o mio babbino caro

blaming the puccini epidemic on latent romanticism and the nice views. just mailed the bedside book in which i wrote my night thoughts to the states without rereading them. go lie in wait, sickly dream fodder. excised nightmare bracken.




job offer in new york. i've never even been there.
van dongen exhibit seethes and coils around itself in my brain.
bag full of leaf shaped pasta for the girls.
bag full of fruit for easter sunday.
two appointments for next week.
that thing you oughta write, write it.
and the other one, lazybones.
dorothy parkers says: you can lead a horticulture but you can't make her think.
dick van dyke says: though i spend me time in the ashes and smoke, in this whole wild world there's no 'appier bloke

where's this one going? give me one more, my ticket's in. not right yet, i won't fake it. look but don't touch. wearing holes in my pockets, keeping my hands to myself. cut out the bad spot. spots. pull out that bad seed. no, it's deeper. i don't know where. faster, i'm poisoning myself. at least it's the brand i trust. i can see my rib bones, but i still feel like i'm getting further and further away from the center.



they say

--white noise of their words
they say

---deafening white noise of
i really should
isn't this when
but maybe i was wrong about


stop that. stop it fucking now.



months of feeling like i am climbing very steep inclines only to reach the top and have someone say: ah, good you made it! and shove me off the edge. crashing through many layers, every time thinking, 'no, this one will hold me,' before ripping through everything. what looks solid is just a sheet, is just paper. and then, today, i am the one i fall through, i finally crash through myself. and hit the ground. funny solid thing. not clinical, but prescribed. and stare up at the awful hole i tore through me, the string of entrails, the gross white crush of rib, of pelvis, the mess i've made, the mess i'm in.

but it's quiet here, finally. no more rushing noise of wind.
(must be about time to get going again)