ad hoc pitch miss

She told me I sound
like a self-help book, 
but 
as if she admired that? 
Or thought it admirable. 
I asked does it help?
 
She thought. Said, 
no
but 
it's a self help book. Keen
look. Does it help you? 

I said no 
not really. I was thinking,
I said,
I might want to write 
an others help book. 

She shook 
her head. 

n o t e s

I used to leave
notes
around
the house
folded over.

Seam smoothed
sharp. Tucked in
away places. They 

were meant to be found.

Read in certain order. They 
weren't hard to find. They 
turned up, but no note

contained any clue 
about locations,
or sequence. 

Or thereabouts.
The notes 
once found,
unfolded,
could be flipped
over. 

However, so 
could most notes,
so.

In theory, it
could be a way 
to communicate.

Sometimes, there would be

something
on the otherside,
the non-inside. 
In other handwriting.
I wasn't the othersider.
Others could be, if they
chose. That choice, though 
was foul.
So.     

The notes.

You want to know.
Well, it's no secret, left lying 
around. They would say things
like 
"how eye roll"
"moment saved" 
"Believe it up!"
"dope"
"I love you note you don't" 
and 
"think brighter"
or
"still"
or 
"anything really."
but

each word

would alternate
in other handwriting.
All on sameside,
officially inside
(othersider writing
disregard). What happens
is,

Picture yourself (no drawing
pictures). You find a note,
open it,
add a word,
(fore or aft)
put it back
someplace else,
sometimes - you find a note

you didn't even start! 

Shocked my ass! first time
I saw that. "Hey!" One word 
only in there. And

in other hand. 

So I add a word, 
for or aft, 
put it back. 

(someplace else)

No one 
ever spoke 
of a note. 

No one explained 
how it worked. In theory

to communicate
it could be
a way 

fate relationship clinic

My ex said
I'm my own
soulmate, but
shows what she
knows.

I'm totally twinflame. 
I can runchase myself 
in circles standing still.  
Only a spiritual duhface 
makes that rookie mistake, 
gets away with it, only to find 

duh karma - which is like karma 
except it gets you for mistaking 
spiritual shit, like twinflames for 
soulmates - duh karma gets us 
all eventually. This life or next, 

you can pretty much bank it.    

hyperpedestrian

That's it.
I'm in training now. 
Going all half-marathon. 
Wait until I'm up to speed: 
that decides which 
one I'm on.

Whichever's open
signup next. Hope 
it's not the one 
downtown! Too much
cheering 

all those bands. 

Maybe I'll just 
take a deep breath 
walk around

"Do you like to fly kites?”

This question’s a setup.
If they say yes, better have
the kite handy! Get your prep
done right, beforehand. So what
if it’s night?

You know
they have luminescent kites
you can fly at night, don’t you? That look
like glowing multi-hued luna moths, eerie
floating crescent moons, twinkling constellations!
UFOs, too - but those are crap, you can’t really tell
what they are. I mean, technically I don’t know
they have those. Luminescent kites. I was more asking
if you know - but the technology seems about right.
Get your prep done! Phosphorescent string, too
I shouldn’t be surprised to expect.

Daytime might be better yet. But
you don’t exactly get to choose
your opportunities, talking to someone
do you? Get your prep done.

Keep a kite in the trunk, or two. 
Then you're ready day or night, 
whenever the question occurs 
to you. 

And if no one's around, hey 
Just ask yourself: do I feel lucky? And:
is flying a kite lucky? 

You either better know the answer 
to one of those, or I don't know 
what to tell you, buddy

who dares

A lot of the time,
an attempt to foist
a fun question is
a daring lark,
a pot-shot magnesium flare
blazed away in the freezing dark.
A leaping plummet into abyss.
If the other doesn’t catch
you, it feels like, “Oh
well, botched that one up
I guess.” Yep. Ya did.

It's a miss. 

very like advice

That's like makin’ a baby
with a babe called Candy,
takin' the baby to a candy store,
keeping it there ’til it grows
to a kid in a candy store
- meanwhile, every kid
who comes in before 
keeps taking candy
from Candy’s baby! Like a kid

in a taking candy from a baby store 

on an old-timey street where the market
sells can o' worms, and horses still have
gift mouths. Sure,
you could do it - but
seems kind of childish,
doesn’t it? My advice? I

forgot what you said your problem 
was. Anyway, that's your problem. 
If you ask me? You should do something. 

Ideally, something very unlike what I described
just now by simile. Don't do anything like that, it's
childish. Do the opposite, if you can work out what 
that is.  

a big peace of war

So 
how'dya wanna handle this 
man? 

Another big barking brouhaha? 

Capped off with a slap-clench handshake
deal?

Firm grasp, emphatic double-pump sealed
with a pissing contest, all over the hands?  

Then we break-clap,
jump back,
hop, 
pirouette

in the air, to land

with a squat-jut bump
of cheek-smack butts 
split/second just-bared?
Pull up, turn round, 
back-nod and stand! 

Or do we fight? 

That's an Either/Or. 

And those 
are our only
choice. 

Choose peace.
Choose war. 

really great show on television

I wish there were a really great 
show on television. It would be 
in black and white, set in the days
where tough men wore sharp hats
and women knew how. So instead 
of curses, there would be all that 
great and colorful old-timey lingo, 
but obviously used in place of a curse,
so you'd laugh and know exactly. 

The hero would have a jaw you 
could found a bank branch on. 
He'd have the look of later men
cranked out of the Carey Grant
stamp press, but with his own
stamp too: kind of fuzzy, like
an off-print counterfeit that can
still pass on the streets, on tv.
Dapper not suave, large 
but not musclebound: 
a good guy, but with a wrong
side you don't want to get on
(several people every week
look right at him and apparently,
didn't get the memo) in short:

straight dangerous, with a 
chaser of hard morality 
and one of those "own 
solitary code" of honor 
deals. Keeps getting 
in fights he didn't start, 
chases he kicked off 
by showing up, or 
saying something 
- with a meaning look. 

It'd be racist, because 

that was the time, but 
every time somebody 
was racist, the hero 
would launch in from 
the side with a haymaker 
suckerpunch crack! across 
the jib, and down they go
- even if he wasn't in that scene! 

You see, in those days they filmed 
on soundstages, so the hero was 
probably watching from the wings. 
Probably how those cases got solved, 
if you think about it. Canny. 

Anyway, the dialogue and character 
touches would be a joy, the plots 
well-laid and knit, the twists and turns 
believably implausible, the score 
would be brassy, halfway-atonal
raucous jazz with an animal rhythm, 
only composed to within an inch 
of its life so the effect is a sort of 
deadly, trained timid raucuity - 

a classic. An all-around ironshod 
brass-fitted pipe-hitting classic 
with a heart of gold, where every
week's show wrapped up tidy
and neat, and satisfying, and
you came to love seeing each
character come back, even if
they're not main-cast, because
it's all been drawn so well
into a taut net of bursting
televisual virtues and merits. Only 

you couldn't recommend it anybody 

because of all the dramatically 
necessary heavily explicit nudity 
and hard core sex - with full-on 
zoomed-in biologically lurid 
obsessive camerawork, too! From 
startling, unexpected angles 
borrowed from avant-garde 
German Expressionism, and 
- the skin tones. How these
scenes were lit to bring out 
luster and throw deep shade, 
with shadows and angles 
turning a vigorous animal 
brute force tenderness coupling 
into an orgy of phantoms panting 
and thrusting, giving and receiving 
around the main pair! How many 
different lights are supposed to be 
on in this "room"? 

But really, this is the only small 
touch of the show's production that yanks 
you out of suspension of disbelief, and 
it's worth it for the sheer art. Truth 
and beauty, kids. The human form, 

whether wandering the dark streets 
sprayed with rain so the light picks up 
darkling gleams, and shadows cut 
deeply across paths, or getting into 
dive bars for a purpose: YOU! YOU 
in the corner! CHASE SCENE. WHY? 

Or when the guns come out. Or the knives, 
but - let it be fists, please. The hero does not 
come up short there. A knife he can handle
- or always does. A gun makes him stop,  
hold up his hands and get cocky. It's 

a plot device. Like how he always gets 
hit on the head from behind and blacks out. 
If the writers can't figure out how to stop 
this guy sometimes, these shows would take 
ten minutes tops! Where were we, though? 

The human form, in the midst and muddling through 
all of that, sometimes we lose its beauty in the doings. 
Yet sex somehow, that doesn't happen. It's as if it's 

the one act 

in which beauty itself is the act. Human beauty, 
and that's why this show gets it so right. Because 

well. 

It's also why you can't recommend it. 

gravity pants

Gravity pants, trailing after us 
as our feet fly scudding over hills and downs,
as we laugh like music on contrail staves 
with notes and trills writ in cirrus clouds.
We have lost ourselves in melodic line 
as we fly catching up to this last sunset 
flashing back towards day, to spend it 
again. Together at last, we have time
to bend and moments to live 
yet another way. We defy 
the rank order of calendar run. 
And trailing after us: gravity pants. 
We will not be going back 
to put those on. 

 

invasion of the bottle snatchers

a baby is like a weird pet 
that can't do anything 
at first 

but eventually 
you can teach it to do 
some things. It's all floppy 
and helpless, and you're like 

"WHY" 

but it keeps growing 
and then...it starts 
taking on your characteristics 

and starts mimicking you 
and growing bigger and bigger 
to replace you, and you can't help it 

you help it.
it's so adorable 
you want to teach it everything 

change of coins

Coins became diamonds,
Swords became spades,
Hearts came from cups,
and clubs were staves.
Our suits disarrayed
in fortune’s spell -
it’s out of our hands
and fate’s as well,
since we’ve gone all in.
All or nothing, or both!
Our bluffs always tell.
Just lucky, almost.

habits

When did you start cutting all your food 
into pieces before taking even one bite?
When did you first disagree to disagree,
instead of letting it be a fight?
When did you start giving up on chances 
and dares, on well-paced bets on life?
The change has crept over you so sleek, 
I'm not even sure if it's major or slight. 

hindsight bliss.

In many ways, it was about what 
it wasn't about. We could see or say 
such things as were never even thought
to have been seen or said before. And 
then, 
like everything else, 
it had broken and receded to the point 
we could see what it's worth.

I don't want to be like this.

I don't want this to be how things
are seen, and made to recede, and

are only worth hindsight bliss. 

in a nude

It's an interesting point you raise
"in the nude.” Are we ever really out
of the nude?
You can’t run out.
Covering up can’t get
you out - if anything, you’d
be enclosed further in. Nude

but trapped.
Unable to stop 
being completely nude 
- all wrapped up in law 
and clothes. Plus 
your humiliating social 
habit: a taboo collection 

you just can't quit observing. 

I need to work on the metaphysic
semantics of this and determine
(ok, decide) (ok, describe) what
being out of the nude would even
mean, and whether it’s humanly possible.

Okay. I decided. Doesn't matter! 

Even animals don’t get to get out
of the nude. Ew. Maybe
it’s when we die
and the flesh sloughs
off. Forget it,
I don’t want to know
that bad.

ultimate response mode

I can’t give a response I don’t have.
I am not moved to respond. There 
it is. 
I’m perfectly
comfortable with that!

I feel a little sheepish about
the innocent glee of just being there
and finding out - I have no response!
What a magic trick. It’s like when
the magician shows you what’s up
his hat and it’s empty! You know

the things that hat can disgorge
in cascade, in deluge. Sometimes

empty is the most elegant trick.

I peer with sincere curiosity
around the moment, watching
others with interest - perhaps
this moment will draw
something out in them?

I’d be cool with that. I’m not trying to
instigate a “BOYCOTT THE MOMENT! NO
RESPONSE!” movement. I’m just alert

in peace, aware

with calm.

I let it unfold, like
napkins dropped
from a height into
a big cardboard box,
their fancy-folded patterns
come loose in some, staying
snug-tight in others. So too

with moments like these, albeit,

not in a way you could describe. 

Because I am unmoved. Because
no response rises in me. Because
nothing is called for. I feel no call.
Did you feel a call? Fine, respond
then. You are called. It is called-for
in some sense. Words

for me don’t spring, take shape
and form in ordered ranks to sally
forth in marching marshalled array 
to wreak whatever the hell I mean 
upon the other unless called. 

“Because I can’t think of anything
to say,” would be one way to describe it,
a false, weak way. The emphasis is
all misplaced, as if it’s the mind’s job
to create the moment’s truth from

nothing!

If I felt anything at all, if I meant
a thing at all - I could easily say.
Easy with force of clarity, even
- sometimes, if called-for -
panache! It is not
strength or virtue
to be easily, powerfully moved
by nothing in any given moment,
is it? Nah. Come on.

Grow up. 

I mean if I had a thing in me to say
I’d knock the moment sideways with it. 
I wouldn't even bat an eye. Would you? 
Would you eye a bat? I eyed a bat 
one time. It was dusk. I laughed! 

"That's a bat!" I looked around 
to see who else was eyeing. Nobody. 
I laughed again. "That's just a cool 
dude truckin' up there. Bats aren't 
spooky!" 

It was in me to say that. It was 
my place to say. In that moment 
I had say. 

Other moments? I await. 

There’s a limit to how long you can
remain in a moment awaiting. Unmoved
by whatever the hell’s going on and on,
and on, and on, and just remain there.
At some point, you come to yourself
and realize “Hey, what the heck? Clearly
it’s not going to happen buddy. What
are you waiting for?”

I kind of love those cases,
where no response rises
in me. I’ll just be there
“on the spot” as it were,
half-expecting my response,
half-wondering what my response
will be (it’s pretty delicious anticipation
sometimes, even in split-second increments),
and suddenly it starts dawning and dawning
on me:

…Hey.

…I’m not going to have a response, am I?

I don’t know, it’s just so refreshing! I always forget
it could happen. When it does,
it’s like somebody
handing you a completely
unasked-for shaved ice, lemon
-lime flavor. Somebody you trust
it’s not poisoned, I mean. The moment

is like that, except not in a way 
you could describe. 

How do you not break out in smiles for miles?
It’s a total reprieve of sorts.

What can they do? Anybody who tries to make
out like you have to give some response, you’re like
“Buddy, you have no idea what you’re talking about.”

They don’t! You don't even have to say that. You're just 
like that. 
If they want
to claim there’s something
you have to say, buddy they better
be able to specify. Hard claim
to sustain on a nothing demand. 

the loathsome

Loathsome and wise, 
fearsome and fierce, 
fulsome and fond:
I am three of these things. 
I can never be more 
than three things at once. 
Or maybe I could,
but who the hell wants 
to juggle five things 
or even, four? When 
being wants only 
what's been before.
What's mastered 
habitually to puissance. 
So: generally three 
is the most, at once. 

stall job

It’s for ourselves
we want the world saved.
Preserved, more like: to stay
this way. The accustomed variety
of life: unwinnowed. Undecimated.
Yes. We can do it. 

The accustomed four seasons and broad
temperate zones for growing, thriving
and comfort. It’s not for Earth.

Earth has been an icebox,
a near-global tropic swamp,
and will be again: both of them.
Many times each, before the end
- and not one damn thing we can
do will stall or prevent either worst
extent at all. We're just panicked
at best,
since at our best,
panic is what we do.

We don't want the change 
whatever may come 
(that is always due,
like a pendulum)
to be our fault.

To see our sweet deal made ruined
or lessened: a wound to salt. 

At best, we don't want
to precipitate things. 

Earth doesn’t give a sh!t. We do.
We want Earth “natural” like our poets,
artists, literatures and cinemas have sung it

to us since we came out upon it
and in an eyeblink saw: this

is what's real. This is what's true. 
The world just this way.
How it should be.
This is the place
where everyday
is new.

But we want them to all dawn 
the same. With the features 
in place stock trope default. 
Only that way can each day 
be ours: a thing that we made. 

All the difference: our fault. 
We want the stage to stay 

the same. Otherwise 
how can we improve our act? 

We don't want to save the world
at all. Just stop it and fix it in place
as fact.  

Which is which?

Two identical stacks of books, 
side by side on the cabinet top: 
all the same titles, edition and nick.
Ordered identically start to stop.  
One stack is straight, though uneven
in size: all of the angles are neat
as pins. The other's haphazardly 
balanced and skewed. It sits 
solidly, with a crazy grin. 

One of these stacks has been read 
straight through. Every page has 
been turned and explored. The other 
was printed and stacked and sold, 
yet every letter remains unpoured.  

the next amendment

the American people
owe the American
people an apology. 
For the repulsive way 
the American people 
have been abused 
by us, accused of 
imbecility and outright 
perfidy, hurt feelings 
and belittling, for years 
stretching to decades 
- ending in death 
if we don't reverse 
course back up this 
slippery cliff!
The only 

one way better

is an official apology 
of some kind - which
all of them must sign 
on pain of treason

- from the American people. 

To the American people. 

We're waiting, asshole  

built on trespass

Every piece of us
was snatched
from things
you should have preferred
to do.

But I don't mind
if you don't mind. And
I won't ask you to.

the information

So sometimes I experience this
sensory overload, when objectively
nothing's going on! It's just gravity
and balance, hearing and sight
and sometimes smell, negotiating
- oh yeah, touch, big time - the crazy 
three-dimensional effect this 
place has. It's 

disorienting 

and unnecessary, and
I love it

Why 
does all of it do 
that, 
huh? Well, 

keep it up

flag warning

As America I say:
hey, beautiful. Don’t
spit on the troops. Don’t
foul the flag. You may find
a bald eagle screaming out of
a skyful of daytime fireworks
to take care of you if you do,
and while a video like that on
You-Tube would guarantee
a ton of hits…let's just say 
I wouldn't want one of them

to be you.

However, that last part?
Don't mind me. I say that
to everyone as an American.
Just a general warning of hope
and message, not specifically-related

to anything you'd ever really do
liable to bringing screaming eagles
out of the sky at you. Yet you know,

we can never be safe in this world 
from a thing like that. It pays 

to keep wary and strong
on such scores. Best defense 
is a good attitude against 
the eagles

circling above us all,  
perchance to kill, biding
their magnificent 
eyesight 

for strong cause 
and bunnies

big break

What if your heart broke a new way?
Cracked so the rattling pieces you've had
all tilted and slid and fell into place! 
Everything fits, and everything meant, 
and nothing sad. 

Maybe you're waiting
for one big break. Maybe
your ace needs a hole, or
your head. Or your heart
just needs one crack so deep, 
it would suddenly all make
sense instead.  

I twinged

I twinged 
a brand-new muscle in my back, 
trying to carry the lazy man's load. 
And I was wondering will this 
injury 
punish me 
later, and enduringly 
to the point I will admit 
it wasn't worth 
having to make 
that second trip. 

Gary Busey smile

There's all these levels in a
Gary Busey smile. It's like
the smile is having its own
conversation with your eyes.
There's the smile! YIKES 

"I'm a pretty scary smile huh?
Yeah I know. Don't worry he
probably doesn't know
I'm scary, so
he's probably just trying to stretch
his face away from his teeth
because he's learned this is how
people show favor and delight, right?
Except...what are the chances, really,
that he doesn't know?"

Your eyes don't say a word

food presentation art critic

A perfectly just-off-balance
composition
with the vertically-flipped turkey Africa
anchoring, leading the eye
up through the mass of stochastic cabbage,
then down
the artful tumble
of citrus wedges and right
off the plate. As visually
mischievous
as no-doubt nutritious, log it in
as another stunner. Perfect score 5/7

wing and spring

Like a well-bred debutante 
with a chicken wing, 
she gnawed me 
interestedly. 
While I 

for my part 
imbibed her whole, 
in face and form 
like a hidden spring.

Yet later we compared notes 
and themes, from that symphony
momentously met. She said

I was the one 
with chicken-eyes. 
And she'd been the one 
drinking in my sweat. 

I was going to protest 
"that's gross" but her laugh 
like bells tolled the tale, 
she was kidding me there. 

She can kid all she likes! 
But her eyes still gnaw
me to bone,

and her spring? 
One sip
still strips me bare.

meet cute

Downtown I espied
a new antiques shop.
Curiosity piqued,
I had to stop in 
to find what it means. 
You were there behind the counter
just counting beans
on a glass display case 
filled with new antiques. 
You asked 
how my day's been, 
I replied not bad. I asked 
how were your nights?

You said oh 
not 
evil or anything. 

This seemed wholesome
and a good thing to clarify. I thought, 
you're not one of those mind-reading 
psionic Templar witches are you? 

You said yes. 
So I thought very clearly and carefully 
only in words, hey, wanna go out? 

You beamed yes.
But seeing I didn't get it (apart 
from the smile) you said it 
aloud: yes.  

So as it was getting well 
up quittin' time anyway 
(I'd timed it just so) 
we took off up the street 
to the savage bistro 
for a bite to eat 
and some chi-chi drinks. 

Conversation's a bit
one-sided, though 
so you say, 
so I think. 

like it's like

I feel like it's like 
I'm famous and like 
interacting in a heartfelt 
snark way with the social 
media people but don't really 
talk about my personal life? And 
then my girlfriend just stopped 
appearing in everything? Where 
she had been in half the things, 
thereabouts. So 

I mean, 
it took about a week or so 
but people started piping up. 
Chiming in in comments, hey 
is Heather okay? Or hey are you 
and Marjorie doing fine? Or 
you get the idea. Whatever 
the hell her name is they're asking
and "interested," whereas 

I'm like half these people 
just pop in every sixth post or so 
and nobody reads all the prior comments, 
so either I do a whole big "explanatory 
post" which half won't see, or 

I commit myself to updating 
people a thousand times on the one-to-one 

'til I finally explode somehow 

and it's just not worth it. So 
I don't even answer, not even 
the first one. I just appoint myself 
the keeper of the business and 
go on about my heartfelt snark 
in blithe blinders mode not noticing 
the presumptuous and unwarranted 
impositions of familiarity. She's 

fine. 

We're fine. 

She just became a nudist okay? 
It's none of you peoples' business
her personal decision sans clothes  
and you know the platform standards 

will not allow it. There's no way 
to make this plain when 
everybody's so used to my heartfelt 
snark they think the whole thing's a prank 
ten different incompatible ways. "Oh 
they just decided hey what if you 
disappear without notice? People 
will be all like hey what!" Or "What 
if to cover for your 'absence' I make up 
a titillating, assulating ahemulating 
story about it to put you in their 
eyes and mind that way?" 

Do you think she and I 
would indulge in such childish 
pranks when we've filled your feed 
with childish pranks for the past 
2 years, 8 months, 14 days 
and 5 hours and counting? 
Yeah, you probably do 
and people? That's 
part of the problem, 
and why I refuse 
to explain.  

Make up your own explanation 
and believe it: she 
and I 

are fine. 

That's what I feel like it's like 
except I'm not famous, ergo 
none of the other shit happened 
either. Still. 

Sometimes it's like that 
even when it's not like that 

and can never be like that 
again

the circle of love

It's impossible not to love your kid 
because they come out lookin' all 
fucked up, and then after a short 
period of adjustment hey 
they get all babyish and stuff 

cute in the adorable sense, 
the irresistible force meets 
weird fleeting resemblance 
to each parent, and you're like 

oh my god I loved you so much 
and me so much I wanted to meet 
someone HALF YOU HALF ME 
AND WE DID IT, and 

even if things go wrong later, 
it's pretty crazy seeing that 
weird little thing get the 
googly-eyed mouth-gaping 
drool-hanging hang 
of things 

like turning itself over 
by itself, or 
dragging backwards 
trying to go forwards 
or sitting up 

UP!  

let alone hauling itself 
up on things and falling 
on its ass, let alone 

language. 
"Language." 

It's like 
"look at our fucking 
collage homage genome 
random shuffle-thing learn
how to DO this this"

it's amazing 

you can't even imagine 
how you did it back 
then. And 

you weren't even your own 
genome. You were these two 
huge loud incomprehensible 
people's. They 

were so cute 

at the time