does the cat recognize that i'm pissing
(when he looks at me- penis in my fingertips,
straight stream of urine from it to the toilet water)?
does he think- that's like what i do,
only different

oh, there was a girl out of place at a crazy intersection.
she came from a nearby business, crossing a nothing landscape strip
that separates one pool of asphalt from another,
stood at the corner.
she tapped her foot just a bit (there had to be some small amount of self consciousness)
then set her eyes to a downcast glance to nowhere
she had her cellphone in her hand, but didn't use it as a crutch
and i felt so glad.
after all,
i don't want to forget the way people used to wait.

today i noticed the jingling of my keys again,
and recalled a time when i feared my level of perceptiveness
would drive me to insanity or death

it is like cartoon sound
floating arcs proceeding towards me in marching succession
and, like curved, pre-fabricated metal,
they fit to my thighs, my calves, the parts of my legs
and stay for an instant before they dissolve into me
and the next one comes.
i've fowled the air
and have serious fears of limb amputation.
it's 5am and i made myself get up and write this

heading easterly now with lunar landscape
and light lifted head
headlights take to strobing
when they fall below the guardrail,
chopped up by its steadfast, sentinel supports.
in the distant darkness on some small country road,
four cars are spaced perfectly apart
and their headlights seem like some magical
mechanical apparatus
and for some reason
i imagine it doomed to become an artifact.

happiness is the words
i read on the page
that warble and flicker,
losing their opacity in random flutters,
blending into the page
all because i just stared briefly into the sun.
they're alive and playing with me
because the whole world does things like this
when it knows you've pulled back some secret fold
in its real world fabric to stop in for a stay in that elusive state
that makes you forget days
and all you ways

a sad thought occurred to me-

that i might wear away absorbing all these other people's experiences,

like a marble staircase succumbs to deformation from the millions of footfalls 

all in the same place, day after day

this is quickly replaced by a sweet, subtle happiness

that these gifts will be mine for the taking

as long as i remain receptive

Everything In The Past Two Days

to hate someone for giving you the greatest feeling in your life,

this makes sense now

the receptionist women from the doctors office,

coming from the convenient store next door

a daily ritual, they enter the random landscaped void

that often exists between businesses in our contemporary world

clumsily framed in a forest scene, walking down the grassy slope

it is words beyond beautiful

sometimes in one instant,

i travel through every single person's brain on this planet

as one gently dips a foot in a swimming pool

just to know

i shuddered with nerves on a drive to a new person

because... i really don't know

because i don't need anyone new, and i went ahead anyway?

because she is beautiful?

because it reassured my recklessness?

i usually give up my life, toss it on the telephone wires

i sat up in bed and stared straight ahead to the far wall,

paused, and then gave a nod to the invisible unknowns filling up the space,

indecipherable to me because i just need a few more lifetimes of visual development

because every year i see more than the one just departed

and if time and attention sat opposite one another on a teeter-totter,

the choir of angels would melt and be mute

and sunlit rays would break from the clouds

only this time, as support beams for all the unimaginable beings

with arms around our shoulders

as we suffocate in containers stuffed with cotton

last night, i had strange dreams

and today, the rain came down like a joke

i've been awful tired lately

it might be about time i qualify for twenty seven

if you think i'll spend my life like you, richard, i'll learn to make do

but in secret, i'll solicit unsolitary scripts

with carousels 

and moving trams

a banging screen door 

saluting its counterpart- the threadbare mat

still, it seems growing old 

means getting used to being

more alone 

klaus kinski was not a human being

he made no attempt to be a part of society

all that felt right was to use himself to manipulate

what he had a good sense of

he could twitch a muscle in his face that had more dimension and personality

than your neighbor

no, he was no human

and he stayed only to give the unsteady a taste of what was possible if you just took the plunge,

throw away the everyday, cast off, accept your lot

save us all

today i told an old man dowser

that i would be settling down

i looked around around around

on the toilet

and my quite mind and morning eyes taking note of my languid arm

lying there across my thighs

it is dead and grotesque 

a freakish arm of a famine victim in a photograph in a far away land

it cannot be of my body

i do not feel it there

with its long, light- black hairs

patterned, sweeped in the same direction like grass on a hillside after a rain

and some white residue like salt stains on winter sidewalks

and the grayish looking rises that hint of the mess all below, inside

but it's the length, the proportions

it's too long, like a section was spliced in

i wipe myself and flush the toilet

and my mind gets sharper

as it will as i awake further

and go have a day

something like:

my life is like the clouds out the window of a plane

you want to look out and forever be enthralled

but then you get tired, sit back and close your eyes

and dream those clouds more fanciful than reality

the trees all have a hint of malice.

you can sense their willingness to let time slowly pass,

to which, when the chance finally arrives,

they will overtake the constructs of our civilization

in an overgrown surge of nonchalance

america is going down the drain.

in my city, more deaths than days of the year

art is bad.

people feel pressured to do it, 

when really they should be interacting with each other,

nurturing beautiful relationships that make you feel

tremendous and stupendous.

those are the real works of art.

The Garnerer

i want you to imagine that this song is like 

you were somehow able to collect all the sounds

occurring on the entire planet in some sort of vessel.

and starting right now, let the collecting begin-

an infinite instant compiling caused an unimaginable explosion.

the world is getting larger don't you know.

it's true- i am no one.

i am water,

shape-shifting, directionless.

i will be whatever person  i need to be.

this scares me.

my essence has nothing to do

with stability or the commonplace.

i guess i should learn this.

time for more wandering, then.

This is it- the feeling of a never ending stream of information flowing marvelously into my mind, creating kaleidoscopic oceans and sense-shifting motions- all of the highest order of beauty, pleasantness, everything.