Book I

Hello. You are . . . new.
Welcome to TranzMishUnz™, the DreemJernul™ of SkyRon™
All the best blessings available to you. You will need them.
* * * * *

9.ix.04
I visit T.
She’s heavier,
shapeless in the way that large women get,
boxy.

She’s a scholar,
huge books on obscure avant-garde composers,
I (vainly, narcissistically) hope I’m in one of them.
I’m about to reminisce on how we met long ago
over such mutual interests,
but with a distracted look, she grabs a mop, leaves,
and starts to mop the parking lot floor,
near the janitor who’s also mopping the parking lot.

She does this, so I think,
to meet him,
and perchance to pick him up.
Well, I’m so super pathetically jealous,
so I scurry down the stairs
to the parking garage
to dissuade her from this,
by inviting her out for breakfast.

“I can make it, or we can go out somewhere”
“We better go out somewhere.”
That was the exchange.

I return
to my apartment
and find that it’s raining heavily inside.

Everything is wet,
a fine mist still comes down.
I grab some tow’ls,
but all this is useless.
My whole studio, and all of my equipment,
is so ruined.

1.x.04
“We are the kids of tomorrow”

That’s the song the kids were singing.

(Sung to the tune of
such an awful
recycling song
I wrote justa few years ago:
“oh
we are the kids of tomorrow
look out,
’cause here we come
well we are the kids of tomorrow
and yeah
and we will surely be active.”
Something like that.)

I praise M.R.
on her spunky performance
“—and you wrote the song too?!
Wow, it’s really sparkly, I can tell!”

Also,
we’re in Kosovo or Bosnia
or some creepy ambiguous war zone
we don’t belong.

But it was a reality show: me
and one other guy and about 8 women were part of.
It starts out very civilized—
we sit down to a big meal,
first in auditorium
(so dark, with dusty light pooling around us)
where the kids were singing,
then we are in sucha rustic kitchen with three divisions.

There’s wine bottles,
and food somewhere
(but we don’t see it),
and there’s strips of leather,
plus some bolts’n’nuts and maybe
those shoe-making tools
that we don’t have a clue about.
We aren’t told what they do.

Four maskéd men
stealth their way
up the hill
and scale rocks
on the side
of this house
and with guns
they enter in one of the sub-divisions.

They immediately shoot one of the women.
She falls out the window.
(We think this is staged,
because it’s
ree-al-eety TV,
but it looks damn real).

(Later, we do see her in bloody clothes and
talking ‘bout how
it was faked,
but somehow this is not consoling.)

We are lead through tunnels
and forced to work in mines.
There’s a metal pan placed near our camp,
with coffeecake within, cut into strips.
One bearded fellow-miner gleefully grabs
sucha piece,
and dances ‘round and eats it.

The rest of us do pause a beat,
then gaze into each other’s eye
a certainty,
so cynical and thus begin
to dig his blesséd grave.

17.xii.04
More fragments from another night.
Tho not the best – those ‘vaporate
like some exquisite, superEx
penSive liquOr that hath a name
impossible for mortals such as I
to taste in mouth
or pronounce right,
say well:

1) I travel back in time
so I can buy
a really big sand-witch
so very, very cheap!

2) We all (who are we, anyway?)
discuss those women,
comics-slash-poetesses
who may have killed themselves.
And so we’re talking ‘bout some One
Who is not Dorothy Parker/
Sylvee Plath.

Who is she?

18.xii.04
I’m
always trav’ling, so it seems.
Last night it was down this one scary
highway:

Devoid of signs, and traffic heavy
and unreal
in its speed.

At least we can duck
into this cave
(now we are
on foot).

The cave is short,
a quarter-mile
(or is it a dozen yards?)
in length:

A breeding ground it is
for such a certain beetle.
(Then, I guess I do not need
umbrella mine).

Emerging from the cave,
we dodge the souvenir stands
And proceed:
(why is it that you gottta do
the most important things on top of
what’s already huge, a busy time of change?
—enormous change—I’m only askin’
—sucha weary hassle!)

(Because, if you don’t
do the most important things,
you shall regret it
—this the ushool answer.

And have I built
vast edifi,
whole histories, geographies,
and E-maJinned communities,
indeed, an whole world-view,
out of as this, my dreem regret.
It’s simply what I do.)

(The race, the cave,
what else is there?
Musique? The dance?
Beest-Kreatures? Food?)

20.xii.04
More people are the things do-ing
in places where I am with them,
and do these things
All interesting.
Let’s leave it now at that, OK?

25.xii.04a
We’re on the road!
The famous Hidden Valley Trail
Of Nevada’s Best,

A path that goes from
Southern tip north
All the way to Naybra-Ska
And very carefully avoids all points of interest,
And
All places historique or
of cultural significance.

We are in search
Of The Almost Forgot,
MyThiKul NutJuly.

(“Would it not be much easier
to call it July-Nut?”
my sidekick asks.
“No – – just think it’s like ‘nutmeg’,
but with July
in the place of Meg.”
I say.

“Nutmeg—now there is a word of int’rest.
Wonder where it comes from.” he replies.

I think it is int’resting that
someone with fifth grade education
would so speculate on this,
the etymology of sucha word.)

Along the way, we pick up Shelia B.
After a few minutes
of small and mostly banal talk
Of this trip, and the places
all noteworthy we avoid.

She cannot keep her mouth from off my face.

* * * *

Along the way, we are entwined
In FrendSaga.
Dear Kourtney-Kox explains to
document’ry crew
How BradPit was the figure
who had held the cast together
All those years.

And then she’s back in character,
At dinner with her Chanduhlor,
Misunderstandings wacky must occur.

I’m watching all this
like the TV show:
Not too amused, yet caught up
in the trying to remember
Who has not yet slept with whom.

But soon enough we realize
How bored we were
With all these mathematics
of the kuppoling.

25.xii.04b
I push around this junker of a car
(and so apparently,
I’ve had some kind of
break-down).

I only can go down-hill, as I
Leave the parking garage,
I hit dirt
rocks, and crevices.
Nobody drives down here.

Rocks are replaced by snow
and I reach a vast ocean of snow:
the glacier.
I leave the car and march in a circle
footprints close together, drawing something:
a big happy face!

I return, I must return
up the hill, back to the city
through the bookstore where everyone is curled up, all in blankets, and
sleeping near the books.

I make my way through sleepers
Into street—Triumphant!
I flash everybody thick smiles
and double tricky-dick Vee’s
I’m still mad as a bat!

I must get on the bus
with the other mad people.
A bus without a roof,
Rows of kid-sized orange plastic seats.
I take mine, next to a tiny quiet mad woman.
(Of course, she gets away,
and the driver’s frantic for a while,
but there she is with Brian, or Greg
—I get them confused—hugging her
and then she’s back in her seat)

There’s so many stories
Many stories and many adventures
in the asylum [1].

25.iii.05
Swimming, near a coast,
but in an ocean.
Freak out and swim to the land!

Before that,
Setting up lights & mics for a show.
Electronics,
and a piano made crooked
by being propped up on a slab of concrete.

Before that,
the couple next door
(Jeff S. and actress in Being JM):
He poisons and buries her in the apartment.
She was pregnant,
but he was trying to do a sex change on her surgically,
at home.
Pretty messy! . . .

6.v.05 [2]
Grissom is having sex with this pudgy
blonde woman (more like, ample,
or one step beyond pudgy).
It’s slow and languid, with several pauses.

Grissom has this thing about stopping just short of (his) orgasm,
which is perverse and frustrating for the audience.
(Apparently, the woman is not phased by this.)

But then he hasta get back to work.
He and the brunette chick are working with the crew in Miami,
but it’s a very corrupt and incompetent crew,
so it’s probably not Miami.
It’s probably Tampa or Orlando [3].

You know what? It might be Miami.

The head dude is blonde,
Owen-Wilson-esque, and barely hiding
his white trash, trailer-park, redneck, roots
with an advanced degree in forensics
(or whatever you gotta have to do that job).
We’ll call him Corrupt Owen.

One subplot involves another guy
who’s going to pick up his 11-year old obnoxious blond son
from school, but he’s not there,
although his shirt or something is there,
with someone’s saliva on it.
It turns out Owen took him,
slobbered on him or the shirt or both,
and “took him away for a while
because then he would be a man when he came back”
(as the kid said when he’s finally found by Grissom).
The kid is perfectly groomed, clean, and in a choir robe,
although he seems spacier than before.

The other subplot involves Owen’s assistant,
who is in his late 50’s (probably Ben Kingsley),
probably a vet (although more of a WWII type of character than a Vietnam-era vet),
and we think he’s got integrity,
although at some point we find out he had been part
of an aryan-nation, white supremacists group,
a bit of personal back story
which Owen can dangle over Ben’s head
to manipulate him to do whatever he wants.

I guess the main plot
is Corrupt Owen
and how he’s trying to get rid of the evidence
that he kidnapped the boy for a while,
and this happened while Grissom is on the case,
and the main case is some boring murder or something.
The main murder
is mostly beside the point—who cares about another murder?
Anyway, the other evidence Owen is hiding
probably implicates him in the murder.
We’re never quite sure why he had to kidnap the boy
(Ok, we figure it out at the end).

Ben is doing research in the loft part
of the CSI place— there’s a metal ladder up to it
that he’s climbing,
but Owen is behind him,
menacingly waving something at him,
messing with his mind!
Ben pulls an electric drill on Owen,
and Owen is, like, whoa!, and the next part is a little weird and,
well, dreem-like.

Owen bounces down to the floor,
and jumps back up to the height he was at on the ladder,
which disorients Ben, ’cause Ben thinks
Owen might have Central Florida Voodoo Powers (CFVP) or something,
But then Owen does this bounce thing again, and this time,
he brings up a cute asian-american girl with no teeth,
and some other guy also with no teeth,
and Ben just can’t resist them
(not in a physical struggle way,
in an immanent-implied-fantastic-oral-sex-scene way),
so he drops his pathetic electric drill and Owen is seen approaching
behind the two teethless accomplices,
holding elegant, evil stainless steel surgical tools
in his hands—a slender tap, a mallet,
and one other tool with nasty serrated edges.

So back to the Corrupt Owen part.
He’s got the residue samples
from the murder and the saliva on the shirt,
and he’s in a meeting with a bunch of people and Grissom.
Ben, in an orange jump suit
(why doesn’t this alarm anybody?),
sneaks up behind Grissom and presses a shotgun barrel into his back
(how did he sneak a shotgun in there?),
and the two leave.
We (and Grissom) notice Ben has
what almost looks like a bullet hole in his forehead,
just above his right eye.

He keeps Grissom, at gunpoint,
in this walk-in refrigerator
while the new D.A. and his people
basically take over the CSI
(this was part of a deal that Corrupt Owen engineered),
and shove the brunette
(and why didn’t she do anything
while Grissom was being taken?)
around while they’re looking for that evidence.

The D.A.: “We will prosecute
to the full extent of the law
any crimes we can substantiate evidenciarilly
(or whatever legal talk they use).”
Owen to the new crew,
with surgical masks and latex gloves:
“Now, go find that stuff I was telling you about,
and neutralize it” (that’s pretty subtle, eh?).

Oh no! The crooked D.A. and Owen
are going to destroy all the evidence,
and then Grissom won’t be able to prove anything,
and as for the being-held-at-gunpoint-by-Ben part,
there’s some way that that even becomes no good
because of the D.A.’s jurisdiction or something legal like that.
How will Grissom save the day?

(dreem ended at this commercial break)

So, there it is!
The cool part is we would finally
see Grissom having sex,
plus we’d have his match,
the Corrupt Owen, who’s really Evil Owen, and
apparently smarter than Grissom thinks,
with the obvious unstated pieces of puzzle
propelling them to their ultimate showdown,
in the sequel to this episode,
where we see the pudgy blonde woman
(who is now clearly ample)
in cahoots with Owen,
or maybe the blond boy their son
(the guy we thought was his father was only his step-dad),
and Owen has this lobotomy technique that leaves no traces.

The hole in Ben’s head was from Owen slipping.

4.vii.05
It starts with me
drawing funny things on the front & back
of this week’s creative loafing:
lots of solid yellow images (stencil, paint blobs)
on black, so those get gently turned strange
(“to set goals” becomes “to sex goats” – stuff like that);
a wonderwoman cartoon has her head erased,
and a caption added “I’d like to have a child,
but I’d probably eff it up”;
and a row of stark yellow teeth or houses
becomes transformed into
“A body will be found”.

Rather smug and pleased with my cleverness,
I make some copies at kinkos and sneak around town,
replacing the real magazines with my fake covers.
I have somehow had time to do all this before I go to work.

When I get home from work,
an epic shitstorm is brewing
(“home” is the lavista road
dysfunctional brady bunch of S, V, JK, and myself).
“Look at this!” S. sputters, very upset,
“Somebody knows – somebody saw us!”

“Who could’ve seen us?” – V

“His drawings are funny, though” – JK

“What are we gonna do?” I chime in,
covering my true response, which was this:
“Oh, that’s right.
I forgot the three of them
killed somebody and dumped the body somewhere.
I completely forgot about that.
How could I forget about that,
after they swore me to secrecy
(I didn’t help out,
but I suppose I’d turn on them in a heartbeat
and join a witness protection program
if I had to).
Wow, I was really not conscious of that
when I was drawing that stuff!”

My real concern, however,
is being found out as the true culprit by the local press,
which is more interested in finding who did
this “terrible act of smearing the Latino community
by defacing these papers”.
Apparently, the yellow images on black
is a much revered Latino thing,
and what I did was tantamount to a KKK lynching
or flushing the Koran down the toilet.
The news media doesn’t even know there’s been a murder.

So, that’s what I hafta deal with.
I do this by bringing home a Leslie O/ Beth McQ type after work,
we run into JK, who’s sorta in drag,
and about to go out.
He’s got these great knee-high black leather boots on—stunning!

27.viii.05 [4]
There are fleeting images
of naive young people in full-service limos
(they have electrical outlets
so you can, for instance, blow-dry your hair),
each with a designated old rich white guy
to give the scene a bit more gravitas.

There are scramblings about town,
in hooded jackets,
as we are looking for the hooded-jacket culprit
(not sure what he/she did or why we were chasing him/her).
But we both see a blonde girl in a hooded jacket,
and see what she knows.
She only knows a Janet Erb from Texas,
whose husband is—no kidding—Herbert Erb.

Finally,
there is loss on a deep personal level,
expressed by some expression and symbolized by a symbol.

It was a book on playing the trumpet,
but it was in a locker that got cleaned out,
so it was thrown away.

A lot of other stuff was thrown away, too,
but ultimately,
it was only
stuff.

5.ix.05 [5]
Just a few images from this dreem:

* brushing up against the nude swimmer,
in spite of several peepole in the pool
who would consider it inappropriate of me.

* cleaning up
or pretending to clean up
the place a little before QE II
(the person, not the boat)
arrives.

* when she does arrive,
she’s really only the sister,
but she orders a huge, dark ale.

Her sister orders root beer,
and I sare-uptishusly sample them both
(the drinks, not the sisters).

That’s really all I can pull together for you right now . . .

6.ix.05 [6]
A few more fragments:

Road work on The Road.
I drive The Road in my orange Rabbit,
backwards.

It’s being paved with stainless steel.

11.ix.05 [7]
Salvaging what I can:

In a dirty alley way,
hopping on the freight elevator,
but it gets caught on something after going just a foot or so,
so I hafta hop out.
Hope it doesn’t come undone and crush me
(it doesn’t).

There was work I needed to do,
and a group of people I would do the work with,
and a place to do the work,
but these are all vague, unfamiliar, and unknown.

They’re all just gone.

12.ix.05
There’s fierce competition,
along with thrillz’n’spillz,
in the great new reality gameshow,
So, You Think You’re Weird,
and I’m doing pretty well,
tied at 11th place with
the cute petite brunette
dancer girl.

The next round of the competition,
which tests how freaky/scary you are
as a homeless person in a bad part of town, however,
is expected to weed out the weaker weird ones
from the truly disturbing.

18.ix.05
It’s some sort of learning center,
and I’m sposta teach an excel course,
but only one person signs up— sherrie, a petite brunette
with a sparkly demeanor—
spunky, peppy, perky, whatever—
incredibly annoying.

She likes the music I’m playing,
which is a remix of a very rhythmic section
of an early sibelius symphony
(which might also be characterized
as spunky, peppy, perky, or whatever)
mixed with my bowed piano piece,
which adds a deep, depressive quality to the experience.

Nobody’s gonna remark
how similar the two musics match
each of our personas.
The metaphors in this dreem are paper thin.

Anyway,
the class hasta be cancelled ‘cuz there’s not enough people,
so I offer to tutor sherrie myself,
but she has some documentation
on apologizing to the administration for me,
and they have questions about what I’ve taught in the past,
and how I use the words “server” and “number”.
Same old same old.

Regardless, george (remember him, from MM-usa?)
gives me a hug,
and then hasta talk to greg D.,
so I wait—nervously, trying not to stare
at the things that are personal & private—by his pile of stuff,
but he never gets back to me.

19.ix.05
Just the usual escape from a nazi work camp,
first by hiding in the snow
(as the car with the camp officials drives by
—but they do see me,
take me for ded,
and pour blood over me and walk away),
then I am somehow now standing,
but the guards think I’m ded and ignore me,
as do the workers who are, I guess,
opening the latrines for the day.

So I jump on top of the roof
of the two parked railway cars,
and make my way back down,
behind the circus-cart wheels,
and then along the fence and into poland
(which I guess was a clean getaway)

Before that,
there was the flashback to waiting for the bus on The Road,
Scotty L. drives it now.
I bring my music with me
on some kind of prehistoric ipod,
and I wander through DarkTown,
which is that deserted,
night time version of interesting,
quaint urban or metro hood.
Empty streets,
empty marketplaces,
but florescent lighting,
fish smells, steam,
and warmly textured shadows.

21.ix.05 [9]
Just battling pandemics
by de-icing the car in the alley
next to the preacher’s house.

The young Kennedy brothers are horsing around in the snow,
so why is it that teddy shoots robert in the leg?
Anyway, there was some computer related problem I needed to fix,
and that’s what I did next.

People got hurt,
and some bad things happened,
but basically it all worked out o.k.

[10]

23.ix.05
Dinosaur Apartments

The main feature
was a film called “Dinosaur Apartments”,
where people living in these apartments would, for instance,
open a cupboard and a dinosaur would stick his head out,
terrorizing them.
Apparently the entire film was made on that simple premise.

This film I watched with 7 other people,
who were alphabetically chosen from my high school class.
I assembled composite images of the seven of us,
seven transparencies,
each at 55% opacity.
But we also were part
of the in-store “faculty”,
the displaced educators
adopted by the bookstore
to give lectures, etc.

Mine was on Mozart,
demonstrating how he’d plant a seed
of some eccentric musical element early in a concerto,
and then expand on that element later in the piece.

Nobody listened to me,
the customers were rude and inattentive.
I stopped my talk once and walked away,
and nobody noticed.

Also, wandering about the parking lot
(which became a traffic interchange at a moment’s notice)
I run into Pat C.,
who plans to study in Denmark,
and asks me what I had been teaching.
Also find and pet
the small white and pink kitty
under one of the cars.

28.ix.05
(On a previous nite,
there was this cylinder of light you’d perform in,
enough space for just one person,
pretty claustrophobic!

but we’d perform there!)

Any normal family
watching the polar bears return to the oregon coast,
would move out of their way,
so they did.

Yeah,
there was a tiny practice room where the piano dude
was preparing Bach for his recital,
but his friends were doing Cage,
so I hafta show them how that’s done.
My oboe reed splits in two
—where am I gonna find another one on such short notice?
Cripes!

But it boils down
to the book thing:
this restorer dude
(a bluesman)
was sandpapering my index-book,
then put more varnish on the cover,
to restore it to its former lustre.
My photo negatives would still be in boxes,
but my index-book
(which is the index to all the books in my life or library)
is a true,
big,
undeniable book.

29.ix.05
Poetry seminar with AEC
and a madwoman who says,
“Look at me
this is a poem
and it’s a good one
look at me
don’t look at her”
or something like that.
Of course, I can’t take my eyes off AEC.

I try to wrap up the seminar
with an assignment to write a short poem,
but not a pathologically short one,
and I end by trying to recite the mark strand’s
keeping things whole,
but it’s a really bad and mangled recitation.

2.x.05
“Yeah,
Floyd/Edge
is movin’ to OklaHomo”
I tell slick dude and his lover.
They sit me down,
and “let me tell you what to look out for”,
says slick dude.
They both think I’m gay,
which always amuses me.

– lots of discussion
around a bad performance of a haydn piano piece
(but it’s really mozart,
except it bears no resemblance to what’s on the paper.
None at all.).
I point out it comes from that tschaikovsky serenade thingy,
but of course it’s the other way around.

– but anyway,
we race back to the house, on foot,
on The Road.
Once I clear the big caddy that hit something
and oil is leaking from it profusely
(and it’s filled with illegal aliens or white trash,
can’t tell which),
I take the lead,
and I’m doing pretty well,
except peewee herman
(this might be who floyd/edge is)
screams past me,
then one by one,
everybody else passes me, too.

15.x.05
Big skyscrapers in chicago,
green-metallic,
sleek, look like they’ll slide off into the lake at any moment.
I just hafta assure the lady I’m with
that mark L. will be by on monday
to entertain the kids with magic tricks.

I flew here with other dude,
Jeff the Beaver,
although he used his own suitcase and I was gonna ask him
if I could leave a pair of trousers with him to pack
so I’d have more room in my suitcase
for the books I needed to bring along.

And about those trousers.
They were extremely dirty,
and I had hoped to have had the time
to turn them inside out and at least shake them out,
outside. But I didn’t even have that,
because we were in such a hurry.
Of course the hurry we were in turned out to be completely bogus.

17.x.05
1940’s cartoon (in the style of Baby Huey or whatever),
where the character is making toast for the baby,
or tea I guess, because he has the kettle on the oven,
and steam comes out,
but there’s a scary face in the steam!

Bobby’s been absorbed into an ominous figure
who goes into the steam room in the basement.
nevertheless, I wait for him to come out and we proceed,
together.

p.s. this was not really a dreem,
just a tableaux suggested by a “twilight zone”,
the one with the player piano:

Callous sophisticates at a cocktail party,
standing around and chatting.
One makes fun of another one and then
they all grow long beaks and peck him/her to deth!

19.x.05
Small, single-engine plane crashes in the pasture.
Two people in it, I try to call 911
but the phone has already been turned into an emergency hotline,
with instructions blaring out to you,
but no way of sending a message.

Wandering the halls of Korporate AmeriKa with Kirk H.,
we see an empty alcove with drawers a few feet off the ground,
and no way to access the drawers.
Kirk finally jumps up and discovers lots of headphones.
I think about a screenplay where Joe Shmoe
has the job of putting all those hedphones away or whatever,
and suddenly he’s able to hear voices over some of the hedphones,
voices of the ded!
Ooh, scary.

Bad doods find me in the kitchen,
I’m trying to hide in the space behind the fridge,
but then I give up.
One bad dood has me,
but Tippy comes to the rescue,
distracting bad dood,
giving me time to grab a butter knife to stab him.
Then I find other knives.

20.x.05
It’s back to school,
(hiSchool).
And I’m in my 40s.

I carry several backpacks,
all the intricate instruments and electronics that make up my thingy
(I’m not sure what it is, or what it does,
but I’m gonna put it together and use it during home room period).
I’m late, so I still need to get an excuse slip.

It’s really demeaning and awful.
God, why do I even bother with all this?

21.x.05
I’m a judge
On the first installment of the show
So You Think You’re a Filmmaker.
I slam one of the first films
because it shows a performance-art documentation
with a really bad dancer.
“You see, this is where we want to see a really good dancer,
but this is a bad dancer.”
I’m so badass.

In the cafe later,
I’m eating lunch with McKinnon.
A pretty oriental prostitute
takes his place in the booth
when he gets up to go somewhere,
and she nudges me,
and explains what she can do for me.
“Very effective nudging,
however, my wife is just across the room in another booth”.
Still, she sucks me a bit,
because oral sex is happening all around the cafe.
My dick starts to turn black,
and I panic.

But we have arrived at the hotel,
the whole band.
I’m rooming with SnarkyDood from 70s Show,
and a kid from Korea I try to locate, but can’t.
Snark & me go to the rabbi who’s handing out room keys,
and he also assigns us our Hebrew names.

McKinnon and I are on,
I’ll do drums & percussion,
he’ll play ‘cello,
and my electronic track will be in the background.
It’s all improv.

Prior to this, I ran into DogWood,
who remembered me from many years ago.
I have returned to iCity, and I’m teaching part time,
in Geography.
McK has already done this,
and last year taught a course on medieval torture devices
in the spookier chambers beneath the campus.
As always, he’s beaten me to the punch.

24.x.05
Finally finding the entrance to the store for the wine-tasting,
I join Jonathan
(v. 2.0 or later,
a composite of gay men and morgan freeman),
we sit at a table,
and try to find glasses for the wine.
I sneak out the very tiny exit
(the only acceptable reason to exit is to find wine glasses),
and bring back some dirty old pottery that might work.
J. has poured some wine already
(a little bit with milk in one glass,
to make the “bloody cow” or the “red cow”
—an hideous colloidal mixture
that produces funny animated cartoons
in the bottom of the glass),
and he lights a long, crude cigarette,
which is really opium.
I breathe it in without trying to breathe in too much.

25.x.05
Chicago—parking garage:
It’s round,
so you’re always going around blind corners.

I fantasize witnessing a murder or something I’m not sposta
as I round one of these bends,
and then I hafta turn around and run through
this labyrinthine maze
(which is uniformly painted tan.
And we are not in cars, either).

Also, there are escalators
where you must lean way, way back as you’re going down,
or else you’ll hit the ceiling.
Very narrow, treacherous.

Golf with The Teatard:
I play golf with The Teatard,
who’s always using the wrong club.
But he’s amusing in a young Mickey Rooney way.

Church Basement, Halloween and Shoes:
Explaining my situation to Mary P.
(who’s the Dallas concertmistress)
I run thru the tunnel fearlessly,
with my plastic jacko lantern,
depositing that on a chair in the school basement,
still running in circles,
picking up the pieces of yellow flip flop I’m wearing,
but as the number of shoes I pick up
multiply and morph into more elegant dutch-like shoes,
I become more confused.

Nevertheless,
I must get back.

27.x.05
There’s the halloween dance,
where semi scary dudes are dancing with young kids
that are actually young boys
dressed as girls
dressed as monsters.
One of the scary dudes
talks about scratchin’ near the crotch of his date.

I’m a little uncomfortable at the dance,
so I turn in early to my hotel,
which is the Nigerian Regional Hotel,
upstairs from The Omelet Factory,
just down the street from Bushnel’s.

28.x.05
It takes place in a victorian home in san fran,
we are on the run,
but hiding out there.
The dude with a gold bracelet arrives and asks us
—urges us—
to put on these cloth hoods and robes and hold out our hands
in a “stop” type of gesture.
If only we had done this,
because this would’ve disabled the ghost/monster/whatevers
from getting the upper hand.

But we hesitated— I hesitated —and so we had
a much harder battle with the ghostmonsters
(They were part monster/ghost and part gangster or criminal.
Nothing unusual).

Also, we were trying out dv cameras:
I had two set up,
and Steve B. just instantly proclaimed the one as the best,
while I was convinced the other one
was rendering b&w images much more beautifully.
I need to make a tape
of what’s in the camera’s memory to convince him.

31.x.05
First
there is a general dance
with the new visual objects
(styrofoam pieces that hold the current,
disposable media object
—each piece holds a different part of a movie or story or whatever,
and as you build things with the blocks
you build a complete narrative— hey, cool idea!).
There’s more to this,
but it’s lost.

Then,
there is the church,
and eventually,
the barking dog at the window comes in,
and I discover I can change it into a lighting instrument,
and a small electronic thing,
but not an electric guitar
(I can change the dog into these other shapes instantly,
but for the guitar,
I try to make it morph gradually,
and that’s why it doesn’t work).

6.xi.05
1. Matrix of 14 X 14 people,
standing, and on certain signals,
only one moves forward,
or to another space,
resulting in a different arrangement,
and maybe the arrangement causes something to happen,
maybe it doesn’t.
Anyway, nobody pays attention to this,
and they all move at once.
What a mess.

2. Some kind of chase sequence involving OMI
(oxymoron military intelligence).
But this was actually quite elaborate and compelling.

3. Showing dudes how my music synthesizer in my car works.
I have a mitsubishi sports car,
an ultra-Eclipse.
But then,
we watch the slightly overweight black woman
who’s a champion swimmer,
do a series of laps in the pool.
At the end of the show,
she shows how she can retrieve silver dollars
and an old metal door
from the bottom of the pool,
but I take back my quarter
(I am so cheap!)
that I dropped in the pool for her to get.

4. At the frat house,
we’re making blow-up dolls,
but leaving off the breasts since they will be added later.
I make one in the shape of the black swimmer woman,
of course without the breasts.

We also fill our plates with nachos,
I’m filling a white paper box with food,
and sit on the formidable concrete steps in front of the house.
The dude who was giving me trouble before
walks up to me from below and smears cat shit on my box.
“that’s what cats do!”, he sneers.
I push him back down the stairs,
but instead of maintaining balance,
he falls backwards and cracks his head on the concrete,
a dark, thick pool of blood emerges.
He’s ded.

Great,
now I need to explain that to the cops.
I am so toast.

27.iv.06
Pimpin’ Out The JK

OK, I admit it.
I was pimping out Mr. JK,
to a pretty plain looking dude for $30.
JK and dude went back to the room
(which had big windows on all sides
so nobody could watch),
and out of the closet came two heavily made-up fat women.
Not like obscenely fat, but good ‘n’ hefty fat.

So,
I guess everything went down,
and JK mentioned to me the fact that his seed had sprayed
on one of the windows.
I kept his $30, by the way.
I guess

I would be giving it back to him later,
but who knows?

KG Gets Help with His Mac

I see KG talking with
(I believe) Paul D. M. (AKA DJ S.).
PM has been helping KG
with some measure of software or hardware support.
KG seems genuinely grateful, and in good spirits.

I think he looks really good, for being ded.

People still drive around in pianos
like they are in a bumper-car rink at an amusement park,
which makes practicing more difficult.

Nevertheless,
I do get a chance to work on my little piece,
pages and pages of octave “e”s,
with an occasional resolution to F# in the inner voices,
right before the vocals and bells come in.
(sorta like Les Noces—Gawd, how derivative!).

11.v.06
LOOZER DYNAMICS® – 1

What follows is a testament to my obscurity.
In praise of obscurity.
If it weren’t for obscurity, you’d’ve accomplished nothing!
But wait, you haven’t accomplished anything anyway!
So all is OK.

Right now, I am railing against (and by railing against, I mean
singing-the-praises-of) all those things standing in the way
of what I perceive to be what I want.
Which is simply what I had, but then let go of.

So, what I had was a sense of belonging somewhere
and doing something meaningful
and having an actual title or position that meant something
at least to me.
Also, I had a measure of flexibility and lots of free time.
Fridays, to be more accurate. Fridays were the days I had
to do my work.
and now I don’t have any of that.

hmmm. what else. . .

I had friends and students and a larger community of artists
and teachers that I was part of.
I actually cared about my health, and I was engaged in the process
of diminishing my own obscurity.

So, long story short, I have none of that right now.
And I blame obscurity for this loss of mine, at least to a degree.
If I hadn’t been obscure, I might have continued the title, students,
community, health, meaning thing.
Or maybe not.
who knows?

You could still be the loozer you are, but you wouldn’t be
the crazy loozer singing on the train.
But now you are defining loozer
as one who is both an idiot and a genius.
Because if you were only a genius, you might still be
in not as good a place, but you’d at least have had a plan
for staying there until something better came along, instead of
just leaving (which makes you a loozer because it is something
an idiot would do, so you’re part idiot and part genius, therefore,
loozer.

If you were just an idiot, it would be no problem because you
wouldn’t be able to discern it as a problem.

So there it all is for now – you have characteristics of both
genius and idiot, therefore you are a loozer.
Welcome to the goddamn train station, Loozer!

12.v.06
LOOZER DYNAMICS®– 2

So, here’s the plan.

(first, remember there was
the cooking demonstration
where L.J. was preparin’
a fish dish

Tossing it from his bare hand
back to the hotskillet back and forth
several times before achieving
a perfect soufflé that possessed the
classic rounded shape,
retaining all the essential oils and
character of the dish, the fish.

OK, so here’s the plan:

1. spruce up your stuff
in its prettiest red dress.

2. put online, on amazon.

3. email campaign

4. at least you’d have
something to shop around.

5. Find out what that is, the thing
to shop around.
shop it around.

Later, you may have some other things
things to shop around, but for now,
you gotta shop around
whatcha got.
An’ that includes
your degrees and your past
OK?

There is never an excuse for
not trying.
There are always excuses for
not succeeding
But there aren’t excuses
for not trying (there’s a more
eloquent way of saying that,
and that’s been said
many many times before,
so don’t include it in
what you’re saying, just
refer to it when you gotta).

So maybe you should enter the
The virtual house or virtual room thing:
Build a house or room
virtually.
Make it something that’s
interesting to other people.
Make it something useful, — no, useless
No, perhaps you are
the useless one, within the house
the room.

You might be able to create something interesting
but I wouldn’t count on it.
There are some things easy to create in a virtual world:
cynicism, snarkiness, discontent.
Stuff like that, that doesn’t require
any programming skills.

The issue is always deception
The issue is always illusion
Concealing, illusion, revealing
Masks are easy to make with
a little makeup. Or a little
résumé enhancement, or not.
Sometimes what’s really real
is the biggest illusion.

The lies we tell ourselves
the stories about our pitiful existence
these are charming by-products of a
personal kind of illusion.

So many people with selfones
bluetooth headsets, it useta be
pagers before they became the
thing of choice for druggies
and then where replaced by
selfones.

All these people must have
so much to do, so many, many
people to talk to!

Lots of illusion maintenance there.
I don’t know, poocher, some people
makea lotta money from their illusions.
And you can’t argue that they gotta
big ugly truck to drive around
or a porsh.
And that’s a pretty substantial illusion.
Pretty effin’ powerful.

Now you come to the more interesting part
of the story: the part before the end of the trip
before you get off (the part before the end of your commute)
where/when you have nothing more to say, and
no further ideas, only some errant, destructive
residual desires, like for the lovely young things
riding on the train with you
to their vastly more interesting, passionate
lives.

During this not terribly interesting part of the trip
(made more interesting because you don’t have
anything interesting or original or profound to say)
almost neat things happen
and I’ll leave it to your imagination
—always a risky proposition—
to guess what those things are!

(This is where the vamp starts
and continues until everything
is done, decayed, washed away.
Just repetition until deth intervenes.
Or hot sexiness, drool drool!)

12.v.06
LOOZER DYNAMICS® – 3

Suppose for a moment you wanted something,
and then actually got it?
How kool would that be?

Or if you could wander backwards in time
in the time that was your little life
and actually do something right for a change?
or at least prescient. Prescient is way kool.

What would you do? I think there’s two schools of thought here:

One is the “lottery” approach. You’d save up winning numbers of
various lotteries so when you travelled back in time,
you could win.
That’s the general principle, but you could apply it to
the stock market, to love, and to a general reshaping of
your life so as to engineer being in the right place at
the right time, for whatever reason, for whatever gain.

But the other school of thought, when travelling back in time
(wait, there’s a third, which would be the various “Let’s
fuck with history scenarios” – murdering hitler’s parents
or something like that. Fucking with evolution if you go
back far enough. And this has all been explored in film,
So I won’t pursue it here.)

But the second school, would be, what would it be?
Maybe just doing ever-thing exactly the way it was
gonna turn out anyway, but being fully conscious of
the consequences. That would be
masochistic.

Maybe there are other second schools, too,
like re-working identity to the degree it
would be reworked if you had no internal censor
or no fear or no desire.
Or maybe you’d live it without certain advantages,
such as the benefit of having all limbs and appendages,
or of having no predilection to substances or porn or gambling.

All the possible second schools, plus all the possibilities of
funny or tragic characters thrust into these situations
has already been explored in “groundhog day”, so why even
pursue this line of reasoning further? Give up.

18.v.06 [11]
Visiting the mythical
shanghai or tokyo of my dreams
LJ says once you arrive there,
you take this awful shuttle
for 20 minutes to get to the city,
“going past fucking horrible
student apartment buildings,
one after another, for blocks
and blocks.”

We are waiting for the shuttle.
It rains intensely, briefly.

At the guest house,
I am engaged in erotic fantasies
and pleasuring myself.
But Sister S. interrupts, walking
into the room to get something (or someone?),
and leaves again—sneaky!

In the guest house,
I have much work to do, but I’m
distracted by a younger,
female robot version of myself,
in a yellow t-shirt, faded jeans.

She asks me about my work:“How do you do it?”

“Well,“ I tell her,
“You’ve got to be able to work
in spite of
 regular, daily
poisonings,
especially by those who love you most.

“You’ve got to be able to do the work
when you don’t want to,
and when you don’t have any money to do anything.
And, plus, you need to do this when you don’t have
any time to do it, either.
And you need to do it when you’re really very tired,
And especially, when you are dispassionate
about the whole idea of work.”

So, that’s what I tell her.
She tells me, “You know,
I know of a falafel stand—it’s down the street a ways,
and the guy there needs some help.
You should help him.”

Then, it turns out she has time
for some hanky-panky with me,
a near-total stranger.

At night in the mythical city,
lovers’ heads float in the air,
slightly above their bodies,
in the cool, damp,
faded blue night.
They will attach themselves soon enough,
but they don’t always attach
to the right body.

5.vi.06
Making your way to the mailbox,
you go through the car
(where the football game is playing,
on the TV screen on the windshield—
the one younger woman
is watching that and cheering
eventhough she doesn’t have the sound:
A fan.).
I go through the car and proceed to

the mailbox
(she’s ahead of me, though).
When I get there
(where she’s been,
and now she reseeds),
I need to fix it a bit,
since
apparently
someone’s driven by and banged it up.
I put the rest of the mail in there,
and take what is mine
(or ours, not knowing
which “our” we’re talking about).

Walking on The Place with the mail,
to The House, I encounter Nina
(from JSM (tv show from 90s)),
she asks me to help her

with some of her things,
bringing some stuff into the house,
in addition to the bag of unspecified coffee materials that’s been

soaking in the rain
(filters, artificial creamer, sugar, etc.).
She says, “Could you bring (list of things) in from my car
(but actually from the monkey garden).
The monkeys are friendly.”

I go through the monkey garden,
which is well-kept hedges with little pigeon holes
neatly carved into the hedges.
I’m figuring out

worse-case scenarios for the
names of the kinds of monkeys I’m about to meet :
spider monkey, grey spider silver-backed ghost monkey,
they all seem to have “spider” in them.

At first,
there are no monkeys, then,
they’re there,
but they’re all sleeping in the pigeonholes.
Except for the upright ape/gorilla/chimp that walks

by me without a word,
his cool grey eyes blankly staring ahead of him
But I’m busy talking to the monkeys,

trying to not look too timid or uncertain,
or trying not to look like a monkey myself.

10.vi.06
We are on the bustruck,
pulling up to the Willies,
and the three or four obnoxious kids get off.
They leave the bus, and as they do,
we comment on how obnoxious they were,
and how glad we’d be
if we never saw them again.
I say, “we probably never
will see them again.”

The bustruck lumbers around the street and makes the turn
toward main street.
As it does,
perspective shifts and I find myself watching all this,
from the 30-foot tower
that’s mounted on the top of the bustruck.
It’s a scary height.

We proceed (this is all Clare*, by the way), and after negotiating
the turn onto mainstreet (all traffic grinds to a halt), and a few
tricky power or phone lines, we make it down main to (I guess)
the brothelhouse of Rénè.

As we pull into the drive George Cookie
starts taking the bustruck apart.
He smokes heavily, and dismantles the machinery quickly
and thoroughly,
and all that’s left of the bustruck soon is its mechanical ribcage.
I don’t have
the heart to tell him we may need to reassemble the bustruck again,
soon.

Mommy in the other room complains
how George’s smoke is so cutting,
abrasive, caustic, rough.
Complain, complain.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––

* this part of the dreem
could be visualized pretty easily with Google Erth.

12.vi.06
After walking around IC,
especially the bakery
(an outgrowth of the bagel place)
and the bookstore,
and after the explosion in the bagel place
(or was it the bookstore?)
I run into bin Laden, which surprises me,
and he speaks to me in English,
which surprises me more.

He mentions how I knew about this beforehand,
both this explosion and the other one.
“What other one?” I ask,
and he’s mad now,
because apparently the other bomb
didn’t go off.

So, he walks away, and I’m in the pedestrian area,
and start telling a table of 3 or 4
women about my bin Laden encounter,
but very soon everybody is listening,
so I start over again: “Apparently,
I have the attention of you all.
A few minutes ago . . .”
and then I go into the whole osama story.
But I leave out the fact that I knew anything
about the other bombing, the alleged fact.
Nothing good can come of any of this.
Even if everybody
heeds my warning not to
go to the bagel place
on saturday,
and there is a bombing,
it makes me look like the bomber!

Visiting the small Shrine to Zeus,
which was gold, but
tiny, held in a way-scaled-down version of the acropolis.
We go through the building,
and wait on the steps at the other entrance,
by the road, waiting for our ride.

We wait forever.

19.vi.06
We are privileged to watch napoleon’s famous battle
“my first against a roman governor!” he says, over
a primitive version of a cell phone, to his wife
(or mistress—don’t know)

It’s also a famous battle because it’s the first one
where he used an early version of a machine gun
(like those Gatling guns on American westerns)
and it’s also the battle where, at a crucial moment,
He has arranged for thousands of bats to fly at
the opposing armies. Brilliant!

But DJ and I are semi-helplessly strapped to a
balloon/parasail, so we float above the scene
and the scene transits to the one where we see

The church of the Rails (That might be a decent
name for it), as it (and by the way, this is an
actual church, frame, foundation, and all,
that is built on a locomotive means via rail.
So when they hafta move the church,
they just drive it elsewhere. There’s plenty of
straw and a ‘Beware!’ or ‘Caution!’ placard
at the front of the church/train, so
I guess that helps.) . . .

. . . So we watch the train/church move
from, like, portland to eugene. And as
we’re floating above the church
as it is about to cross two suspension bridges
(trestles that are at 90 degrees to each-other),
a dollar bill floats down, evidently from
a collection plate. I think I grab it.

And also, it’s moving day, and K has a couple
of my shirts, neatly wadded up, he hands me them
as I’m going up the basement stairs, and he’s
going down.

Other K, too, parks his car in the rain around the back
and starts unloading stuff.
A lamp that has stuff
wrapped around the base.
Stuff like that. This is all
happening while it rains.

24.vi.06
Husband & wife artists in their rustic studio, lots of purring,
sleeping, dying, cats.
The wife just got invited to exhibit in the mozart-paris expo
She sculpts slender female faces
(like noir et blanc by manray),
faces grafted to things.

Some elegant acrostics float by
from a movie title that then means something else
I ask, “Do you know which movie first did that
with its titles?”
(of course, AlteredStates)
Necko accuses me of being grandiose
or for taking credit for it.
No, that’s not it, I say.

Necko and I are having some sort of affair.
But I’m also having a different kind of affair
(non-sexual, therefore extremely smoldering)
with Jane (of Jane and Tom, while Tom is off
fighting in Afghanistan), whose also rustic house
I can visit pretty easily. She’s with her kid, and
laments what we’re doing, recognizing the wrong of it,
and secretly confessing her desires by glances
and certain looks and inflections in how she says stuff.
All very predictable. Ho hum.

What isn’t predictable is that she’s made a song for me
and recorded it on the tiniest of cassette tapes and gives it to me
I consider it in my hand, and we walk past the old dog
the size of a bathtub
lying on his back
belly exposed to us
and one smooth, huge ball
saluting us as we pet him.

26.vi.06
Numbers
that encode
the behaviors
of Japanese girl gangs on subways.
They hit people and are very obnoxious.

The woman from India,
naked except for a top.
When she removes it,
we see her breasts are diseased
because they are bright lime green
(a 1970’s shade of chartreuse—
AntiEstablishMint). [12]

5.vii.06
It’s a usual workday
My boss, a tall, superconservative black man
with glasses
tries to convince me to do over some files
or whatever.
I persist, and get out of the extra
unnecessary work!
Yay for me!

There are others milling around
they all have tasks to do.
I’m drawn, of course, to the young
Needlessly beautiful
Flute-player. Curly hair,
luscious lips and moist eyes.
“Do you know where you’ll be
in the fall?” she asks.

I know she’s already
got something cool and exciting
lined up.
“No, I’m, um, waiting on
a couple of . . . ” I must’ve
trailed off, but at any rate
she gets it: I’m not really going
anywhere. She’s the mobile one.
With youth & beauty & all.

Regardless of these setbacks,
I spot the more-my-age policewoman.
Short-cropped blonde hair,
Weathered face, but not too bad,
Bending over to do something,
so I see what she still has to offer,
that is to say, her ass.
(wow, you can be so subtle!)
And as I walk back to the workpile,
she takes my arm,
and we sorta hit it off.

What happens next
is the really interesting
part, though.

7.vii.06
They always stop at this same gas station
just like me:

The girl band in the stretch-vw bug bus
in lavender and muted psychedelic tones.
The bus matron implores the girls
that they need to consider their weight
when selecting snacks.

At their gig, at the lesbo bar,
they sing in cowgirl outfits
and at the appointed moment
the lead says, “C’mon girls.
Let’s have some tiddies!”
(she really means, “Let’s all
show our nipples”, which all
the women do, because they all have
little openings on their bras and
shirts and blouses
that delicately reveal their nipples
like a vast sea of new, sneaky eyes.

But all this occurred after my sit down
with two student guys,
who wanted a quick review
of 19th century Expressionism vs. Romanticism.
I mention that Haydn may well have been
one of the most forward-looking of 19th C. dudes
at least in the vocabulary he uses
(harmonic vocabulary, especially in
those late piano sonatas,
like the one in Eb, right?).

(So I sit next to this zombie guy on the bus
and he’s typing in, like, Greek!)

After the tutorial
(and the one guy, the big dumb one,
wanted more of course)
I try to find a place to huddle
and hide in the park
—among the jungle-gyms—
from the approaching storm.

As we gather
(and I’m still not sure
if I’m exactly, you know, safe)
someone recalls
the shoe-car that was built
as a novelty float or whatever.
A red-pump car
That was elevated to
the bandstand/pavilion
in the center of the city square.
It must’ve been a truly
glorious event!

Then, the tornado hits and we all die.

12.vii.06
It was supposed to be a breakfast, that meal.
Obviously, it was a little more.

While there was much– too much, really— to
be eaten, even enjoyed,
there was the deep-fried turkey leg
that was all sinewy and viscous
and seemed to be partly alive.
I couldn’t eat that.
It seemed like a salamander’s head
with no eyes.

But the rest of the event was stunning!
Amid the occasional accidental defecations,
there was ample time for the guests to mingle
and get to know eachothers.
What else happened? hmmm. let’s see . . .

17.vii.06
The sun rises and sets over this dreem off columbia
and I couldn’t say which columbia,
but these facts remain:

– first, as a prelude to all this
and something that happened yesterday,
was the tasty new snack sensation,
oboe pie,
which was like a pizza pie,
but with a disassembled oboe
baked in.
I finally find the seminar room
with all the oboeists
who are disgruntled—
I give them the news
that their oboes
are being delivered
around town
as a tasty new
snack sensation.
Their grief is hard to contain.

– back to the columbia matter.
Did I mention, in the oboe pie episode,
that it took me forever to find the right room?
The building, the department
had grown immense and mazey
since I last visited.

– now, getting back to this Columbia,
The main preparation, the main event
was in the men’s locker room.
I go there to wash up, and I try to
contain myself and my “whee!” glee.
I try not to sing as the dour fat man in white
Rumbles past me, on his way to poop.

and finally, in the final analysis,
at the last reckoning, as my last account,
it seems there wasn’t much to the Columbia episode,
but at the time I sure thought there was
and the distance between these two realities
is enough reality for me right now.

18.vii.06 [13]
An epic that I thought I saw before
unfolds before my eyes, Matrix-like:
The gang of young, beautiful
protagonists is at it again.
They’re pushing the laws of physics
(daring them, actually)
by doing super crazy shit
like sending a 1934-D Jefferson nickel
(yeah, I know they started in ’38
that’s why it’s pretty crazy)
back in time twice, so it can land
both heads and tails
when it gets there.

This, and all the permutations
mapped to human bodies— desires,
emotions, jealousies, power-grabs—
are played out over the next
twenty minutes, it seems.

I don’t catch all of it,
but I recall going back to eTown
and wandering around a bookstore cafe
with a pool table (how convenient!).
The Wife spies a Pudgy Boy
and says to me, “why, look! It’s—
you know who it looks like!”
“Yes, but it’s not him, so leave him alone.”
I urge.

There are books to peruse,
but these wanderings, these
peregrinations accented by
hints of cedar-wood
and various lemon-scented furniture polishes
just return me to home.

Home is where the killer ghost-bird robots are.

19.vii.06
Stumbling around the millrace
I enter the main building and find
Jeff G. has completely sealed it waterproof
with this amazing new hi-tech caulking.
He shows me this on the windows and doorways
(The whole building is almost all below ground level
with just a few slender windows high on the walls
that provide a slight view of the grass).
So, we walk around, he explains some aspect of
contemporary security surveillance and how
necessary it all is, to not be free.

I’m required, requested, asked, forced
to put my photos on top of high piles of clothes
It’s very high.
So I do this.
I climb down, and talk with the two women, both
petite and ornately dressed, the buxomy one
throws her hand in front of me in a
“talk to the hand” gesture.
“I didn’t know you were Ocularian, too” she says,
and sure enough, there it is—an eye
in the middle of her open palm.

The remaining events involved people crashing
through the door, glass
crashing and breaking, but in a lyrical way,
and something outdoorsy unfolded.
Probably a pastoral orgy of some sort.

21.vii.06
Getting killed in Mali turns out to be not so bad.
I mean, it’s being shot by the crazy blind general dude
Who’s hunting you for sport, although he doesn’t know it’s you.
“You” don’t even enter the picture – he doesn’t know “you”.
And why didn’t my two compadres
shoot him first before he shoots me?
“We’re not going to take any easy shots”,
they all agreed, before all this.
The problem happened as I worked myself into a corner
behind some buildings, lying on the ground.
I throw a plastic pail or a piece of tupperware
(Mali is a pretty sophisticated place, after all)
to distract him away from me, it only points him right to me.

All this after the demonstration of the drone-robot-shooters
No bigger than a can of beans & franks,
but capable of spraying bullets randomly
through the many openings
on its cylindrical surface.
The general had dropped hundreds of these
above the threatening air troopers
cutting them to pieces
(the roboshooters can just hover in the air while they shoot).

So, this general dude, black lord of war
shoots me, grinning.

24.vii.06
OK, here’s the score
not a score, actually just a dreem
like every other dreem.
You can ignore all this up to a point.

So, the thing is that we’re playing a
Bach chorale prelude
probably from a cantata,
probably “ein feste burg”
and we have this swedish
conductor on the podium.

I’m in the wind section, as usual.

He asks the winds to stand.
“ossaemir! Ossaemir!” he implores.
(in the dreem, this means, “stand up!
Stand up!”— for Jesus? maybe—
the conductor is one of the leading
Progestant conductors.
He may be trying to
proseletyzse on the side.
Who knows?)

Anyway, Toby’s also in the
winds and he is appreciative of my
mention that we would be standing up.
for whatever reason.
We can’t always fathom
reasons people have
to do what they do.

(there may have been more,
but again, it’s been lost to the ages
by coffee, and routines,
and normalcy. the
three big imagination killers.)

25.vii.06
The story is about three young filmmakers
They each help eachother out on their films
they’re all in film school or whatever.

In the rather communal living situation
of one of the filmmakers,
I use the communal men’s room
with three open toilets in one area
One of the toilets doesn’t work
the one I do select is of a modified eastern design.

I need to squat above it, but there is also
a system of rubber rollers (like skateboard wheels)
and running water below the wheels.
Maybe you sit on the wheels?
Anyway, as I begin my descent
I look up to see through the glass floor
the six or seven women who also live there.
Watching another girl sleep (I guess she
might be ded.
Ded/asleep—who can tell?)
But they could be watching me, too,
in my white cotton oxford shirt (and that’s all).

Perhaps not.

So I get up, and continue on my journey.
Visiting one of the other filmmakers
who’s showing me her film.
“I’m good at offering a critique
or suggestions,” I say.
Always sucha helpful guy!

Her film shows the interior of a house,
we are moving toward the door, and see
a dude approach from the outside.
but we only see his torso and head
because the bottom half of the door
even though it’s glass
shows us only the empty sidewalk.

So this half-dude enters the house
and coaxes the little boy
to join him on what will surely be
a cross country saga/roadtrip
involving much pederasty—oh no!

Now, we are the film
(inspite of the third filmmaker
putting down the second one
or maybe me, by saying
“you know, he’s not the only one
who can tell you if your sound is off”
Maybe he says, ” . . .if your soul is off”).
In the dreem film, we are
driving a truck, a pickup,
trying to chase after the kid
and the evil half-dude.

But as we drive, there are lots and lots
of newspapers and magazine articles
in front of us, both on the road,
and in the truck’s cabin
that we must read or at least look at
before we can get past them.

We really are trying to save the boy, you know.
There’s just so much impeding our progress.

27.vii.06
Obviously, there’s not much to say about it.

The astro-turf covered streets
do nothing for traction for cars
Nonetheless, I had to get
on Murry street, which requires
a sharp left turn
up a huge, sloping hill.
We almost don’t make it
but at the last possible moment
I grab that astroturf
for all it’s worth
and with my catclaw-like hand
I’m able to make the hill
and the turn.

Old Woman next to me
(wife/mother)
is glad we didn’t slip back down
the hill to whatever disaster
awaited us there—anyway:

Amid a lively discussion
about housewares, kitchen utensils,
and such, the gathering crowd
turns amiable.

This helps the events
fade in my memory.
Thank goodness for that, at least.

Remember, the other night
you had it really made.
I mean, you had three
million dollars! And one million
of it was yours right now,
in small, neatly packed bundles.
There was also
a superabundance of ladies
drawn to the dough like bees/ants to honey.

You like to think
you’ve got it made
when really you’ve
only got it made
in these cranky dreems.

28.vii.06
We’re at the office with
Loozer Dude
And the girl he’s had his eyes on.
He takes her away from her work
For a moment.
She doesn’t have time for this.
What is this?

Dude’s down on one knee.
Is he doing what I think he’s doing?
“Will you marry me, (girl’s name)?”
He looks at her, waiting with
The sincerest of all eyes.
“What, are you crazy?
No, I won’t marry you!”
Dude’s confused,
heartbroken
So we leave.

(Here’s where all the
character-building
hero-making stuff
happens)

We arrive back at the office
He’s dirtier now,
A mess, actually
Having been through so much
(the entire third act, by my account)
Undaunted by all, he asks her, again, “Will you marry me?”
Co-worker Judy shoots me that “Here we go again” look
I adjust the pin on her lapel.
A semi-goofy look washes over the girl’s face
And she says “Yes!”

1.viii.06
I’m telling this to Octa
(short for Ach-Tung!)
in his hunter green volvo station wagon
but we’re both in the
passenger seat:

“Al Gore bought
the ethnic leadership
a few years ago,
now he needs
to hand it over
to younger leaders.”
That new leadership—
all shapes, sizes,
ages, ethnicities,
and genders—
march past on the
cool white stairs
in a very postmodern building.
Maybe even
post-postmodern.

So, I’m going over
all the possible ways
a short, stocky
latino guy
could break into our bedroom
and hold a knife to my throat,
and how I would anticipate this
seeing his shape emerge from
the shadows,
and how in the struggle
he would cut my hand or arm,
but I would bash him against the wall
where the wall sorta sticks out
in the bedroom.

You see, I’m a pretty big
burly guy, I’d have the other guy
on me, but I’d be walking around
and swinging him around
and into the wall.
repeatedly.

So he’s pretty much toast.

2.viii.06 [14]
So we are starting
with a realization
that we don’t have
anything further to say.

Nothing can be retrieved
from memory, or brief encounter
with images or people, places, events,
or anything dreemed.
Nothing strikes me
Nothing jogs a memory
nothing is goin’ down
in the mind, in the imagination,
or in the cold observer’s eye.
Nothing at all!
How amazing is that?
No sights or smells to catalogue,
no interesting people to
speculate about, to wonder
what their big secret is,
what goes on in their
hidden inner life, because
they don’t have a hidden, inner life
because you, now,
don’t have a hidden, inner life.
You must not, otherwise
you’d recognize their’s.

So what you have
is a resistance not only to change
but to the unexpected:
to the little ballerina at the top of the stairwell
to the pepsidog in the fridge
to the arab gunman in your room at night.

7.viii.06
There is great debate
among the non-profits
on the various elephant dung
recycling programs—
do they really return value
for the agencies?

Nevertheless, it can be argued
that one would certainly know
if an elephant was in the next room.
(possibly even the next building,
but this is a point I decide not to use
in my argument).

8.viii.06
It’s a road trip, of that much we can be sure.

It takes place in late january
Early february.
We’ve arrived in michigan
I’m guessing anNarbor,
and we see the frigid lake michigan
(so it’s not the real Ann Arbor)
from the thin slat windows
of the place we’re staying in.

In that place,
we meet the other students (mostly)
staying there.

There’s julie, there’s
another dude and girl,
and there’s The Straggler
Sort of out of place,
someone who belongs
in a gutter or a stoop
on a street of a major metropolitan city,
but instead, he’s here.
his hair is thinning, he’s balding,
but he has an Edward-Norton-esque
moustache and/or goatee
(It might be edward norton, for that matter)
“You can open the plastic bags on your own here”
he offers, testimony to surely how
really neat this place is.
“Oh, and you get Scotch here,
all you can drink!” and yes I can tell
he’s been taking full advantage
of this amenity.

“No thanks, maybe later.” I reply.

Kit has already gone to the kitchen,
Past the huge plastic sacks of popcorn
One of which is open.
Apparently, the bags are replenished also
on a regular basis.
In the kitchen, Kit helps Julie make the
snack of choice of the house:

Handfuls of popcorn
floating in Scotch
in a flat tupperware container
(the size and shape you’d use for
salad materials, for instance).

Again, I try to avoid the snack,
but hold a container of the vile mixture
in my hands anyway.

How all this relates
to John W. (and his further adventures)
remains unclear to this day!

10.viii.06
Ostensibly
it was a music competition–
a singing competition.

Ostensibly
the style was “soul”
but soul was in the context
of a medley of songs
in a similar style
(It didn’t really matter
what style you chose).

Now, my contribution
to all this
was a set called
“one can soul”
or “once charmed”
or “one claimed”
and the songs
all dealt with
the ocean of
menstrual blood
each woman creates
in a lifetime.

11.viii.06
And now,
for your enjoyment
a musical diversion:

From the 1930’s,
a performance by the great Ellington,
but he’s laid out like a corpse
(apparently a new style
of conducting a jazz band)
As we leisurely pan
over the time-tinted photo
of the band, ken-burns-style,
we focus on Frank Killty,
whose chart “Mechanical Man”
we are hearing in the background.

Frank, it turns out,
plays the “ta-bah-la”
(“notice how I throw
an extra syllable in there?” mugs the Duke).
At least that’s what he’s playing
in the photo, but he also plays
contrabassoon.
A pretty versatile guy.

So we hear his tune!
(sounds a lot like
that really popular one
everybody dances to.
You know the one
I’m talking about.)

12.viii.06
At the luncheon/banquet/vacation hotspot

Dude asks me if i’d take a picture of his family.
Actually, it’s his cute wife who asks
because Dude’s a dick.
He starts lecturing me
on aperture, f-stop, exposure.
“I’ll try my best to get a good picture”, I offer.
“Try??? You gotta do!”, says Dickdude, parroting Yoda, surely.
“You know what? You’re right, I can’t do this,
I’m sorry, goodbye children!”
I hand the camera back to the wife, and walk away.
Never felt better about leaving a situation
up in the air!

(what a dick!)

OK, after that,
I made it back to my lovely
voluptuous woman,
petite but with muchly
generous fleshings
and we engineer a bath together
with an abundance of touching, rubbing,
and (inevitably, I’m sure) sexing.
That was all quite nice!

Other events included
what—urban rock climbing?

No.

Mall perusing?
Maybe.

You don’t remember, do you?
No. I lost it.

Too bad. I bet it was neat.

14.viii.06
Just a few items:
Walking around the campus, everywhere
there’s an inch or two of water.
Eternally wet place.
I duck into the cavernous main building
and walk toward the inner elevators
I hear a gal entering after me,
or trying to enter, but I don’t help her.
I proceed to the elevator to take me
to my apartment, which is 1892
although I get on the one for 1918
so in order to go down a floor,
I take the internal stairs,
which are opulent
brass and teakwood
the enormous rails
about a foot and a half in diameter
and running,
counterintuitively parallel
with the stairsteps:
I’m able to slide down the length of the stairs
on these rails, again, not the most
unbumpy ride
At the bottom of the 18th floor (top?)
I am greeted by the chef or bakery manager
who briefly runs down for me
the specialties of the day.
I have arrived at my destination:
Pastryland!

15.viii.06
The time was ripe
for a Rube Goldberg-type of activity
my task is to direct the kiddies
on what I want to happen
and how
“So, we start on the left,
where we’ll have an accordian-unfolding
wood-made-out-of thingy
that expands and knocks over something here
and there are various balls
and holes—
intimate tunnels
—and wacky contraptions!
all servicing the greater good
of a thing that does something.”

And off they are!
I am in awe of their industry
and imagination
in realizing my dreem musheen.

And it’s done!
They demonstrate to me
it’s a larger-than-life
pinball machine.
At one point, a hand lifts a roll
of toilet paper from a hole beneath the floor.
“take it, take it!” I am asked.
I didn’t realize I was gonna be
part of the machine!
I hand the roll to another
or drop it in some funnel or something
and the machine continues!

There are points
when a ball misses its mark
and everyone groans
but it’s put back on track.
The whole thing
is a grand success! Hooray!

“OK, now
we hafta clean up
for the next class coming into the room”
and the process of returning the room to normal
proceeds. Chairs, desks
are put back in place.

* * * * *

Either before or after the machine adventure
I find myself in my room
my bedroom as a young girl
regarding the night sky
or thinking about monsters or dinosaurs
or birds or cameras
or achieving incredible reknown!

16.viii.06
Sometimes there is a rich and active populace
of quirky and unforgettable characters
set in a narrative of (at least) movie-of-the-week proportions.
Othertimes, there is only a sense of place
and the attendant smells, play of light,
and imprint of the seasons and weather.

The latter is what we had this time.
The season was winter, the weather,
clear or cloudy, but easily preserved
fresh snow.

There was a sense of comfort
because of a sister
present but not seen.

22.viii.06
Of course,

there’s no guarantee
that anything I give you here
will be of use
of value
treasured
cherished
enjoyed
or even offer
a momentary reprieve
a distraction
from the misery
pain, agony
and utter meaninglessness
of your pitiable life,
but nevertheless,
I shall proceed:

Whether it’s a party
or a wake or a prelude
to an execution
I cannot tell.
What I do see are shapes
Some might be tall, blonde women
of an athletic build
and some shapes might be
kitchen utensils
or things/devices
dealing with the manufacture
and/or the consumption
of cigars.

Also, I am excited
giddy, if you will,
over the prospect
of travel
or simply of transportation
from one place to another.

I know all these images
and recollections
may not deliver to you
the one-two knockout punch
of some amazing insight
some deft and elegant turn of phrase
some evocation of a deeper
language or experience,
but one must take what one can
and don’t worry about it, ok?

Really, honestly,
what is it you expect from me,
anyway?

23.viii.06
I seem to find myself, again,
entertaining the big mobster
this time with a homely, improvised
set of balloons tied to strings
tied to a stick.
I twirl it around and he’s amused.
I’m not even naked this time.

How I got here
was by stumbling into the taqueria
at the end of the street
that the young couple
(M and his wife J)
don’t go to on weekends
because they know
the gangsters meet there
and cook the books.

But I wander in anyway,
and the harder I try to extract myself
from the situation,
the deeper I get pulled in
(nobody would get it
if you made a reference to
br’er rabbit, so why even
mention it?
SopraNose or GawdFather, they’d get.).

This was all preceded
by a long and halcyon
parade of days
we call youth,
chasing around in muscle cars
drinking beer in secret with the boys
learning the mystery symbol language of sex,
and perhaps
if you’re lucky
wondering what it would be like
not to be
completely obscure.

26.viii.06
It’s true, all great buildings
someday decay and fall apart,
but this one was only being built
and already, it was crumbling.
Vast wall of concrete in ruin
and whoever was running the crane
with all those steel rods
just sorta let them fall to earth.

We decided (I decided)
we should get outta there—
I mean, the building was clearly
falling down, and we were pretty close to it
after all.
Down the broad avenues
then down the left side of the city
(from A-Ville the locale morphed
into eTown).
I thought I remembered how to get there.

When we did get there,
it was a kitchen to one of the larger
co-op housing places.
Big pots everywhere, on a bunch of stoves.
I had just extracted
the white segmented worm
from Kat or Dog, and meant to get rid of it
by throwing it away, or maybe boiling it
but first we needed to prevent the kitties or
puppies from sniffing and biting it,
which they were wont to do.

At some point during the evening,
Wife #1 was reminding me
of my first heart attack,
how I only missed a day of work
and now I semi-recall it
as a time when I just couldn’t
think or remember,
but I was conscious throughout,
and in my pajamas.

28.viii.06
Promising himself always to see
more of the world than is really out there
who is it that now
presents to you this speculation
on a fantasy about a dreem?
(Not a real dreem,
and not even a real fantasy. . . )

First, there is the inquiry
into a certain disappearance
or maybe murder!
The detective dude
questions the rich dude at his breakfast
in the breakfast room or patio
and the detective notices

One shiny bolt
quickly fastened to the stainless steel
(or maybe brushed aluminum)
floors.
It just glares out at him.
You know that’s what he’s gonna look into
but is it the clue that cracks the case?

Anyway, we get further information
about all these events
from the guest-whore on the TV show.
He is surely rambling on meaninglessly
about three certain rock singers
and a Dreem Kollektor
who is greater than or equal to
a kitty.

Our oracular friend
the guest-whore
spins tales with no effort
and in so doing
she effs up time itself!
To make right the situation
who should appear
but our Lord ‘n’ Savyer
Jesus B. Kryst, and his Merry Pranksters
Dressed in snappy metal uniforms
standing
in front of the fort
ready to pounce!

(The role of JK is played by Chuck Norris.)
(The role of the guest-whore is played by you!)

29.viii.06
Visiting the Sun Korporation
Employee Residence Towers,
we see your typical family
getting ready for another day.
Husband’s a little stressed—
“Where’s my jet pack?” he barks,
and with that, rises, flying around
the room at low altitude—this
without the jet pack.

“Oh, here it is honey!” offers the
longsuffering wifey wife.
He puts on the jets (they’re like
big red and white life-jacket vest-like tubes
but worn on the back) and off he goes,
after the obligatory peck on his wife’s cheek.

He flies straight up
through the skylights
built into the structure
for just that purpose.
This fly-way skyway
goes all the way to the top of the building
right past the penthouse window
belonging to this paranoid white rich guy
in a plum colored terrycloth robe
who looks out the window
and is often alarmed
at the rockets and people
that fly toward him.
There’s also a parallax trick
that makes it look, from rich guy’s POV
that the rockets are gonna hit the window.
but they never do.

So, back on the ground level,
JenA and I stroll toward the wall
of another nearby building
with an interesting rattan texture.
There are no markings to tell me
where the door is, but I find it anyway
and we enter this very upscale
chinese breakfast buffet.
We sit next to an old-boy network,
the one guy in his red and white pin-striped suit
and shortcropped white beard.
They’re talking about
precious metal futures
or coins of low mintage.
But all this is merely background
and curious, overheard remarks.
What occupies me more principally,
is my search for TOAST.
I find slices of milk-soaked wheat or rice bread
and I bring them back to the table
for us to roast.

(oh be-jesus fuck! did you do that?
You did that.)

30.viii.06
Always plenty of groovy times
when visiting the water-bird display,
which is a large, cold dark room
with a wall of plexiglass windows that looks out
on a better-lit segment of the room with three to four
feet of water in it, populated by birds.

They’re all water-birds,
with snaky heads that peek out of the water
and sometimes, they get out of the water entirely
and we see that they are actually ostriches
or emus—two ostriches (but with bright yellow
necks and heads, also seem to be covered with
confetti like a piñata) and one emu.

So, now, there are a number of birds that get up
and they’ve actually all become women
in their late fifties and sixties – some older
but all withered and standing about in
indelicate poses in mid-length skirts and blouses
and they all have pretty ugly glasses.

The indelicate poses include squatting, bending over,
presenting, and a sort of Charleston-inspired bending of the knees
highlighting the pubic region and below.
This bird-woman explains she does this
so we can all see her Cock.

(The double- and triple- entendres pile up
at an alarming rate)

I am invited to help them with their English
and I start with one rather subdued figure,
helping her tie her shoelaces, explaining how
one string goes over the other, etc.

But soon enough, I’m asked to help with
a much younger girl (they are no longer birds)
and the English I am to help her with
borders on literature.
We sit next to one another on some sort of bench
looking at the book.
She leans into my open jacket and inhales
I probably do the same. I’m only a man.

The lesson continues
(frustrating a Dante moment)
but I do accompany her to the barn
where she is staying.
I lift the ladder to the opening in the wall
where she can enter the hay-maough
and I say goodnight.

(we can all see where this is going,
and eagerly anticipate
future lessons!)

31.viii.06
The most enduring image
is also the most scatalogical:

I’m in the livingroom
watching TV from,
not the old reliable
Naugahyde recliner,
but from a stark, unadorned
porcelain toilet.

My defecation
during the commercial break
is noticed by George C.,
who just happens to have
made entrance into
the livingroom.
in his oshkosh over-alls
We both find this
or something he’s said,
extremely funny.

5.ix.06
Who knows what else happened—
And I’m sure there was plenty of cool action
and weird shit swirling around
some devastatingly interesting characters
in a virtually breathtaking landscape,
and that’s all well and good and whatever
and that’s all fine,
but the only fragment of memory
I was able to drag back with me
from the fuzzy, muddy deep
which is my dreemwerld
is the discussion
with scholars
of how certain important,
powerful, and likely, incendiary
Hebrew texts have been smuggled
across borders intent on keeping
new ideas in or out
by means of transcribing the Hebrew characters
or transforming them somehow
into music notation
They look pretty similar, anyway, right?

“Oh, sure, it’s happened before, alot”
mumbles one of the scholars.
I don’t know what to make of
anybody or anything anymore.

9.ix.06
There’s lots of missing detail here, and it’s not written poetically,
but here goes:

The photo shoot for incentive brochures,
comes rather late in the whole dreem.
Me and one other employee woman
are being photographed for the incentive brochure.

As the photographer, a woman in her late 40s,
fiddles with camera, placement of lights, and placement of
background (or maybe they’re our outfits?) black fabric,
she becomes dismayed that she’s not getting us happy
or excited enough.

“Maybe I should get you a different photographer”, she says,
in a sorta low-key, but maybe passive-aggressive way.

“No, no, no”, I assure her
(is that what she wanted in the first place?),
“you’re fine. You’re doing fine. It’s only an incentive

brochure. How “incented” do we need to look for that?
Let’s get on with it!”. She starts snapping the pictures.

* * * *

Reviewing SkotPee’s films I helped him with
not only reviewing them, but converting them to HD
while I’m at it.

Some of the films are overlapping in strange ways,

as a result (maybe improving them?),
so I’ll need to undo this and do it over.
But until then, I enjoy recalling the memories
of helping out on several shoots:

After the dolly shots of the modern kitchen
(all aluminum, stark whites, flat unadorned surfaces.
very Bauhaus),
there’s the epic human relationship drama.

The scenes post-coital
of the heavily tatooted girl
lying on her stomach and doing her nails,
feet dangling in the air, knees bent up
(do I need to draw a Fawh-King picture?)

As the LaTeenO dude lover
(I think he’s adjusting his tie
or pantomiming a tie that he’s adjusting,
facing himself in a mirror).

“now you are . . . my phaulck!” he tells her
with just a hint of non-assurance,
enough for her to pick up on and reply,

“Uh, ….uhm, No. No I am not your phaulck!”
Yes, they have just phaulcked,
but this is her way of breaking it off.

I watch a lot of little films:
from the wedding reception,
at the bookstore,
at the offices of Mike-Row-SoPht,
(which is not a film, but it’s now where we are)
where my pictures will be taken for an incentive brochure,
but right now a beautiful Awseeane-Merkan

girl frets about her husband
not getting his calendar to work right,
and I half jokingly say they should switch to Oh, Ess-Ex and the
calendar included with that.

Chase scene from the wedding reception to the streets:

Young priest needs to be instructed by gay guy
how to make two cuts in a white napkin
and fold it over twice and

put the ring on it
(he’s delivering the ring to the couple at the reception).
We notice VarnerBroz kartoonz are being
projected onto the wood wall of the reception basement.
a little distracting, maybe?

How this leads to the chase scene I’ll never tell.

Dood who will save the day
just got his stretch suv muscle car fixed,
so we’ll ride on that and meet the other cars coming
the other way.
(His car is both an achingly beautiful blue,
and completely covered in mud).

So we see the ambulance careening toward us,
in this very famous chase sequence that I’m enjoying
as I’m now part of it,
riding with musclecar dude
(who’s tinkering with the engine
as we drive or before we take off)
and it’s just a fast crane up from the hood
to reveal the ambulance.

After the ambulance,
we arrive at the also muddy open-ended trailer part of a semi,
that’s now stopped in the road.

In the muddy floors,
gradually the dogs or ferrets (plum ferrets)
gradually come to life and start wallowing around,
even though their tails or sometimes legs
had been wrapped with duct tape.
So I guess we’re all happy they’re ok.

Supermodel’s Edible Bookmarks
(This occurred before the chase, I guess):

While at the bookstore,
I see the new line of edible bookmarks
(really just like flatbread or thin wheat wafers)

Four to a set, various flavors.
Use them as bookmarks, then eat them when
you’re done with the book – neat idea!

And they’ve been promoted here
by this brunette supermodel
who has probably never read a book in her life
(at least that’s what we are imagining about her).
The four flavors are
green (beef),
yellow (something),
purple (something),
and fruity flavored.

The beef flavored one
has a picture of a cow saying,
“Well, I’m a ded cow, now!” on it,
as a cartoon text bubble.

10.ix06
Ode of Spoofy Durtboy

Ruled by Tantalus,
he got the greatest pleasure
out of not getting what he wants.

Ruled by Sisyphus
he enjoyed the fruition
of tasks that never came to fruition

Ruled by that other one
(that would be Ixion)
he jacked off, drank, wasted time
and didn’t care about the right way of doing things.
(and got his liver pecked away at, all the time)

11.ix.06
It’s all in the telling –
just the way you inflect it, deliver it.

So, I was in adolescent male land
with my buds, sitting at the end of the row
waiting for communion

(I haven’t been to church in decades,
so I guess this was a church service)
The tall, straight-laced guy next to me
(it’s the Aryan born-again scary guy
who works on nuclear regulations
and has complete faith in the system)
puts his hand on my shoulder as we rise
to sing a hymn.

I conveniently reach for a hymnal
to escape his grasp for a moment.
His hand returns soon enough, though.
All the guys start exiting the row –
why are they going? where?
It’s communion, stupid.
Are you going to communion?
No, you are not. This drama was originally played out –
when?

You do notice, however, that the Jewish girl
sitting a few yards away from you
is also not going anywhere,
so you take perhaps a little comfort
in that.

When the guys return,
there’s a general sense of good-natured
camaraderie.
Nick is explaining how he’s doing this fundraiser
in Kalifornia, while his wife
squeezes a few drops of spilled wine
from her napkin to her mouth.

Apparently, in Kalifornia,
if one sees the opportunity for free wine
one makes the most of it.
But nothing there is really free. [15]

13.ix.06
Honoring the ded in attendance
at the fancy awards banquet,
I sit next to Tom Theory, who’s been listing
the achievements of Marsha J.:
Performed under Previn, and Boulez
and Berio, (etc.)
“And don’t forget Foss!” I add,
having been there for that one.
A pretty festive bunch, these ded.

I make my way to the train platform
adjoining the banquet hall.
There are three or four video crews setting up:
modest one-man operations,
(plus) a much more involved several-person crew
with cool superdeep18K cameras that sport three flatscreen
25- or 37-inch monitors in a horizontal row
attached to the camera—neat!

This crew is from LaJolla
(and they pronounce that name with the hard, anglo J)
Their equipment came in large
refrigerator-sized stainless steel trunks
a very elaborate set-up.

They are shooting both the train station,
and then the little concert,
which featured music of extraordinary delight
(it must’ve been Stephan VolePay!)
And after the performance
during intermission
announced as “August 19”
Bobby H. takes me by the hand
up the steps toward the entrance to the hall
and tells me “There’s this baritone
I want you to meet.” which is good
because I’ve been looking for a baritone.

19.ix.06
I don’t remember much anymore
only that I walk in behind the alter
with Paster and the boys.
We sit on benches high enough in the air
that our feet don’t touch when we swing.
Paster criticizes my jeans & black shoes
Although he’s ok with the white shirt.

On the side street
(I think it’s) Nancy R. and I
peruse what’s in the little shops
I press the button in the clear-plexiglass dome
of the interactive display.
“click here and get a woman” the instructions read.
Nancy’s already done this.
I try it, and nothing happens.

Fiddling with the coin-sets,
I hear the nearby younger people
(students, I guess) say how much
they enjoy L. and how little
they like me, because I’m always
explaining things to them as music, and
they don’t appreciate that.

27.ix.06
The house of the ded
(and the dying)
is Victorian in its appointments
we visit the living room, the church balcony
and the swimming pool outside.

Living room: writing the incidental music
using paper 44″ in vertical dimension
Brother is there, helping out, or running the show
I’m surprised I knocked out the overture so quickly
but I need to go back to that percussion interlude.
The parents move slow and are silent
but taller than in life.

At the pool
Tami and Heather splash around
I dance on the edge, not getting in,
but admire its neat plastic sides and edges
and the contours of the
late summer afternoon
of this memory.

Short interlude at the StarBux—
I’m pulling shots, but when I steam milk
I’m also making foam rubber tubes come out
I make them into animals
or convince the customers
they’re more than just tubes
“oh, here’s a snake,
and here’s a bear that lost all four legs
and is very slender,
and here’s a horse that also lost three legs
no, four . . .”

Then, up to the balcony
and, amid hearing the story of the brave
oriental girl in a white blouse and black pants
who kills the cruel overlord
then vomits,
we have the beautiful mechanized gamelan,
a compact but elegant arrangement
of tam-tams and gongs,
which I tinker with, providing additional touches
to the music that backs the girl’s story.

And then it’s real people
playing stuff, and near the conductor,
little holes in the floor, which I can
play with the mallets he hands me,
some combo of “Kitty PopKorn”, “Take 5ive”, and some 60’s
tv sitcom themeshow.
My job, as always,
is to write it all down.

27.x.06
Dreem Spam Crazy. An interlude

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27.x.06
Dreem (through a) Spam KlosLee

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31.x.06
Sleepin’ with mom again,
we are both startled by such
a fierce wind – blows the curtains straight out
“I am in location: dreem
or dreem location” I tell myself.
We rush to save sister M, in the other room
and that’s all who’s home
except for the two cats.
We head down to cellar.
grey-orange-blue cat finds the cement
nice’n’scratchy – oh how suhWeet!

Later, in college days
on cheldon street
I tell him he needs to come more
often to watch various events I’m in
and in his way of acknowledging
my supernarcisism
or confessing it for me,
roommate M hands me a slim-line
version of the bible (you know, just
the passages you’d need to get
saved, like if you were in the trenches
with a dying soldier in WWI and had to
convert him, like Paster M useta tell us)
and a little leather satchel
with his name on it, but also
a picture of David B (as lord bob almighty)
with the caption – quote “Be truly creative!”

I am able to leave this unholy scene
by way of the blue ’75 chevy pickup
that, as I drive off the place,
becomes very high,
like 60 feet in the air. Higher than
any big truck then or forever!
(Bwa ha ha ha ha!) (no, no evil laugh)
I drive up the road, to past the bridge,
but stop before hitting the power lines
that go across the road,
Turning around, I discover the trucks
unique power-sweeping capacity
it’s able to cleen a street and
continue to rise!
But I am coming down, and the truck
evaporates as I walk along the road
and look at the roadside garage auction
of questionable art.

“You’re gonna sell this, and buy some
real, new art, right?” I ask the proprietor.
He only grins, hugely.
I continue to sweep dust from the art objects
(the whole truck is now just a hand-held
fetherduster).

[16]
And then I’m back in the late 70s,
trying to tell some dude what’s gonna happen
in the next thirty years or so.
He is, like, so not interested.
I forget, though, who will be
remembered from the disco era
for merging it with soul.
“Some black guy, or chick” I offer.
I am so pathetic sometimes!

But the video show is running,
it’s gwenstefani covering madonna’s
“I’m So Badly”—fun choreography,
everybody in big stripes.
opens with gwen leering at the camera,
lying before us, taunting us with
plastic stick-on vaginas she places
on her crotch, but not quite in the right spot.
(there’s at least two, by the way)
“You know what she and I have in common?”
she further invites us to consider
what she could possibly mean.

And finally, I stumble across campus
to The Joe Show, where he’s on stage
with his guitar, and I don’t really want
to sit through his performance, so
I make my way to the back of the small
auditorium, but this is tough
because I’m carrying the Tiger Bassoon,
which is a silver bari sax that turns into
an unfolded contra. Big suckah!
I exchange, or want to exchange,
damning invectives with the stern
black woman who’s apparently at
the top of the academic food chain,
and bring her down! (but I don’t, or can’t)
I wimper away.
Like I said, pathetic.

10.xi.06 (dreemlet)
Hangin’ out with the rising young stars
of some tech neatness
all athletic, beautiful men
horsin’ around with digital stuff and business plans
and of course they’re all multimulti millionaires
or whatever, maybe even billionaires
So they party, they drive white or red (but with a touch of Krishna’s Lavender Spray)
stretch Scion xB’s made of a new paper
hard and moldable like fiberglass.
They’re all fun, everything is fun.
Fun fun fun.
Money, too.
But where are all the girls?

13.xi.06 [17]
The trouble with the Munsters’ daughter
besides being goth and all,
she’s been apprehended
and despite the protests of, I guess, the arresting officer
the chief says, “Book her!”

All this takes place within a glassy arena
or in a nonet for winds and strings, as it’s being written.

Weird, huh?

14.xi.06
There are school fragments
I’ll be upfront with you about that
Of that there can be no mistake.
There were lotsa fragments from
various schools and universities
and institutes of learning and discovery
interiors, corners, windows,
architectural details, some shrubs
a sense of place—many places!

The basement:
Grissom explains to me silt, or sleet, or sladge
where you take sawdust and wood particles
and mix them with baby lotion
until you get a sorta oatmeal like paste
and you put that under the foundation of a house
when you’re building it.
It adds flexibility or whatever.

After hearing his explanation, we walk outside
Majestic plane flys overhead, to land
But—Oceat!
It sorta stutters, and stops askew in the sky
Then it falls to Erth, straight down
It lands on its side, but without crashing per se;
everybody’s safe, and they all run from the plane.
We wait for the explosion that never comes.

22.xi.06
So, there was the dreem from 10 years ago or
So.
Rich browns all around the people standing in the alley
or they might have been flat cardboard
people-placeholders.

That was one—they were just waiting.

The other one
collected the usual ingredients:
things happening in a place
to people.

Let’s be more specific:

It was Steve Martin’s house,
A cute, square, ranchy house
The same one he shot as the house
in his movie “The House”.
This house was covered in palm leaves.
It had a cartesian hot stream
surrounding it like a bubbling, boiling moat.
I guess that would be a good feature.
Messes with the driveway and car, tho.

We were gathered there
and the story gathered itself around
ex-wives and other urgent topics
during the dinner party.

That was the second one—or maybe
just the first one of the evening.

See? Not much happening in either.
But at least you had them,
or you occupied the same planet
as someone who did.
Woo-hoo!

29.xi.06 [18]
Mo-K, the two separate but equal events:

1) Hosting Ramadan for hundreds of Muslims on our farm in the middle of Iowa, in the middle of the ‘70s, in the middle of nowhere.

Trying to find a place in the shed to hide
if the shit hits the fan. They’re all dressed colorfully, tho!

2) A photo-shoot, where I’m documenting
Jackquline R. and
some dood, and I shoot lots of pix,
only to discover at the
end of the shoot
that I didn’t load the film.
At all.
It’s just bunched up in the take-up side of the camera.
So, I fix it,
and run after J and Dood
because they’re getting coffee
and can I tag along and maybe
catch a few more pix?
But the cool thing is
she has my check—more than $1,600,
which is pretty suh-Weeeet!

30.xi.06
In back of car—Dad driving.
“Left at stop” is announced by the robot-man
sitting in front passenger seat.
He does turn left, but we both
comment on the hardships and suffering
of turning left.

In the restaurant, “We all know who we are?”
I ask everybody. The three of us—me and the
two asian chicks—are spies, and we need to
get our stories and identities straight.
The one on the right—let’s call her LoosyLoo,
is approached by the Old Man’s Toy,
a plush, soft animal-shaped animal. tossed toward
her, on the floor.

She picks it up, says, “Oh, well, I don’t take these”
(from old men? from children? from tall invisible
ghost-cats that walk past behind you?)
and then she stuffs it in her jacket.
Then she walks over to the old man,
who’s now more like her age,
he’s sitting alone at another table,
and says, “You know, there was only
one woman who loved me more than
24 hours,” and there’s this flashback to
the man peering down at the woman—he’s in the
audience, she’s on some circus floor,
looking at him. Then back to the
cafe/diner/restaurant we flashed away from:
he reaches down to a duffle bag and opens it,
revealing an 8 X 10 glossy of the kid, a baby really,
their baby, I’m guessing.
Or whatever!

1.xii.06
Place blew up,
dude went back in time
and blew it up again, better.
Joncey had a piece played
Choked me up!
and all the trappings of wealth!

1.
It’s like the Court of Versailles, modern-day.
a resort, I guess, for the rich.
and we see the big, older, ware-housey part
explode like a messy, beautiful old barn,
and fall literally at the feet of the two
guys who are watching from their parked van
(it all comes down very cinematically,
in slo-motion).

But the snarky owner guy is not happy with the blast
and pulls us all back in time
so he can “do it right”, sticks bales of straw
neatly in the windows, and makes adjustments to
the interior.

We’re watching this from a distance,
the two hero-girls in the red convertible
escape from the blast at the last minute,
as we track past the wealthy
dipping themselves in the pool
“I can’t believe we’re paying sixpence a minute for this!”
says one.

Prior to the new blast, I’m also listening to a new piece
by Joncey—it’s brilliant!
and he’s choked up, thanking me, for my work,
even though that was 20 years ago,
and I’m wearing a dorky baseball cap.
I try to pass it off “Oh, come on, that was nothing . . .”
but I get all teary, too!

Then, the new explosion takes place,
and snarky guy is much more pleased with it –
it’s much more controlled, restrained, elegant.
and pretty much nobody was hurt. Whew!

8.xii.06
Hoo-boy!
Lots Going on, very little remembered
even less actually captured!

First, the portal or entrance to the dreem
was boxy, and bridged to waking life
with black, strong timbres, boxing in my bed
with the voice-over of urgent mexican soap operas
providing the dramatic structure of the transition.

Now, we’re in the real dreem.
It’s a lively place,
tall black drag queens parade around
take pictures of eachother, one of Whittaker
in the background, not bothering to fix his tie,
which loops out to touch his neck.

Where I sit, I can see glimpses of the rest of the loft.
maybe a little sunlight coming past plants behind me,
an open kitcheny area in front of me.
Martin bumbles past— “But I thot he was ded . . .”
Oh, it’s THAT kind of place . . .

But once seated, I have two matches before me
to light my cigs. One goes out, the other smolders,
gets bigger, morphs into a crackly sausage,
fried, and about to pop.
Waiter dude (host?) sez he’ll get me another one.
(another what?)

Young oriental gal brings me a book
big clunky, red—she thinks it’s a bible.
“Nah, it’s some Wagner operas, see?” I tell her.

Actually, a bunch of early and late romantics
and some obscure Russians
like “Turenov” or “Turenovoskaya”, which would
be not a dude but a chick.
I try to find my name in the list
of who checked this book
this collection of scores
out.

I’m not there, but so-and-who is,
and now I know where he got
his orchestration.

Time for food? Maybe.
It will be served on big square
High-Def plates, playing some Japanese
mashed up video art—
manga, anime, woodcuts, typography,
and Japanese weirdness, toys, etc.
I try to explain this to someone else
who’s eating, about to eat.
It’s Hokey! “So, Hok-ee, my frend!
You know, I wanted to say
how good it is you farm—
taking care of the land with your 5277,
(where’d I get that?)
and corn is up, now, right? I mean,
the price is up?”
I better tone it down, since
DoyYenz in the house, and he might
get a little pissed I ignore him,
and also since Hokee is not fond of the gays
and I might seem to be coming on to him.
Or not.

12.xii.06
Dr. Poochee is training home-grown terrorists.
so there’s lots of going in and out of cars,
and meeting in various places,
and moving boxes around.

Jethro rows Granny
(still kickin’!)
Across the river, but Ellie May warns,
“Look out—there’s a ‘gator after ya!”
Sure ’nuff, there is!

Watch out for the ass cops!

18.xii.06
Three main parts –

I’ll let you fill in the details.

1. Readings, various readings

2. Ping-pong anxiety

3. Afterlife as animated cartoon

We started in a room
With Bet-CF, I think, sitting nearby,
but I’m looking though the book
of books I’ve been reading
(handy service. Who does that?
Makes books like that, Amazon?).

What I’ve been reading lately
Has been interesting, no doubt,
But it’s not, like,
the next great book
that changes everything.
Not yet.

I wander (where else?)
Down the basement
And look for a moment at
what needs to be moved around
or cleaned or organized.
It’s all utterly hopeless!

So, I settle into a ping-pong game
with Dean T.
I’m assessing his strengths and
his strategy, looking for weaknesses
to exploit.
He has many.

While I’m the better player,
I still enjoy the game—the process
of giving and taking points.
Some things I control,
others I do not.

There’s the stuff about
the forms I hafta fill out
that commit me to a 10-year
membership at the church youth club:
Icky stuff I don’t want to involve myself in.

And it all condenses to the
cartoon version of all this:
The girl
drawn with the simplest of lines
says, “Now, you guys, watch this:
when I take the onion and squeeze it
with my hands, I start to perspire,
like this, see?”

Crudely drawn dots cover her body.

19.xii.06
Stuck in a college town
murder mystery
each time we turn around
another “connection” is killed.

7.i.07
“Because you’ve been a little depressed, lately,
and haven’t done much interesting new work, lately,
you are sentenced to hang”
—at least, that’s what I think I remember
that explains why I’m in this damp, dark
holding area with 6 or 8 other men
Queuing up in a u-shape, and I’m the last one.

As it starts to sink in I will no longer exist,
that my life will drop away as my body catches the rope,
so many thots flood in:
people I’ll never see again,
projects I’ll never finish,
just not having a body or consciousness.
This is all, uhm, pretty heavy.
“Well, you just gotta accept it . . .”
(some voice from somewhere
but not necessarily someone)

“Oh, and by the way,” says the prison official,
“you’ll be glad to know that each of your nooses
have been tested, and are all in top shape—here!”
He throws to each of us
Several gym socks,
Tied end to end
to make a noose.
Wow, I am so relieved.
The nooses will work—that’s just great!

I’m then given a sheet of clear vinyl
and a blunt, #2 pencil to write
the names, addresses, and phone numbers
of those who I want to notify
that I’ve been hung.
I remember the lawyer dude I emailed
once, months ago,
and Craig, and Doris who was my boss
at Moke, but that was all years ago,
and no addresses or contact info.
Oh, and I should write my wife’s name, too.
She’s probably wondering where I am,
since I said I’d be back hours ago,
and then she’ll get this note that I’m ded.
Boy, she’ll really be mad at me then!

10.i.07
It’s stickier and messier
Your hands are left gooey and red
when you play with this new play-dough
Like I am.

So gooey that I beg off
shaking hands with Craig
although I haven’t seen him in a while
and why is he here/why am I there
anyway?

But we walk into the gallery together,
it’s the end of the year show for all the students
and we look at the work.

“Say, why don’t you do
one of your own?” he asks.
I’m a little off guard, but ever
the spontaneous guy,
I improvise a performance work
“Man Under Sheet”, where
I am curled up in a ball, but on my knees
under a white sheet
(all the tables in the gallery
are covered with them)
whimpering.

Later, or maybe before,
I’m asked about the taping of this
and somehow the tapes can’t be
checked out of the library all as one
because they were checked in
as individual tapes.
That says a lot, don’t it?

24.i.07
Darkroom work is always tedious
Even when, like today, you’re pulling pix
Of the lovely Lindsey L. from trays of cool liquid,
A gig I’ll return to
after I put my tennys back on
in the lobby of Big U. Union
or Big Ritzy Hotel.

We drive to BukHed,
we drive to New StyroTown
where the clear plastic placeholder-buildings
announce mission statements and manifesti
of some commmercial concern
“which we hope is your concern, too!”

We park behind a red ‘vette,
one that’s beat up, a bit.
Ahead, an unholy DahjRahm
parks also, slowly, repeatedly
backing into the ‘vette.
I alert him with a look of alarm,
but he, being evil, just keeps bumpin’
and shoots me a “You’re next!” leer.

So, we continue driving.
(‘Vette owner has returned—
an attractive drag queen—
and she and the evil trucker
are about to go at it when
we pull away)
It’s me, Sis, Pa, and Pretty Yung Rich Dood*.

“I’m interviewing celebs
and writing articles about them
for Kondy Knast PubLiKashuns”
he’s telling me.
“I get $5k a week for a two-page story!”

But before “we continue driving”,
I blank out momentarily—
“What month is this? Oh yeah.
February or January. Damn.
That means I missed the deadline
to apply to study with
The Great Old Man, but wait,
all the Great Old Men are your age,
anyway, so what’s the big deal?
Damn—I got old. How did I get old?”

More Bumps.
Sis drives now, drives off the parking lot,
and over the curb. Bump.
We’re walking now, and
she walks off the building.
Bigger bump
(maybe a 10 or 12 foot drop),
but she dusts herself off
(why’s she wearing a white formal?)

We walk towards the little cafe
where *Pyrd’s burthday party’s at.
I try to sit close to him at the end
of the table, even though I don’t
know him all that well.
I just don’t want to get marginalized
by sitting far away, like Sis and Pa.

On my plate, I take potatoes.

Of course, I’ll always regret
singing to the strange woman
sitting at my right,
singing that commercial about
robot monster trucks—which I murder!
Knowing when to quit
is such a virtue, foreign to me.
Still, she’s gracious, offering
“Would you like some pea-bread?”

[19]

25.ii.07
What about the Garnish Guy?
I’m the Garnish Guy—I give you
bits of vegetables, toast, bacon, whatever—
to go with your drink.
I am the Garnish Guy.

Now, what about hanging out
in the garage,
looking at the dune of sand
across the street?
It’s enclosed with barbed wire,
a test plot owned by the government
or the military (same thing!) .
And now we see the shadow
taking form, indicating a barrel
dropped from the sky.
It lands and starts to spew
some smoky substance.
I get outta there—it could be
nerve gas, never gas
something to keep us from
looking deeper
into the sands.

So, and finally, walking around
the dune-boxes,
structures made of hardened sand
made into rounded pigeon-holes
one can climb on?
This, explained to me by the
Juliegurl, at least
until we spot the badger
coming our way.
We avoid it, and play tennis.
As I walk away,
and toward my obligations,
she asks, “Who are you?”

30.iii.07
But flying again,
discovering it’s easy to do,
flying around The Apartments on Dodge Street.

Peeking in on peoples’ rooms.
One woman curled up on the floor,
but I can’t see much.
I flail my arms, and I’m gone.

But now we watch the TV show,
the one that shows the petty lives of academics:
their dilemmas,
their lame stories
of rivalry and deception.
Male/female things, too.
One woman is sending
her mother in Elgin, Illinois
a package.
A gift.
So what?
Do we care about these people?

But back in the Hotel Room with MS
(of remafame)
I’m in the bed,
relishing, I guess,
this other dude in the room
trying to figure out who MS is.
“You’re in TV? Movies?”
M leads him on.
“I’m sure not!” I butt in.
That’s gotta look pretty pathetic.

But crawling behind the generators or spillways
of the hydropower plant
is the ancient blue-grey dragon
who is showing famous musicians
the finer points of financial management.
His many weary, damaged heads
shine silver in moonlight
filtered through dense, heavy air,
and the sad hydra lies on the shore
to die, I guess.
Maybe he’s just exhausted, like me.

But I’m always waking up.
It’s always 4:33.

7.iv.07
Going from show to show.
This one exhibit—brilliant stuff.
Five or six strips of mirrors placed
end to end,
strips not very wide
maybe 2 by 6 inches, at eye level
and going around an inside corner
“It told me something about myself”
said the woman (Mary P-esque)
who I saw this with.

(Well, of course it does.
It’s a bunch of freakin’ mirrors!)

In the hay field
about to get bailed
I walk around and
hear talk about the son
of the great designer, Mrs. SoSo.
How his latest work
“Blue Amorphos Anhydros”
Makes fun of, undermines,
Pecks away at
his mother’s landmark work.

I let the conversations pass by me.
In a corner of the field
I snuggle up with a book
or a blackberry—and hear or write
the new pop tune
“There are little blue lights
following you and me/
because what we do isn’t free”
and it’s all about digital artists
getting busted—seriously, physically—
for stealing stuff.
I’m sorry, appropriating.

The baggage I carry around
trying to get the right degree:
“Why don’t you just do what
you hafta do?”
sez Young Blade.

He shows me the latest annual book
I don’t expect
to find myself in it
and I don’t.

I tell Kate W. about my Florida trip.
She’s too distracted by her blackberry.
Am I gonna hafta get one of those?

27.iv.07
“I do like somebody shampooing my head, though . . .”
He wanted so hard to go through life
without being touched by any other human.
He caved.

Anyway, the caverns are offices
they are thinly covered in water
and seaweeds
but we drive over it all.
I let her drive, Barbara K.
(her again—what’s up with that?)

But we keep driving, mostly in circles.
This is a warm, orange-glowy place
for a cave.
Oranges, golds, and greens.
The car is green, by the way.
Dark green.

Does anything else happen?
No, just driving around the caverns/offices.
We may have gotten out a few times
just to walk around
in the shallow waters.

6.v.07
A SkyRon™ Purl of WizDum™

Scream Saver: that’s when, like,
these multi-dimensional aliens come down,
and grab somebody and bring them to their own universe
or dimension and return them after they’re done screaming
or crapping their pants or whatever, hence,
saving the abductee the embarrassment of screaming
or soiling herself,
in front of members of their own universe or dimension.
See, get it?

Usage in sentence: These aliens did a scream saver
with Jenna. That’s why she was so calm,
but visibly upset and that also explains
the odd blotches on her pants.

7.v.07
Viewing the maps
of The Undiscovered Territories
reveals that boundaries
are dribbled in blood
on the snow.

(This is especially true
of Regions 4 and 6.)

[20]

20.v.07
Only two scenes persist, remain:

One, we’ve just arrived
at some generic amerikan airport
we reserve a rental car,
and hey, it’s about $408, so
not so cheap this time.

But when I inspect the vehicle,
I notice it has only one tire!
The rest of the car is on blocks!
“What? Where are the other three
Fucking tires?” I ask the cashier-woman.
“Oh, well,” she demurs, “you
didn’t say you wanted all four
tires. That
will be extra.”
OK, so I’m a little annoyed.
My annoyance turns the tide
of those in line to also rent cars
and the mood turns ugly.
For this, I am gratified.

Two, BeeAych [21] is shaving me
with a weird
part-clothes-iron
part-rotary-blade
razor.
He leaves it to hover
on my face
at least twice,
just to show me
how it just stays there,
not harming, just buzzing.

Why are the ded
always freakin’ me out?
<>
22.v.07
You swim.
In this lake, there are dark pockets
of riptides, vortexes, and undercurrents
that grab you and spin you around
if you’re lucky.
The first time you are,
then the second time. . .

Well, the second time
you get propelled out of the water
or through the water,
onto a rail system
(maybe a kiddie train ride?)
where you’re in an open car.

It stops on the roadway
between church and school.
You find (and conceal from Ronnie)
neat stacks of silver dollars—
the old, big, heavy kind
they quit making in the 1920’s.

Finally, some payback
for all that pain!

27.v.07
Helicopter’s hovering right near
mom’s hospital room.
Might be scrapin’ the sides
of the room (a glass room)
with its rotors.

Now, the bad dude
is pulling out of the chopper,
pulling out his hi-powered rifle
and starts shooting people
on the streets below
from the relative safety
of mom’s room.

I think, maybe this
is a good time to slink away.
Others have done this
successfully, before me.

I make my way through
ornamental windows
and cavities
of this ship
Now the real fun begins.

2.vi.07
(found emailed to myself)

The Jeff of All Jeffs*
Pulls up to The Place in his lush minivan.
“I thought you should have this,
Since I’m not going to be able to help out.

With your piece.”

He hands me then
a battered alto sax case.
“This is too much!” so I think.

But when I open-up the case,
the sax is only just a jumble
of thin metal pipes with fingerholes,
A mouthpiece to it doth connect
Of saxophonic origin—weird instrument!

Weird, but compelling.

The piece he referred to
had at least 2 videos going on
one serene,
one a document of instrumentalists
rehearsing or performing something less serene.
Then you’d play along with this.
“Just like real life!”

So, the continuum of Jeffs
and the continuum of times
in my life when I met them
become blendy
and all becomes one.

Same old same old.
______________________
* composite of all the Jeffs I’ve known

18.vi.07
Not everyone knows
who they are
before it’s too late.

Quite literally the Girl Next Door,
DawNell, and I sit in the church pews
trying to figure out the mysterious
bar-b-que recipe.
All she has
is this device:
an interlocking set of
multiple measuring cups,
each partition
is intended for a particular ingredient:
chipolte, sulphuric acid, rocks.
The challenge is greater
than that of the rubric’s cube.
It is truly mind-blowing.

19.vi.07
This alien’s a set of slender, stainless steel tubes
in roughly a human form factor.
Nevertheless,
it snaps photos of us
in bed
with cold, sharp flashes.
Wife chases it off,
while I’m left whimpering.

But later I’m asked to help
the residents of
the seedy part of town
by Mr. Iachet
who determined I’d be right
for the job of “teacher”
by throwing a dart at a board with names.

The area is completely scaffolds
but they’re more polished,
modular, and plastic.
More colorful.

And in a move of great courage,
I throw in the trash
All my remotes.

22.vi.07
So, there was a watching
of the StyroTown video.
The new ending was disappointing:
watching images develop in a darkroom tray,
always a watery birth.

As we discover we can zoom in
closer and closer, magnifying even the smallest spex,
we find a small german village
of ants
and a stunning, majestic
bonsai tree
in two such spex.

But we need to follow our male tiger-cat
on his nightly outings
more carefully: this morning
he returns with caked blood
in a gridlike pattern
on his thigh.

15.vii.07
Multiples of One

Not much here except for the
three small dogs on two
remote-controlled flat-circular carts.
They are wheeled around by radio!
Oh, and the dogs have
catheters and straws attached
so they can drink and pee while being
remotely run.

16.vii.07
Synaptic Issues

Lots of stuff.
U-connect-the-dots:
Interior, school/house,
small cellophane packets.
additional: tracy or trina or whoever.
They pronounce the packets “(adjective)”.

So clear so long ago,
and now my back is sweaty!

Something with and about music or chemicals?
Maybe.
It’s a swamp, where Partner and Eye can buy
the big, poochy waterproof wading pants,
for $30 for both of us.
I pay in cash,
but Weezly Erik snatches my Cashier’s Cheque,
even though he couldn’t cash it without ID.

“You little creepy!” I snap. Snap!
at him, then pull out my switchblade,
opening it for dramatic effect.
Mock fight ensues,
nobody’s hurt or anything.
Very mock.
Like Mock Krab.
And beyond that,
I cannot say.

15.viii.07
End-Of-An-Era Free-For-All

Just a few items to add to your next PowderPoint™ deck:

•          Stomping on the millipedes:
Necessary, but not too elegant.

•          Those pesky loose teeth
you must take care
not to rearrange wrong.

•          BabbyScat:
Sitting on the couch, holding court.
Nobody dares offer funnier comments
on the TV we’re watching while he’s in charge.
I cover him with my coat,
since I know he must be chilly
(being ded and all),
but he’s testy right now, and throws the coat off.

But, really, what do I know about it? really.

•          Reality base: paper + pen + clipboard
+ printouts of google map + collections of people’s
phone numbers and contact info.
That would be my iFone, for now.

•          Document Lem, context for discovery:
In tanktop, you join the orchestra.
First choice of instrument: cabasa (or circular/cylindrical gourd w/beads.
Lem: “I wanted one of those once.
[Kid, not gourd.]”
•          In spite of being quite possibly
a scam
(a sham of immense proportion),
deth raynes down!
But, seriously!

Deception Werldz.

•         Two gals, dishin’.
one talks to other
about her impotent boyfriend (who sleeps
on a couch on the grassy hill above her)
and he mutters something about
his impotent boyfriend.
But I’m getting ready for some gala event:
in my dreary room, for whatever reason,
I hafta pee in the small
plastic
trash can in the room.
I fill it up!

•         Ernie wailing on sax
at a nightclub.
Just look at her go!
All that blonde hair
flying all over the place.
Man!

[22]

•         T attacks me
(in the machine shed)
for getting Daddy
to authorize her
South African citizenship.
Now, when this happens,
Poulenc (he’s the dad dude, maybe)
authorizes the auto-bird machine,
which dispenses several kinds
of cat litter.
It’s so neat ‘ n’ high tech!

[23]

•          “Where’s my frickin’ car??!!??”
Wandering about The Place,
the lawn, the front yard,
I can’t find it.
Cool car watchers
standing by their
neatly parked vehicles:
They are too cool,
arms folded.
They can’t help me.

I work my way through the Union
to find a way outside –
but arrive in the Teamster’s Kitchen,
again not much help,
just lotsa grey men
peeping at me
through small square glass windows
on the doors.

Someone points me outside,
but through the monolithic,
out-of-service doors.
Careful! One crashes beside me
as some guy and I
proceed outside,
past an interior room for smokers,
and we’re out.

Just a stroll by the river
before I realize
my car would have been moved
to the next stop.
So, I need to take the train there,
and then get my car,
paying extra for the car movers.
Such a fucked up system!

In light of the many unremitting changes
(physical, real, concrete, literal)
we need to frame the received dreem data accordingly:

•          Modes of transport, mass transport,
where you’re on the top deck,
going through tunnels.
Good idea to duck,
so you don’t loose
your head on the lights that fly by.

When you get off, you discover somebody
ripped off your laptop you left in your seat
when you went to attend to something else.
I’d never have seen that coming!

•          The House of Many Domestic Pets
Is being sold or privatized.
All the dogcats (they’re blended species)
are fed in the other house
while we (who are we?) salvage
furniture, equipment, etc.
from the house.
Antiques, old movie camera.
I walk through the house,
hoping to find something for my 503-c (?)
which I’ve just organized.

•          There is hot sexiness on the periphery!

•          And one more thot: to watch
a learning take place
can be a horrific experience!

•          Chaos in The Comedy-Pocalypse!

Thousands of grey beings
fleeing the city as it collapses!
Lucky for us,
we’ve made it off The Island
and onto the rural mainland.
I call after my Loved One,
to make sure she knows
the right direction: “BITCH!”

Now,
We are in this farmer’s kitchen.
I contemplate storing up
some water.
Like water would help against Zombies!
‘Cuz they’ll come, the Zombies.
It’s justa matterov Time.

There’s a flashback
to how I got here,
a hotel lobby
where the lovely idiot daughter
buys food for retailers.
Her mother is so unnecessarily cruel:
“Sometimes,
they have buyers for her.”
As if the daughter
couldn’t sell a tin of bing cherries
to a hungry person in bad clothes!
Really!!

So, I make my way
thru the checkout line/security line.
The hostess has found old money in my book
(I travel with a set of Klibans)
and it is $22.22, in two bills,
a $20 and a $2, but plus this was from 2002,
when I visited NewyOrk Last.

This has been
The Comedy-Pocalypse.

•          The One: “That gave ‘im $150K – I can’t smash.”

•          The Other: “Prettiest thing, price tag – shit – you know
you got time-aha-well, allright – take kare, mutha –
we need a think-truck.
A one-twenty-five. . . “

•         Clean place – white clean rooms,
elegant people and things!
Neat!

Any idea how you got there?

Or any idea what you’re doing there,
or who these people are?
Didn’t think so.
There’s the mother and daughter –
she’s in her 20s, the mother coaching her
on how to get ahead.
“And last night, I bedded Mr. Silk,
for just that purpose.
And look at the result!”

The daughter, however,
is not sold on the whole
sleeping-with-men-
to-get-what-you-want scene.

But this is an attic apartment.
Ceilings are angled to a peak
in the adjoining rooms.
At least three attics
I’ve lived in—sheesh!
<>
21.viii.07
“Keep the racket down Master Pickett” she says.
or I say.
“but say it in the cockney accent” she says.
I comply.
As I walk past he, stepping on the big towel
and slowly (that) disrobes her,
making my way to the stair.
The two girls are going over that monologue
that she has—filthy and completely disarming.
(all about her many sexual conquests
with the bright british lads)

(I’m now Master Pickett,
and “since class is so important to ‘im.”
she says, in cockney, ” ‘E just hands out money
to whoever he wants to feel higher-class than!”
That one got a really big laugh.)

Then, prior to this, I discover there’s been
some kind of earthquake.
Floors are off their foundations.
Can’t find my kat.

So we organize an odd collection
of folks that will be taking stuff to GoodWheel.
I’ll be driving the little cart.
I do that, but not too well,
dodging oncoming pedestrians
on the sidewalk,
dodging ominous white cars
(white dodge, what are they – Vipers?
Ramblers? that gangsta looking car)

Because I have my hat on,
it’s like the wild west!

28.viii.07
The hotel staff is always changing.
Luckily, the lovely girls I useta hang with,
part of the lounge band—are still around.
One, who adjusts her breasts
and powders them, plays piano.
the other, petite, of asiatic origin, sings.

We chat, then I hafta get back.

Back is confronting Mary F.,
who was inspecting my shiny silver dollar
in my collection of old coins.
“I just wanted to look at My Coins.”
She owns me!

(This is an erotically thrilling
supraPlatonic
and professionally emasculating
partnership.)

She’s written a new treatise
on the French or German reification
of Marx and Freud through Lacan
and a bunch of filthy epistemologists.
A bright, blonde guy,
one of my grad students, I guess,
is writing something similar for his thesis.

“But what she’s doing
is like really,
the only way to do it,
so what’s the point
of me doing my thing
my way?” he pleads.

I don’t have an answer for him.
Just a dopey look on my face.

Dopey!

3.ix.07
1. Journey

Journey starts in Manhattania, I guess.
The streets are mostly empty,
but the stores and shops are full
of gaudy, cheap-ass
shit.

I bypass the streets I think
will have the most useless junk
and head toward a better street
which also takes me to the interchange
so I can cross the street
and arrive in nuJersey,
after dodging the few cars
always present, always speeding.
The first building I come upon
is the book publishing building,
which is now where I work.
I introduce myself to the boss –
she’s meryl streep in “devil wears prada.”

I’ll be doing some kind of editing.
I meet (if you want to call it that)
the rest of the staff.
Women run everything,
but a few men are retained
to run databases and air conditioning.

And Brad Pitt works there, too.
First, I hafta take the “Brad Test”
which is a brochure I must fill out
Although really the Brad Test
is all about finding out if you’re
gay or straight.

After I fill out my personal info—
mother’s name and maiden name—
I print it out, only to discover
I had been using, like, 2-point type.

The women are making a big deal
over the tray of pastries that just arrived.
They introduce themselves to me.
There’s Annie, and Portul (as in Portul-Gal
why didn’t I think of that pun before?)
and Here, who says, “Sure made my life easier
When I took that name”.

There was one other, of course,
Shy, dark eyed, and gone.

2. Big Screen

At the community bar,
there’s lots of activity.
Pretty normal families, etc.
I’ve been watching
the big screen TV
(A bigger deal then
than it is now),
and there’s a place
you can put your 35mm slides
and see them on the screen!
I take out a few, and put them in the recess
on the main cabinet,
where the slides go.

I need to take a leak,
so I go into our house (nearby)
and the three dogs
have trashed the place.
Poop and pee everywhere.
I leave, as the doods
Dennis and Dorkbot
enter, and I see
they’ve packed
a thin couch
into my car
without putting the seats down.
Awkward!

But somehow
the Big Screen TV
gets set up in the house.
Spouse is excited
because it gets HBO
and is hoping to see
a recent movie.
But all the kids there
take priority, and the movie they choose
is a kiddie comedy
featuring Williams,
an ex-jock turned comedian,
and not very outstanding
in either profession.

7.ix.07
Jena of the Streets

It’s a mexican soap opera about a street-smart American girl!
Piles of twigs in your bedroom—they smolder, glow,
catch fire when you sharpen your pencil.
Putting the fire out by dribbling soapy water on it
from shallow, elegant, dirty dishes and plates.
Among the contraptions: the traffic-light changer,
but somebody steels it!
We all walked down to the lights to time them
when the theft must’ve occurred.
I watch everybody leaving, hope to see it
in the back of their pickups.
No such luck.

Hot Sexing with Oriental Girl
on the living room couch.
Clear away papers first.
It’s you and Scott P. again.
You’re taking the still photos,
the 35mm is doublecapped.
It’s another ho-hum party.
Unstructured, but decent food’n’snacks.
Semi-interesting people.
The shy woman from a faraway land
needs a word person to translate a children’s book.
I grab a bite of chocolate cookie or toffee, offer her a bit.
She pecks at it like a small bird.
(I’m not really a word person,
but I masquerade as one—how hard can it be?)

8.ix.07
Thirty years ago
you had high school friends
who thought they knew italian
for the then-current
curses.

They didn’t really.
This would have been
Iowa, rural Iowa,
Mostly rural Iowa
In the Nineteen-Seventies.

But oddly enough,
it comes to me
by way of distant,
hazy (as in a photographic darkroom)
memory (and accompanied
by the attendant
darkroom smells:
the acrid wiff of stop bath;
the more subtle,
sweet twang of developer;
the non-aroma of fixer,
although it was that
that stuck most to the fingers,
making them slippery
and giving one the uneasy feeling
that one’s fingerprints were being erased.)

So that in the resplendent theatre
or concert hall, or maybe just a lobby,
chubby but friendly friends gather
and discuss clever ways
to cannibalize the honored one.
“Oh, yes. We shall have to/must
peel back the skin,
then expose it to the flame,
to quickly, effectively
give it that crunchy, crackly
texture. But served with that
nice shiraz, you know!”

So.

And there is not much left to report.
They’ve all gone on to their jobs and families,
and soon enough to their graves.
But those photos endure, don’t they?
And still you don’t know what to do with them.
Maybe you put them in a book?
In a show?
On a website?
Maybe the stories
are still retrievable,
but only, again,
by exposing them to flame.

I don’t know.
There seems like a number of no-see-ums
are always around,
crawling over the work,
drawing attention to themselves rather than the work,
leaving trails of scrawls and splotches
where I smash them into the paper.

Heavens.
If you could settle down for a minute
And not be so distracted
by Italy, or alcohol, or obligation,
you might actually have something,
see something.
And what would that be?
Some delicate bug or flower?
Some story of ancient love, betrayal, murder?
Some neat car or pretty guy?
So many not terribly unusual things.
But enough to draw the attention of the homely bug
Away from the incandescent
filament, at least
for a few seconds.

I guess this wasn’t a dreem after all.
It was more of a rant, a plaintive call
from a long untouched oboe.
Whoa, dood! An oboe, man!
Man, what a frickin’ tough instrument to play!
What made you think you could?
What made you even try?
Whoa, dood—like everything else
in your life. You try the hard stuff.
No, the ridiculously hard stuff.
The almost impossible stuff!
So don’t be so disappointed
If you don’t always make it all work out.

The thunder is kinda nice.
It makes sense.
It’s like something familiar,
comforting, not that difficult to imagine.
Not hard to squeeze into a lifetime framework thingy,
even though the people change and smile,
and wear dorky shirts.

6.x.07 [24]
These initial attempts
to regain past glories
after such an hiatus
is necessarily brutal
awkward, sloppy.
a mess of garbled werdz/
possibilities of werdz.
but the alternative
is to leave nothing for no one
forever—whoo, that’s pretty
heavy, dude!

OK, so we’re in france,
looking as tourists look
at the great cathedrals,
touching the wise old structures,
peering up to see
where and how they lean a bit.
Inside one of them,
or inside the barn,
we watch poop being hurled
as the basic medieval weapon,
loaded into cross-bows.
We wait ‘til the coast is clear
before peeking around the corner.

I’m carrying one plank in one hand
as I work my way to the heifers,
and intend upward entry
to the hay maough (never quite sure
how to spell that . . . )
Dad points out I’ll need to put the plank down first.
Well, duh.
Little Feller,
my steer from 4H days
(which I never joined)
agrees with him.

Every cathedral is a barn,
and every barn a cathedral.
I miss that big old barn.

6.x.07
(guest dreem by DJ DuJour)

Guy controls the world
by turning people into light sockets!

So that kills them.
But then the guy falls in love with another guy,
and while the first guy is trying to decide
whether or not to turn the lover guy into a light socket,
there’s another woman, too.

So the guy cuts off arms and legs of guys
so they become worms.

And while he’s deciding about the other guy,
the woman comes in and before she can do anything,
he cuts his own throat with a saw.

And then we see the woman
driving off in an open convertible at night,
smoking.

8.x.07
No Prose Poems
or Whatever The Hell They Are Today

In my new opera
there’s lovely, prosaic music
suitable for a midwestern dysfunctional
family drama (mild)
followed by an onslaught of
dissonance and audio overload
to match the point when high atop the condo
the lovely baby of the lovely couple
falls over the railing
and begins its descent,
but the overall effect is stunning and
alarmingly beautiful.

So, the baby falls and falls
and somehow lands OK
on the beach
next to the randy grey couple
that has always wanted a child.
And of course they don’t know
what to do with it.

So that’s part of the opera.
Explaining this to my real-life
father and step mom
brings vacant stares. They live
in a single, spare room
with work-out equipment.
Looks like a self-storage place, maybe.

They are scheduled for a very misguided
round-the-world tour I bought for them
as a gift. I’m sending them
into the jaws of deth or hell, with that.
Why would I do such a thing?

[25]
My oldest sister
is now converting from making
ditsy handcrafted junk
to writing online stories of sex
and debasement.
They’re hot!

“I think it’s because,”
says one of my other sisters,
“of her new medication”.
The stories are endless variations of
old themes: seduction, desire,
sex, sex, sex.
I am stunned
at how much traffic
she’s getting!

Prior to all, all this,
I found some coin-books
and lifted the coins from them
But there are so many
just lying around
I feel bad taking more.
So, I put some back,
not knowing who I’m ripping off, probably
they could use the money
more than I.

10.x.07 [26]
The auto trip around Afrika was neat.
I didn’t realize they had roads.
Landmarks or some kind of mark
were left on the central tree.
We stay with a poor family (hello?),
don’t know where the youngest kid sleeps,
but they are hospitable.

In the middle of the night,
curled up with Sherz,
she reminds me that
the last place I lived that was “homey”
was on North Avenue.
(That was a long time ago,
and I’ve lived in fifteen places since.)

There is a commotion
as Bones fights the boyfrend
of the gurl Bones is in luv with.
They, all three, break through
many glass doors, lots of shards
everywhere,
not so much blood as you’d expect.
But many big jagged spikes of glass.

Some other gurl
in blue genes
poses for me,
a grapefruit-sized
involusion? indention? absence?
in her crotch,
but so very ladylike!

11.x.07
Two places
lots of people, milling about
in both.

One is a party of sorts,
low key, not much going on
no food or drink comes to mind,
but the kids are all playing instruments
and a string quartet plays selections
from new world symphony,
the “going home” part, especially.
I am about to join them
but my violin’s strings crumble its bridge
and it collapses through the violin top.
I put it back in its case and wander on.

The other place
is an art supply/sex supply store
where many winding paths
through the merchandise
lead me past tvs, microwaves,
paints, frames, brushes,
whips, dildoes, leather accessories
as well as store staff
eager to demonstrate
everything.

Between the two,
a corridor to the past,
where Jenni sits with a grad student.
The student guy pulls out a picture:
looks like currier and ives, but in full color,
a pretty good specimen,
Jenni starts naming all the geographic features
“this is saratoga springs, this is mount so-and-so,
this is whatever hill, this is whatever river . . . I lived
in that valley for five years.”
It is an impressive display.

I manage to squeeze in
a question on technique or originality.
He says, “You’ll come up with one thing
that’s maybe interesting.
You’ll use it
a million times!”

13.x.07

1. Riding Shotgun with the Relics

It’s a stagecoach
and inside there’s a little golden box
inside the box is a piece of god:
or an ear, a nose, a tongue,
an internal organ, of some
saint or holy being.

I’m not really sure
what’s in the box.
We aren’t told.
But my job
is to guard it, and deliver it safely.
My first blunder
is to break the key
in the door of the coach,
but it locks anyway,
so I continue driving.

Along the way,
Mary MagdaLénè
and Virgin Mary and Mary Mae
appears inside the coach,
in the flesh,
dressed all in black
and curled up, fetal-styled
around the box.
Now, that’s devotion.
(I guess . . . )

I drive the coach
thru Deth Valley
and other scenic spots.
This is my job.

2. The Listening Room

It’s the Twins’ room
where the big green
stereo box is, that is where
we play records.
I am flipping through them
as my brother pulls out one,
starts to play it.
It’s “Samuel”, an oratorio
from the streets of Amerika,
featuring a spokesperson
from the streets, someone like
Samuel Jackson
Or Henry Rolands (Rawlings? Rolings?)

I’m flipping through albums
and there’s The Who
and The Flintstones
and The New Yorker
(which is an empty
maroon velvet
vertical-format accordion fold
brochure-holder,
empty except for the
black baton, so you can conduct along,
and two or three cartoons
—New Yorker style, naturally.)
addressing various operas
in Wagner’s Ring cycle.

My brother is fiddling with the dials
in order to hear some of the voices
more clearly. It’s because
the sound is only working in
one channel, and some of the voices
are coming out of the other.
“Adjust this one”, I offer.
It’s the stereo balance,
and it helps a little.

2b. The Music School

I’m at the new Music School
I’ll be working at.
But many of the students here
are rude.
They push and shove their way
through the doors.
See what I mean?
Just rude.

Inside the lobby, though,
everything is made up
like a little Italian bistro:
nice tables, tablecloths,
place settings.
What time is it?
Do I say “Bon Giorno”
or “Bona sera”?

[27]

14.x.07
Another encounter with Sherz:
Again, she wants a “no-touch” approach.
Again, I follow her wishes.
But at the Moke plant,
I move shopping carts around
and collect garbage
all in my ill-fitting suit.

Afterwards, at the cafeteria
I take my seat behind a detached couple
The woman looks at me
and does extremely weird, cartoony things
with her one eye.

There’s also a visit to Russia
and I take video of the Moscow version
of Times Square‚
lots of activity,
lots of commerce,
bright people in many colors
a delight for the eyes.
When I stop my camera,
it has suddenly snowed
and 8-10 inches blanket everything,
everyone. That was quick!

25.x.07
I’m using that contraption to fly again,
this time, pretty high.
30 or 40 feet in the air,
near the huge industrial building,
high enough that it would hurt
if the machine suddenly stopped working
and I fell.
(“Hurt” as in, “I would die”)
But it seems to be working fine,
and I only loose one shoe atop the industrial roof.
Maneuvering around to get it,
I need to confront the other members of the team
on the stairs.
We discuss next week’s big game—what else?
But I get easily bored by everybody
so I grab a seat on the train
—a roller coaster ride, really—
across scenic OrGun.
Hang on tight!
It’s a pretty bumpy ride.

* * * * * *

With several dancers in everyday clothes
(and one older dude who doesn’t look like a dancer at all),
the Muslim girl is practicing her dance moves
in the hallway, where we are trying to get work done.
“Didn’t we set up a place where she can practice?”
I ask. I lead them all into the larger room
and offer to move some of the folding tables.

* * * * * *

The entrance to our place is complicated
with many inter-built porches, screen doors,
and much sliding glass.
Inside, the refrigerator holds my breakfast
Identical to yesterday’s breakfast.
I shower, and as I do
I imagine the shower-booth riddled
with bullets from the home intruders.
I curl up into a fetal position
and let the water fall on me a while.

There’s a photo of their photos
framed, hanging on the wall
and standing on the tops of counters and drawers.
I examine the many pictures of Jesus
Strewn among the family snapshots.
There’s also a Jesus punching bag.
Hit it, it tips over, then slowly rights itself.
Like it,
I have a “returning gimmick” and a flat hed.

30.x.07
Your fantasy world
is one carved into a single
vast deep excavation
and the city is built
into the walls,
like the Mesa, or is it the pueblos?
Everybody in the city
is about six inches tall.
When you leave the city,
you’re normal height,
so are they.
In the city, you’re a giant,
so you sorta avoid it.
But outside the city
you help them clean up
the ruins left by your culture
since it is now lost:
miles and miles of
railroadcars
just sitting there
rusting, not moving
stacked four high.
You show the little city people
how to start tipping them over
using a simple lever.
Tip one over, they all go.
They fall off their trestles
Leaving at least the area they were
a little less cluttered.
We’re not thinking
about the mess they make
on the ground below.
Not even going to think about that.

But the city
has fantasy characters
and animals
and forms of transportation,
and elegant, mechanical
ways you can die.

9.xi.07
M brings back to the apartment
his girlfriend and her girlfriend
“and I thought we could have some 3-on-1 sex”
he says, implying that the “1” is him.
This makes me a little uncomfortable.

In the co-ed prison showers
the new young black midget woman
is showering, and the also naked
tall, black guard touches her
with his baton, which is off-white, smooth,
rounded.
She returns the touching, her tiny hands
assessing his massive, powerful, yet gentle
(at least now)
hands.
As she turns toward him
to (we always make these assumptions)
attend to his other baton
with her hands and mouth,
it retracts into his body
almost mechanically.
(“oh well, there’ll be other times” is the unspoken
subtext, caught in the shower room steam)

Back out doors
we wait for busses.
but the makeup of the “we” has changed.

10.xi.07
People, Places, Things

There’s the studio,
which is down’n’artsy
I’ve been waiting for Betty L. to return.
She does, I make it look like
I’ve been working all this time,
standing in front of the music stand
as she enters the nearly dark room.
The alterego she travels with
is pretty hot, in a tight shiny green dress.

But we need to resolve
where the ghostdogs are,
there’s been several peeps that have died here.

And we are also at the control center
trying to cleverly out-maneuver the bad techies
who are trying to take over.

My friend LynnLisa
(of shortcropped hair and swing choir demeanor)
has also been tracking them down.
(We promise each other we will soon screw
—all with a brief glance!)
She has become intertwined with the bad machine,
but she can morph and take it over and make it good.
Yay! The good guys win!

2.i.08
We have cloned copies of our cats.
Ten each, of two cats.
I carry around a couple of the lion-kitties
in order to tell which one is the real one.
I guess the clones evaporate over time.

In the bedroom,
Rob C. has returned
from The Amy Glump Summer Camp For Boys.
Amy Glump is a celebrity
from one of those weight-loss reality shows,
and she runs this summer camp for boys.
The boys are probably in their 20s,
so it’s not really for kids, I’m guessing.
She has a spigot or faucet
duct-taped to her crotch.
She’s wearing a white 2-piece bikini
which breathtakingly displays all her cellulite for us.
She also has some military accouterments:
medals, those shoulder-thingys, a smart and tight helmet,
and a riding crop (but not too S’n’M-y).

11.i.08
Lacking the substantial resources to change
Baffetted–(don’t you mean buffetted?
Battered? Bumped? Banged?)–around
by various piddly addictions and time-wasters.
not finding—seeing—seeing/finding—a way through this passage.
and by passage you mean “20 or 30
or even 40 and possibly more—dear godimaginethat” years of living.
and by living,
you mean existence by a means and in a manner
whereby the current situation is typical
(although really bad things can still happen, and very likely will).
Meaning, it can be done,
but if the current year or so is repeated x number of times,
what will give out first, what will undo you, what will, well,
kill you?
Because, ultimately, life is toxic.

OK, recovering from that a bit.
And then we go on.

Just fiddling around with my new sleek laptop—all in black,
very very thin
About as thin as, thinner than, a selfone.
I should go over to the women standing away a bit.
But I don’t.

There’s a rerun of The Office on the tube.
It’s the one where Jim is supposed to meet Michael
And have office sex with him.
Jim has on his new blue-rimmed glasses
for just this occasion.

The remainder of this dreem involves much flying,
spinning, propelling motion,
reversals of fortune,
and a cast of thousands.
And lots of hot steamy love scenes.
So, like, similar to an ordinary life.
But with more exotic fruits.

14.i.08
Walking toward the dining room
with the dirty-blond-haired
Evil Woman
(and she’s probably not evil at all)
I mention I have that same addiction
examined in that comedy ice-skating film.
She looks at me knowingly—
She, too, is a sex addict.
We walk.

Evil woman
Talks to me in the cafeteria
Her associates are a few booths away
but she acknowledges them.
“We’d like to have you do this job in Rome.”
she says, and she outlines the scheme.
“Well, yes I’d like to go back to Rome,”
I spit out bits of dessert with my pitiful excuses,
“but this just seems . . . wrong”
Maybe I don’t say exactly that,
but I’m trying to make up
a reason I can’t be part of the plot.
I leave and join a throng of people
meandering past in the dirt streets
of this old West/small town early 20th C.

We wander through all sorts of streets and paths
Sometimes, it’s raining, sometimes not.
We adjust our strides and walking-styles accordingly
When raining, we watch for and avoid
puddles.

As the crowd filters through the route
and people shift positions in the crowd,
one emerges that I seem to be
jockeying for position with—the Teen Rebel Girl.
As we climb stairs, some of the fatter folk
slow down or step to the side
So we slip past them.
We notice eachother
and take measure
of the relative strength
of the other’s character or whatever.
We may even exchange a few words.

“You’re in High-School, right?”
(I know this because I’m semi-creepy and have
googled her)
“17, right? Just the age
of my target audience/ my target demographic
for my RPG!”*
*(maybe I mean, “ARG”)
“For real?” she asks as she drives away.
“I’ll send you a starter kit”, I add, and
I have no doubt I will.
Doesn’t make me a less creepy-
or dirty-old-man.
I know she’ll end up loitering near
the General Store, but for now
she’s driving off in her el camino.

I continue my journey a few more yards
through the rain, with my paper plate of food
and my one book.
Where did my other book go?
Did I leave it somewhere?
It was a New New Groves/Grout,
covering everything including the digital era.
I sit down with the two other doods
to assess the situation:
my plate is full of a lot of pork, meat, some potatoes.
I pick at everything.

* * * * *

Evil Woman (now played by A. Bening)
puts on her Sunday best
and walks off to talk with Teenage Rebel Girl
Explaining to her the benefits she’d get
by following her.
“Well, isn’t it time we got started?”
She adjusts her hat.
“Attent-hut!” and some marchy music starts up.
World War Won veteran joins them
The three of them
march off
toward the military church sobriety meeting.

30.i.08
Something Military

But the main thing
was those pesky coins
that are mine, but the dood running the newspaper
and magazine stand—
he’s selling them.

I want to take them back,
but I think better of it.
Also, some old LP box sets
like operas or the six Bach sonatas and partitas
for solo violin
present themselves.
Maybe I can cut up the coin sets
and put them in the LP boxes?
So much planning over
so little.

Other sheets of images cover me,
fall over me
like cinema-clothes,
(yeah, clothes that displays some recent cinema.
I guess it doesn’t need to be recent)
Anyway, that shawl’s over me
and I clasp it around my neck
like a cape.
(See, all these things will be lost
during the next revolution,
war, sea-change.
That’s too bad.
The kiddies would’ve enjoyed cinema clothes.)

What else?
Is there anything else?

Something—someone Military, perhaps?

10.iii.08 [28]
Briefly, we see the lush meadows,
pastures, very bucolic,
before the screen skews to reveal
that it’s just a painted backdrop in a dark TV sound stage.
(But it is very well painted—so realistic!)
Anyway, pan right
In the dark studio, in a pool of soft light,
Lounges in a barca-lounger
Barak Obama, in a lovely lavender evening dress
He’s distressed, holding his martini, and asking about:
“Where is Oprah? Where is she??”
Pulling back, slightly,
we see silhouettes of two producers or assistants,
replete with headsets, microphones, clipboards:
“Are you gonna tell him? I’m not gonna tell him”, says one.
“Are you kidding? I’m not going to tell him”, says the other.
It’s evident that Obama has completely forgotten
that he ate Oprah. [29]

20.iii.08
Returning to what used to be home
(to the place you called “home”)
is always tricky difficult.

So, I’m back,
and everybody ignores me.
This is a mall
or an atrium inside a corporate-y building
and I look out the windows
and see the town.
DarLene slips past me
into the elevator,
“Hey, maybe we could get
a cup of coffee or whatever”.
My voice trails off as the doors close,
and her reply, “Oh, maybe some other time,”
also fades away.

This is the point
where some amazing insight
is revealed.
I’ll forego that today.
Today, it’s just that nobody likes you.
Boo hoo.

6.iv.08
Well, I’m on campus.
Looks like a campus,
don’t know which campus.
I must teach here.
Wandering around the quad,
and there’s one of my sculpture students
(Ari S.) pushing her project from last term
to her dorm
Where is she ever going to put those?
Assemblages of pipes and stuff,
and a large mirror
all on wheels, and sorta modular
like a train, with different cars
that she can pull around with her.

Behind me crashes
the one with the mirror
into the building next to me,
Glass flying everywhere,
and it comes to rest
after going through this glass door.
(She had left it on a hill,
it rolled down the hill).
I want to cheer her up, but
maybe I really don’t want to.
Yeah, that’s more like it.
I hope somebody gives her
a hand with cleaning up
all that – it’s just not me.

I wander back to the sound stage
where they’re shooting
this week’s episode of “mule”
the fantastic gameshow
where contestants try to carry something
across the border,
by whatever means they can.

I’m given a tour of the studio
by my lovely former student D.
She’s now a production assistant,
although she was once
actually on the show—
the greatest achievement
of anyone in her humble family.

She shows me where I can sit,
in the audience, “Sit right here,
Here you can feel
when they ‘stomp like pigs’!”
(Apparently that is what the crowd does
when someone actually makes it
across the border with whatever
they were supposed to take).

I had taken off my shoes
before I approached
the bleachers.
“You can put your shoes back on.” she says.

The gameshow proceeds
to the tune of a famous spanish lovesong,
sung in English.
Here is the awkward translation:
“Kiss me, sweets.
Kiss me all over.
Kiss me like the deep-throated hummingbird
kisses the rare flower of the saguaro cactus.
etc. etc . . . .”

[30]

17.iv.08
In New Orleans
we live in the number 400 blue building
which is inside an inca or mayan sorta hive/pyramid enclosure
you must climb up to reach the inside of the building
I’m doing that with two cats
one under each arm.
I tell DJ she’s doing it all wrong,
trying to gain a foothold on the surface
with the airport luggage dolly.
Just not working. Why does she even try?

After I make it all the way up
I need to go back to street level
to the nearby cafe.
A neat, tidy cart has been set up
with a cup of hot water
and some instant espresso.
Some dood walks up to me
and asks “How much for an espresso?
Is it good here?”
“This espresso is just for cats!” I tell him.
I take my cat and we go.

The space drama
taking place above us, or before us, or after us
involves the bad mean ship
with rotating thingys
getting wreaked by the brave, outnumbered, out-gunned
rebels
but then, the bad ship realizes it’s nearly toast,
and it is able to go back in time a few minutes,
change some of the access codes or frequencies
and come at the rebel ship with its single, piercing
elevator shaft of bright light,
that just cuts right through the poor rebel ship,
people screaming, and falling into space, the hull breached,
and the tables turned.
If that wasn’t enough,
the bad guy’s sharky-shaped ship zips around the front of the
hobbled rebel craft,
and using the guns concealed in the skin
(and this was also something they did
after going back in time, somehow)
brings merciless fire on the good guys.
It’s not looking too good for them.

25.iv.08
The barn
is full of bees
but at least they’re only near a portal
to another part of the barn,
but it’s the part I need to go to,
for some reason.
There’s also a springy metal pole
held horizontally
that I can hang on or bounce on
and that seems to help my situation
although it does not solve the bee problem.

[31]

26.iv.08 [32]
Kit once flew on a plane sitting next to Hitler.
Yes, he did.
This constellates The Father.

The Japanese general, in the meantime,
made his specialty dish:
a flambeau made with plum liqueur
he drizzles over the rice.
No, really, he drowns the rice
with that gooey, light liquid.
He needs to light it a couple of times
with both match and lighter
before he gets it right.
This constellates The Amateur.

Tall people, everywhere.
These are the crew of the submarine,
or The Marines, stationed on this base.
They peer down and up the stair-ways
and closet-ways
and into new flaps of carpet
that can conceal the openings.
This, too, constellates The Father.

I am always grasping at what I’ve lost
by taking too much time
by not remembering
by not trying to remember,
or by wearing the wrong clothes. [33]
Mostly by wearing the wrong clothes.
This constellates The Loozer, The End!

29.iv.08
We drive to The City of Judah Bar-Num
I’m not expecting to see my old school there—
it was taken down
deconstructed
years ago. But there it is!
“Here it is Dad!” I tell him, guiding him
through the deep furrows of mud
Behind the temporary trailer-offices,
where we can see the magnificently boring building.
He drops to his knees, I hold him, standing.
It can’t be long now, I think.
“It is a song”, he cries.
Hug hug. A Hallmark® Moment. A Kodak® Moment.

I look away, and when I look back,
Dad has become some car mechanic dood.
Far younger, and far, far dumber.
Also present is Michael S.
and we reminisce about our
road trip that time.
Odd thinking back to it,
since we had just run into each other a few times
in the hallway, and at the seminar.
I guess we each sniffed out a level of quality
in the other’s work, and the vocabularies
were different enough that we weren’t outright
competitors, but of course we were,
and thus we became friends.

The road, apparently,
led to ireland/scotland.
In the clean minimalist white and pastel
day-care attached to dark oak’n’brass-looking pub,
DJ and Steph C. are conversing,
glancing at me from time to time.
I try to ignore them.
Better not to intrude on that exchange.

But I go to the window/door,
The sky is painterly, the heather and the moor
ready for some British Landscape Dood to paint.
It is just breathtaking!
A patch of grey above the horizon,
where a few strands of lightning or neurons fire off.
The august white dome of the mansion
(surely what Jefferson used as a model for mCello)
emerging on the hill from behind some fog.
“You gotta come see this landscape!”, I wave to DJ,
trying to get her to look at this
because it’s dynamic, changing all the time.
I watch this huge grey-black stallion tear across the fields,
and head straight toward us.
He stops right in front of the door, snorts.
He must stand twenty feet, and almost as wide as tall!

I return to playing the penny-tennis game
with my group.
It’s my serve, and I absolutely suck at this.
You’re supposed to throw the penny high in the air,
or have someone throw it at you,
and smack it at the opposing team.
I try this several time, always miss.
I try it with a half-dollar, then a quarter.
I actually make contact with the quarter,
but the other team is not amused,
because they stick with the rules,
and it’s gotta be a penny.

As I pick up the penny for one more try,
The barmaid gives me two big bunches of bar receipts
Stapled together.
They’re all from me, records of all my exploits
At two different bars, years and years ago!
“You’re old” says the cute young girl on my team.
I want to get mad at her for saying that,
but, guess what? She’s right.

21.v.08
It’s some task among the learnéd
Oregonians
that I’m involved in.
Mary F. has been stirring things up again,
and I’m trying to pick up the pieces.

Wandering away from the meeting,
I ask SkyRon Ultra™
(this is an enormously powerful,
magisterial, version of SkyRon™)
to explain to me the difference between
“ego” and “smartness”.

He starts to tell me, instead,
of the cloud theories of human intelligence,
first studied in Europe, then in Japan and Korea.
This doesn’t quite address my question,
but what are you going to do?
He’s tall, in charge, and holding forth.

Then, he takes me, and one other fellow,
along on a speedy ride in the open-top, double-decker van
the top floor of which is
a miniature landscape.

I try leaning forward or squatting
to maintain balance,
all the while
dripping the condensate
from my wax-paper cup of soda on ice.

We speed along, and I notice there’s been flooding.
Oh no, it’s really really deep!
People are floating away from sunken cars
and railroad tracks.
Now, water’s filling up the van, and yet we drive headlong
into all this!
We are submerged,
but I swim toward the light,
Finally, breaking through the water,
gasping for air.

25.v.08
Ok, so, well, at your massive office-plex performance union,
you hear tapping on the door—which door?
Some girl at the door that wasn’t knocked.
Shut that, and moved on to the other one,
up and down a few steps.
Behind the door
is the albino-white robot clown mime.
“Well, what do you want to say?”, I ask, a little cranky.
“You know, they’re wiretapping your office”, he says,
in such a fragile voice.
“The phone lines or the internet connection too?”
“It’s everything. You should expect inquiries to be made.
We don’t like it, but we cannot control it,” he continues.

My teeth are loose in their gums,
and I manage to hold them all in
by making a face and wrapping my hands around my jaw.

30.v.08
“The Modes aren’t for everbody”
says Roger W. to me,
while I’m doing “The Modes”,
a series of funny faces made
by stretching a rubber band around my lips,
and sucking on a magic marker.

I imagine, in slow motion,
the marker propelled through my teeth,
through the roof of my mouth,
through the brainstem and spine,
and finally emerging through the
back of my shattered skull.

So extremely poetic!

(Roger’s kickin’ back on the couch,
arm around his gurlfrend,
who’s slight, sleepy-looking, pretty,
with long black straight hair. A lovely couple.)

OK, so I’m in the church basement,
exchanging glances with the ded.
And recalling often how yummy the product of that kitchen
And how toxic the propaganda from other parts of that building.

Stepping outside into the crisp winter night air
I see 5 or 6 cars leave the ground
and fly to an array of lights in the sky
People, too, would do this.
You could do it as well, if you wanted.
Remember, it could be the same as deth, if you do this,
I tell myself.
Worst case scenario.

While making up my mind, a noisy noise heralds
the procession of marching children, women, and some men
just past the edge of the cornfield.
This was the first batch to return from the skies, so I withdraw
behind a few cornstalks
to see if anyone sees or recognizes me.

[34]

29.vi.08
“Shouldn’t there be
smoke or steam,
or some graceful articulation
of air in motion?” she says,
parting her lips to make various
just such articulations, as in blowing a kiss,
“So we achieve the ‘wha’ level of intervention?”
Ah, those were the key words!
“Or, like, a tongue?” she continues.
“Whose tongue?” asks Lovely LadyProf.
This reply gets a big belly laugh
from all the women nearby.
I’m the only guy there.

“I prefer grabbing the serpent from both ends!”
her colleague—also a lovely ladyProf—reminds her.
This refers to the practice
of smoking marijuana reefer
both before and after
one’s expected duties in public.

So, first LLP pulls out some of the weed she purchased,
“. . . all in one shot, for a lot of Money.”
It’s held in a homely, makeshift apparatus-pipe,
of tubes, two bowls, and wrapped in newspaper.
Little flames erupt out the side
while I’m taking a hit, inhaling,
holding, holding.
Holding a really long time!
And—
exhale.

Now, this is all part of the film in square aspect ratio
featuring seven or ten people of a multiplicity of genders,
but wearing dark charcoal-grey jumpsuits.
They all take poses, and the group freezes
into a set of Louise Nevelsonesque human forms.
Then the episode above took place.

Now, this is all happening while I’m searching through papers
Looking for the drawing of a caveman I made
That Toby S. expects to have on his desk, or published online,
soon.
The papers are unyielding of the drawing.
Like folds of flesh, they are coy, shy, need coaxing.

1.viii.08
Amid the usual festivities at a funeral
my dad, the guest of honor
has unexpectedly
come back to life
a minute, forty-five seconds
after being in-the-coffin ded.
Maybe it was an hour, forty-five minutes?

Anyway, it’s like a new world’s record,
so there’s a moment of glow/gloat
(thinking how this will improve my Google ranking, no doubt)
before I start wondering about the
suspension-of-disbelief details
necessary for this to have happened,
beginning with, “Wasn’t he embalmed or whatever?”,
and ending with, “Well, so what—he’s just going to
die again anyway.”

Nevertheless,
after a brief encounter with Mark W.,
I start driving to the wake
(reception? cake’n’coffee in the church basement?)
but, I’m driving backwards,
plus facing the steering wheel
from the hood of the car, through the windshield,
so I’m pretty uncertain
how to steer.

But, I make it there.
I pull the VW into the parking space
at the rear of church (but inside the church,
the last few pews removed)
with bags of collector’s dinner plates
and coins (mostly silver, minted to resemble small violins)
that I will drop off at the pawn shop later, for top dollar.

16.viii.08
Solitary expressions of individual synapses
at night, without censor,
leave these impressions upon my feeble mind:

A house,
pretty big, with interesting
passageways, and not very direct
ways of navigating through it,
And the people there,
were not spectacular
in any way.

Still, there were moments of repose,
and a sense of extended being.
And plenty of suggestions
of intimacies that would likely
never come to pass.

Also, there were nasty national leaders.

23.viii.08
Main Pieces

Rain, always rain, on the roof.
On the roof, a door leading to the inside.
Inside, the practice rooms,
which are unlocked and contain pianos, cellos, clarinets, etc.
One kitty shrinks in the rain,
the other kitty bites him in head,
his teeth puncturing the skull,
and leaving it a forever damaged mental cat.
I’m so mad at that cat, that I kick other cats
because I don’t have the ability
to express my rage with words.
Nobody does.

29.viii.08
Frag-Items Included

At the restaurant where the criminal investigators gather,
I was shouting at someone because
I had to explain to him why I was so thick,
at least with respect to knowing what’s going on
and how to act, at a moment’s notice
when unexpected things happen.
I don’t know what to do, so I shout at him
Scream at him, really!

Bloody events, now.
Murder, deceit, betrayal.
Yikes.

30.viii.08 [35]
All this centers on the School for Really Bright Kids
That Are So Smart They’re Really Very Annoying, and Borderline,
Like, Obviously From Privileged Families, and this is most likely in NYC.
(Or SRBKTASSTRVABLOFPFTIMLINYC, for short.)

We are the kids in this school,
but now we’re hangin’ out in this shack
maybe some tenements in some urban downtown,
and we’re picking off pedestrians with our high-powered rifles.
This is what we do for fun
but the police have now shacked up across the street from us
on a roof and return fire.
I guess our little fun has gotten a bit out of hand.

Anyway, I tend to hang with
the lovely, buxomy Angela Davis type,
and we take turns firing through the window
and dodging bullets.

I’m getting the feeling
it might be a good idea to hide the guns
and escape the premises
before the cops arrive.

So, we start down the spiral staircases,
now chased by the big fellow student
who’s dressed in white, that sometimes changes
to a pure and intense sky blue
but with a little more punch to it.
(it’s this blue: hex #3399FF, but brighter and luminouser)
He’s the whistle-blower among us,
and he is going to get us.
As we reach the lobby,
we go back up the stairs a bit
(the other stairs, not the stairs he’s coming down)
and watch him enter the lobby,
and head into the street.
Now we can go back up to our lair
Partly through the stairs and then
at a jumping-off point,
into a virtual empty zone
that will take us the rest of the way
up to our hideout.

So much motion, and so little action!

We’re back in the lair,
and the police are about to enter.
(Pause)

And really the only other part is
The Discovery,
where you’re under a canvas tarp
with two other partners-in-crime.
Cops find you, pull back the tarp
from your face, and put an elegant
white-ceramic gun with red stripes
to your forehead, telling you to shush.
Then, they will capture the other two,
and your collective fate will be sealed.

So, kids, learn your lesson from this!
Don’t be shooting people
from your fancy high-above the city windows
with your fancy high-powered rifles!
I think we can all agree upon this.

31.viii.08
Crossing the strait
Boat, then bus
Mom discovers 2 types of magazine:

– “Tastes of Metrosexuals”
– “Dawn L. on Bed, Sad about Her Lover-Woman”

(Because of the breakup note she left on D’s thigh,
Written in lipstick or maybe fading red magic marker)

1.ix.08
. . . but we were singing
the Perfect Non-Sequitur Song
(set to the music of B. Manilow’s “Weekend in New England”)
and as we gathered around the two microphones
and laid down the first take,
I knew I was the one
who didn’t know the words.
I copied them on a sheet of paper,
and even drew pictures to remind me what the words were,
like ‘sweetie’ was a chubby little woman icon.
Some of the words were not just non-sequitur
they were non-words
Thus, I encountered difficulty
in the pictorial representations I drew.

Perhaps the song went something like this:
“Naith, trap, and paste core.
Sweetie and manipour.
Trait, nark, and sim-you-late rude.
Main partch, torn pram mourn, non greb.”
Now, I’m sure you all
blew out a tear duct or two
imagining Barry sing that!
I know I did.

So, back to our story.
I really am trying my best.
It shouldn’t be that hard to sing this,
but it is difficult, with RobScott
looking on. He’s intimidating.
Yes, he’s a total narcissist loozer,
but he maintains a stranglehold
on the very center of my being.
And it’s my fault for letting him get away with that!
Now, who’s the loozer narcissist?

And, in the final analysis,
at the last trump
in the twinkling of an eye
in the eye of the storm
and in the storm of the thurmond,
I gasp and realize
there is no more story.

13.ix.08
At the PN reunion concert,
I’m jammin’ with Howard and John.
Just a few minutes into our set
I launch into my rendition
of the theme to “Rawhide”
(“Rollin’ rollin’ rollin/ keep them doggies rollin'” etc.)
I get a standing ovation
from the crowd!
(Most of the audience
is wearing these bright yellow
rain coats, jackets, dresses, ponchos).
Later,
I ask David L. (who now goes by ‘Bob’)
If he’d like to stay up half the night
discussing music.
He’s not too thrilled by my offer.

14.ix.08
So, the three of us sit down to watch the concert –
Me and John C. , and the young and charming
“David Darlington”

There’s a moment alone I have
with an English Horn.
I look at it as a ewlix deom my pAT.
But a good relic.
Good times!

K, morlater, bye!
[36]

24.ix.08
Looking at Stockhausen’s second-drawer art collection:
His paintings of Kevin S. and some female students
in the “scorched earth” style of painting—
realistic, but it looks like the features of the subjects
are sandblasted away, with
hollow and diffuse eyes.
S’s daughter makes dramatic
environmental art—a huge circular mirror
in the desert of the amerikan southwest,
shining a bright disk of sunlight
on Ford’s landscape, or that of the Navaho’s
then, after she’s invited art critics from London to watch
she swims the Colorado.
Pretty dramatic.

I’m helping, or watching,
the young yuppie dood
and his presumed lovely wife
with the paintings and sculpture
they just purchased–
A bunch of medium-sized
Figures–look like 18th or 19th century
waifs and children.
Pretty trashy looking,
but $8K-$12K each—sheesh!
And one, rare, tattered,
scorched-earth style sculpture
of a 19th century boy, but almost unrecognizable.
That one, he’s paying $30K for!
I’m trying to figure out how to
rig the rope to lift the larger canvasses.
Mr. Peter Public Queen, a rich gentleman
who previously had an association
with both the yuppies and the museum
provided a letter of introduction for the couple
to carry with them as they drive their enormous moving van
with their newly purchased artworks
in case police pull them over
and inspect their cargo.
The inside of the van
is completely furnished and liveable,
so the artworks are just
propped up against chairs and stuff
and strapped in place for the ride.

This is how art moves.

5.x.08
So we find ourselves
next to the mighty swimming pool
—it’s actually, really, just part of the ocean, after all—
it has the same seasons and emotions
as the larger body.
Now, it’s winter
and the sides of the pool
bulge and groan, sometimes break
and the surface of the water
is speckled with snow,
but it’s still wet, and you can
run your hand through it
and shove fists of water
into the sky, where they return to Erth
as white flakes.

So, before arriving at the pool
we are in the many hallways
echoing with Bobby H. puttin’ me down
to his friends,
“Oh, he thinks he’s sucha
bigshot now. Living in Florida,
on the Beech”
I follow the voices, and find him.
“No, really, actually, I have nothing.
I’m just a teacher” I say, nevertheless,
he taunts me with the white water balloon.
“Yeah? Well, at least you’re
alive!”

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Connecting the So-So structure
is the random, elegant branching
of decisions, all nicely distilled
into a neat bit of programming.
But it’s also concretized
and sinewy, actual pale branches
of nerves or vessels
we should waste more time
discovering.

11.x.08
Lernin’ DETHkraft™ from annulveena (aunt alvina)

Videoing
battery check
Marian has chocolate on her face.
Shot of cards fluttering down.
Introduce DJ to Richard,
but not sure what he teaches now.
Hey, lots of lunch options,
but what do I wear?
Don’t werry, deth’s alreddy heer!

27.x.08
Previously,
there was Bobby H. by the pool table,
pulling up his shirt,
baring his chest,
a boon-bestowing gesture
that ensures the game we play
will be full of good fortune!

Meanwhile,
the bald, old man
(who’s not really that old,
probably just mid-fifties)
waddles by, and at first
I’m gonna make fun of him,
until I realize that he’s basically me.
But the derision was going to be
something like, “He’s defined by what he’s lost!”,
which is really komedy that kills!
And also, I’m applying that definition
to most of humanity, really.
So, that’s why I don’t make fun of him.

Then, there’s that photo of three gals
hangin’ out on a noir-ish city street.
The photo’s been photoshopped,
because one of the girls has an extra set of breasts
staring out from under her skirt,
on either side of her inside hips.
I still think it’s a pretty hot photo.
I am so lost!

Michael is applying for a new position
Some sort of web media management job thingy.
“You know, maybe you should apply!” he tells me.
“But, I don’t want to apply. I like working with you guys,”
I reply.

31.x.08
We’re driving north past The Cookies
and notice lots of cars parked on both sides of the road.
Obviously, there’s some sort of sale going on,
a farm equipment sale, maybe a land auction, maybe livestock.
Anyway, the parked cars are close,
and I’m going too fast to stop
when the guy opens his door on his convertible
right in my path.
I tried to dodge it, but I’m sure I ripped off the door,
but I quickly look back,
and don’t hear or see anything.

In New York, I’m with DJ as she tries to take
her old aunt dancing.
“The old jewish men
pay $72 an hour to just stand around
(in a Stag Line! Thanks, Sid!)
and maybe dance with the elderly women.” she says.

“It’s overcast this afternoon,
so that makes the other room dark.
I need to size her up a bit more,” says
the effeminate physical therapist dude,
who’s really Denny M.

But as I leave the porch
and consider walking down to the village
A lovely german woman asks
(I think), if I’d seen her little boy.
My german is so bad,
so I slip into the cactus show,
a great exhibition of living cacti,
some of them blooming with flowers
that look like peacock feather decorative eyes.
Some of the cacti have shed enormous leaves.

Not sure how I ended up wearing cowboy boots
and a huge hat–but it seems to fit.
Never sure if my pants legs go into the boots
or out of the boots.

Still, I wander the outdoor restaurant
with its many tables, private areas, gardens.

After hanging out with Matt D., we wander into the Guild house
where the rug-craft women meet us.
I think it’s rugs they sell–I can’t be sure.
They’re both pretty overweight, but they have nice eyes.
They’re sisters, maybe?

The younger, less fat one says I have a weird walk.
“It looks like you’re walking
backwards when you’re
walking forwards.
It freaks me out!”

Wouldn’t want that to happen.
But then I catch a reflection of myself
in the polished hardwood floors.
I think I see what they mean.

Anyway, I walk through the musty closets with Matt,
he points out the camera equipment you can rent here,
but all the cameras look ancient,
and they all look like they’re mounted
on gun stocks.

“Hey, I’m also looking for a producer—can you
recommend one?”
Matt sorts through all the junk
in this portico
(hallway?)
and digs out two delicate glass cases
like thin aquaria, but filled with dials, buttons
and metal gears.

“This should be able to find one for you.”, he says.
I try operating them,
The one with the buttons
indicates a one-year old kid
being played with by his mom
in the street cafe
will grow up to, indeed,
become a producer (can I wait that long?);
the other one,
with a couple of miniature, finely detailed
mechanical chickens in it
just squawks a lot.

9.xi.08
Drawn in broad strokes:
DJ needs some surgery
done on her sinuses.
It’s outpatient, so I can wait in the lobby.
Instead, I wander outside,
and across a narrow muddy passage
to a nearly empty Greek isle.
Just one other guy on the island,
writing in a notebook.
Border patrol dude drops by
asks to see our driver’s licenses.
“You’ll both hafta come with me”.
We cross back into Italia,
where all the medical stuff happened,
all the waiting in a long line
that stretched out a couple of miles
into the sea—we’re waiting on this
slender metal dock
(or maybe it’s a jetty?).
“The doctors never come out this far.
It’s hopeless!” wailed many.

Where we wander
is a place I’ve returned to several times
although I’ve never been there.
It’s an immigration station,
and a museum filled with awful concrete
cartoony duck statues
and a really great market and dining area.
The NPR description of the market
is heard as we approach it.
We peek in the vast, cold cheese room,
dark and dense with cheesy smells—
dairy, walnuts, some fruits.
This is all guarded
by an old woman, the cheese guardian.

The market owner’s daughter
smiles at us from the rows of seats
in the tiny ampitheatre, speaks
to us in Greek, but extremely friendly.
I’ll leave it at that for now.

[37]

30.xi.08
(Italicized portions may be sung by extremely
stuck-up white chorus – lots of wobbly vibratos and pretense)

Wind box – or case
oboe + piccolo + really
tiny bass clarinet
(becomes tiny sax)

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Let’s examine
the curious case of
the windbox—or case
or satchel or cliché—no, attaché.
It’s really just a typical instrument case
with the nice leather, slightly padded cover
that protects the instrument from
changes in heat and humidity.

The windcase has my oboe in it,
plus the obligatory piccolo or half-flute
(which later I try to play a pathetic
tune on)
and a supertiny bass clarinet–
it’s about seven and a half inches long.
And it turns into a superneat baby saxophone!
So adorably cute
and essentially unplayable!

I try to read the price tag for all this–
and I’m helped by the very nice shopgirl
who leans in too close to me
to read the tag. “$300”.

____________

Classroom – english anxiety
meet Manju + other dude
(prez?) – wanna make
discs for them, but
they’re, but I gotta
get back to
classroom – english anxiety
where
dude is explaining “I only
changed some letters”

– – – – – –

In the schoolish interiors
I run into Manju and his pal
who might be his boss
or the prezdent or something.
I promise them copies of my DVD.

Now, I gotta make those discs,
but first, back to the English class
which I may have missed too many of, already
but the girl and I secret ourselves inside,
find seats, stuff our winter coats under our chairs,
and sit.

Dude is defending himself
as he explains why he shouldn’t be docked
for plagiarism: ” I only
changed some letters!”
I don’t think anybody’s buying that.

– – – – — – –

Tornadoes again–” well,
you’ve never done this
with farmers”

– – – – – –

Stepping outside, in the messy rain
I make my way to the shed just south of the barn
Yeah, tornados are coming.
But where should I go?
How about across the road,
where I can hide behind the concrete slabs
of the corn crib?

I make my way there,
but dozens of folk are already there!
There’s even a TV news crew
interviewing some city-type guy
who explains, “Well, you’ve never
done this with farmers!”

_________

Rat to bird.
Bird dies – ties it to
string & twirl.

– – – – – – –

I’m in the crib, but now it’s just a house
with lots of holes in the walls for the cats to play in.
No storms outside.
But, they chase out a rat, but it’s orange
and furry, then grey, but with no tail,
then, it’s a lovely, delicate bird.
Bird flies around a while,
then drops to the ground,
convulses, dies.

Ded bird!

Gently, I pick it up
and tie it to my string.
I twirl it around my head several times:
This is my ritual to preserve its memory.
But, the bird is my soul—right?—
so I’m basically fucked.

19.xii.08
If you want them to call,
start doing something.

If you do these things,
they will escape
and no one will remember you.

In the Dreem – it hinged on research:
you said you were glad
you didn’t start your research until you were 40—no, 50!—
because of the perspective one has at that point.
That, after Ded Bobby’s girlfriend is screaming/singing
in the other research room.
She has an afro,
and is not too attractive in any way.

There is repair on the research door that’s needed.
And I don’t want to leave the research door open
because too much gets let out,
let in.

We are waiting for the phone, and doing art in the meantime.

I’m encircling the Great Ideas
with Elegant Forms! Yay!
That’s the art I’m making,
but nobody gets it.

(maybe I should try it all again,
with different forms or shapes?
maybe I should put on a sweater?
nah—)

The phone not ringing
means there are possibilities
and things might be happening,
or else you may have simply gone mad.

There it goes, not ringing.

(How many possibilities
and how much time
do you have?
Don’t know.)

The ringing phone represents the end of life
or at least the end of art.

The phone will ring, and then the art will end.

There it goes, now!

10.i.09
Grudgery

We open on the other folks
trying to kick in our door.
They really have no reason to do this.

There are exchanges taking place.
Perhaps lessons are being lerned.
An easy commerce of people, objects, and actions.
I might be flying for part of this.

I’m asked questions about things
I really don’t know about.
Legal-type things, deadlines.
They make me feel ashamed
I don’t know the exact answer,
so I make stuff up.
Wrong.

I just get cranky when I’m tired.
I’m OK if all I’m doing
is pondering the size or age of the known universe
(but, you know, I don’t get paid for any of that).
And I’m also not counting acrobatic skills.

We do these things.
Great things, pretty good things.
We don’t know what they mean,
Or what they mean to anybody else.

Do what you must.
Whatever.

16.i.09 [38]
People parade you around
as the ultimate dissolving person.
You are a completely inert lump
of human clay
Conscious, but conscious only
of mica-like layers
of your own collapse.

The little robots
clean up the parking garage.
Your car is slender and thin
so a few could fit in a standard space
still, you park it.
On to the conference!

At the conference,
You claim the couch,
but you’re soon joined
by three beefy men
from Colorado,
all in your field of endeavor,
Introductions, all around!

The belle of the conference
steals away with one dood—
Ron or Rod somebody
who you just met, and
hey, you were talking to him!
“You’ll be next!” she says,
taking my wrist in her hand,
a wink, and a lush smile.

So much takes place
in parking garages and hotel lobbies.
Who needs scenery?

[39]

25.i.09
“When were they climbin’?”
“When the astornauts
singed the sky”.

Some buildings,
but with a purpose.

Perhaps some sort of game?
All so vary clear a few hours ago.

If you cut a map,
You won’t forget the map.

Usually, you don’t need to worry
about the return of dinosaurs
on your insurance policy.

Where are the Russians when you need them?

27.i.09
On the banks of the river,
across from the medieval city of Pompano,
we watch fireworks
or maybe we all just hang out
on the grass, at night.
The light of the moon does neat stuff
to those with red hair
(as in, “a neat lighting effect,
a glow, an effervescent
shimmering sorta thing”).

After the viewing of the film
(a brand new film,
made entirely of
visual and narrative clichés,
and references to earlier
avant-garde and surrealist films,
also all clichés),
we get in small cars.
I with John L., who drives
to the edge of the stairs
before the courtyard,
but everything is flooded,
so I advise him it might not be
such a great idea
to take such a plunge.
We do, anyway.

2.ii.09
First,
I’m not sure how I ran up the bar tab
about $695, in Ireland,
and tracking down The Red One,
or The Red Ones,
Nine or Ten-year-old girls
with curly red hair
who do all the bombings.

I’m wandering the alleys
with my buds, playing
kick-basketball along the way.
You kick these over-inflated basketballs
onto the roofs of the poor houses.
Apparently, we’re all pretty good at this,
and we each earn about a thousand dollars.
I should probably pay my bar tab with it,
and so-and-who offers to pay it for me,
and I decline his offer.

Matron woman comes close to convincing me
to take the money to the bar,
but she doesn’t.
The next round of kick-basketball
will make us all lose our winnings,
and I’ll be back to where I was,
but the Matron rides the boat to the bar,
and there they are, The Red Ones,
both of them,
plotting their next carnage,
mayhem, ensuing triage, disorder, discord
in calm, calculating prose.
Very orderly.
These girls are way smart.
Their mother sits with them,
proud of them, but unaware of what they do.
She’s the monster.

9.ii.09 [40]
I have mixed feelings
about using my old movie camera.
When I look through the viewfinder,
I see images in motion
of all the kids I shot
when I was a kid, too,

Even the ones who have since died.
Haunted movie camera—neat!

1.iii.09 [41]
“KonGradjuLayshuns!(sic)” sez Deth
as she serves you brekfust in bed,
“you’ve gone from
a place and time in your life
where everything meant something
to a place and time
where nothing means anything!”

Quite unsurprisingly,
I’m not sure what it means
to have Deth serve me
brekfust in bed.

[41]

2.iii.09
“If I haven’t already said so (or done so)”
The plucky, young black woman who’s interviewing me
has just identified that as my ‘catchphrase’
and she parrots it back to me
very rapidly, so I must’ve said it.
I have on good clothes,
but my junk is exposed as I sit
and face her. Rather immodestly
exposed. Oh well.
(I have a just-pressed tux,
shirt, tie, etc., in a plastic bag
on a hanger, in my hand)

Looking out the window,
I see the new Military
deploying down the road a bit,
but they’ll need me
to open the fence by the apple trees.
So, I do that.
Mr. R., my math teacher in highschool
leads them. They are apparently
putting down some sort of
internal uprising.
“In times like these, there aren’t leaders,
so the whole structure collapses.
We have to be there to take charge”
(Yeah, but what about the recent
elections? I guess that doesn’t matter.)

In my fantasy-within-the-dreem,
I imagine the young, militant arabs
of this uprising, following tanks,
rolling up into balls like aliens
and entering the tanks from behind,
presumably shooting everybody inside.
Messy, but effective.
The narrator (Mr. R, I think)
supplies voice-over about
“The James-Bond, wanna be,
oil-rich, young militant, in his
gold suit and gold car, pulling out
his gold gun. He’s already lost
his left hand in the fighting,
but he steps back into the street,
onto a (boom!) . . . ”

Yes, land mine, but no James Bond
I knew would ever be so clumsy,
or lose a hand.

But young kids,
the next generation of struggle,
learn from this loozer,
and have identified
the buried drums of fuel
they can tap,
and use to build explosives.
I’m about to report this
to the nearby authority dood,
but first, I get a lesson in making explosives
out of garbonzo bean paste,
from the McGivver-type guy of this company.
“You take one handful to form the filling,
and four handfuls to form the shell for the filling,
building the shell around the filling. No, like this:”
Confusing.

5.iii.09 [42]
Dancing in church
is not always frowned on,
I guess.
Anyway, Johanna teaches it,
and at the barre,
I’m one of two students stretching
and doing ballet extensions, or whatever.
She comments on my back,
on my misshapen back,
and how I’m a pretty decent dancer
in spite of it.

Later, after the other student has left,
she shows me her approach
to fellatio, and more.

* * * * * *

My students,
on the other hand,
are making short videos—
texture experiments involving
the patterns of light
seen from under
a clear, vinyl waterbed
filled with exotic, colorful fish.

Now, some of these texture
studies are quite good,
and I’m sad that I hadn’t looked at them
earlier, like when I was sposta.
Like when I was actually
teaching the class.
Nevertheless, I load the clips
into my mixer, and do some further experimenting.

Next, I’m off, running thru campus with my mixer
It’s starting to rain,
so I don’t want the water
to damage the electronics.
I step inside a hallway
graced with many busts
and statues of various figures.

* * * * * *

Our new home
is a car or van,
parked on the side of a busy highway
that runs thru cornfields.
I notice there’s been an accident, or several,
since the black van behind us
is askew, parked slightly angled on the road,
a broken windshield, and glass everywhere.
But lots of cars that pull up,
also have broken windshields.
The guy who owns the van
is talking with some seriously crazy man,
and as he leads him toward us, and toward the cornfields,
the van-owner reaches in our window
and locks our door,
like that will help.

We’ve now gotten out of the car,
we walk behind it, open the trunk.
The two girls approach us,
and tell us their stories,
apparently we will be taking care of them,
since we are now an older couple.
The tall brunette is lanky, with long straight hair,
and looks like that Alias girl.
“I’m a slut, and I drink and do
a lot of drugs. I’m just trouble,” she says.
Her friend is shorter, with short blonde hair,
and since she’s the nicer one, we both embrace her.
But I want to include the other one, too,
in our group hug,
betokening a new beginning,
but it’s just trickier.
Why should it be so difficult?

Sometimes
it’s easier to grab something
when it’s farther away.

What the hell is that supposed to mean?

20.iii.09
Light at End of Day:
Directional.
Sharper, longer shadows.
Slight peachy tint to it all.
Then it’s Magic Hour,
Then it’s all gone!

E N D   O F   B O O K  I

____________________

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