if i was a pearl i’d feel itchy scratchy stuck inside an oyster shell if i was a tree i’d  be a big fat redwood fantasizing about Julia Butterfly Hill living and peeing around me if i was a dog i’d be a Catahoula hound if i was Italian i’d be Sicilian if i was pasta i’d be spaghetti if i was Icelandic i’d be Bjork if i was a rock star i’d be Elvis Presley Bob Dylan Jimi Hendrix Jim Morrison John Lennon Bruce Spingsteen Maynard James Keenan if i was i writer i’d be Herman Melville Mark Twain James Joyce William Faulkner Thomas Bernhard Yukio Mishima Naguib Mahfouz Phillip K. **** Gabriel Garcia Marquez Annie Proulx Lydia Davis if i was a poet i’d be Walt Whitman Sylvia Plath Ted Hughes Gwendolyn Brooks Pablo Neruda  Heather McHugh Carl Sandburg Robert Frost Arthur Rimbaud Dante Alighieri Homer if i was a painter i’d be Leonardo Da Vinci Michelangelo da Caravaggio Johan Vermeer Rembrandt van Rijn Paul Cezanne Marcel Duchamp Jackson ******* Mark Rothko Ad Reinhardt Anselm Kiefer Susan Rothenberg if i was a photographer i’d be Man Ray Ansel Adams Edward Weston Diane Arbus Robert Mapplethorpe Sally Mann Helmut Newton Richard Avedon Annie Leibovitz if i was a philosopher i’d be Socrates Plato Aristotle Jean Jacques Rousseau Sören Kierkegaard Immanuel Kant Karl Marx Georg Hegel Friedrich Nietzsche Henry David Thoreau Ralph Waldo Emerson  Jean-Paul Sartre Jean Baudrillard Michel Foucault if i was a singer i’d be Woody Guthrie Otis Redding Grace Slick Bob Marley Joni Mitchell Marvin Gaye Johnny Cash Patsy Cline June Carter Patti Smith Chrissie Hinde Nick Cave P J Harvey Beyonce if i wa a band i’d be Velvet Underground Ramones *** Pistols Clash Cure Smiths Joy Division Uncle Tupelo Pixies Nirvana Nine Inch Nails Madrugada Sigur Ros White Stripes Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra Justice of the Unicorns if i was a boot i’d be Chippewa Frye Ariat Red Wing Tony Lama Wellington if i was a shoe i’d be Christian Louboutin Jimmy Choo Kedds Chaco Chuck Taylor p f flyer if i was a dress i’d be Channel Dolce & Gabbanna Giorgio Armani Marc Jacobs Comme des Garçons if i was a cowboy shirt i’d be H bar C Rockmount Temp Tex Karman Wrangler Levis Strauss Lee if i was a hat i’d be a Stetson Borsalino Stephen Jones if i was a fruit i’d be a mango apple banana blackberry if i was an scent i’d smell like fresh perspiration jasmine sandalwood ylang ylang the ocean if i was a doctor i’d be a gynecologist neurosurgeon if i was a flower i’d be a hibiscus rose orchard if i was a stone i’d be a sparkling ruby diamond opal if i was a knife i’d be a k-bar switch-blade machete if i was a gun i’d be a Remington Winchester Beretta Glock AK-47 if i was a car i’d be a Lamborghini Ferrari BMW Saab Volkswagen GTO Ford Mustang Dodge Challenger if i was a  TV show i’d be Law and Order if i was actor i’d be Charlie Chaplin Humphrey Bogart Steve McQueen Robert De Niro Ed Norton Shawn Penn if i was an actress i’d be Marlene Dietrich Ingrid Bergman Natalie Wood Audrey Hepburn Marilyn Monroe Helen Mirren  Meryil Streep Brigette Fonda Robin Wright Julianne Moore Angie Harmon if i was a female comedian i’d be Gilda Radner Lily Tomlin Nora Dunn Joan Cusack Sarah Silverman Tina Fey if i was a  football player i’d be Sid Luckman George Blanda Walter Payton **** Butkus Mike Singletary Joe Montana Jerry Rice Payton Manning LaDanian Tomlinson  Drew Breeze if i was a celebrity i’d be Charlotte Gainsbourg if i was a rapper i’d be Tupac Shakur if i was a movie director i’d be Sam Peckinpah Robert Altman Stanley Kubrick Roman Polanski Werner Herzog Rainer Fassbinder Louis Bunuel Alfred Hitchcock Jean-Luc Godard François Truffaut if i was a bird i’d be a eagle hawk sparrow bluebird if i was a fish i’d be a dolphin shark narwhal Charlie the tuna if i was breakfast i’d be a French toast pancake folded in half with 2 strips of bacon in between if i was a cold cereal i’d be snap crackle popping rice crispies shredded wheat cheerios oatmeal if i was tea i’d be Japanese green matcha Irish breakfast Tulsi Thai holy basil Lapsang souchong Luzianne Lipton if i was a soap i’d be French hand milled ayurvedic Avon Ivory Dove Pears Aveda  if i was a man i’d be a football basketball baseball tennis swimmer athlete if i was a woman i’d be a track star runner writer painter gardener doctor nurse yoga mom i'm just scratching the surface and the beat goes on lahdy dah dah

“every man wants to be a tyrant when he fornicates"— marquis de sade (philosophy in the boudoir)
in murky region of my mind flickers shanty town of wickedness and all who burn betray me are tortured murdered buried on outskirts of this moot province not entirely devoted to revenge shadows dart lascivious exchanges shadow economy back alley shenanigans soundproof rooms filled with hunger for beautiful women sole source of my arousal female lust japanese silk braided ropes bowls hoses drop-clothes vibrating toys anticipating mischievous acts town’s folk love esteem me applaud my fiercest turpitude fathers offer their daughters mothers perfume girls with wild flowers in their hair whispering accommodating instructions ultimately i decline their generous offerings opting instead for steadfast soul confidante accomplice closer in age she knows how to mommy my genitals get me off and i the same for her churning simmering caldron of desires dazzling aromas through center of town runs sacred blue river constantly replenishing innocence upon dust filth criminality also many enchanting bridges connecting dark side to bright side in elegant rundown art museum hang several of my paintings next to jackson ******* ad reinhardt anselm kiefer gerhard richter albert pinkham ryder francisco goya susan rothenberg and public library shelves brim with volumes of my writings next to james joyce william faulkner sophocles sylvia plath rainer maria rilke milan kundera franz kafka gabriel garcia marquez thomas bernhard patrick suskind  pablo neruda oriana fallaci annie proulx lydia davis during mornings everyone busies themselves making things practicing yoga swimming cooking friends gather for lunch munch comically gossip about previous night’s dramas in afternoon go back to their interests at sunset all citizenry come together look to west watch fiery orange globe sink beyond purple mountains wonder reflect sniff their fingers as night falls on little village each goes about deciding what to wear then meet for cocktails in local taverns and commotion begins

In the middle of the night
I share this poem with you

What do you know
what do you see of me?

A few patches of black
carved in the white of a screen
a few sad words trying to soothe
what is left of me

I live secluded in an apartment
downtown of a half a million souls' city
founded by the Atlantic ocean

I live a cosy and quiet life
sometimes going out to feed myself
and breathe the lousy air of town

Me and my few friends gather once every week
to share a drink
to exchange meaningless thoughts
and useless ideas
around the fate of man
the hopeless prospect of our destiny

We are bachelors around forty
We were born wild and hard
offshoots of the oddest
long gone sycamores
rooted in the most infertile soils

We used to read powerful litterature
Nietzsche, Kafka, Broch,
Joyce, Balzac, Beckett,
Shakespeare, Goethe and Bernhard
to name a few

But none of them has ever helped us out
to find a heart to love
and a pristine soul to care for

All the books we read
have tormented us
with many questions and relentless issues

Now we sit still in our chairs
and watch the clouds go by
hoping for the next blue sky
hoping for the next feeling to come

And never do we ask when...

In Times New Roman, I font
to hitch wagon to a star.

Alias Adobe Jenson Albertus Aldus here
wed Alexandria (Algerian, an all around
American Typewriter gal) scattershot
with Antiqua ancestry, she told me
after I Aster while Aurora Borealis

shimmered overhead, while temporarily
embarking on long day's
journey into night
("yule Jean," I uttered
for no particular reason,
while taking a knee).

Upon spontaneous spur of moment
(not prematurely *******)
whim we pledged our troth
courtesy local Justice of the peace

at a pitstop named Baskerville
renown for landmark Bell
designed by Georg Belwe
in collaboration with inscription
by poet and cleric Pietro Bembo.

Whatsapp parent tis obvious influence
upon Berkeley Old Style,
plus subtle nuances difficult to discern,
nonetheless affecting one
Bernhard Modern as well

incorporating bankrupt trumpeting
apprentice Giambattista Bodoni
envisioning aspiring career as Bookman
titling initial publication;
The art of the deal.

Linkedin to aforementioned
aliens perhaps...maybe...
lost tribes of Israel long since
swept into dustbin of history,

a puzzling hyperlinked conjunction,
but with nebulous, mysterious,
gaseous, ambiguous
personage, and/or place
merely identified as Bulmer.

As iterated, we decamped
in proximity to Caledonia known to me,
a transplanted Californian FB,
who spent countless blocks of time
shuttling to and fro Calisto MT,
where pennies pitched into
fountainhead with Atlas shrugged.

Thee above ayn nee auld
rand (dom) blurb
invites intimations, yes...
viz pre Cambria yen
humanity awoke, where

sophisticated indigenous peoples
sparsely outnumbered,
they nonetheless compensated
minuscule population size
vis a vis did intriguingly fashion
(bug a boo)

underground elaborate Capitals
two identified as Cartier,
and Caslon Wyld
housing many a "FAKE" Antique,
circa Fifteenth Century
purported predecessors of Catull farmers

easily mistaken for garden variety
prehistoric Asian Tsen
Centaur re: yen creature,
what with Century Old Style,
Century Schoolbook,
New Century Schoolbook,

Century Schoolbook Infant
teenage ninja mutant turtle vestige
aligning their (ain't fib)
be yen cool visionaries,
donning tortoise shell bifocals,
otherwise affixed i.e. born that way

with poker faced purblind outlook,
and whose shockproof
shell acted carapace
tricked out to unseen observer
as an eye opening spectacle.