mr hot tips on the fly

First: Don't volunteer denials unasked. 

Second: Don't catch yourself
believing yourself so fast.

Third: Quit giving me that look! like
"Who the hell am I?" 

Fourth: I'm the cook
  
with the recipes! catching
all the chickens in the kitchen -
it is way too hot for them in there 
but I'm a bout to stick 'em
in my big, black boiling pot 
and call it all "kettle." Too many cooks 
spoil the broth,
but I don't!

I got the mettle and the will 
and the fettle and the skill 
and the waddle and the bill 
so duck! 

I got ill

Uh! 
Uh huh-huh,
huh-huh, huh huh 
pardon me "cough." 

That's more than what you asked I know,
you didn't even ask, I know you didn't
speak at all, I know. Sometimes

I go off 

Oblige.

Listen. I have almost no inhibition. 
It's been winnowed to unstoppable blocks 
or else full-blast gaps, and so many much
more of the last. So any inference 
or deduction of yours
based on "people wouldn't
say that unless" is just gas.
Sniff it all you want. Go 'head, 
fill up a bag and huff.  
I am prone, but not bound to laugh
like bells. You can see into me 
all that you want,

but it smells

When you take it for real, 
by not taking me so. 

Well, so what can we know?
You know? 

I think it would be better 
for each and both
if we go 

a little further on down this lane. 
In my experience, no one ever
comes back the same. You would have
to be much less sane 

than you appear 
to doubt me over any course of ground
in this game-not-game.
Or believe
I don't mean 
who I am in fact. 

Be is mine. Not seem. 

I'm not trying to convince you, though. 
I'm just sayin' 

a sound. 

There is action, 
but no,

no act. 

different dreamers

When I wake from dreaming as I do,
I prize and pry and correspond
to the real as far as I’m able to.
The ideal remains a guiding star. 

spiraling out

I wish everyone who loved me would go
away. That life is over now. We talk
for hours, different days, different people
catching up and finding how
to not let go, I guess. But if

They would let go, maybe I could.
And I'd say now: they tired of me,
and went off spinning into lives
of good and better greater good.

A glorious mess.

But since they don't, but since they keep
on reaching out, and drawing in,
I'm forced to know their better lives
are pretty much the way they've been.
When I was there, and we would come
together. I could really do something

I sleep and wake, and so do we,
and now I'm where I can't. And still
They reach, and draw, and so I cling.
To nonevents, eventually.

Spiraling out of orbits now, unnaturally
this gravity holds. The farther out we go
we see: the sun we loved is just a star.
We know. We knew it then, but then
we walked out under it and saw
just everything. Togethering,

With so much future left to stall.

Serious As

The question, you'll forgive me, 
is too basic for seriousness. I take it 
as serious, mind you - I am not 
the sort of dimwit who finds insincerity 
in ignorance! One should never be skeptic
about ignorance - it's too easy to prove. 

And we gain nothing by such acid tests. 
You are serious, your question was serious, 
and I am sincere in response. There. You'll 
forgive me, though, one can be perfectly sincere 
in unserious matters. In fact, it's even easier! And 
this is one such. Let me lay it out for you, now 
that I'm done with the obligatory obsequious 
apology for my own sincerity! I shouldn't 

Apologize like that. I know. It's offensive, 
but I must sometimes. It is the price I charge 
myself for my abundant, high-quality supply 
of sincerity. No I'm serious. 

Who the heck would joke about that?

breakfast feast

Bacon and eggs!
Eggs and bacon
Everybody's smelling
this food I'm makin'
Only enough 
for just one man 
Eight strips of bacon
six eggs in the pan 
and 
no one home 
Nobody's home but me
Just one to feed
I don't have to share 
my delicacy

Bacon and eggs!
Eggs and bacon 
Everyone's smelling 
this mess I'm makin'
Who's gonna clean up 
all these pans?
It's almost too much
for just one man
I should have made less, but 
the bacon is almost bad

the weather

Coming home we step
into melancholy and memory 

and the world where we lived,
now transformed by our travels. 

Then stepping out the door again,
we find we are under those same
emotional skies, no matter where

we go, the rooms we have lived in
remain within us, and the weather
we've walked out into and lived under
- we've brought it all along. Tiny objects
set sail and get nowhere, huge stormclouds
we've weathered are shrunk to the size
of armchairs we settle into, as

the affliction settles over us, everywhere
we go. 

We live in a world haunted
by rain and loss of home, nomads
wherever we roam or settle,
with only the roof of the blue sky
above it all, above all the storms,
forever over our hearts:

and unconquerable.   

the interconnectedness

I am happy to live on periphery, sworn
(well, I swear) to pipe up or chime in 
when it needs. I am borne and bound
to respond when it calls, "It" 

could be you, or just me, or just all. 

Fate or coincidence

When two luck out to such degree
it was destiny, or something much like. 
We can't
imagine ever missing
each other. Not past that point
it became so right, 

but of course! Someone knows 
there were so many points 
along this way

we could be deranged. 

Humility, now. Is indicated. 
Strange indeed it would be for we two 
to estrange. Fate

or coincidence work about equally well
in our case, as our course has took. It may 
have been writ in advance, but if so 

it takes nothing away from each page 
of this book. 

What We Have Here..

This blog is written in English. That 
is no insult to lovers of other language, 
lover. Yet 

to comment on this blog in another language 
strikes me as ignorant, if not necessarily 
disgusting, presumption to say 

the least. 

If you were capable of receiving meaning 
from what I wrote, such that you could
meaningfully comment upon't, 

then we speak the same language. It 
(the language itself) would behoove you
to continue in that proven vein.

If you comment while unable to receive 
my meaning at all, you 

are not commenting at all. You strike 
at random, apparently, commenting 
not at all upon what you did not 
receive. If at first you did receive, 

and chose to respond in incomprehensible
ways, or in ways you have no cause to regard as
comprehensible (I've given no such indication),

you are simply being coy. 

I hate coyness in all its repulsive aspects, as much as 
I love it in all its cute, hot, adorable ones.

Keep being coy, language lovers! If you wish

For I for one get a kick 
out of your unmeaning squiggles! Yet 
this personal sentimental value 

of mine, which I value, is one
I find I cannot inflict 
on the readership, 
such as it is. 

So I delete.
Trash-can it.

Not sorry, 
sorry

Shared values.

When someone you didn't know loved
something you secretly love, openly confesses
they love that thing, it's like they're kissing you.

When you tell them this, and they disagree
that that's what it's like, it's like 
they're not kissing you.

And it's like they never did

incomparably, but

I love you incomparably, but 
that being the case, I must say 
or admit there are some
who could never compare
to you. And the converse
is true, I don't know 
what to do with that one. 

decisively.

It's an effortless match we serve 
and volley, and score without boards
or lines, or net. Someone's keeping track, 
I'm sure - we both are - but incomparably, 
without numbers or bets. When each 
of us win, I'll defeat you at last. It won't 
be a tie, as you triumph withal. The fans 
will leap up from the stands in a rush 
to the court or the exits, but we 

will just stand there 
and breathe, and smile, 
and stall

the too-long dawn

As the millennium grinds to an opening, 
one of so many along the way, we sting 
and smart so much harder and wiser 
and sweat at the task we've been offering.
Before we can knuckle and hunker down,
reckon the score and decide not now
but soon just which of the jejune
and vacuous pule that got us here,
which planks of the boat we all rowed in 
should stay, which we should keep, perchance 
to rule, and which we should blast as not ok
- there's a bigger decision bestride us now. 
We all have a sense of it in the ribs. We all 
feel the need to go back to school, kill 
the teacher and ask whose class this is. 

kink risque

Hey babe, 
if any man wants to fuck you 

Tell him yes 

Then knee him in the balls 
and run 

Unless it's me. 
Then say no 

Trust me 

I'll be thrown off 
you can pretty much do 
whatever else 

besides knee me.
You'll already have
in some canny-competitor sense 

won

identity jag

Oh my goodness look 
who it isn't! Thank god, I thought
it was you. But it's not, is it? You're
somebody quite the else. Nor am I
the one to mistake you for who 
you aren't. It was only
 
a momentary sense 
of misplaced self,

not mine, but yours. Or rather, not.
A misplaced face, and body, gesture 
and manner, posture and grace, and art,
all poured into who you
could never have been.  

It could never be you, 
from what I've seen. 

Some start!

Boy's Wonder Book

There used to be, 
apparently, a British periodical 
called Boy's Wonder Book of Science. 
I feel as if I've lived that Book. 
Albeit, in an abstract way, 
upon which we should place 
no great reliance. 

lamentation song

To me, it feels most like lament 
for the fact that perfection, without 
any flaw at all, can still run its course. 
And nothing could ever be anything wrong 
with this thing we have found and grown
from source to some starriest pinnacle, still.
Lament for its plunge to some passing abyss. 

It could not
be anything but
what it was. Let us
rejoice, then. We must,
remembering this. 

the unhealthiness

I think our relationship has become
unhealthy for one of us. Which one?
Not sure. Is it you? If not, could be me. 

But if so, the unhealthiness seems to be 
in the feeling itself: our relationship has 
become unhealthy for someone in it,
unspecified. 

Despite it's not me.
Despite it's not you. Well,
who else can it be?

Something doesn't fit,
or somebody lied. I guess
now we've had this talk, we should: 

just soldier on wounded trust
and pride, with injured resolve
towards fractured future good, until
we find out the real problem to solve. 

Maybe it's nothing. That 
would be weird, but hey 
it's a good thing now and again 
to check under the hood. 

Let's forget it for now, 
and just knock on wood 

the pit

Self-awareness is like 
trying to put a pit in a plum 
after it's already grown 
full and ripe without one. 
With glossy-deep skin 
like a surface abyss, 
and beneath it is gold 
or red in its bliss 
of juice-laden pulpy 
flesh. And you say, 
hey wait? Why put 
any pit into this? 

And that's when you 
find yourself 
the pit. 

It was always in there. 
It was worth, perhaps,
not knowing it. 

Yet finding it centered
and hard and dense, 
you regrow your flesh 
to untouched skin, drink 
deep in the knowledge of juice 
and sense, and begin
to act from within.

My diary's last entry

My diary's last entry, 
more than ten years old,
was "I think it's going to work out.
I'm coming to some grip, somehow 
- but I don't think this helps
me now. I'm going to lay 
this pen aside. I think it's best 
to leave my thoughts unfixed 
in ink, to wander free invisibly 
and without shame of what 
some future self might think. 
Dear diary, I think we're through.
In testament to all we've done,
which I have duly set down true, 
dear diary I'm leaving you. I 
might come back to jot a line,
or write a song, or some perverse
repurposing of thine blank page, 
but something tells me your way 
isn't mine."

That was the last entry. 
The first as well.
And I was more than ten years old,
when suddenly some thing took hold
and broke the spell. 

You have done enough (just now)

Do not worry yourself
about tardiness now. Creep about
warily. Observe the shadows, and practice
merging with them. Occupy yourself
as a watchful spirit haunting this world,
whose emanations glow
and penumbras deepen
in the hearts and minds
of all who know you, even
when you are not an active principle.
The shape and furrow you've left
streaming through only reinforces
and encourages us
in our wake
from you.

Halloween trick

On Halloween, I went out in mind, 
in costume - not 'out of mind,' just in.

I was dressed in mind (not really though)
as the avatar of a deadly sin. 

Can you guess which one? Guess 'Pride'
you're wrong. Guess 'Lust' - please leash
your gutter mind! Guess 'Gluttony' or 
'Wrath' - come on! Such rages spoil 
healthy appetites, I find. Guess what? 

The whole thing lied. I did not go 
in mind at all, in costume, sin 
or otherwise. My mind needs no 
such fancy dress and ball, 

And 'Lie' is not a deadly sin. 
You'd think it could be, though

pine model plane

I pine for the days when wistfully 
I'd wonder if you and I could be 
a thing to take off and fancy fly. 

Perhaps come apart midair, and die 
- or just crash land. Walk nonchalant off. 

Away from the scene with nostalgia on,

and a melancholy cry, but soft.
 
We'd say it was more
than worth the try. 

the imperious breeze

The imperious breeze came coolly down
some far green hill, and passed us by. 
It would not turn aside for us.
As hot and sticky as we were, it was
that chill, and that aloof - but just.
We saw it ruffle blades of grass
not twelve yards distant, as it passed 
- but there was no hope in a rush
to reach that spot. There was 
no breeze for us. 

bargain struck

If you ever had uh

If you ever had a 
If you ever had a notion
- not a "notion" exactly, 
but an inkling, a sojourn,

a presentiment or otherwise 
sentiment - not a "sojourn,"

a sojourn's just a way of saying
a journey you'll be coming back from, 
or think you are - you'd know some things
can be put in words but never taken out. 
Which obviates some part of the process, 
arguably: tell you what. You keep reading, 
I'll stop writing. Enjoy the uninterrupted flow 
of lines, the kind you read between. See, 
what you read between the lines - you 
are the author. Credit is all yours, 
and I can't stand in your way. 
Fair enough? You know 
I neve could stand 
standing in someone's way. 
Not in the ordinary run of things. 
They might be on the way 
to some good stuff

triumphs

You can't do it like we both
loved last time 
You've got to improve 
on the perfect score. 
You've got to innovate 
the recipe. You've got to go 
one ingredient more. 

It's triumph we crave, not mastery.
Finding new ways to not fuck up.
For you, perfection could not be enough, 
unless you had tried every trick in the world,
to return to the thing you long since knew 
and say yeah, that'll do. Oh hey, that's
the stuff.