thirst

Sometimes the border of the cliff isn't enough to keep people from going over it. Here is an exhibit: a man with sandals playing basketball and tweeting about "the horse-race." By which I believe he means the race of actually equines in the next county, but by which he could also be referencing humanity. It's hard to tell what a surgeon is thinking.

But that was yesterday, and this is today. I've dropped my stuff off in the lobby and to be honest I can't tell whether we are discussing the elegant flames painted in the bathroom tile, or the purses containing amphetamines that somebody stashes beneath the bleacher seats at Times Square. The moment you realize your alive you're already dead. That's a joke of course.

Evenings with Gladys were among the best I've ever experienced, truly Julie. An orchestrated, balmy evening in the bowl of a stadium with winter wheat stocked up in our coats, crowing about unicorns and fancy de-palmed believers. Did you know that they can erase your signature after all? They can erase your fingerprints, your Social Security Number, and your make-believe identity. Sometimes I sweat laying on my bed at night thinking about the turmeric lobby and all it's done to wrest power from the powers that be.

And just like that, another German on spelling vacation, licking his wounds from the last come-uppance. I swear, Julie, I could've beat that n-----, and if he'd looked back at me one more time…

Just now walking down 17th street I was saying "Preta" to myself (reading aloud, upon seeing sign for the over-priced deli of the same name where I often eat breakfast because it's the most convenient option) and looking at my reflection in a shopwindow. I noticed a girl passing by staring intently, smiling widely, like she was very interested, or amused, or both. Or she thought she knew me — but she didn't say anything. I looked back at her and she was glancing back at me. What are you supposed to do in those moments? I swear on all the vital organs of the continent I should have ran after her and come to understand her, made plans to see the symphony, grown old with her by a lake, but I just kept walking like a foolish ordinary human being thinking there's no other option but to keep on.

Then there's the part where you're all out of plans and you're thinking about Wisconsin, or talking to a girl down by the jetty about signatures or dopamine. Both are pretty individual to the person that makes them, and how do you know my brain's chemicals are like yours? I don't think it's obvious we know anything about what makes a person decide to get out of bed in the morning, or enroll in an expensive preparatory school to become a clown doctor. 

The Whole Earth (pt 2)

The Whole Earth

is wholly property, 

you see, for him & him, 

but not for me. Don't you 

see, don't you see? 

Power doesn't answer, 

nor ask questions easy. 

Don't you see? Don't you see? 

The whole earth, the whole 

infirmary. A cold collected 

purpose for this purpose, 

incomplete scenery. Writing 

about the proverbial sand-storms 

or the sand castles, like a chaste 

woman (for the first time) in 

a fraternity. 

Please, if you'll bless me, 

don't make me again recount this 

goddam rosary, the "first time" thing, 

virginity. 

I've suffered enough for never 

having made a woman suffer 

through my indigence, 

my superiority. 

Over-ripe fruit, that! what a waste,

what an egg-shell too many. Here's 

Dom Maize, crowing about his 

virtue when he ain't got any. 

(Slippery boulders somewhere 

related two-and-two, becoming 

four like her concern was for 

free.) You really like me, you really

get me. You really don't understand 

how important it is to notice the 

scenery. (Sure kids, just keep writing 

on and on, like there's a recursive voice 

here, something made and collected 

and broken again into pieces that 

jade up the whole works, that 

make a man more brave than he probably was 

already, that make a man really want to 

roast something, whether it's his best 

friend, 

or a whole new tribe of actual people. 

Am I talking about nuts? Yes, let's fetch 

and eat them as soon as, believably,

one could, though not greedily.)

many reasons

there are many reasons

why i'd like to move on 

the sea, for example, 

continues her midnight reveries 

dark and immaculate in her waves 

the fish sleep as they swim along, 

daybreak the sound of bubbles rising 

and anchors descending, and history 

ending. 

i've had dark carcasses on the mind for 

weeks and maybe (, bless me, ) i could 

have been colder than an April shower

[]

icy reigns withholding her tumultuous, 

cavernous reason. yes i've held breasts 

in twilit hours, grinning, and yes i've progress(ed)

perhaps as far as the spider is spinning 

her web, and the web's beginning. i don't 

know how to slope it out of the park--i'll 

have to hit it. i don't know how to make this

aroma any darker--i'll have to quit it. i don't

know how to make a lager any quieter, 

so come back in the afternoon when it's lighter. 

a flame to the candle to burn 

and a mantle with candles to burn 

a mantle with a man chanting sunscreen 

clouds in front his eyes, Indigo Bunting 

shimmering waves

shimmering waves 

all around me       :::  

a pegasus wiping his 

tears, confounds me--

this madrigal girl, w/ 

a heart like a calculator 

beaming his bird brightly colored 

up -- 

toward heaven, or to 

her nemesis :: wives in

the kitchen and Connecticut

from Beverly to Hilary are heavenly. 

backing up now, away from

the straw, away from her manic 

abbreviations of wood. my body

makes water like papyrus 

made scrolls -- except the plant 

was not ashamed of what he 

shed off. Grooms and Latter-Days

and boys without spittoons, shining

Mexicans' shoes with ribald glee. 

If you want to know the truth just 

ask me and I'll tell you, I'm in charge

here, In charge of everything, In chase

of this moment likewise, like this is 

how a person begets betterness. 

I don't like cloves or garlic but butter

is just right, now. Like borrowing or 

robbery, I tell you what I think --- 

nice scenery. Expecting some kind 

of better judgment to seize me, but 

I'm disjointed and breezy. Gaps & 

windows open, a slow lonely purpose. 

I've kind of lost my steam even though

I can still sort of keep it out. Of the trees

again, the false presence or the false 

dichotomy. Broke her back on the back 

of the fraternity. I wanted to make it 

easy. For somebody. To remember me, 

this parcel or this empty bassinet. I don't

believe in locomotion, I believe in parsimoniously 

telling the truth--and the spell is over. 

The Films of Nestor Kacinsky (conceived 10.24.07)

1.

The films of Nestor Kacinsky

are like watermelon babies, borne

into water apiary: this pool is a birthing

zone. On Summit Ave., I become a

metaphor, and I have long since doused

myself in redolent cologne. Before

moving on, the past explains itself—

or doesn’t, so you wait; she wasn’t

perfect after all. Even bees appease

nobody, disappearing strangely,

nevermore. Nevermore, a song too

appropriate to avoid being sad. Never-

more, so many people and things,

since-extinct species, the sky itself

once described by throngs of regrets,

passenger pigeons, deadspeak. Alcohol

once was illegal. Melancholy is medieval. I

am tired of one line endings, sadness.

Therefore, write something, and the ceiling

will become more bearable. Perhaps being

nothing more than transparent to sunshine.

2.

In the bay at Summit Ave. I have met

people in earthenware circles, here, there,

hiding behind shrubs, in alleyways and

on balconies. I have tendered green in

swank hideouts, brave rooftops and--

the first time--ducked-down tennis court,

Clark Park. Mass emails don't contain,

anymore, special thanks to kind churches,

but they contain instead references to

another kind of Good--a plant's discovery

of a foreign land, where you forget how

normalcy works (but not entirely). Pain--

think about it--is the hardest feeling to

summon from memory. My brain knows

how to forget. My mind plumbs always

more these times, un-listening. So I will

put flowers un-pollinated in a glass cave,

burn them, and relinquish, something suddenly

undeniable, though undeniably not-a-thing.

This is why I end singly; That is why religion

is a twice endless stew. Social lives are at first

quiet & isolated, then made to order: meaning 

is finally brought to bear. Peoples, countdowns. 

Dr. Kazinsky's Mind-Cleanse

Cleanse your heart
Purify you mind
Eat mushrooms
One at a time.

wealthy conspiracy buff

[A missive from a wealthy conspiracy buff's  

masseuse (october):]

existential body club 

bodies and cubs are withstanding wholesome 

fourth cubs of running hubs & 

oh-my-gosh-whom-when-how are these pale-bonnetted 

lasses investing drums 

dumb, can't collect the cold pipes can't 

even when the whole wild world is culling 

corpuscles or properties, hmm? taste these 

word processer hands, leeks, these pale watered

down petunias of tomorrow backslaps handslaps

culled empty, hi

Hades, nightshades deadly, block out the evening-dark 

blooms of her mushroom's daybag

her bloody neat-o-rama bookshelf, or, 

I-don't-know, somebody's oatmeal being 

eaten recently even if you're not your 

best self all the time, seek silence 'n 

craving 'n style points 'n backlogged

hammers, like a marathon beast of best-logged

policies and cold frenetic bones held together

with ligaments 'n ferry decoders 'n damn digging machines 

caustic colliding raiments, fragments of code 'n 

cooling towers with fucked-up fish 'n stacks of 

draining drawn but drainable powertools. domes,

damn, doors. water under the brigade / loop / send 

empty chucks to the dancefloor with ideas 'n doped 

sentences that-go-like-this what? are 

things, doves, wore, war, or warhammer, like 

day-glo candles banking brandishing candles candles 

cankersores cores bored & boarded corporate dunces 

Dung, Dang, dingers fucked 'n boarded 'n bearable

(boring sleeves man) 

built from a PC launched at the Apple Marathon 

for goats, non-humans are the next market for 

computers & Mars flights. Humans are the next 

ghosts. Folders & Viagra forever, I keep 

thinking it's Thursday. Thanks a lot. 

Pineal Melatonin: Cell Biology of Its Synthesis and of Its Physiological Interactions*