And it's difficult to remember something as the very name of Eisenhower
Or flowerbaskets
And tired movies made of silicone and
Aftersex
Or sixteen candles echoing out of an imaginary suite with cigarettes at every table
And green lawns
Barbershop conversation
The reflection of the sun in special trees
Or my best friend Jesus Christ
Or the smell of the theater that one day with the cynics who just got back from a tennis match and barbwire still laced delicately around their thoughts and
Nihilism
And automotives
And priestess Jane or Henry's gloomy doppelganger who reads alternative magazines and loves the aesthetics behind broken glass
And fine tuned musical instruments

It's difficult to remember
Lonesome Fridays smoking on a park bench trying to finish the puzzle
Or synagogues you've never been in
Or insurance
Or newspaper articles detailing the misadventures of Mr. City
(Of course of course! Take your shoes off at the door and make yourself at home)
We're tossing all our sewage into the ocean
that's far from clean as it
LOOKS anymore these days
That's anything
And everything except for the glowing mountains seen faded and wintry behind Apartments and the
"Glorious Mexican House of Spices"
Never been in there either

It's difficult to remember
Times of Mr Twin Sister
Or Joan Jett in the hallway
In a highschool who's psychology classrooms have become a time capsule in the ground/
Or the gentle skinny ******
Wearing Broadway makeup and
Kafka tattooed on his shoulder
I like his hat
He looks at me suspiciously
Or the guy who is yelling his order at the counter when it's quiet here anyways
Or the mariner who has a hobby of the saxophone
Or 1970s *******
Or the sheepskin bikeseat fad that's yet to come but I'm predicting it now!
Or two dollars and twentyseven cents at the beginning of Allen Ginsberg's America
"I've given you all and now I'm nothing"

It's difficult to remember
The Oriental
Sacramento flies
Midnight Moon
Quarter to four
"The Immortalization Commission"
Remodelled hotels downtown
Where mandalas on the floor became a
Tiger lily luminous
And the kimono is yesterday's painting/
Dearest Darling
When I was feeling down!
A staircase in reverse (??)
The sound a kiss makes
It's difficult to remember
Colleen's earrings
Or Washington State
Or air conditioners in Bali
The Indian ocean's daybreak hymn
To Seminyak
Or whatever happened to Steve from the Airplane out of Taiwan
On 3 days awake
Hello Kitty nursing stations
****** (Kubrick's version)
Cardboard taking up half my bedroom
It's difficult to remember until I jot it down and then its a sudden forever
Sunshine Superman in a cafe spontaneous
drawings with someone I just met who has some ******* attitude/
Who hops fences and has feral ideas
People! En Masse! Te Amo!
You're all in wolven liberty
And vague postulators
And holy prostitutes for the dollar
Sad eyed intellectuals
With undergarments made of breakfast cereal/
Seaferry poetry is different from
Trestle in August poetry
Or henna handshakes
Or the Napoleonic era
Sweet Cherry Pie
The tulip's tongue
Garabajal
Cloudy first day of July
Was hotter yesterday
But not too hot

It's difficult to remember
Antiquity
The pale horse Studebaker outside the clinic
With a glossy red trim and **** I wish that was my ride
Andy Warhol's exploding plastic inevitable
Nearsightedness
Angels and their ability to shower with a a snap of their fingers
Distant harp music
Better him than me
Bananas almost ripe
Green aquatic
Reclusive junkies
Palomo's appliances
Questions for the next time
How much I like what you like and how I like that you like what I like
Ahh that's not my bus
I'm trying to get to the city!
That one quote Socrates is known for about knowing nothing as true wisdom
Supermarkets being built on top of liquor stores burned down a while back
Monopolies
Tragedies
"No Love Lost"
THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL
Your guess is as good as mine
Never tried to eat Asian food in Asia
It was all pasta and good cider that tasted like pineapple
Rain hitting the window and I'm
Drowsy again
God Save The Trees!
Curly hair looks good on boys
Torn up blinds
Queer as a three dollar bill
If Bill costs 3 dollars I'm sure he's caught something better safe than sorry
Sage advice
I'm the very model of a modern major general
Golden yen and international currency
Incense in the bedroom and how good it smells
There's my bus! Applying for a better job than the one I got now
But that's how it always is right?
Chasing satisfaction
1007 apt
Porch ornaments
Unique names
Unique style le style
The extra charge on foreign ATMs
Cordoroy polo shirts
Flooding in New York!
When someone's face screams *******
"Slippery when wet"
Dine N Dash
Grass gone yellow
Confidence in dyed hair and capes as long as wedding gowns
But less expensive
Doors that always seem to be locked and I'm wondering 20 year later what's behind them?
Albino animals
White thoughts as clouds or
Abstractions
Weathers nicer in Florida but who cares
Festivities this early in the day
Automatopeia
Do sad orphanages still exist?
Just like the movies
Midnight in mirrors
That sick puppet at the shoe shop used
To know how to really hammer it down
And now he's weak and forgotten
Never heard the words of a true prophet only Oceania
Or the private temple near Apollo Bay
Like Japanese gardens behind that gate
Will I ever see it
Make a proud example outta ya misbehavior
Form without function
Exhausted spiritualism
*** Kettle Black
negative photographs of dark rooms
And there's laughing coming from SOMEWHERE
Essays on kleptomania
Had a bad dream I became a cliche
Surrounded by other freaks and there was a lovely ***** I fell in love with her
We married in Oregon by the sea her name was rosy
***** rosy
Check your mailbox for nails
And what you don't wanna hear/
If you were a vegetable you'd be organic!
Empire
Satirical bubble gum
Satori
Linda Lovelace and her special party trick
That's someone's fantasy
Diamond in the rough
Mister guy with two black eyes frequents the adult playhouse
Hes fully stocked on fishnet leggings
He's too proud to put them on himself but
Has nobody else around
Boo hoo
Swigs back the whiskey and trips down the stairs getting a third black eye in the process
Marion came by with her dog the other day
Wanted her box of clothes back but he loved to sniff them to remember her
But she wouldn't have it

"Honey I'm going to call the police!"

"Ah they don't give a **** they have bigger things to worry about"

"Yeah you got that right shrimp **** enjoy my unwashed *******"

And she never came back again
He started losing the vertebrae in his spine 1 by 1 and you know where this is going
I won't say he was a poor man because he had it all coming to him the *******
But he coulda had a better start if you ask me.

It's difficult to remember
And even more difficult to forget
After the fact

Seagull opera
Giganticism
Portrait of the artist as a young man
Losing one's pencil when the best idea of your life drops down from heaven and into your sorry head
Signs graffitied to have funnier meanings
Cruelty
Impassive
The Loyal Lioness
And Bangladesh has too many kitchens
And not enough dishes
When I was young I used to say Island as "is-land"  
Which is true it is land
But the Europeans probably stole it from somebody else anyways/
I left my future behind
And objects in the mirror are closer than they appear
Im no illusionist
I'm terrified of the cracken
Father feels the same way about
Hotels
Why bother/
This has been going on and on for a while are you tired yet
Is your patience being tested
Mine isn't because this wasn't an all-at-once kind of rambling
It's extremely important to laugh at least
Once a day
Otherwise you'll find yourself a politician
In no time at all
Rockefeller
(         ) Quaint home to die in
I think
Trains create great music
Float on
Sink into yourself
Roses in a crooked alley
That's people
Busy busy busy busy
Let's describe a situationist
I'm not a fan of bright colors on clothes
Your best shade is blue
Bricklayers transcription of Don Quixote to a skyscraper
Rocket thyme
& Garden
Erratic children's
Insomnia
The doorbell repeatedly
Vancouver riots/ I saw that live on the news!
Pictionary with the surrealists
N Dada TV set MC Escher
Antenna
You're in the Twilight Zone now
Dear Ramona
I'm trying to make it up to you
With a brightness only seen when you're ready to see it so please for the love of God don't blame me when it's not appearing
The tapestry hidden
Keep your blankets clean
And avoid hospitals unless you're fine with fishbowls & the halogen
The water gestapo
Storage lockers full of unacted plays and
Antique microwaves
Emitting the nostalgia of the cold war era
And what a waste of time that was /
Walter Wanderleys presence in Autumn universities
The opening of Vivre sa Vie
Salvador Dali's pluvial taxi
Lightbulb epiphanies
Aquariums and their protestors
Zebras in the shade
Two wrongs dont make a right
Elizabethan theater
Saloon shootouts in a fever dream
I lost and bled out all over the rustic wooden floor
A maiden reached out for me and El Paso did play I woke up and pretended nothing happened/
Funerals for bad People who did bad things
My first memory of a cat beneath the mattress
Hello Dolly!
Auditory learning
Psychotherapy
Lillian the landlady lost her ladle and labeled little Lyle as a lair
The Black panther movement
Reading symposium some years ago and
Making note that Phaedo was still my favorite dialogue/
Zen Buddhism
Xoxo xoxo
The day Gypsies were replaced with
Surface ****** appetite
And not the real thing
Newspaper clippings
Hypnotism when all other options are out
Mystical visions of sidewalks
And the love of your life stepping through a door you've never seen
Maybe Yes No I Don't Know
Creature comforts
Che Guevara's problem is that his beard made him too easy to recognize
(Also that little hat!)
Chinese cough medicine didn't work
For long I still wheeze sometimes
Domestic violence thru the wall
Ceiling fan probably doesn't even work!
Dimpled laughter
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
In skytrains to Commercial
Bermuda in her mind
And courtesy in her voice
I'm no Arthur Rimbaud
But you already knew that
Alcazar of Seville
Filling up the shipbottle
Here's your paradise
Now relinquish it as it is
False!
Hare Krishna
Nowhere Fast
El Diablo and the
Portofino loaf left rotting on the countertop
Latin children speak of the sacred viper
You'll hear of it after this but we'll never see what the ******* meant
Heads alternating round the social current
Of my lively city
There's a dog soaking up the rain
And songs are made in honor of
Recent catastrophes
Trials are dealt
Cards cast to the gutter
New York quiets down for the news of another war
You scratch my back I'll scratch yours
Skeleton key
Ballad of the last wailing zoo
THE ATRIUM
Complexity in simplicity
That's how Brainard got me!
Elderly overcoats
Hiding purest LSD
Is a fan of Hawaiian T shirts
And a communist
What if I was a Freemason
Or owned a tanning salon
Faint crimson
What did Marv look like again?
"You're surrounded by people who love you"
Coffee when one needs it
GOODBYE BLUE MONDAY
Tattoos on the wandering man
Oriental chimes and the people who own them
Bus stop regulars
Vines overtaking power lines
The hypnogogic state
Strawberry light softening
The mind
Sister Ray LOUDLY PROCLAIMING
doitdoitdoitdoit
Passing the graffiti n Pluto neon
Halal wide awake another Saturday
Where's the Karaoke
Flashing by here
Those who find comfort in a bridal scavenger hunt
Or expensive beer
And here comes the hooded clown
Clamoring about his favorite
Loudspeaker
Telling me my time is soon and the noise
Drowns out the drowsy bliss
After hour spirits the perfect time for
Writing and trying to read distant Chinese
Indecision on the tip of the tongue
"NOW WHO IS THAT KNOCKING
ON THE CHAMBER DOOR?
COULD IT BE THE POLICE?"

I'm completely off the topic
And into Apartment lobby photosets
Low battery phone calls
Confessions
Nauseated reverb
Trying to see the attachment people got with bingo halls
And moving companies
Ah no luck again
Eve is at it with her showtunes
Halfway methodology
Triage
Paisley headbands left
Distraught on the quivering
Heater
Dwindling sunsets
We're truly disciples of the moon spirit which grants us more energy
(This is according to a drunk I met one night)
Or ***** old men
When the horizon is engulfed with
A winking cinder
Suitcase at the door
Last time
First time
Magician never reveals his fetishes
(They all have to do with bags under your eyes)
Employment office dramas of my friend the one who blinded a social worker
And the one who blamed Islam
And the one whos philosophy entirely consisted of Spooky Action at a
                                            DISTANCE
Parisian riots
Queer youth
Didn't make the team! Jester
'cross the hall who's beard suggests
Ishmeal n car battery n expired vegetables n rain which crosses the line n
***** cranberry n
Poorly fitted suits n
Harsh pigment n incense shops n
Bocca     secret towns
With churches more beautiful than any you'd find in your own city
n the cultural market
Xylophone ear to ear
Soul cleansing starting at only
$89 (with a 6 month guarantee)
Sophie's birthday and her picnic at Victory Park
The nearby bums trying to sell tea mugs and
Loose wires beside gated convenience stores
I'm an Island away attempting a poem
And never bought a scratch n win
Or heard the same song more than seven times in a row or been in a column
Or escaped the washhouse
Invested in a birdcage for next year
Been to a palm reading
Visited Oasis
Smoked salmon
Told anyone else about Montana
Screamed the things I'd like to scream
** Word of the day
Or kissed a lunatic or swallowed the corpse of yesterday
I keep her on my neck until
I'm too anxious to let go
Counting streetlights
Jeans worn in and faded to be sent off to
A lonely caffeine addict
Christmas Eve I'll be reading a postcard from San Francisco
Asking the same questions
My imagination is made of a different material than last week
Now it's the same color as your hair
HEY that's a good pickup line to use in the heart of the Canadian Embassy
Drinking discarded music resembling a sweater you may have said YES to if it wasn't so unsure of itself
And now Mr. Acker Bilk ascends thru the window of an August home
Like a lazy hornet
I'm still lost without identification
Or a nice belt
As happens when one uses a quality item too casually
How did uphill suddenly seem so downhill?
I'll claim a waterfall
For SALE that inevitable Indonesia
Greyhound O another greyhound O another greyhound
I'm fretting too much about not enough
Delayed the Airport and the yellow question

????

II

What if I knew how to read the curb?
Or translate drunken droll
What if I was never tired again and could
REALLY do anything I set my mind to?
What if I was the first cigarette that cured cancer instead of caused it?
What if I could end superstition
And walk underneath any ladder I wanted?
What if I could make it with a young Audrey Hepburn!?
What if I stopped pretending to be a microphone and got on with "it"
What if the grocery store closed later
And I opened earlier?
What if parking lots werent so sad
All the time?
What if gravity simply had enough of exotic birds and specifics?
What if we stopped trying to recreate what is truly lost?
What if foreign children embraced
Wasting time instead of
Midnight starry bicycles
And the antics of a monk
Disguised as a romantic?

There are those that worship God
And those who worship the Sun
And those who worship nothing at all
But I suppose on the last bus
We're all the same exhausted
Voice who can't wait for next pay day
What is an empty bank?
Or authenticity
What is there to prove anymore?
I hope I don't die tonight and regret
Being impulsive for once
You're a smart shadow
And a dull character
Pushing the last of the daisies
Get the lamp to turn on again
Give the pavement something to look forward to with your walk
Be consistent in being inconsistent
If there's a word there's a ***** and a poem for it!
We all oughta worship
Nothing at all except
Clarity
Compassion with ones neighbor who either forgot the pay the electricity bill or couldn't afford to
We're a swimmin

Entering Summer's sweet solstice where
daytime has won the war,
children born beneath the raspberry moon, to be reborn and reborn again midst stillness.

Here I see
old arms stained with
glass and vermilion
sticky alcohol and memories of
parades illuminated in New York.

whole city sulking in it's own gentrified poverty
looking at itself in a faded mirror,
silver wrinkles
kissed by June's many modern gentleman
(in quotations)                                                    Th­e lonely towers howl
                                                            ­                  benevolently

transit thru factory neighborhoods and catching up on O'hara,
fatigued by staying up to watch dry mornings repeated.

looking for meaning in various signs
adverts
columns
shop names
and streetcorner dramas

the same strange song plays!
picking up where you left off at the clothing store or the laundromat
it's a soft tune I'm not complaining but variety would be nice
this anonymous song/here it is/again/
the one that plays in the background of our sleep

a child is wrapped in red silk sprawled out on the pattern seats of the bus, he pretends to be unconscious
but I know better
gasoline keeps our eyes alert

Few days later I'm embraced by rooftop wine,
a sleepless night watching American Graffiti beside a
red stone on a mantle plugged into the wall,
The Mamas and Papas
"Spanish Harlem" in the living room
with a bought wrap from the cafe up the block
and the morning is mysterious and uplifting

"awoo
lalala
lalala
lalala la               there is a rose in Spanish Harlem"

we're tired people that see enough in the world to stay awake
there's a story here
and briefly written or explained pasts  
that will soon be replaced with whatever humid
accompaniment lurks loudly beyond the doorway.

A distant man with a knack for the harmonica searches for his cigarettes
by empty diners
and psychic shops of Christmas colors
vibrating lucidly 'cross the sky,
and he can apparently hear
the feedback to an amp used by a man
that changed his life
H E N D R I X
I snapped a few pictures of him
I wish him all the best

he told us of a past-Jamaica
and the dreams he brought there,
a girl he fell in love with
and her incredible ***
and I mean just incredible
you wouldn't believe this ***
and he never got with her
or the girl who used to frequent the church here
but he's staying optimistic, and
so am I man.

So am I.

Heater hallways shake beneath the blue sky/
Apartment flash of childhood howling thru top floor window

Pink memories and ambient music
while stoplights blink
for their empty streets.
I'm wandering alone in this town
and the cat is sleeping off his traumas of being a man

"COLOR VIBE
LIMITED
TICKETS
AT ESQ"                   half a sign away from meaning but the abstraction
                                  means something in itself

Black hand pointed to the doorbell of the cosmos
all lit up
I'm present in a quiet
fluorescent shopping complex on the way home,
I like that anonymous kitchens are still unified and yellow/
these pattern lives remain/
optimists I'll never know/
lovers that browse the antique shop up my street and have a certain
fondness for the velvet hat on the rack

(that's     how    I    feel   about   this    whole    neighborhood)

"NO SMOKING
WITHIN 7 METERS"

Means nothing to the morning before bussiness hours

You were there
underneath strange elevators and
London's tragedy made the news
I don't know what to say                    but

I guess it doesn't matter now does it
(Hillcrest Park's ethereal flow catches the blue room
and makes my cheeks warm)

We cleared the air,
we didn't but we did.

"What have you been up to?"

"Ah, just keeping around"

"Yeah?"
"Yeah"

The voices across the hall a blur behind the door
I
barefoot
             walked down the steps/
                    into the bathroom/
      looked into the mirror/
                     told myself that I was myself/
I still need that reassurance.

Melody melody melody
melody melody
                                               in the skull
it's a calm sound and a violent feeling
I've been kinda sad about it all day now.

(Laying there
the room has vanished)

mute the flower screaming from the television
and love's been paused again
for Summer months.

and after a
death nightmare like that
I can't help but think of Corso's gravestone
and how much the clouds really do
mean to me

O how important
tattoos of ailed hands become.

appreciating
the flowers of May
as trees become aware
of the cold every year,

me, teary eyed on waking
and realizing
what people close to him must be going through now.

Active motion
act in motion
spark the plug
and speak with love                  smalltown rain
occasional clouds                       bus stop lights out
hazy thoughts                             sway your imagination back and forth with
                                                      violin­ and incessant heartbeats

I adore you saxophone
and appreciate the pattern of your voice
there's a little something for everybody here.

(at least for those that act on their own
volition!!)

existential essays among
the Spanish backpackers belongings (Camus' Myth of Sisyphus)
the sound is dazzled with itself/
my attention wanders to the distant mountains
where snow still sits meditating on
my dreams and your dreams.

(The more we get together the happier we'll be!)

In a flash the coffee shops close and large homes from decades ago
are physically moved to other lots
and cranes observe the night
a little ways down my street
across from the Apartment I lived in around 2002
(My cousin Rachel came over while I was sick with summer fever)

EVERY STRANGER SLEEPS
I WONDER WHAT THEY DREAM
I WONDER IF THEY ARE DREAMING RIGHT NOW

painted animals wait idly in the fields of parched grass
for another bomb to go off
and I've forgotten the static of the TV
I once saw them in

May day May
day
I can't believe how hot it's been outside!
I'm forcing myself to be confident enough to wear a T shirt
(ah) at the line in the grocery store the woman ringing thru my
soon-to-be plastic bags
she's a child of her cigarettes and a mother
of her ashes. Her hair salted and her face like tired glass
I'm so sorry
I'm so sorry that love is hard sometimes
(and o so soft)

I was at the sleepy supermarket once
(in an imaginary place)
and a child was with her parents and noticed the expiry on a 2% milk
she asked
"What does this mean?"
her mom looked down at her to what she was pointing to and replied
"That's when the milk goes bad. When you can't use it anymore"

They continued down the aisles and she asked
"Do people go bad too?"
I don't know what caused her to think this so early
it's such a shame dear,
her mom frowns in that way when you're trying to hide it.

"Yes, you gotta drink the milk fast, but some people drink up life too slow and it leaves them sour"

and upon leaving back to my mattress
I never saw which direction they went or where I wound up
after accepting that my heroes would never appear.

PASSING the elementary school I once attended
during a windstorm
throwing tantrums during assemblies and making
friends with car accidents.
I try to remember names and only Sean, Alexis, Daniel and Dean
come to mind...

..So long to childhood vagueness in
days deceased to
trashcan calendars
it was nice to see you
but I really must be going now.

                   (TODAY IS A UNIQUE SHADE OF YELLOW)

Flashing Monet garden blur,
central eye signals up to the core of the brain
until entire body shudders silently beneath the brightness
of banana visions and white blood cells
circling a small dot which fires
down a shorter path in this large bleeding space.

Pupils rolled into sockets,
losing sense of body and of self/
just a floating consciousness/
vivid rainbow lacework pattern into
a vibrating eye
staring back at me fluctuated
in flashes of
flower and
numb fingers
asleep
with absence of mind.

Soft mechanical shapes
swirl about the washing machine,
my head no longer attached to the body/split down
de/
capitat/ed/
consciousness wanders, circles back ethereally
to the room behind me
sees clearly
and expands out thru the window into the grey light of the morning
to see nobody awake
and the vagrant eidolon
can feel me staring back at it for once,
a presence not felt before..
..and the hum in my body rushes up to my head,
intense vague visions,
the weight of my feather-sensation
increases to point of fear,
disorientated upon opening eyes
and centralizing myself
to the room
and universal position.
                                                       ­ Breathing deeply.