I should probably be frightening the crap out of everyone today.  The phrase “with extreme prejudice” resounds again and again—as if an order—in my head.  Is that my prior military training flashing back or merely some pathology infecting my mind? Feeling unlackadaisical even though lost, I ‘m like a wandering renegade samurai with an unsheathed sword.  It would seem like I should be able to render all insensate with a single swift swing.  But I don’t know why I am not projecting this terror….

So I walk into a coffee shop and assume a place in line.  While waiting, I notice a utility razor with a projecting blade sitting on a freshly opened stack of today’s newspapers. As the line peels away and I get my turn, the attendant asks me promptly what she can get for me.  Deftly with a  warrior’s acumen, I grab the utility knife, thrust it towards her—handle jutting first,  cutting edge towards me—insisting “No,… what can I get you?”, my question building in a purposefully powerful crescendo.  She giggles nervously, then graciously disarms me (disarmed by a woman again—is that my life’s story?).  She still awaits my answer…*taps*… as I gaze around and then up to the daily bulletin board.  It features a daily trivia question that gives 10 cents off your purchase for a correct response.  Today’s question is: “What are the ashes made out of that are used on Ash Wednesday?”    Without thought or emotion, I unblithely blurt out: “The teeth of pagans’ slain pet dragons.”  The girl humors me, “You’re right!”  But I add quickly, “Palm fronds, of course.”  She nods once in acknowledgement, and follows-up laughingly, “I like your first answer better!” 

Damn it, girl.  I’m shoving knives at you, I’m speaking of dragon’s teeth without even smiling, I’m right on the edge of primal defilements--and your reception of me is so pleasantly cordial???   I give up!  What’s the use!  Smile back and say gently , “I’ll have a medium to go, dear.”  

…the Beast next turns his attention to the deadly cream and sugar.

I’ve just got to post something to prove that I exist.

Yet, if I haven’t yet posted it, how do I know that I exist?

And if I don’t know, then imagine I do not.

And if I do not, then posting as evidence of existence means nothing!

No hences even arise from this.

Nothing happens.

No post.

No.

Post!

Something happens.

Pretenses to  impossibility fall away.

And if I do exist, then posting as evidence of existence is everything!

And even if I don’t know, then I will imagine that I do!

And since I have already posted, how can I deny that I exist!

I’ve just got to post something to prove my belief in you!

I’m untethered, not boundless, but bounding about.  I am wireless xanga: laptop-modem-sprintphone with no location defined.  Where have I been with this?  Where can I go?  Tiddy bar? No!  Nor have I taken it to bed or asylum.  But coffeeshops, yes!  As my coffee poems attested!  In the classroom, yes!  As my students took their midterm….And roadside, of course!  Driving out to the country with a six-pack, parking off-road, overlooking forests, overlooking lakes, waiting for tempests…seeking the most scenic of all to be sought. Have I found bliss?  Is the Internet this—waves warbled with shifting frequencies through body and air?  I’m  a nomad, now wandering…as are my ideas: behavior matches mindset—I can go anywhere!  And this everywhere from anywhere has set me free…(or enslaved me forever?)   Just an eProp cowboy now—so vast is the range!   Find a mobile xanga, put it your pocket, and never let it fade away! 

I often run through a wooded forest in northern Ohio where solely a footpath makes a two mile circuit. Never is there company along with me and almost never anyone else encountered during my excursions. Yet many signs and remnants of profound companionship abound etched as paired initials into trees, etched as treed testimonies of love. As I run, I take notice and feel somewhat awash in these hints of romance and in these entanglements portrayed. Strangely enough none seem recent-all the wounds are well-healed. Seems the trees no longer serve as totem posts of affection.

So this:

A long time's now passed
for the lovers unwatched
who carved hearts into trees:
such moments of delight
in inscribing nothings to each other!

To have strolled and played
and taken only such from these
unprotesting spires--no more--
than for to leave their enchanted vows
disturbed not the Great Mother.

An age ago on a tree with smooth bark
one boy recorded
"here I loved Val…a great fuck forever!",
etching also an arrow
pointing suggestively down
to the soft ground below.

As I ponder, I imagine:
There she lies even now!
beckoning to me with unfading smile
to provide her with company
and fulfill the long-gone boy's dreams
of living forever!

What is Life? It is the flutter of the butterfly over a flower. It is the racing heart of a cheetah in antelope pursuit. It is the darkling in twilight that hides in shadows and scampers nearly noiseless in anticipation of the night.

You and I are not snobs. We can never be born enough.
We are human beings;for whom birth is a supremely
welcome mystery,the mystery of growing:the mystery
which happens only and whenever we are faithful to
ourselves. You and I wear the dangerous looseness of
doom and find it becoming. Life,for eternal us,is now;and
now is much too busy being a little more than everything
to seem anything,catastrophic included.

e.e. cummings; introduction to 101 poems

barbara est et barbara,
et mihi cara,
splendidus igneus, sol muliebris,
movens me atque, procul penitus.

I speak to you in this tongue, girl,
with the feigned voice of Cicero,
not out of some strained pretense,
but only so you'll know-
that I think that our days together
are as sure until the day I die
as seeing "Elvis Lives!"
skywritten in an ancient Roman sky.

Where have all the clowns gone...?

One poignant shift in observational happenings over the past several years: the clowns have disappeared. Where once I would catch glimpses of clowns in neighbors' backyards, in passing car's on the street, or even actually stationed on downtown street corners promoting commercial products, for the last two years--at least, as measured by my own personal observational samplings--the world has become a much more somber place. One more keen point: these clowns were all women. So the female clowns have all disappeared!

This situation reminds me of a period in my youth when it seemed as if for years I didn't see any Oriental women on the streets. It wasn't a situation I immediately noticed, i.e., the absence of a segment of society that never played a prominent role in my socialization. But one day, the eureka realization that I hadn't seen an Oriental woman for a very long. long time jumped into consciousness. I then quietly began an unmentioned personal hunt for the very next such woman in my environment. It must have been 1/2 year before I eventually saw one. And right then they immediately became ubiquitous once again--showing up everywhere and often!

How can you explain it? Statistically speaking, one might say that one individual's sampling is subject to a high degree of sampling error. This is comparable to saying that if I flip a coin 10 times and it comes up heads 10 times-with no tails--that this is not so absurdly unlikely as 100 individuals doing the same thing with the very same outcome. In other words, maybe *I* wasn't "seeing" Oriental women and maybe *I* am not seeing the once manifest female clowns, but maybe others are having a less-skewed, more representative observational time of it. Nevertheless, I cannot know that. Unless I begin to ask around to see if anyone else has had similar sampling anomolies.

There is, of course, always the possibility that these two demographic groups did disappear for some reason or another. The Oriental women to reappear later like a pulsar making its round. Who knows about the female clowns? Who knows? There is, nonetheless, a lesson in this: one must live with one's own life observations and experiences, take notice of quirks and pattern changes, seek clarifications, but not become too paranoidly obsessed or invest too much significance in personal phenomena if explanations are not immediately evident. Augurs, in the Roman legion sense of finding hidden meanings in all the signs that abound, we should not become. Hence, one may sometimes have to learn to sustain personal confusion in order to allow for the world to provide elucidation! Or what the hell is the world good for?

Here's a preview of the next breakthrough in the technology that here most dearly impacts us:

Now this is the real stuff that the Internet Highway's been waiting for!

My inspiration has passed away…

James’s post sadly brought to my attention the premature expiration of my true xangan muse, urnightmare.  How could this happen?  Who was standing guard?  I merely closed my eyes, slipped into dream, now forever more urnightmare will go unseen?  Ah, take me, too, then Xangan Reaper, for the pain is too great, take and post my epitaph:

"This page has been deactivated because we have either received complaints that revealed a violation of our Terms of Use or because it, too, did complain too loudly about another page that met a dusty death.

If this is your page, you may petition for reactivation at help@xanga.com"

Why go on?  The stars at night are insufficient light to stoke this extinguished fire, so pile my posts along with these last comments upon urnightmare’s funeral pyre...

First, his last parting words to me:

...and my inconsiderations, now forever to haunt me for their brutal insensitivity:

Damn! urnightmare ur urownwetdream!

2/14/2001 5:33 pm

urnightmare is just too embarrassed to put his own putrid acne-pitted puss on profile since he knows it would earn him even more of the scorn he so richly, no--nothing rich about him, ...so poorly merits.  Also, worry not: I’m sure the geek is too conceited to erase the previous posts.  He probably just made them *private* so that he can view them lasciviously while excitedly fondling himself as he straddles his  well-humped computer--which is more than likely propitiously propped next to his love-stained toilet.

 2/18/2001 10:21 am

 Jealously is getting you everywhere. But beware! I habitually induce my own nightmares, so as to slay the arrogant demons that arise. So much practice all my life have I had with the likes of you, that I yearn to be released veritably on the killing fields of your actual demise.

 2/17/2001 3:11 pm

I see urnightmare as my sibling counterpart,
the Abel of my Cain.
Goodnight urnightmare,
sweet darkling dreams;
see: Death is not a shame.

 2/17/2001 3:20 pm

Alas, was I urnightmare’s urnightmare? 
Less I be tortured forever with that notion,
I drink now from a strange apothecary’s provision, this, my end-of-xanga potion.

 I am so touched by you!  Seemingly out of nowhere your delicate attention bloomed!  As if I were walking in a winter garden bereft of function, with nothing but bare ground spread all around, and I casting my head back and forth in knowing non-expectations.  Then suddenly! This beauty!  Alone!—all else barren.  Could I believe?  Nothing in all the shine of life--or even beyond in my daydreams of things undone--ever prepared me for this rare moment of budding.  No imagined perfectly-reasoned season can compete with this true of you!

It seems Xanga crashed (7 hours without recording a post) this morning...*wow*...agrochick78 was the *newest entry* (5:25 AM) before the demise...her heartfelt realizations must have shook the matrix to its foundations!

Or...

The really strange thing is I had a dream last night about Xanga where I was absorbed into its cyber fabric and I was actually being physically (well, if you want me to reveal the real details, *sexually*) passed back and forth from blog to blog (yes, but just *female* Xangans involved  It was the Matrix! And I did believe!  OMG, do you think that Xanga crashed because...I mean, I don't *remember* acting like my cat Hawk with his girlfriend *teddy*....*wonders if he should
blush*  ;)

Will anyone of the Xangan founders provide us an explanation beyond my psychic matrix presuppositions?  Hell no!  So go with the flow...Just say: I'm starting to believe!

Looking to the future, some other convenient days for Xanga to disappear:

March 1st--laptop giveaway day. They say the winner will be notified by email.  What?  You mean *we* will never know who won?

April 3rd--domain expiration day! Don't worry--if they drop the domain, I'll pick it up and make it a respectable porno site

Buddha. Let us convene and pay respect to Buddha.


   …So at parties my best friend and I would shock guests by getting them out into the backyard garden to admire the huge (4 ft.) bronze statue of the Buddha. Once all were favorably arrayed, my friend would, after proper respects to the god, leap right up to the bronze Buddha, and with a trembling display of WWF Herculean-like strength, seize and lift it by its base. Grappling with great difficulty, he'd slowly pivot and then…suddenly and furiously toss it at some awestruck and unsuspecting guest, hitting him or her *smack* in the chest!
   Well, this bronzed authentic-appearing Buddha was actually a styrofoam Buddha, and the shocked guest upon realizing this would typically laugh bubbly in nervous release and invariably pronounce: "Oh my God! I thought that it was real !" Whereupon, both my friend and I would immediately and relentlessly tear in: "It is real fool! What do you think that it is? Merely your imagination?"
   Such fun! But illustrative of the fact that reality is not black /white and that *fuzzy* expressions of hybrid truths are more amazing than logic alone allows!

the never of even laying together
            on the beach

or finding the touch
            in the curve of her smile

the nothing of playfulness
            always out of reach

the dance so undanced
            and now out of style

the question unspoken
            for a known answer feared

or the answer when blurted
            with a pretense not heard

the secrets too buried
            to shake loose with trust

the contract screamed married
            but the relationship's bust

:the reason of never shedding
            synchronous tears.

stone man valentine

i’ve never been challenged by anyone
--he’s a “self-made man” they say--
i don’t really know what the hell that means:
i just live it all day to day.

yeah, i’ve been through my own hell of stark demons,
crawled through my own desert of most extreme sear,
and have slain legions of enemies arisen
out of my own never child-discarded fears.

yet i haven’t ever quite had that one challenge
--never that special sense of true give and true play--
that will lead me to believe that tomorrow
will be any different at all from today.

the lulling

waken me no more for love
leave me rest now unperturbed
the tangles of dalliance that would once excite
serve but now to disturb.

touch me no more with tenderness
i’m roughshod now and worn
the thrill of your bliss once so endless
from my heart now has been torn.

soothe me no longer with your soft words
my world hard and silent has grown
the poetry that sprung as life from your lips
are just warm breezes now yester' blown.

Yet if I could somehow regain it all
with just a wish in time
I would hearken to and forever hold
that one moment you were mine.

Coffee I

Entangled in a conundrum of unrepentant thoughts,
I seek a madness to the method I have bought.
Sometimes the bright side of things is tarnished, too.
At times, the collective voice of the outer world is cruel.
Before I dare to urge my brain to up-and-play,
I feed it coffee by throat intake each day.
I like it sweet and white but black is fine--
Whatever it takes to reclaim the mind that’s mine.

Coffee II

The first was a boost required for revival.
This time I’m loose and flirting with more gain.
Though the Matrix fixes me in the neural network,
This suck of brew helps shatter that game’s taming.
Sipped through a straw or drawn through plastic lid,
Like rocket fuel siphoned for the next ignition,
Sky-high’s the elevation now for which I bid--
God help the Matrix: it’s about to plead contrition.

Coffee III

I warned them but, of course, they would not listen--
Their silent planet now no longers glistens.
Detached but rocking my mind explores deep space,
“Another loss” they say, “he’s just another waste.”
I thank the brew of bean that got me here:
Now where I am which is, of course, nowhere!
This journey of many-thousand miles starting with one sip,
No stopping me I’m on a coffee trip!

an ominous black and flashing storm
assaults the downtown noonday blocks
torrentially turtling all traffic in intersections
and punctuating violent, anomalous pause
in the usual sidewalk
babble of bodies.
only a few impulsive umbrellad bravadoes now
willing to suffer
the victimizing wet.
otherwise
people impatiently waiting
their sanctuaries in angry fret.
here, beneath a department store canopy,
a woman curses the weatherman.
there, stranded in a phone booth,
a man stamps puppet feet.
all along the avenues
hoots and howls of abject damnation
for nature and its tempers.
i, an omniscient observer, think now
of ancient fish fluent in the depths of abyssal seas,
while below in sewers
rats drown in the abundant drink.

 I can feel it coming…

   It’s just a matter of time…

     …before I once more start gushing out inspired love poetry .

     …before I again riddle my world with romantic ditties.

 Is it the proximate comeuppance of Valentine’s Day that explains my inclination?  Or the readying of the earth as it swings towards Spring (and we with our rituals embracing that promise of light, of life, of love?)

Perhaps it was the dark spirit that visited me last night in my sleep, nibbling on my neck with tender intentions…. Yes, while watching the trees outside sway in the wind, I had fallen asleep on the couch again.  But I woke in the darkness with the greatest of panic—really feeling little nips placed along down my neck and hearing the synchronized pursing of lips.  I reached to grab hold—but no one was there!  Yet the touches continued, and the whispers persisted! Awake with no dream, I succumbed to this visit of a mysterious stranger aloft from afar.  

 My icy mind screamed: Resist! Resist at all costs!

 But I can feel it coming…

   It's just a matter of time.

  I’m out of phase.  I’m out of season. I should be sunning on a warm beach in the Australian summer sun.  I’m going to pretend.  Going to take a walk out into the Xangan sun…well, glory be!  I swear it’s almost…


fourth of july.
                             i’ve counted
six thousand and twenty-six firecracker’s
boom!  already.
                             boom!     boom!
got some drunken girl next door
running out naked every hour on the hour
firing off in indiscriminate directions
a thirty round clip from
an M2 submachine gun.
shit!          someone might
call the cops
exceptin’ her husband,
who’s the chief of police,
is laying out on the front lawn
passed out in uniform,
all vomited and pissed,
a burnt-out sparkler jutting
majestically from his mouth.
ka—boom!             a massive gunpowdered steel-nosed
acme rocket pierces aluminum-sided wall
and explodes in brilliant festivity in my living room.
i sit studiously considering the roman
of this mutant roman candle thinking
…somewhere tacitus turning in his grave.
but what the hell!      screw tacitus!
it’s the fourth!
the day when all good, patriotic
maniacs of America are proudly lunaticing
their minds in uproarious prankstering merriment
and deep dragon volcano booms!
singing all the while:
remember Lexington!        remember Concord!
remember to buy more beer!
hell, yes!     hell, yes!
and i, too, a maniac!
a real fucking yankee doodle maniac!
up now with sufficient wine
and out to the backyard
with assorted red, white, and blue cherry bombs,
mosaicing Old Glory in potent resplendence
my prize Ohioan humus rose garden.
then   ignite!      and:
earth and flower petals
in a grand simultaneous-exploding     jack—a—room!    delight.
o, joyous good American smoke and dust!
and i, then, dancing the earth with the drunken tears
of a flag-loving, fist-waving patriot, screaming:
jack—a—room!         jack—a—room!
may you ever boom!, America
long may you boom!