you don't forget your roommate when your'e in a secret cia space program on mars

delusions are funny 

from the outside

i mean we can all clearly see

that your stab at a flll in your blank dream

can't be taken seriously

when you're painted into that corner.

the brush is full of termites

the can was empty when you got it

yet there you stand, back straight,

feet tucked, stomach tight, stuck because

you don't want non essential paint on your shoes.

you can see it. you can see us

getting that stuff on our shoes

and it looks a lot like blood

from a halloween tube you filled 

yourself. because you saw him again.

even though you'd trained yourself 

or they had

to not. ever. see him. again.

 when you did, all the careful

patches you'd sewn unravelled

 it was back to the two of you against

growing up, apart, depart, dearly decapitated

those memories. cut off at the head, so dead.

but you know. and he knows. you just don't forget. 

tres rosas on fall mountain

three birthday roses survived the tres dias
we drove to chapel hill.
or thru it, snapping pix of million
dollah homes and the best labs
money can buy. mornings
you can walk to the co op in carboro
live bluegrass under the burning elms
serenading the stroll. i didn't get to taste
the vegan chocolate cake
but the coffee was rich, strong, zippy.

we get to the mountains in the middle of the afternoon.
you can't drive the hundred and nineteen miles to asheville
in two hours. in two hours you find yourself
at linville falls, driving a honda civic fastback
up the side of the mountain on a gravel road
designed for trucks full of hunters with orange hats.
thinking briefly of broken axles and banjos
but no one gets hurt. the upper falls, though small
are impressive anyway, tearing a hole in the middle
of the mountain, twisting the rock into mock
humans, sculptures that signify how
 we dash into each other
headlong,  gravity an orgasm to chase

in asheville,  cherry djarums
are as hard to find as downtown parking
we careen the hiway thru  the village in the mountains
clinging to the seat as it grows dark
i know  some curve  is going to pull
me over the side of those cliffs
 and make me cum at last

why can't we go thru bryceville?

i  try it 15 different ways, drag the damn routeline
directly thru the town's name on googlemaps
and everytime i let go of the cursor, i'm presented with yet another
alternate route down us hiway 301. googlemaps refuses
to let me pass a 2.3 mi length just north of  jacksonville
and it's got me thinking in conspiracies
count your buttons for the one you'll meet:
alien, government, bildeberg, god

i'm going to see fall
on a bender, gonna pass   by
places i've been before, detour
from my typical detour see what swamp
monster can kick up from a roadtrip's
underbelly. i'm thinking i need to take a step
back from your attention, hey did i mention
i'm a loner stoner, a one berth marina,
a closed sign when i'm in word's cantina.

so i like you along for the drive
i'll pay , you chauffer, i'll just write
all the way thru the night , chugging starbux and fright
and smokin the sweet sensimilla. truth
will come in the light, around atlanta, it bites
the traffic , it gets so static but maybe we 'll avoid it.
grab a go and spoil it, take the side, recoil it
slide thru the morning and enjoy it.

what will i write on? your phone.
we'll forget we ever knew home
get lost on the hiway,
somewhere on a bayou
that swallows us lock stock and bone.

i mean, we aint gettin any younger


but i'll trust you to keep us on the road
till the credit runs out. as i understand it
they can't put a lean on life insurance :)
the kids can pay off the trailer or buy a house
i'd do it myself but my next life's a mouse
stealing cheese from a store in the village of bryce.

edit

  metaphors for rain



 every summer   hot  crickety cars
 twitch along limpid roads. the sky.sticky
with tar, slides into skin with an overnight
bag and  plans to stay a week


  evenings  smell of  the tin hook
you picked up rusted in the rushes
on the edge of the lake

 hydrogen and oxygen rustle and bustle
 surround   me with a peekaboo shroud
from inside waterstacks and
 the breaking of the sac
  floods down the leg of the sky

the wind   whips her hair into your fac
a hurricane when she's whirlwind
 and  nameless thunder a passionate  passion that archs
in the aftermath, a diver toward the drain

tell angels to take
 their kisses and place them
 on some other forehead for
 mine is blessed by holy water
 from a dripping tongue
and an element more basic than tears

on the front porch my
son and i blow bubbles
they barely birthiin the heavy  mist
 rising from the waterfall
of two sharp angles
  carressing above us


soooooooooooo he blows
 what about god?


  and the devil? i catch a small
bubble on my wand.well, um god

  hold on just a second...he places
his wand in the jar,  rinses his sticky hands
 in dribbles that still sputter
 from the roof, climbs into my lap
and says

at last!


then  the clouds are sun and the sun
is  fireflies of gold  in the wet air
and we are fish, taking a first breath

at last, at last, at last.

the golden sounds of the underground

was off work today
body breaking down, forget
the rest of the world
 in an ulcerous sleep.

lost the rx lost the drive
lost composure to survive
but the bed's too hard on my hips
no water means dry cracked lips

and i didn't die so oh my
another day to face. i should erase
this all but if this is what comes out
who am i too cry or shout

the gods come in the gods go out
like ghosts with purpose and clout







*&*^^^^^






Some publication is looking for a restaurant crit. meals on da house. yummm









&*^&















i only want half this cigarette. jazz
from the forties in my box. my belly's
beginning to ache again. my older sister's birthday
i missed it again. she won't mind, all these years dead.
sometime in the summer, from the wounds
we call upon ourselves in the name of life.
in the moving strife in the paralyze partialized, dramofied
living sometimes you fall victim to the gods intentions gone awry
how high does that fly, march, march my love, until we die.

the raggedy's resurface in tampa

she was the darling of orphans and suburban
girls who dreamed of being orphans
and he was her twin brother. their brand
of  1930's homespun cinnamon
 haired sailor, carrot top baker
topped barbie's longevity . advemturous
and  spunky they were the red headed
stepchildren, the hanzle and gretel of america.
 orphans with cool striped legs

i don't know what happened between them
perhaps it was losing the hat, the bald spot
that appeared late in life, or the way she wore
nothing over her striped leggings  displayed
all these years after their heyday.

 i guess by ninety eight you must have seen
everything at least a couple dozen times or maybe
the thought of trying to survive yet another baby
girl who wanted to be their mommy dearest was
just too much at their advanced age, candy heart or not
maybe it was the rash of news stories about mommies
killing their kids still it surprised me . to find

ann   face down; andy,  face up
and the weapon,
 an empty  sample size bottle of tylenol
lying on my bathroom  floor between them
ending their adventure here as
just another murder suicide pact

skirting the demi dream with carved radishes

i have grown out of the daily
and i can't say it pleases me.
dunno what it is about being with
the scientist that makes me not write.
perhaps tis all the past writing that comes
now to haunt me, or that he wants to be written of
perhaps i can't write unless it seems as if it's
sneaky or taboo even. is that the medium of my ouvre's growth?
how ludicrous. if i don't worship at the sadistic malicious ironist altar
then i don't get to write>
once told an il poet, one i rarely got along with
that i'd give up writing in a second for love.
he concurred. i don't know if he's still writing but i said that
never thinking i'd have to.
never thinking i'd want to do that again.
it's different when u have kids, that kind of love is demanding
who has time to write. and as my daughter constantly reminds me
i shouldn't have done it while she was growing up
because i'm a neglectful and fully abusive parent
i have the poems to prove it. my son
merely thinks i'm insane. my new lover...
loves poetry. has wonderful stories
that would make great copy
wants me to write the story of his life
which parallels mine in some really weird ways
but with a male background...i dunno. he's as in touch
with his fem side as i am with my masc. loves dishes
and shopping. uses his intuition rather than logic
would love to stay home while i work and be that wife i always said i wanted
except
he doesn;t really want to do that.  that's his consolation prize for bombing out

in the professional world. that's his fallback position and he's been pursuing it for going on five years. he's landed in the state where the swamp swallows you up then burps you out after the rest of the country has digested you.  a colostemy bag. that's what florida is you know, not a flaccid penis , we've got viagra for that, jjst change yr pov my fren, turn that map. you too can find your mojo in the land of paradisical whim, if not from a girl, then from a pill. so yeah, bombing out, carrying the fragments of your former life into the subtropics, seeing what a li'l r and r will do ya. findin that pretty thang to fill your time while deciding between dreams and aspirations, doin the man thing,.if that's even what you want to do anymore. by god, this weed is fine, the drinks are cool, that babe is HOT, buddy can you spare a dime i'm on margaritaville time..

and then you meet me.  i am that girl. that vargasviagra girl.  how many aging men have found a spark in me? i'm the legendary cougar, the deified surfer girl,the notorious craigslist killer,  the art inspiring beauty you fucked when you shirked your life in  that transitional time between where you were and where you'll finally go after you find out you must either escape from the pond, or grow scum for hair, webs between your toes and sand in your veins. yes i saidthatallinonebreath.

so the lover. he is a lover. i do love him. he loves me. like i love him. i think. it feels that way. a cocktail of adhd and ocd that fits me well. we saw promise in possibility but i don't know how to foster that and keep true to myself. dont' even know if i need to. foster anything.  but the adhd makes me think maybe a bit. maybe  but not so much...

 he's  midwestern. an indiana baby. but he grew up in springfield so he's really   from illinois. these are important distinctions to him. if i write his story i'd have to get it somewhat truthy. so


 i was a horse
he stroked
nickering into  his
 neck while his hands
brushed both flanks
tightened the cinches
i was horse he rode
with barely enough control
to stop me going through
the woods fast as the sun
painting my  hide
 with desiring dapples
splotches where  his legs touched me
freckles where  his spittle  burnt
me palimino before he fell or
jumped  off
i never knew which.




no, not that.

springfield and orlando had a lot in common back in the day. the integrational seventies.boomers had blown up the old world but  boomers didn't have to face real desegregation. didn't have to live the consequences of forced busing , race riots, the conflagration of the lambs.( but that's just historical blindness  plenny rednecks in springfield, we just call em union boys. it was always someone hating on someone and blacks were   at the bottom of even that.) just like orlando. somehow my middle school had only one black student. he was so token. (but i was like one of a handful of white guys in high school. that's why i wanted to become catholic.) more on that later. this is my narrative. (but this is pertinent to why i wanted to be a catholic so badly) ok but we haven't leaped yet. i'll let you know the warp drive time.

just slow down. we both come from some really racist backgrounds but i don't think we  carry the unholy bigotry with us. with me it was a playground i couldn't go on. (with me it was the drum and bugle corp, travelling in the south with jim crow tudes filling in where  the laws used to be. one time in lousiana we had to drive all the way out to the interstate to find a place that'd let us stay and even then they wrote nigaz go home on the motel while we slept. . ) oh see now this is truthy but it becomes a long narrative that really could only be in a book or a character study and it just isn't distilled enough to make sense of why i 'm not writing at the moment, just kind of slipping into a series of wow it's almost thursday and will i have a job come this time next year and if i didn't could i survive on the thing i love?

i told him when we met that i wanted to be rescued. i wanted out of the slave mines, twenty five years is enough. he thinks he'd like to be back in them. it's exhausting being out there, entrepenuering, scratching, peddling. thinks his chances for success in his doctorate are past him. stressing the big five uh oh rabbit did you forget to run? i think he heard the gun, and raced for fifteen years till it the bullet finally reached him. he just hasn't quite figured out that he's dead. but he's in florida. livin here stayin ova there, driver's license from another state.

 i'll be lucky to die on temporary disability insurance after the trailer's paid off and all i got to pay is the lot rentz. reality obama? you couldn't do nuthin bout that. the pensions are all eaten  by the last great gen and their progeny, the boomers. and florida never saw a pension it didn't wanna shoot, stuff and place on the wall of the robber baron's vault. that's why we like romney and rick scott. if you wanna work the salt mines, you need to get you back to a state that respects workers.


the pres looked tired tonite. he looked as if he couldn't take the campaigning on the dias . romeny on the other hand looked well rested and smug, and he's been practicing the reagan "...well, jimmy, i'll tell you..." i fear he may have won. if i were undecided i might be leaning his way. and that's a lot of writing. incoherent, unpoetic, but writing. i think i'll try that again very soon.

if time is relative then mine's my grandmother

so another year rolls round.
how many birthdays zoomed by
how many poems got lost on unbuilt subways
how many last quarters given to
that could be you on the street but you just have
to let it go. it's not your thing anymore
heads, tails. the flip is the point.
that and the ab crunches to build core.
yeah another winter approacheth
and the weight's aleady boarded the bus.
you say you got a call from your area code
i say let's just drop you off there when we go look
at the leaves, since that must be where you're meant to .
be.

i can only write as long as the back holds out.
perhaps that';s how i should build my core.
but it takes so much effort, you whine,
it takes time i could be using to smoke
this pot, or this cigarette or recover from the soul dead job
i have to get up and go to every morning.
with no end in site. i know it's a 25 percenter whine
considering the conditions and prospects available to  say
a worker at the chinese ipod factory
  but the outcomes the same, we'll both work till we die
albeit hers may be a bit sooner and has a higher probability
of being self inflicted and who can blame her or me
really, to whine about aging, my bones, back, liver, lack of energy oy vey
here comes my grandmother, the one they gave me
during all those commercial breaks, the old one, you know
from golden girls, fiesty as hell for five minutes
then it's nappy time till the early bird lunch.
and let me tell you
i don't like it.
the malaise, the droopy one sided plump mobile
the stretching of memory for algernon type losses
comprehensible, tantalizing, as real as dream state
which i'd quikly love to inhabit.
but no, live
says the body, live you must live you have to live
why, and i f it wants me to so badly
why doesn't it just lend me involunary impulses in
my dreams so i can get my cardio in before i have to get out of bed.

meh, i'm a sissy. but i can't decide which is scarier for
the last big caroom...being in a runaway cart or having control
of the hand brake...