29 jan: rough faces fall, eyebrows teased to tense, features erase and stall, lost expression, losing face. wiped off those grins in bad taste, tongues play dead, talk stopped, tow away, the white noise choir of crowd conversation rolls over to erode, walked on, past, quiet, the mission street mercy girl who swallowed all my donations and some of me too, teeth marks up along my arm. im feeding you and im starving but being nourished by your attention. this is old. this is new. this is real. this is imagined. this is all.

this is all.
7:23 pm

28 jan: the hall of ma'at.

you behind the veil

heavy eyes, grace of saints, healer, youre even tone. you . . . you are too understanding.

youre a daughter of the western lands, kept by the desert, a pet of the people, saved by the advice of death, you are a child, motion made to flesh, you are a woman of everyfaith and allexpression, you are the bride of pale faces, a wife for congregations, married to the aural, widowed by the songs from these instruments, and also the drums secret lover, you are mother of ten minutes, their heartbeat heartskipping heartache, and you speak like you ache, you are the author of barefootprinted bibles in this citydust, and you dance for a living, you lead prayers for the living, you tend to our dying, you let us pretend it isnt happening, you show us again what we were missing, all along, all this time

youre silent, your mouth transcends words, your lips move, without a sound shapelessly pronounced. you offer a homeless smile, offering lonely company for the lost, invite their approaching, you weigh their hearts and you lend them a patient sort of peace, a sense of peace for them, for every one of your wandering sons, these nomads, these uncrowned kings, seekers of a second paradise, forever seeking kingdom come from the time of their birth, when everyone must lose you to breathe life, to be granted the world. and you dance till the end of everyones life when they finally will come there to you, once again, to be taken.

the veil wears you under, it is your curtain, it is the sky, and this stage never starts, it cannot end, and youre leading, lady, and our memories exist entirely and only on that surface, there on the contours of aurora borealis, the milky way that youre dancing behind, that transparent screen, this is a cinema playing, images are cast over you, the fabric becomes the dunes, light shimmers, shine glances off the sheer and the precious tears woven through the seams, a sandstorm is approaching, its coming, fury screaming across a geography of those ancient deserts there that is your body, you are a mecca for me, when we watch we are touched and there, its then that you will have brought every nomad home, to rest, put still for sometime, having been delivered, found, and, yes, having been guided by you, the you behind the veil.
1:00 pm

19 jan: im still gone, missing, absently losing, lost, all of these missing persons mean nothing to noone. were exiled out here on contrition boulevard, left to this sandwhichboard submission, where the messages are old but are sold to the shortchanged and occasionally to the highest bidder if there is one. and weve got vodka and handcuffs, sadists and soapoperas and stories of secret silken worlds and slave traded ambitions and my purely innocent perdition and sex, sex without permission. i go armed to the teeth and i wander the streets confirming my worst suspicions, lie awake in my bed disguising my dread as concern for the human condition, im a god fearing man but i got blood on my hands and i deal with the public and i do what i can to keep these thoughts of the plague away. the streets are filled with boys all blown out on dust and high caliber toys and they keep me in terror and they keep me employed and i? im nobody. i am nobody. i wake up dreaming every evening about some chemical blast, my brain full filled up with questions that youre too afraid to ask, and she says livings just dying ungracefully, so act fast prices wont last, get it while its cheap and die while gods still playing for keeps. a shadow flickers a face sweeps by transparent in the shining window, i am recognized by a stranger, i am someone that they knew, someone that i was. i must be that someone, but im not who they believe, that someone is not i; i am noone. the boxer trains, the baby cries, the waiter waits, all boxers train, all babies cry, all waiters wait. in towers and in gutters and in soft sweet rooms, eating takeout or escargot or gasoline fumes, drinking coffee from used paper cups, heateai rothschild from magic crystal goblets, am i alone in this? am i alone? am i alone in this? am i alone?

i am nobody. tuxedos and guns, madam, because theyre the symbols of a time. and rivers of blood. madam, in a sunny foreign clime, we keep it with lies and lies we embrace, we embrace what we despise, servants in the rise against the postmen and we understand that love and hate are old fashioned and the obsolete mere voices on the street, but we want our headlines. we got government by ignorance and lots of lobbies in a line and stick twirling painclerks out punching in their time, dread damaged democrats dangling for a dime and paid for paperboys there to keep the public blind. us we got no reason. no clue, no one left here to sing us the blues, and we got drug war arms pimps with all their paydoolls in a row, the cold war cowboys need another row to hoe, air force c-13s flying out of mexico, machine guns going one way and cocaine coming home, the time is ripe for pure dissent if you got money from the mob and muscle from the government, the time is ripe for pure dissent if you got money from the mob and muscle from the government, the aint got no shotgun hydrahead blues, cause here if you blow off one head you get another dozen, the money gods of washington got a lot of waiting cousins, bellies full of cutty sark and faces ripe for muggin, the tyrants and the mob bosses are joining up like theyre in a witches coven and the whitecoats and the technocrats are warming up their ovens, us? we got nothing, no reasons, no clues, we aint got not shotgun hydrahead blyues, and were noone, no bodies left behind, and i am nobody.

(sometimestheres a phantom knocking at the swearingisaw something just past my meaning. this houseis haunted with the never of you and me. faster than we live before we die. opened up and afterall afterall are we going to have our shot at it? something better than the snapshot smaller andsmaller confined to wishing we had known better cursing geography and cursed by paraphrasology the pornography of having never touched you.)

im standing by, supposed to be. pointing at the fading color scheme, devotedly falling for fast talk scam artists, arguing. hostile monochromatic takeover season plots, pbs quality soap picnic, nonprofit condescension posing as education. channel nine murder contraption.

bleeding just got darker, easier, quick cut, screen time shorter, edited for tv blade between the ribs and i am nobody.

but theres this boy here sitting in front of a computer naked and drunk and he can barely take the sight of himself anymore. im making everything up, my mind is stuffed with useless fairy tales and recipes for cream puffs. and somewhere 5 across. it scares me that i know the truth behind what i feel, feeling for you

(it isnt easy telling you the things you should have already had to undergo suffer us. were later day saints waiting for later days to arrive and prompt us to save eachother without our crosses or the text promise of our congress i dontwanttowait i dont want to havethis anymore i want your skin i would rather damn us in person. fleshtoflesh.

you are a butcher of my happiness here. you have taken my life, romanticly assisted suicide. can you give me a life with you truly in it nohidenoseek justplaintosee to be done withthe moratorium of waiting for something to happen.

make something happen. i thought something did.

i miss talking to you like this:

walking with you arm in arm, sidekicks for an innocent cause, companions again, we walk through the city like we are falling, plunging down dark shafts of streets, catching at corners, doorways. nonnarcotic schitzo jargon, conversation is like maple leaf serum. slow slurs and truth drowning in the liquid nitrogen boiling across our throats.

we pass blind man sitting in the sun, cross-legged, indian. barricading a doorway. no go here. a man younger then, with the outer fringes of a soft blonde beard. he sits with an arm out, ignorant of asking us in, his shirt open showing the smooth patient flesh, the slight immobile folds in the stomach. he sits there, he sat there all day every day.

were on our own then.

you visited when i was homeless. and i am. havebeen. who, host to vacancy sign busy signals replying, i was occupied when you tried the door.

fourteenfiftynine, after death, during a year of circumspection and still birth contagiously inspiring still life, youre caught on the outside, on the other side of the door, juggle the calendar, jiggle the handle, dont pressure the jugular the keyhole looks back at you with an animals nervous system questioning a lockpick bargain, break in enter and wonder why the tenants dont reply to the knocks. doorbells, jinglebells, bell toll tellers, dead ringers . . . pass the time, past the bridges pay the hour with broken ears and decibel queers, quarter slot double shot hard ons.

cardinal sins and sinister virtues, working stiffs, the motive at-tempting to color breathing again. a show of comic respect to answer as to why no one came to save you.

and i know where youve been.

they cant say that im that sunken in their old retry try again suspicions, too neck up in the doldrums to know what territories youve fought to stand your ground within, and to what, what you ended up with was a safe place within which just to stand your guard?

to emerge inert, to occupy vision with an occasional flicker. (viscous)ly absurd(ity): these motel quality circumstances, morning round kodak captures, the bible in your footlocker has redundant pages taken from memoryophile distances. take a step closer to your extended family albums with mobile feet dangling at twelve inches up off the ground, bending down at the mercy of a fifty two pickup, (a broken down cheverolet) fifty three including casualties and the joker you call your friend there you are breaking sweat, kicking forward, running marathon eternaloop end-uring a frictionless momentum that couldnt push the noise into a melodic second runner up between you and them in the second place past the long stretch and the finish line and the last lap, the problem isnt the casting call . . . its the absence of value in their welcomemat communications. the way they keep the talk to a minimum. you know, small talk is easy to squish under your boot. real connection requires an exterminators touch when it comes to breaking up the collection.

evicted into a sound of sirens, theres an emergency autoinflatable friend asleep behind the glass coffin, propped up beside your bed, tempting to be broken,

bordercrossing guard gestures your crosswalk again, warning off the gentle permissions for unpredictable things like sneezes that set off a sequence of gin and tonic latenights and gunfire in the darwinian morning light. no one to talk to in exile. main street follow-through. a parade with no marchers. conscientious objectors to a living situation.

fireworks without the celebration to legalize the outburst, close touches without the precautions to sterilize the probable hallucinations, handshakes without the history to condition commonplace traditions and the weight that little things can become.

what do you want from your home? missing person posterboys point and call you castaway, runaway, foreign dignitary deserter. delivery first person shooter. theres a handbook there for traitors and the crew assumes youve been given a copy to which they all subscribe. 11 issues to pay for, one free prize for all to study, singalong hymns and copycat rhythmus in a band of uninteracting poise.

songs to wake their newborns and tunes to wrinkle their wet beds. soundtracks for being lonely inside wartorn country-sides. no trespassing. beware of god. no loitering, hitting or kissing. no playing fair. quietly suffer, thats it, instead.

theres a place for people like you. paradise in the color. strobe combined with others to blend together in offsets that illuminate into bright white light. friendly fire.

the captain. first mate. skippers, missing dates and bedtime hours. sightsailing. sightsailing. navigating nowhere to here. courses getting somewhere. eventual everywhere.

(how do i get to you? you are a way over there.

which way again? closer. teeter. caller.

number

openended
9:42 pm

2 jan: 'you can lean in if leaning makes you feel closer to center,' and her mouth made ugly shapes while she spoke, even though what she was saying was this gorgeous thing. the words shoved their way out instead of flowing passed her lips, chapped and peeling like motel wallpaper, and there was an odor wearing her like amonia which was stinging my eyes. through my squint i could see the outline of the haze that was her shift its weight, impatient, waiting for me to respond.

i took a step back and leaned away from the interaction, putting my shoulder into the groove between two rows of bricks of the building behind me. i fit myself there and smiled, i think. who knows what it looked like, i couldnt read it from watching the reaction in her features, i was still half blind from the social pollution. i looked away and caught my breath then i said, 'theres a better balance here if i do things my way. this feels better, but thanks for the tip.' i nodded at her, almost friendly, as a consolation. 'theres alot of space between us now,' she said, 'you pulled yourself away.' i heard her ten seconds after she was done saying it. i was being distracted by the headache tonight was beginning to manifest into. and without a word from me she just spoke again, 'maybe ill talk very quiet and then youll have to stretch your neck and get your ear closer to the ground, close in to me here.'

she may have been trying to flirt but i felt something that i cant bring myself to put to the innocent permanence of being written. i was sick of the strange atmospheric pressure to like these women whose intrusions made themselves at home in my night, in the history of my life, uninvited. 'you dont deserve this much of a mention in the summary of my day,' i said. 'youre not at all what i want as decoration to my senses. goodnight,' and i smiled nice, pretty please, as i pushed away from the wall and walked away from her. the prettiest girl ive seen in awhile. stunning, really. probably the girl of my dreams, actually. im just too bored with anyone to look for someone special these days.
4:17 am

2 jan: ive been listening to the rainbow connection tonight, thats right, the muppets are unwinding behind me from the pizeo resonance coming from the speakers. the volume is unthreading everything. they are coming completely undone and by the time i finish this letter and look again over my shoulder all that will be left of them will be limp, formless puddles of unidentifiable material. not at all the characters that were singing 'the lovers, the dreamers and me!' just a second ago. its time for another record. its been a carrie fisher autumn and then theres winter, hey, and all i have to say is 'fuck you, december.' were breaking up again. well try it again next year. until then, ill be pretending groundhog day was this morning and ill tell you now, im not scared at all by the strange shapes my shadow seems to make, making faces, playing silly putty games with me. but, im fine.

christmas didnt wear me down besides the lower class consequence of having only hand made to give. i would have been empty handed if it was not for my mind over mattering.

the storyline with loneliness didnt really hit until new years became pronounced again. its gone now, again. but it dragged me down a little to remind me of the rest of the world there under my cloud nine. i didnt get a bug, like a few people suffered, but ive been sick with a slowing. ive been staying inside. maybe, hiding.

its only this week that ive been breaking from my social fasting. so, maybe im over it. or its over me. how does that work again?

getting well? overdosing on painkillers. some of them came with a hallmark card. call it even. dont even . . .

besides the quick character treatment i have left now, after all ( the transit edit, the desire for compatible capitol, looking for more, berkeley view, muted transfer, besides the letdown of winter thats been there for you as well, besides being side by side with no one now) i cant keep myself occupied enough to help tolerate the uneasiness thats here.

jumped or pushed?
3:19 pm