Burt Vonnegut

I am like a pastrami made
from lots of little parts but
mostly fat.

Transparent and mostly delicious,
hard until warmed up
a little.

#

Dead, until death comes back;
rotting with a tenacity of
affection—at least.

Can't eat, no means of digestion.
Eat anyway. What will happen
to food in the dead stomach?!

Missives of this anyway; the old
man who smiles too much,
or like thinking about death
to the point that magical thinking works.

#

Aggressive in that guise. Not not
intentionally grievance-laden

but, for the rest of life, I can be a prick.
It is not, just, like something you buy or don't.

#

The last Finnish problem was Swiss design. Do you have any idea how hard life is in the shadow of something so universal as that? Try Burt Vonnegut.

Next April

Manifestation of you twenty five years earlier
overlarge black jeans seemingly starched
syndicalism, however you want it to be.

What were you considering having pierced then?
were you still practicing your falsetto on the back porch
late in autumn so that things are covered in leaves and you're stuck with just one bottle of white wine in a canvass knapsack, your cellphone,
an old dreadlock. It is next April.

Your Bag

If you died and instantly disappeared
like Jedi do
would my boot search the sleeves which have not yet collapsed without the skin cylinders of your arms to hold them out? It would!
I would go through your bag
I would find gum wrappers and bobby pins
I would find a stash of white cocaine in a little bag, or mashed up perccets all in a film canister
I would find a schedule for the Blatino film festival. (you have circled all the gay films and written "do not invite Tyler to.")
I would find a bad set of knives you bought at a flea market and the Criterion Collection DVD of a Wes Anderson film; I don't remember which one; it never worked
And the clam chowder bread-bowl from San Francisco
And whatever smell couldn't escape the other vinyl side when it moved quickly from where you were.

the Despot

If the dog were a determined despot,
nope, Christ knows it's not as simple as a despot.
You are one complex fucker God,
remembering Franco fondly.
Stalin so unlike Marx or Whitman? caring for his countrymen as much as a rock—which is to say, a lot.

If despotic race could raise alpaca and all have and wear fine wool garments
if this silly bitch news magazine journalist
if the eyes peered from behind a metal thing, or something
and dipped behind it and the forehead came next.

Bad Economy

"Wait, so you're saying this job has required complicatedly networked computers, a seismometer, and a microwave beam satellite dish strapped to the back of a cellphone. I can't have done it. I don't have the money."

But its equally clear that he could have had a backer, or a nest egg in the Grand Caymans fattening in the tides of galactic commerce. This bit of rage dump, transmissive as a quick punch to the curve of the neck.

If Fine Tools Are Made Blunt

How you said "I can smell your acne face wash."
Well you smell like a pouf chav wearing Axe deodorant!

And your illiteracy was paramount
but for something like Niffeneger.

And you programmed the animotronic band for Chuck-E-Cheeses.
And you had theosophical parents who told you you were the last king of Atlantis.

(They actually did this!) How many demerits
would you get for doing drugs like this, and getting AIDS, and then the meth.

You were a mix of Keith Haring, Vincent Gallo, and Jesus,
eating a bit of holy bread here, committing some sort of digital suicide,

reconstructing a mix-tape playlist from a long forgotten lala profile
because it was deleted after confessing your love and trying to erase everything about you.

Your Office

Sugar, love, crevasse
my ass.

Whatevers
happening

around the
eyes,

maybe I've
just

grown accustomed to

your fucking fuck fuck fuck face
gravel around the mouth
pubis transparent with the inviolate opaque flecks of a pear's skin.

What the coinage did
what the ember did
what the visage did

what the nurnies and the greebles did
what the quite long wish list did
what the shiftless did

what the hard work and hard work and hard work and life of vacation on the board did
what the amory and feud with Christian Siriano's boyfriend did
what the lap did


Cornice and valance and mustache
Lapis
Horizontal stripes
Gingham and ghost gingham
k10k and Jason Kottke

Drawing in to the point that all that exists is the fun office, foosball tables sprewing forth Shasta Mountain Dew into river stone-strewn stream-beds made of polypropylene so that everyone in the office can have a drink.

Wholeness

Thank God nothing is wrong with my body
svelte as velveteen is,
capactive.

Snap Callahan who had the degenerative disorder was my lover.
He could totally get around, if hobbledly; wore the left outsoles right out.
Spent a lot on shoes. Spent a lot on shoes anyway.

James Agustus Blatt III had no thumbs, was my lover; was much harder.
He ate artichoke hearts and fed me olives with four fingers post-coitally until we were overlarge, greasy, smelling delicious.

Real Tenuous Living

Will end him with a baseball bat.
Will leap away crying that the last time a penis had been anywhere near there "it was rape."
Will keep up with what-if's at Isamu Noguchi.
Will not get anywhere.
Will not get anywhere.

•

Like Jim Gaffigan in Les Miserables or something like that.

•

Will raise a horny chill down upon the S curve that is the back bone.

•

Is a growing-older man who does not know the difference, will not cooperate, is made of pomegranate juice concentrate, is wearing two tee shirts that are strangely layered as if both neck holes are straining for the opposite shoulder

and the gold shoes are not working, and the black Doc Martin boots are not working, and the acid washed jeans are nearly white and not working

and the lights are not working, and the like is not working.

Old Buildings

Face locked in a permanent hrmph,
whole body has unbodily contours

like hump above the pecs and
nearer the sternum as if

the heart is on the outside.

•

Slower than anyone has ever spoken.

•

Irma Sosa, my collar bones are aching.

There is a old notion of
skeletons as old buildings

and everything that means.

Worried about My Place and Who I Am and How I Still Love You Too Much

As if this whole life
were about pendulousness

and clothing were about
covering the body

and the residue hung
just over the thing

and obscured that thing
but you knew of that thing anyway;

the shape, that has no other
name but probably

has an equation to represent it.


It is fucked
that I'm aligned with the stupid bitch

you broke up with
because she was so crazy.


It is raining.

There is a Mechanism for Retreat

There is a mechanism for retreat.

Lyndon

Lyndon, if your coming meant anything at all to me; the dregs of the universe; grimy, noirish, dump city you are so fond of; the feeling my tongue gets up the side of your cheek until the feeling abates.

the Knife

"Just fucking do it Gary," and he plunged the whole knife in, to the hilt. My eyes widened. The bottle of South African white wine on the table, empty, casting a green shadow, maybe a flash of concentrated green light playing on a wall or unbeknownst on someone's chest.

Fault ilk with the robberies and they will grow up to be thieves. Some wonky chest has a bad heart inside it. Concentrated flash of excitement waxes, is colored with "love" or any of those affections, transparent as a thing phase-shifting.

Maybe it was raining! Yes and it was dark outside. Maybe it was after the first warm day of spring and it felt nice to put the sweater back on. Anyway, who would want to be outside when it was warm and night? I would.

Scott

(for Scott Hayden)

Scott,

When they

put you in the grave

your body will be old

and used up. The genitals

and butthole

nearly transparent

from good use.

The beaches

will draw no comparison.

The cigarellos

will sing a gay chorus of

summer nights,

bicycle chain grease,

the stickem of post-its,

good bread,

newly cut hair

blowing off the porch.

Your library will be canonized.

(Anne Rice will be appreciative

for the move from pulp

to bible sheaf) Your dim

reading lights will go bright.

Your staid governance

of the printed page will be rewarded

with bookboard,

Reives BFK,

waxed olive cotton thread,

Japanese paper,

and the sweet,

sweet letterpress.

Your legs will come together,

be forced into the casket,

be covered in black denim.

Letters will come from afar

speaking of twelve intense hours

in a coffee shop in Tempe and

beg to be put in the grave with you.

There will be a twenty-one LASER salute,

seemingly parallel,

but at the limits of noteworthyness

will be very far apart.

Dover

Universe,

I love you. What a pitiable existence that this be reduced to farcical joke, but it's true.
Please do the following, make your workings more Orient and less north by northwesterly, have a great scone and have some caught in your throat so that even your coughs are sweet, have the earth be biomorphic in accordance with some machine or other, all of this sex: partially transparent shirts, garments whose cut shows an enticing calf, wrist, part of the neck, even when it is raining and you are huddled against the wind

*

I would make out with you in public. Even though we've both expressed our disdain for things like that.

We went to a festival.

We ate frozen mango covered in chili.

*

The divisor has his place. The divisor has gold ink. The poor SOB lives his life in the breach.

*

You are sad. I am sad. There is a place where the sea meets a white cliff face.

Black and White

Shawl, awl, twig,
my leg.

Bulimic toothpicks,
bleeding

gums, bleeding eyes,
nose,

fingernails.
A spate

of dominoes
put

into the mahjongg
tiles,

riled up so that
some

are black and
some are white.

a Body

Dead, 42,000 nautical miles later, thin hair bleached white by sea air and sun, seemingly constantly growing thinner and the song also.

Like ten candlestick bowling pins whittling themselves, Aqua di Gio daubed behind where ears would be; blanketing the white wood by force, nostalgic for the nautical, cocksure of buoyancy, quick to draw, quicker to draw.

Forearm to indefensible club, balls to blue balls, lip to fat lip, hip to not hip, anger at sexual frustration to the maceration of small creatures in a white tub of lye for a long time—for the bones.

A moving wallflower, the wall moving, everything—in fact—moving, it all; confidence to inspire, blankets that the native Americans made, a body.