love face

Let your love face
lift off.

Let your love lift
face off.

Let your lost life
drop off.

Let your alone face
bleed young.

Let you love face
phone home.

Allow your moonbeams
to swing on --

Allow your body
to feel home.

Allow your mind,
this is our phone.

Allow your body,
this is our womb.

Allow us this:
we are a womb-bound.

Let your love noose
never touch the ground.

Allow your moose hunt
to end before supper.

Let your mother
know your crimes.

She will repent
for you.

Let you mother know
your heart's answer.

Listen: the dog's whine,
her owner's dead.

Listen: a knifefish fumigating
his immaculate home.

Listen to the love-bump
prison, where love is hidden away.

Hide your pride inside your mind
but leave your heart on your sleeve.

Let your body hug (or be huge by) the shore
or let the shore undermine your ideals.

The shore is here and the river is there
but we are together, wow.

Let your love face
list off:

One, Two, Tenciltown.
Three, Four, Fordham-bound.

This is the story of a young man
with a passion for cooking.

The story of a youngster with locks.
Looking for the perfect barber.

Looking for the cozy home;
looking for the only home.

This is an immaculate prison
in which I've never been.

Hey chick, I'm at a loss for words,
but maybe you can lend me

a boot or a paper to shoo the birds
like pigeons.

This is as cozy a bone
as I've ever seen bleach white

in the [ dread ] Mojave sun.
The animal once lived

and now it's dead.
Let your love face

lift off. Let your
love life

brace open. Let your dimpled
heart mourn more openly

or instigate crimes for a
lack of budget. Let your hope
die where your tracks do,
in the river.

Let your body roll to the stove
if in life you cannot find

an answer to your riddles. I didn't
mean that last part, I didn't

dream the sex scene with a sister.
Somebody's, maybe, but not mine.

I heard we've all been kids before,
I've heard all kids of things.

I've heard there are drugs for
people like me. "There's something

peculiar about you, kid," but
I'm not trying to say this.

Let your body open
like you're about to cook.

Take this jar, honey, and
give it a twist. I don't

know how many sentences are
left. I don't know about the metaphor

where words are murder. Bars of
jail are windows of soul, narrow,

released from their place by
a shimmering sound of a burden

being lifted. That was too hopeful:
being dropped. The man falls out

of the home he built with his hands.
Of course they're his own.

The man falls out of favor
with those he's given allegiance.

Is there a sadder story? Try this:
it happens every day. 29 years old,

reticent to appear a seamstress, a beautiful
woman died yesterday. She was 29. She was

walking down the stairs, high heels and a
day bag. I have died like this before,

in my mind, hoping for something I can't
find. I have died before in the motions
of doing something, never done right. I've
made too many furrows to get out of this spot.

I really believe in reading in to what's meant. I
believe that words having friends, is part of it.

I believe that doing this matters but
not all silent like a bobcat, but a bobcat

has dignity. This is a principle that I've called
a virtue. Principles have virtues that birth

whole homes of people on welfare. Left
or right we find ourselves eventually,
let's say it has something to do with closet space.
You cannot be too careful about what you pay for.

(Or work, you
pray for.)

I have never donated to a single cause
and I have no boys or blankets of my own.

I'm the shop-owner type, w/ my 5-year plan
and some croutons baking in the stove.

You know, vegetarian. Practice tai-kwan-do
on the weekends in my Prius. Got a daughter?

Yeah, I bought her. With a lighter and some
legos at the Shop-n-Smart. Saving while you're

shopping smart. What more could you ask? I believe
you'll read into this whatever you like. I can't
stop. I believe you'll read whatever your life
's like. I can't stop you. Let me. Your face.

Hold it. Your eyes, emboldened. Think about *her*
again, trying to use italics in an all-text

art-space. Her again, a decade later, your
first love can still kill you. Too many
deaths. Too many harpoon fights. Too many
wounds, right? Too many cocoons tonight

to lay and to set,
up as traps. I can't let you. I can't

love you. I can't deny you. I won't try you.
Please just stop it, please just

maybe let me know. Let me know. Let me go.
I'm trying here, baby, my lovely,

I'm really trying. Maybe you'd admire
the effort: but I'm leaving. Like the train
to the sunset, the whistle from it. Not
like people mean it. My own way.

I'm leaving. I never loved you. That's a lie;
or, curse the day I doubted

myself. Just a fucking hairpin turn anyway,
into an alley with the Omega crowd:

Alpha, cats, dogs, Romeo, chocolate,
Galileo, telescopes, censorship, apprenticeships,

moonlighting, Juliette, you know, the fable,
the life spun wrong from the silver chains

to the fumigator, again, in the corner.
The people who have embraced steamers. I'm

really trying, honey. I'm really trying.
It's good to know this. I'm really trying

to notice me. Let yourself go. That's a moonbeam,
again. Again a notice. A soft felt item. Something,

you know, you wear. Let your love lift
your face off. Let your love life

take it's own heart. Take it's own life
seriously for once, this is our heart. This is

our heart. You and me, one in the same person.
I'm a crowd of bone diggers, realistically.

Let your fight begin. Light your mind and spin.
Just add an onion. Left and right and let's begin.

Let your love face
lift your home down. This is our time;
this is our crowd. Let your love life
make your face red. Let your love home

become your gem mine. Let your love frame
hold your face right. Let your camera
cloy your back shut; anger; sadness; white
brights and darks again. Bugs and temper(ature) and
seduction. The immaculate beating steaming
dreaming car-pile of American sunsets.

I'm bereaved baby, let's eat. Let your love
life, make your face heard. My body's talking
but my wife's home, and I've yet to find her.
Searching biscuits and cooking spoons,

in a boiling baby breeze.
This is real life;
now live it.
Wildfires.

South Dog Pole Suns

South Dog Pole Suns
Starring Hank Paulson

1.
On August 16, 2012, numerous wildfires burned through coniferous forests in Idaho.

2.
"Share? Share what? What do I not share enough of?"
"Everything," she said, dejectedly.
"I can't share everything."
After a long pause, she started crying. "Then it's over."
At that moment there was a knock at the door. The ruse was decidely NOT up.

3.
"Yeah, she's got a hot little piper bod, I'd say. Up for which it's definitely worth staying."

4.
North of it, a collection of wildfires known as the Mustang Complex had charred 134 square miles (346 square kilometers).

Susan + diamonds + parts

My step-sis derived from diamonds and amphibian parts. She is a goiter on the seam of the world; a salad where dessert is desired; a soreness where calm is needed.

She is a pimple on the fold of the nose where you can't reach without damaging your ducts.

Step-sis Susan, indeed. In the course of her nuptual dance she skidded to a halt and began sobbing, telling all assembled that she'd made a terrible mistake -- she had had sex with a bar wench in Bavaria. At first it seemed like a sick joke; this unnatural act with another woman, some hears hence likely when she was last in Bavaria. (I get regular updates on her location, ovulation schedule and March Of Dimes donations.) Surely, it was all a charade.

As it turns out, it was. She turned her frown upside and the man with the trombone in the band went, "WHOMP-WHOMPPP" to singal the jab. Everybody whose teeth were alread gnashing began soon to laugh, sure, but the damage was done. Donnegal, her dearly beloved -- and quite a man, if you ask me -- was only two hours married, but he was done. He dropped her like a bassinet three weeks later, by which time she was already pregnant... by the doorman.

The baby was to become a beloved laborer in the court of H.L. Mencken's sister, in the third realm of Alcatraz.

I have since cut off contact with her, though she has written by a long scrawled letter in blood which I will read at my earliest convenience.

Lazy Days of Summer

"Flush it!" yelled Drago, "Fucking kill it, dude!"

Shimon was frozen, momentarily paralyzed with fear. Racing around the sink at 100 mph was the biggest damn cockroach he'd ever seen. "Don't rush me," he pleaded, "these fuckers can fly."

Olliver, standing nearby, did not take kindly to this revelation. He quickly and quietly walked out of the kitchen, through the garage and out the side door, never to be heard from again.

A banging noise followed, and then a loud shattering of glass. In his eagerness to corral the monster bug, Shimon had swung at it with a rolled up "Vanity Fair." Unfortunately, the roach was too quick - it escaped under the other dishes in the sink - and in the process Shimon banged his left knee against the handle of the drawer under the sink. When Shimon reached for the counter to balance himself with his left hand, he missed again, violently knocking Drago's "I ♥ Huckabees" mug to the tile floor. 

"You're a dead man!" screamed Drago, clearly overreacting. Drago picked up the jagged handle of the mug and brandished it at his brother-in-law. "I ♥'D THAT MUG!" exclaimed Drago as he sent a flying right hook crashing into the back of Shimon's head.

Meanwhile, the roach scuttled merrily down the sink drain, chuckling to itself.

Swagstone Ltd.

Here by way of over-explanation is my idea for a sick new (fake) company called Swagstone™. Basically it's the coolest motherfuckin' joint you ever seen, kid. Swagstone™ is just a bunch of swagged out, big-dicked landscapers the like of which the blessed Earth has never seen, and will hopefully never see again. For a hefty fee that few people can afford, they will come to your house, bring "bitches" with them, drink your alcohol, ash their filthy blunts all over your house, invite their rude and dangerous friends, throw a party, and also haphazardly lay random flat stones (which they steal from various quarries under the cover of darkness) in your yard.

THIS IS AN ADVERTISEMENT: 

Call Swagstone™Today. Why wait, unless you a bitch? Swagstone be basically the most big-balled, hossed out party joint this side of da Mississip', ya heard? We be flossin’ so hard all up in yo grill just settin a playa up, dig? We got primo flagstone, call it swagstone (cuz a playa can’t swag without Swagstone™), and lay it ALL up in your yard, see? And at Swagstone™ yard work ain’t gotta be no chore. We bring hot bitches—to your exact specifications, of course—to help us swag out on a playa. Tiki torches, brews, Cristal—you name it, we bring it. Also stereos and da freshest jams to make a playa wild out, son. Just a crazy party up in your crib while 10 or so strappin’-ass brothers hall in some Swagstone™ and lay a path around your yard, so you can be goose-stepping like a champ from the garden, to the bird bath, to the herb garden, et cetera. Hallowed be thy name—Swagstone™.

(Swagstone™ makes no guarantee as to the quality of it’s flagstone, nor guarantees that its stones are “flagstone,” per se. We reserve da right to use sandstone, feldspar, and assorted sedimentary rocks so you can holla at your geology knowledge and expand your dome, son!) 

she said

i am sprinkled with boys and boys and babys and babys
sleep is a welcome jackrabbit -- grave -- poems -- slate
roofs -- i know where they're from -- i have canoed past
sloughs of impossible sediment -- oh wow life's sentiment
collecting at the bottom -- an accident of semantics -- an
accident of blind fury -- an accident of bodies -- an accent
on the bones of the day -- this morning is wash -- everything

(s)

heretofore unnoticed are bellies upturned looking at each
other like what? this is the clock ticking and i'm trying not
to waste your time here, really Margaret, i believe in your
faith, i believe in your dripping head, i believe in the cart
that you lead about you, i believe in your pennies, i believe
in your stocks, i believe in the bible       you worry so often
about obeying      i worry so often  sometimes  too  we are
just wandering kiosks, anyway, like purely imagined bones
in a hillside so long ago, we can't even keep track of where
we put our heart, and where we hid the bottles of lotion
whose commands we slathered on our skin, nave romance
& all.

i believe in the bible      you worry  so often
about obeying
                         , she said

FIRE WHERE

this is your   fire where?

this is your fire wheel
this is your father deer
this if your fire's here

<>
there is no heart
where the heart is

FIRE WHERE

fire where there is a hereness
shutters & shutters & layers & layers
and dawn, piqued and drawn,

   (a cocaine model on burlap couch
    a brown women picking buttercups)

lies clutching at her Neptune curves
her sleek body, tits aching w/ pure juice
the cane of lust & it's imaginary counterparts


FIRE WHERE
fire where the heart is

What We Thought

Was all wrong.
Polish apples
from Poland
fresh fish, rotten eggs
long-ish legs

"look at them stems"
look at them planets
Mercurial, to say the least

Jupiter's beard - Roman Gods

Flawless as Goddesses
brawny bronze,
stained copper windows
see-through statues

Fake tits
baked beans
make me swoon

make me dinner

make me lunch
boxed up in a paper bag
Only drink water
So don't need
no juice

Rejoice

closed

war.    war.   war.  
where are your thoughts.
your bones   are wars.  
your heart    is no muscle
won't say what it is.

sadness
at the cinema    is sadness indeed
boyhood dreams    two-sided &
incredibly wasteful
fold together closed.    Closed.

you make me want to live again

i haven't yet met you.
what are you like.
how do you dance.
where's your home.
maybe we'll make one.

you know (silent, smiling, smug,
you know, you know, you know)
or maybe you don't

have you taken everything
you wanted. have you
done things you regret. that's not
a question. i'm pretending
this means something.

i am only tender

maybe everything is alive
maybe a branch is a-bud
somewheres

maybe a boy ain't a band
if his mug don't shine

remember when? people
never thought the world
was round

they never
they never thought the world
was round

they round          (up)   (everything lost)
they polish their apples
they round up to polish   the
last of the apples ,  the (they; roundup)
   the last of the apples.
  t h e l a s t o f

Kumquats & persimm-
on tea and juvenile games
that we play.Juvenile
goddam games. everything (invisible
juvenile)

is electric
everything
is    for sale.

Everything's a goddam juvenile game. 

an abandoned boy; pity

an abandoned buy
an item, you know
an upbraided boy

a bear cub
is a nightfish
in a dayglo nightclub      HEY
   drinks grown in a tumbler
   chicks with chinks in their timber
   hearts, like lodgepoles showing

battle scars, & remnants of rot
now dried and wood again

now wood again
enough to burn

   down the road
   the fire costs $2.50
   for a bundle
   of yew

all will
be ashes
soon

you don't really swap you just pay

“Once an ice shelf is removed, this ice flow may speed up, which then increases the loss of grounded ice, causing the sea level rise.”

paul was my lodestar
until the muggy winter
when the embers caught fire again
and our apartment burned to the ground

"it's not a joke
the other day for example, our winner
was the Samsung Sweatbeaver, which,
despite it's name, is a real
agile and cool mega-drive"

all the pixels in the world
cannot hold me -- all the pixies in imagined scenes
wearing frocks or no, gilling cod or full of woe
is a girl from out of the scenery, coming in,
having attracted the light,
is now retreating,
i should have talked to her
last night, the girl, decisions
like blankets cover you,
and you sleep -- or rising, furious, febrile
you swing machines like swords and
break the binds the hold you,
insane as Llullaillaco microbes.

"would it be helpful if you always limit
the maximums" "what our high score was"
"double the category average" "oh yeah"

these are remarks i overhear that no doubt
make sense to these people, who are clearly
not insane. but i cannot help thinking their
exchanges are, while the dark breathing heart
of the matter is not discussed.

do not ask me about busses or plans or transportation
i have started wildfires that destroyed entire schools
of thought, while observing the sabbath, and boiling
children's blood in my leaden saucepan
which i stole from the clutches of a shackled geisha

Brief impartation of knowledge

What do I know about the Civil War? General Custer rode in on a horse, and defeated Col. Robert E. Lee at Little Big Horn. I believe the horse's name was Barbaro. The South won the battle, but not the war.

Catholicism: Confession is where people go into a room and privately tell the pope about how much they hate the jews. Something something pews.

General Maltese

Humdrum
"Humbug" she thought, "Bah" said the sheep
"Why so glum?" Mutton, yum.
lamb jelly in my tummy belly
sunny hey hey hey
hey hey hey hey
fifty times like shades of gray
filthy lines, shit is cray to z
alphabet, pray for me
be catholic, act like it
cross yourself but don't cross me
middle name Revenge
first name Terror
last name Stephens

General Malaise

Today is my 27th birthday.

What the fuck.

I suppose I feel okay (do I?) about where I am in life, starting a new law job next week, liking Atlanta and living near my family and some good friends. So why am I so freaked out? I go to great lengths to avoid stress and stressful situations, but they have been following me around recently. With work, girls, and even regular social commitments. I still don't feel remotely grown up, but I remember ten years ago when I heard someone say they were older than 25 ("you're twenty-seven???") I just assumed they had stuff figured out. You know, I just figured people in their mid-late twenties are, well, adults.

I don't have a girlfriend, or any current prospects that especially intrigue me. Sure, I've always been too picky, and my confidence comes and goes, but that was always okay because I was so young. 27 - not so young any more. The truth is I'm actually not ready to settle down and even live with a girl, let alone get married, or *gasp* have kids, but within a few years I actually think I will be. And now that I am starting a 9-6 job and commuting 35 minutes each way, I question how many opportunities I will have to meet new women. I also question whether I will ever meet a girl in Atlanta that really floats my boat. Dating is a little bit fun but also depressing -I want a girl who provides excitement and a little mystery - recently I've been seeing girls who are pretty transparently just looking for any guy who can provide stability. This alarms and saddens me. One thing I've realized is that I definitely enjoy dating younger girls - 22, 23. Old enough to be mature and kind of know what to look for, but young enough not to be jaded or panicky about finding love.

I feel a little bit lame for staying in on my birthday, especially since it's a Friday night. If anyone really pressured me to go out, I would. But all day I have been feeling a total lack of energy and general malaise. I always question my "traditions" on days like my birthday and New Years - am I really starting my 27th year on Earth off by smoking bongs by myself and watching sitcoms? Yes, I am. I have been smoking more pot than usual recently, as some sort of comfort mechanism - it makes things feel a little less real. But shit is getting real, whether I like it or not. I am grateful and lucky to have the support of wonderful friends and family both nearby and afar. This doesn't change the fact that getting old sucks. I feel an urgent need to build more memories over the next couple of years, and do my best to record them so I can remember them when I am actually old. This has neither been absurd or funny, sorry. Just some generic-as-fuck thoughts about being one year older and none the wiser.

Outlooking

summer sunlit rainy daze
sand and
mud
running through wet grass
remembering the past
relishing the present and the future

Eating good food
Meeting good folks

Care about them
share goods, and vibrations,
drugs and libations

This is intrigue
this is life

value the invaluable
experiences

Experiment

everything for sale

we're all just fishing kittens
more is required
josh is typing
flickering galoshes over puddles
on asphalt drip money girls
sweat honey men grab shovels
the young open sodas the homeless
are hovels, begging coins
and sentences, the streets are
poor, the streets are rich, the people
are color, the windows are
reflections, the goods
are for sale

CHANDELIERS INSIDE THE PYRAMIDS

Tuesday nite at the Moon Til Rise. The man 

plays sax in his boxer briefs, perhaps some

sort of undershirt, "rollicking"

is rolling and licking or rocking

and licking or rocking and rollicking.

How will you spend your first day

of freedom? Love had to happen

somewhere first once; the first love

of the world. New shirts. Just being ready,

owning it. There are still komodo dragons

on this earth. Realistic demagogue of no

actual conscience. Juicing the rabbit

was never one of your better ideas.

Things were buried, Capsules! Place 

is an activity too. Choo choo choose

the Cleopatra in you.  

Be all that you can

believe. There's a thief 

in you. Some smiles

are intentional. 

Tyson Chandelier is a maverick. For President. Forever.

Realistic dialogue of no consequence

Guy: What's up with you? 

Girl (insouciant lips, suddenly aware of her pert breast and at once setting them aside): Nothing, I'm just leaving the office, heading to the gym.

Guy (in low volume praise): Look at you! 

Girl: Yeah I was out at this thing last night, because it was my birthday yesterday…

Guy (conversational handshake): Oh, happy Birthday! 

Notes from about a month ago, some needless retrospective words and a poem about dementia

1) "Look up: --Jared Fajersk1,
dir. LifeBr1dge Health and Fitness, Baltimore
Study called "Life in the day of a towel" that I read about in the WSJ"

I got the WSJ delivered to my girlfriend's
We broke up and I never read it / we broke up i'm ever bleeding
( neither thing true ? )
I'm afraid of clowns I'm afraid of small towns
I'm afraid of small gowns
I'm afraid of payment
I'm afraid of clouds

2) "Drop off bone." []
afterward realize you should have put it in a bag or sack
instead of handing it bare & boney to the doorman
at your expensive friend's place,
who looked at you like a saliva-clad chewtoy.

3) Verses (A 'poem,' maybe)

healthy figs & dementia
and priority club seating & dementia
and club soda, ginger ale,
potassium tablets, astrocyte awareness clinics,
lung gyms, verbal ice luges, & dementia.

definitely hermetic     sealed   stone vases and tablets
Rubriks d'or, Dior and Hommes blood (a Hermes product)
incalculable matrix, charms & oxen blood
     (and oxygen, blood)
paste of mercurial kidnappers   Vitacraves & oregano

some stone and tablets
and a bladder of dried seeds
to make a pleasant noise.

4) Forgotten calculation of immense value:
4.5 = 9/2, * 9/5 = 81/10

enthusiasm

war with a yacht
candy bubble

bugs in free time
bugs in jail
bugs in grassland

Novelty has a shape
as does firewood
and her shackles in the basement

blood levers the cement floor or her turnpike with the concominent noise of turnpikes closing.
My blackness is my sin my blackness is Muslim.
My women are warming my women are morning
my women are alarming
My winnowing is alarming
My pillows are harmfree.

eat what you did win

Kirk Kavendish and the Abundant Boy Parade

Kirk Kavendish & the Abundant Boys
tied for 3rd place
at the Immokalee Constance Nun's Parade,
coming in just behind the Pirate Barbs
(a group of women named Barbara,
festooned in fake boas and
Somali cut-throat garb).

There are a lot of words on this page.

a lotta words on this page
a lotta birds in the cage
a lotta rage in Nick Cage

damn kid, too many onions
gunship, yesterday, bunions
ate too many funyons

wrong spelling right kvelling
it's wrong to yell when your Spelling
the famous Tori not Joe, Joe Tori hits the road

Joe Camel and a toad smoke lavender to Depeche Mode
(fragile)

hurry style keep up and make me explode
not really though i like being wholly whole
one full piece like a soda straw

unperturbed wicker baskets
the third degree, not of a burn but my family
member that's a cousin,
don't know any of them.

A terrible and half-hearted impression of the second part of Ginsberg's Howl

Out, Moloch! Sin of dustless life! Tragedy and shame like twin bed shadows grow on, the fire growing! 

Moloch the bedazzled fucking of lusting arachnids shedding! Off Moloch, these robes of designer feathers and wireless braziers! 

Moloch the messianic virtue of a dream come to light! Now sunk, worms and stuff, Titanic! Why such vaingloriousness down here! 

Dangerous & Unreasonable (Introductions)

1.

"Hi there,

I'm dangerous and unreasonable. 

What's your name?"

2. [as host of oyster party]

"Hi there,

I'm dangerous and unreasonable,

but more so than anything, 

I'm dangerously unreasonable. 

But also don't forget about the 'danger'

part.

Oyster?"

3.

"I'm dangerous and unreasonable,

and I'm mildly attracted to you." 

4.

"I'm drunk." 

Pompous display of affection

1.

"I'm irreparably fractured &
we will not die together. I have
lots of problems, but I am a
good person, I guess you could say."

"Does anybody care if you're a
good person?"

"That's what you take away?"

"I take away breath.
What do you take me for."

2.

He said:
She said:

3.

I am as open as the door
on her refrigerator
in the middle of winter
after it's thrown away
--languishing underwater
in an old quarry, say--

("entombed in ice," a lesser
writer might say)

years later,
rusted,
cold,
but yes, open.

quick and disoriented

there are people in the world
who have bodies. pale nepalese clouds
of bodies, already high up, &
wispy. bored little sultan's daughters,
tossing & turning, a heat engine
is like a hurricane. spinning
that empty eyehole forever upward,
looking at heaven, this wind-shear
is uncomfortable.

The Search Continues

Dream: I'm drinking from a cracked glass.
Don't remember the rest.
Civil unrest.
Always yearning for meaning
all at once purposeful
and lost at sea.

Lost it, see
everything so clearly
but not soon enough.
"That was stupid."

So goes the refrain
and I'll refrain from elaborating
because this could mean anything to anyone.
Music to my ears.
Or it could mean nothing to someone. My greatest fear.

realize that my greatest tears are not so great
at least not in a positive way
though crying is mighty in its own respect.

Someone will cry tonight, I suspect.
And I'm not sure whose fault it is.
Certainly not mine.
Well, I'm certainly not trying
to gamble away my time.

Our glass is your glass - hourglass.
Sifting sand
shifting sand and
Change is on the horizon;
portent, important, pregnant
with a certain quotient of emotion
and devotion to success
ideally in its most traditional sense
which is probably not what you think it means.

my most important revelation recently

is that i don't know anything

Still sitting at the Toyota Dealership

My murderous rage no longer sarcastic

Just Sitting at the Toyota Dealership

Just killed a fly that came to rest on my left hand
with my right hand
and flung it into space
nobody noticed, which is fine.
But people are idiots.

Just brought my laptop closer in
so nobody can see
that I called them idiots.

Just watched a guy scope out a euro girl
walk past, around the room, then come back to sit next to her
odds of him speaking to her are slim to none
odds of her responding in fluent english are nil, in any case.
He is flashing glances at her computer screen
Thankfully he can't see mine

Just like that, she's standing up
and walking to a different room,
laptop and euro swag in tow
Hope this weird guy doesn't start to cry about it.

Just come tell me my car is ready
for the love of God
Come tell me my scar is deadly
I will kill everyone

Just brought my computer even closer
since that last line is pretty fucked up
And my screen is exposed to the masses

Just blaze
is what I should have done
before coming to this place
Everything is better in a haze
What was that sound?

Just the Asian guy, he just woke up
looked around, indubitably startled,
now palming his face and going back to sleep
Nice fucking moccassins, dude.

Just smiled at an older lady
as if I'm not writing depraved, murderous words

Look at me again and you die

Scribbles, mounting horror and warring insides

"Barely optimistic like I'm only one run up /
Smith and Wesson in a vessel--that's a gunship"
   ---Greek Proverb

This is a hectic account of perhaps nothing that occurred to me--to my insides--on April 3rd 2012. Sometimes it's too hard to approach the subject head on. It's like a bus hitting a deer. The deer's dead. The impact was large. The bus is damaged maybe but it keeps going. Can we reflect on that singular moment; the deer crouched beforehand on the shoulder, its eyes darting, it ventures across the road in an angular path, thinking in its deer way of fresh green shoots; bus approaching; a whiff of cement all-around; deer frozen; adaptive failure; "adaptive management," lingered a term on the lips of some academics around the nation, on their minds, even in this instance; woodsheds; fragmentation of habitat and skein; and the impact---the deer dead, the bus stops, the children not-even-shrieking thinking ??? (besides “!!!” and “[toys]”).

Rivalries dashed to smithereens. Sardines, maybe, (obviously) studies suggest, shouldn't be eaten so much. Leave some fish for the (other) fish to eat.

Others obviously. Others, is what it’s all about. (Sort of.)

Sort of not really, kind of okay, doing fine thanks how are you, just another day, another peg, another Whiteboard Calendar Day X’ed out like my old girlfriend Jess did, before telling her parents about it, who were to their credit horrified. She quit doing that but never quit worrying—and by God, it will take her to the top. You’ll never find a peaceful man there in the upper echelons, I swear. You’ll never find a peaceful woman

This is a hectic account of nothing in particular that didn't happen. A gross man in Bangladesh offered up a sordid account of his status as a man in the world in 2012, even in April, maybe monsoon season. "This is not what he said," he said. "I'm thinking now. I'm fat, unlike many of my countrymen, and the goddam sea---it just keeps rising. Change? I think so--and no thank you. Climate? Change? I don't know what carbon dioxide is. I couldn't be asked to understand it. It isn't visceral or real to me. All I know is a flame gets brighter and hotter when I blow on it. This gas that makes me live makes the flame dance, but not too much. That makes the dance end. Not too hot, not too cold. Also maybe medium isn't okay, but who's pinching your shayna punim now? Is there a significant Jewish population in Bangladesh?"

Academic queries drop like tears from his eyes; an irate pirate cutting onions on a gunship. Facing a court martial (& impartial, God knows) in an unknown country that couldn’t possible let this piracy happen without some ulterior motive. (Seriously.) Throughout history pirates have never been a huge problem in highly trafficked, well-defended shipping routes, like the Gulf of Aden, one of the busiest in the world. We’re using it as a pretext for more military presence in the area. At least that’s my assertion. (Compare historical pirates in remote, poorly defended backwaters, like in the Caribbean or Barbary (Tunisia)).

That aside (“to the left, to the left / all your things in the box to the left”) there are as usual more questions than answers but such is life. God has the answers. People have the questions. So excuse me while I'm walking around all: "???" I'm a human after all, with a child inside, let's please assassinate the concept of an "inner child" while indeed reveling--nay, worshipping?--the idea that we are still obviously products of those eager young children we see on the streets & buses everyday, (we were them, I’m saying) brimming with subjectivity & boredom & hunger & inquisitions & curiosity & questions questions questions. A need to run around, be embodied animals, maybe run into each other--little kids need a few scrapes now and then--throw objects, chase skirts, don skirts, talk about skirts, look up skirts, prevent people from looking up skirts, giggle, be ashamed, be made to feel guilty, be made to feel free--what a concept--made to feel alive. The last is not necessary for little children are nothing if not alive and being alive is being unafraid of constant questions & wonder & a lack of anchored rules about how to act.

Be made, or make yourself.

So much for avoiding head-on: girls I've dated have routinely said I act like a child, "You're such a little boy," to which I respond about how not all of me is little, even so showing that childlike grossness & wonder for bodies & sizes & situations that are strange, strange, normal. Strange--the new normal--the new word for what? These words don't make sense & never have. Normative tingles of strange headiness. Those are really my lips? I thought just a few hours ago looking in the mirror. Maybe I should meditate more. I don't mainly because I fear it.

(Elaborate? No thanks, except: the dream of carrying an awful mat, beholding strangers bodies (excitement, disgust, embarrassment), being TOO aware of my own, & my breathing. As it is I’m happy when I can carry on WITHOUT thinking about respiration.)

Confessions, confessions again. Still somewhere a Catholic youth. Made to feel guilty--and I bought it. Maybe it'd have happened anyway; probably, though that's impossible to say.

A gulf of impossibility when confronting the counterfactual---is anybody else confounded by this problem?

People everyday & of every color & intellect say things like, "If I only…" "I wish I could have" "What if" etc. Each day, I too. I want to rewind, rewind, rewind. Will I ever reach a sandbar where I can say: I have used my day as well as possible, urgently living and unafraid and lacking regret completely.

I know that I hope so.

What would I dream about then? Dreams would be sugar candies & flying without the continual current fear--when flight comes to me in slumbered fancies--of falling, not flapping my arms right, not being able to overcome some physical limitation… but all my limitations now are mental, it seems, all mental, mental. I can do things with my body. This is of course good—I am not disabled, I am not injured, etc. (Pause to be thankful. I don't care who you are--it's important.)

Outside the sun shines nicely & warmly like a stranger’s backpack warning you about his political preferences. Does this please? Don't wait.

I live in China. Don't belong here. Fine with me: I've never felt I belong. Any place.

Outside sun & a man driving a forklift back & forth. A massage parlor with a gregarious limpid sultry TV screen of hands kneading a back, or impeccable feet. It took me nearly a year to actually pay attention to this site and realize what it was--previously I had thought it was a TV with sports on, a sport I couldn't really make out since it was so far away, & I thought the establishment was a sportsbar. But I never connected the dots--if I had (oh great fallacy, hello) I would have said: "I am going to go there."

Funny how something so familiar, glanced at daily, was never really CONSIDERED fully, I did not GLEAN WHAT IT WAS. And then one moment I looked more carefully. AHA. With exclamation. I thought. A massage parlor. Later I went there after drinking and asked if they gave "full body massages." They could tell what I was; I left with a business card and met some New Zealand girls at a bar. This was a Thursday in maybe February.

Now it’s a Tuesday definitely in newborn April and I’m not doing the work that I have told myself I would. Except this.

A Tall Boy Named PBR

from afar

i saw him standing

tall dark handsome

smiling, winking

begging me

to take his hand

to drink him down

to be my man.

Decisions

this one or that one
over here or over there
how now never
maybe baby someday.

movie, nudity, food

naked watching Sopranos
at one thirty after midnight
thinking about Baked Lays &
suicide & the sewers outside
filling with a gray sluice of
rain mixed with trash & dirt

nude watching Vanderbilt
men's basketball

home alone without clothes
watching Home Alone, then
City Slickers 2--The Legend
of Curly's Gold

Meet Caleb and Ashley

I've been a bad door, opaque
and impenetrable. But what are doors for?
Tomorrow is for living, today's
to plan, yesterday was the moment.

Open the future and glance back
at your driveway if you have one.
The moment now cannot exist.

The door, the door--the door of
Caleb's awakening.

Walking through one, meaning opening
it, he knew all was about to change,
and in the next moment, it did.

In my dream I icefish
and count my companions as
carefully as my drinks at Cupertino's
(a bar named to remind us Northerners
of warmer, more innovative climes).

I invented the iPad in my sleep,
years ago, but I didn't write it down,
& forgot. I invented Caleb
just now, thus jotted, but until I say
more, he's just a brownstone
unknowable, smooth as a doorhandle.

Be my Caleb, I'll say, to a
subliminal power, who'll raft in
a suite of characters that make a
wraith a man, & figments into
full-blown legends and college theme
parties where nubile blondes shall
use the occasion to dress more
revealingly even than Ashley, the
saucy waitress from chapter 2,
who's role becomes much bigger
than imagined.

I don't think this makes sense, but I did write it, after all.

Elongated substrates
make gates from hedgerows
& bullets of arrows. Aaron

told me that in Autumn;
now it's March and spring's
just beginning to
leap through the woods.

Arrowhead lake, the way she
said it, meant she loved me.
I didn't tell you not to
leave me be.

Forgotten Title

I've been a bad dog
I want to know the truth.
What do my dreams mean?
Cause they have been weird.

Restless times call for desperate measures
treasure the hours you are alive,
and awake.

Spirit.

In my dream I icefish
it is surprisingly loud and warm
and I am doing quite well.

the youngster's song (too personal)

i'm a sad frog
beneath the hills of the mudswamp
& the leftover rations for the needy
i skate upon piles of remorse i
don't need these plans i do not
need a horse i do not need a party
i do not need a closeup i need a book-away
i need to burn all these books away i need to
carefully count my creations i need to
carefully arrest my hesitations i need to
look at all i've done i need to realize what's done is done
i need to dance i need to pray i need to strive
harder without striving harder just doing i need to listen to my soul i need to live like God intended i need to believe i am capable of my best i need to love myself i need to leave well enough alone
i need to avoid unnecessary idioms
i need to avoid swimming in shoals of uncertainty
i need to love
i need to move on
i need to grow up
i need to hang on
i need to blow myself away from time to time
i need to be green like pastures of insane purpose
i need to slide away
i need to come back
i need to find peace
i need to be myself.