I couldn't help you
even if I tried
 it was derailed
  like the onions
    you moaned from another story
and complained about the Oxford comma
 Strunk & White
   "no need to hate" I said
from the other room
but you had already left 

trundle
   headed
    King MERZ-erz
schliess
beer bottle
 and strolling
in a humid
night
    the windows were
better doors
  than people
 if you shine a little light
...or if you curse the darkness
but the windows still needed cleaning
 

Slotski
  Meerschaum
 bilious
liedernapz
  you stoofa
 I stoofa
 so fuck the shit
 capischco?
 anyway the barrel brain
sent schlock waves
of stupidity
through
 a perfectly kind evening
 but you fucked it with your bullshit
so
 slanted cables
 chairs of wood
   broken block-
 squirrels of many colors
  i got ramblin
on my mind

  the police found me on the road divider
I was clothed 
 I was on the phone
   And I told them
     Everything was going to be
       Okay

 "Here's to old D.H.Lawrence!"

the quay of dreams
the crocodile queue
  step into the carpentry nightmare
 hello
i've seen the
living quarters
  seen the stairs where
 the late night smokers live
   been
there
   and seen the moon
 watched your
thoughts go backwards
 and your mouth talk incessantly
oh wait that was mine
weell shit goes on
like the buddha says
you cant always get what you want

smack


     smack


              smack

     i spoffed
           the fricking
                        bus ride
           
                  sitting next to a red headed gal
         
              listening to the Stooges
 or Elliott Smith
  

     i spiffed
       the fricking
            bus ride

  and stared out the window
     
  singing the get me home blues
                        el ron hubbard
                     or Big Joe Williams

   I got a mean stepfather
and I know you got one too

        smack


 smack

    smack
 the streets alive
        with uber and lyft
and fuck all

 somebody sold our city
down the shitter
  and fuck all

 so theres no King Sub
     no more
   and i'm hungry

get a tapas sushi infused fuck all

or get the fuck out

  thank you

the forest for the trees
  neither do I sees
 the rain complains

Marooned in space
Like 12th St BART
Gluons and Quarks
 & the neural bass player
T. Cognition
Playing to an empty station
The sound catches an SF train
And gets out at Powell

Alas, she fled
Your eyes were twins
Non identical
And fighting
In the living room

there was no milieu
 nor pays de passage
no exit visa
 help me Rick
 a guy standing at the train station looking like he'd been kicked in the guts

I had a ripping headache
  perhaps I was dehydrated
    maybe I was dying
      I heard the neighbors coughing

the provisional cup of coffee warfare tactic
 proved fantastically effective
 not unlike the lava beds
 near the cinder cone

he saw his shadow as
a lost brother
  'shadows aren't the same anymore'
'I remember when shadows...'

if you walked out to the golden gate today
 you would be
an electric fog machine
plugged in behind a xmas tree
at the Uptown
"what part of that did you think was a good idea?"
(apologies to JC)

the nascent factor;
will time overtake (what's the opposite
of unique)
'that would be what's yer mom?'
for five hundred Alex

furtively
breathing
  as the fog rattles the door
breathing as in smoking
 fog as in fog

would that errant sideshow
  freak should talk
 he looked at you askance
we passed these rivers
with no time
ours is not to ask
  ours is to build
prefaces and instinctual
 was it waxing or waning
 the sideshow freak
drove a Lamborghini
into a wall
 

he bargained for steel
like the sofa
   it was a memorable decay
 there were no screen doors
or dogs to bite him
  instead he checked his email
  while drinking lemonade

dried out
taken
exchanged 
 the zoo monster
 heads
 walking in time
 the painted saying
these words you said
  now the wall is gone
 you saw a psychedelic mushroom crystal sky
on a bridge by the arroyo road
who goes to horse camp now
   and learn to ride a horse backwards
 Pilsen nearly fell off the back of the horse
by the river
where they serve raicilla
and the water is cold
they live in shacks
but they dress nicely

  

pick a word she said
 not sex
   encyclical
I said
 who are you the pope
  no just a dope
   she lit a cigarette
   pick another one
she said
tents
 its where stoners sleep
in tents? she said
INTENSE man!
 she said she had to go
 note to self
dont tell stoner jokes

fat and out of shape
 sitting on a bed covered with books
cigarettes
cameras
 my phone
 a key chain with a plastic hand
"pull my finger"
 it's hot and sunny out
SO NOT
San Francisco
  f'ing bullshit
hot weather gives me a headache
I moved here to get away from the dry heat
oh poor me
poor poor me
can't even smoke now
the clean air police
don't like you
 I'm an asshole
I know

ipso facto delivery
like a pine needle in the fire
   a thousand million billion trillion pine needles
in the fire
  but you can't smoke here
fucking neighbors
haha
   

Cinder Cone, Lassen Natl. Park 

the farcical avoidance measures
 bequeathed at the throne
stowed
laid waste
 chastened
 inexcusable
theses traverses
you slipped on stone and awoke
in ice
thirteen years and
the ice hasn't melted
   beware you said
but no one did
so you
 yes you
created a thought
 impregnable
lock it in they said
 down in your belly 
  never tell a soul
   and it ate you from inside
like a big sugary donut
covered with pink frosting
  or maybe just chocolate
yum
  poetry makes me hungry

Jimmy Jango
  or John Crow Batty
 that's a vulture's butt
in the state of Jalisco they have "Mezcal Moonshine" called Raicilla

As my friends get older
they learn to hate me
"he's a prick, what a jerk, fuck you, asshole"
and I smile
so I guess they're right.

the bantamweight blutonix
smearing grease down the front
of nazi symbology
you chase the chicken
and u get e coli
   theres a room beside the forest
its frozen
 and you have no windows
you are a cypher
it's code you stare at the dots
there must be meaning
but you need a break from all that
too bad its your life
keep moving everything here to see