gym boat slipping under
your bed shirt
running over
a magnet
retraction,
wake me.

sky ship floating up to mars,
we pause and laugh at
jupiter
and his candy ganymede.
we’re reality,
never stole,
never lie, always gravity, grey

corpse,

gray seal,
neptune,
reminding we’re
only dogs who swim and die.

black pillow
over my breath…
will i see you? when
he carries me
to that fifth  sun?

i guess, about me,
it’s, i’ve got one phase
and that’s remote-viewing
on your screen,
like, how you tell
what made you,
and what it takes to
tell me.

i float over cassipilo,
streaking naked
on crusty rocks.
and, i learn what
hurts or loved,
like i learned
to read.

read you? i mean
be, your motion,
under the whisper,
surging crush
of hush-now
volcanos…
of bitter blossoms
stinging up into the stratosphere…
like forgotten star dots,
like egos in winter.

i was at the doctor
4 my asthma
miasma,
and im staring down
at this rubber mat…
rubber mat, what do u say?
“i am a mat of recycled rubber,
i get mixed,
things cling,
i have rings of circles of
yellow spots, what had been;
i’m part of the plan,
i look good.”

the universe is the,
another prior cluster of, a leftover of, is
without structure: forms structured
now trying to get back
to the original
cathedral picture, before it was ignited,
before it went ‘bang’. when,
really, it too existed as a melody component:

atom opening, draining down
what i want to say now. motion is the shape
of time. the imperfection
of is obvious: cosmos of a broken god.

we can’t go back.

w…

shiver time is never fun,
you feel the world inside you spun.
there, terror is the oligarch of one;
lost, alone, is not so fun.

sweating time’s the crime beyond;
the stink of hell, the smell of vice.
abuser users are not nice;
sweating fear is never nice.

longing over what has never been,
i must be longing for a melody —
since, dumb reality rejects dumb dreams —
and, brahms is total cake and cream.
but, thinking of him, wondering… suicidal mysteries,
the things in mind, mind’s manic seed —
a paper box of fantasy of want and need:
romantic longing just ain’t what it seems.

i want
to write like a spiral
down to the pee hole
of DNA, where no one
will look for me.

ocean’s,
a memory,
flapping its destiny.

you want
to talk in handshakes,
volleykock whispers…
be your cockatoo,
be my mister.

i’m the oxygen
turns into dancing,
my feet in my ears,
the kind
of queer you only think,
‘pansy.’

in the sixties
i just saw art directors
make it look
psychaadelic

on television. an idea
of weird
lines and grooviness.

if it looked
like that way
it looks on acid
it won’t get into
the box.

so, now in 2018
people and trucks
are psychedelic
like black and
white
shows how
to listen
to the beetles
again.

it’s how i never grew,
it’s not why i never grew up,
it’s where i never grew up,
or is it when i never.

words, i mean too much
ask for my attention. i’ll
go to coney island
become chronic history,

rock’n runt
crossed the track,
jack-back on her pillow.

runt down
to hipster
town. keep
that frown,
he wants to buy you.

unmasked
at the ballroom,
clowning for the voyeurs…

questioned
by the SWJ —
you ga-ga ga-ga gay,
or just a lawyerrr…?

it’s quiet, I mean silent,
still,
quiet night.

all is calm.
white waves wash the sand
and morning’s just a dream, the dream
you never finish.

it’s the moon,
who knows if time,
it flies by, you never care, it never asks.

all your wishes wonder,
wishing on the moon,
what they’re there for… kissing
dreams and shadows,
kiss the dream,
kiss the shadow.

paul? telling a joke. expressing a joke. “joe miller knows a lot of jokes”. different things, yes?

There’s this song, “when joe miller told a joke.” i heard it in the film, “ziegfield girl”. the lyric goes, “laugh, i thought i’d split my sides, when joe miller told a joke.” the song describes how funny joe is, and gives a couple of examples of jokes he told. i didn’t understand. the song didn’t talk about how he told the jokes, just that he had jokes to tell. the song says, ‘when joe miller told a joke”. “when… told…”, not, ‘hadda lotta jokes.” a poem is like a joke. i’m slow. it took me a long time to figure out that it was just that joe had jokes — he wasn’t a funny guy, didn’t have a way — the song doesn’t talk about his style and timing. joke telling is about style and timing. this is getting lame… what about a written joke? ok, ‘content’… it’s got to be a funny joke, or serve as one. a poem has content. the joke is in ‘space and time’, yes paul? a poem’s content is the author’s feelings expressed in time and space as a poem. a joke’s content is expressed in the audience’s space and time.

“you come into the room, and i must pretend i am not part of you.” — this is supposed to be a poem.

you come into the room,
and i must pretend
i am not part of you.

how do i make this a joke? “you step in and i have to pretend i don’t know you.”

the poem is already in lie-language… ‘ironic’.

you come into the room
and i must pretend i am
not part of you.

chairs, tables, rickety legs
all belong to you —
i cannot touch the world.

a joke includes and separates the audience from a world reality. “watch this guy, he’s going to try to carry two buckets a once.” both poem and joke play on the spirit, just in different ways. what does that mean? “i can’t carry the buckets, boss..” funny. “i cannot touch the world, kelly.” pathetic. ‘i’m going to read a poem. get ready for lots of pathos.’. and, ‘i’m telling a joke, get ready for fun.’. I read a comic poem by dorothy parker — it’s a one-liner joke spread out in cosmetic line breaks. it’s funny. it’s a poem — it’s ‘verse’, really. it’s prose in a format. “baloney on a roll.”…

“we’ll go to coney,
and eat balony on a roll”, talking about ‘hot dogs’ on coney. lorenz hart. a funny thing to say.

most people think a poem is a funny or sad thing to say. like a joke, but not serial? like, no, ‘tell us another!’… that’s not true. ‘read us another.”

but, still, the poem is supposed to be about talking about an event in the author’s life… an account of something which moved the author to write a poem. Henry James often found his plots in the news papers. his stories and novels won’t be called ‘poems’ by anyone not selling them on e-bay. ‘hype’ is funny. a joke hypes a situation, close up and personal about the private. “– this PFC walks into a bar…” — jokes are contagious, they open up. poetry opens up. two guys go into a bar. the one says, ‘wait a minute, i don’t drink!’. the other says, “ask for the powdered bourbon.”

it depends on where the telling is told. a word object in a poetry magazine, or a word object at a comedy club. you hear how an actor can read out the telephone book and get a sob. also, how the good comic can get a laugh from it. it’s what’s emphasized? “get this, his name is ‘percale’… who names their kid ‘percale’ in the last two centuries’? ( emphasis on ‘percale’ and ‘centuries’ ). it’s precious though, shows the limitations of comedy. — “‘percale’ is the family name, gave its name to the cloth… manufacturing county — the dukes of percale’.” an interesting story. ‘wait a minute, i’m telling a joke!’. “I’m reading my poem.”

a joke is worded to describe an event. a poem is worded to describe an emotion. can that be right? The joke manufactures an emotion. but, that’s what a poem does. is it only about the ‘kind’ of emotion — how complex and thoughtful the emotion. some jokes make me think about human nature, make me thoughtful. verse does that too. but, a poem never reduces the world to an event. the event in a poem is the author’s writing the poem.

jokes and verse tell stories about happenings. poetry creates a happening by telling a story. — jeez, that sounds cheap. but, i’ll leave it like this for now.

I’m not go
ing to write four you. you’ve
got your misteries,
eternet ease you dream too. sometimes
I am all alone and you dream real,
but, I’m pretending you’re just hateful.

why
should I remember when we
walked to allston in the dark,
looking for the moon,

and, I’m back too soon.

why should I pretend.
why should I pretend?

I’m not going to tell you
you’re so beautiful,
it’s you who told me.
when we wished inside a star
I never held you,

now I’m paying,
now I pay, you take my heart
and all I say is,
“are you lonely?”,
what’s your life like, are you
lonely too…?

I’m indecent, I’m depressive,
I’ve never said
how much I only
lived for you,
loved like you,
wanted to be you.

hope is a butterfly,
why do they wing? flowing like caataforms,
somersault, and when will the moon
stop rhyming?

iris and icicles,
melting in tremors:
avalanche of snow balls,
falling so gentle before the monsoon. hitting
sleigh white
night lights, shadows in alleys, men in their rooms.

I’m not go
ing to write the novel of anyone,
I’ve never been one.
my poetry is soot falling,
washed through the hands of a
fake Buddhist nun. and, if I sing this, and
call it a friendship we once had,
laugh at me
and I’m gone.