Why-I'm-Not-An-Artist

my father agreed with me and my younger brother; birds sound exactly like birds. philosopher of a screened in porch - the door slams shut and the blue jays fly away-

"...sister(s) will have a tragedy, and again
we will unite in our grief, judging
her much less than we did the bad
sister. This time it was not
our sister’s fault. This time
it could have happened to any
of us and in a way it did. We’ll
know she wasn’t the only
sister to suffer. We all suffer
with our choices, and we
all have our choice of sisters."

"It is a great advantage not to drink among hard drinking people."

the moon is made of cigarettes/ God is my Father/ I am my Mother/ you are Brigitte Bardot...

in graduate school i was told by the t.a. of my first writing workshop i "had not earned the right to reference Cassandra in my prose." i wasn't "referencing" Cassandra. I was quoting my friend who sent me a letter from prison in 1999 calling me a "Cassandra" - as a joke - like "ha, ha" - because being in prison, diseased and alone and afraid - my friend would write letters as if he were on fire. in grad school in my writing class i was told by the T.A. my friend could not slide down a prison wall and i could not catch him and fold him like origami - he said my friend could not become a paper bird who flew threw his cage. nor could i wash his feet until his toes pruned and fell off into a puddle of milk as if they were raisins in my friend's favorite cereal - for my friend was starving, his stomach shrinking - i had not earned my way with words - i was told by this adjunct not to speak - my writing would no longer be workshopped - he suggested i get shock treatment - doctor of my bloody valentine t-shirts - every evening at 8. he told me to sit beside him - scribble in a journal, leave if i was uncomfortable - what a waste - i complied - i was afraid - in an alternate version maybe i flipped the desk like some drunken real housewife and demanded my tuition be reimbursed - for my friend, sick in prison - caged or confined never ask for the right to use words that don't belong to anyone - not even the caves they were carved in- and when i wrote that you slid down the wall i hope it did not hurt & when i folded your arms i didn't mean to break your bones- i turned you into paper gave you wings and set you free - and when we tell our truths we wrap them in brown paper - because institutions have extraneous rules and we are always asking permission

found herself in the dark…and if not exactly…insentient
insentient…for she could still hear buzzing…in the ears…
and a ray of light in and out of cloud
feeling…feeling so dulled she did not know what position she was in her first thought was…oh long after…sudden flash…brought up as she was to believe…she was being punished… for her sins…a number of when then…
further proof was needed (excerpt from Not I)

we were not supposed to read in the institution. one day in February dreary as every day before - no day light in the institution - windows warped by chicken wire - i was gliding in my gown - paper blue gown - to get my vitals taken, morning pills, sip juice. i watched an aide abandon a copy of the NYTs science section on a card table - i grabbed it and stuffed it beneath my mattress. Evil, according to St. Augustine, arose from original sin, evil, said St.Thomas Aquainas, resulted from man's abuse of God-given free will, evil, Rousseau proposed - is a philosophical problem - corruption, caused by societal constraints & of course Freud- who believed conflicts in the human psyche to be the cause. Broken homes, childhood trauma - evil evil evil. We were not supposed to read, we were told not to talk to one another- evil- & Dr. Bennett's stethoscope swung wildly as he scurried to leave the unit, locking the door behind him

the thing is sometimes a girl will start sleeping with a guy because she's lonely and feels misunderstood - maybe her insurance no longer covers one of her 5 medications, maybe she has been sleeping on the floor in a basement in queens and believes a firm mattress is some sort of solution. sometimes the guy will give the girl ultimatums - like "i will love you if you shut up about my drinking" "i will fuck you if you don't mention my pill popping" "i will be by your side if you don't carry on about my coughing and hacking and shitting and puking throughout the night" he says your taste is tasteless - he tells you he is a genius and he doesn't have a problem - he repeats the phrase "i am high functioning" - he gives you his dead uncle's pajamas to sleep in - his dead uncle , he tells you "was in the closet his whole life" - and now you are knocking on the closet door. girls go quiet sometimes when they are afraid to say "i am lonely, i feel misunderstood" afraid to tell a guy - multiple guys - "i don't love you, i don't love anyone" and a girl may sit with that thought for a while - but then the guy keeps borrowing books, keeps using your toothpaste, destroys the bathroom - eats sweet breads and the meat clings to his tongue. he sends the girl his "someday" screenplay that will validate his existence - a girl might skim it or read every other line or page or not read it at all - and the guy - double fisting forties and critiquing the canon, finally makes a girl feel sick - so she must work herself into a panicked frenzy - make the phone call - cry and play like each tear drops for him - and oh how crushed you are/she is, and oh how you/she will miss him so, and oh sad and gag and sob and lie and lie and lie - 'cause that girl likes poetry and reality tv and no i, i mean - she- was never going to introduce you to her family - and she knew he was a body with whiskey breath who would be insufficient and temporary because besides the teenage boy habits he's a black and white thinker living in a myopic world where there is a glaring difference between people who like the beatles and those who like the rolling stones - a girl knows at this point in life - they're the same people and she blows her nose, hangs up the phone, and bleaches every inch of everything he has touched

Much Madness is divinest Sense -
To a discerning Eye -
Much Sense - the starkest Madness -
’Tis the Majority
In this, as all, prevail -
Assent - and you are sane -
Demur - you’re straightway dangerous -
And handled with a Chain -

Emily Dickinson - 620

Trypophobia ("if you make that face long enough it'll stay that way")

I believe in living above the line. Above the line is happiness and love, you know. Below the line is all sadness and destruction and unhappiness. And I don’t go down below the line for anything. – Agnes Martin

- when a man is choking you BITE HARD through his skin so you can taste the metallic zing of his blood between your teeth - if he lets go it is your chance to get out of the room - if he holds on he will jerk his skin out of your mouth and hurl you down the hallway - push you down the stairs - it is summer so you may be - possibly - definitely - wearing a skirt that lands above your knees - try to get to your feet fast enough to head for the front door - try to ignore the hollering coming from his housemates - telling you to SHUT UP and GET OUT! housemates are in the business of selling methadone and do not want you and your irritant activities alarming the neighbors. run out the screen door - but he - the man - the guy - the delicate genius high iq super star artist - has caught up with you and grabs the back of the t-shirt you got at a sidewalk sale - it reads in bright purple letters Pat Benatar's lyrics, "LOVE IS A BATTLEFIELD" - you have no idea what is coming so you can not appreciate the irony - he pulls you toward his puffed out, winded chest and tosses you down a flight of cement stairs and you actually catch air - and land on a public sidewalk on all 4s - your knees bleed - your wrists are torn - people walk around you - a neighbor woman shouts - "you were on his property!" when you, crying and snotty, plead for her to call the police. you see your car - get in the car - turn the key start the ignition - but he is coming down those stairs so you run and run like your field hockey coach is blowing a whistle - for GAME OVER - keep running until you find a cop in the Super America parking lot. bloody and crying you tell him what happened - you beg him - please HELP ME! - the cop with his blue uniform pistol in its holster looks you over - eyeballs your earrings - which read "you jerk" in cartoon balloons as he stares at your beat up knobby knees his coffee breath breathes, "don't you think you were asking for it!" - don't you drop your head - yell "call another cop" and try try try to remember his badge number

queen of the kitchen sat at the head of the table empty seats surround her. tiffany chandelier swayed as if someone stood to grab the salt the pepper the s.pellegrino. queen sighed deeply- shined her tiara - cloth napkin covering her lap - little voices murmuring about artichokes and hearts, chives and angel hair - a cacophony of silverware silenced meaningless sentences - then appeared king - he stood sulking silent - tripped over his loyal dog, the 2 of them left the table- the children rubbed their eyes and coughed in that exhausting atmosphere - where is the dog where is the dog - brother prince complained about the queen's face - no one complimented her cooking - the dishes piled up and up and up by the sink where the queen spent hours clanking and cleaning china in suds - i miss her hands - pruned like raisins - i took her tiara & threw it in the hudson

of course I
want you in the world
whether I’m in it or
not your spirit
I probably mean
there is always
something to say in
the end speaking
without breath one
of us will be lost
to the other

...He pulled down his trousers and bent over. I went to work. I felt as though this were all happening to someone else; I heard his glasses fall off and thought only this: soon I will be dead, so I will never become old and sad like this man. A voice in my head said I had finally started this process and would soon die. (excerpt from Noonday Demon, by Andrew Solomon)

but you never wore glasses and i was already sad

my twin brothers were conjoined at the elbows until the age of two and a half. when one walked forward, the other pedaled backwards. they learned to dance by watching two candy wrappers swirl in the wind. if one said, "tree," the other whispered, "root." my father cut the connective tissue with a fresh razor blade, one morning after breakfast, and the two cried wildly for a long time because they felt invisible, a torso of sky beside train tracks./ to this day each brother cannot fall asleep unless his back is against a wall.

i had to read this poem aloud in a latin literature class - but you had recently died and my body was still broken from the car crash. by the second line i began crying but i carried on - sobbing through the whole piece. the professor asked to speak to me in his office. the head of the department strongly suggested i take time off.

i left class and walked down lexington thinking how super it would be if my hair hung like crystal's off a chandelier - because i wouldn't have to wash it any more and because i could have something beautiful on my mind all the time besides you

nikki - so beautiful, so blonde - tried to quit smoking her sophomore year - she got acupuncture - had pins put in her ears - but it was boarding school in the 80s - what else was there but j.crew catalogues and camel lights - she just couldn't help herself - and her advisor, Ms. Hoffman - gave her onetwothree warnings - and threatened her with detention - nikki stood on her high blonde legs and told her to fuck-the- hell-off - which was unheard of - she was thrown out of school and afterwards we discovered Ms. Hoffman was having an affair with an administrator at the boys boarding school near by - she was fired - so i suppose all the girls figured fucking and cheating and smoking were things to be kept secret - we put on our pearl necklaces & floral print skirts - filled our bags with booze, cigarettes and gossip and set up 2nd school underneath the paddle tennis courts - deception is a learned skill

i like you most in the morning when you're putting on your jeans and hurrying to brush your teeth. you use your index finger and travel size toothpaste. i like you more when you're near the door - as you turn the knob i toss you two bags of trash and tell you to take them to the basement - i like it a lot when you are waiting and waiting for the otis elevator to cough and climb to the top floor - you get in and i go back inside - take out the lysol open two windows and try to rid my place of the chicken and rice you came with the 5 40's you drank - the pint of whatever you try to hide in your bag - the plastic baggies the pills the pills - i like you best when you get on the L or M or anywhere not here - you are the guy i have been with before - the one i found sitting outside penn station - i took him home and tripped up my twenties with several version of the same scene - i took him home and ...i took him home and... i took him home and... aided and abetted a boring habit - this time will be different - this time you sweat too much - this time i don't have enough time

sometimes i find the most beautiful people in the most wretched places

The rollers cruised by in a squad car so i flashed a sucker smile on my face & cooled it until they passed./ I went on ruthlessly, "Bitch, you are nothing but a funky zero..."

a funky zero

we were waiting for the bus on 10th ave and a woman looked up at the cargo rail and wondered what would ever become of it - that brief ceiling in the city tripping over a gas station and birthing an orchard bird by bird as they dropped seeds between the empty rails - my mother was tripping from apartment to apartment - east 11th to west 72nd - it was getting hard to find her - i used to jog to her newest place - in between cars choking on exhaust - high on espresso and anxiety - before going up i would loiter outside on broadway picking up used books and wondering if my father and the dog would be upstairs - that would drive my mother away again - always wanting to be alone - all she wanted was her own bathroom - room - closet - garden - wondering aloud, after my father's passing - was she actually a mother - this sent my younger brother's eyes into a little flood, he covered his face and i watched his girlfriend hold him - as my mother never would. and yesterday again i went up to 72nd street and walked to 76th - and my stomach got sick - i saw the place i last saw my father - that morning the weather was rain and blurry faces and my little niece asked me why, when people die, are they wearing make up - and the dress i've never worn again - black and hooded with pockets - stiff in my closet - i went across the street to a cafe and there was someone else's father in a wheelchair fingers tap tap tapping on a table like morse code - trying to tell all he has to tell - possibly hoping someone is taking notes

rats live on no evil star

we got a tv, but we didn't get any channels no matter how we manipulated the rabbit ears. i had to go on a dinner date with this lawyer to get the tv. he was rude and brash and he spread his legs too wide. i commented on how he sat and he said "i can sit this way because i'm a lawyer." when he dropped me off he offered the tv - sure please and than he asked me to slap him so i slapped him and he said "ouch! you bitch!" and i laughed and laughed - and still got the tv. but it was useless until i met another guy who gave me a dvd player - i went out to "dinner" with him too - if sucking on jolly ranchers is dinner. and you and me - we were pleased - with our set up - all we needed were dvd's - so we walked up nicollet to target and you or me or both of us - stashed a ton of box sets in our bags and down our pants and walked out the door - burrowed into the wooden floor of the studio apartment and went into a three year trance with a laugh track - couldn't hear our own thoughts. watched the snow gather in the parking lot - felt the radiators freeze - slipped into the red sleeping bag my younger brother lent to me - if i had been a human bot fly i would have vectored into your upper arm - because i was not quite right in the head and i did not know love can become parasitic during times of unrest

you told me it bothered you - the joy i take in poetry- how i "ruined" dylan thomas by having you listen to him read aloud. do you not know we are going extinct - you my friend far faster than i - i took you to see the rhinoceroses - stacked 3 on top of one another and you mumbled under your breath - something about being hot needing another drink - public art is not your thing - if i told you i was referencing exile in guyville would you get what i mean? if i told you it's like gilligan's island when you're around would feel my heart beat racing - you watched MASH and Barney Miller - what a corduroy childhood - i'm grinding the side of face - my right ear has lost it's essential purpose - left only to itch and hang my mother's gold hoop from - it is no fun at all screening calls on a smart phone - i want a landline to hurl across the room and an answering machine the size of my side table - with a cassette tape filled til it runs out - with your begging voice - this desert island is crowding me

my younger brother and me - every winter - if we were both on the east end together - borrowed my father's canary yellow truck and got coffee at 7-11. we drove to the dune deck and sat in the wind watching the waves, listening to them crash - we didn't say much- but i knew he was wondering about the temperature of the water, his wetsuit, horseshoe crabs - summer - i was thinking about conch shells and how quick i was to believe it was the ocean i was hearing when my dad held one up to my ear - i was thinking we can hear the waves crash from my older sister's bedroom window - we can smell seaweed in the air

mother dated a boy called melon-head, at least that's what her father called him. maybe they were students at reno high together - i don't know my mother doesn't talk about reno too much - she says there was a main-strip and a drive-in, sometimes the whole family would get in the car to see neon lights - she ran away to NYC and bought her clothes on st. mark's place. she wore a rabbit fur coat so she could fit in with the upper ups of madison avenue - she went to bars and was thrown out for wearing pants - she slept on a door that was balanced on chairs - she told me she didn't talk about the past because when you're poor you don't have a past- so i just imagine her in american graffiti eating french fries and drinking a strawberry milkshake off a tray balanced out the side of the passenger's window - and she hides her toe shoes in the glove compartment holding all her breath

I can travel faster than light so can you the speed of thought the only trouble is at destinations our thought balloons are coated invisible no one there sees us and we can’t get out to be real or present phone and videophone are almost worse we don’t see a journey but stay in our space just talking and joking with those we reach but can never touch the nothing that can hurt us how lovely and terrible and lonely is this
(Science Fiction, Les Murray)

we were in oak bluffs - leah wanted to get a piece of pizza and we figured we would wander around since every destination is an 1/2 hour car ride away from one another. she pointed out an old circular barn - i could hear music - like on coney island in the summer - taking photos and eating italian ice overhearing every 3rd person telling someone about the haunted house - a murder a suicide a window someone was pushed out - inside the barn was a carousel - reminiscent of the one my father used to take me too in central park - those laughing horses - teeth brazen - waiting for you to fall off and all the other 5 yr old children and their parents would join horses giggling and whinnying. my dad would stand beside me and keep his hand on the pole. sometime he stood between me and one of my siblings - and we slowly went up and down. it was different - the carousel in oak bluffs - it was elevated and it was surrounded by arcade games - and the music was too loud and a mega phone shouted an anxiety provoking count down that sent a line of children and adults weaving through metal gates. when all the horses were occupied a red rope stopped anyone else from climbing up onto the ride. children and their grown-up buckled themselves around the horse with a taut piece of leather - which seemed excessive - but see i had never been to a brass ring grab - they were readying themselves to reach for their bounty. one brass ring guaranteed a free ride. the carousel began spinning and buckles were ripped off - grownups and teenagers stood with their backs pressed against horses as they tried to snatch ring after ring after ring - the children - alone - strapped in, crying and confused - listening to daddy - "i just won you a free ride." but no one sat down on the horses or went up and down and i swear those teenage girls were too old to be hoarding brass rings - and leah said to me "i'm getting dizzy." and we walked out - leah mumbled to me and to herself - "... a metaphor for life." she told when she went to coney island she dug a deep deep hole in the sand and climbed in it to hide from her family - some cities need few metaphors for childhood.

i was reading a collection of short stories in the window seat of american airlines flight # whatever and the woman next to me said "i just finished reading that book." she had black cropped hair - the kind of cool style she probably didn't have to bother with in the morning - the kind of hair she probably didn't have to wash more than 2x a week. her jaw line was so sharp i reached up to my face to feel for mine - and she had black ink eyeliner beneath her eyes - i would never dare use ink eyeliner - because of being allergic to everything, having no patience and still wondering when someone was going to give me "girl-lessons." i told her i didn't like the collection of stories. i got it because the new york times book review praised it - of course they did - a married lesbian latina sensation - i told her she was no "lorrie morre, or kelly link" - then i ran my eager mouth listing a bunch of other writers i thought the woman might appreciate - she was reading a hardcover copy of an author i will not name - she had heard him give a reading so she bought the book and showed me where he signed it. i too had gone to one of his readings and went out deliberately to buy another author's book to spite him. i did not share this. we had both lived in san francisco - she left, i left. now she lives in carroll gardens - but she was raised in brooklyn heights until her family moved to new jersey - i asked if she ever went back to see her family home - because things are different and sometimes sad. i told her where i grew up in the city the only thing that's really familiar is the sound of metal swings. she told me she worked in tech. i asked her "what is the cloud?" she explained it but were descending and i wasn't paying attention i was looking at her tri-colored dress. traveling in a dress - this woman was a grown up woman - we were going to depart but i sat in my window seat - in my sweatshirt in my jeans in my sneakers with a hole in the right toe where the dog had bitten into it. i didn't get her name or number - she had a weathered copy of a dated new yorker in one hand - i wanted to ask her so much i wanted to ask her how to get good at make up and dressing up - i will look for her in the ocean between the jetties - i bet she is practical and uses an umbrella - sunscreen - beach chairs. i never found her. got distracted by a seal with a head the size of a watermelon and a conch shell my friend found alive at the bottom of the sea.

my friend said he feels like an astronaut on a space walk and his cord has been cut off. that new pill to cure hep c costs one hundred thousand dollars. he says chris m is the reason he started using again - i said that guy and his slob girlfriend got in my car one night and asked me told me to take them to mcdonald's drive-thru - i have done some questionable shit, but that was pretty close to the grossest. they ordered chicken mcnuggets and sat together crammed into the passenger seat dunking each piece into barbecue sauce and honey mustard. we showed up at that bar that has since shut down. my friend was drinking with an irishman who always tried to pee too close to him. i got in a fight i walked home - my friend and me used to stand on an uptown corner - he played the mandolin - he made it himself - this homeless guy - who i had jump from behind in the snow in the city in a state of complete despair and delusion - he came to the corner with his bucket and banged away. it was not a great time - but it passed time. my friend gave me a talking to about chronic drunks - he listed people we knew who have died. he told me about his anxiety i told him take medication - but who listens to anyone anyway - once he asked me to give his eulogy - i said sure - but that was like a million years ago - back when we were diplomatic and socially served and had second chances - i remember those chicken mcnugget eaters - the girlfriend said "i thought you were dead" - i was not dead i was driving, "you must have me mixed up with everyone else."

the city was so small all the boys had the same fetish - which cynics might protest due to its popularity was not a fetish at all. it was a relief for a lot of us girls because of being on our backs for the entirety of the 90s by the 21st century we just wanted to lay there as boy after boy after boy - ruined by drink, devoid of character due to excessive drug use, sat in a submissive position at the edge of our beds licking slurping worshiping our sweaty blistered feet - took no time for what's his name or whoever to get off - grab a cloth - wipe it up and get out - i remember watching Monsters On Maple Street waiting faking waiting until one of the regulars finished and left

my mother says losing a baby is like pulling a tooth, giving birth is a sneeze

...my aunt sees Jesus Christ, with fair skin and a gold tooth, selling lottery tickets & fire crackers from a burning street car.

in minneapolis men but not men. dudes without lassos without steers would tell a girl she was "wrecked" or "ruined" if she had slept with any other person than that lasso-less dude. it was an attempt at spirit crushing shaming breaking the girl. this guy sam told me i was "wrecked and ruined" he said i needed to be saved. he took me to a pentacostal church and all the bibles waved and swayed in the air and the preacher had a microphone and i was in the back and the pew was stiff and sam was serious - he turned his head to me and said when calls out the sinners you should walk up there. tell him you are a sinner - let him touch your head. i have never felt so jewish in my life as i did in that born again church - i walked out and left sam inside. called joshua and got a ride home. sam came over later that week and said "i got you a present" it was the king james bible - he said only read the new testament - when jesus's speaks the words are red - the rest it doesn't matter. in ny my family went to temple in east hampton. the rabbi's name was greenburg. a boy in my class was named todd and the rabbi asked todd if he spelled his name with one or 2 D's - todd said two. and the rabbi bellowed - "Two D's! Do you think you are better than GOD?"really - we just wanted to get out and go to penny candy.

totally foxed

karen told me you can tell someone is mentally ill if they wear winter clothing in the summer. like this beautiful girl we met in soho, she wore a floor length fur all year long. she spoke like she was poking you between the ribs with chopsticks - like you didn't know whether to laugh or cry. always proclaiming, "i see through you and you and you..." in the park last friday i was surrounded by saxophone soloists the stink of halal carts nyu kids in their caps and gowns - it must have been in the high 70s. girls stretched out in the grass in bikinis- skateboarders flew through packs of pigeons. between the 2 dog runs a black woman wearing a wool winter cap sat on a bench - ear flaps pulled down. there was a young man on his knees with his head hidden in the cave of her sweatshirt. his black wet curls peeked out as he tried to stay still. the woman opened her sweatshirt and the young man jumped to his feet. eyes barely open bright yellow t-shirt walked fast fast right by me. then the woman on the bench discreetly pulled open her sweatshirt and calmly pushed back her cuticles. three minutes later the young man returned and squatted at her knees - head hidden in her sweatshirt. it looked like she was breast feeding a full grown man - and he loved it and he needed it and he couldn't get enough of it and i guess in a way she was.

burn your body in the hot spings

on the upper west side, near columbia university, she parted ways with her parents and walked into a bookstore. under medicated and moodier than usual 2 young russians approached and showed her a magazine - the magazine might have been time or newsweek or esquire or vanity fair - print was big and bookstores were hangouts. their russian accents were thick but she understood when they claimed to be photographers and asked her if they could take her picture and in her mood swollen state she shook her head "sure, why not" - the one named dimitri had a studio a few blocks away - his friend michail was doing most of the talking. said he was married and lived downtown. the three of them left the bookstore and walked north and farther west west west - to dimitri's studio: communal bathroom in the hall. he went behind a curtain to make a phone call - to his kid in st.petersburg. the room filled with smoke and when dimitri hung up the phone he and michail stripped off her clothes for the photo shoot - it was dark there was no flash she was on her back on burlap-like carpet - in an SRO. dimitri kept the landlord from evicting him by painting pictures of the clintons - they were stored in a closet on the first floor. the russians lit cigarettes endlessly, passed bottles back and forth and when dimitri said "bottle" it sounded like "battle" he ate water pickles the size of potatoes - out of a barrel or from the deli - gripping a pickle wrapped in paper so tightly if it were skin it would have bruised. the 2 russians came downtown to her place and dimitri, for some reason, stayed for the summer - they went to galleries he told her how to dress he grabbed around her waist and told her to lose weight- michail would show up for more photo shoots - he would ask her to bring him other women. dimitri hassled her about her so-called connections in the art world - of which she had none - but she could pronounce words properly like; cash rent bills portfolio - neither of them got a job, both of them lost their studios and one another's phone numbers - ran into each other on sullivan street - he was double fist drinking battle after battle - michail was there too - trying his usual hustle - she left them on the corner - no one could google and no one could text - turn once in the dark and disappear

i was staying in a converted convent off interstate 494. some suburb near minneapolis. billboards were going up advertising what would be the mall of america. there was a big boy and an arby's and empty parking lots. my roommate - katie - was from washington - the state. our room fit 2 cots and we spilt a dresser. she would tear up while showing me photographs of her two little boys. she had a husband back home. her body was oddly proportioned - reminded me of the roadrunner - she wore stirrup pants and tons of eyeshadow. i worked at the arby's and she waitressed at the big boy. at night she waited for a flat bed truck to honk its horn. she would sneak out the front door downstairs and get in. she told me she needed the money. told me she couldn't make it on tips alone. i don't know if she turned tricks in that truck or the driver took her downtown. later, i saw a woman get tossed from a truck on nicollett ave. the driver threw her wet-ones and she went into a port-o-potty to clean up. that day she made $20 - which she used to buy a stolen bicycle from my friend john and john used the 20 to buy a bundle. and i was really young - chewing on the side of my right cheek trying to taste blood.

when i was little i would visit my grandmother on the upper east side. she smoked and watched the price is right in the daylight. i was too young to know the feeling it gave me - but now i guess it was depression. tv in the daytime = depression. it wasn't the cigarettes, it wasn't the velvet green hooded chair that seemed so regal, it wasn't the endless amount of seashell ashtrays that me and my siblings continued to bring her from the beach. it was hearing the muffled tv. the contestants being called by bob barker - the clapping and whooping - running to the stage, arms waving in the air. even the name tags - the way certain people couldn't really spell their own name - at least not within the boundaries the name tag permitted. daytime tv - it makes me sad, like warm apple sauce on a hospital tray. so when i became an "adult" with my own place i never ever got a tv - as if the antennas were attached to a mental disease. strange what people go without. my mother doesn't have a bed - i wonder what she thinks comfort is attached to?

We're supposed to listen. And I have found so often that people don't listen to what patients are saying. They don't. They have a preconceived idea as to what's going on, and that's it.

They are as inflexible sometimes as the system in which they work.

"Have you been worrying a lot?"

And she says, yes, she has. She's been worrying a lot that the elders of the church, the _______ church, will take her daughter away from her. And I ask her why, and she says because she stopped taking her medication. And I ask her, "Why did you stop taking your medication?" And she says that the only reason she takes it is because she told her bishop that she was visited by the archangel Gabriel and that she'd had sex with him. And then she was also visited by the archangel Michael, and that she'd had sex with both of them at once, and that they'd ravished her almost every night.

So her bishop made her go to a doctor, and the doctor gave her some pills, and she took the pills, and the angels stopped coming. The bishop and the elders had told her that if she had sex with any more angels, they'd take her daughter away. So I asked her again why she stopped taking her medication and she says, "I'm lonely. I miss them. I want them to come back."

there was one hot guy in the mental institution - one hot guy. we weren't supposed to speak to one another but what were they going to do - lock us in a mental institution. i asked him where he was from he said williamsburg brooklyn. i told him he was so handsome told him get better and get outta here. he said he couldn't "get better" said he was sick like me - i didn't believe him being that he was so pretty being that he was a boy but still he was stuck and he told me to comply - which he never did 'cause when dr.bennett with his swinging stethoscope walked past us like we were wallpaper that very pretty boy picked up an arm chair and hurled it at him. dr.bennett took cover in the nurses station - shaking and adjusting his glasses - the plexiglass window shattered - the one where the aides slipped our meds in paper cups morning and night - all the fights took place around that station it was the only time patients were near one another. waiting in line to be poked and have their blood pressure taken. young girls having breakdowns on an oatmeal carpet - screaming that bacteria was attacking them - mostly i watched from the quiet room - the quiet room was cold - a mat on the floor - at least i got to lie down. it can give you a ton of anxiety not knowing when you are leaving, if you are leaving, waiting for anyone to call. the smokers were allowed outside for a few minutes. no one looked anyone in the eye. a girl who told me she used to work for a kids television channel- packed her luggage every day and waited by the door - ready to leave - the guards would take her bags back to her room and unpack them. she would go nuts. i asked her why she was there / here / wherever - she said during her engagement party in san francisco she let go of her fiancé's hand to show off her ring and he stumbled and fell backwards down a flight of stairs. snapped his neck and died. i got 5 hours in the quiet room for talking to her. she got a tube shoved down her throat for refusing to eat. a spanish woman - must've been in her 50s or 60's - lost her false teeth - this was considered defiance - she was made to sit outside the cafeteria and face the wall during dinner. i told the staff that was bullshit - how could she eat without her teeth - so i too was sent to the wall and written up for defiance - and the mental health workers poked and scratched and made me read them their horoscopes. they laughed and laughed as they pulled on winter parkas and talked about freedom and the sweet sound of turning on the ignition of their cars. some mornings they asked me to get them the classifieds - had to be a better job than this - and the patients started to give up. some were frequent fliers. some didn't want out anymore. i asked over and over for a phone call and a lawyer - they rolled their eyes and hid my drivers license - and then and some day and eventually no one will know this happened. you will forget it felt like suffocating - it will be something but not everything and we will pretend the significance is no greater than j-walking- and i j-walk all the time.

i was about to have lunch with my father at the art director's club or the illustrator's club or the friar's club - some club i was ill prepared to eat at - didn't want to dine at - had to check my coat but wouldn't let them take it. went upstair and we ran into my brother - i remember feeling it was a set up. this was during my deep paranoia days. i got a call on my post 9/11 nokia flip phone. and i guess it was kate who told me you were dead. i got up to leave - i had to pack my bags and fly to mpls - and my father followed me out and my brother was calling me names - because i wouldn't explain - i took the train downtown and sat in washington square park with nick and didn't say much. and then i felt sick and then people played guitar and then they sang and cried and i remember they wrote you notes and burned them in an empty pool outside the unitarian church and then i got in a truck a white truck - and was dropped off at my empty apartment - and then i lay flat on my back and stared up at the ceiling and then i got in a massive car crash and when i was spinning out of control i let go and shut my eyes i figured it was over but i woke up with blood dripping down my face and glass in my mouth and a man with dark hair in a white shirt with a flip phone screaming he was calling 911 - i thought it was you - i thought it was you it must have been you sometimes it is you - it is nice now and then to have dust in your eyes

the original is very colorful. the women remind me of dancers at The Gay 90s - this night club in downtown MPLS. I went there once looking for my soon to be ex. When I found him I was like "what are you doing here?" he was high and his eyes were all twisted and he pointed to the stage and said "these chicks are hot!" i said, "darling those chicks are dudes." in the end none of it mattered - oh my gosh it isn't the end, and my bird can't sing

My life was the size of my life.
Its rooms were room-sized,
its soul was the size of a soul.
In its background, mitochondria hummed,
above it sun, clouds, snow,
the transit of stars and planets.
It rode elevators, bullet trains,
various airplanes, a donkey.
It wore socks, shirts, its own ears and nose.
It ate, it slept, it opened
and closed its hands, its windows.
Others, I know, had lives larger.
Others, I know, had lives shorter.
The depth of lives, too, is different.
There were times my life and I made jokes together.
There were times we made bread.
Once, I grew moody and distant.
I told my life I would like some time,
I would like to try seeing others.
In a week, my empty suitcase and I returned.
I was hungry, then, and my life,
my life, too, was hungry, we could not keep
our hands off our clothes on 
our tongues from

My Life Was the Size of My Life, Jane Hirshfield

I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!

(The Layers, Stanley Kunitz)

unmarried women should not bathe. ever. and should embrace the most deliberate squalor. (St. Jerome)

...and although we are not better for it, / they tell you to go. And you do

joan drinks diet coke out of a straw she doesn't recycle she leaves the empty cans by her chair she leaves the crumpled brown paper bag from sam's deli right there too - she goes out to smoke and by smoke i mean begin the begging charming subtlety a dowdy old woman can bring to the streets - under dressed in the winter that same grey sweater - matches the color of her matted grey hair cropped around her ears like she cut it herself - she doesn't wear a bra she tells me her heat has been turned off - i bring her a few blankets and comforter - she says "fuck you" and starts walking toward chelsea - at the end of the corner i hear her mumble "thanks" - i leave the bag inside on the window sill. she will be back for diet coke and cigarettes - she says she went to the bar for a little conversation - she missed her husband - she sat with him as he died. she said all she ever wanted was to be a wife in the suburbs - no specific suburb - just out of the city. she lived in the chelsea hotel in a room across from sid vicious - she and her husband drank and drank more then once they set their mattress on fire after passing out with lit cigarettes in their mouths had to drag it into the elevator 'cause they couldn't put it out. joan was so ashamed she hid from the firefighters she climbed out the window to the terrace in her nightgown - but there they were - those firemen - staring at her waiting to guide her down to the street. the neighbors can tell if she's missed her injections - she smiles like a shy field mouse and pulls up her grey sweater flashes whoever is around she goes back out missing her dead husband looking for him in a bar long gone

"There are times I wish we could fly; knowing that this is impossible I wish I could get a selective lobotomy and rearrange my senses so that all I could see is the color blue..."(from Close to the Knives, David Wojnarowicz)

that chick was sick. dave called me from the Bellevue's ER and told me "no" cassandra did not have a "seizure" and fall into the subway tracks - she jumped. he said she had done it before. he asked me what he should do? what do you mean "what should you do?" should i have her committed? leave her in the psych ward?" i told dave "yes, leave her there." he said ,"she's gonna be mad at me." i said "she's gonna be dead if you don't. tell her i said to leave her there." faking some kinda authority that dave needed to hear - to walk away - to let her live. she had already had her kid taken from her - the baby was living with her mother out on long island - and dave was in some kinda of custody battle with his ex - and you know sometimes i just wanna walk away - because i can - i see dave in the west village - cassandra is out of the psych ward - but - no fucking surprise - she's getting high and she broke into dave's place - so now he is going to court to get an order for protection - they will spend suspended time breaking and regretting breaking and regretting - cassandra - she came up to me like a kitten - told me we were so much alike - so much alike - she was wearing pajama bottoms and a sweatshirt, dave was by her side - no, i would not throw myself in front of a train - it's disgusting down there and the whole city pays the price - i don't have a dave and don't have a kid - i have wool socks that keep me warm in the winter and i like clementines -

she sat beside me on a used couch in a moldy room and told me she thought i was "cool." cool because i was angry. cool because she was angry too. we left together and walked up hennepin to get coffee at espresso royale - neither one of us had money neither one of us mentioned it. we talked about people we both knew - guys we had both slept with - in the sunlight i noticed her hair was synthetic - clipped on to cover up bald spots. her eyes were rolling marbles and she bragged about being the only girl in town who wouldn't screw so and so - i don't know if that's much to brag about - considering her hair was falling out and she nearly married that frankensteinian monster on colfax - who would take a bowl of ice cream from her hands and throw it down the toilet - drag her by her arm and make her watch him flush it because he was so sick of seeing her throw up every "god damn thing she swallowed." i told her i knew a girl in san francisco - a natural beauty - every night after family dinner she excused herself from the table and went to the backyard - she dug a hole and puked up dinner. it would have been her best kept secret except for the family dog - he began putting on weight - he was digging up the holes and eating what she had buried. the family became concerned, about the dog - eventually her - and we met in a room in san francisco - a room where we could not even stand the sound of a soda can being opened.

i saw the girl from the moldy couch again. this time at a dbt group - oh my gawd we hated it. trace a maze with your finger - this is called mindfulness- figure out your trigger - write it on the dry erase board - learn to avoid it - turn yourself into teflon - stop stealing stop cutting stop burning stop puking stop restricting stop screwing the screw ups stop everything - me and that girl with the clipped in hair - we hated everyone in that room. high-strung jitterbugs who wanted to get "better" - you could say "i brushed my teeth with a blow torch" and some fragile motherfucker would have to put her head in a paper bag - it was a condition of my release - i don't know why the moldy couch girl was there - probably 'cause she was sick. we left together after the first session and took the bus outside walgreens down chicago avenue. she asked me how i got hospitalized - how skinny did i get ? - i told her the hospital was horrible - i told her about the dehydration - the tube girls, the fucking Ensure - i told her my kidneys went bad, my hair my skin - the tinnitus of the quiet room - but she wanted it bad.

she never went back to the group - i did my 2 yrs. i saw her a few more times - once she put on weight and began stripping. once she called me after a failed suicide attempt - only to find her doctor would no longer fill her scripts - and once she showed up at Mo Pitkins while i was doing a reading - she looked beautiful - wrapped in a leopard print fur. but i heard complaints from the audience "something stunk like puke shit and cigarettes" she must have heard too - when i finished, she was gone.

i take the 1 to west 96th street to see my doctor. i take the local. the light is good for reading. or note taking or mind-wandering. my doctor has given me a code to unlock the door to his office - i have put it in my phone. 2 years of not being able to remember or remembering wrong - i like to get in there early - see what magazines he has put out. hope it is not expired issues of the new yorker - i want mindless inky pictures - i want to steal - but i never do. my doctor is awkward. tall, young, professional. i love him because he is kind. because he takes notes and writes me prescriptions - gives me bottles with 5-6 refills. i sit in a black leather chair directly across from him. i make jokes about my life. he scribbles in a yellow legal pad. i tell him how long it has taken to quit doing the things i did - i tell him, "it wasn't until you straighten me out, now i only feel empty, not destructive." i don't mind - there is a hole in the room - i could get up and walk right into it, but i stay in the black leather chair. push my feet into the floor and lean back. i tell him i like the chair. i ask him why he works so late. he lets me stay longer and longer each session. my confessions concerns him. he asks me to see a physician - he suggests a lab on 14th street; get some blood work done. i tell him i don't do that stuff anymore. i tell him i got the idea from a book - like it's not my fault - someone somewhere wrote it down - like instructions - bad ideas for a broken brain - it didn't work anyway - and the guy who wrote the book is now giving TED talks so he must've been a phony anyway and i have taken to reading sentences backwards - like when i was a kid and there was always a secret message on an album if you played it in reverse - there was a band that scared the shit out of me - a hair band who's name i can't remember - scratched that album up. my doctor - he's so handsome - doesn't get my jokes - or ease with what i have done, who i have been - i tell him "you can see why my family was concerned" - but i'm talking about history - history is not memory - memory is last night's dream - my dead cat came back to life and so did my dearest friend. i tell my doctor about the first time i tried to date after my friend died. a guy took me to a movie. i did not like the guy - because he was the wrong person - so i ran and ran through the parking lot into the multiplex to sit in an empty theater alone. and we wrap the session with the regular blah blah blah "no, i haven't found a job." and i complain about lithium making me fat - but promise to keep taking it. i walk back to the 1 train - this time on 86th street - thinking about when the pine barrens burned - fuck if that doesn't set my face on fire

...he also snores, and his breath, oh his breath - usually there was dental floss hanging from his teeth and a q-tip jetting outta one ear - yeah - it's true he goes out like that. i saw him getting 86'ed from the Bryant Lake Bowl in his pajama bottoms and flip flops - in the winter - he asked me to go into the women's bathroom and cross out all the graffiti in the stalls disparaging his good character - but his friend mumbled that i would only add to the graffiti and make it worse - he huffed and stormed off to Super America - you know what he does there? he gets the biggest cup - like the 20 ounce i guess and acts like he's gonna fill it up with soda - i mean "pop" - but actually he jams as many hot dogs as he can into the cup - it's so gross - and he's proud of himself - 50 yrs old smuggling hot dogs. still, tons of chicks wanna fuck him - once he tried making pancakes and they came out the size of a serving platter, flat and no flavor - so he called his mother - she had to explain to him what went wrong with his recipe - there was no way we were going out to eat because that monster would not spend money on his ass if it were on fire. he used to stick a pie pan out his window to try to get wifi reception - anyway, i'm just saying his breath it was like he'd been sucking on one the filthy socks beneath his bed - and when he had one of his daily mantrums he smashed out my headlight with a tire iron - instead of paying for the repair he went into his house and came out with guerrilla glue and a sharpie to put it back together - and when he snapped my sunglasses in half and i told him i had gotten them in barcelona - he held them over the blue light of the gas stovetop and tried to return them to their former state. it was a risk to let him in the kitchen - but at that time in my fairy tale life i was low on silver ware.

"i guess i had fun. but not enough to stay."

sometime in the 90s - you showed up on 19th street - said you wanted to kick at my place - like i was the ever extending 3/4 way house you would never leave. you unpacked your backpack - Tide detergent, peanut butter and jelly, and a phat farm t-shirt. your teeth - withered corn cobs and your feet - filthy and rough. i had you take a shower. you were not the guy i knew - the guy i saw beneath my window straddling a green motorcycle - all smiles & blinding blonde - outside Sebastion Joe's - that coffee shop next to the dry cleaner where i worked. you bore no resemblance to that guy - i let you crash your body was cold as a corpse - maybe i gave you all the blankets - maybe i used them as a barricade - you had come from chicago by train - spent all your $$$ on whatever substance you were hooked on - so we ended up at the check cashing place on 14th street. i called your mother- asked her to wire money. you stopped talking to me. i lent you my father's coat and took you to Karen's place in Brooklyn - you stayed with me and my sister - didn't say a word. my sister said you looked like the saddest person she had ever seen. i felt sick. in the subway station i held the back of your jacket so you wouldn't fall onto the tracks. remember - i left the country? remember - you went and copped? remember - the shit in a cane? remember- you couldn't wait so you shot up in the bathroom? before - before that nasty habit you would tell me "i'm better looking than James Dean!" "I am the best looking guy you've ever been with." you made Rice-a-Roni for dinner and ate Captain Crunch in the morning. We played basketball and bathed your golden retriever in the tub. Drove your Ductati to Taylor's Falls in the summer and threw ourselves off the highest cliff. We went camping. we built fires. roasted s'mores, swam in cold rivers, took road trips. and then we didn't. then we absolutely didn't. and you, my dear sweet, you do not have to remember any of this

you wanna get a free meal? say you're at The Uptown Bar & Grill, order an omlette - they're huge - when you're half way through it flag down one of the tatted up teenage waitresses with the same piercings her mommy has - show her a hair and tell her you found it in the food. those waitresses will comp anything - after that we can roll down to catholic charities and grub off their food shelf. my pal, mark bizarro, sells used furniture and plumbing in my front yard - he dragged a toilet off the street and is charging $30 - who wants a used toilet - someone that's who. his girlfriend is knocked out on seroquel - that's her in her bra and panties laying under that tree - no i doubt she knows it's not a mind altering substance - i doubt she cares. i gotta run upstairs and grab some Borax - I've been trying to scrape these tattoos off my ankle with a scouring pad - so you can quit making fun of them. my favorite thing to do - mastering the inability to hold liquor - is to hassle you. i love buzzing your doorbell - i like hollering at you from the parking lot of your building - and when you refuse to let me in i find someone to open the door. i love making you live in fear. how's your anxiety? need a higher dose of benzos? and when you do increase your intake i love telling you that you are "using" and if you don't pray to God you might as well be praying to this here coffee cup. i told you i'm a genius and no i do not have to look over my shoulder when i say that! my IQ is so high i can't tell you what it is. what? then why did i try to use Elmer's glue as lube in a flawed threesome -you weren't supposed to repeat that! I swear some days i wanna call your family and have them commit you! You drive, i don't have a license even though i'm almost 50. and don't flip out when i yank the keys out of the car in an intersection in the rain - you change the radio station! and don't freak out every time i lose my hard on while we're fucking just shut up and don't move - lay there and watch America's Next Top Model so I can finish - and then let's BBQ. you know i've fucked most of the chicks in this city, i've fucked chicks in my family - my cousin is super hot. didn't i tell you, the Lebanese invented the sun. didn't i tell you you are wrecked - didn't i tell you don't bother calling the cops - i am magician- i can bend spoons and put cigarettes through quarters - i make reasonable women fearful - i make fearful women run. My foot fetish makes me eccentric. I won't change out of my pajamas. i walked from North East to Uptown high as a 13yr old boy. you don't have to believe me - but you don't have to believe in chairs either - until you need to sit down.

it's as cold as the winter our radiator froze and Cassie's hamster died and our laundry became a ball of ice we threw in the bath and jumped on. we sat on the floor of the kitchen with the oven door open trying to find heat and you - you strange strange boy - had stolen cashmere socks from Calhoun Square for both of us - we burrowed our feet in them and waited to get warm. flip flops in the snow - lucky to keep our toes and you to whom i would have given the shirt off my back - but of course you had already taken it.

i'm the kinda guy who uses "love at first sight" as a pick-up line. me in my skinny jeans and hooded sweat shirt - i am sensitive. i listen to Galaxy 500 and The Brianjonestown Massacre. i smile at waitresses and take calls from my mother. I have tattoos covering both arms - i confess, i got them because i am a cutter. what is that you say? isn't that a chick thing? no, no it's not a chick thing. I have sex addiction, but i am in a program for that. here, i keep the literature by my bedside: SLA. Oh, you thought that meant the Symbionese Liberation Army? Patty Hearst? Is she hot? i am an artists, and yes, "branding" is art. i repeat the phrase "i won't go above 14th street" whether or not anyone is asking. i rise early on weekends to take the L train to Trader Joe's - i'll be back before you wake up. i know you don't mind sleeping on a loft bed that does not have a ladder. you have to follow my instructions and climb to my chair to my desk - without knocking anything over - to get in bed. you will be staying up there- get comfy. the guy i was a month ago - well he's just getting warmed up. so, no you can not touch the remote control and if i text you 35x in an hour while you are at work and you do not respond i will call you a dirty whore - i don't care that you had your hands full with the needs and wants of autistic 5 year olds-you selfish slut! Don't talk in public, don't expect to be introduced to my friends. Don't wear that sweater - you look like a tramp. Take off your shoes when you enter my apartment. Did I tell you, I hate your winter hat! You need to exercise more. I could get a chick 10 years younger with a better ass. I hate you, I want to marry you. How 'bout I show you rings at Tiffany's. How 'bout I buy you one off Canal Street. How 'bout you sleep in my dirty laundry. How 'bout I blow smoke in your pregnant face. I will buy as many bass guitars on ebay as i want - and i will order worn boots online to look like a working man. i go to craft fairs and get my nails done. secretly, i love the grateful dead. I wear silver bracelets and a belt that jangles. i will be sugary to your mother - i will buy her tea and artisal honey. i ride the L train to Lorimer - when you take me to the Met i look at vacuum cleaners. my idea of a 5 star meal is grill cheese and pancakes at the kellogg diner. i'm gonna look you in the eye when you try to walk away and tell you, "but it was love at first sight. it was too!" bikram yoga, matcha, kale. i own strangers in paradise, 400 blows. i'm cool i'm cool i'm cool i'm cool i talk about NYC in 80s non-fucking-stop but i still get lost downtown -don't leave me - meet me in Mccarren Park. we can go on and on and on

Darn it, Joe! We've driven into the wrong story!

once upon a time i lived in minneapolis, minnesota and i would lay on the cold wooden floor of my studio apartment off of loring park and read Sky Mall as if it were part of the literary canon. i wrote about Sky Mall talked about Sky Mall oooo-ed and awed over the useless must have items offered in Sky Mall. and one day a box came to my door. my younger sister - who also fetishized Sky Mall - mailed the anatomical gorilla head to me. it was amazing and awful. i put it on a cable spool and every time my cat walked near it the gorilla would howl and moan. so - yup, it was me and a cat and that gorilla head howling in a studio in mpls. one day three men came to my apartment. two of them in long black coats. one sat on a milk cart and stared out the window -the other stood against a wall - the third went into my bathroom and i heard the shower running. these 3 men were pretty much strangers - 2 of them were dealers and the one in the shower - well he was certifiable. the 2 in the long black coats left and i was alone with a stranger wrapped in my martha stewart bath towel. he was drunk from the night before. he dried off, got dressed, then in almost familial admiration gazed upon the Sky Mall gorilla and looked deep into its eyes. it was like something deeper than love. he picked it up, took it from the cable spool - opened the door of my studio and walked out into the hall with my gorilla cradled under his arm! I ran after him - and as i caught up he didn't bother to turn his head - he just threw me to the ground with a heavy wave of one arm and i - in my long underwear - went skidding down the hallway - as i watched two apes walk away

Hard Times Cafe and Government Handouts 
or: Pretty Boys are for Boys

Law & Order SVU OD

WHY YOU GOTTA WATCH YOUR STEINFELD! I wanna watch my Wheela Fortune! Doug takes pats of butter from the cafeteria and rubs it on his wrists to slip out of the restraints. I - whoops - walked the hallway in a bath towel and got tossed into the quiet room - gowns gowns - at night shoot shoot - hand your linens to the polish laundry woman. the spanish lady with no teeth is told to sit alone because she won't eat - i tell a staff member she can't eat - her teeth are in her room - i am written up - meaningless legal sheets - red ink vitals ekgs - every night i can't watch seinfeld - you say, why you gotta, why you gotta! i wanna watch my wheel of fortune - in the morning you shove the daily news at me and tell me to read you your horoscope - you circle better different jobs in the classifieds while you watch me shower - i need a prescription for water - when i get out i go go go gone i sit in doug's pick up truck - he eats orange crackers with peanut butter in the center - i listen to the minnesota public radio - i don't go inside my studio on loring park - we watch the neighbors come in and out of the building - we watch the drunks piss in the parking lot - girl boy fights in the freezing cold - in the not too far future i run into doug at the airport. he's going to nyc - i tell him he can stay with me at the beach - he doesn't. he goes to the lower east side - and i pretend not to know why. maybe i see him again at Electric Fetus or Cheapo or that memorial service - maybe i climbed back into his pick up truck, he ate those orange peanut butter crackers and i listened to KFAI

Say, don't I know you? Where was it we met? The Au Bar? Dorians? Do you jog along the reservoir at dusk? I am the kind of guy you're gonna want to take home. Mothers adore me. I have been invited to more Bar/Bat Mitzvahs than I can recall. No one seems to mind that I was kicked out of that private school and then that other private school. I belong to the Yacht Club, the Country Club, La Ronde. I'm getting my own place - I just got back from L.A. - so, yeah, for now I'm staying at my parents' apartment in a twin size bed with pro-life bumper stickers on it. Do you wanna hear something about my sister? Not really, well, you'll appreciate the story. When she comes home with a guy i press my ear to her bedroom wall so i can hear them fucking. I mean she's hot. She went to Spence and was in the same class as Gwenyth! They both auditioned for Shakespeare in Love - my sister would have been so much better. Yeah, so I had to leave L.A. - I'm an actor - yes - an actor not a waiter! So what if I'm tending bar to NYU students - I have too been in movies, but i was kicked off a few sets for groping women and drinking too much. Why are you laughing? I have enrolled in the Stella Adler School of bar backing - no not bar backing - acting! We are reading the Zoo Story. Do you know about the Zoo? I can tell you about the Zoo, if you're from the right family.

I am a cabbie and I show up without an invitation. Proclaiming a love for you that I have been concealing for years and years. I take you to Starbucks on 19th and 8th ave - buy you a frappucino - this is the honeymoon period, so sip don't slurp. I meet you and your brother at Empire Diner and tell the two of you how I got off setting cats on fire as a kid. You can't back out now. I said I love you. Get in the truck. Throw out your stuff. And quit smoking those cancer sticks - did I mention I'm righteous about health. I pound creatin shakes and workout in the Tenderloin - you will be joining me - 4 hours a night - i don't care how long you've been tending bar. i don't care you teach in the morning. i stand by you while you run and tell you you're cheating yourself - go faster, lift your legs higher move move move...Wait, did you just make eyes with that guy? I don't care that he's gay! You whore. Get in the truck - I go 80 mph when I'm angry - I am always angry - anger makes me feel masculine and in control. I slow down to point out roadkill. Don't think about jumping. I button your shirt up one more button before you leave the house. I will not allow you to talk to my friends, fuck it, I will not let you talk to your friends. I drive by the bar at night and come in 2 hours before closing - to watch you - flirting with men in assless chaps, laughing with women like you think you are free. I drive you up to the sequoias and fuck you on the stump of a red wood - what can i say, i'm a romantic - i wipe myself off on your shirt. We go to my mother's for thanksgiving and yes - it is the best macaroni and cheese you have ever had - and when mother asks you where you got your G.E.D. - don't go bragging about some fancy high school or college degree! I deserve nice things. That is why I keep whatever any passenger leaves behind in my cab. A watch, a wallet, a ring. I store all my money in a lock box under the bed and count it in the woods of Golden Gate park. Sometimes I make you sleep on the couch. Sometimes I tell you, you are empty, spiritually speaking. I set aside 45 minutes each day to mediate. I have God and you are depressed. I tell you, you are worse than any junkie I have ever met - get up and run me a bath.

i am a line cook who's counting days in narcotics anonymous. no, that's not a beer, it's a bottle of s. pelegrino. i tell the ladies cooking is soothing, meditative, nurturing. then i drop the needle on beggars banquet, light a cigarette and shove your face in my pillow. my sheets are filthy - aren't they - don't answer, that was rhetorical. i am so clever, so handsome, so, so affected - one day i'll join a band with just girls, they trust me. i will come on to my male friends and say "it was the drugs" faking a slip. i will write horrible poetry and blather on about Baudelaire. i will tell you you are nothing, tell you you're going nowhere, criticize your entire family. in the not too distant future i take interferon and become a rash on your inner thigh -

Ha Girl!

move girl

out girl

of your 

way girl

own girl

stuck girl

still girl

uhg girl

bathe girl

clothes girl

dirt girl

years girl

gone girl

bye girl

gimme a break 

girl

this is a drag girl

can’t say I care girl

pacing apartment girl

pipes girl 

bust girl

won’t buzz 

the super

scared of everyone girl

girls girl & guys girl

Ha girl!

in head

too much girl

a tomb 

girl 

even

your bats girl

can’t stand you

no more girl

Happiness Index: Ocean Beach

i sleep in my father's fly-aways. white v-neck t-shirts with labels from bloomingdales. they are torn and soft. on the bus out east i speak of my father in the present tense. i want to tell him about the 20 something i took the elevator with last night - he had in ear buds and didn't say a word. he began texting and didn't say "good night" or "what floor" it was as if we weren't in new york. on 69th street we had a terrace and rammed our big wheel into its rails. he had a pin ball machine in his office and a dentist's chair in his waiting room. he collected people and animals - black socks brown shoe laces flashlights and guinea hen. i would say "dad, there's no one around, not like you." and he would say something comforting and we would split a black and white cookie. he would encourage me to be brave and i would say "i am tired" and he would understand but never let me know how much. my father used to cut holes in empty tissue boxes and give us all a marble and we would stay at the bottom of the stairs for hours flicking the marbles into the hole. my father flew on TWA. worked in the Pan Am building - grew up listening to jack benny on a bakelite radio. my father hated smokers. in a photo taken by avedon or penn he is supposed to be smoking but he told me he didn't inhale - it's weird, i remember those 2 photos and i have no idea where they went. we collected box turtles and he would put our initials on their bellies to see if they would come back to us. he would love my sister's dog. he taught our poodle how to slow dance. he taught us cole potter, irving berlin, gershwin, all of it. we were so unhip - in the kitchen with the beatles and the mamas and the papas - in 5th grade when rebekah appel asked me if i liked madonna i said "lady madonna, yeah it's a great song" i wasn't prepared for pop. my father would tell me not to worry - though worry is what he did best - he used a shoe horn to put on his shoes - he had long elegant feet. he got his shoes shined in grand central. he sat next cabbies and told them what route to take. i sleep in a tank top i took from a sophomore who lived in my dorm at boarding school. i was fifteen when i stole it. it is stained and torn and soft. that was a strange year prefacing future strangeness - it's good to have souvenirs. my father had a lunch meeting with my friend tom at the friars club just because i asked him too - i told tom to talk about jack benny - tom was graduating from college and needed advice - i wish i had been at that table. great at whistling equally good at feeding ducks though i'm not certain these are skills anyone needs or wants in a digital world.

for sammy - who told me it was about time i got burnt. 'cause the cops do nothin' and the pawn shops are too many and all our "friends" are exhausting and even we have become the people our parents warned us about

alan and me found two dollars on the street last night - the sidewalk outside of sam's deli. we looked around for who might be missing the money - a 20 something drunk and teetering on her cell phone loud and calling an uber while her friend went into the deli - her purse was hanging off her arm as she fondled a cigarette she could not seem to light - the homeless man with a cane who scared the shit out of the young woman as he asked her for a cigarette so she quickly slurred "take this one" - alan said we should give it to the homeless guy but had just heard the homeless guy threaten another man saying he was gonna crack his skull with a sledgehammer - and alan should have the two dollars - c.e.o's of nothing, no ship coming in, city rec centers, and tape on the soles of shoes - i know he wouldn't want me to say, but he wore the same pair of pants for the entire decade of the 90s. he says he could go back to canada work for his brother see his family have a nice life with healthcare - he says he's just waiting for immigration to toss him out - he says we have no right living in this city we have no right - we have become onlookers - an audience waving at no one wishing only to be recognized for time served - so we take the two dollars and go buy candy and eat a box of chocolate covered gummy bears buy a citibike dock - i tell him i read they are putting a dock in astoria -he says someone will complain and asks me if anyone complains down on hudson i don't know, the church? but the dock looks just as good as the construction, that dumpster and scaffolding holding up the south side of barrow - i tell him the citibikers ride on the sidewalk 'cause of the cobble stone - he says "well yeah" he gets on a bike and we don't bother with goodbyes

in normal doses, fear, indispensable to action and thought, stimulates our senses and our minds; without it, no action at all. But when it is excessive, when it invades and overwhelms us, fear is transformed into cruelty. A man who lives in terror ends his days in ferocity...If I am lost, I am lost. I don't care...flinging himself on his knees to pray but broke into laughter - not at the idea of prayer but at himself. With a wave of his hand, "Fear is a trick. Get over it."

before you moved in all i had was a wind-up radio, cat and phone. i would call radio shows and try to get on the air just so i could talk to someone. eventually, i got through to dr. drew's "love lines" and the woman screening the calls asked me what my problem was - i hadn't thought ahead. i made up some b.s. std thing and got on the air. dr. drew was giving me some sage advice but adam corrola was being a super loud prick in the background - playing to the crowd - rather the listening audience - he made me feel awful - like everyone out there in and beyond minneapolis knew i was alone with a cat and wind up radio in a studio apartment making calls - then one day that summer you found out i was in town and maybe, because you were lonely too, - you showed up on my door step and we were not lonely anymore - or at least lonely in a familiar way

it feels like this slow boat drowning in an ocean and a shark comes by and he says, "i might eat you in a tired, gnawing way. my teeth are dull and it takes a few tries to get through bone." and i say, "well get to it then, i'm drowning and it's cold and lonely out here." and he says, "you sure are pushy for someone in your situation. i bet you didn't share the remote control did you?" and i say, "oh come on shark, isn't it just nature now, survival and all that." and he gets real wise guy about things, "i suppose it is, but you might get stuck in my teeth and what if i am what i eat?" and then i have to tell this judgmental shark that i had a really long day, and the 6 train was delayed because of an investigation, and the pushing and shoving and the homeless guy under the N who eats fingernails mumbling and roaring and the mentally ill bloated guy with a cane who sizes me up on Ditmars so often i wanna call the cops and the Skype call i'm waiting for and the boat slowly going down, which no longer bothers me, and how i'm trying not to feel sorry for myself and trying not to believe i don't get what i deserve because i'm not sure what i deserve. and the shark says, "oh gawd, are you trying to be charming?" in this way where you know he's truly disgusted, in a way that transcends all living things. then he gets on his cell phone, his cellphone!!!and calls up that nasty monster squid, and the two of them start talking shit about me. the way it would be during a slow drowning. and i ask the shark, "one quick thing," and he's like, "i'm on the phone, hhhhwhatttt!" and i ask him to log on to my Facebook page and deactivate my account and he says sure, but he just goes on the page and tells this story, but worse, the fish version. and maybe he eats me and says i was rotten inside too.

I am because my little dog knows me

when i was about 22 yrs old i lived on the 9th floor of this apartment building uptown. i had just driven across country in my used car with my used boy toy so i could start college. i was broke - broke broke broke. i remember calling up my little sister and asking her for a token so i could get to my job in the west village in the morning - she said "no" - the boy-toy and i were sleeping on the floor of the apartment that we split with a guy who worked on wall street and gave me the business about how to make money using my body. blah blah blah. the boy toy ended up on the lower east side lost and confused in a cliche kinda way for over a decade and the wall street roommate - he hated my kittens - i had brought 2 across the country. one was striped grey and white and was given to me by a crack head named colleen - she worked at the pharmacy where i got my meds. the other kitty was orange and white and i got her from the aspca - she looked like a creamsicle - delicious - i named her fish. so, like i said, my apartment was on the 9th floor and my roommate, after the boy toy took off - started getting high too - gawd - it was either cocaine or crystal - fuck it - in a suit and sweaty - i just wanted him to pay rent - but in a rage he tossed fishy - the orange and white kitty out the window. he said "i did that cat a favor" and these security guards came to the door and took me downstairs and there was a huge hole of glass in the buildings awning - which seemed to save fishy's life. i went to the vet and there she was limping in a cast with a syringe sticking out of her left leg - she crawled right up to me. and she lived 18 long years after that - with a gimp like step and sat like a kangaroo favoring of her left leg. we packed up immediately and went to brooklyn - stayed with my friend karen until i got a studio in chelsea. i never let that sweet kitty outta my sight again - expect once - involuntarily - when i was hospitalized - my little brother took her in and as i handed over the keys to my place he passed me an anthology by the paris review - he said i might want to read while i was away

the locker room is yellow depressing and wet. two industrial size fans blow humid air in circles and the shower drains are usually clogged with hair and rubber bands and fingernails and caps from shampoo bottles - some of the white shower curtains have been torn off, others have been tied back on to their rod and tucked into the metal partitions - i shoved my backpack into a locker near the front door - now that it's warm out i wear my bathing suit up to the pool - walk in my flip flops and carry a combination lock, towel in my bag. two older women were sitting on the one wooden bench in the locker room. they must have been in their early 80s. they were both heavy skin lumpy and curdling out of their swim suits - talking about how it is nice to let people know you are thinking of them. gift giving and what not. they got on to the topic of mothers. the woman with shorter hair was pulling on her swim cap and said her mother never wanted her, she was a mistake, there was no contraception back then. the other woman said, oh you can't possibly know that, did your mother ever tell you that? "no, but i could feel it. she didn't have any choice." the two old women got going back and forth about whether the one was wanted or not - and mothers and no choice as opposed to the ruse of a choice - i left the locker room and no women were at the pool - it was me and a lifeguard and a tidal wave of men - men with towels and flip flops and goggles and bellies and bad tattoos and kick boards - i waited my wait and took my spot and shoved my flip flops in and swam into the second lane along side this grey haired dude who looked like a high school principal - he didn't bring a towel - he had a balled up tablecloth red and grey with tassels - he used a kick board and got in and out of the water. within 10 minutes the pool was filled with all sorts of grown fetuses - wanted unwanted - swimmers everyone - like sea monkeys without a kingdom - moving between the projects & 10th ave -

my psychiatrist has begun wearing wife beaters in the pool. he stands in the shallow end and stares off into the distance - as if debating whether he might remove it - but this entire week he has gone back and forth in the middle lane covering the top of his body with a white wife beater. i wonder about transference - though this is a state reserved for patient to doctor having to do with an emotional state of mind - what if i have given him some of my sickness - in the pool - the way a pool can get intimate - if you whisper underwater everyone underwater hears it- i thought perhaps he got stitches or was covering a rash - but the chlorine eats through cotton - he is so serious staring straight ahead when he gets to the deep end he leans hard into the rope dividing the fast lane from the medium and tilts his head back - something in the cut of his hair - black and silver falling in a sharp triangle to one side - he mouthes cures and questions to himself - that ratty wife beater - it is undermining his profession - but i still feel more secure in the pool when he is there swimming twisted in that rag than without him - it's as if we shrink into tadpoles - pre-people-pre-frog - pre-anger-apolitical just pruned skin and splashing - hours like this and then outside tourists like robots taking smart phone photos of keith haring's mural and adult dodgeball - horrible gridlock but the sun is so warm my hair will dry by the time i get to barrow street and later that night i will watch a shoeless drunk pick a lit cigarette up off the corner of hudson and charles while hollering at a cop who is waddling out of rite aid wearing bifocals and tattoo sleeves while packing american spirits on his wrist and yeah yeah yeah-ing every cursed word the drunk barks at him

zombie girls of Minneapolis Uptown

Before we had a car we waited around for a bus in the snow that never came - like the bus bench was public art. we walked everywhere - you never wore socks or a scarf and every season was winter - i got a job and never went - you helped me stay clean - so you could get high - i got catastrophe insurance - you were a catastrophe - we holed up in that hole of a studio the stairs were adorned with yellow streamers that said CAUTION and our neighbor gave us ear plugs when we asked him to stop drumming late into the night. he ate oreo cookies in the hall and told us he fed the crumbs to the ducks - even though there were signs that read "don't feed the ducks" on the edges of the pond - you were good for wandering and sleeping and listening to music and years of procrastinating and then you left and i had to do something and the something felt draining and heavy and lonely - so i listen to music and drink coffee and read a lot and remember your mad mixes - in the winter we would sit on the kitchen floor in front of the open oven door trying not to freeze - people in the building carried branches in from the trees that hung over the dumpsters and made make-shift fire places in their stoves to keep themselves warm. i have a book and the preface says, "maybe the real novel is letters to you." maybe?

“Adam, does this apple make me look fat?”

and found

bad bad lands

he returned to the little city, population 67,109. 36 degrees, windchill makes it feel like 25. he worked and worked in the sainted little city drove up and down that one dirt road. called to tell her that he was in a little city claustrophobic claustrophobic chilling saint of a city that it is and always will be. told her down and out stories about his family in texas says his niece delivers pizza, his sister, she's in treatment - and a fat rainy cloud drenched the room she was in 1500 miles away. she reminded him it was not his 1st time in the shitty little city - he had been there before - 16 yrs before - locked up in prison. he did not remember - she told him she kept the letters he sent, the prison letters each one signed "wish you were here" locked up with him in prison in the sainted little city - locked up together - and in a way kinda she was - ("you're ok, i'm ok" and there must be more to life) he talked about his own bed and his dead father - while sucking on chicken wings and laughing at her wicked memory - went to the bathroom sink, rinsed his fingers and told her he had to leave - out the door at 7:30am - factory work 100 hrs a week. she said "that isn't living, that is surviving" more laughter - so she laughed too - but he said he didn't hear what she said he was watching a movie on cable tv. she was content to hang up and surprised to hear he washed his hands - clean clean hands in the city little saint that he was/ is/ wished for years - more than 16 - her to be

after Elmherst

and your/mine/our past is shrinking and our incomplete swells - i am in love with the 75% of myself that is water - the rest - those numbers have given me quite a bit of trouble

won’t ya come out tonight and dance by the light of the moon