When I was little,
I always wondered if people wore nightcaps to sleep to capture their dreams.

Dear Mom,
Hey! How’re things?
So, LA is weird. It’s all sticks and stones and billion dollar homes. Last week on the Metro I forgot my headphones, but it all worked out because there was a homeless man who was naked from the waist down except for a pair of Spiderman underwear with the tag still attached who was singing “Sweet Caroline” at the top of his lungs.
Everyone here is someone important. They live the philosophy of Descartes like scripture.
I think therefore I am... exhausted. I haven’t been sleeping because my mind has taken up running, which means it’s acclimating to the culture here quicker than my body because everyone in this town ******’ loves running almost as much as they love vintage shoes and car horns.
It’s strange though, I can’t shake this feeling that I’ve lost something.
Anyway, I love you.

Dear Mom,
Thank you for the eyes.
Last afternoon a stranger told me they were beautiful, and on a day where every mirror seemed to be of the funhouse variety, it was a welcome compliment.
I’m sorry I haven’t called in a few weeks, please don’t think it’s because I don’t miss you.
It’s just, lately, I’ve been feeling a bit like a marionette whose had his strings clipped.
Slumped and crumpled.
Small.
Collapsed and sprawled cracked in some forgotten corner--the hollow knock of wood bouncing across the walls of this mezzanine dressed in finer things than me that have been fostered by
Father Time and his Mistress Stillness.
And I know how you worry.
You worry ‘til bones bruise and still your skeleton aches to shoulder my melancholy yourself, so I can’t bear to bridge this distance with crestfallen phone calls where the past year locks fully loaded on six-shooter lips--the way heels cling to cliffs edge--before finally, reluctantly, free falling; firing off each round.
Six words aimed with eyes closed as if it were up to God to decide where they’d hit:
“I wish I could come home...”
Then your silent, empty-cartridge, catacomb sigh would just teach this telephone how cavernously a mother’s heart aches for her children.


Dear Dad,
I know it goes without saying, but thank you for the check and the note attached to it.
It’s hard to describe how much home I find in the deft curves of your surgeon’s cursive.
I hope you’re doing well. Last time I saw you, you seemed a bit like a lit cigarette filter tip watching the singe approach.
Maybe it was just the embers of your eyes glazed over by one too many heavy handed nightcaps.
And this isn’t to say the Superman who stayed up late nights holding me through fits of anxiety has up and flown away, this is just to say you seem to be flickering.
This is just to say I hope you still laugh at bad movies with the thunderous bass of July fourth fireworks.
This is just to say I’ve been staying up late nights holding on to yesterday.

Dear Mom,
The care package was unnecessary.
I now have more Skittles than any one human should ever consider consuming in a lifetime. So thanks. I know I told you, at some point, years ago, that they were my favorite… but *******.
Really though, waking up to that box on my doorstep choked me up quicker than a swift kick to the nuts. You have a way of weaving through this heartland like a Middle-American interstate and I love you so much for that. It’s just next time, maybe try something that doesn’t have the nutritional value of flash-fried butter sticks.
But not too healthy. Maybe fruit leathers?
P.S. Keep the homemade fudge coming.

Dear Dad,
Forgive the handwriting of an earthquake.
My hands are shaking again like when I was young. I’ve been finding stillness, though, in between sips of five dollar coffee and midnight cigarette drags beneath and incandescent moon that seems to use breeze hands to play cat’s cradle with strings of smoke.
Life is fast here. It’s all gas pedal and touch-and-go breaks.
P.S. If you see mom, don’t mention the cigarettes.

Dear Mom,
I got your e-mail about smoking and the ensuing health issues it leads to. Graphic stuff. That was super informative and totally unprompted. Thanks for that.

Dear Dad,
...

Dear Mom,
Stop worrying so much, you’re making my bones ache.

Dear Dad,
In my dreams I am a lighthouse with an unfocused beam. I’m searching for something, I just don’t know what.
At least I’m sleeping right?

Dear Mom,
These days blur together with the fading speed of a half-life hardly lived to its fullest.
Was it different for you when you were my age? I shift between a drifting stick stuck in a current and desert stone.

Dear Dad,
In my dreams I’m a lighthouse.
There’s a fog horn distant.
I’m still searching for I don’t know what I’m searching for something and there’s a fog horn far off like it’s from someone elses dream but at least I’m sleeping.

Dear Mom,
Do you believe that streams take sticks where they need to be?

Dear Dad,
Have you dreamt of fog horns lately?
I am a lighthouse looking for a nameless something in fog so thick I should be choking.
But I’m not.
At my feet there are rocks and they’re jagged but I’m not anxious because they stay up late nights holding me.
And in the distance there’s a fog horn that seems to be saying “All is not lost.”

Dear Mom,
Do you think that desert stones are waiting for something?

Dear Dad,
In my dreams a lighthouse is built upon jagged rocks that are shaped like your hands. I’m searching for something and even though my lamplit electric torch eyes can’t touch the sky through this ******* fog, I keep them burning because I should be choking but I’m not, I’m finding stillness in the way breeze plays with smoke strings and far off there’s a fog horn distant promising “All is not lost.”

Dear Mom,
This town is all sticks and stones and broken home drifters.

Dear Dad,
All is not lost.

i love you.
i love you.
i love you.

you prepared me for this
and i can't decide whether
it's ok for me to feel as relieved
as I do when I am not crying

i've never felt so much instant pain
and relief all at once
so confusing-- my ****** lady
who walks like a trucker

piebald nightcaps
tree terrace
800+ hours
miles upon miles of cigarettes

dengue.
my heart.
my heart.
you brought me to Christ

you showed that God is love
you've left such a huge rainbow
in the earth's clay
i miss you
i want you

but I don't need you now
you know that
we know that
my heart.

you dreamt me and robbie
will one day meet
we will
and it won't be incredibly soon

--but it doesnt matter.

promise brothers
promise sister
Ngariy.
please hug Tithinfal for me

i'm glad you are with him now
im trying to go to Yap on Tuesday
for a week to see Ray and Celine
and the kids

to see Tingin
our spots the island wide
the tunnel behind peace corps
i inadequatley described to you

but that you can now see
and feel
with ****** yapese local music
blaring in the background

i'll be fine
you know I will
with heart on fire
I reach out to you tonight

all nights.

i'll find Zeyto
i'll hug him
those eyes

i'll sit in Gilin's kitchen and chainsmoke
i'll make you proud
i'll spread your word
i'll spread your message

i'll spread your love
i'll make it to Africa
and ill see you again
before we both know it

i love you.
and i'm good
ill learn to dance with a limp

rug baadagem ni odig, tinmad
gu baadagem.

forever
forever
forever

go rest

i love you.
i love you.
i love you.

you prepared me for this
and i can't decide whether
it's ok for me to feel as relieved
as I do when I am not crying

i've never felt so much instant pain
and relief all at once
so confusing-- my ****** lady
who walks like a trucker

piebald nightcaps
tree terrace
800+ hours
miles upon miles of cigarettes

dengue.
my heart.
my heart.
you brought me to Christ

you showed that God is love
you've left such a huge rainbow
in the earth's clay
i miss you
i want you

but I don't need you now
you know that
we know that
my heart.

you dreamt me and robbie
will one day meet
we will
and it won't be incredibly soon

--but it doesnt matter.

promise brothers
promise sister
Ngariy.
please hug Tithinfal for me

i'm glad you are with him now
im trying to go to Yap on Tuesday
for a week to see Ray and Celine
and the kids

to see Tingin
our spots the island wide
the tunnel behind peace corps
i inadequatley described to you

but that you can now see
and feel
with ****** yapese local music
blaring in the background

i'll be fine
you know I will
with heart on fire
I reach out to you tonight

all nights.

i'll find Zeyto
i'll hug him
those eyes

i'll sit in Gilin's kitchen and chainsmoke
i'll make you proud
i'll spread your word
i'll spread your message

i'll spread your love
i'll make it to Africa
and ill see you again
before we both know it

i love you.
and i'm good
ill learn to dance with a limp

rug baadagem ni odig, tinmad
gu baadagem.

forever
forever
forever

go rest

We scoff at smokers ******* in stone
Yet we've held plastic cigarettes of our own
Nightcaps of cyanide to end Hell's day
A field one at that, while we wandered away
From higher thoughts and chanting gulls
Now poisoned air does fill our lungs
Singin' Glory Glory to emporiums that sell
All that we won when the lottery ***** fell.

We are in the ungodly hour again,
that sixty-minute stretch,
embedded in the nighttime,
of undisputed stillness.
A fracture of the evening
occupied by deep breaths
and oddly-human silhouettes.

The town butcher spends overtime
breaking bones, working
on the swine, and counting  
the progression of the night
by the swinging bodies.
They’re cold and sinuous
but he likes their company.

The town preacher wastes time
as he knows to pace himself
by half hour intervals,
squeezed between nightcaps.
In every period he remembers
slightly less that, a boy
is to be buried by the morning.

The town beggar walks towards nowhere,
he blows an alcohol breath
into his clasped hands
like resuscitating a needy mouth.  
from his ceiling-less living space,
he looks into black windows
just like we would look out of them.

The town dealer is on nothing
living back some hours he lost
Inside his head, looking, from a distance
through his eye sockets.
Now he’s on a strange sobriety and with a text,
the Londonese and the hood come back up.

In the ungodly hour,
no storm makes an eye around me.
In an un-pretty always, things just happen
to fill the timeless time.
We all assure ourselves
we’re all alone.

It’s midnight on June 24th. We’re returning from a “Hot Wax” concert - they were wretched. We’re heading back to Paris tomorrow, so we decided to just stop at the (Kube Hotel) lounge for nightcaps.

Everyone was stirred-up and tight as a violin string when we heard that the “Extreme Court” threw out “Roe vs Wade’s” constitutional guarantees - the latest signal of Americas ascendant entropy.

Following that, was a ruling that threw out New York’s gun restrictions. “Republicans wear compassion like a costume,” Anna pronounces, “what “right to life” IS there, if every nutcase can walk around with a machine-gun. Haven’t they been watching the news?”

Leong, who’s always willing to discuss the superiority of the communist system, susurrates, to no one in particular, “Abortions are legal in China and unless you have a hunting license - guns are illegal.”

“Maybe we should move there,” Lisa says, ingenuously, holding up her drink toastingly, her face tinted a gleaming, bourbon gold in reflected light.

Returning to our suite, 3 hours later, Sophy’s adopted a mode of travel involving swerves and leaning heavily on things. Which Leong, who was not doing much better, finds hilarious. “Use your signals!” Leong says after barely dodging one of Sophy’s flailing arms.

“Two loves I have - of comfort and despair.” Sunny quotes, in her richest, Shakespearian voice.

“There’ll be no uncomfortable beds tonight,” I say, searching my bag for my phone, which has the suite key in an attached card-holder. Charles’ room is directly across from ours and I see him shaking his head as both of our doors close.

We’ve adopted a motto, “live to exhaustion,” and I think, to myself, that we’re living up to it, as I flop onto my bed and the world goes dark.

School children walk by in their dirtied rugby kits
as a reminder that it only takes five years for
inertia to calcify and turn into a state of mind.

I smoke by the front door, ear to the hallway
in case a phone call comes from the government,
lending me money so that I can break up the days.

There is no need to change. No reason to pull out
of these clothes and take to window shopping
in the market town of charity shops and fast food.

My bed is full of crescent moons in nightcaps
and faceless stars, sewn together in Indonesia,
some small hands that gave me a comfort which

faded through wash cycles and pill-drawn sleep.
I have given myself to application forms and binary,
Yes/No answers to my heritage and right to work.

All I can do is lie exhausted in the night sky,
draw the curtains from daylight, and hope that
poetry is enough to punctuate the afternoon.

I thought depression was a creative drama;
a way to filter reality into a thousand petalled lotus
flower that blooms through broken skin and sends

algae past the ionosphere and into the breathless
lung of space. There is caffeine for food and boiled
sweets to give the sensation of mint and sugar.

I thought depression was a poet's ultimate muse.
I thought depression brought the most peaceful sleep.
I thought happiness came in basaltic columns,

echo chambers that sang with water flutes and
siren songs. I thought that I would find the current,
lengthen my back, and then float to dry land.

(since my recall isn't as lucid as yours):

i'd like to imagine that these
wires and terminals traverse
and meet at various odds and ends
like laundry powder and the crumple
of leather on the floor,
summer room industrially cold
and spent curled up
from 9.40 a.m., running on four hours
though was wildly, wakefully inspired

you used to say that sleep is overrated
in the company of
pages and nightcaps, repeated and
withheld goodnights worth more
than a hundred, five times over

now i greet the ceiling away
from milky cloud and skies
in some blinkered awareness, sheets creased,
folded in a mocking design
in-between vistas of
my fingers which you clasped like instinct—
present tense, clasp
—remindful of things that are still here,
that i am no longer fiercely alone.

Strands of ridged ribbons,
Neat bows on nightcaps.
Slippers on floor placed neatly at bedside.
Bed socks and nightgowns,
Laced up to the collar.
The man says we're in for a chill this winter.

Covers pulled tight up round their neck.
Bed lost it's *** appeal.
So cold.
Still trying to feel.
(c) Livvi

I was hardly thinking when I entered the acropolis
The windy roads talked of carefree days, I was to last
At last, my chance came in the talk of strangers in cinema pans and wave cuts
Interfaced, by the aversion to cloudy vision, I adjusted my glasses
Walking among others, could not be more perusing and anticipating
The dissipating dreariness was really smothering my look for a change
Yesteryears shifted by my tainted feeling of flighting writes, and unopened letters
The mailman checks my mail in the mailbox and the ordinariness of things
Committing to the vapid and the milk and closeted wine, in the shepherd's column
My hands were painted with writer's ink, the thoughts just kept flowing
In the rainmaker writer, it was a syllable of doubt and dough, that I was looking at a compensation or stay
The company wasn't hard to come by, the room was charged quarters
In the middle, there was a trapdoor and I felt drawn and quartered
Garrulous crowds talked of Garibaldi, Aristotle, and praise was the talk of the century
Mephistopheles has become somewhat of an errant symbol of a syllogism with your sins
One leads to the other, and follows the posterior, laying logos for following the argument
The argument is not something that writes in my journal, but, it crossed my mind, anyway.


Voracious readers, devoted people, and a couple of friends made my stay, a welcoming farm
Likewise, life's not picket-fences, gambling, drunkenness and staying alive
It's living life to it's fullest and appreciating each moment like it's your last class in life
At some point, philosophy can be unspeakably lame
Well, your ambitions are lame too, and women need to trample over
Just tramping a few, could get you shiny shoes in this American dream
We have divorced ourselves from the idea of nationalism, and I'm sure we make good citizens
I am not even sure why entered the acropolis, as it does not accept speakers like the colosseum
Crossing paths and circling winds were once where crossed swords in history
No, I'm in Rome and looking at the short nightcaps and scenic speakeasy, my mind is wasted on women
But, books and bookers and fantastic factotums who service my every need
Once, they used to shine my car, as I walked among Hollywood stars
Now, I live with my estranged wife and intermittent wives, who are feral and feline
I might even call some of the lithe, but, you're on my mind
Smelling the paint off some of them reminds me of your person laconic and pale
Some of these girls were rather beautiful, I must say, but, the heart was lost with you
Nursing your every need and caring for you, was the biggest burden
That I learned to cherish, and the love was unreal
It was fading like the wind catching me in those eyes
The first sight was love, and now I see you every day as a routine
In the hospice, hoping cancer doesn't spread in the acropolis
Polished ceilings and hovering over us are towering structures, and love is no object
Love is an ordeal, and it takes hard work and effort
These days in this short day in the life of the caring girl, the buildings, and the houses
Living in this city remains all dead, but, empty
Dying in this city remains all dead, but, dying seems more real with
As all this fame, is make-believe
This acropolis is mortal
You are immortal, busy leaving a good feeling
Which is something I can believe in, even through existential crises

Bluebells an beautiful azure bell-shaped blue
Lady's Nightcaps, on which, witches thimbles grew
Under a wreath, of which truth to tell
Evil poisons  within its juices dwell
Boots of the Cuckoo, when plucked from the earth
Easily stolen innocence, early childhood from birth
Later aged, forever followed, by woodland goblins dread
Less fortunate elders, soon to be dead

I slept on sleepwalking, woke conscious people can't stand to absorb the vibrations of folks who's mind is tweaked off the twilight zone, at supper time it's a wake up call that it's bed time soon, solar eclipses brought the halo effect, daylight savings time causes us to fall into the habit of taking advantage of the night as the new early morning though summer was my season of love; I had nightcaps at women's houses, my baby making time to **** and call it a day, holiday season, I was greedy but valued giving more as the world turns, becoming a grown man woke for my kids, they stay sharp from rest from the stress of this ever changing day and night, people of the world, I married venus as the man on the moon on cloud nine, haters say I'm from Mars, I'm one with the Universe!