mmdcxcv

Saturday Morning Scurvy

It seems to me, or, I have it quite
pronounced in my mind that nothing
written (and hardly anything that
purportedly happened) before the
late 19th Century amuses me at all,
except Shakespeare and Aristophanes.
While I was an academic actor and
studier of all things theatre for many
years, I always wanted a seriously
serious dramatic role. And on those
rare occasions when I would be cast in
one (there were only to be two or three,
in the end, it seems to me), I inevitably
found them quite tedious, which, in turn
diminished my desires and my hopes of
becoming a “famous” star on a soap opera,
most hopefully, of course, on Days of Our Lives,
or The Young and the Restless, both of which
I have memories of watching with my mother
at age 3 or so upward. I came to realize that the 

life of a ribald actor (even with the occasional little
death of absurd silence which would occur some 

evenings during a scene where the audience would 

be on the floor the following evening) was for me.
Comedy. The sound of gasps and spurts,
followed by uncontrollable laughter were divine.
So, being a student of theatre I’d often have to read
plays set before the twentieth century, and I’d
constantly wonder where on earth the laughter
occurred, if ever, when they were originally performed,
as I flipped ho-hum from page to page. I’d be told a line
would be hilarious to the attendees. I was befuddled. But
I’ve always considered myself a now kind of guy, if not
way too into the present, to any given present. This
explains, perhaps, why in 1991-1992, I devoted my
masters’ thesis to covering the subjects of post-
modernism, using as splendid examples (and a
colorful backdrop) the works of opera director
Peter Sellars’ adaptions of the Mozart-da Ponte
operas: Don Giovanni (set in a Bronx slum),
Le Nozze di Figaro (which was set in Trump Tower)
and Cosi fan tutte (set in a diner). I even had the
opportunity to participate in Peter Schaffer’s wonderful
stage production of Amadeus. So, not to tag on a moral here,
but, now that I think about it, it seems to me from these skewed
experiences of mine that Mozart was pretty hilarious. And he
lived well before the late 20th century. Ah, things in retrospect.
Who we become is never who we think we are, anyway.
I stand corrected.
Go figure.

mmdcxciv

                        ...emptiness is a kind of speed moving
slowly with extreme consciousness.
                  —Susie Timmons

             Obviously our heroes are conglomerating.
             Where, my dear, did I ever learn to write?
Sentences, I mean? How can anyone
appreciate me, much less tolerate it?
And to the point of gung-ho? I, too, want
to put a sign on the wall of my office
(which is also, appropriately enough,
my bedroom) with the word INFANTILISM!
Maybe I will do just that. But to what end?
To show that nobody knows a damned thing
in this world; that supposed ‘progress’ or a
positive form of ‘evolution’ is no sure thing;
or, to reiterate, that we are simply
(as a people, as a world, as individuals)
just babies. In the whole grand scheme of
what? He said something to me. Such as,
“You just gonna lie there with your money
all day?” Or perhaps it was I who said it,
both of us being infants. Nothing else 

happened for the rest of the afternoon.

mmdcxciii

Love is a pain in the ass

isn’t clear anymore.

mmdcxcii

My Own Personal . . .


                        . . Platform;
                          . . Jesus;
                            . . G a n g p l a n k




                                                         ? 

                                                         ?
                                                         !

mmdcxci

     I have pictures of the empty room. 

                              —Laura Moriarty

The surplus was at gunpoint
(mid-range) so I took stock
in fear and adrenaline (wouldn’t
you?). Half of the reason is the
$1,000 phone bill (half yours)
which you left me after paying
for well over a year and giving
me absolutely no indication
that you’d stop doing so, cold.
That day you left and never
spoke with me again. Your
ghosts keep raising their ugly
heads. Only I know who they really
are. Right? Lately, just when I’m about
to be okay, about to be on my feet again,
about to wake up, as they say.... (Did
you ever leave? I’ve watched movies
aplenty about these things: Ghost
stories vanish, too, like the unlucky
number of them that vanished into
something much more terrifying than
retrospect - into nothing; into perform-
ance? Into a game during which I was dis-
qualified in its early stages, only nobody told me so I
happily participated until it had been over for decades.)....
The four circles that made a square that appeared on a
nearby garage door have sort of disappeared, and in
their place is now a triangle (a misdirection of anger?
angular tension?). Boy, would I love a massage....
The show goes on, however, as it must. It must. The show.
I’ve generally encouraged such drama (yes, did you honestly think
that I didn’t know?) clutched onto intense belief systems only to
watch them dissipate like the Andromeda. The drama. The belief.
These things happen, I know them. But do ghosts know current
events, or even care? Donald Duck is now the Emperor
of the World Federation. It turns out that the
Federation were actually the bad guys all along. It’s
a world full of surprises even for an old man who seemed
to constantly catch them like falling chandeliers. The universe,
the galaxy, whatever: Bad Guys. It’s my existential crisis, my
value judgments, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist. And
this is not cinema. At least I don’t recollect that it is. But
I do remember the cinema. It was a place we went to escape.
The reality of it all is Star Wars. Every night slogging alongside
the melee until morning, when I keep remembering to tell you this,
only to find out that I’ve forgotten. You. This. Also, cash, the
paper kind, that which we all relied upon, sometimes obsessively.
Well, I’m not sure where this is coming from or why I’m even telling 

you, but for some reason it amuses me to do so. And reminds. Any

way, it isn’t green anymore. I think I’ll take that spark of pleasure
ache asking you to guess what color it is now. Or. Well.
It turns out that the future was all mine, after all. Who on
earth would have been listening to that noise? Silence. How
appropriate in a world that’s mine, but yet one which I find
no place to grab into. Perhaps it’s perfect that you are naught
but spirit – and a spiritless naught at that.... Think for a moment.
Notice now the spit and slither of spiritless spirit. Do things
never work themselves out appropriately? If. Only. You were
not such a glorious and tricky vacuum of spirit. Black hole
tricky, I’d say. And while it always breaks my heart, the month
of October never looked quite as dashing as it does this year,
unlike the bully it (and certainly other times of year)
has been in distances past. The bully it begat.  I mean, 

relative to the infamous eleven months, which (from widening 

distances. . . past), at worst only dourly come and go. What am 

I left with? Oh, substance. Which I actually apologize for bringing
up. Even to you. Yes, I still think of unpaid for I’m sorry’s
and What can I do?’s. But you’re spirit, I’m flesh. That is that.
The meaninglessness of logic, of sense, and most certainly
of karma. These days we learn that even the lifeless, the immaterial,
are tortured. A gas chamber for ephemera? All of it. Unlike even you.
No magician as yet has brought any of it to life. So here we are
at the butt end of a very cold November. A humiliating reprieve.
What’s left of the pretense of joy, of respite? But you must
admit that we wore October well. Materially, that is. I might
venture to admit that it still looks good on me. Sorry. Maybe
that’s bitter, too. Looks can be deceiving, anyway, right?
There are many days that, for some, are neither holidays
nor birthdays. Favorite things. October, October, October...
BOO!! Oh I hope I got you again. It always makes me remember
being bowled over with laughter. But I know that you are only
here (and never here) simply to remind me that the joke is still
and always on me. I know because I see only one of us. Bowled over.

mmdcxc

Whatever It Is, It Isn’t

clear anymore. Furniture
that reaches out to you
in the middle of the
afternoon on a night
when you need desp-
erately to go to the
bathroom to pee
or to the kitchen
to guzzle a pint
of ice water.
“Wake up,”
laughs B’rer
Rabbit as he
dives into the
patch of black-
berry briars below,
“come along with me
this instant. It’s an
adventure!” And
then he disappears.
I’ve even the bloody
scratches to prove it.


               this poem is inspired by Susie Timmons’ “Into the Stickers”
               and the following Google Link Titles, neither of which I ever bothered to click:
           a) Brambles Gone Wild: How to Remove Blackberries – Tall Clover Farm
           b) How to Eradicate Blackberry Bushes; and
           c) How to get rid of blackberries – YouTube

mmdclxxxix

I’ve Got the Keys to a Brand New Saturday

So hop in
if you’d
like to 

ride.

mmdclxxxviii

We stare at each other like ghosts of another century
                                                      —Ronald Palmer

“It could be they are from separate centuries,” Ron’s
written word whispers to me (without ink, should I add?).
“Instead of two ghosts, say, from the 17th century, Which
isn’t ours?” No response. At least for a while. And then
I clearly hear “Hours? Two, that is precise and correct.” I’ve

not just been dreaming (I’ve said this aloud while sitting
up sharply in my weather-worn bed. In this dreamlessness –
and with this quick snap from lying prone to becoming a ninety
degree angle and with a voice I am certain – because there’s
that stolen sentence lying there without much discretion,

Tucked away amid other words in them, The solid book
held firmly within the grip of both of my hands and now,
directly above us, an epigraph, so to speak. I intro-
duce to you this, my story. Anyway, as I might’ve
already said.... Black gold sinks heavily into many

hundreds of thousands of acres of a place called U.S.A.
circa the early 2000s. This becomes the hub (and the
hubbub) of some importance at the time. I can’t be
certain why. Perhaps Ms. Notley knows (and I swiftly
scribble a note to myself to inquire something to that

effect). I’ve an infection of the pancreas. Or maybe
it’s the liver. This becomes important at the time.
I’m not sure why. Scholars of history (and, therefore,
of every subject once known trying to fit into a pair of
academia) often distributed history books as auto

biographies. This is known. This was obvious
to all but most. In a world where, nearby, say,
in the next galaxy and unbeknownst to the tepid
inhabitants of all of this rather deviant rogue
of a planet’s tepid inhabitants (which included

the fevered, the feeble, and the dead, as well as
those who most often worked at will [and a few,
legend has it, unwillingly, or at least subconsciously]
slicing and dicing the so-called earth, clearly part
icipating in its early demise ... [a small coughing sound

is heard from several audience members]) ... anyway,
as I mentioned earlier to one in particular, nearby, say
in an adjacent galaxy, who'd never heard tell of this rogue
of a planet’s surly inhabitants (the fevered, the feeble,
the dead, and the so-called ‘toiling’— all murder[er]s,

and mutter[er]s, mind you.  Anyway, as I might’ve already said...

mmdclxxxvii

  Indigestion

    (later that
   same night)

A pain in the ass
is worth two in the
bush doesn’t even
begin to hack it
until you try it!
Get it? I’m so
happy for you.
(If only I got it....)
Eating escargot
[late drum riff,
awkward giggles]
at the conference,
I thought of Rome,
where the hallway
entrance was made
completely of the
animals we and
our favorite rest-
aurant’s guests
would profoundly
digest later, during
bouts of uneasy
sleep. We would,
earlier, of course,
finally eat. Per-
haps because we
were so alive then.
It was a five-star
entrance, that
hallway. We were,
as they often say
in Bolivia, super-
duper-entranced.

mmdclxxxvi

misother brother

“don’t do that!”
he says, meaning

enter the trans
america pyramid

tower     all out
of shape     sees

worried fav
orite entry

doorway to the 

other shore

mmdclxxxv

(part two)

     I have not forgotten
     we sound
     the same when we say the same things like people of a certain time. As if
     history were not over.
                                                                           —Laura Moriarty

“What’s on the list for today?”
like not knowing a thing
about a great uncle as he passes
in the middle of mostly crying

‘family’ holding their hands in
an obvious imperfect circle around
his death, or how could we ever know
almost any normal event in my life,

(and speaking as a an actor –
am I working toward a more
earned and reasonable hypothetical
or is that just my take), what is the pose or

the tic or the spirit that alerts the lie?
To anyone listening or paying attention.
How diminished that quality is, no matter
your existence, no matter the audience.

Do some find this irrelevant? Certainly!
I see the hands, I hear the protests. So
of course you do, too. But let’s say I barely
know myself. What is this path

towards ‘trust’ (that comfortability
we find in certain others/that
comfortability I find by myself?
Occasionally....)?

Teach me, oh Great Nobody, the
pose that gives the ‘appearance’
of listen, I am being real(!!). That is
, perhaps, I am even being myself.

mmdclxxxiv

(part one)

I have not forgotten
we sound
the same when we say the same things like people of a certain time. As if
history were not over.
                                                      —Laura Moriarty

“What’s on the list for today?”
I look back and forth in
terror, searching for anything.
“We’ve got years to get it
done,” I look back and forth,

the manner less spastic. These
last words are balm, a stanch
for the deepest of cuts which
only allow a minute or two of
more life. A sad fly zips by in

disgust. If we start with the
premise that every single indi-
vidual lies (quite literally, the
entire embodiment of our spec-
ies depends on it in a way, it

is built into culture, it is written
in Amy Vanderbilt, the circum-
stances sometimes quite elaborate
and fun; or guilt-inducing). Be the
person you are, but I prefer ease

and an amalgamation of real
and fun, I value honest and ...
real (the former, from my
test runs, most especially)
but, I’m a liar. By necessity at

times, using etiquette of others.
At other times, or just because
I’d rather for whatever the
reason, perhaps even out of
spite, quell my truth, or with

which I seem no longer familiar...

mmdclxxxiii

Whodunnit (the prequel)

intrepid telepathy

makes the murder

tenuous ... grip

all your whines

in the back of

your throat un

til the maid

servant has

cleansed every

single dinner

dish. Drinks

aplenty come

later. See to

it you bring

your tongue

to carefully

(and perhaps

cynically and

yet clinically)

analyze the

poison be

fore tak

ing a dunk

in the

dark pool.

mmdclxxxii

...is language strangely
                      —Laura Moriarty

The ostrich’s hopscotch
was graceful (Ines

timably, thought
the ostrich, who

believed she was
being offered a

scotch.) and my
skin burns as if it’s

afire. I’m
all too aware

of the numerous
lies within my

heart. What
I meant by

the weather
was my mood,

emotion. Emo
ticon, emoticant.

Precipitate. Rec
iprocate....

Andy wasn’t hard
up when I hit

rock bottom.
Later that same

weakness – a
few silent frays –

a Miss Oliver point
ed up to where

we were when
we first saw it.

Each of us felt
a chill of a

different
kind.

mmdclxxxi

“The Dropdown Runs Out to the Right”

Or haven’t you heard? Logic rules.
It (and its common sense strategies)
bring such a wide smile to the faces
of my friends, the set of which is too
numerous to list; and I’m not just talk
ing acquaintances, no sirree. But puredee
always-there-for-you-in-the-nick-of-time
-when-you-need-them-most (and without
even having to send out so much as an
S.O.S.) FRIENDS. It’s uncanny, the
certainty of their existence. I’ve heard
rumors of poor sots who cannot say the
same without a sense of irony – I’m also
told the tone of sarcasm is as obvious as us
believers’ ascent to heaven will ultimately
be (and none too soon, according to my
calculations). Gosh, I’ve had such omni
present good fortune. I’m so truly blessed,
to be sure. Such calamity befalls this poor
earth it breaks your heart. And then there’s
me and my happiness full of incalculable life.
I’m so ready for it to be over, for the few of
us who belong in paradise to float like tiny
pink balloons on the horizon until we’re
so out of here. Alrightee, this conference
is over now. Who needs another revival?
My tummy's grumbly. And Agnes knows
very well how I get when I’m hungry (In
deed! she hollers from the back porch.
She’s always at the ready.) Indeed! Let's
go ahead and get this the party started,
shall we? Yes, let’s . . .

mmdclxxx

     PULL UP

     NOT OUT

   —a Walgreen’s paper bag

“Who will be
the cause
of my demise?”
whispered om
inously, it
seemed to
me, at least,
the aether
from which
nothing
comes.

“I will,”
replied, 

it seemed

(to me), the
entirety of my
kith and kin,
bowing, pray
ing, I be
lieve, over
my demise.

mmdclxxix

I’m trying
to forget,
but please
allow me
to list for
for you the
top 200
reasons
why you
are more
cruel than
Cruella
De Vil.

mmdclxxviii

Autumn’s Anthem

We are all fallen
with excitement.

“That sounded
big,” one was

heard exhaling.
“Oh, dear that

sounded really
big!” And so

each of us,
being so

very close
to the heart

of our cumul
ative hearts, 

the one we
perpetually

strum (as it,
occasionally

with a bit
of glee,

harmonically
thrums), stood

in our respective
places and looked

around with a
tinge of anxiety,

waiting for the
biggest and the

loudest 

collapse.

mmdclxxvii

The Boil-over

“It’s weird,”
thought the
janitor, “how
the crooks
take us all
for such an
excruciating
ride. It’s a
true night
mare, really.”
Like the air
in a room
(of most
any size)
when a
sufi takes
the sofa,
we were
each and
all just
plain un
comfort
able. Toi
lets were
being flu
shed. Our
thoughts,
as fully
intended,
and then,
of course,
appropri
ately app
reciated,
were as 

One.

mmdclxxvi

Mutual Attraction

“There’s definitely a story to be told
here, somewhere.” Forensics experts
aren’t known for their profundity (nor
for their profanity as it turns out).
They are not, on the whole, a very
glamorous bunch, I might also add.
But they can be sexy. Think of the
Riddler character on the new Batman
reboot (Gotham). It’s yet another TV
show where the original cast goes nearly
babies on us; a prequel. God, the
Riddler (or is it The Riddler) was
hot when he was young. Maybe
the story, then, is youth. Is this
just my problem or does this speak
to you, as well? Or you, over there?
Rather than attempt to pronounce
the name of your rather intelligent
city (the country’s capital, no less!),
I’ll say this: the threshold between
childhood and adulthood occurs
as an individual tries his or her
damnedest to see through someone
else’s eyes. Repetitively (as in on
a fairly regular basis). That’s all 

there is to adulthood, I say.
Unfortunately for us all, a rather 

large percentage of the population 

never make it through that 

threshold. So we live on a planet 

full of selfish, bratty (and, all too
often), bullying kids. That’s
our mutual attraction, yours
with me, and mine with you.
Clearly, we’ve no chance
of ever understanding
one another. So,
how about we,
oh, I don’t know....