right size

had a hard time reaching the finish line. had two hands with me, a great pair, the right size, still had to do it myself. didnt even run through the last time a few nights ago with that. not enough magnetism. about her at least. i knew i did well enough and played with my luck too hot on a friday night. remember that there is a curve through the week that drops so hard on a sunday eve. everyone wants a good week ahead. since i got my rocks off this weekend i should actually sit down and do the work. (the ones that matter, and actually like). in the afternoon was a triangle of casual conversation. pretty nice. perspective is the most expensive thing you can wield. consider yours wisely. i should be slowly writing down thoughts and forms and narrative again. there is so much noise in the world, and only a very few nuggets of clarity, elegance, wit, can be found. diamonds on the sand. does it need starlight? not necessarily. i asked sir dons for a word in the middle of my own personal hell. does it have to be accurate? no, but it should be truthful. “truth” gets thrown around a lot. the truth of the pond lies in its stillness. a dragonfly perching on a lotus. a raindrop sends ripples throughout its radius but the center, the point of contact, impact site, red-dot, bulls-eye, suspends in a state between zero and one. a state of creation. “the work”. the very first sunny day after a long spell of rain.

goja

nobody stays out after 2 am anymore. ladies wiping tables and closed kitchen approach by the cinderella hour. the boys in brown prowl on their trucks and bikes like jaguars paws pounding on the jungle floor, animals, lions, elephants, cigarette butts, last night’s rain, ice on the floor, a bucket for 450, ( quite literally ). my dog is turning two soon. i feel like i’ve changed so much and so little in those years. forever is learning how to enjoy youtube too much. maggie chen told me to quit smoking and yet everyone around me says i smoke too much. its a sublimated fidget. sometimes i look at people and think, man, what’s it like to be in a group? i got a vape and i absolutely hate it. i wouldn’t like myself if i met him. i’m more bearable with cigarettes. what kind of conversation am i look for, even? i asked a few questions like, what were you like in high school (i wasted so much time playing volleyball) , have u ever said you loved someone, (vaguely) .. slowly the bar spits out the crowd in her belly, lights in the out off and ones inside a white fluorescent glow, everyone is a little bit as ugly as from the previous minute. i remember eating ostrich in a strip mall restaurant when i was 8. there began my love affair for warm yellow sconce lighting. if you opened up my inside it is a studio type with full windows on two sides of the room. with warm yellow lighting pouring down from the edges like if the walls started to bleed.

The Day Before I Left

So much of it was spent under the betelnut tree at the front porch. Three garden chairs and a table. An exact same table four years later. Same frosted surface crystal ball. The same field of blue. Since all places are the same, my friend and I have had the same conversation for years and years and years over and over. Upper Fulton isn’t the same anymore now that all the pilgrims have left that station a long while ago. Though we’re still in the same place. Nothing ever changes, really. One April day I learned that lesson as the tide swallowed my legs whole in repeating patterns of coming and going and coming and going. I kissed a woman in the dark water facing the Pacific Ocean. We had time under the shade of many countless betelnut trees. Magellan didn’t make it to the end but the full circle still counts. Maybe home is the long oval circuit we spin around again and again and again.

span

young boy of 11 passed

an old neighbors mother

black circles

these days

we’re not young anymore

an entire wave has washed

and two

those summers are so far away now

from there it was forever

blue dawn

burning sun

those were some long years

stretching out into the high road

somewhere

beyond was a little ways ahead

a curve

another bend

those most golden days

those days

wartime

these days there ainte much goenone .. i like it

no thoughts just making things

dates and deadlines

turnovers

i sleep with a light on in my living room

that is how committed i am to the engine

elegant motions

a furnace

there are bodies in the streets (allegedly)

wash my hands double these days

and a 2nd mask on

how central are these events

our only tv show

ersatz mortars

proxy drone wars

third degree burns

napalm trees

out here in cali everyday we’re resort living

siesta time on judgement day

keep the engine on

cash money

plate deadline

i take two hour naps. in between i jerk off and slip into another few hours of blank empty. im going through two of my bud jars post-half and still it ain’t come yet. the TV is always on. every once in a while i check to see if someone’s free and i’m begging to have some company over. i’m not used to the room. this is too much space for one lonesome. but it’s more than i need and that’s room to grow. on the floor i’m filling it up with rugs. one in every entrance. that makes three and two more to wipe my dog’s paw prints all over the place. i’m still waiting for that call. it’s 3pm again. maybe do a nap. i’m trapped in my own prison and the walls are the sides of my skull. sometimes i dare rock the boat like go hard on the jamesons or green out. i tell myself in the mirror and it’s thursday again. am i cut out for this shit? i’m being folded into shape that’s what i tell myself. but then i ooze over every once in a while.. i’ve never been good at coloring in the lines and doing the right thing. i’m always somewhere else. i always miss the little things except when i’m three cups of coffee in. i like to remind myself that everything is a choice including who you are and where you want to be. one can will to bend rivers and i’ve tried to steer mine into a place that’s acceptable. good net worth, healthy relationships, retirement. times for silence. but the water is raging and when it rains it rises over the banks and seeks out dry land to get into, weathering stone into soil, wishing, maybe at some point the longer i go on, a garden will grow along the edges.

thai lessons

a cab driver at 3 in the morning taught me how to say charoenkrung, amused, on shotgun, jalern kung, i left that cab grateful. my first bowl of boat noodles, confused,  by an old woman with a surgical mask on, but you can tell the smile behind that. every once in a while i come through just to say hi. the old man selling cha nom right by the streetside is gone. i waited for him, the water warm, an inviting blue monobloc, but he never came, and he didnt show up the next day, and the next, then a week, and it’s been month since wondering what really happened. so is that grapey little beggar man by the bridge. one night i thought he fell down so i looked over… he hasn’t been around since. i should have gotten a dental from the dentist right at the pak soi. they’ve now sold the place and pulling down walls. i dont count my hours. ive just learned how to work. to sit with intent. to be intent with a thing. all my life i felt i breezed through it with a grace. that i’ll always get away with a thing or two.. but i learned the hard way that yaint smart and slinky and eventually some fisherman gotta grab you by the tail, flailing, electric, brutal, yet still, fish, you whack along the deck until youre back at sea afloat, dreams, waves, rivers, old schools, gray skies, judgement days, ash fall, rain, gray, dust cities, titanic exhaust fans.. late afternoon.

Baseline Grid

I can’t find the pulse. I’ve been sleeping way less and reading more. There are 200-minute calls.  Changed my sheets and got a duvet and threw out the old bottles out on the porch. Aint got no time lounging with Tony S. and the therapist and the fictions that brim my guilt. Maybe it’s switching from sticks to pipes and the amount of nicotine in my gut. Bought my machine double the memory speed. Had that watch I picked up oiled and repaired. In my sleep the wars are over and the palm-thatch doors of my interiors fly open for visitors. Told her I don’t like being on the nose and she says what’s on the nose? She’s right. Did I need her around to set me on fire? I can cup myself in my hands but that’s tough work for one. I spill through the holes in my fingers. But now thats coming home at seven to monggo dinner and that’s more than all right with me. Maybe it’s what I’ve been missing. There’s warmth and it beats.

 

 

 

 

But it beats.

1718

Im on edge. At the horizon line of a revelation. Its that close. Too close skinny close. Just waiting for the ball drop, the shit to get down. And then coming about to a moment of pure agency. (Youve seen this before) Part unknown, part knowledge, a pinch of foolishness (though no formula can do justice). The ball rolls. It only makes sense in hindsight. Today i had one of those again. Felt like ive been here once– must be the lack of sleep or my head going haywire. In any case good ole Edna St Vincent Millay may be right– Life Isnt One Thing After Another, Its The Same Damn Thing Over and Over. Now those are pearls worth a thousand circular lifetimes. I can console myself with inconsequentiality and amplify the joys of sunday morning rides, high and driving, greeneries, risky corners, la di da.. What are young men’s dreams but hubris and foolishness? Steel to temper. The iron is hot.