When you want intense blue
Cobalt will do.
For white/miscellaneous
Go porcellaneous.
For a texture of nub
Try Crawling Glaze, Bub.
With motile non-sessiles
Do Handle your vessels.
And Showcased Absurdity?
Use Unreal Birdity.
the surgeon invited me to peek
at his handiwork on my hand
just as he had on my other hand
on the seventh of this year’s Jan
and as before i was eager to see
so he warned “cold water” and washed away
the occluding and offputting sanguination
and lifted my hand above the canvas
and i beheld the bundle of nerves
relieved from its tissue strangulation
the tendon alongside as ivory as tusk
and looking as unyielding
depth of field about two centimetres
site about two cm wide
“thanks!” said i and my voice had husk
because I had witnessed a miracle
i was getting a ride home
she had looked at me and said vámonos with that tiny jerk of the head that said let’s go/no argument
we went/she was telling me her favorite kinds of latin music/and she told her screen/and it would play
and she would move with the music/with shoulder shimmies and head tossbacks
and old as I am and young as she was i was stirred
she deliberately drove past my street and we drove on
I said to the screen FREDDY FENDER BEFORE THE NEXT TEARDROP FALLS
and freddy’s sweet lamenting voice filled the car/first in english then in spanish
and she was stirred/hearing that old-school song
and we came to my apartment/i patted her shoulder with my hand/but our heads seemed magnetically attracted/and they slightly clunked/with our heads both facing forward
and the truth is, i wanted to embrace her
and the real truth is, i wanted to grab her
and the stone ground truth is, it would have been wrong wrong wrong to grab her
so i didn’t/i got out and let her know without words/looking at her as i got out/that I sincerely enjoyed the ride/the moment
and she dawdled a little/lowering her driver’s side window/and saying inconsequentials/but finally “bye”
and i shook my head walking to my unit/muttering stuff like “jesus!” and “hot stuff”
like the foolish old man that i am
well, there goes health/and many human services/national parks/but hey we ought be nervousest/when we come/to the severing occurrence/of who tend/our nuclear deterrents.
chainsaws loud/uncaring of credential/slash and burn/regardless of potential/last hired going/on the chopping-block hypocrisy/in the name/of a despot’s “meritocracy”
I am tempted to change my last name
To Diddit.
“Who’s responsible for this?” “Gary Diddit.”
That’s the perception anyway.
I have been Ghosted.
The trouble is, I understand.
Years back I found a relative so toxic
That I did my best to exclude him
From my universe.
I was civil on those occasions
When we were in the same room together
But I had felt sufficiently betrayed
That my idea of the ideal interaction level
Was Zero.
Gradually I realized that avoiding him
Was giving him too much power over me
And that my passive-aggressive ghosting
Was also toxic.
But they who ghost me
Have their reasons.
Who’s compared #47 to Hitler–unfavorably?
Gary Diddit.
Who keeps arguing
After the horse is so dead
It has begun to decompose?
Gary Diddit.
Who let his addiction
Interfere with his relationships
Time and time again?
Gary Bowers, that’s who.
Acquiring a language may involve some tug and wrench
And fluency comes slowly to the phoneme-inattentive,
So if you want to Parlay-Voo and fill your speech with French,
The play on words comes to the fore to help, if you’re inventive.
“stiff knee” is descriptive but reductive
the knee demon dispenses pain/that makes the legowner gasp and curse
trips to the bathroom/are like horizontal traverses/of el capitan/punctuated with painblasts/loud and mindless/as a jackpotting slot machine
when getting back into bed/it is best to treat the leg/as if it were a mannequin’s
and once safely abed/do ultra-slow slight flexes of the site fulcrum/increasing the range of motion/from five to maybe seven degrees
and try to sleep
and agnostically pray the pain goes away
or at leastmost becomes manageable
but the knee demon is cruel/as is his playmate
the bladder demon
You know deep down implies
That Deep Down is a sanctuary for Truth
Away from distractive noise
And subtractive rhetoric.
So let us sink
Into the deep down
And quietly decide
Where our battlegrounds are
And which side we are on
And what we are prepared to pay.
We may not relish the answers
But the Deep Down
Doesn’t weasel.
the agglutination of cars at 5:36 pm
near a major intersection
in this major metropolitan area
as i watch them out the east window
of a burger king
makes me wonder why i am car shopping
.
a split second later i have answers aplenty
public transportation waxes unreliable
and feels more dangerous
and i spent more than two grand renting
last year alone
and walking at night is more dangerous too
and i’d get more dates as a man with a car
(maybe)
.
now it’s 5:58 and more duskish
the westbound drivers must be squinty
i can see one doing the visorgap slouch
and a big truck just did a jerk-to-a-stop
.
and at $5K down
$300/mo for 60 months
and god knows how much
to insure this septuagenarian
a car is looking more and more
like an unaffordable luxury
.
but i think as the dusk deepens
about sliding into that driver’s seat anytime
destination anywhere
what
a
rush
when you learn/you become/but before you get good at what you are learning to do/you are so bad it is embarrassing
the embarrassment makes some give up
the stubborn keep at it/embarrassments are less frequent/and begin to be interleaved/with successes
and some who are stubborn but not passionate/will give up at that point/with a self-congratulatory “mission accomplished”/and an urge to shift focus
the passionate keep at it/and pile up experience/and one fine day/there is a “beyond their wildest dreams” moment
they have done something that rewards/their day after week after month after season efforts/something worthy of peer recognition/worthy of celebration/worthy of something beyond congratulation
and that is quiet knowledge:
they know that they are Good
One with Clay, Image and Text 