I want to be a tight man
a fight man
a get it when I can man
a hard man
a ladies man
a take when its there man
a bad man
a cad man
a wham bang and thank you ma'am.

I want to be a flirt man
a take a bit of skirt man
a **** man
a slapper man
a kiss em quick an part man.

I want to be a cheat man
a cheap man
a slip between the sheets man
a creep man
a street man
a leering ****** beer man.

I want to be a cold man
an ice man
but some say I'm too nice man?

room spins but i do not feel dizzy i am used to the spinning dancingon air i do not care i am painter yet prefer bare walls i am writer yetfavor blank page i practice yoga daily yet suffer angst a romantic withno one to love no one loves me we unheard voices sing to imaginaryaudiences world not yet born anyone who knows me knows i’m wildconflicted vulnerable mistake-prone trapped in lost boy skittish atsight of blood frightened by shadows scenes on tv movies terrified byviolent humankind why do people trust treasure animals? because animalsdon’t lie cheat steal talk ****** gossip why am i always beingmisconstrued misunderstood? why do women get so ******* at me theyyell slap slam door? why do i just want to not remember get numb die?what do birds see horses know dogs sense dolphins dream butterfliesremember soldiers want to forget? room spins but i do not feel dizzy iam used to the spinning

You hear those saint fainted swines? Slopping around ****** in muck. For hogs seeking bogs, bespatter the pink with thick mire. Dull sluggish foul smelled trolls, basking a bridges under cove, feasting on distant mare. But old boar’s belly’s’ under grown, he has not self meat to spare. Go elsewhere wise butcher. Go elsewhere. Grieve not thy ******* of purification, instead satisfactory of sales. He has not the soul to touch rare blood of a bessy hung by hook. Sars covered hands, sars drenched the feet. Not here butcher, elsewhere lay menial meat.

There's a passage in a story by John Buchan where a minor character explains how a good mystery story is created: take at least three random subjects or events and connect them together. Here goes.
 
A toothbrush
Covent Garden
Wildflowers*
 
Interesting to let the mind float free and subjects appear unbidden, thought Marcus. The moon had risen and out at sea its reflections caressed the swelling waves. Calm the night after such a day of being about.
 
Gregory had phoned him, early. Marcus had been lying in bed. Sylvia had just returned from the bathroom and had folded herself into his arms. Their collective feet had conversed amicably as early morning feet do. She was still tingling a little from the passion they had shared, stretching herself languorously like a cat coming into the warm after a cold night out.
 
'Marcus,' said Gregory, 'it's today.' And that was all. The line went dead, but that was all he needed to know.
 
He extricated himself from Sylvia who was intent either on sleep or further love-making. She was incorrigible, but so so desirable.
 
I'll just take a toothbrush he thought as he swiftly shaved. He picked a new pink one still in its packet and put it in his bag with the papers, a map, his camera . . .
 
He thought about Ripley as he steered the car onto the motorway. That character fascinated him and he wondered if its inventor Patricia Highsmith had ever known such a man; a nice good-looking man, but selfish and nasty. Marcus wondered if he was selfish and nasty. He reckoned he was.
 
When he reached Covent Garden, parking illegally in Jermine street, he wasted no time in walking directly to Turino's. There, amongst the tourists and the out of town shoppers was Greg.
 
'I have this little package for you. Don't open it until you reach Southwold. Park in front of the Lion Hotel. Do nothing until she appears, which she will do after her lunch with the doctor. Then follow her. We think she'll go to Ben's. If she does we want the pictures . . . and as explicit as possible. Leave the package.'
 
It's at least two and a half hours to this village on the Suffolk coast. Until Ipswich he scarcely regarded the early summer colours, the plaintive skies, fields stretching to woods, the occasional grandeur of parkland.
 
He stopped for coffee at a services and called Sylvia.
 
'Hi Sylvia it's me.'
'Where are you? I was hoping we'd spend the morning together.'
'Well Greg called . . . I'm on my way to the seaside.'
'Oh . . . no time for Sylvia today?'
'Not today'
'Tonight?'
'if all goes to plan'
' You journalists, you're all the same . .'
 
But he wasn't. He was different. He didn't just write, he could investigate, uncover things, hack into mobile phones, get the compromising images.
 
Yes, she was going to Ben's . North, on the Norwich road. No hesitation. She drove fast. He had to have his wits about him. When she turned off the main road to the mill he carried on, then doubled back and two miles further on parked within sight of the building.
 
Her red car was there the courtyard. He decided on getting in from the garden so left the road for an adjoining field. Waist high in a profusion of grasses and wildflowers Marcus made his way painstakingly towards a collection of outbuildings, the indoor swimming pool, garages, an office.
 
The pictures were good. Both of them, together. The architect and the broker. Lovers, conspirators, thieves. They deserved everything coming to them.
 
He had entered the mill briefly. There were voices upstairs, a little laughter and then silence. He left the package on the kitchen table propped up against a vase.
 
They'd been following her movements for months after he'd taken his suspicions to Fred. Yes, he'd been so lucky. A wine bar conversation, an aggrieved employee, a few leaked documents and it all came together. And now this . . . the ****** stuff the paper loved.
 
He decided not to go back to Sylvia tonight but walk by the sea, let the gentle whoosh of water on the pebbled strand sooth his ruffled conscience. He had done his job. There would be other intrusions. Investigations, revelations. Mr Nice but nasty like The Talented Mr Ripley, he thought.

THIRTY-TWO Greeks are dipping their feet in a creek.
Sloshing their bare feet in a cool flow of clear water.
All one midsummer day ten hours the Greeks
        stand in leather shoes shoveling gravel.
Now they hold their toes and ankles
        to the drift of running water.
Then they go to the bunk cars
        and eat mulligan and prune sauce,
Smoke one or two pipefuls, look at the stars,
        tell ****** stories
About men and women they have known,
        countries they have seen,
Railroads they have built-
        and then the deep sleep of children.

I don't brush my hair or eat my vegetables.

Really, that's who I am. The tall girl
with the little cousins splashing careless
in the tissue paper leaves of fall
who climbs trees and scratches her bug bites until
they bleed and comes home giggling
with grass-stained knees and dirt in her pockets.
Mom would smile at dinner and say I smell like
Outside.

The compliment of compliments, untouchable with
innocence revered.

Somehow, with a little west coast living and
men under my belt, I've changed. With pressure to
be domestic and beautiful, ****** and *****,
flourish professional and more successful
than my mother's mother who mothered 6,  
I have forgotten this. I fall short.

I fall
in love with men who quell Outside joys and bike rides
with money and ******* and touch me in the dark,
cooing and cawing and convincing me
I'm happier to throw a pretty penny
around, and here, take this pill, smoke this dope,
to not remember the smells and scabs and stories from
when you gave a **** that made you who you are.

I'm getting my hair done today at some high end place.
I'm waiting for blonde dye to set, reading about
world hunger in my National Geographic. Wait,
that's probably not acceptable.

Okay, I'm reading
about J.Lo's *** in US Weekly, talking numbly to the stylist
about I-can't-believe-they-wore-that, while some yuppie
next to me with her face stretched too tight
is reading something ****** in Vanity Fair and
won't shut up about the Kardashian divorce.
"I mean, not like I know her or anything, but it seems
SO like her to..."

I'm surrounded by flourescent lights and floor length
mirrors and ******* with their caked on makeup
whispering of affairs and debt the way
you inexplicably can to your hairdresser alone.

I look at my face in the mirror,
framed in foil, pop music pounding overhead.
I mean, I'm not as bad off as the rest of them, right?
I couldn't be. I
remember the bug bites, piles of old leaves,
pink-cheeked simple childhood, and I can't
breathe all the sudden.

I
click my designer heels to the counter
throw my credit card at the $144 bill and
leave, speeding, to get away, don't know where
to go, I just end up at a ritzy bar where I stumble in
and, out of habit, order a martini, clean, straight up with
a twist.

Then I look down and burst into tears because
really, I'm no different from them and
truly, growing up in this town is
such a cruel, long hurricane of loss
that you can try to flee, past tangled hair and untouched
vegetables, all across the great Outside but you
just can't outlast in hide and go seek.

Nineteen years it's been

And after nineteen years of learning -
Nineteen years of
see-through models,
****** magazines,
and the jutting bones of
anorexics -
  
After nineteen years of whispered hate,
I believe I have forgotten, dear Mother
what beauty is.

I get off the Belt Parkway at Rockaway Boulevard and
Jet aloft from Idyllwild.
(I know, now called J.F. ******* K!)
Aboard a TWA 747 to what was then British East Africa,
Then overland by train to Baroness Blixen’s Nairobi farm . . .
You know the one at the foot of the Ngong Hills.
I lease space in Karen’s African dreams,
Caressing her long white giraffe nape,
That exquisite Streep jugular.
I am a ghost in Meryl’s evil petting zoo:
I haunt the hand that feeds me.

Safely back in Denmark, I receive treatment
For my third bout with syphilis at Copenhagen General.
Cured at last, I return to Kenya and Karen.
In my solitude or sleep, I go with her,
One hundred miles north of the Equator,
Arriving at Julia Child’s marijuana herb garden–
Originally Kikuyu Land, of course—
But mine now by imperial design &
California voter referendum.
(Voiceover) "I had a farm in Africa
At the foot of the Ngong Hills."
My farm lies high above the sea at 6,000 feet.
By daybreak I feel oh, oh so high up,
Near to the sun on early mornings.
Evenings so limpid and restful;
Nights oh, so cold.
Mille Grazie a lei, Signore *******!
Andiamo, Sydney, amico mio.
Let it flow like the water that lives in Mombasa.
Let it flow like Kurt Luedtke’s liquid crystal script.
We zoom in. We go close in. Going close up,
On the face of Isak Dinesen’s household
Servant and general factotum. (Full camera ******)
Karen Blixen’s devoted Muslim manservant,
Farah: “God is happy, msabu. He plays with us…”
He plays with me.  And who shall I be today?
How about Tony Manero for starters?
Good choice. Nicely done!
Geezer Manero:  old and bitter now,
Still working at the hardware store,
Twice-divorced, a chain-smoker,
Severely diabetic, a drunk on dialysis 3 times a week.
Bite me, Pop:  I never thought I was John Travolta.
But, hey, I had my shot:  “I coulda been a contenda.”
Once more, by association only,
I am a great artist again, quickly made
Near great by a simple second look.
Why, oh God? I am kvetching again.
I celebrate myself and sing the
L-on-forehead loser’s lament:
Why implant the desire and then
Withhold from me the talent?
“I wrote 30 ******* operas,”
I hear Salieri’s demented cackle.
“I will speak for you, Wolfie Babaloo;
I speak for all mediocrities.
I am their champion, their patron saint.”

Must I wind up in the same
Viennese loony bin with Antonio?
Note to self:  GTF out of Austria post-haste!
I’ve been called on the Emperor’s carpet again,
My head, my decapitated Prufrock noodle,
Grown slightly bald, brought in upon a platter.
Are peaches in season?
Do I dare eat one?
I am Amadeus, ******, infantile,
An irresistible iconoclast and clown.
Wolfie:   “I am called on the imperial carpet again.
The Emperor may have no clothes but he’s got a
Shitload of ******* carpets."
Hello Girls: ‘Disco Tampons!
Staying inside, staying inside!
Wolfie: "Why have I chosen a ****** farce for my libretto?
Surely there are more elevated themes . . . NO!
I am fed to the teeth with elevated themes,
People so lofty they **** marble!"
Confutatis maledictis,
Flammis acribus addictis.

So, I mix paint in the hardware store by day.
I dance all night, near-great again by locomotion.
Join me in at least one of my verifiable nine lives.
Go with me across the Narrows,
Back to Lenape with the wild red men of Canarsee,
To Vlacke Bos, Boswijk & Nieuw Utrecht,
To Dutch treat Breuckelen, Red Hook & Bensonhurst,
To Bay Ridge and the Sheepshead.
Come with me to Coney Island’s Steeplechase & Luna Park, &
Dreamland (aka Brownsville) East New York, County of Kings.
If I’m lying, I’m dying.
And while we’re on the subject now,
Bwana Finch Hatton (pronounced FINCH HATTON),
Why not turn your focus to the rival for Karen’s heart,
To the guy who nursed her through the syphilis,
That old taciturn ******, Guru Farah?
Righto and Cheerio, Mr. Finch Hatton,
Denys George of that surname—
Why not visualize Imam Farah?
Farah: a Twisted Sister Mary Ignatius,
Explaining it all to your likes-the-dark-meat
Friend and ivory-trading business partner,
Berkeley (pronounced BARK-LEE) Cole.
Can you dig it, Travolta?
I knew that you could!

Oh yeah, Tony Manero, the Bee Gees & me,
A marriage made in Brooklyn.
The Gibbs providing the sound track while
I took care of the local action.
I got more *** than a toilet seat, a Don Juan rep &
THE CLAP on more than one occasion.
Probably from a toilet seat.
Even my big brother–the failed priest,
Celibate too long and desperate now–
Even my defrocked, blue-balled brother,
Frankie, cashing in his chips at the Archdiocese,
Taking soave lessons from yours truly,
Taking notes, copying my slick moves with chicks.
It was the usual story with the usual suspects &
The usual character tests. All of which I flunk.
I choose Fitzgerald's “vast, ****** meretricious beauty,”
My jumpstart to the middle class.
I spurn the neighborhood puttana,
Mary Catherine Delvecchio: the community ****
With the proverbial heart of gold &
A backpack full of self-esteem deficits.
I opt out.  I’m hungry and leaping.
I morph again, grab *** the golden girl.
Now I’m Gatsby in a white suit,
Stalking Daisy Buchanan in East Egg,
Daisy: her voice full of money;
My green light flashing on the disco dance floor.
I, a fool for love; she, my faithless uptown girl,
Golden and delicious like the apple,
Capricious like a blue Persian cat.
My “orgiastic future” eluded me then.
It eludes me still. Time to go home again to the place
****-ant Prufrocks ponder their pathetic dying embers.
Time to assume the position:
Gazing out from some trapezoidal patch of green
At the foot of Roebling’s bridge,
Contemplating an alternative reality for myself,
A new life across the East River,
In the city that never sleeps.
I crave. I lust. I am a guinzo Eva Duarte.
I too must be a part of B.A., Buenos Aires:
THE BIG APPLE.
But I am ashamed of my luggage,
Not to mention my baggage.
It’s like that last thing Holden Caulfield said to me,
Just before he crossed over the Brooklyn Bridge,
Crossed over to Manhattan without me,
Leaving me alone again, searching for our kid sister,
Phoebe, the only one on earth we can relate to:
“It’s really hard to be roommates with people
If your suitcases are much better than theirs.”
Ow! That stung; that was a stinger.
I am smithereened by a self-guided drone,
A smart bomb full of snide antigravity,
Transformational and caustic.
My meager allotment of self-esteem
Metastasizes into something base,
Something heavy and vile.
I drop to earth like lead mozzarella.

I am unworthy, unworthy in the maximum mendicant,
Roman Catholic mea culpa sense of the word.
I am now Umberto Eco’s penitenziagite.
I am Salvatore, a demented hunchback
(Played flawlessly as a demented hunchback by Ron Perlman),
Spewing linguistic gibberish in a variety of vernaculars:
“Lord, I am not worthy to live anywhere west of the Gowanus Canal.”
By East River waters I weep bitter tears,
The promise of a promised land denied.
I am a garlic-eating Chuck Yeager,
Auguring in, burnt beyond recognition,
An ethnic trope, a defiant Private Maggio
From here and for eternity,
Forever a swarthy ethnic stereotype
Trying to escape thru a small but significant
Hole in the ozone layer above South Ozone Park,
New York, zip code 11420.
That’s right, Ozone Park.
If you don’t believe me, look it up.
GO ******* GOOGLE IT!

And I just don’t know when to quit.
So why quit there?
Work with me, fratello mio, mon lecteur.
Like you, I took the LSAT so long ago.
Why am I not a distinguished American jurist
Asking the one question that seems to be on
Everyone’s eugenic lips today:
“Aren’t three generations of imbeciles enough?”
I am Charly from Flowers for Algernon,
A slow learner with a push broom, swept up in
Some dust from Leonard Cohen’s cuff.
Lenny: a grey-beard loon himself now, singing
“Hallelujah” for fish & chips in London’s O2 Arena.
“Suzanne takes you down, Babaloo!”
At last, I am Jesus Quintana—
John Turturro stealing the movie as usual--
This time in a hair net and a jumpsuit,
"Made of a comfortable 65% polyester/35%
Cotton poplin, you can even add your own
Ribbon leg trim and monogramming
For just the right look to be one of
The Big Lebowski’s favorite characters.
Mouse-over the thumbnail below to see our actual style
(Color must be purple). Style #: 98P, Price: $55.95. On sale: $50.36.www.myjumpsuit.com."
Fortunately, I am a savvy marketeer:
I understand the artistic potential, the venal
Possibilities of product placement. Go with me
To that undiscovered country.
The humanities uncorrupted till now by
Crass gimcrack television ads. That’s right:
******* commercials smack dab in the
Middle of a ******* poem. Why not?
Great literature has always been about
Selling something, even if only an idea.
Hey, **** me, Herman Melville!
We both know the publication costs of
Moby **** were underwritten by the tattoo artists &
Harpoon manufacturers of New Bedford,
Matched by a small research grant from some
Proto-Greenpeace, Poseidon adventure in some
Great white whale-watching swinging soiree.
Murray the ******* K, pendejo!
At last, I am The Jesus, a pervert & pederast,
According to Walter Sobjak—another post-traumatic
Post Toasty, like me, still out there in the jungle,
Still in love with the smell of ****** in the morning.
My bowling buddy, Walter, comfortably far to the right of
The Dude, and Attila the *** for that matter,
But who gives a **** if Lenin was The Walrus?
(“Shut the **** up, Buscemi!”)
“Once you hang a right at Hubert Humphrey,”
Said the streets of 1968 Chicago,
"It’s all ******* fascism anyway.”
That creep could roll, though, and as we know so well:
“Nobody ***** with The Jesus.”
Can you dig it, Travolta?
I knew that you could!

INCOMING!
I just heard from an old girlfriend who is miles away,
Teaching school in Navajo Land.
The Big Rez:  a long day’s interstate katzenjammer,
A Route 66 nightmare by car, but by email,
Just down the block and round the corner.
I had previously closed an email to her with a frivolous
“Say hello to my stinky friend.”
It was a total non-sequitur, an iconic-moronic,
Ace Ventura-mutant line from Scarface,
Which may have meant–in my herbal lunch delirium—
That she should say hi to some mutual acquaintance
We mutually loathe, Or, perhaps an acknowledgement that she–
My surrogate Cameron Diaz–has a new **** buddy,
Of whom I am insanely jealous.
Or maybe it was a simple Seinfeld “about nothing.”
Who knows what goes on in that twisted *****’s head?
She spends the next two hours in a flood of funk,
A deluge of insecurity.
A veritable Katrina ****** of self-consciousness,
Interpreting my inane nonsense in terms of vaginal health.

Hey, you want to ruin a woman’s day?
Tell her, her **** smells.

A pack of hyenas, we howl in a frenzy.
Set off by naught,
A twitter or flick and all is lost
To laughter in the night,
Engulfing us all.
Sides aching, my body keeps quaking
Free as a warbler, Screeching and Heaving
As the fire dies, I open my eyes
In a tent, we lay sprawled
Worship almighty Party Mix
Now ravenous lions, or kindergarten children
We claw and shove and dig into the loot
Faces full, stomachs pounding, eyes heavy,
Fingers sticky with snacky crumbs,
A sugary tantalizing coating.
Hounds we are, gluttonous fiends
Living for twenty dollars of sweetly goods
Bought from an otter.
All is forgotten as we sit down to feast
"Spare the jerky, we'll need it later!"
"You devil, its all gone!"
Oh well, no worries of food now
Sufficiently satiated we snuggle into sleeping sacks
Shadows play on the walls
Dancing as jubilantly as shadows may to the music we play
****** stories, crude jokes now met with sheepish sniggers
A fifth giggle is heard from our party of four
Unseen, yet someone is there
A screaming spirit, a lost loner,
A wily wizard, a carnivorous ******,
A balefully babbling banshee,
A sambaing Spanish sandman,
A dopaminergic, diamond-eyed dragon?!
Dare we ask what he be
As his wisdom calmed our carousing
We journeyed through eternity
Visions of it all so overwhelming
Our minds explode
Great kaleidoscopal mortars on a warm eve in july
Visions of dank alleyways, bums and drums
Pastoral sights with floral delights
Emaciated emigrants, there faces so slum
Whimsical unicorns cavort through clouds
Young boys in green turned pincushions by hot flashing iron
Jovial faces devour whole hams by candlelight
Hopeless faces cry and starve by moonlight
Weary we are as the rooster caw-caws for dawn
Wet with dew and naked we slip out
Crazed and dazed we walk in a haze
To witness diurnal beginnings
Pink tinges and orange singes
Streaming above the horize
Time now to sleep
In the crystalline shimmering meadow
Short morning naps
To ease madness since midnight
Dreams foggily drift in and out
Sun's rays fry the flesh
As we awaken to sickening reality
Had it all been psychedlic delusions
Surely it'd just been us four