Powell's

These books are
built to live in like a shoe;
narrowing possibilities
expanding possibilities
carving language into you,
dissolving pictures,
forming pictures to put
in mental boxes and
place on shelves.

The group of older women tote shopping baskets full of various sized books. Their arms hang unevenly: the right one almost drags the basket down another unknown aisle, the left points and searches. Some of the women lightly kick their baskets, allowing them to slide on the shiny pavement floor. They scan the shelves for a title they recognize, a cover that intrigues them.

A boy sits cross-legged, blocking most of an aisle, leafing through a stack of Asimov novels.

In the Powell's coffee shop I read Frank O'Hara and look at everyone. The boy across from me is searching for a good translation of "The Golden Ass." I pick up John Berrymen and read a poem about suicide.

Pests/Ghosts

First, it was the moths. In the humidity of summer, my room filled with living moths and then with dead ones; the window sill lined with furry winged bodies. Eventually, when the days grew cold, I swept a pile of their dried bodies into my paper garbage bag and was done with them. But the cold brought no solace. Rats gnawed through my walls and forced there way into my room. Twice now, the rats have been killed with a strange poison, and while they have not returned again, the warming air has brought many flies.

My World View

I am glad that the street I live on is flat. If I am sitting on the roof and a biker passes below me, he glides along leisurely and with a smile. If I lived on the side of a hill and was seated on my porch, the bikers passing would be in the midst of a struggle. Perhaps, if the hill was big enough, no bikers would pass me at all.

The Tree of Knowledge

He was a person defined
by what he wasn't
defined by who he wasn't
defined by himself,
huddled by an oak tree,
arms suddenly stretched
so that someone might know him.

The Trap

As the Rats chewed their way
into
my whiskey dreams
they said
You are not a human
but a weak rabbit
feeding on incandescence.

Morning

In the dark morning I rode the loaner bike to work with no helmet and no front light. The bike has a skull on the back of the seat that lights up when you knock it. It is too short for me and one of the pedals is loose. Now the sun is rising and the ominous feeling this ride gave me is beginning to dissipate...

The City

Your reflection in
black granite,
walking.

Green

After taking this picture John said, "They look like a bunch of craps. Fucking lilys"

My thoughts were somewhat different.

Signs of spring are coming seemingly early. I keep thinking of the first stanza of The Wasteland, "April is the cruellest month, breeding/lilacs out of the dead land,mixing/Memory and desire, stirring/Dull roots with the spring rain.Winter kept us warm, covering/Earth in forgetful snow, feeding/A little life with dried tubers..."

Walking home from work I came upon the most delicate white flowers, their tiny clean heads hung down, ashamed at their early bloom. But I am grateful for the return of spring, it makes poetry much easier.

IMMORTALITY!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turritopsis_nutricula

The Old Creek

I walked the wrong way and
ended up in the dry creek bed.
I have never seen a creek in the bed.
It is an old grave,
I am lost inside it.

Untitled

And the ocean grove was over-run
with auburn beards and cans of Oly.
And by my side the spirit of a poet,
outlining the trees with verbs and poignancy,
a romantic song rolling on the tongue of the sea.

Father

“It's the Foster way” he said.
“To control every situation.”
And the whole time he spoke I could not help
but look at his all-white beard,
and the way I did not know where his chin was
or what his chin looked like
or what his face looked like.

The Vulture

The accuracy of my memory stopped concerning me when I realized that I could no longer remember much of anything. I feel sure that each new memory erases an old one. My memory is eaten away at by something within me and because of this, I log everything that happens in my day. I note conversations and how I feel about them; I write down the color of the sky. My notebook is my second skin. Yet, each moment that I attack with my pen is already dead. I am feeding on the carrion of the past and now makes me hungry.

Detrite

Detritivores are organisms who feed on dead things. They eat rotting plant matter; the soggy orange leaves that pile in drains, moldy bark and decay. They also eat animal waste and some eat dead animals. Vultures are not detritivores. They are just scavengers. Examples of detritivores are worms, fungi, bacteria and protists.

The root word, detrite, means worn out material.

In a bar I had a conversation with a stranger about memory.

"When I was a kid, I remembered everything," he said to me, glugging at his beer.

"Yeah, I definitely remembered more than I do now." We ordered shots and drank them without really tasting or thinking. The bar was dark and seedy.
"Do you have any memories that aren't real?"
"Well," he said, "I suppose none of them are real, in a sense. I mean, we can't touch them. They are intangible but they are all we have."

There was a great deal more to this conversation, but I do not remember it, and I cannot remember the stranger's name. It has been eaten away, or it blends with many other nights like this one, talking to a stranger in a bar.

The Man Who Always Looks Different In Pictures

The man who always looks different in pictures. He is a good friend of mine. He is average height and has jet black curly hair. He is very handsome. I have looked at many of his pictures and in one or two, he looks like himself. In other pictures, he is smiling or straight-faced. Sometimes he is flushed from alcohol. In a profile shot, his features look soft and feminine, his expression passive and sweet. There are pictures where he is dancing and his head is thrown back; his mouth agape, trying to gulp at the music I cannot hear. There are pictures where he is surrounded by beautiful women and he simply glows. In other shots he looks bored and is tragic or ugly. But it is not merely a mood or expression that is captured. He defies self and appears so different that at times, there is no shadow of the man I know.

We have no pictures together. There is no evidence to say I am friends with this morphing man. When I look at him in reality I can see his various selves flash in his face and in short, I am afraid. Who is this person and why is he no one?

I have discovered that maybe he is me.