Once sad refrain of acquiescence Then rebellious No and licentious Yes I cannot say which one’s correct and am glad to have had my say of it
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Nounce
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I’m getting ideas to do things. They are represented as flowers and clothing. I worry about being tied up in them.
I have a knife and cut myself out of them. I see that I have the right to be free and to have an inexhaustible supply of flowers and thread.
-
I’m hanging around. This nice druggy guy comes by. We drive around a little bit. He asks borrow my car, cell, and some money. He’s just going to take a nap then return them to me. I agree. I take a nap. After I wake up he hasn’t returned with it.
I want to call him but I don’t have my cell phone. That’s when I start getting suspicious. It’s been a while and he’s not back and I have no way of getting in touch with him.
So, I file the police report. I met a woman on the way out. We talk. I’d like to be lovely with her. Then I realize I don’t have a lot of things she’d expect me to have. Then I realize I never would have meet her if I hadn’t been in my situation. At some point we are hanging out in the back of a moving flatbed pickup. She helps explain to new cartography in which earth no longer seems round and explains how atoms become capsulized. I can see what we are talking about scribbled in the air as we discuss it.
I’m at my parents’ home. I bump into Mom; she asks if I’m going to do a specific thing. I’m embarrassed because I don’t have my car to do it. The same embarrassing situation happens with Dad and Brian. It’s getting to he point I’ll need to confess. Then I hear my guitar.
It’s the guy. I go and get my guitar from him. Then he gives me my car keys. Then I go to my room and see my cash on the floor. It’s all returned to me.
We get in the car to drive him home.
“First,” I tell him, “we have to go to the police station to take back the stolen car report.”
“So, you filled a stolen car report on me?”
“Yes… How how does that make you feel?”
“I thought we were buddies.”
“Well I trusted you until I realized I didn’t know how to get in touch with you.”
Then I realized I could have called my own phone to talk to him. Well, it’s going to be hard to have him think well of me now.
-
I’m hanging out with some young coworkers afterwards. They talk about Brian from church in my childhood days; he’s gone to a really cool development job. He just went to the company and asked for a job and they handed it to him (as opposed to my waiting around for it). I have a pang of jealousy and a well-I-could-be-doing-what-he’s-doing resentment. Then I realize I am shot.
Some of the young women want off from their other jobs.
“Do you know about the 1030?” They ask. “It’s a daycare for kids to go around lunch.”
“Yes.”
“Would you take a shift? You’d like it.” I hesitate.
Not really what I want to be doing, but I’m not doing anything, so…. and it would be fun to hang out with kids. As long as the employer doesn’t think I’m a creep.
Job Prospects
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At a castle which is a learning institution merged with business workers. The high school gang is here but I eat at a different time than them. I walk back from lunch past a book store. It’s busy with people, sophisticated people. I go in and grab a new yorker financial magazine for some reading. It’s a flimsy little magazine. As I walk away, I realize I didn’t pay for it. I’m not even interested in it, so I go back to return it. I hope I won’t be charged with theft; no one pays any mind. Back in the bookstore there are Christmas candies everywhere and blond children.
I’m at my house. I go over to visit some guy. He’s busy with something so I hang out with his boy and wife. I pay attention to boy. I try to be friendly. It’s a little awkward. The wife tells me what I did that was inappropriate. I correct myself, but it doesn’t help things between the boy and I. The boy is not interested and a little uncomfortable with me. I’m just trying to force it. Back at home I get an email from the guy. I’m shocked to read it.
“Watch out for my wife. If she does anything against you, let me know and I’ll teach her a lesson.” And something about a football game.
Well, frankly, I was pleased with his wife. She corrected me, but that was my own problem. I can’t change my effeminate nature no matter how much I want to. Wow, this guy has major problems if his is in secret at war with his wife. I don’t like him.
Women Troubles
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I’m at university in a far off town. I’m late for class and I haven’t signed up for any classes. I drop into a class. The classroom seems to be open-air. Just desks seated outside the football field.
I barge into class. After class I tell the instructor, who resembles Philip Seymour Hoffman, that I have an apology to make for my revealing the controversy behind a football player (bribe, grade falsifying?). He tells me I should take it up with the dean. He goes out of his way to mention how busy he is with not only this professorship but another even more prestigious one, then another prestigious adjunct professorship. I swallow real hard. It’s hard to take; here I am still struggling to graduate after all these years.
The professor and I are with the dean, who resembles Holzinger. We sit in a car. I show the dean my note of apology, written on a USPS customs form. I don’t even pay attention to the game, I say. I don’t even care about all this. The less time I spend thinking about this the better.
They don’t care. They are focused on the apology, which is god-awful important for the university to help quell the public controversy. The note is a big scrawl with half the lines crossed out.
The dean says, you had better rewrite that. He ponders the inconvenience of going to the post office to get more paper. I reveal blank forms underneath. I can rewrite it right now.
Apologies to the University
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It is a mystery how all this matters light circling light so intently a profound weight born of relativity changes a negative to a positive turns a lighthearted affair substantial A vast collection of these contingencies congregate by some strange attraction reaching across the void only to crush themselves in their collective action into carbon copies, hot air, and other complexities shedding continual light in its smashing only to collapse under its own manufacturing and give itself back to the universe to perchance evince a life of its own upon the foundation of its ruin From under what strange circumstances does the miracle of life spring A mere chip off the old spitfire collides with a celestial being who sets its orbit, gets its pulse beating and ritually guides it in its dreaming After phases and phases of icing–over and fuming near extinguishing from within its nebulous sea a chemical compound redounds in recreating its structure, preserving its memory with tiny changes here and there growing larger and more defined recomposing its recomposing At first, blindly following the light a sensitivity beckons focus a pair of eyes peer out from the depths Now on two legs, a monstrous stomping over the earth kings tyrannously rule and a growth of wings and a chirp, chirp of birds and tender little things Who begin to talk and repeat make tools to pass along and pass along ways to make tools and think about things And ages and ages of such talk and figuring such that remembering back to earlier days seem a dream And with each age some savage desire to love and sustain yields a development from the elements of a previous fire The world is heavy with inheritance buried in the vastness of time and space from half–conscious fumblings cosmic heirlooms accrue amid the ruins of ancient beings arises, painstakingly crafted, itty–bitty things from itty–bitty things
Aitiologia
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Dimes wouldn’t been in use if they weren’t generously given as alms during the great depression. A man tells how he just took the clip of his pen, the clip having a dime near its base, tore it off, and made a collection of these torn-off dimes clips for the local union.
I’m driving around the union parking lot looking for a space. There is a fellow union guy or a client in the passenger side. I get trapped for a little by a somewhat young Asian woman when I drive down a dead end of filled spaces.
We walk up to the building. I nonchalantly approach the women (there is a young man and young woman (similar to the one blocking me in the parking lot?) monitoring the entrance here) in the security aperture. She yells at me for a good long couple minutes. There is some mistake. I just wanted to use a room for a meeting and she thinks I requested a spool of printing ink cartridge.
I explain.
Union Woes
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I forget its beginning perhaps first found in The Origin of the Species or that strange story I read as a youth of the unknown naturalist–fiddler wading through that field of flowers scientifically concluding in his heart while evolution was still evolving that each creature unto itself is its own species Perhaps the same man who despaired at helping a butterfly to its death unrealized without allowing it fight out of its self–made cocoon to discover its own strength The poets may take for granted your beauty taking you for something perennially special The botanists may catalog your delicate reproducible features The sellers may know what price you command at the market by your heritage You grow beyond these interlopers your very bothersome incommodality is that prize secret hidden in your bud Your uncouth break from tradition turns intellect superstitious renders traits broken and molted The world rotates upon your axis seen afresh through your aspect With a joyful pain the world births itself anew The mysterious law of your specific genes hums a song composed in situ This is what the world is dying to see Your nature is wild, naturally
Field Work
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No. Peas will not replace
this strange desire to add capers
to my already quite exotic Indian stew
God, do I have to go over this
with myself again?
And Live
Get that which I happen to want?
There even ain’t no shame in it, for shame!
Jeez, just go to the grocery store where
they have a whole shelf of them — 2 kinds
And don’t wait for tomorrow’s regular
beautiful shopping; the desire is for them now
And shit if this ain’t the first day
of spring and bare feet
and the children out playing
and Terra out happy despite
a benign cancer near her stomach bulging
and red in her eye
and joy to hear the birds chirp along
to Flaming Lips’ Fight Test
as Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
As I still feel bad for not working
and wonder when I will give it up
like it’s inevitable
Marching past the children echoing Yoshimi’s
battle cry, their young souls
shaming my reluctance to fully embrace
my capers for all I know
Past the teenagers hanging out
fresh in courage, laughing smiles
at one another as they embrace
awkward, vulnerable, vibrant youth
I taste one
salty; almost grimmacingly bitter
How many capers? How many capers?
1, 2, 3
Fuck it. Stop counting. Keep going.
My intuition will tell me
And if I don’t just cover it with ’em
Add black pepper and a crush of bay leaf.
Add black pepper and a crush of bay leaf?
Add black pepper and a crush of bay leaf.
OK.
You will need a smidge more rice.
Really. OK.
I load up my plate up
hear my roommate in his bedroom
loitering, lounging, laughing with his fiancée
as I go out to witness the dusk of a beautiful day
and the slightest dusting of spring
tears have anointed my table
I wipe the seat and as I eat
any evidence of wet is vapors
And, no, those capers are not bitter tasting
they fit perfect, well: smashing
and, hmm, maybe not enough rice
ah, no, just just enough
I needn’t have thoughtCapers
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