least all four of the gals didn't
have to think to know that much. But pies can wait. The sky was bunched up into waves. And Junie’s big brown eyes were rolling with them, like a windswept surfer hovering dry over an epic wave.
Does one opening possess moving matter that, nice under night, alone inures the indisposed masses to the epitaphs on their own slab-stones?
Or is our courage more of a collective fixation of corsages in heaven; or up our ancestors ashes with spreadsheets full of family trees and DNA tests?
Lost in these glib (at least to her) thoughts, Mary merrily grips her Groupon for half off all of the answers. She cuts quite the figure in the Walgreens line (at least to her).
The line being what it is, and what it’s full of, she absorbs all of the nowhere into her, letting it dissolve down to nothing. This is where she spends half her days and most of her nights, dreaming of irrevocably lapsed endorsements.
