I wake one more time with a start, is that the sound of wet pavement
or dry, going out to buy a paper, I seal my convertible top, well, it's
been wet before, it'll be wet again

I'm sitting here with Miles Davis and buses with clarinets for breaks outside the window
trying to do the math on the whole thing, why does friendship keep reducing itself to
failed panicked refused gropings, is it 'cause I'm a girl?

Recall Vesuvio's, beatless and patronized, uncertain in it's tourist trap / local dive status
ideal in meeting a need for being unfamiliar, (factor A) that night I hoped to be
heroic as expected

Drinking Bass as second choice to Bud in an art house version
of working class cool, (not me, I'm drinking Red Hook, my pretensions intact)
dialogue: states of being, six a.m. bike rides and ferries on the Aegean

enlightenment and love, cocktail napkins sailing off the second story balcony,
but again, I lose my (glorious) status (undeserved) as artist (begging) visionary
to a woman inviting you up to see my etchings, and turned down.

My apartment is freezing, the jazz is cool, and the pavement
sounds dry, I can't see out the Japanese blinds for fear of being seen into, the
next day, I smiled while crying

in Lance's kitchen, as he baked Christmas cookies, I said, I can feel, I am
feeling right now, he smiled and licked jam off the spoon, four weeks
ago, it was spring for a day

that is how California works, seasons moods swings of a land without
lithium, today more T.S. Elliot's April, or William Carlos William's spring
or just fucking wet and cold

So I get back from vacation and we spend the whole evening in an
ill-advised inebrium, you allowing me to paw you (factor B) claiming change
a province, but life...

We have this on going argument, whether it is everyone's job to live every
moment of life (grace to be born) or just mine, you say that damn poetry of
yours. I think that Nothing is muddy that runs in time.

maybe for you, maybe for you, and yelling now, no, everyone, every single day
I am curious about the corrosive powers of alcohol, that allows me to
kiss you chastely in the cab

or scream as I walk away down the street, just what are the rules?
So I felt an emotion for one day (factor C) which you admit not
to have felt for ten years

What kind of paladin, Bogart, long stemmed shelter you building, trying not to cause pain
a shitty mantra for anyone, ( I say this having spent last night masturbating
to the thought of causing pain)

Well I sit here with that taxicab kiss not quite as vivid as the night someone
parked their overly sensitive car alarm outside my window
or as precious as the sound of tires slushing on wet pavement

The algebra this brings up is startling, A/B + C : overly unfamiliar / pawing +
love, A) on my birthday we shared a cab, B) San Francisco fall convinced it was summer.
C) It was a very long vinyl seat.

Are you thirty-nine are you forty are you dead yet? You have
thirty-seven reasons to move to Spain, beginning with Barcelona, drinking absinthe
in the Barrio Chino and ending with

a hidden fountain in the Generalife, in Granada. I've never been to Lisbon, and you,
just thinking about a job in an office, is the word wife sitting
easy in your lap, a black cat stretching it's paw out to your stomach

Can anyone tell the fucking difference, and why doesn't this apartment have
heat? I guess what I am trying to say is, right now, what colour are your socks and
are they warm?

January 15, 1996

"'grace to be born' and live variously," Frank O'Hara

"Nothing is muddy that runs in time," Jack Kerouac