mmmdcccxlviii

     I just like living,
     only like living.
              —John Ashbery

I’d think he thinks there was a
joke he planted about reading
these lines, his words, after he
was gone. But then, I really do

not know. I’ve grown quite ac
quainted with what I think of
as his humor, which is generally,
or more often than not, pretty

bleak. A funny thing, certainly,
to be able, with some feeling of
authority, to think of him at all
as if I have even a general idea of

what he was doing all along, with
the sidewalks of words he built as
he wrote. Sometimes someone
else might pour a bit of concrete

or lay down a square set of nailed
planks into which to pour this salad.
I project this upon the man who wrote
a grand sum of these sidewalk collages

from which I glean clear stories seen
by endless angles, or become hard-set
on how absolute the narrative of some
of them hold intact, despite the absurdity.

You’d think him my favorite, but he’s not.
Frank’s snacks, Jimmy’s elevated lines of
observation, these are more my cups of
tea. Although I don’t drink tea much, unless

chilled with Splenda. Lately, I’ve wanted
to put in some lemon juice, so I just this
moment took a break to ask Alexa to add
lemon juice to my grocery list. Maybe I

should switch it to fresh lemons, but there’s
no need to involve my new roommate in
that idea. I need to take an inventory of
what books of his I have yet to read. Even

as I poopoo his my-cup-of-tea worthiness,
each next time I read one of his poems or
one of his books, it gets better. And there
are hardly that many memorable poems

(though endless memorable moments).
That’s heresy to no small few of you, or of
those who read him anywhere near as much
as I do. But what I was going to say is that

even if for me his tomes don’t hold what I’d
consider my favorite poems, even of those
of his spare and problematic ‘school’ – which
of course I’ll admit has had a most profound

and expansive—over any other group’s or school’s
or coterie’s—influence on ME and what I present
in this multitude of virtual pages, and elsewhere—
save for perhaps my own personal poem-swap

compatriots (I so miss you all, from my elders
in Jamaica Plain to my colleagues on those many
weekend mornings at Anza Vista to the swaps at
my short-term bachelor pad on Bush to the decade

plus of regular swap-meets up the block and catty-
corner at Pine and Mason—and how could I mean
these many important diversions to not only divert
from what I’m trying to say but muddy it up, this

truth I feel I am divulging, to cast doubt on it, but
that would be silly of me to do, wouldn’t it? Esp
ecially since John Ashbery’s bricolage of stanzas
and sentences DO, surely, more than anyone

else’s, catalyze so many of these that I fold up
into little paper airplanes for which to bombard
you with so regularly. Which is a bit of a sullen
if not just downright offensiven metaphor, I

suppose. My pieces as airplanes that crash some
where onto your body. Enough so that you can
feel it, so that it makes an impact? There’d be
casualties, then. Let’s make a pact that those

who don’t survive the impact are just metaphors,
like the worst lines I happen to write. Don’t
kill them all off, please. Well, how nice it’d
be to have given you a little of me or at

least something that is somewhat real,
that you might keep—if for no other
reason than to remember me by.

mmmdcccxlvii

I Hate to Disappoint

Essentially, this begins around the
expected ending of the middle period,
although expectations are a truly rough
head screw (just between me and you)—

but what am I even saying? Give me some
one who is not at most moments, with little
respite, aware of this beast we ride from the start
and, yes, to the finish, in this, surely our singular—

our one and only—existence. Blah, blah, blah. While
wearing our costumes of today, beigey taupe, and to
morrow (and tomorrow and tomorrow), taupe-tinted beige.
And it’s once again from the start, back to the middle and

around again. I’m gonna be there ’til the end. And then
once more, but all shifty-like: I’m gonna do this once again.
Hope is hope, folks, and let me tell you now kiddos that 100%
is never enough. What I meant to say is I hate being disappointed.

mmmdcccxlvi

Ode to the Joy of Youth and Insects

So tired of the
sleepless fumes of
nearly breaking legs

off of dreams (of cock
roaches casting their
spells like Hogwarts) of

Kafka, until nothing but
the lack of any pain re
mains. Not even a screw

ball bug squirming in the
mutated hollows of an
accumulation of antiquated

novellas gives me the slight
est itch any more. I listen to
the stragglers left scratching

through the handwritten
memoranda left within
gnarled miniature ledgers,

all of them cowards like
me, writhing around within
this faded pink comfortor,

coddling its soft, poofed-out
curls while worrying about
microbes and cryptology.

Us poor things! All of us
so confident in impen
ding national incidents.

We settle, sketchy and un
comfortable, into the doom
as if it were just another day,

all but insignificant; at the
dawn, perhaps, of yet
another global pain crisis.

mmmdcccxlv

All Dreamers Are Queer

You really should have seen them
scurrying about from one research
office to the next, etc. Kinsey wanted
everyone to only be studying the

bumps under each of the sleeping
subject’s slippery eyelids. He’d say
bi. But heresy arrives regularly wear
ing wildly varying disguises. Man

Ray sleeps with Basquiat, and so
on. Herbert Hoover and the rest
of the vacuum cleaner clan build
their Hoover Dam. All of the

regular beavers, as well as the
Leave It to Beavers, build beaver
dams. And the boys and girls
would not stop singing that

repulsive lullaby—the one
about how much wood the
overachieving woodchucks
upchucked on any given—

it was all enough to damn
even the grooviest night
mares. Chuck, the head
woodchuck back in those

days, always insisted upon
telling a different story.
It was just that dopey song
that always stayed the same.

mmmdcccxliv

How to Remember the Name of This Story?

After all that has happened since
then? It’s impossible to fake the
kit, much less the kaboodle, when
there’s such a distinct lack of noodle.

mmmdcccxliii

Going Long

He went sifting through
the foot fetish section
when he came across
a game-changer: football empowerment!

All the carpets on floor forty-four
shifted to the din of astroturf on
that day. No winy hues, no Blue
Boy blues, just the iridescent

color of plastic grass. So it was
that this kid whose game had so
whiplashingly changed that he 
fell flat on his ass. But he picked

himself back up, piece by piece,
is how he'd later describe how it
seemed, ran down forty-five flights
and without a moment for a first

thought on these or any other
matters, he purchased himself a
subway token and then immediately
hired himself an official spokesperson.

mmmdcccxlii

Hospital, Hospital, Make Me a Cure

And it did, of course. So our now
healthy hero bought himself a long
round of golf. And, as these things gen
erally go, it was quite an expensive round.

Our hero nevertheless made a valiant attempt
to remain upbeat about his health and the
round of golf. This was a celebration, after all.
However, things were really starting to get to

him. The course was too coarse for his taste,
for example (but I’d suggest that you trust a
narrator when he states that our hero never
tasted that great, anyway—so it was what it

was). Also, on this particular day, all of the golf
carts had been replaced with horses, which were
to be saddled by each sad golfer. And our dear
hero had never been to one cinema in the great

Southeast for to see a double feature Spaghetti
Western, much less a single feature Western of
any cuisine or flavor whatsoever. So no golf
carts and no saddled subsitutes. “Things are

getting a bit sticky for a celebration,” thinks
our hero. And that is just when it was found
that every golfer’s balls were at least a little
bit mildewed; and none moreso than our hero’s

poor balls, which were irreversibly gunked up
with green and gray muck. “What rotten luck,”
thought our man of the hour, the earlier pekid
but now perfectly healthy yet quite distraught

once-upon-a-hero. Who was now, it would
appear, making his way swiftly toward an exist
ential crisis of some potentially invaluable
relevance to his erstwhile ordinary life. And

so it was. A gamechanger for a real live human
being was most certainly about to transpire. (And

very hopefully not expire.)

mmmdcccxli

The Music I Didn’t Make Got Me Here Anyway

The misadventures of my youth
included tons of melodic ad
venture: brass mouthpieces
freezing my lips off, fingering
chopped and screwed Scott
Joplin chords in record-break
ing slow motion, faring Ol’ Joe
Clark well in chamber chorale
on many an evening or afternoon,
sometimes with disappointingly tiny
audiences and other times with the
arrhythmically tachycardic panic attack
anxiety and sweat that comes when you’re
on a tiny stage with four or five other tiny
humans amid throngs of mostly drunken
festival attendees with nothing for ammo
or armor but your vocal cords. I took piano
lessons that were paid for in hard-earned
fashion and almost never practiced for any
of these weekly outings (these lessons took

place mostly at the mid-sized town of Fort

Smith, Arkansas until I graduated from high
school in an even tinier enclave in a sprawling
bit of Ozark rural-suburbia that existed a couple
dozen miles away from Fort Smith, and then for 

three more years at a gem of a liberal arts college

down the highway a bit from Little Rock, where

I also took a couple of years of voice lessons!).
As I let this sink in to my own little head, allow
me if you will to pose as an educated guess that
during all of this time the average amount of weekly
practice these fingers had each week between those
piano and voice lessons: cumulatively around fifteen
minutes. Plus, I sang for and with puppets that I some
times also puppetteered, performed in many church
musicals, tooted a trumpet and tinkled the ivories a
bit for a jazz band, played xylophone for an award-
winning half-time performance at no less than two
dozen high school football games for a percussive
interlude that was a version of (for real!) John Denver’s
Thank God, I’m a Country Boy which took place be
tween our marching band’s performance of the theme

from Rocky and our grand finale, a version of On
Broadway, during which I had an improvised
fluid high-pitched swift-paced (ta-ta-ka ta-ta-ka)
brass solo. I was even the senior high school band
president. It was my junior year. Somehow, musically,
I’d go on. Three years of choir tours at college, hitting
all the “larger communities” of Arkansas (and some that
were even a wee bit beyond). I played Reveille while
marching for a couple of miles in a Veteran’s Day parade.
I did organ and grand piano solos, vocal solos, duets or
special choir performances, usually when the plates were
being passed around, at the Baptist church in which I
practically grew up. I sang a duet of Bette Midler’s
The Rose with another strong-willed and lovely
redhead whose name was Kim Burton at a Valentine’s
Day Banquet when I was thirteen or fourteen. On
several occasions, I’d be the adult choir director
and/or the Sunday morning service music director
at my church, also as a teenager. I sang at more
weddings and funerals than I can count, again, mostly
all as a teen (this I sometimes think is the primary
reason I began to slowly exit the musical performance
scene that had always played such a large part of my
young life). I played Nathan Detroit in pretty swell
community theatre production of Guys & Dolls the
summer I turned twenty-one, and a few years later,
in the early 1990s, I pretended to be Elvis (more hip-
shaking than singing, this gig) in front of hundreds
of people in Bowling Green, Ohio during a summer
theatrical production that I thoroughly enjoyed.
I wrote my master’s thesis on a postmodern
opera director of some renown. And I was
piano accompanist for a 2nd grade version
of The Nutcracker and (clearly the most
amazing—and most amazingly impossible—
accomplishment) was two of the four-handed
piano accompaniment to many of Brahms’
Liebeslieder Waltzes night after night and day
after day for the Hendrix College Choir’s spring
tour during my junior year in attendance there.
So you first might imagine how in the world I
did all of this, especially the piano performances
without much practice at all, or certainly not enough?
I’ve really no idea. But what I do know, as I listen
giddily to my “Discover Weekly” playlist on
Spotify this week (and do they ever have my
algorithm, my list most always being a motley
assortment of the most bizarre but generally
upbeat ditties that a beat can be found within
but yet the songs otherwise would most all
have some difficulty finding homes in any
of even the most newfangled genres;
I’d call it a bunch of happy synthetic
and organic noise combinations that
exists on whichever week’s most far-out
fringes of whatever might be called pop),
is this: that whatever my commitment,
whatever my patience or my discipline
has NOT been in the study of music, the 

education of music, despite the lack of taking it

serious enough to practice on my own before so 

many musical performances that I always found 

myself doing, music has been an integral part of
my life, and for as far back as I remember.
But I’m not a musician. Maybe a bit of an
afficianado. But. I am always more than
happy to spend whatever time it takes
to put together a few lines like these
to tell and/or retell such seemingly
inconsequential stories, or build 

collages, pastiches such as this 

one that I am presently over

doing, for example. This is what I DO:

spend my time practicing, with disc
ipline and commitment, as my friends
here on the bookshelves around me
can at least attest, this is a thing
about which I have made quite
a point to set aside the time for
a long-term, ongoing education
and practice. Which means I can
spend hours on it pretty much
every single day, often humming
a few bars of some tune or another
as I go at it. Relatively speaking,
for me, it is this act that seems
to be my one indefatigable passion.

mmmdcccxl

I Hate to Disappoint

The misadventures of yesteryear
and its phone service. Maybe I
meant that I hate to be disappointed.

Swerving in other directions, I need screws
for the television stand; to connect the new
tv to its v-shaped legs. Also, more plastic

boxes (so the children can suffucate?). Also,
also, also, stop being so dramatic and pick up
some dishwashing liquid and some laundry

detergent. I can scratch new iPhone off the
list (reminder), but also, add new laptop. Oh, and
don’t forget to get milk (always) and murder spray.

mmmdcccxxxix

Dozed and Confused

Essentially, for me, the middle of 

the night is the top of the morning.

Also, sleeping habits are very
genetic—unfortunately.  They

can also be downright contagious.
I can write, however, at any hour,

when I’m not currently working
a job that (oh, so importantly)

pays the rent.  So, like my 80-
year old mother (who remains

a woman who seems to rarely
ever sleep, unless in her chair

while watching the television
at whatever hour of the day),

without the structure of a paid
nine to five or so gig, I become,

despondently, a creature of the
night.  Who else happens to be

spry, alert, and on the job, no
less, at these dwindling or bur

geoning hours (depending on
how you look at them)?  My

siblings, who are both graveyard
shift nurses.  One is an emergency

room nurse.  Talk about taking
the whole nocturnal thing too

seriously.  Me, I’m a morning
person.  And as noted above,

morning is also the middle of
the night, by definition, but

when I say I’m a morning
person, that means that I

prefer the early hours after
I’ve had a night of sleep;

of some sleep, at any rate.
And I can write at any hour

of the day or night, I mean, if
one were to call being a poet

my profession, heck, there is
no hour that it cannot be done

and with some ease (but, yes,
always with a modicum of dis

cipline, sure).  So here I am,
stuck awake without having

yet slept, at eight past four in the
morning, putting words in some

silly order on a screen.  To feel
feel like I’m being productive,

or perhaps just because that’s
what I do.  Pacific Time, of

course.  Because that is the time
zone in which I live.  As if that even

matters.  Since it’s always morning
somewhere, right?  But, while that’s

related, like genetics, I suppose, time

zones are an altogether different subject.

mmmdcccxxxiii

A Day and a Thumbtack

That was the day that I had. And
entitlement, if I am being real
here. But isn’t entitlement
sometimes just craving a tiny

break from being beaten down
(says the white guy)? I’m generally
the odd one who’s rooting for the
underdog. Is it so wrong to admit

that I’m tired of this underdog
decade? It may sound a bit too
Gemini—does that always have to
mean hypocritical—to say in one

breath that I miss the pre-diminu
tive canine era and with another get
passionate and empathetic about in
equality and the lack of world peace? I

was a poor kid. For the longest time, the
closest I got to a school of hard knocks
was getting through graduate school. And
yet I got through it. With a bit of encourage

ment here and there, but otherwise on
my own. And I’ve known success, lived
wonderful years that were replete with
the blessings of love and friendship

and frolicking and no small bit of the
heartache that goes with it all. So if
I say, as I peek my eyes just slightly
over the fog that’s yet to lift in this

decade of dog days, “Hooray!” it could
be I finally ditched those assholes at 

T-Mobile. And got an upgrade to an i
Phone 14 Max, to boot! Oh, and may

be mention that I followed that with
a burger, fries and a milkshake after
wards.  Does that make me entitled?
Probably. Sure. But what are we to

do when we lose the celebration
of life? Is it really any conundrum,
the answer to that question? Be
nice. Do good. Give it away on

occasion, if you have it give. But
celebrate all the life you have anytime
you can. How else can we loosen the grip
of unfairness and inequality? Be aware.

Find your happy. Spread some love. And
maybe save getting pissed off until tomorrow.

mmmdcccxxxii

Dreaming with Idiots

     The moon’s backwash is like a deeply incised
     hairnet against the stadium.
                                        —John Ashbery

You can’t control the airwaves. And
don’t even talk to me about the neighbors!
In this place? You can’t pick your neighbors
here. Forget about it. And if there is some

sort of hairnet in the sky, as you might
imagine, what you experience when it comes
to night visions—or even daydreams for that
matter—are all caught in a communal feedback

loop. So let’s say you’re one of an endless
bunch of bodies stacked like sardines into a
massive complex. And that the whole gang
of said sardines are degenerates. Now you’ve

really got a complex. Dreaming and redreaming
the dreams of a gargantuan tin of dumb sardines.

mmmdcccxxxi

On the Way Home

     Bats drool into the gutter.
                —John Ashbery

And so do you. Or you
used to, anyway. You
were always looking for
bats. I take a couple

more twirls around our
mini-park of yore, remin
iscing over your various
fetishes. I have no re

morse, so this gives me
some delight. What was
it you used to say, “Dare
the devil to care?” Yes, that

was what you used to say.
Heading home. No regrets.

mmmdcccxxx

Pulling the Wool Over the
Eyes of Almost Everyone

Phil was having none of it
today. “This could be your
worst book ever,” he practic
ally spat, once he got Jay all

to himself at the donuts table. “I
know,” he drawled with a devil-
may-care grin and half a donut
on his tongue while somehow man

aging to twirl his mustache, all this
while exhaling that fake Alabaman
accent that had so captured our
Phil back in the days before the two

had slipped into their own personal
world war. “But could you not see
how closely I held onto them with
my every word?” Phil was practically

beside himself over what next to say.

mmmdcccxxix

Diary Entry # I don’t know (10,000-something?)

I can’t write about this.  Because*. When is the
last time this happened?  Perhaps when I took a
Xanax and went dancing with a massive box of
overcrowded straight people (that’s my judgment,
as well-educated as it is or isn’t; an indication for
you to judge me, okay?).  I’m rereading Pet Sounds.
This is relevant only because it’s what’s happening.
I want to accrue diaries again; write them; read
them.  I wrote a piece a few days ago to put in
mine, which for years has been electronic, an “app”
that I never add to, but one that automatically,
inserts all of my so-called social media posts into
it.  That’d be Twitter, Instagram and this Anachron

izms  blog.  As I post them (boom!).  I only ever 

tweet to tout. What did that guy on Facebook call it

yesterday, to self-promote?  “I haven’t self-promoted 

in a few weeks,” he noted, “so[and here he inserted a 

self-promotion].”  To which my initial reaction was retch.  

But why?  Isn’t that just utterly ridiculous?  All I do on 

Twitter, as I just said, is self-promotion. It’s true.  And 

if you ask me if I market my work, if I “self-promote,” 

I’m more than pleased to proclaim that I do.  And what

of pride, and the joy of running a little magazine (in case 

you’re not aware, it’s called SHAMPOO – and you can find it 

at shampoo-poetry.com, which is not the original URL -

[muffled curses]). Back to Pet Sounds.  I’m doing the 

typing here?  Sure, but look at me now typing “subversive

marketing.” What’s that—anyone?  It’s a loaded, hypocritical 

question, with apologies.  But feel free to send me your 

answer.  It’s easy to get in touch.  Oh, I don’t really need 

to know.  Would your answer change my mind?  It’d 

certainly cheer me up.  Jeez, I do persist in limiting 

an audience.  But, yes, I like my marketing subversive, 

to a degree.  And I’m fidgety, so it keeps me doing some

thing. For example, I do this (that) (which is take out my 

trash). Then I do something else (this) (I sit a while and 

write a few more lines; bloated).  One of the joys and 

sadnesses of any Oulipian limitation is that I cannot 

write every single thing all at once. Quick, what are you

thinking?. I’m not asking you to exert yourself much. I’m 

only wondering who you are.  And where you are in time

and space?  It does bring me joy to wonder. Even though

it’s legitimately impossible to disccern.  So then what I get 

instead of joy is consternation; there’s a negative side to 

everything right?  Or maybe not. Everything’s relative?  

Ugh, family!  No matter what a dictionary suggests, or a 

know-it-all demands, we move forward, so where was I? 

Do I, like these words, need your existence in order to exist?

I believe in you.  You can do it.  Exist!  There.  I’ve had my fit.

I’m starting to reread a lovely book by a person I know dearly.

Her name is Stephanie Young and it’s called Pet Sounds.

* I must really get a job.
  With a postscript to Stephanie: Yes, I picked up another copy.

mmmdcccxxviii

The Death of a Very Close Friend

          A cup drips air,
          peanuts fester.
                —John Ashbery

and a difficult one at that. but one in the
end, i can say, which felt like abandonment
moreso than a passing, as these things often
must surely seem. but this being the first of

such of its kind, perhaps even the last, which
was brought about by the literal end of a life,
how am i to blather on with any authority about
that solemn notion; all of the rest of mine

have come to terminations much less mortally
and more metaphorically. either way such an
ending is physical, visceral. but when i heard
of his passing, all i could think was how he’d

been the one friendship to which i had found it
once necessary to finalize. and yet, fortune of
fortunes, until the sad day of his demise, he in
stead remained cordial, empathetic, understanding,

and with that familiarity that comes from the
hundreds of hours one puts into these things
we call the real deal. even as all of the others
disappeared in the wake of a path of some del

usion, of some destruction, as far as i still know
(don’t ask me to do any further research, however).
they’re all still out there, cold hearts bumping away
at someplace out of my periphery, which, sure, is

another way to be dead. but this one, who is
gone for real, not just dead to me or dead spec
ifically for me, is actually gone. and i miss him.
and that familiarity. and take comfort in the

hard fact that i could never simply slip into an
abject avoidance of his existence, even after
our unfortunate but necessary ‘falling out.’ it
remains one of life’s greatest mysteries, to me,

how anyone could even, would even, find that both
feasible and possible. friendship as a capitalistic in
vestment, perhaps? a metaphor, really, but a real
way to see it. more as that which sustains. have

mercy on those who see humanity as anything else.
and on those of us who see it as so big, these bonds
so irrevocable. but more than anything, a deep
gratitude for this friend, and of his rare choice of a

palpable if not yet a mostly performative permanence
against the definitive transience of life, this existence,
which, in reality, of course, is nothing less than—

and nothing more than—ephemeral.

mmmdcccxxvii

Tall Tales

i did get lost in that woods,
a forest of sorts. i’d read all
the stories, but you never think
this could be me, so i didn’t mark

any trees, left no trail of bread
crumbs. and if i’d never found
my way free, if i hadn’t made it
through the thick of it to this place,

well, i wouldn’t be telling you this
story, now, would i? what a laugh!
because i’m such a liar. aren’t i?
i mean, of course i am. i’ve probably

been sitting here in this cave for a
decade by now. just you and me.

mmmdcccxxvi

Now This Tale Is True

     This is a fact that only those who do not know do not know.
                                          —Kim Hyun in Glory Hole

i rode him bareback for a
while through the brambles.

got all scratched up. the
brambles of potato hill, or,

the brambles of fort chaffee.
lying on the hood of the car

we both looked up and saw the
same shooting star. which wasn’t

a star, of course. like a pony is
never anything but a horse

(unless you’re a drinker or
a well-rounded thinker).

mmmdcccxxv

Well, Here’s the Thing

my mom turns eighty on
monday. i find that fairly
astounding. and then i
think of other numbers,

like seventy or ninety,
and they start to all
sound the same. like
fifty-five, which i find,

in general, to be a pretty
nifty number. that’s my
age. which i thought was
two years younger than

when my dad died. but i
counted a few days ago.
i mean i did the math and
he was actually fifty-nine.

then i imagined my father
at eighty. which, as imagi
nation goes, was a bit insur
mountable, or at least surreal.

while i can’t imagine making
it to eighty myself, i think i’d
like to dig this up and read
it if i do. how old are you?

mmmdcccxxiv

What About Memory?

what is it about memory
that keeps it from being
remembered. if that
makes no logic, what is it

about the speed of time?
is memory locked or blocked
depending on the speed at
which time passes? either

way, or whatever the case,
how does one go about
getting it back? this so-
called memory? is it

the treasure that i’d always
hoped for, yet never found?

mmmdcccxxiii

Mickey Mouse on a Platter

when i think of the word
splatter i find within myself
a pang, a metallic taste in my
mouth that is not at all pleasant.

i have a few things going on. i’ve
been wet. it’s been rainy. these
things wash away memories. but
my memories get washed away

anyway, despite preventative
measures. did you know, by the
way, that i write in order to remember?
not that everything i write is ‘true’ –

but also, do i write to forget? do i
wish the rains would come and
wash the city clean again and again?

mmmdcccxxii

In Defense of Everything

     for Peter Gizzi

          (a send-up of his poem “In Defense of Nothing”
           in which the first two words of each line are
           the same as in each line of his)

I guess it is a big weather day today here in the San Francisco Bay Area.
I guess that most businesses are closing around 3pm when the storm is
     expected to arrive.
I guess the “bomb cyclone” is not affecting Tu Lan which, fortunately for me,
     is where I shall grab a late lunch.
The present can be regifted; history repeats itself (we just had the wettest
     day on record only a few days ago).
It’s hard when one is living as I am to say that any of this is bad news.
This sky looks ominous, but the sun is shining just as much somewhere behind
     the darkening of it.

mmmdcccxxi

The Endless Cycle of White Noise

aging strong, at its highest speed,
because i can better function
with the din of white noise,
whether awake or asleep
or attempting to find my way
from one state to the other.  as long
as the noise is at least as indecipherable,
is voiceless, non-verbal, as radio or tv
static, no station available.  just these

machines, three fans and an air purifier, 
almost always on.  once in a while, say 

every three or four months, i might flip one 

or more of the dials to off in order to allow 

for a more exaggerated silence.  radio
silence.  so that i may hear the “noises”
in my head (let’s call them thoughts),
which accumulate over time.  the 

white noises stopper them, keep 

them muffled for a duration until 

they become unmanageable.  this 

tactic works.  the noises in my
head almost never divert my 

focus.  with the white noise they 

don’t distract.  this cacophony of 

various noises which can be separated 

into stacks, into types (i can’t help but

do that if made aware of them)....
so, inevitably, this clamor fills my 

head to a point at which it must,
of course, be drained, swollen
as my head becomes.  my friends,
when i had any, found this telling.
maybe they understood my feelings
about intelligence. maybe not.
‘intelligence’ being brain build-up.

about smarts i feel strongly, strangely.
and this cacophonous assemblage
dulls whatever smarts i thought i
had, makes much more difficult the
very act of differentiating, of existing
in some sort of normalcy (at least one
that normal folks might suggest is so;
so much is relative, so normalcy, while

theoretically calculable, is difficult to pinpoint).
and so, once the switches have been
turned off, the excess noises semi-
identified, and at first put thematically together
to note for further evaluation at some distant
point, then to drain, then the three
fans and the air purifier, those mechanisms
that fill a tiny home consistently with inert
(untranslatable, indecipherable)
sounds, my precious white noise, this
motley crew of distraction is cut for enough 

time too smooth out the disturbing voices.  

and this internal chatter 

begins to slowly make its way 

down my insides.  it gets filtered, 

makes it through
my throat, my heart, 

all of my organs, until my 

more decipherable internal

clatter dissipates, evaporates, 

and finally extinguishes itself.

and when the voices make their ways individually 

down, by the time all of these distracting 

jumbled clumps reach my knees, i am free

of this cacophony, and each buzz-

whimpering thought is free of me. 

i flip the white noises back on. 

the hubbub of distracting voices 

can begin to accumulate once

again, without diverting
my focus, until
it is time to
drain and filter,
to cycle out these
“noises” once again.

mmmdcccxx

Introductory Notes

now it is completely silent,
but for the white noise, the
sources of which are: the three
fans that go about circulating the
air (which is usually warm, but is
today soothingly cool) around in
this place, my miniature home
(a doll’s house), and an air
purifier that was stolen
from a hotel several years ago
(does it matter that it wasn’t
by me?)—how if i’ve no friends,
not even local acquaintances,
at some point the local might
become the only bunch of idiots
who could be more than acquaintance.
the easy exceptions are the ones that aren’t
here, the ones ongoing, regular, almost constant
with rapport and conversation; ones i can see.

oh, but to be a hemisphere away.  for three solid years. 

nothing that seems normal, everything that seems LOVE, 

but is nevertheless surreal.  something that can be suddenly
and stiffeningly doubted (this can’t be, we should be in the
same room!).  proclaiming love, yet legally stifled.
hell, i was essentally homeless until four years ago.

and this four years in an SRO has been fraught with
reminders of the impossibilities from which one might
at one point emerge.  so, look at me, i’ll look at you.
know that the plan’s the thing.  know that i hear

myself in furture tense.  is it the same with you
from me?  how else can virtual not remain
virtual?  when does a breakdown or a
realization occur?   we can indeed
motor along, but how intensely this
motoring, the speed, until the removal
of the virtual, smashing into each other
so eager we might break some bones. 

to feel a bone broken by slamming into
each other would be a truth too alarming.
but how else might we know we have it?
i know i’m a teasing pacifist.  but this world

teases us.  am i simply a retailer of dreams?
NO.  but we both have to KNOW.
we each MUST know and do.
i do.  i do.  i do.  do you?
maybe you do.  ten times
ten times ten times ten.
whisper, darling, the sweet
nothings that, when whispered,
satiate.  feed me.  i don’t mind
if it is a drug, if i can taste your
finger.  drugs and fingers are real.
they get me from here to there.
give me a bullet to bite into.  or a 

belief to drive me unwaveringly, so that 

even if it is not believed by you nor any
body else along the way it will be nothing
but firm to me.  concrete, no con.  a plan
bigger than a planet, a miniature universe.
one in which universes, mostly believed
by me, from all aspects of my past, meet.
the plan of today meets nothing but reality.
shoot a cannon into an unclear tomorrow and
there may not even be a noise.  placing a
bomb of destruction or celebration inside
a small non-virtual can is, say, reality?
how can i say this: tomorrow is real!
how real it might be, will be, is.
come on over.  the water is wet and
it cleanses indefinitely, peeling off
layer after layer until only skin.  i

swear that i can get us out of the 

water before we disappear.

mmmdcccxix

The Stand-Up Routine at Ditzy Jerry’s Lesser Laugh-o-Rama

there were several
comedic as well
as electrical and social
miscalculations. ‘it’s
new year’s eve,’ herb
insisted, in his usual
performative upbeat
fashion. he was always
good at emphasizing
the obvious. ‘do
you have any
resolutions?’
‘yeah,’ this
response came
from margaret—
the person with
whom herb was
infatuated, always
and obviously had
been; she was,
in fact, even when
he was doing his
routine, no doubt
keenly aware that
his focus never strayed
from her—‘revolution.’
sandy, a maudlin comic,
who’d just delivered
her two or three
bits onstage before
the current performer—
not that anyone would
have remembered
her routine or anything
about it, even by now, really—
giddily proclaimed ‘it’s new
year’s eve!’ she, too, was
always effervescent in
her emphasis of the
obvious. ‘do you
guys have any
resolutions?’
what folks never
realized is that
she was never
quite as ditzy
as she generally
appeared to be.
‘yeah,’ this one
from margaret,
and as if she was
a month ahead of
everyone (groundhog’s
day, to be precise),
her response remained,
‘revolution.’

mmmdcccxviii

The Poisoned Aphrodisiac

breakfast seemed to come
earlier and earlier. the
bed would barely be warm
again from their curled
bodies. the four cabin-mates
had been the best of friends
for some three decades now.
there was the writer of music,
composing a symphony in front
of the fireplace, who now placed
upon her large page a small fermata.
there was the daughter of the man
who’d made millions in the candy
business. she was sunk deep into
the sofa snoozing. there was the
stockbroker who’d been pilfering
through his luggage looking for
the most appropriate pair of
socks. and then there was me,
the troubadour, a relative unknown,
so devoted to the writer of music
that he’d spend the last of his
days in obscurity, dipping his
pen into the light fantastic,
corralling words in clumps
throughout even the most
symphonic of her pieces.

mmmdcccxvii

Sleigh Bells Ring

they settled in for the
evening in a hotel not
far from donner’s pass.

the gruesome stories
had enchanted the kids,
whetted their appetites,

so to speak. war hurts.
none of them had asked
for this adventure. al and

miranda, faced with the
prospect of an explosion,
or worse, slipped the bed

covers over their midriffs
and attempted to pass
out. the distant choo-

choos of a train could
be discerned. between
it and them was a distance

of calm, of buffered perils.
al shifted a bit in bed as
miranda held her breath.

mmmdcccxvi

The Honesty Policy

he’d woken up with a lot of
hair in his mouth. perhaps
somewhere this was a good
omen, but if so, that some
where was not to be found.
he spit it out, kept picking
at his tongue with a grimace.
the meal of the day would be
served at two in the afternoon.
there was time. but not a sub
stantial amount of it.
and for what?

mmmdcccxv

Electrical Miscalculations

there were several electrical
miscalculations. we counted
at least eight. until the lights
flickered again mid-afternoon.
since this was a holy day, most
of us had checked out. undressed,
a lack of distress. gleaming, the
parade held no witnesses. no
mistresses. only christmases.

mmmdcccxiv

Insufferable Meanderings

          Sufragette City
               —David Bowie

we called the electoral
college urging surges.

they responded, sent
us several thousand

scourge protectors.
the booth was filled

with inapproriate
mechanisms. the

line in which we
stood for a few

minutes in order
to get there

was a metaphor
for malapropism.

mmmdcccxiii

Houdini’s Ghost

these thoughts that are but
mine are like a signature, i

now surmise, or a finger
print. or maybe they are,

wholly, if they could be
gathered, put together,

at least mathematically,
theoretically, if not (can

i even say?) physically,
moreso than what is

muscular, skeletal
or corpuscular,

the stuff that is me.
so here i am, not

what you can literally
see, not the brilliantly

designed yet flawed
and puncturable organic

conglomeration that any
one might automatically,

with me, of me, associate.
but this assemblage of

thoughts, this relatively
miniscule pile of notions

and desires, this hodge
podge of fears that

have accrued in ways
pavlovian or else in ways

meandering and illogical,
this swirling admixture

which also includes the
residue of dreams and

whatever else might fit
within the limitations of

memory, are these not
more of who or what i

am than any clump or
chunk that might be

jabbed or grabbed
at, punctured or

bruised? just this
evolving jumbled set

of thoughts that are
more apparitional

than physical or
visual, and so

less quantifiable
or at least

impossible to
gather—this is

who i am, is
what i, immortally,

may yet
continue for

at least some
dissipating length

of time
to be.

mmmdcccxii

Decisions, Decisions

Never judge a book by its cover.
Always look ’em straight in the eye.
Unmask the villain at the end of each episode.
Get a life.
Hell hath no fury like a human scorned. Huh?
Tie a yellow ribbon round the ole oak tree.
Yes, we have no bananas.

Over my dead body.
Revenge is a dish best served cold.

Not on my watch.
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.
Call me maybe.
Everybody needs somebody, sometimes.

mmmdcccxi

Leo & Joel Go Underwear for Their 25th

You have to hand it to Joel, he knows how to throw an
Underwear party. So when he and
Leo decided they were going to celebrate their 25th by inviting
Every single one of their friends and colleagues (and they have
Tons, trust me!) to an underwear party at their massive estate,
It was the talk of Tripplehorn.  And has been ever since.  
Did I get an invitation? Did Janey Mae? Did Ed Bach, of
Ed’s Conservative Gentlemen’s Clothier? The answer: we’ll each
     be shopping for some quirky undies very soon.  And I, for

     one, am looking forward to the naughty party of the year!