sketches composed while listening to The Talking Heads on a Tuesday afternoon.

the girls just want to be with the…

The boys don’t know what the girls like about the boys. The boys don’t know what to think when it comes to what it is the girls might be feeling about the boys. The boys are in the dark about the girls. The boys often wonder, what is it that makes the girls like the boys? All the boys want to be liked by the girls. It is hard for the boys to know if the girls like them, mostly because the boys don’t see what is so great about a boy that would make a girl like a boy. Only the girls know what it is that attracts them to the boys. The boys just don’t understand. The boys know what attracts the boys to the girls. The boys know what they like about the girls. The girls also know what the boys like about the girls. This makes things somewhat unfair for the boys. The girls do not know this. The girls have a hard time understanding why the boys don’t know why one of the girls might like one of the boys. To the boys all the boys are the same. The boys don’t see why there might be something special about any one of the boys that would attract one of the girls. The boys do see why a boy would like a girl. The girls have certain things that attract a boy. Both the boys and the girls know what these things are. What the boys don’t know is what the things are about the boys that attract the girls to the boys. The girls know what these things are of course. The boys spend a lot of time trying to figure these things out. The girls don’t need to figure out what it is about the girls that attracts the boys to the girls. The girls already know what these things are. The boys are at a definite disadvantage. Sometimes the boys will try to be funny. The boys think that being funny is something the girls might like. Some of the girls like it when the boys are funny. But the boys aren’t really sure what that “like” means. The boys are not sure if it is a “like” like, or just a like. The girls know the difference, but they don’t make it clear to the boys. The girls think that they boys can tell the difference between a like and a “like” like, and the girls don’t want to let the boys know when it is a “like” like anyway. The girls like to keep things like that to themselves. Sometimes the boys will get frustrated by this, and the boys will sometimes go up to the girls on the playground and push one of the girls down, and the girl will fall on the blacktop, and the girl will get her hands scraped up and she might tear her pants and she might even get some bruises or start bleeding. Whatever happens, the girl’s feelings will definitely be hurt. The boy will most likely laugh, or the boy might spit at or on the girl, and then the boy will go away and give the other boys some high fives, and the boy will feel very vindicated. The girl will not understand that the boy actually likes the girl. This is very common. It happens all the time. The boys don’t understand certain things about the girls, and the girls don’t understand certain things about the boys. These things will never be resolved. Still, 95 percent of boys and girls end up getting married by age 55.

please respect my opinions they will be respected some day

When I came home that day I found that my mother had moved seven male lodgers into our house. We only had two bathrooms in that house, and one was my mother’s. I was very concerned about the bathroom situation. It didn’t seem that we’d have enough hot water to get through all of those showers every day, and what about all that time we’d each have to spend going number one and two. It could cause problems. I was very stressed out about this initially. It was on my mind a lot. There were not locks on the bathroom doors. Would we be getting locks on there? I didn’t want to walk in on one of the lodgers. I didn’t want them to walk in on me. It was not a fun situation to be in. I asked my mother, why? Why all of a sudden this influx of lodgers? We had enough money to get by. We were not lacking. And it wasn’t like we had a lot of room to spare. In fact, besides my room and my mother’s bedroom, there was only one other small room in the house, well, excluding the kitchen and the two bathrooms of course. My mother said that the lodgers needed a place to sleep at night and a place to put their stuff. We had a place to sleep. We had a place to put our stuff. We had food to eat. Why not share some food with the lodgers? I didn’t argue with her. It was not my place to argue. It was not like I was paying to stay there. I was a notch below the lodgers on that one. She had me there. So, I tried to get used to having all of those lodgers around, and tried not to think about the bathroom situation, which, like I said, was very troublesome to me.

My cuticles would get cut and bleed a lot back then. It seemed I was always getting cuts on my cuticles. They were always bleeding. It was a rare day when I didn’t have at least one band aid wrapped around the cuticle of a finger. I would cut them on cracker boxes and shampoo bottles and pens and cardboard trays and doors and carrots and really anything with edges. It was hard to keep enough band aids in the house for me. The lodgers sometimes took the band aids from the medicine cabinet and hid them from me. The lodgers would laugh about this. I didn’t find it funny. Having a bleeding cuticle and no band aid to put on it is not fun.

The seven lodgers all slept in our spare room, which was quite small, but they had bunk beds in there, bunk beds that my mother had bought at a second hand store for them. So, there were these three bunk beds crammed in there, with hardly room to move. I don’t know where the extra lodger slept. He might have slept on the floor for all I knew. I didn’t really go in that room much, except to take out their dirty laundry down to the wash room. Mother said it was my duty to do this small task. I frowned a lot while doing it and also made a lot of frustrated noises of contempt, but I did it.

One night I came home late. I’d been to the grocery store to pick up some turnips and horseradish and a cheap bottle of wine. My mother had asked me to pick these items up after work. I came home, with the turnips, horseradish, and wine in tow, and when I opened the front door I heard a lot of commotion. I didn’t see anything at first, then, as I walked towards the kitchen, I saw all of the lodgers in there, and then I saw my mother in there too. I dropped my bag of turnips, horseradish, and wine. I heard the wine break on the floor. I’m not sure what happened to the horseradish. I grabbed the turnips and made a hasty exit.

Relaxing is overrated. It is not easy to relax. Is in not fun to relax. Relax, don’t do it.

I’m not as smart as most people are smart. That being said, if that were something that we could assume from the start, if we could just go ahead and say, okay, this kid, he’s not so smart, then it would be easier to explain myself, to start from this position, this, shall we say, differential of experience. Because what I’m talking about here is not the hard-wired capacity for intelligence, for learning things, for remembering, for thinking abstractly and attaching notions to expanding potential and turning them into other notions, which are then created and verily follow, and that lead to the ability to think in a highly developed and articulate way. No. I must be speaking of something else. It is more of a way of seeing, or of not seeing, the way things work together with each other. Now, as I have stated, I am not as smart as most people. I am not in the possession of even a mediocre intelligence. I do not remember things I read very well. Sometimes I will read the same sentence over and over again, and still I will have no idea how the different words connect to each other. I will have no idea of the meaning of the sentence, though I might be able to recite it perfectly from memory, after reading it slowly over about a hundred times, I will most likely have no idea what the words are saying. Nothing connects. I see everything as bits and pieces. I never see the whole. I am not smart. This is something I reconciled myself to at a very young age. I considered myself dumb from very early on. I did not have the knack. I could not “get” things. Concepts were beyond me. Numbers never added up correctly. I remember distinctly sitting at a lunch table at recess one day. It was one of those mean days in the middle of February. One of those days when summer seems light years away, when the weather is dark and gloomy, and there is nothing good happening at all, just tests and homework and bologna sandwiches and dirt-laced water from the drinking fountains. I was sitting there at the lunch table, my elbows resting on the smudged blue of the slick plastic tabletop, my chin resting on my closed fists, my eyes partly open and partly closed, as I was kind of staring off at nothing in particular and daydreaming at the same time. There was this group of kids who were out there playing kickball on the field in front of one of the backstops out on the schoolyard’s wide expanse of grass. They were having loads of fun out there, those kids. I was not. I was sitting there at that lunch table feeling miserable. The clouds were heaving. I kept thinking about how heavy and wet they were. You know that is what they used to call beer, heavy wet? Gin was called Blue Ruin. I do not know why I know that. I do not know why I mentioned it. I am not smart. That is all I can say. I am not sure why I felt like the clouds were heaving. I guess I meant that they were swelling or something. Or that I felt like they were swelling, that they were somehow weighing down on me. Something like that anyway. So, I just sat there that day, watching the kids play kickball in the murky light, staring off, daydreaming, thinking about how I would never be smart no matter how hard I tried, no matter how many books I read or things I thought of in my head, I just was not dealt the same cards as all those other kids, all those kids that got to run around and play kickball and be carefree, those kids that got to frolic and laugh and stuff like that. All I got was this busted good-for-nothing noodle, this brain with a broken gasket, and you know, its brakes are not too hot, they stick and whine like a lobster being boiled, and the spark plugs are misfiring, the oil is low, and the radiator leaks. I remember sitting there at that lunch table like that, looking at those kids out there who got to play kickball. And all I got was nothing, and it was hard for me at the time, but I tried to convince myself that nothing was plenty for me. Sometimes I would even try singing that song from Porky and Bess to convince myself of it, but, like I said, it was hard. I was not smart enough to see what I should do about anything. I was not even smart enough to ask anybody about what to do. What to do, what to do, what to do. What does one do? I mean really, what does one do with this life? This is the only life that has been given to one. To one? To whom? To me? To you? Yes. This is it. So, sure, I know, even though I am not very smart, that I should make the most of what I have got. But what is it that I have got? I have got this life. Yes. That I know. This life is something. It is really a miracle. Just being alive. I cannot spell. I do not know much about grammar or putting sentences together. I like to sing, but my voice is no good. At least that is what I have been told. I like the sound of my voice though. What is good about a voice? What makes one voice better than another voice? Are not they just sounds? Is not it all merely a matter of opinion, a matter of taste, something more of an aesthetic sense than a concrete thing? I know that does not make sense. I told you I am not smart. At least not as smart as other people are smart. I do not understand things very well. But we must have clarity. After all, things must be presented in a way that they can be understood. There must be order. Sentences must have subjects and objects. The word “got” should not be used. Things should not run on and veer away from the point. Pleonasm should be avoided at all costs. Commas should not splice things. Modifiers should not be left dangling. Prepositions should not end a sentence. Effect should not be used as a verb. I know these things. But I can not apply them. I am not smart enough to know how to use what I know to do what I am never quite sure I am going to do with it. That day at recess, sitting there watching those kids play kickball, I could imagine myself out there playing with them. I could see myself doing all the things it would take to play. I would settle in behind home plate. The pitcher would roll the ball to me in the rock-strewn, sienna dirt of the path from the pitcher’s mound to the plate. It would bound. That rubber ball that the principal called Mr. Redball and told us not to kick. He would hold up the ball and pronounce in a deep rich baritone, “Don’t kick Mr. Redball!” That ball, Mr. Redball, would take many bounces. I would take one step, and then another, and then a few more with increasing speed, and then I would draw my foot back and swing my body to the side, and I would time my foot with the bounce of the ball, and I would kick at the ball with my foot, whipping my leg around like a catapult, and I would look right at the ball as I kicked it…but this was all I could do, imagine this happening. I knew that if I were to go out there, if I were to go and play with those kids out there on the grass by the backstop, out there under the tenebrous sky, out there where they were all having fun and doing all of that frolicking, that I would not be able to kick that ball. I would know how to do it every step of the way, but to make all of those things happen in consecution seemed a complete impossibility. I just could not make anything add up. Things only made sense to me in parts. I am not smart. I repeat myself constantly. I never think anyone is listening when I am talking. I lost my first baby tooth when my father smacked me across the face for pissing my pants when I was five. These are just some things. I do not know much about what they mean. I just know that they are things, and that they are mine. Excuse me, is this microphone turned on? Should I speak into it? Is anyone listening? Hello? Oh. There we go. Sorry. I knew something was wrong. Can you hear me now? Okay. Good. Um. Well, I could go on I guess. There is a lot more I want to say. But I will not. I am tired. I am weary. I am not smart. And really…nobody cares. Good night.

heaven is a place where nothing ever happens

if there are airplanes outside the window

if there are apples in the refrigerator

if there are kisses in the glove compartment

if there are morons making the laws

if there are portraits of iguanas hanging on the walls

if there are killdeer in the radio

if there are people walking and talking

if there are silences between life and death

if there are fruit flies in the Laundromat

if there are mistakes of color in the elevator shafts

if there are flowers

then it’s not a major disaster

This girl was trying to steal my barstool, and it seemed to me, since I was still sitting on it, that this was an improper thing to do. So I told her as much. She did not like that. She didn’t like it one bit. In fact, this really irked her some. She started giving me the business. She was really giving it to me. Calling me names that made me feel about as tall as a potato chip. And then she started slapping at me too. It was really something. I tried to cover up, to ignore her, but it was difficult. She was really worked up. She was in a tizzy. There wasn’t much I could do about it. As long as she didn’t knock my beer over I was okay with it. I’d take it. And take it I did.

When she was done I went back to my beer. She’d called me a scrawny, mealy-mouthed sack of wet shit before slapping me one last time and trotting on away. I was pretty proud of myself. I’d held up well under her barrage, and I still had my beer sweating there on the bar in front of me. Absently, while taking a good long swallow of my beer, I looked into the bar mirror, and I saw the wreck of a man who was sitting there on my barstool, the same stool that horrid woman had tried to steal right out from under me. I couldn’t really blame her for trying to take it away. I wasn’t much to look at. She probably thought I wouldn’t put up much of a fight. She probably thought that a guy like me didn’t need a stool anyway. Looking at myself, all woebegone and wasted away there in that mirror, I have to say I couldn’t tell you that she was wrong

some rules for the kids:

Don’t tuck in your shirt.

Don’t wear jeans with a suit jacket.

Don’t wear jeans.

Sing Buddy Holly songs as loud as you can as much as you can.

Don’t eat lettuce.

Don’t use umbrellas.

Read the list of ingredients on all foods.

Don’t watch TV.

If a lot of people are doing it, try not to do it yourself.

Try to stay as quiet as you can as much as you can, except when singing Buddy Holly songs.

Don’t fit in.

Fail.

Try not to own things.

Enjoy yourself.

Give away as much as you can as much as you can.

Don’t worry about tomorrow.

Don’t wear hats.

Don’t let other people tell you what to do.

Hug a cop.

Create as much as you can as much as you can.

Don’t waste time worrying.

Be lazy.

Ignore all rules.

Shelly and Lloyd

We used to be busy waiting for Jesus. That is what we were concerning ourselves with. Sure, we went through carwashes with our eyes open. We did a lot of things while we were waiting for Jesus. We played guitars. We talked about our problems and expressed concern. We had finger-snapping contests. Sure, of course, we did that too. We were keeping busy while we were waiting for Jesus, while we were also busy with waiting for Jesus. But Jesus never came, so we found other things to keep us busy. Sometimes, we’d buy dishes or we’d clean windows or we’d put coins in parking meters. Other times we’d just count money by adding and subtracting rows of numbers on a piece of paper. We smoked cigarettes too, even when we weren’t busy waiting. We smoked a lot of cigarettes. Lloyd invented a new kind of mop head. We saw the light. We were lost and then we were found. We spent time walking through the park and also ate chicken fried steak. Keeping busy is not always easy, especially when you are used to being busy with waiting for Jesus, and all of a sudden you are no longer busy with waiting for Jesus. We kept busy though. That is one thing that is for sure. You can be certain of that. Now we are always busy, but we are no longer waiting for Jesus. We are nothing now but busy. That about sums us up.

The book I read is about compassion being a virtue and so many people who’ve got their problems and other nonsense like that

the sitter

I hope she didn’t give you too much trouble.

Did you whack her with a belt?

Did either of you at any point in time play hopscotch on the driveway?

I’m sure you’d rather have coffee than tea.

You don’t seem like a tea drinker.

You might be someone who plays make believe.

I am not someone who does, but that doesn’t mean I automatically hate anyone who does.

You probably spent some time lying down by the fireplace.

It’s okay.

Being warm is good.

There’s nothing wrong with keeping warm.

Let’s be honest.

How much do I owe you?

The thing about helicopters is, if you really want to know about it, if you have like some kind of an abstract idea or even some abstruse notions about the flight of helicopters or the sounds they make when flying, if you think about helicopters more than a few times a week, more than the average person might come to think stray thoughts about helicopters, then when it comes to helicopters, well, I might be able to tell you a few things. You know about H.G. Wells, right? Sure, that’s something you might know, the thing about Mr. Wells predicting helicopters, writing about them before they existed. That’s something you probably already understand. But the thing about helicopters, not, obviously, that there is just one thing when it comes to helicopters, but the thing I want to tell you about when it comes to helicopters, besides the landing pads on the tops of tall buildings, and the way helicopters help chase down bad guys at night, besides those things of course, is that helicopters can be really loud when they are flying. Of course, you know this. You’ve probably seen movies where helicopters are landing and making quite a racket, and maybe you’ve even taken a ride in a helicopter and witnessed this loudness first hand. But when you are sitting in your apartment, and there is this helicopter flying overhead all morning, then you really know how loud helicopters can be. They really can rattle the walls, even when they are pretty high up above, and things can get kind of shaken up in your place, kind of like what might happen in a small earthquake. Helicopters are pretty loud. I wouldn’t want to fall out of a helicopter. I wouldn’t want to like, you know, just fall out and head towards the ground. Even if I had a parachute on. I mean, how can you be sure the parachute is really going to work? And splat becomes the last things you know. Just splat, and then no more you. I don’t want that.

I am a disgusting human being. I am an American, born and raised under the red, white, and blue, spanked into manifest destiny, schooled from sea to shining sea, and mollycoddled by boredom and the comfort of wide open spaces. The sky is like velvet today. The grayness will come. Lightly, wind is already starting up with all its doings, taking the petals from the hunkering-down flowers adorning the branches of the tree outside my window. Life is happening. The weather channel scrolls its temperatures along the bottom of the TV screen, ESPN runs the baseball scores, and CNN tells of the rest. I am a puddle of anxiety and irony, with a few splashes of lassitude and detachment thrown in for flavor. The shoals of my soul are deeper than my thoughts. I become more terrible of a person with each breath, more removed, more set in stone, more deranged and self-important. A few of the things that I can rely on are the channel changer and the microwave. I am not patient. I want things without even knowing why I want them. The cords of my neck stand out when I scream, which is often, at the television set or the kid behind the counter at Starbucks. Getting riled up is one of the things I pride myself on being good at. Sometimes, just to pass the time, I sit in my truck while it is idling. If my garage door gets stuck, I get angry. The wind blows cold. I know where the grapes of wrath are stored.

Elvis would never tell but he’d break a mirror trying

saying it is just make believe

saying something

saying Presley

just a look and a quiver

Elvis never found a window

Elvis would just forget instead of forgetting what it was he was trying to forget

saying it makes it truer than gun shots

saying it is like saying nothing

just a face and a facing of it

painting windows while watching TV

Elvis ran in time to the way a circle goes

saying finds direction

saying gives hope

saying rhymes with things you say if you say them right

just a hook and a whimper

Elvis worked and Elvis sang and Elvis was and Elvis had

saying so is so

saying is seeing is seeming is saying

saying it is spraying and spreading

just a voice and a warning

saying this is he

look at my hair

look at my skin

look

look at me

Elvis

get the girls

get the wishes of common sense

get it intuitively

Elvis put on some sunglasses and kick at the sky

I wouldn’t worry about me

placating a patient’s desire to perpetually have something wrong with them, whether it be a physical malady or something of less actuality, as far as a thing having the quality of being a discernible substance is concerned, a thing more of the mind as it were, if one were to draw a distinction between the somatic and the cerebral, if that were something that would be allowable in this situation, or any situation for that matter, which might render the patient’s so-called “malady” completely irrelevant in the diagnosis, as the symptoms themselves, as symptoms “per se” in this rendering of circumstances, could not qualitatively determine what is “wrong” with the patient, if it could be said that there is something possibly wrong with the patient, it would still be a good idea to humor the patient until further test results come in

shake it up baby

The complete loss of control. That is what death would be. There would be no way to know what is happening to your body. Anything could be happening to it, and there’d be nothing that you could do about it. In fact, you wouldn’t even be there to know that anything is happening. You’d be gone. Nonexistent. And the worst part about it is that it wouldn’t even matter. Nothing would matter. You wouldn’t have a body. The body would no longer be yours, because you would not be you. That is not to say that you would be something else, unless you consider nothing to be something else. Then, yes, you would be something else: nothing. So, really, there isn’t anything to be concerned about. There would be no loss of control. You wouldn’t be alive to lose control, or to know that control is being lost. Other people looking at your body might feel this way, but again, this would not matter to you. There would be no you for it to matter to. That is all.

Ken & Barbie left the house unlocked

left through the backdoor and threw away the keys

not so chary they were ginning up a slippery scheme

to lose it all

traveling spare were the pair

no more doll-hair chandelier to light the way

guesswork was good enough

paths that cross

nothing a couple grand wouldn’t fix

shinnying up a telephone pole and over a brick wall

there they go

to be bumming around and getting by

riding the tide of escape

mooching and mucking it up

splendidly humble and gracious

Ken lost his clothes somewhere around Bakersfield

Barbie lost an arm in Fresno

they robbed a bank and had nothing to put the money in

there they go

off and running free at last

just a couple of two-bit shysters

a couple of bums on the lam

Ken & Barbie got while the getting was good

to find themselves a city to live in

marriage

Some guy was playing The Star Spangled Banner on the clarinet in the apartment next to us. Bobby was ready to knock down the guy’s door. Nothing would get the guy to shut up. We’d banged on the walls and screamed at him. Nothing. He kept right on playing that damn song on the clarinet. I didn’t mind it as much as Bobby did. Bobby really couldn’t stand it. I have to admit, that song was really starting to irk me too, but I didn’t really let on. Mostly because Bobby was doing enough complaining for the both of us. Anyway, I don’t really like to rock the boat. I’d rather float along and let somebody else do the driving. That’s what I was doing then. Just letting Bobby do the driving. I was just along for the ride. At least that’s what I kept telling myself. That was until Bobby socked me a good one to the kisser. That was not fun. Not something I’d want to happen to me again. My blood was getting all over the place. My nose was really gushing. Bobby didn’t care. He just kept raging around and yelling at the Clarinetist. I went and got a towel from the bathroom and held it on my nose. I figured it was broken, but I didn’t cry. I knew Bobby wouldn’t like that, and it’d only make him more mad. I kept my cool, let me tell you. I started thinking of that Patsy Kline song Crazy. I started singing it in my head. It made me feel better. The clarinet was still playing, but I couldn’t hear it.

the ballad of the nine-year-old runaway

I got a harmonica that I can’t play

I got a gun

I don’t got no real bullet

I can squeeze the trigger

I can shoot

I can take it on the lam

I can fake my own death

I don’t play nice for fun

I ain’t no sucker

I run afoul more than most

I throw cue balls at strangers

I ride subway trains alone in the dark

I sneak into movie theatres

I know the places to go to on the streets

I don’t go where skies are not cloudy or gray

I could be a cowboy if I wanted

I don’t have to smile

I think I might be able to fly

I don’t need you to take my picture

I might spit a watermelon seed in your eye

I ain’t too careful

I think I’ll go throw a brick at a window

I got cotton-candy fingers

I got coca-cola lips

I got a temper and pistol and couple of bucks too

I wanna go where the deer and the antelope play

I don’t miss anyone when they’re gone

Ontologically speaking, we were not making any inroads. We were not getting anywhere. This is just to say. There’s really not much left to say now. Going with the sway, going with the tide, going with the way things tend to go, we were pretty much stagnant. That’s about all there was to it. You can’t always tell someone when this happens. You don’t always feel like mentioning it. Sometimes you might want to sing a song like My Darling Clementine. Other times you might find yourself just keeping quiet or doing a puzzle or something. Sometimes you might end up by yourself. The TV could be on. Things could be going awry. People don’t say awry too much anymore. When did people stop saying awry? When I say awry does it date me? Does it make me seem pretentious or ostentatious or magniloquent or pedantic or conceited or vainglorious? Or does it make me just sound like a dick? But that doesn’t matter. We are still not making any inroads. Inroads are not being made. You might find yourself, say, in a park, surrounded by funny-looking sculptures or trees. You might ask yourself why you have a song in your head. You might ask yourself, ontologically speaking, what the hell you are doing here on this planet, taking up space, using up air, dirtying the sky, swimming in lakes, biting your nails, you know, all the stuff that you do. And you’ll probably wonder why we stopped making inroads into why you do all of those things that you do. You might think of Tom Hanks. You probably won’t. We are made to wonder, ontologically speaking. It might even be said of us that we are made of wonder too.

check a box

I don’t like you. Do you like me? Because when it comes down to it, that’s what matters here. The liking or not liking of me by you is what matters most. Don’t ask me why I don’t like you. I don’t like you because. Let’s just leave it at that. Why do I have to like you? You probably don’t like me. You might not even have reasons why you don’t like me. You might just not like me. That’s fine. I don’t mind that. I mean, I don’t even have reasons why I don’t like you. Why should I ask you for reasons? Who needs reasons? Certainly not me. Nope. Not I. I surely do not need any reasons for not liking you. I just don’t. There is no because. Unless you consider because to be a because. Then because would be the reason why. You know like when you tell a kid he can’t do something because? You know that because? When you tell a kid, “Because, that’s why.” That’s the kind of because I’m talking about. And if you don’t like me either, and if your reason is just because, then that’s okay with me. That’s perfectly alright. I am like totally willing to accept that as an answer to my question. You don’t like me because. It’s not always possible to have a person like you. Of course, I want you to like me. Everyone wants to be liked. But, just in case you don’t like me, it won’t be a big deal to me. Mostly because I don’t like you. That’s my because in this particular situation. I already have a because to answer yours, if your answer is that you don’t like me because. I have an answer to that because. I don’t like you. Do you like me? Be honest. I won’t be offended. Come on. It’s just a simple question. We are simple people. We say simple things. Here’s something simple that I’ve already said: I don’t like you. Don’t think you are going to weasel your way out of this one. I’ve got you cornered. And all I want is a yes or a no. That can’t be so hard. Just a word. One syllable. You can come out with that. Whether you like me or not, I will still not like you, so don’t base your answer, or you know, don’t let how I feel about you influence how you feel about me. I still will not like you either way. So, just let me know, okay?

I was singing Psycho Killer to about 5 or 6 bored Japanese businessmen at a karaoke bar when my water broke. It was embarrassing. It was right during that part when you’ve got to sing in French. I lost my concentration and started screaming, “Husker Du! Husker Du!” over and over. I finished the song though. I don’t think any of them had heard the song before. I did a pretty good rendition of it. You don’t usually hear girls do that song at karaoke bars. When I was done a few of them clapped. I thanked them, tipped the KJ, and went off to the hospital to have my baby.

Pull me up.

So I got myself some cardboard. I set up this cardboard in a meticulous way. I bent the corners and smoothed out the flat pieces. I was very careful. I cut off the flaps. I didn’t get too excited about what I was doing. I concentrated on making sure it looked just right. I had that cardboard all figured out. I wanted to make some shapes with the cardboard. Maybe some rhombuses or a few triangles. I put on some music. It didn’t scare me at all. I am not afraid of music. Also, I am not afraid of cardboard. Cardboard is alright with me. I got myself some cardboard. I cut it up. I bent it. I made all kinds of shapes with the pieces. I was in the living room standing on the carpet with my bare feet. I was feeling pretty good. Cardboard is not paper. You can hold paper up to the light and look right through it. With cardboard it is different. See for yourself. Write things. Nothing fits. You’ll see. My shapes were marveling. I did some marveling at them. I was feeling very grand. I had taken off my shoes and everything was soft and I had that cardboard all figured out.

Liquid H, Men, And Beauty Too

crooking with the slight groove of the collarbone

bested and worse off

a burring in the chopper’s wake

the fit of a key into a lock

a burlap bag and gunshots in the apartment down the hall

witnesses who saw men dissolve

stooping to a disagreeable chore under electric light

spitting on principle

through thrifty skies and shabby hills

just to be thrown into the calaboose

taken for a ride on sagacity’s robe

under an owl perched on a skull and crossbones

telling tales of the war

in oak-ribbed rooms filled with smoke

superbly independent

a doorbell rings

what is happening to my skin

I’m not worried about the air

Today Is Not Friday

 

in want of a moment’s peace

I walked outside of the bar

and sat down to smoke a cigarette in the sun

the birds were making all their racket up in the trees

an old lady walking by glanced over at me

and made the sign of the cross

I held my head

I smoked my cigarette

I laughed a little

the steep hills were breaking away in the distance

rolling and covered with houses and telephone poles and hospitals and cement

just like everything else

I got up and walked down the street a ways

I kicked at some thick weeds growing out of a crack in the sidewalk

they just bounced back up

I stopped at the corner

I held my breath

a few cars went by

I exhaled

I held out my arms like a scarecrow

or Jesus on the cross

a dog was taking a dump in a treewell a few feet from me

I looked up as high as I could

and

with a cigarette dangling out of my mouth

I stood there like that

on the street corner

with a sort of smirk on my face

feeling good about things for the first time in a long time

it wasn’t so bad to be alive just then

standing there like that

fooling myself into thinking I didn’t have a care in the world

and

for once

believing it

the dog finished its business

and its owner pulled the leash and led the mangy beast away

I crossed my legs at the ankles

I didn’t make a sound

the wind blew

and the wind stunk like dog shit

the smoke from my cigarette was burning my eyes

I stood there like that for as long as I could

while people’s phones rang and mailmen walked and clouds scudded

and governments bought car companies and newborns cried

I thought

hell this ain’t so bad

I’ll just stand here like this forever

there’s nothing else to do

then my cigarette went out

 

 

The Comedian From Jamaica

  

I am drunk and walking home from Specs

it is a Tuesday evening

a lot of people are still out walking around on Grant Street

this guy starts talking to me

and he walks with me for a ways

he says, “I’m a comedian from Jamiaca.”

I say, “I’m not giving you any money.”

he laughs

he does a lot of laughing

he says, “Come on. I’ll tell you some jokes. I just got in to San Francisco today.”

I say, “You don’t sound Jamaican. And you’re not very funny for a comedian.”

I am pretty drunk

he laughs some more

he says, “This is my first time in this country. I swear. Let me tell you some jokes.”

I stop and lean against a lamppost

I light up a cigarette

I offer him one but he says he doesn’t smoke

I say, “Okay. If you can make me laugh before I finish this cigarette, then I’ll give you five dollars.”

he laughs

he likes this idea

he has very white teeth and a winsome smile

he starts telling me some jokes

the jokes are not funny

an old Chinese lady stops and scowls at him

she asks me if he is bothering me

I tell her to mind her own goddamn business

I am pretty drunk

I am not really listening to the Jamaican comedian anymore

I am just enjoying my cigarette and feeling good and drunk

I say, “Hey. I know some comedians. You ever go down to the Punchline?”

he says, “The what?”

I say, “I thought so. Your time’s almost up, and I’m still not laughing.”

he laughs

he starts in on another joke

I cringe

it’s a pretty bad joke

something about a Hertz Doughnut

but I laugh anyway

and give the guy a five

and go on walking down Grant Street

until I get to a bar

where I go on inside and order a double whisky

and decide to try

to never laugh again 

Forever Undone (a continuing saga)

--And, you know, well, I am grateful for these things. I’m really grateful, filled with grace…
--Is that what grateful is? Um, like gratitude too?
--They have a similar root, if that’s what you’re asking.
--You tell me. I have no idea what I’m asking.
--There’s a Latin word gratus, which means something that is pleasing. Both words come from it. The word graceful doesn’t cut it. You know, the meaning’s different. But I think you could say that having gratitude would involve grace, though grace has a lot of different meanings too. I guess what I’m talking about when I say something like, “filled with grace,” is that one is almost overcome with a sense of devotion, thankfulness…Um, okay. So it’s like you’ve got the three sisters, the graces in Greek mythology, you know, Aglaea, Euphrosyne, and Thalia. That’s the kind of grace I’m talking about, like being filled with their spirit, being blown full with the wind of Gods.
--What the fuck? Is that supposed to make any kind of sense to me?
--Never mind. You know what I mean.
--Maybe.
--So, as I was saying…
--Yes, as you were saying…
--I look out and up and all around at these old buildings, these architectural treasures, and I feel really grateful. I’m so glad that people decided to build them when they did. I am so pleased that those people existed, people like Timothy Pflueger…
--Not that guy again. Why does he keep coming up?
--I don’t know. Anyway. I’m grateful that those buildings were built, for the time period that they were built in, and the fact that somebody has seen it fit to keep them around, to do some upkeep on them, make the windows and the doorknobs shine. I mean, not all of them. There are those that have fallen into a state of disrepair. Like the Hibernia Bank on the corner of Jones and McAllister, or that whimsical decrepit relic with the Doric columns topped with friezes of laurel leaves at 1017 Market, the one with, “Furniture and Carpets,” engraved across the top of its decaying façade. But sometimes I like those all the more. There is something crushingly beautiful in the way they are still hanging in there, something gritty and real and marveling about it.
--Marveling?
--Well, sometimes I’ll just take a stroll down Market Street. You know, on weekday mornings or early afternoons, when the sun’s performing impossible feats of light and shade on everything.
--Taking a stroll. Stretching those legs. Going for out for a little ambulation. Taking in the sights.
--You’re one peculiar guy, you know that?
--Nope. Glad to hear it though.
--So, I’ll walk up and down Market, stopping to stare at things, buildings mostly, and talking to myself a lot.
--You must fit right in.
--Right. I feel very accepted. It’s strange. I’m just a part of the scenery. Especially around the Civic Center and down towards 6th street. I’m just another lunatic wandering around aimlessly.
--That’s for sure.
--Sometimes I’ll just stand on a street corner, say like by the Golden Gate Theatre, and stare at things for a really long time, trying to remember all the details of what is there, of what things really look like when you stop and look for long enough. You know the old St. Francis Theater on Market?
--Oh yeah. The one that’s been all boarded up for a long time, with the letters missing on the marquee where it used to say, “Bargain Matinee Until 2pm.” Another St. Francis. We’ve got the hotel, the soda fountain in the Mission, the hospital, the yacht club, and, shit, probably more than that.
--Didn’t know about the yacht club. You’re one fancy dude. Yachts?
--I’m not a member. My friend’s dad is.
--Sure. Anyway, that theater has always fascinated me for some reason. Old theaters in general tend to interest me, but this one, maybe because it’s all boarded up, and it looks so woebegone and like it’s been untouched by human hands for many years, maybe it just gets me imagining all kinds of things. Like that cracked marquee sign with the letters missing. Where did those letters go? Did they fall on someone? Did somebody climb up there and steal them? And why didn’t they just take the letters down when they closed the place up. It would’ve been easy enough. And also, there is like no way to look inside. It’s hard to imagine, with all those boards all over the bottom half, how it looked as a theater, how it functioned, where the box office was, and I wonder if the movie screens are sill inside, and the seats. There is one window, with kind of an ornate metal frame around it, but it’s pretty opaque and it’s too high up to peer into.
--The things that you wonder about.
--I saw this Charlie Chaplin impersonator standing out in front of it one day. He was really old and had all kinds of makeup on, and of course that little mustache and the cane and the too-small-for-him black suit, the whole nine yards. He was selling cigarettes. It was weird. And he kept doing that little hobbling, skip/dance thing, you know, the little tripping thing, like the Little Tramp. He was really good. He’d pretend to drop a pack of cigarettes, and it’d get caught in his sleeve, and he’d do this like Globetrotter thing where the pack would go from one sleeve and across his neck and into the other, eventually coming out in his other hand. It was pretty good stuff.
--Did he sell many cigarettes like that?
--I didn’t see him sell any. But a lot of people stopped to watch him and take pictures and stuff like that. It was really something, watching him perform like that out in front of that old boarded up theater. If it weren’t for those stupid trees there it would’ve been quite perfect.
--I remember you saying something once about how you hate trees.
--Nice segue. Well, I don’t hate trees. That’s not true. What I was saying was that I don’t like trees in certain situations. Like, for instance, in urban landscapes. The less shrubbery and green the better. Out in front of that old theater, well, they just don’t go. I mean, in a lot of instances, when you’ve got all kind of old marble, brick, sandstone, beveled glass, ornate flourishes of architectural wonder, and those withered, harlequin green lamp posts, well, the trees just get in the way, they cover things from sight, they make the whole scene seem a little more paltry and dull.
--Maybe it’s just certain shades of green that you don’t like. And, anyways, are lamp posts really that color?
--Sure. Yeah. Why not?
--Don’t know. Guess you’re right.
--Trees in the city landscape, especially downtown, just piss me off. They grow wild. Their big old branches hanging over the street and poking into buildings. All those leaves getting all over the place, getting in people’s hair, making tall people have to duck to get by. So much upkeep is involved. We spend so much money to keep all those damn trees manicured and watered and whatnot. It’s all such a waste. And they are fucking ugly as sin. They make the cool soot-stained ways of certain streets seem almost sterile and suburban. They take away from the feel of things. Have you ever seen an old picture of Powell and Market, a black and white one, on a rainy night, taken way before they built that BART Station there, before they planted all those damn trees and put up that chain-rope to reel in the tourists waiting at the Cable Car turnaround?
--Of course. Everybody’s seen a picture like that. Like something out of Dark Passage, right?
--Exactly. People with umbrellas, wearing overcoats, a certain sense of style. And the Pig 'N Whistle sign shooting down like a giant arrow, the Hotel Powell, the regal, sumptuous, and capacious Bank of America building with that big old clock hanging over the entrance, the awning of the old Owl Drug Company, the Cable Car turning around…
--Wasn’t there a Woolworth’s there at some point?
--Yeah. But I’m talking before that. There used to be a cafeteria there too. A place called Moar’s. Not many cafeterias left these days. It’s too bad. It’d be nice to go into some old lunchroom and eat a meal sometime. We know so little about what we’ve lost, about what’s been bulldozed from existence, things we’ve never had a chance to remember. Hey, but you know what else you don’t see in any of those old pictures?
--Um, let me guess. Trees?
--Right. Not one motherfucking tree anywhere in sight.
--And when you look at these old pictures, the ones taken before BART, before they closed off that portion of Powell to cars and made it all Disneyfied or Las Vegasfied or whatever you call it, you start to see how all those stupid, worthless, piece-of-shit trees they planted there really ruined what was a classic urban landscape. Not that trees are the only culprits, but still, they suck.
--Okay. I get it. You don’t want trees mucking up your nostalgic and idealistic vision of what constitutes beauty among the concrete and glass and fumes of city life. You have this absurd notion that in the past things were somehow more, I don’t know, cooler than they are now. As if people had so much more style and grace, as if just by not wearing shorts and t-shirts and Nikes, they were somehow more richly alive, and the buildings were all untouchable masterpieces of architectural genius, and you’d whistle and say hi to everybody passing on the street, and the rain made everything romantic, and the world was black and white. That’s such bullshit. Things change. They are always changing, and they are always going to keep on changing. Thing weren’t even like that then. You just think that they were. Sure, you can look at a picture and pretend to make time stop, and then get all caught up in the infatuation of the moment, the whole history, the way things were, things, by the way, that you’ve never even known, and they seem so great because you can imagine whatever you want. You can pretend it was all like an old Humphrey Bogart movie where people in suits and hats smoke cigarettes while leaning against lamp posts, which may or may not have been harlequin green mind you. And it’s all so rosy. It’s all this perfect image that you dream up in your sappy head. It isn’t real. It never has been, and it won’t ever be real. I’m sure people at the time didn’t find anything extraordinary about the world they were living in, about the way people dressed, or about the lack of trees in the city.
--Okay. I agree. But that’s not what I’m getting at. I’m just getting a little sidetracked here. I mean, nobody notices the trees much now anyway. And they certainly didn’t notice when there were no trees. Nobody pays attention to all the really fucking wonderful and amazing things that are happening around them all the time. They don’t enjoy the way the power lines sizzle in the rain, or that certain way the MUNI buses sound going by on electric wires, or the slight trundling of the trolley cars, even the damn whistle that the wind makes in airwells of old apartment buildings that makes me think of The Wizard Of Oz…
--Please, no details on those sounds. I’ve heard you go into it before, and really, we don’t have the time. I’ve got laundry to do and food to make and phones to answer, you know?
--I’ll bet. You’re one busy guy, aren’t you? Okay. So what I’m saying…no. I mean…
--What are you saying?
--What I am saying is that people should stop ignoring things so much. I know we all need to filter things out, the doors of perception and all that, but we can choose what we filter, and I just think people should think about what they’re missing.
--Aren’t you sort of generalizing? I mean, how the hell do you know what people are, “filtering out,” as you put it? Maybe they are seeing and hearing and smelling things that you can’t even dream of.
--I hope so. That’d suit me fine. What about touching and tasting? As long as we’re naming senses here.
--Glad to see your sense of humor has returned. You were getting a little too serious there, and, well, you know what the poets say, seriousness will not do.
--That’s very true. I like that. Seriousness will not do.
--So. You hate trees. Can’t stand any kind of greenery in the city, huh?
--Well, actually I kind of like to look at the trees on Market Street sometimes. You know, maybe on a windswept afternoon around dusk, or late at night when the streets are pretty desolate and there is a certain something in the air.
--Oh no. Here we go. The contradictory romantic waxes poetic. Go ahead. I’m ready for it.
--Hey. I’m a Dadaist. I’m…
--I know. You’re contradictory by nature.
--Have I said that before.
--Oh, only about a dozen baker’s dozen times.
--Really? Geez. I’ve got to stop repeating myself.
--It’s okay. I’m not here to judge you, right?
--I hope not. Anyway, so those trees on Market Street, all lined up along the inner part of the sidewalk, with their leaves waving in the breeze, their branches slightly lifted, hunched up a bit, trembling there…well, if you look at them just right, say on an October night by the light of a full moon and the streetlights and the glowing eye of a trolley car, gazing at just the right angle, they seem to go on and on forever down into the end of sight. And you just might start to think that maybe the world isn’t such a bad place to be in, and that there is hope out there somewhere floating around in the interstices, those spaces between adjacent atoms in a crystal lattice, and that maybe, like just then, you might be able to stop the world from turning for a little while, reach out and grab it, hold it in your hands, and be grateful for what it is that you have.
--Um. You want to walk down to the Ferry Building with me? I’m getting hungry, and those hamburgers they’ve got down there are pretty badass.
--That’d be great. I should probably eat something at some point. You know about that clock tower down there?
--Oh shit. Here we go again. Alright. Let’s have it.
--So, it’s kind of an interesting story. You see…

(Click Here For A Visual Aid) 

Mine Eyes Have Seen The Glory

they don’t warn you about mornings like these
mornings when the sun doesn’t spread out like butter
when the newspaper smells like piss and the ants crawl all over the kitchen
when the bile is climbing up the rungs of that sandpaper slide you call your throat
and your head feels lopsided and like it’s filled with oatmeal and cabbage
they don’t tell you about that weasel squealing in your ears
or how you won’t be able to get any food down into your stomach
which churns and quakes in mad spasms of revolt
they don’t let you know just how tired you’ll get
tired of Wednesday afternoons
tired of weeks and months and years going by
tired of not being able to sleep at night
tired of television and rats
and a long succession of jobs
each worse and more tedious and mind-numbing than the last
they don’t speak of days to flush away like used toilet paper
rent checks bouncing and hair falling out and hope sputtering into panic and dread
they won’t tell you that most of the time you won’t feel blessed for just being alive
you won’t look up at the stars just for the hell of it
and getting out of bed will be a miracle on some days
on days that start off with mornings like these
when your life is just a hangnail waiting to be torn off by the world
when you don’t even have the motivation to make coffee
or wash a dish
or take out the trash
or listen to the hoarse quock of the black-crowned night heron
while you stumble around
dizzy and alone
searching for a cigarette
wondering how the hell things ever turned out like this
how all of that then could’ve led to this now
they don’t tell you all the ways the world can come up with to crush the life out of you
or the caged fury that melts into a headache behind your eyeballs
they won’t fill you in on the horror and the absolute empty ache in your gut
that comes along at the end of a week-long drunk
stirring the mush that is left of your brains into madness and despair
leaving you unable to count to ten or make a ham sandwich
they never warn you about the women who are kind enough to sleep with you
the ones who claw at your face with their fingernails
or empty your pockets for you while you’re passed out
they forget to mention that people will desert you
leaving you clutching a shredded paper bag that had been filled with your memories
they don’t ever say how much you’ll crave that first drink of the day
how you’ll need a few more to level out your head
and smack you back to where you want to be
heading out to join those who line the bars at mid-day
how you’ll lean against brick walls and parking meters and telephone poles
to smoke cigarettes in the shadows of tall buildings
waiting for something to happen
how you’ll go days without showering or brushing your teeth
or eating anything besides peanuts and potato chips
how easy it’ll be to piss your money away like this
that’s not something they go on to you about
instead they tell you to invest your money and buy a house
to do things like get married and have kids
they tell you to just go with the flow
to never question anything
to be one of the crowd
to watch and be entertained
to get along and be normal and well behaved
to buy things and to not think too hard about why
they tell you that you are inconsequential
that your life is merely some data on a chart
another statistic on a spreadsheet
just a speck in the thin slice of a pie chart
something to be marketed to
nothing more than a slight fluctuation of the stock market
not even a blip on the radar screen of commerce
and there are times when you find yourself believing them too
but then again
there are times when you might find yourself
riding a silver-smooth stallion in the rain
peering up at clouds mashed like thumbprints into the sky
missing the way you used to dream
like that
before all of this thrashing about in the midst of things
caught up with what was remaining of you
one morning when you’d stopped answering the phone and the door
and promptly finished you off
before you had a chance to begin

Taking The Stairs

A Slinky was hanging around the top of some stairs. The future looked mighty bright to the Slinky, though the nights were still dark nonetheless. Right next to the Slinky there were these two magnets, never mind motifs, and these two magnets didn’t like each other. Who knows why they didn’t? They just didn’t. But they were inexorably attracted to each other too. That’s obvious. They were magnets after all, and everyone knows that magnets can’t help but be attracted to each other, at least on one side. When it comes to sidedness, at least magnets have one side where they can’t help but get along. The other side, well, that’s a different story. These magnets, well, they both tolerated the uncertainty of what was going to occur between them. They had to. There was nothing else to be done. Getting angry about this sidedness issue wouldn’t do any good. Being sad about the whole attraction/repulsion thing would obviously come to nothing. So, they went on hating each other and being inexorably attracted to each other also. One of the magnets tried to get the other magnet to hang around on just one side of it, but that other magnet kept turning itself around so that it was repulsed by that side. Then the first magnet, who was trying to keep the other magnet on its good side, would turn around so that it would be attracted to the side of the other magnet which was now turned towards it. But, without fail, that other magnet would somehow find itself just turned around again and, without any mens rea for its actions, unintentionally fleeing the scene. Chronically dissatisfied with all there was in the world around them, the two magnets decided not to fight against it anymore, and they jumped off together from the railing of the stairs. They weren’t wearing parachutes. It was a long ways down. Let’s just say things didn’t end well that day. The future was dim, the days grew just as dark at the nights, and the Slinky tumbled its way down the stairs.         

 

The Genius Of The Tree's Leaves Baffles The Wind

skylarking isn’t something you just think about doing (while you’re doing it) you would never think of the word frolic to describe your activities either (so here’s the fucking rub) nothing to it because you don’t have to think (not about what you’re doing while you’re doing it) it just is (so if liking is to jelly what hating is to roll then you will not ever know) besides it is always more profound to not have to just say hi or to do the doing without the trying (muddy spikes and spitballs have less to do with each other than they have in common with the weather) jesus makes it plain and simply circles (crimping the style of a crooner reeks of remorse when the commonest thing to excoriate is some hectoring do-gooder god disabusing the good of bad notions) rapt and at attention (facts besides themselves are just that) spiriting away what is left of one into crackerjack boxes and molehills (needles needlessly scratching sun-scorched skin) the whole fucking trinity slammed on the brakes before the god machine slammed into the derangement of the cold hard facts’ brick wall (you wouldn’t say keepsakes in conversation but instead something about tchotchkes or knickknacks or clutter or emptiness taking up space even might come up) o’er yonder ‘neath steely skies the color of changing channels crept unwillingness to hide below loss (push out and on to shove before beneath becomes above) wisteria doesn’t always get a chance to climb (bow out before begin and want will always win) mankind tips the scales at adore (potato chips are left feeling misunderstood) just don’t think about it (okay) while the humming brush of the commuter rush distills loneliness like sun through a skylight (got it) make plans and do without (breathing and getting lumps out of the throat) turn your coat inside out and watch flowers grow and keep a small flask of whiskey in your breast pocket (catch a cold and throw it back) the spilled drops of who you were might make a puddle soon and if god should happen by a shoe might get wet with a step or a splash might forget what is missing (still a screen will save itself from going quite mad) and don’t try on oblivion for size too soon (fight back while you can) if the gate is open walk on by until it locks itself and then try to break in (the kids will make for better astronauts than foot soldiers in your war) copy a cat’s style (the mens rea of praying kills more men than bombs) happen upon a way to do that suits only you (care) but not if you have to (skylarking the whole while)

The Dilemma of Artie Brill

The thing about not getting a fortune cookie at the end of a meal in a Chinese restaurant, if you really don’t want one, that is as far not getting a fortune cookie is concerned, well then, I mean the thing about having to actually ask the server, who may not completely understand you, who may not have English like mastered, let’s just say that the guy wouldn’t list English as his first language, if he had to do so, if he had to make a list, let’s just say English wouldn’t be first on that list, whatever that list would be, so it might be hard, and often times is difficult, to get the waiter, who is not really very used to this kind of a request, he probably doesn’t get these kinds of requests often, regarding the fortune cookie preemptively being un-asked for by a diner, and so will not be expecting this type of request, even if the whole language-barrier thing isn’t insurmountable, if the whole language-barrier is not such a big deal, if it doesn’t even come into play, it still might be difficult to get the point across about not wanting the fortune cookie, to make the festinate waiter, who will most likely be trying to do more than a few things at once, who will most likely be doing his best to not spend more time than he absolutely has to with the diner, to make that harried waiter see, when it comes to the fortune cookie, the thing about the fortune cookie is, is that it is not wanted at all, that there will be no need for a fortune cookie, thank you, no, that will be all, though asking for the check, because the fortune cookie will usually come with the check, is not an answer to this problem, to the problem concerning the not-getting of the fortune cookie, so when it comes to asking for the check you might as well just forget about, concerning asking for the check, better not, just leave it alone when it comes to getting the check, the check will be brought, most likely sooner than it is wanted, so there is nothing you can do about getting the check, and so this here, this getting the check maybe even before the meal is done, it might add a wrinkle to the not-getting-the-fortune-cookie thing, because the diner is like, you know, going to have try to finagle their way into not getting the fortune cookie rather early in the meal, the diner is going to have to be real careful not to wait too long to make the request, as far as not getting the fortune cookie, though asking too early in the meal might also add to the risk of the busy and rushing-around waiter forgetting about the diner not wanting the fortune cookie, that is if the diner has not only asked but also gotten across clearly about the not wanting of the fortune cookie at the end of the meal to the waiter, all I’m saying is that it’s still possible, and pretty damn likely all things considered, that the waiter might happen to forget in all his haste about the diner’s request to not partake in the traditional eating of the fortune cookie after the meal.

 Now, you might be wondering, why would a diner at a Chinese restaurant not want to have a fortune cookie served to them after a meal? Well, there are numerous reason, but the one I’m concerned with here, as I do not have an out-and-out aversion to fortune cookies, as far as liking or not liking the actual taste or texture of the fortune cookie itself, as far as having an affinity or a dislike for fortune cookies is concerned. I am not siding totally with those in the camp of liking fortune cookies, nor am I pitching my tent over on the fortune-cookie-haters side. There just happen to be times when after finishing a meal of almond chicken with fried rice, or a plate of beef and broccoli with chow mien, when I just do not feel like eating a fortune cookie. It is not that I don’t like looking at the fortune inside. In fact, I like looking at the fortune inside, the one written on that tiny slip of white paper, the paper the looks ridiculous in your hand because it is so tiny. When it comes to looking at the actual fortune written on the tiny slip of white paper, well, that is something that you might even say I like too much. Looking at the fortune can be a compulsion with me. I don’t like to give in to this compulsion. It is something I try not to do. I don’t need any encouragement when it comes to believing in omens. When it comes to predicting my own future, well, let’s just say I don’t want to know too much about it. Sometimes when I get a fortune cookie, even though I have tried to ask to not have one given to me, and have failed, as often happens to happen with me, I will put said fortune cookie in my jacket pocket, so as not to seem rude or ungrateful for this small token of appreciation. It is when I forget that the cookie is there in my pocket that it becomes something that could be considered not so good of a thing to have happened to me. Having cookie crumbs in my pocket does not make me happy. You could say that I am very displeased with having cookie crumbs in my jacket pocket. If I put the fortune cookie in my pocket, having restrained myself from breaking it open to read the fortune written on the tiny slip of white paper inside, I usually will forget that it is there because really there is nothing else I can do with it, besides throw it away, or break it open to read the fortune, which I do not want to do, which I am at the time probably very proud of myself for not having done yet, but I do not want the fortune cookie to go to waste, and if it is an unwrapped fortune cookie, as many fortune cookies are unwrapped in Chinese restaurants, though you still get some that come wrapped in plastic, but if it is an unwrapped one then it is a hard item to give away. Try giving away an unwrapped fortune cookie to a stranger. It will not be an easy task, let me tell you. Nobody will want it. Just your attempt to give it away will be awkward and probably scoffed at. So, I often end up with fortune cookie crumbs in my jacket pocket after eating at a Chinese restaurant, and you could never say of me, hey, there’s a guy who goes fortune cookie hunting. That is not something that would be accurately applied to me, the going of fortune cookie hunting. That is not something that I would do.

Ontological Boilerplate

I am nothing
I am no one
I do not matter

So the newspaper says,
“The aluminum spandrels with their accordion-like zigzags were dulled by car exhaust.”
just around the corner begin was engineering a coup d'état to overthrow the end
but the pigeons weren’t taking sides just yet
like a strand of alfalfa in the hair
or a chipped-off piece of rebar rust lying in the gutter
some things make for shitty bedfellows

I am nothing
I am no one
I do not matter

take a survey and tell them where to put the new bathrooms in the park
take your time
bite your lower lip while scratching your head
get a dollar and a dream and be ready to flee at any moment
there are not pockmarks in the rubble

I am nothing
I am no one
I do not matter

fistulas and runnels and rivulets and fault lines and mohair suits
uncle Charlie spits at switch hitters
carry yourself away
but don’t get too caught up in the tide of things
become a cliffhanger instead

I am nothing
I am no one
I do not matter

a gadabout slowly circling the fire of consumerism aglow with the flames of hope
giddy bellhops and overrated ticket-takers
and the swell stink of sinking hearts
staying put to get away

I am nothing
I am no one
I do not matter

on a par with smoking a whole pack of Parliament Lights before supper
a cumbersome coat of nervousness lined with anxiety
placating the grogginess of being with bored yawns
upsetting the institutions of motion with the confetti of ideas
about or just about like eating after-dinner mints for breakfast
the final greatness of being wishful

I am nothing
I am no one
I do not matter

pinched fabric in the nerves of needles
that time of day when the sun starts melting and flowers start folding up shop
one-hitters
safety nets
and the brake lights flash

I am nothing
I am no one
I do not matter

the subtleties of breakdancing on blond-brick parkways
inquisitions of stop-and-go traffic
plagiarized vulgarity being shouted from rooftops of insurrection
a game of keepaway

I am nothing
I am no one
I do not matter

before the commercials started there was a point when the heightening of the dramatic tension became almost unbearable if not unendurable and we held hands then at this point because it wasn’t too good to be alone just then or it at least didn’t seem like it but then a commercial came on and we released hands forever losing something which we never knew we had had in the first place

I am nothing
I am no one
I do not matter

the light from the light bulb creeps
there is usually nothing unusual about wrapping presents in wrapping paper
seesaws work best with others
when it is not true that one might pay dearly for cheap labor
then the horses can all go out to pasture
as far as the horses are concerned
leave a trail behind so you will know why you’ve been apprehended

I am nothing
I am no one
I do not matter

listen
chances are that you are missing something
be dire and be insecure if you must
cup a hand behind an ear
reinvent yourself with irrelevance
but most importantly
listen

I am nothing

take my word for it

I am no one

don't behave yourself

I do not matter

be constantly aware that you are alive

Capricorn One Plus Me

trying to ferret out the irks of working too much
like my head is aboard Capricorn One
a thumbnail of sunlight on a crumpled paper bag
the surface of Mars
cigarette ash ground into the carpet

hello

so there’s this guy, see, who takes a trip to see the sights, you know, he has a real good time, anyway, he decides to call his brother, see, and, well, he asks his brother, how’s everything at home, and his brother says, the cat died, and the guy says, you shouldn’t tell me bad news like that, you know, not like that, you should tell me something like, well, something like the cat crawled out on the roof chasing some mice, and we had to call the fire department, and when the firemen went up to get the cat, well, the cat slipped and fell to the ground, see, and we had to take the cat to the vet, and they were going to operate on the cat, you know, but it was too late, they couldn’t save the cat, that’s how you should break bad news, like that, see, so the guy says to his brother, how’s mom, and the brother says she’s on the roof

mottled stains and the desert’s red rock
a funeral under an elm
the gravity of slow motion and sleep and goldbricking
patience and a weak-kneed resistance to trying
and the filamentous flowing of the thoughts of free-thinking beings
ex tempore
a lot of going and not much coming back

this is she

and he banks it in, he’s eating up rebounds, and we’re tied at 53, approaching the 6-minute mark, he’s burning up the nets tonight, they’ll reshuffle, reset the offense, he’s got to hurry, clock shot winding down, they’ve gone stagnant, and here we go, it’s the hard-nosed point guard from Chicago, baseline, all alone, good, he knocks it down, 56-53, and we’ve got 4:40 to play, second half, and he’s really banging the boards out there, he takes it to the bucket, oh my goodness, what a finger roll, and he gets up limping, we’ve got a couple of guys limping, it may be momentary because when he gets back in the flow, forget about it, you can tell he played a little football, look at that body, they’re clinging arms on the bench, and we’ve got a timeout with just under four minutes to go

no

shallow crescent-like indentations form like cups to catch the rain
humps and hounding shadows
a scow rived in twain
likewise
try not to flinch
when the cops hogtie you and drag you from your home

It’s the sleeping pills. At first, maybe, you just take one now and again, maybe when you get that feeling, that busy-brain feeling, when the lights on your neural pathway all stay green for too long. So you take one, and you sleep pretty well, and you’re groggy in the morning, but after a cup of coffee you actually feel pretty damn refreshed, even energized and filled with an unusual amount of pep and vim, and sure, maybe some vigor too. Those things usually go together. You know, like peas and pods and those kinds of things. Stupid things like that. Really stupid things. But then the next night you get worried that maybe you won’t be able to sleep, you know, because you took that pill the last night to sleep, and now your body is a bit more dependent on the chemicals the pill gives it to regulate its diurnal cycle properly, and you start thinking about circadian rhythms and melatonin and hypnagogic states, and then the worry starts in, you know, when you are pretty much convincing yourself that sleep will never come, and you start checking the red digits on your clock over and over as they blink away in the dark, and you think about how much time you have until the alarm goes off, counting down the hours, and you turn over and change positions and try to breathe slowly and not think about anything, which only makes you think more, and you start thinking about how hard it is not to think about anything, which leads you in vicious circles of meandering muddled craziness, and time flies but you are not having any fun. So, you give up at some point. You take another pill. And at some point your alarm beeps and beats you awake, but you are even groggier this time, and you think, God, what an idiot I am, why didn’t I just take that pill earlier. I could’ve got a decent night’s sleep and I wouldn’t be so damn tired right now. Then the next night it’s worse, because you are beyond tired, a zombie, a slab of flesh, and you are worn out and your nerves are frayed and you want nothing more than to just sleep and sleep for a long time, for as long as you possibly can. But, you know that if you fall asleep too early you’ll wake up at some stupid time like 3:13 am, and you won’t be able to fall back asleep. You’ll just lie there and listen to your heart beating, and thinking about stupid things, and doing stupid things, and feeling really tired but wide awake at the same time. So, now there are two options. You fall asleep early, and then when you do wake up in the middle of the night, you take a sleeping pill and fall back to sleep. That plan sounds like the best. The other option of staying up until bedtime, and then forcing yourself to fall asleep naturally because you are overtired, seems like a more risky alternative. You do not want to take the chance on staying up and then having your body readjust and start to think it’s morning, rendering you a million miles from dreamland once again, but still overwhelmingly fatigued. The nap plan doesn’t work though. You are barely able to get into the beginning of an oneiric episode when a car alarm goes off outside your window. After that, there’s no way sleep’s a coming. But you are still too sluggish to get up out of bed, so you just lie there and stare around at the shadows growing all over, as the sun paints the walls in pinkish hues, and you can feel sleep moving further away. At some point you finally crawl out of bed, feeling like a real piece of shit for wasting away your evening in this catatonic state, and you stumble through the darkness to find the bathroom, because you’ve really got to take a leak, and you trip over your shoes and stub your toe on something and bitch and moan and call yourself an idiot as the night starts berating you through the window. You close the blinds. You turn on the TV. You sit up in bed and watch whatever comes on. You reach in the bedside table’s drawer. You take out the small amber bottle of pills. You fill your mouth with spit. You take one. You take another one. They go down easy, those white and green oblong capsules. They slide right down. You feel triumphant. Finally you’ve won a battle in this war. You will sleep for a long, long time. Everything will be just rosy tomorrow. Tomorrow all will be soft wind and roses. Life will stand tall and free again.

birchbark boats headed north
clipped river saps drowsy on the sun-baked horizon
coupling insects
sticks hitching stray weeds to the shore
an upset canoe’s hull caught on a sandbar
a jarring flex of side-winding wind

picturing circles overlapping in a blue-back world of likes and loves and less than that too when things are restless and running away and diminishing and dizzying while broken old scalene triangles swing from acute to obtuse and lose their appeal and hexagons die alone in the street without a sound and she’s still wearing his ring and the telephone wires are strung with shoes and the lawnmowers have all gone out of tune and you’re painting the room with rectangles and polyhedrons and the bow has lost the arrow and the camera has lost its film and the husband has lost his wife and the moon has lost its way among the stars after having a cross-eyed dream of what it means to be in love with the sky

sure enough

élan comes and goes
sure it does
it does
in a recherché way
it can stay
this is just to say
enough
surely is
enough

the way the two sides of the building come together at the top the way they meet at the angle that they do up there just below where I am looking into the smoky blue behind the sign on the top of the building just above where those sides meet at that angle there it reminds me of something makes me feel something that is nice and easy and windy and effortless the kind of the thing that is drowsy like the sound of an airplane in the distance and it is more pleasant than I’ve felt in a long time and I start to remember an April morning maybe ten years ago and the way I felt then that was like this feeling but it was almost triumphant then and now it is just empty

he lived in a small apartment next to another small apartment in which lived a girl whom he had fallen madly in love with though he had never really talked to her much except to say hi and how’s it going and that kind of stuff. but he was madly in love with her. he was in love with her laugh the most of all. it may have been the most salient thing he could think of about her that had actually led him from liking to wanting to like-loving to falling madly in love with her. he would often hear her laughing through the thin wall between their apartments while she was talking on the phone or when she had friends over who were making her laugh. he loved hearing her laugh. it made him want to make her laugh but he never had. he wasn’t good at telling jokes and he got nervous whenever he was around her which made him not be able to think of things to say besides a breathy kind of hi and how’s it going kind of thing. he figured the girl probably wasn’t very impressed by this. he wouldn’t spy on her but it was hard for him not to kind of notice things that she was doing like the sounds she was making whether it was washing dishes or dropping what sounded like large objects on the floor or listening to music. if he happened to hear a song coming from her apartment that was a song that he liked he would start imagining what it would be like to be listening to that song with her and would fantasize about them lying in the dark wrapped up in post-coital bliss on his bed together listening to that song. sometimes he even imagined them to be smoking cigarettes too. so it was that he came to have this idea of who she was based on what he could glean from his imagined forays into her world and the wire-tapping-type way he had of observing her private life. to him she was someone who she may not really have been at all. he imagined that somehow they would fall madly in love with each other at some point. or that she would fall madly in love with him. for he was already madly in love with her. he would construct elaborate scenarios where they would cook dinner at one of their apartments and then go over to the other person’s apartment to eat while they watched Humphrey Bogart movies and said all the best lines together. silly stuff like that. most of all he just wanted to make her laugh. he dreamed of how they’d eventually knock down the wall that separated their apartments and thought of how they would pound it down with sledgehammers and how they’d wear face masks and thick gloves and would laugh at all the rubble of drywall and wood boards tumbling down in a heap. it would be fun. but he couldn’t figure out how they’d haul all of the rubble away or how they would get permission from the landlord for this or why in the hell they’d want to do this in the first place because wouldn’t he want his privacy and wouldn’t she need her space too and the apartments didn’t really fit together well because her kitchen wall would be gone and where would he put his tv and then he started thinking this is stupid why the hell do I put up with this shit from other people and she probably will try to change me and make me do things that I don’t want to do and she’ll cry and try to get her way and I’ll have to pay for things when we go out and I’ll have to get her presents on the holidays and they’ll never be just what she wants and her parents probably won’t like me and maybe her friends and I won’t get along and how the hell did I ever end up in this goddamn relationship tied down god I just want to be free to do my own thing and I’m so sick of you laughing all the time why the hell are you always bothering me for fuck’s sake just get the hell out of my life and leave me the fuck alone.

we are heartless and our right wing is damaged by the winds of discontent
we are mugged and gut-shot and rarely adept
we are muddled
we are mixed and matched and morose at best
we are bandwagon hoppers and mundane hooligans and hopscotch champions
we are as bored as statues
we are aching to be entertained
we are stranded and bled dry
we are kind of absurd
we are lucky to be alive

so he is talking and he is saying things I don’t know things like this next piece I shall be reading to you entitled Maximum Entropy is a piece I originally wrote on a napkin at a bar called Puddy’s Place after having had six martinis and then he reads this aloud to the crowd:
not part of the solution we are somebody else’s problem
up in the air
cut it out kids just cut it out why don’t you why can’t you just cut it the fuck out kids
made up out of thinness and water
came back on through all the way around again to be where we were going
came out just like this
so how is it out there lacking the figuring out and the ways of suppose
the area is fraught with powers that are hungry
which who am I
never telling
you
a thing
that will make a disturbance
in the calm of understand
chuck the difference
the end is just beginning

This guy calls on the phone. The phone is always ringing. It’s in its nature to ring. It’s what a phone does. This guy says hello this is Steve and he says I work for Straminium Consorted Alarum Freight & Lumber and he says I heard you were having a little trouble with a business transaction for the account numbered, let’s see, oh yes, #voicesleakinginasadcafe, and he says I would just like you to know that I can help you out of your situation there so what do you think? and he says I could make it worth your while, you see our business here, this company, well, we have just what you need to make things happen for you, to make your whole world a better place, and he says but first we are going to need a few things, and asks can you hear me okay? Am I coming through? And he says good and so now first I’m going to need your social security number and your date of birth and your last three addresses and the names of your first and second cousins and your workplace ID badge number and a copy of your last tax return documents and the deed to your house signed by you in all of the right places of course and all of your paper receipts from, let’s see here, ahem, that would be the year nineteen hundred and seventy seven and the name of your pet donkey that you had back in the fifth grade, and he says I assure you all of this information is not only necessary and very pertinent to your situation but will be kept strictly confidential and not shared with anyone whom you know or do not know except those whom you don’t tell us not to tell which could include all persons here on this big old bubble of a planet we all call home oh yes oh yeah can you dig dig dig dig it?

she says a quick prayer and makes the sign of the cross every time she goes through a yellow light
he doesn’t look half-bad for a suicide
some sort of compensation for missing that ten-foot jumper at the buzzer
meeting people in the ocean
unwanted gifts
and a circus parade in Baraboo
these things are simple to understand
but the compensation for putting up with television
is rarely ever much of a payoff
she hides her bus pass in her boot
he makes methamphetamine out of Sudafed and hairspray in the garret
there are rarely opportunities to answer questions when they’re asked
tea is served at four
she used to be a genius
he had a great left hook
nobody compares grapefruit to cotton candy
gas masks at dusk
low-calorie love notes passed in the dark
paper-flower cartels wreaking havoc on the moon
middle infielders who drink too much and fall in love with girls
she makes Marlboro sandwiches and smokes refried beans for lunch
he tells the time by the freckles on his wrist
the phones have all lost their cords

there was a smell of rain in the air and the buildings all looked like tombstones while the wind kicked and the streetlights shivered and the buses all shot exhaust up into a tarry sky feathered with clouds where the moon was bursting its britches and the tug boats tooted and a bishop fell down the stairs and the streetsweepers fled to the country but the swans just sat around smoking cigars at the race track waiting for a horse named PS Burton to show

Capricorn One. Come in. Are you there? How do you know that you are really you? Capricorn One. This is Houston. We’ve lost your signal. Are you there? Are you going to start saying things like mayday and red alert and shit we are fucked here we are really fucked and we are burning up upon reentry because our heat shield has separated and open the pod bay doors HAL? Come in. Earth to Capricorn One. This is Houston. Are you there? Are you even listening? Can you hear any of this? Please. Answer. Anything. Tell me about the Navier-Stokes equations. Tell me what a Magnetoplasmadynamic thruster is. What are the names of your children? Who invented ice cream? What the hell is going on out there? Please. Come in. Say breaker breaker or something. We’ve lost your signal Capricorn One. You do not exist as far as our computers are concerned. You are no longer you. You are no longer Capricorn One. I am no longer myself. Where does that leave us? Come in. Please come in. I know this must seem desperate. Capricorn One. Are you out there? Can you hear me? Can you hear anything? Can you…hello?

hello