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an error in chemistry

culling words, a bit of dull poetry, attempting to recreate the tarn of a certain puddle i came across the other night. here i am in the inky black; it's all pale -- an achromatic copy of a landscape design. the puddle flushed with a rudimentary vortex of ripples. well, there was a pervading dark tentacled dampness, though the garland lights in the video store were singularly thrilling. bare branches burnished. it all fades and fades, piano music at 2 a.m.

days later, sipping hibiscus tea, i feel this like no earthly sensation. i had walked into the mist to sip, what would be, a yerba mate, steaming milk, toned auburn gray. i sat down and took my book outta my jacket - the subterranean voyage of nicholas klimm, scanning passages in pomponius mela about the old african satyrs, a forgotten book in quarto gothic - the vigiliae mortuorum secundum chorum ecclesiae maguntinae - i don't remember. anyway, the place was packed. i had managed to find an almond table against the side of a hippo-skinned wall. the tea felt terrific. i read, and here you dropped something, this is yours, i'm drifting

the time between now and then is a beautiful pastiche of fellaheen humor. tuesday: people of the yucatán fry tortillas with black beans and avocado, turkey and pickled onions, too. idle political chatter, jokes, the non-philosophy of laruelle. drunk later, music playing. the icy saturyne of winter hangs outside my window like a superstition, and i can't tell whether the dream or after-dream is concrete or a reverie because, anyhow, poetic musings.

it's getting on -- late now, and while i've felt a bit lost lately, i know i can always count on that moment of sudden and conscious contact. pulling the airbrake of time -- letting this or that moment rest and breathe in peace. by this simple method i've immobilized millions of moments, perhaps paying terrible fines but stopping the train. say why do you do it? the red-nosed conductor might ask.

because i like the view.

harih om

o elephant-faced god, ganesha, you are served by the assemblage of ghosts, and you eat sweet wood-apples and blackberries. you are uma's son, the destroyer of sorrows. i bow to the lotust feet of the remover of obstacles. hari om.

oh let's compare mythologies and boy these potato crisps are tasty.

a way a lone a last a loved a long the

my poetics are lurching through vague states and machinations and good luck brought me back to a very clever and energetic girl. it was on a rainy night in a dark hotel bar in the middle of the city - she sat in the corner. i walked over, noticing her colorful drink (hug), and sat down.

she always did look lovely and calm. i teased about her fancy clothes, she, my beat, and the beat blew mood architecture - never doubling back and ho never no repeating a phrase - talking, serious questions, a sigh this or the thing was and you know how. i'd ordered a drink i don't recall pronouncing. the talk continued easy, real - afterwards we left with a clean air after discussing plans, people, an open-ended

buoyed by that calm but still itching days later, strange feverish exotic, dying to put the metal machine music feedback loop on pause, so no sooner had i settled into a mind of go do this had everything become no not now. a sunday night of boredom when a friend and i were discussing strange fears in our hearts concomitantly resulting and had we finished when he was calling our friend in the wee hours for accompaniments for a drive to mexico. we picked stuff up and blasted down, flying down the highway in the early morning traffic, the pink dawn stretched, glimmering over the earth - the music - a tidal fury blasting to god and the morning star. through new york, pennsylvania, maryland, and he's still asleep. shit, i was getting tired, and just thinking then as sirens blared behind me in loud, wild whirs, then waking my friend, as the cop moseyed to the passenger window and took a look around. "where are you boys headed?" he asked in small american authority. "out for a cruise, sir, you betcha." he walked around and asked me to step out, so step out i did, and after asking cop-like questions, he tells me we stink and to turn around home.

busy back with self-satisfied disappointment though sanctuary dreams.

and right now you'd never dream we were on the same highway to mexico telling our stories with big, round eyes, a flash in the el camino dirt wig, digging somnolent ditties, patchworking the sky.

torturing into aught of the sublime

o, it's the night of the evil birds, shrouding my eyes in the simplified room - strewn - wild desk of books and alcohol and drugs. it's the tortured night - so distracted have i been and so to save myself from some bleak insanity - the veil lifting, thinking of everyday things - finding out what i'll be in the coming months, and maybe i'm throwing my life away, but i swear that i'm not cos i'm in love with my life, and i'm telling myself that and sometimes really feeling it, or at least the belief in it - making up for the botch of my days, creating a vast universe - phosphorescent far-off isles in sweet and sometimes macabre movie-house reveries - waiting for the sun to rise.

there's a chinese man sleeping down on the couch.

and i'm praying for my pops, a dime and two, working and earning a few bucks and getting into bed, all quietsleeptight - so here i am stealing off like a fugitive, inexplicably drunk too often - though i feel him tottering in the dark like a slave - are you happy? comfortable? numb? whisked away from this sad, lonely land by the sea, saved by my brother the sea - to wit - rocked and rearranged, dark and grappling with shadowy fancies, dear mr. warhol, is plastic fun?

ah, but the sun'll be shining soon - i know how to fight and survive - thinking of grand boyhood trips through the colossal new york countryside - you see, overlapping books and moods and my own life makes for a heady time in the black nothingness of 5:16 a.m. - though i'm beginning to hear trucks, echoes of life and the newspapermen are gathering in the streets, shouting or standing pat and cool in the impending wintery air - their faces of resolve and hopefulness and pride in their work - this great american lonely crockashit is stirring, and soon the coffee'll be making nice, stretch out to golden rays...

adieu. i'm haunted in the mind by you. cock weather to change my concepts.

cockblocked by faulkner

oh, hey.

i wasn't opposed to going out or staying in but feeling somewhat complacent (rare) - a roommate going to a design school shindig another going to a downtown club hoping to pickup a suburban broad (with pigtails i imagine another in florida working on behalf of voter registration last talkin about goin' to a party down the street, and you're speaking my tune right then.

so. her friend from undergrad came over with her ninja-doctor-boyfriend and they played video games, so on, me, drinking, waiting.

we left.

david bowie's album art was hosting the party - the keg pleased me, and so i stood in my costume probably nobody understood - i'd shaven my beard but kept the stache, dressed appropriately as a political activist ('68 mugshot) who's been featured in the news as being linked to a u.s. prsdent candidate - the wholes in my jeans - under the moniker of a domestic terrorist. my roommate sally was a doctor-viking and the ninja-doctor-boyfriend's-girlfriend was a football player rugby player. the fiesta also featured idaho, mastercard, futuristic moon chick, and i was getting on with the plant from little shop of horrors who i also believe was my roommates friend.

and man... we DANCED! - i mean, danced - like... danced! (spin, sugar, spin!)

the d.j. was a first-rate disaster, but wot i'm sayin' is

we took a break and talked about people's costumes which made us both punch pleased and then went outside for a smoke - a young curious pleasant fellow ambled down the street toward us - in his boston accident -

"do you guys think they'll let me into the pahty? look, i wore my yale shirt and everything!" being not dressed in costume, and in heartbreaking earnestness, he unzipped his black parka, proudly showing his yale shirt, which looked like anyother shirt with buttons.

"yeah, man, they'll let you in," i told him.

so he romped up the steps (rocky) but dejectedly came back down telling us that the beer had run out, then said -

"you two like each other, huh? why don't you just leave? i mean, you're out here talking close, she's beautiful, right?"

"yeah, she's beautiful," i said, and she was - she being giggles now, and me telling the lad that he doesn't want to be a talk show host and that there were various spirits and tinctures in the party and go check it out.

so, now, things being blurry, but i recall seeing faulkner dancing, and she had been speaking with him friendly friendslike, and i had to replace faulkner's dimwitted void with the name he was hopelessly searching for: foxy brown. and now me, her, faulkner, some others out back in garden for a bit, and then leaving.

on the sidewalk, andrea, her name told me she saw our lad sipping a drink, bobbing his head on the cleared out dancefloor - swells, i'm inviting her to my place, though faulkner too joins in with his other friend i don't know what's wot - arriving back, smoke tea, cool, (roommates also being home, one cooking spaghetti sauce with girlfriend, other living nice, last, asleep) - and then explosive, frenzied exchange (lambasting) with (at) faulkner 'bout literature on the deck.

final vision. eyes locked for about eternity but still and lock-jawed as i sat seething, paralyzed, mais dumb drunk - her head was on backwards as she left last after other girl and faulkner too.

ah, life.

lou reed, take me back.

i'm talkin' proverbs. who's talkin' proverbs? the sidewalk edition (of montreal).

secret smiles on the sidewalk, in the cafe, on the bus, you've slid your hooks into me, beautiful, and it does hurt as i spin uncontrollably forward, splish-splashing here and there.

i'm staying in a bright, shiny hotel with a huge crystal chandelier and views of tall banks and insurance companies. how elegant! i'll be happy when my money runs out.

the sidewalks are wet and delightful. did i mention i've actually worn my jeans bare, and holes are forming - this being the first happenstance of this sort since i was a tyke.

the past few nights i've been the star of loungey midnight interviews, as i hurtle toward the center of the city, a beetle railing against a screen window in forlorn summer bars, oh hum, oh hum, refined dissipated excitement lurking in the heavily designed interiors (but always rushing to the center whir!) (finding nothing but a feeling twenty feet above my head.). i sat alone sipping absinthe behind a blurring neon sign, the glossy black table reflected the green liquor and my new beard, as a tall black guy in a suit and wild, wild eyes made his way over and sat down. he told me about himself (a lawyer). i told him about myself (a bum, a prophet). he asked if i'd like some tea (marijuana), i said i was cool, he asked if i'd like some tail (women), i said i was cool. he told me he was very high. i told him he was god's child. i left.

blasting down, i heard some live music moving inside, so i popped in. it was an intimate setting; dug. the stage was about fifteen feet away as i dipped the bread in the lentil soup (required food purchase with stout. being early and hungry, i happily acquiesced.) the band was only rehearsing, but i liked it, and it was a lovely accoutrement to the rain and the soup and the gorgeous girl to my right speaking french.

there's something i like about this city. the women. but more than that there's a feeling in the air that you're safe. everyone is polite and warm. the cab driver was learning spanish, and he had the u.s. electoral college map taped to the back of his visor. you can see it and feel it in the lack of hegemony, and the narratives of design, architecture, music: everywhere. it feels somewhat enlightened. though at the same time it's given me renewed appreciation for america, that old frontier town, that crazed, wild do anything. america has a sense of power and money and suffering and killing i don't feel here. in america, the underground cafes are that much more compelling, the music and books, more radical, radical begets radical reaction, and i do love the american jungle, even if it is against my better judgment(a fuller chronicle of emotion?).

i've heard that incredible amounts of friction can shoot particles into outer-space. i mean, not to get all astro-physicist but the boudoir in my suite would be driving me to fits. thankfully, i've exorcised the demons these past few nights.

tonight, i'm an angel.

verily, verily i say unto you,
except a corn of wheat fall into
the ground and die, it abideth
alone: but if it die, it bringeth
forth much fruit.

john XII.24

who's talkin' proverbs?