Muse Doctor

The desk is filled with chronic papers always wanting to solve their own illness

The only depression I feel is the cleft where my male part goes, I am propulsion

The event horizon is breakfast: two eggs better than tits/a keyboard/a dream


I'm a burning ball of fire and feel mandated to 'get things done', therefore I scream


.

The 7 Pack

The slot through which -- in late spring, 1958 -- the testicle sank to its current home on the left

gave way to a tear from abdominal crunch for a hernia bulge just above -- hint of a squid's head --

public hair.  Scallop shell and Venus rising.

.

Al Dente

I see you brushing your teeth

in the reflection off the glass-mounted print

of the John Singer Sargent scene

of an Italian fountain with bathing women.

I deny you don't travel.

Warren Beatty For President

Warren should have thrown it in the ring, his hat.

Rubber chicken dinners and ten months we would have stuck it with him

July smelling of sunscreen, the campaign geared for the neighborly gusto

of good women, picnic melon, Mission figs, the local cheese and follow-up thank-yous.

I'd be a lieutenant in that corps, burnishing the leader's star

think how better we'd look, how pretty the city, how fresh the USA, what curvature the globe would spoon to, had he.

How fine-tuned a world that runs cinematically on time, cordially, but with a big stick

you need someone with panache, you need someone to explain it all that way.

.

Chow

The anthro prof, Jim Frazer, called it 'eating of the god', a strange appreciation, you'd think, for all that comes one's way

as when the mayor of a town would bake a man of dough -- an extra-large -- at harvest time

and break bits off for the farming folk to dip in the new wine decanted from old bottles

But now everyone knows each feeding place in France lays claim to good bread, and even the émigrés in the States serve hot loaf.

In fact, she and I know this place that's authentic here like a private home with Alsatian dog warming by the hearth, where

even though you call ahead you wait, full with a hungry sort in the anteroom and, poured around, complimentary Bordeaux blanc.

Once (if I may speak frank) by the power of their pork terrine we made love on a tiger rug out of Indochine.

I'd give it four stars on nothing more than the sweetbreads and the fact that our child was born

rollicking to the beat of the human heart as that beat goes on.

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My Main Man

One of us was a sour apple

and then there was none

It's always dwindling, I'm

someone, with bird vision,

ear on the tracks

doing the head count

ready with the barber blade

an accountant cutting costs

taking a big bite out of life

that's how this show is going

to be run, or my name isn't

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The Bureaucratic Frisson, Part 2 Of 2

You haven't gotten the whole story.  During this waiting time, maybe 25 minutes in, a very personable young woman with a clipboard, after attending to a score of others south of the aisle, made her way to me over the three ranks of chairs where I sat, and asked if she had managed to talk with me yet.

I was prepared, having seen her 'work the room' up to then, and explained clearly my simple problem:  how to use the online system designed to prevent people from having to queue up in the local offices like this one, like I was doing now.  I left out anything that sounded remotely snide.

She was sympathetic, but pointed out, there's nothing I can do from here.

I went back to looking at the screen, and as my number was near to being called, I stuffed Sartre into my book satchel, zipped it, and prepared for what seemed to be the need for a modest dash to the proper window before the potency of my queue number deliquesced.

My turn, Window 8.  The lady there was girded like any pro to deal with what happened to come her professional way.  I threw her off-balance.  

I was hoping to get you!  I chirped.  

She locked her chin a bit closer down to her clavicle and pretended to finish-off some prior business on her computer screen before she asked how she might help.

I detailed cleanly and quickly my problem -- really a simple one, I underscored.  She had an answer oh-so-ready.  You'll have to call the national number.

Ah, but I have done, and it, too, could offer no access -- is this a systems problem, then?

Her distant frown emphatically denied knowledge of any, and told me to keep on trying.

I nodded and then asked her an allied question about how to change my email with the Agency.

She denied even the possibility that there was any email contact whatever between the Agency and any individual at any time, and began to explain how The Privacy Act interlocked with government programs.

I nodded and raised the question of what I must have been smoking at the time that the Agency screen seemed to show an email I may have inadvertently and irrelevantly given at the time of my online contact.  She began to smile strangely, but at that point we both heard very raised voices coming from another window south of the aisle.

You'll have to come back, someone was saying to someone else.

The other voice muttered something in a growl.

You'll have to come back, the first voice insisted again

Fuck you!

My window lady had her head turned in that direction.  I whispered to her, I used to work in a public office.  She said, Security should have stopped all that, but he's just standing there.

Our business was almost at an end, but I decided to play my trump card.

I used to work for SSA.

She perked up, now connecting up why in blazes I had been able to use, earlier in the conversation, the term 'T bens'.  Up here? She asked, now with true interest.

Mostly at Bay Area Regional, in Richmond.

We chatted shop talk for another few minutes, but by the time I left, it was as though we had worked in the same unit, desk-to-desk, for a dozen years.  No.  As though we had served, unit-to-unit, in the same theater of war.

So familiar we had become so quickly, that when I told her my stint of service, she dubbed me a 'pioneer', and when I told her I left with my retirement, she came close to 'high-fiving' me.

Sometime soon, she intimated, and to signal her intended exit, she scuttled the fingers of her left hand across the counter as if they were departing feet.

I actually did get up -- her time-per-conversation being measured for efficiency -- I went to shake her hand.  She seemed almost giddy, our talk a sun-break in her very cloudy workday.  She responded with a jazz riff of a handshake, fingers thrumming the inside of my palm.

This wasn't 'business' -- this was homecoming and fond departure.

Good talking with you, I said.

Remember to call that number, she chuckled.

.

The Bureaucratic Frisson, Part 1 Of 2

I have become a card-carrying Medicare enrollee and am unashamed of it.

The application process, online, went smoothly, and the personal 'call-back' I expected from a 'live representative' didn't have to happen.  They just sent me the Award Letter and my card.

Later on, thinking about my access to online information, I re-entered the system, quickly realizing I hadn't yet established a password, so I followed the instructions to get one.  After going through four entry screens, the alert showed:  Unable to access at this time.

Ultimately understanding my standard American English pronunciation, the automated, sound-sensitive, multi-menu national phone number, which I went to next and which might have resolved things, also didn't.  After several of my vocal and numeric attempts over the phone, the alert sounded: Unable to access at this time.

This is not a major problem, since I'm still working -- functionally, happily, and getting better at what I do -- and when I do retire, I'll be applying online again, a new claim, a retirement claim, at which time my 'access' problem would likely be resolved.

But I'm something of a terrier, and I like to dig.

So I went into a local office.

Knowing fully ahead of time that the press of humanity would not be genteel, I readied myself with patience and a book.  The office itself is situated in a newly-constructed building, the fourth floor, and there is a greeting station wherein you punch your choice of reasons for visiting, get a 'triaged' number (four separate sets, depending on your query), and take a seat in an area set up like a private viewing room.

It's well-lit, has an aisle.  There's a big screen TV silently displaying the current numbers being served.  Those numbers were getting matched every so often over a loudspeaker directing people to particular windows.

General information also gets displayed on the big screen TV.  It shows in English and then in Spanish.  I deliberately avoided the English in order to practice my Spanish.  I also watched a close-captioned version of how Social Security works to one's advantage.  It stars Patty Duke-Astin and George ('Mr. Sulu') Takei and takes place on a mock-up of the Starship Enterprise, its bridge.

I'm sure it's a comedy, but I was too absorbed in the book I brought along, La Nausée, Sartre's seminal novel in which a bridge between Phenomenology and Existentialism is laid out in fictional form.

Although written in the late 30s in France just as fascism was rising as a plausible political force in Europe -- what with Mussolini, Franco, and Hitler saluting and huffing and shouting and lying and bashing -- the realization felt by the main character Roquentin that the existence of any thing was nothing more than an empty abstraction, that its reality was only a convenience, a relation between itself and any other thing, including oneself (!) -- that realization made him sick.  Movement and arbitrary assignment of meaning.  

I might say that I myself was getting a bit of vertigo trying to comprehend the missing floor that Roquentin had found himself unable to stand on.  And I was sitting.

I jerked myself away from the book's momentary abyss and looked at the screen.  My category of numbers (Roquentin would have rejected all categories as ephemeral?) had reached A32.  My number was A35.  I, for some inexplicable reason, began feeling butterflies in my stomach.  They flew around each other, one non-thing around another, one nerve impulse firing on the basis of chemical activity derived by my reading a book in a public office.  I had to stop this.  It was almost my turn.  Almost my time on stage.

.

The Dinner Worry

In the midst of my modest wealth and ability to spend, 

it sets in, taking the comfortable chair, 

the chaise with the button-backed cushions, 

and frames its face by the window's changeable sunlight 

while I'm in the thick of wondering 

by whose invitation it comes by.

No one could arrange more awkward stay, 

a visitant whose not-so-veiled requests 

come on as knuckle cuffs, gloved punches, 

asking if another wine or fruit be served, 

no one other than me, the host, to fetch, 

nothing but 'just do', to handle the appetite.

If I were dreaming, this would pass on through, 

be gone like an intrusive aunt or a workman 

saving travel hours by sleeping in my garage, 

my habits thrown to a corner for just that while, 

all that I've grown to expect so disarranged like hair

but able yet to be combed -- if only I were dreaming this.

.

The Long Goodbye

Maybe you're 30 and it's America's 70s and you've got a place above Franklin in Hollywood and the place is next to a roomful of New Age girls practicing naked yoga.

Maybe you've got a 'Madison' sent to you from Mexico to pay for your expenses and to buy off your friendship and you wear a thin tie and black suit and smoke too much.

Maybe there's a mysterious, classy blonde heavily put-upon by her washed-up novelist drunkard husband and they have a doberman who dislikes your face, but the blonde cooks you chicken kiev and begs your help.

Maybe the cops distrust you and the mob does, too, and you lose your cat even though you go out at 3 a.m. to buy special food for it.

Maybe you've got access to the Malibu Colony and a classic car to drive to the border.

Maybe you've got the moral grit to 'resolve all issues' and the sun is on you and maybe it is a Hollywood ending to an episode that sums up your life.

Maybe that's what it's all about.

.

A Moment Of 'Small D' Democracy

So I'm standing, mildly put off, this Saturday at a distance from two people, a man and a woman separately using the available ATMs outside the bank.  Their looks don't quite repel me, but there is a 'social evaluation' going on whose upshot goes something like this:  so very glad I'm not them.

Well. The woman at the machine backs off and comes my way.  It's not accepting check deposits, she says.  Gets in front of me, but indicates I can go ahead.  I'm there to deposit a check, but I'm dubious about her judgment.  Really? I say, almost melodically -- kind, but with a patronizing skepticism.

I go to the machine.  It tells me it cannot now accept checks.  I go back in line, behind the woman who just clued me.  That's what it does say!  

Such verification cements me, perhaps by the 'egg-yolk' on my face, in unity with the gal.  A new guy wearing a baseball cap files behind us, and we tell what's up.  He, too, has come to deposit a check.  So we're a line of three.

The fellow at the other ATM is still futzing away at his business, and noting the queue, looks over apologetically and says Sorry!  I'm almost finished.

No problem, we indicate.

Now a fourth person, another woman, joins us, we fill her in and invite her to go ahead with her transaction, which isn't a deposit.  It works fine, and she remarks that such a problem as ours did occur at another ATM just this week.  She wishes us a quick resolution and a fine day.

We're now becoming 'a community', all commending her on her luck at this machine.

The original guy leaves, and the lady in front of me tries his ATM.  It works.  As I take her place, it's almost a 'high-five' moment.  Two clean points, our team is up by six.

Now I take my chance and discover that it's accepting my check, but not reading it effectively enough to note the deposit amount without a 'zoom'.  Perhaps an allied glitch.  But the zoom works; so too the deposit.  As I leave, I pass the baton to the baseball cap man by verifying that the ATM will handle him.

Even though we've 'been in this together', I feel superior, utterly in charge, utterly analytical and socially skilled, dealing with a class of people I wouldn't want to sit with at the theater or stand with in the museum.  Well. They wouldn't be there, would they?  I think.  No need to bring the hand sanitizer.

As I unlock my car and get in, hoping to scoot away before the guy leaves the machine, he rushes up to me.  Holding my ATM card in his hand.

You forgot this!  He says cheerfully.

I take it with a genuine thank you, feeling totally lame.

.

Style-Blind

A teacher once said that satire can't just wallow in its subject; it needs to follow it with a keen, but quietly judgmental eye.  

Over the past 30 years, America's puritanical heritage has resurfaced in its politics, and much of that can be attributed to fear that what we see in P.T. Anderson's Boogie Nights was 'real', that it represents what was a 'mainstream deviance that corrupted our children'.  Even people who 'experimented' may wrongly believe that this movie shows 'what it was like'.

Actually, Anderson gets wonderfully comic performances out of these actors, some of whom have become fixtures, either as major names or solid supports.  They all play deluded people of average talent and intelligence, maybe a bit less, who focus on their American Dream which -- given the Southern California milieu -- means using the lens of a porno industry camera.

You don't watch Boogie Nights for sex or for music, though both suffuse the movie . . . uh . . . top to bottom.  You watch it to find the true nature of your pity.  How much human outreach do you have?  How would you -- if this were real -- how would you counsel any of these people?  You gladden when the ones who don't sink from their actions don't sink.

Most of the movie is simply fun, despite the awareness that  those dumb-headed actions happening recklessly at the edge of one behavioral cliff or another presage downfall.  For some of the characters, disaster comes.  For others, life plods on in very common ways.  

It's not real, but as you watch, you see how it could have been real.

Watching and seeing are retrospective skills.  That's what art is for.

Living is for mistakes.

.

That Time Of The Deity

Being it's the month of 45 and rainy

one gazes at the deck and wonders

if I saw a god's face, I might turn it to stone,

or draw mustache or scribble some jokes

or become like rain myself or forget my name

Being it's a week of the 45, rainy,

too cool for the deck, one stalls in the thought

about just what makes things a god and

whether I could make one an ornament from stone

or paste it to pictures of cities far off as a cute joke.

Being the remainder is 45, rainy, 

such final days are to brood

over whether to bury or burn, dig down a god

alongside me -- or mount us both on the mantle,

twin boys, and obsessed for fame, for esteem, to be loved.

.

Fourrures Interdites

Working over papers, I, drinking mucho coffee -- floating in it, threads of tabby.

The cat, Midge, simply cocks her head, as if to say, What? ain't you seen hair before?

Goliard

You can call me a wanderer, I'm not

like the people on TV, true, cagey with the dollars per square foot

grousing over cupboard knobs and closet space

chuckling at those kitchen appliances are so new I might take up cooking

or what's not to love about the double sink and soaking tub! The views!

And at special times making sure that the baby's first Christmas will show on Facebook

or that the anniversary celebrates at a fine restaurant and give each other a rose and then visit the beach you walked on when you courted, and then make love don't ever change.

But before you think me shiftless, which, neither, am I,

just strolling from casino to casino, a cup of quarters, a well drink,

in need of a haircut and the suede jacket in need of a deep dryclean,

chatting up over jello shots the first available Kim at the snack cart

or picking up the tab on her garlic guacamole.  A guy with bad habits

low rent and run-ins, neglected kids sequestered with the ex, et cetera, 

like health going or gone at 40, and I'm whistling in patent pathos at the cheerleaders mocking back in teen sopranos.

No.  None of the above.  Try remembering you've seen me, registered in no big way, no ma'am,

as a guy in the Safeway aisle converting the metrics to ounces, sodium overloads, no wonder

you passed by.  Or with a book bag.  Or reciting to myself.  No wonder.

There's lots I've done like that, like kissing and deep-breath exercise, but my mind's

remarkable most in that only I, only this instant, began to love this singular phrase out loud:

'cardamom and cinnamon'.  Cardamom and cinnamon.  Say after me.

.

Miss Jones

My love's hungry for its own eradication,

but it's a lemon I can't swallow whole

until circumstance comes along and wedges,

skims tangentially by and zests, just squeezes  --

her fingers adept on the kitchen boards, and

with the utensils found in the drawers, a chef.

Fast moving like a dance when it's called for

but patient with the time, waiting for the reverb,

the well-echoes, the satisfactory plunge

a taste makes when it bulls-eyes.  The zen

of plinking a sexpartite cross-section citrus shim

between the ice cubes of a tall, cool glass of H2O.

And her appearance, smearing itself like ectoplasm

what a goddess in that she can walk on her hands.

.

Management Praxis

What needs to be done.

What needs to be said about what needs to be done.

What must not be said about what needs to be said about what needs to be done.

What must be said never to have been said to one about what must not be said about what needs to be said about what needs to be done.

Got it?

Absolutely!

Then it's yours to steer.  I'm sure you won't let us down.

.

The Condiment

Avoiding a curse is ritual.  Tossing salt over the shoulder.  It'll not happen, then, that bad dreams come at you.

And for positives, one looks in the mirror at moments of great confidence, perhaps after a day when separate compliments come:  You know so much. You're just so funny.

Not to mention a spark of a glance that under other conditions start long expeditions, find new continents.

So, to looking into that mirror for the Great One, the hero to take you on the journey into the possible, that you.

 

It's a finding that what's a prison of one's own limitations turns out to be a lucky number.

Pick the chair which makes you invulnerable to table whispers, sure that in the decorative tapers around, you're royal in the glint.

.

Peer Pressure

People don't want to do it all the time.  Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.

Yet they're supposed to want to do it all the time or there's something wrong with them.

But what's really wrong is that they're meant to claim to want to do it all the time and feel as though they mean the feeling even though they're not having it.

Sure.  Some people do want to do it all the time, and we have places for them with cots, nutritious energy snacks, showering facilities, and plenty of filtered water.

Most people, though, would forgo that haven and just be left alone for a while simply not wanting to do it.

.

The Last Time I Saw Paris

When 45 and rainy, one considers

people's history in a fat book.

And a rainy history considers

45 people's fat when in one book.