1742

The phrase "you love your fear"
Is spoken at me three times one day.
It's true, I cling to it
Like a sock. The week flies by.

I start to talk like a self help book.
To correct this, I blast
"Eat yrself fitter." It doesn't work.
What does work is the computer.

I stare myself into it
Several hours a day. There,
The universe is literally words
And pictures. I love this universe

Like a fear. I love it day and night.
It tells me stories beautiful and dirty.
It puts me in touch with others
Whose fears are so obvious to me.

1741

I am afraid of "Grudge House"
And the noises that come from it.
As a private joke, I wag my finger.
"Grudge House" sends me a blank note.

It is indeed a marvelous structure.
I can see it fine from here, thanks.
A book tells me to walk up to my fear,
And that it will pass away.

I stay indoors and watch tv instead.
The mail piles up on the lintel.
Many years pass; I draw some comics.
"Grudge House" is repainted twice.

1740

MY WAY NOT YOUR WAY

That's not me talking, by the way.
Cats hot meta king.
Spending time with what is admirable.
Staring down the walkway to "Grudge House."

Spending time with what is admirable
We end up speaking like a translation by Yeats.
We're just that lucky.
It comes to us like shallots in autumn.

I am not listening to a psychic,
I am playing a fast game of yahtzee.
(Yeats wasn't into it, but Millay liked dice.
Actually, Millay was probably a lot of fun.)

This one clings to the truth,
Lives in his head. Boil him an egg.

1739

The power struggle makes me sleepy.
The stack of applications is teetering
In the tote. Scallop shell of calm,
Can you give me a hand with this modernism
Of cease fires and time constraints?
I may be searching for a school,
But everywhere I look, teachers.

1738

WAKE UP, I'M HERE

I get what I want
And I want
To go for a drive
Damn this war
In a clean white car

Why should what we want
Make us sad?
Or do you know, now,
What it is.
I wake up alive

And there is white light.
It feels right
To sing like a dog
In the tub.
I want to love you

From here 'til old age
And after.
You draw me to you,
Right? You do.
I'm here to love you.

1737

IMPERATIVES (THE SUBLIMINAL HUNTING GROUND QUESTIONS PAST REACHING)

Fluoride
Growth hormones
Vaccines
Air conditioning
Automobiles
Mobile phones
Wireless internet
Alcohol, tobacco, firearms
SSRIs
Controlled substances
Pesticides
Organic foods
Therapy
Antibiotics
Carbohydrates
Codependency
Dialectical materialism
Nuclear energy
Indie rock
Producer pop
Dead-animal poems
Poems about paintings
Poems about New York City
Stifling yourself
Speaking impertinently
Criticizing
Righteousness
Apathy
Complacency
Once-and-for-allism
All-or-nothing thinking
Imperatives

1736

Be Dionysian in your mind
And Apollo on the highway

1735

Take the first door
You measure
For a good time
Inalienable
Like ice cream
And fresh mishegas

(Who doesn't like
Paintings?)

A house made
For Big Bad Wolf
Dog and pony shows

Little thoughts
That expand in water

1734

Kick the ball to me don't
Kick the ball to me.

The party starts at nine

I'm sitting with the typewriter
The jazz is making time

I don't need it every day
It doesn't seem to mind, oh

Kick the ball to me don't
Kick the ball to me.

Come tell me something saucy
Tell me something true

Tell me that you want me
To give you something blue

Well the party starts way past nine
And you're sitting in my chair

If I saw you every day
Every day'd be that more fair, oh

Kick the ball to me c'mon
Kick the ball to me.

1733

HOLDING TOGETHER / THE TAMING POWER OF THE GREAT

A future belongs.
The lightest heart
Shimmers sleepily,

Millions of poets
Reducing experience
For good stories,


But wouldn't you
See that as a good
Use of a lifetime,

To manufacture real
And pleasing reasons
To believe in love.

1732

Deep stone
I like to think about you
With the same television mind
That enjoys baseball, dirty talk,
And the comfort of predictable forms.

That I think
Is the heart
Of all debate --
Do you want
To feel safe
Or do you want
To feel alive.

Ideally I want new wave and the truth,
The stone
And the city wave after wave
Of overlapping hucksters
Slap together
Counting on the stone
To be their doormat.

1731

Enough of this stopping and starting, big man!
You're looking positively claymation out there.
Relax your face, don't stand so stiff, and
When you talk to this person in front of you
I'm glad you're not looking off into space
But at least try not to give the impression
You're reading your lines off her forehead.

The easiest way to signify you're in the moment
Is to give a big fat soliloquy but face it,
It takes real energy to master service return --
Don't get nervous, we've got the best in the biz
Here for you to hang around and study. Tell you
What -- take my car down to someplace he calls fun
And practice. Now. Let's chalk today for overrun.

1730

It is a humid muni purse.

It waves the same Dave
A free par cassette
Wouldn't undo for loose boom footage.

Questions come back from the investigator.

I could go for some compassion
And crushed ice,

And lo, the documentarians are partying,
Dancing on the sofas even.

Drop those allegations of dourness,
It's open heart time.

I'm not waiting, I'm living.

1729

GEMINI (May 21-June 21).
You'll find a loved one very difficult to rein in, so focus your
incredible disciplinary powers on yourself. There are so many
ways to cut the nonsense out of your life, and cut it you must if
you're to reach your splendiferous goal.

1728

We went running down the hill
Looking at the pictures in the gallery
Shopping for music and new shirts
Turning on the cable
And moving across the water
From website to website
Driving the whole way in the passing lane
Subscribing to every magazine
Going to parties every night but Tuesday
Trying all the liquids and powders
Jumping right into the deepest arguments
And falling in love with each other
Every night for six or seven months

On the way back from lunch with Chris
Back from the auction of his grandfather's stamps
In Hong Kong he looks good he's writing a novel
I stop at Chase to deposit my check
I've been old fashioned since the company
Overpaid me by thousands of dollars my first month
I see the words Taskin Mumcuoglu on a desk placard
And hear Al Green singing that he's still in love
I don't think I've heard anything so beautiful in a bank
Since my second mortgage

And what is all this about love anyway
I'm feeling cut not bleeding but explosed
Like the electrical and plumbing
Of a building that's been struck by a large object

Love this terrible unbeatable team worse than the Yankees
Always in the media always up and down
It can never do enough to please its owner
Except win every time and we all have to root for it
I don't want to I never have I've always wanted
The impossible come-from-nowhere story
This is as the English teachers call it my tragic flaw
But it's September and my time my team is doing
Either what it always does or what it does
The year before it does something amazing

I don't want this love anymore it's what
It's so cruel always looking like that promised bliss
Then turning out to be everyday life my life
Don't get me wrong I prefer living
I go to the magazine stand it's the middle of the world
Assembly no new NewAfrican the Southwest Review will do
I pick up two more sets of MegaMillion numbers
As I tend to when the jackpot is greater than 100

By everyday life I mean war hot and cold
I mean I'm not asleep in history class
I can see the smoke rising from the field
I can understand it but I can't understand it
I enlist I show up I have faith in the leaders
I'm wounded they send me back to the front

Metaphors are for the truly stupid
And I am for metaphors
Too what too crazed scared or just tired
To articulate what I imagine of your experience
Too slow to know what to do with my analysis or yours
Not slow but possessed of a misplaced faith

People of the future, we knew in advance
About the flooding, the heat, the die-offs

Knew in advance that we were waiting too long

Still I for one believed
In truthfulness compassion forebearance
Whatever those are or mean
When you don't control capital
I don't control capital
I can barely manage to tell capital
What capital's frantic confused footsoldiers
Are seeing on the ground

It's not good it never is
Except at the end of the teaching day
Throat hoarse, back tired top to bottom
All that talking taking effect
Over the following hours and days

Let's don't call it love anymore
Even though I would say that's the best name
Let's make the feeling strange again
Less of an obligation, more of a sweet
Brimful clacking unto the roofslates
That what has started goes on through absence
Like light through space ok that's corny
But it's true I feel warm in your presence
Like a cat following the sun
On its tour of the windows of the house

Metaphors are for everybody to have enough
And similes are wandering the land
I'm not wandering I'm sitting at my desk
Putting one foot in front of the other
And you today are all about revenue

In your unguarded moments you have a different laugh
In your kitchen you have a ladder
In your bedroom you have a self-portrait

You ask me what I want to tell you
I can answer that, how much time do you have
It may take fifty or sixty years

A beautiful city is built on an earthquake fault
Or underwater, or on a harbor, same thing
When the world gets hot
The people of these cities live every day
With the intensity of survivors

They call it a fault but it's just the earth changing
They say "myth of Sisyphus"
But we're just getting up every day
Waiting for this monster we made up
To come tickle us to death

I'm alone it's ok I'm collaborating on something
That makes the motorcades do their Three Stooges whoop

Just doing one thing and then another
Which sometimes turns out to be
The first thing's next part

1727

Musicians are the true adults,
Giving themselves over to a power
That forces and focuses
Everyone in the radius to a state
Neither waking nor dreaming

Self-consciousness is overrated
Not to meet with pitchforks
To go get old man Shakespeare
But it does imply an omniscience
That cancels the power to act

Maybe that's what's up with Jahweh
He thinks His Kid outdid Him
No, musicians have it right
Practice the rough spots away
I'll stop here and leave the bumper stickers to Tim

1726

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

The merchandise hasn't arrived
So we ask the people behind the counter
If they can make a rubberstamp
For the stack of invoices up to my nostrils
We don't want this miser of quiet seesaw
Fluorescence to come xeroxing the pervy know-nothing
Visible world

It happens that way to us, it's like radio
Was a kind of soda and mementos
Proofread your arg arg arg

That's the fee season I want to play calamine lotion in,
The white-faced resuscitation order
I carve into the side of an ice World Trade

Now I lie down on the ironing board,
Now I shop for overspecific appliances
I am horrified to have gone back into the abbatoir
To find my keys, Buddha, what the fuck?

The falcon summons me to a cholesterol screening

I demand to see the presiding officer's molars

Names don't worry thin Binky except when he's opening his eyes
And when that alien light shines under the doors
He can kiss Duane Reade's ass
With a footnote explaining to the aliens what a Duane Reade is

Binky, close your eyes

What are you doing here, Binky?

Corniness comes from centralized power structures
Take for example Malachi McCourt
The trees were knocked down twenty miles away
The force of Frank McCourt is ten times that

Now I'm tired and will rest on the divan
With a diva

1725

I'm covered in pieties
They make me sweat
Like a rhino, like a dog

Jim nods and strokes his chin
It's a sign he's thinking
Better of laughing

But that's how it goes
When you constitutionally
Can't be cool, sometimes

People let you know
"You're covered
In rule-flavored popcorn"

I want to be a pair of scissors
I want to be a pair of pants
Take your scissors away from my pants

I really like the idea
Of complete vulnerability
Which is why I'm dead

And frankly it feels ok
To say whatever
If by ok you understand dizzy

Have a sour soda for me
While I sit in the sauna
En route to the lasers

1724

TRY AGAIN

I shiver, flash with rage:
The bottle cap says "try again."

The crying wells up like a cave,
The pressure pushes on my eye

My arms extend outwards
And I can feel a sneer melt.

Laughter fires like a toy gun
Repeating in the other room;

I can understand it but
I can't understand it. I want

To do as the bottle cap says.
I catch my breath.

1723

A hatred of the language
I associated with anti-semitism;

It's ok if the art is just words,
Only words -- words have the best parties

And the biggest bedrooms.
The emotional travel guide speaks knowingly

Of visits to the piles of coats,
But to me it's Laos or Hat Head,

I struggle all night with
My preconceptions, wake up

My pillow soaked and my heart weak.
Murasaki Shikibu focused on the sleeves

The way Homer sent spears through nipples --
The jackass spends twenty pages

Carrying out a conceptual joke
Worth half a laugh and twenty seconds' thought,

Let's chip in and sign him up
For the Sierra Club.

1722

No that's fine, you go ahead
And take all my pegado.

The birds rising
From the exploded earth,

Marbles rolling down
The legislature steps --

When the facts were explained
To the timid drinker

We had a serious discussion
Sprinting to the concertina.

The words? you're worried for
The words? They'll be fine,

They've been to law school,
It's so muggy I'm parched.

1721

Throw some ink
On the touchscreen,
Leonardo, tell the bailiff
I won't placate Amy Moore.
The duststorm
That we kick up will
Illustrate
The collected works,
Night feelings
Breaking on the edge of the glass.

It's quiet inside
Me. Except for the creaking
Of the stairs
The elves pace;
They are reluctant
To say what is on their minds,
But then, they are in love,
The elves,
With the sound of the highway
And the winter winds.

1720

It's only the most serious
Accident you can enjoy, the one
Decision relaying your childhood
Into an army of villagers,

A statement to the effect
Of your physical emotional psychic
Ability to participate
In your own slow destruction

(Or so they/we will tell you
The instant you supply a reaction,
The only object of this
Question so much like gorilla-grooming):

Are you guys going to have kids?
Why not
Ask it, it's worth crying
Every night all night

When they're not little
For that short space
When they learn to say what you may never have:
I'm confused why you're not here.

1719

A dark place.

LINNAEUS: The names of things

FOUCAULT: Are names and things

PLATO: That take up infinite space

NOTLEY: By dividing and conquering

LAKOFF: Our minds.

1718

A chocolate plantation.

MOHAMMAD: You're much better off
Trying on new costumes
In private

SULLIVAN: Inspiration follows exercise
To be sure, but

BEHRLE: My man! Don't ever respond again!
No responding!

GORDON: Chaos is not evidence of life
But it can be a very good time

GARDNER: Let the night drown the weasels
Who stand aside and mete favors

1717

The internet.

DUDE: Dude, you're not writing like the internet.

DUDE: Chillax, dude, I will soon enough.

DUDE: That's what you said about rap, and ten years later
You're still all verse paragraph this, iambic pentameter that.

DUDE: IP is bananarama!

DUDE: The Beatles are the future of National Geographic.

DUDE: Dude.

DUDE: Dude, you haven't generated new slang in like
Two years, I'm hearing everything you write
In a headgear-lisp, maybe you should go animate some gifs.

DUDE: Dude, what is this crap you're listening to?
No wonder you're depressed.

DUDE: Dude.

DUDE: Dude.

1716

A sandy beach with table set up as for a panel discussion.

MEDIATOR: So how did it feel to have your heart broken?

FILM DIRECTOR: It was a process
Not unlike salsa -- a lot of one-two-three,
Some turning around and coming back for more.

FILM CRITIC: I didn't experience it that way at all;
It was much more tense and drawn out,
And then all of a sudden I was seized by the sense
That there really was no way out except
Into the ground.

POET: It felt like a stroke. I was dizzy,
And my heart -- my cardiovascular system,
Not a blazon, not a symbol, mi cuore --
Felt like it had been kicked repeatedly.

HEDGE FUND TRADER: It felt like an uncovered call.

1715

A playwright workshop in New London.

CASEY: Yeah I don't care about that.

MILLER: Tell me something else I don't already know.

CASEY: We don't need more negative noodling.

CHURCHILL: God how much energy it takes
Just to say one thing with all these nudniks
Breathing and complaining. But I am alive!

OVID: Big deal, alive.

(RIDING): Big deal, alive.

CHURCHILL: And yet, I'm half aware that these voices
At this table are all my own voice, all my own wish
To be held back from some imminent disaster...

BOWLES: Morning feelings, the warmth of sheets
With an angry woman not yet conscious next to you --

BARNES: Why do these children write poems
About their grandparents? Why are they not
Stealing diamonds on horseback? But the beer drinkers
Seem to be the ones who attract crowds.

WEINSTEIN: The problem, if it is a problem,
Is that as Frank said, you can't really send a message,
Or maybe it was Sam Goldwyn. No, he was
"Writers are schmucks with Underwoods."

THOMAS: I spilled a glass on my writing table
And wrote Under Milk Wood.

ELIOT: I spooked myself with my poems
And turned to counterfeiting Nick and Nora
For the conflicted Unitarian set.

ELECTRA: The only song anyone wants to hear
Is the one sung out of impossible love.

DARNIELLE: The death instinct feels pretty good,
Apparently. As does everything nearly feral.

CASEY: And you bring in too many characters!

MILLER: Too many characters.

CHURCHILL: I bring in my feelings of escape
And release, of lifting my head and speaking up.

1714

A playwright workshop in Moscow.

CHEKHOV: Looking at American movies I realize
I probably shouldn't have said that, about the gun.

TURGENEV: Oh but it's true. As I said
Climbing into the lifeboat ahead of the women,
My heart rate is elevated, give me the oars.

DOSTOEVSKY: Wrap it up, gentlemen.

TOLSTOY: Gentlemen, go on.

O'BRIEN: Gentlemen, what'll it be, lights or darks.

CHEKHOV: Darks, and a plate of crackers and onions.

BLACKBURN: Those guys are so fixated on the big picture.

OPPENHEIMER: I know what you mean.

BLACKBURN: Don't you see, what gives us life
Just as much as our big decisions and heartbreaks
Are the little glimpses (muffled by roar of laughter from the Russians)

OPPENHEIMER: All the same, I kind of want to drink
Somewhere they let women in, Paul. Or blacks.

BLACKBURN: America is changing, Joel. Williams
Saw that, and pointed the way. Why aren't everybody
Following?

OPPENHEIMER: They think Williams is a hick, Paul.
If they'd just look at Spring and All (muffled by roaring Russians)

1713

A playwright workshop in New Haven.

DURANG: "For god's sake don't be a drag"
May or may not mean dress everyone in drag.

FO: What ho!

T-SHIRT: "Enough with the scientology already."

SCHECHTER: The distance from Sam's social experiments
To Gilligan's Island, I'm no numismatist
But I think we all knew from Spalding's paws
How big a dog he would grow to be.

SHEPARD: Patti, this is Jessica. Jessica, Patti.

MAPPLETHORPE: A flower is a game,
Silver gelatin is a room
Where everyone talks but not to anyone in particular.

SMITH: The poets can't possibly understand
How much power they have so I'll take it.

LANGE: Sam baby, can we go get dinner now?

COURTENAY: So I said, for a larf,
What are your turn ons? And she said:

CHRISTIE: "Penetration"

TURGENEV: The trick is to be at home
Among the imaginably wealthy, and also
For there to be no gossip magazines yet.

DURANG: And yet we imagine ourselves
In a conflict-free world where we stay young
Not just unwrinkly and full heads of hair
But sleep doesn't come into it, or petsitting.

WEAVER: Darling I didn't imagine
Being the bitch who fries space bugs.

O'HARA: Something terribly important is going on
Involving being a surly fuckoff with a sure hand
And that is our modern idea of purity,
Consistent aggression we scan for tenderness.

KOCH: That's not what it's like at all.

DURANG: There has to be a woman standing
Near the center of the stage, unreadable.

WEAVER, SMITH, LANGE (at once): I used to know how to do that.

MAPPLETHORPE: Unreadability only gets you so far.

FO: Oh do you think so.

1712

Ghosts at the battlefield of Antietam.

GHOST: A war can only be waged
In a climate of profound belief.

GHOST: When irony kicks belief in the nuts, though,
Then also is it possible for ironists to pose as believers
And tell the lies that stir women to confusion.

GHOST: It is only necessary to lie
To start a war.

GHOST: Wars start when there is a surplus of men.

GHOST: There is a surplus of men in China.

GHOST: There is a surplus of men in India.

GHOST: There is a surplus of men in the White House.

GHOST: It is only necessary to lie
To excel in marketing.

GHOST: It is only necessary to lie to yourself
To excel in journalism.

GHOST: It is only necessary to die
Once.

GHOST: A city can die and be reborn.
During the great fire of London Samuel Pepys
Dug up his gold coins from his courtyard.

GHOST: Alex Chilton sat on his porch.

GHOST: Everybody broke open:
Blind, diabetic, abandoned.

GHOST: In a time of rational discourse
Insight is dimly perceived to be beyond reason,
And war comes looking for sugar to burn.

GHOST: It is normal to have spiritual feelings.

GHOST: It is normal to feel anxiety
In the presence of difference.

GHOST: It is normal to want a very large burger.

GHOST: It is normal to do nothing.

GHOST: It is normal to take advantage
Of who cannot defend themselves.

GHOST: It is normal, it is normal, it is absolutely normal.

1711

The new century begins at a customs window:

UBU: It's not a muu muu it's a flag painting

JAP JOHNS: In point of fact I find Dubuffet's "paste"
A sore ray from the crown of unsleeping
Mention.

PETER GIZZI: The object of looking into the heart
Of time is as yet unknown and yet in a prison
In California Johnny Cash spoke truth to power
And for that we can only admire the goofiness
Of the great printers' errors of our time,
Apollinaire's Zone, for example.

UBU: My wish is not to have to eat shit again.

GADDIS: And that is why I am not a poet.

MARKSON: Always rationalizing, bless your heart.

MOSLEY: Without rationalization, what reason
Would we have at all?

BBC1 WEATHER: Cloudy, with a chance of clouds,
Followed by some clouding up in the evening.

THE GODDESS NIKE: Revealing the names of spies is treason.

THE GOD HERMES: Stealing from the treasury
By awarding contracts to yourself is also treason.

THE GOD APOLLO: Treason is punishable by death.

THE GOD ZEUS: I am what I am.

THE GODDESS HERA: We create our own reality.

UBU: I create a coil of shit!

JAP JOHNS: I paint targets and flags.

1710

BUSY WRITING POEMS

Ah nobody
Wants to see through
The clothes
Of the prose

Into the heart of the heart
The artificial artichoke
The fries and shake combo

Because that's the thing
That matters most now
The racism at the door
Of the casual mambo

The corporationism
Pain radiating from the spine
Out to the wilderness
Of a clinic's giddyup

Look at the end
Of the word
To understand
Roman cruelty

And I will tune up
The motorcycles

Playing "the beginning of censorship"
In my headphones

Like an abstract painting
You want to own
To ignore

I can obviate all that bonus pringle can mush
Just by turning on the Mickeyvision
For a wide lugnut spaz out formative moment

Known as "live before a studio audience"

1709

BRIGHT LANES STORY PLAQUE

Throwing the ink onto the straphanger,
I am liberated
From the cassette tape and into gazzosa

The surly ruddy
Companionshiplessness

Of nothing to declare,
The sharp teeth of night's
Census takers

Exhorting the leaves to detach already

And though I may never ride public transit
During the next state of emergency
I imagine I will cling to the side of the moving bus

With just enough presence of mind
Not to record the event
With a ball-point pen found on the curb.

1708

Sleep,
Do you mean
I'm getting
Sick fat or old?

I run but
There you are
Tugging on my shirt.

Of course I'll
Come see about you.

Right after
This cup of tea.

Do you believe
Music makes the intellect
Shapelier than cut crystal?

Not that I
Advocate for shaving
With a Waterford candlestick

Ah you
Got me already,

I'm typing
From inside the dream

Apparently.

1707

They look for the world
Like perfect nothing could
Come shocking through them,

A trance more stable
And more succulent a wish
Flooding slowly from

Their feet into the sleeping
Reservoirs of time.
The closets are full

Of these broken clocks
Even today! when speaking up
Is managed not by whips

Or a bullet to the family
But an implication,
An imagined threat...

The imagination is more real
Than its linguistics
Can absorb, it makes

Of the visible spectrum
A sleeping nogoodnik
And a damn bad gamer.

1706

Now is the time.
I'm
Waving a foam finger
At the parquet floor
And picking a fight
With the anthem singer

It just feels right
To close a door

1705

If I've got hold of you
Why would I look the other way

Why wouldn't I want to try
Everything you've mentioned

Not like we're in a store
Is that a game you like?

But as if we're at the beach
One thing after another

1704

MISSED CONNECTION

We take the premise
Like a subway
To the Memphis
We don't know
As a spiritual exercise
In being say-hey
Like nice nice
Was Mei Mei
And hi hi to ice wine
From Lagos' sunshine
The message is messy
The song's by Jodeci
The gdp's foreplay
Compares you too
Come here you two
Let me tell you something
About the word disgusting
We'll keep walking
As you sit on my tray
What'd I say
Three hundred crunches
I packed your lunches
We met for unrest
And came back undressed
Syllables unstressed
Story of a new west
The old one fell away

1703

SHIT-EATING GRIN

I've never cared much for this phrase
But then I've never much wanted to stare
Into what it might mean or why anyone
Might say it -- it doesn't start fights,
This eating shit business, even though
It sounds to me like it would. What
Do I know? I've taken (like so many others
I know, have loved, worked for, smiled at)
So many less loaded phrases for insults,

I want to break into a car
And not take anything

Or go running in the woods
Singing arias from Telemann

Speak truth to women
And lies to money

Waking up every morning
To the motrin of drayage
Plume ferns agnostic a much
Needed window blink oboy oboy

Mostly though I want
The presence of mind
To make a meal when I'm hungry
And get laid when I'm what,
Awake? some dreamer
Of romantic spice racks
I'm turning out to be

Some Bugs Bunny shooting
Han Solo first

Some index card essayist
Of the Chevrolet Impala endzone machismo

Some tivo programmer

Some friend of literature's less guarded mimicking
Of the plaza outside the Department of Energy

Well, in that case
Let me just shuffle
And deal, can I get
A bless for rest of yes the best southwest
By west confess no less to guess for

Standing in the path of the oncoming car

Dreaming of the light changing
At the turn of the season

Admiring the prose of Ford Madox Ford
And generally being
The good friend

A bit clueless with segues
And opportunities to give gifts

But on average maybe not as
How you say
Mischievous
As the expression implies.