peeking in for a spot of chocolate

I’ve been brain-stuffed and with not enough sleep spindles in my pillow, spelling memory loss and lanky long-term, erratic centerfoldings. Chemistry varies from foot to foot. There must some meaning in this vase.

I'm not thinking about it too much because it’s only confusing to think about it. I am weary of hearing musicians say this when an interviewer asks what their reaction is to all the excitement over their new album. It isn’t the fault of the musician, though. It’s a reasonable, stable way to respond. (Damn right my album shatters planets! I’ve stopped writing. This is as good as it gets.)

I understand why an interviewer would ask the question, particularly when some sort of success comes abundantly and out of nowhere, but the answer almost always tells me nothing about the musician or the music. By now the musician should know that the above response is a reasonable one and self-consciously say it whether genuinely or not. Or maybe the musician will answer that he’s slathering himself in the erotic chocolate of his new fame.

Whatever the answer, and whether it’s delivered honestly or self-consciously, it’s psychologically shaded and weighted and, thus, of little use. I suppose it’s a way for the interviewer to acknowledge and congratulate the musician on his or her favorable reception. In that case, though, the interviewer could just do that frankly and then break out knife and fork to get into the meat of things.

Dinner bell, dinner bell, ring.

Next time: tawdry tales of eight-legged bicycles excommunicating widows from their places of worship.

hot bird tea

Weekend was delightful. Using that word makes me feel like a 19th-century British school teacher. Just delightful. Tea? Erect pinky and sip.

Tea is recurrent. I read the first page of two novels last week to see which one I wanted to read. Tea was in the first page of each. Saturday I happened upon Alice in Wonderland and carved into a plate in front of her was a line about tea. Tea?

The weekend was delightful because it involved a series of unplanned events. My plans to explore Central Park after work were knotted into nothingness by traffic and demon heat. By the time I reached the place I was half-naked at dusk, and my friend who lives nearby was absent from the planet.

Before I headed home, travel fervor unrequited, A called and asked me to visit DJs on the Hudson River with her. Eating alfalfa sprouts and avocado all the way, I met her riverside. We drank circus beer and dallied with dancers. Her friend J appeared.

A little tipsy with newness and beer I effervesced about poetry and The Little Prince, demanding that both A and J read it, and lamented my failed exploration of Central Park. We left and I met K and cohorts at a bar that served 32 oz beers and rum-n-cokes to go. There was pool and a beard and a girl who didn’t want a beard.

Saturday was hot. After visiting the Whitney Museum upon the kind push of T, I returned to Central Park, where Alice in Wonderland appeared before me. If ever I have kids I will read the Alice books to them early on, womb-time and after.

Walking on, a man on a bicycle begged me to buy poems. I kept my sunglasses intact and thanked him no. Twice. I happened upon Belvedere Castle, then the Shakespeare garden, where quotes from the plays sit in the foliage. I sat on a bench outside the Swedish cottage and began a book of tea.

Then to Strawberry Fields. Guitar and dollars and flowers in my eyes and noggin, I turned around and there was J, A’s friend whom I had met the night before.

Coincidence and Kunderan birds. Used to, I put much into the collisions and intersections. Now not so much. Either I’ve lost magic and romantic whimsy or I've gained discretion in interpreting subtlety in sign and symbol. Or, as always, something in between.

Whatever the case, the case now is sound, i.e., less bloated: always there is sign and symbol in recurrence, but not every red bird means gold-pot paradise; nor black bird, death.

fire in the goal, regurgitant match-box

For some reason, for the past two weeks I’ve been listening to music I listened to a decade ago, Nick Cave (newer Nick Cave albeit, but he doesn’t get into my ears often anymore), Ride, Catherine Wheel, Swervedriver, Cranes, Psychedelic Furs.

Either I’m having early-onset mid-life crisis or the new music of today is driving me back there. Or I’ve made another giant leap onto and across the luna and have no idea what year it is or what year anything belongs to or what my attic attaches to each year. July 5 was no easeful solace.

Landing strip tells, when a memory presents itself on your lips, speak it lest you vomit it up the next day with a slice of pizza or eggs on a street in Philadelphia. Powers to the peoples! Except for the people who walk slowly in the dead center of hallways. They are bad blind buddha-mites of the highest degree, and you, lurking behind them, are the backseat asshole.

Too much fun induces reflection and potentially self-loathing, which inspires a vigorous jog through thick humidity and demon heat. For some people.

Here’s to multi-faceted, multi-lingual cursing! Diamond exclamation! Now let’s light a sandcastle on fire in the air. That way we will still be able to see when the sky turns dark with wisdom.

I have said veritably nothing here. What’s new. Tomorrow I make my virgin trip to Virginia where there will be ship and family and a pond with ducks.

what happened when the nipples opened

There are pina coladas to be drunk and bikes to be ridden, asses to be sculpted and restless legs to be settled. Drums to be pounded. Backhanded compliments to be driven back over nets, bugs to be eaten out of those nets, and clarity to be achieved.

Sing it, Yoda, yes we must let go of what we fear losing. Bars are closing and the sewage is rising. A man still can be upstanding.

I used to think I could know everything some day—still with some buried knowing that I could never know absolutely everything, but with enough fancy that I could at least learn all that’s contained in the foundation of the coliseum.

Earthquakes happen and things shift, even things rooted deep and never can everything be known, not when so much more keeps happening.

This stunned my brain a few years ago and turned it into dirty hermetic whybotherness. What a field of pansyhood and resignation. Where to begin and how to keep going and why bother writing another stupid poem that at root is merely a reconfiguration of another. Why bother researching the origin of language and all its dendritic needling outward and forward and so on.

Somebody has to or that pond is gonna get grimy. Even this woe-is-me/I is old news, I know. Sometimes I just need a dumber but that much more rigorous motor. Where is the clarity, Auntie?

This is my happening and it's freaking me out. And then all the animals turned into strawberries ticking their lives away.

What are my coordinates now? Still caught in the potholder, I think; i.e., bad flowers still emit odor, but there is visible pensee happening in loud music boiling up in the planet’s ring.