He was larger than life
   even shriveled
      even the size of a
septuagenarian
   even at 85
      even growing smaller in mind
and spirit
   the last year I saw him
he was larger than life and
   I still looked up . . . .

He was 59 and I
   was a child with
arms and legs dangling
       as though they were made of
purple and orange pipe cleaners
and when he said to hang on
   I thought of Forefathers
      of Revolutionaries
   hanging on to their ideals
and my arms wrapped tight
   like the rubber band on his bread . . . .

The long-ago far-away again and
   again of the
Last Year I Saw Him
   seems to come around
      like Fruit Stripe on a bicycle wheel
   seems to come around
      like a broken holiday of
can/can't come because/without
and you drop
   like a barbell weight
like a drop of blood
      like a ream of cardstock printed with maps
to find you and
   to find you and
to find you had just received a thick file from
   the Feds.

     Again.

I fell into a dream
waking up into a
cookie-scented utopia
of apostrophes that indicated
   ownership
because it was Marc's cookie
and participles grasped and
   secured
like a balloon tied to a toddler's hand

I fell into a dream
where nothing was kool or
   rite
and everything had been
twice read, reviewed, evaluated, and
   deemed worthy
like the cupcakes that get placed
on the plate in a
Cupcake War

I fell into a dream
of silence during silent work time
not invaded by a slithering serpent
fork-tongued and effulgent with ideas
   expressing expressions
idioms cliches redundancies falsehoods
   lies
and the silence hung like
an anticipated snow
cold cloaking with excitement
and a feeling of being completely

awake.

Like a C-clamp
pistons in my ears
drawing together as if magnets
drawing together as a punishment
for having thought for myself
for having thought of others
for having thought and
my thoughts diverge like
a meteor shower
splaying hither a-thither like
blood spatter at a crime scene but
the victim will not be silenced
even in death there is an
effluence of ideas like
beads at Mardi Gras and
a sense of here and now expands like
easy-cheez on a ******* and
your vice-like grip on my mindset will
     not
contain my ideas
because my mind is a river
undammed and
inherently willful
because my mind is
set free

There's a frenzy around ID cards
when you're fifteen
an excitement like trapping bees in an airtight jar
which cannot be replicated as an adult
although the behavior is the same:
     Criticize the picture
     Berate oneself for being
     A human with height and width and coloration

Then there's the barber shop mirror replication of self
the meta-selfie of taking a picture of one's ID
and posting to
     everything . . . ever
so you have a sounding board for your self-aggrandizement
     enrobed in self-deprecation like
     a chocolate-dipped madeleine
which will inherently lead to a
knitted afghan of praise and adoration
which was entirely the point

Then there's the dismissal
the abandonment into a wallet
from which it will never escape
living out lifetimes ad infinitum in vain
never recognizing the worth of

Your student ID
113809

which identifies you
but is not you because

You could never be so two-dimensional

There is a monster who eats time
and he always knows when I’m running out
         the door
         of milk
         of time
and he often seems harmless, mewling like a kitten in
a sunbath on tile
    but then
his teeth gnash like a bear trap and
he growls like a starving grizzly and
he bolts like a tabby
         lightning fast in a quest for the red dot, and
as I claw at my time with
         jagged
    chipped fingernails
begging it to stay
the monster eats my time
engorging himself on the
        ever-hastening electronic cucking of the
clock
consuming my days like a teenage boy eating a
pizza.

I have a monster
     and I hope he chokes on sand.

Once upon a time, we shared a Tuscan moonlight,
A reflective glow illuminating our worlds
Thousands of miles apart,
But shared nonetheless,
And it’s ochre glow hummed down on you
Just as it would thrum down on me
Several hours later.

     Once upon a time, we shared a Tuscan moonlight,
Sharing a cool breeze after a
Day oppressive with heat that
Cloaked the world like a long absent grandmother,
And fruit flies hung in the air like a beaded curtain
In your world
And gnats hung in the air like tossed confetti,
Frozen in time,
In mine.

     Once upon a time, we shared a Tuscan moonlight,
In the same timezone,
In a village described as “Italianate,”
As though that might mask its very
Californiance,
And we dreamt of a summer day in Italy
With countless stairs and winding paths
That unfurled like a waterfall onto sleepy piazzas like a
     “Once upon a time . . .”
          And a shared Tuscan moonlight.

You pass the gryphon house,
     mythology perched atop like Snoopy,
And pick a lemefruitange from the
     omni-citrus tree, and
You cross the threshold onto the
     marshmallow carpeting of my brain, and
My monkey heart leads you by the hand
     to the furtive frenzy of my
          butterfly garden lungs, and
Through my eyes, you watch a movie
     while a unicorn makes ice cream
           on the comfy sofa of my
     stereophonic
laugh . . . .