self city



welcome to the new me

the sharp smell of my late night

farts indicating

a preponderance



of Parliaments in my blood

guts heart and mind.

It's in the genes said my uncle,

a millionaire, and I reckon



he must know.

My hands have the mind

of snakes, single and cold,

tense. waiting



but only for now. and what I

have left to tell you is

only everything, only

what subsists, only



what I can show. yeh

this no waking dream, no:

simply waking and waiting, a

prelude



to the good stuff that happens

when the night draws in and cover

is near. I think my legs are warm,

they feel warm and years ago



I would have taken this as evidence

of going, of a need to go. and go I did,

have, would, but no, not in this world,

not in this world inhabited now.



all I want to tell you now is what is true,

best as I can see it. man, my images have deserted me

and any image I could offer now would I guess

be contrived. maybe that better than this.



I got no millionaire solutions for you tonight but shit

I am drinking. and that, as good as any.

I know what you want to hear.

You want to know why



I ain't riding with my head on fire out across the slow foothills and back across

that wide Mississipi

and on toward morning. she just keeps coming. or else

claims she never does. there it goes:

I never did the West much.



Had I, I would've no doubt checked the opposite

latitude, those other mountains yonder.

then cross the strait to Vancouver. nope.

just me here tonight



in a loaned hole in the ground. better,

we got our own horizon here.

I'll probably take most of tomorrow off

and go see Wesley Clark. he's in the land



tonight and he's better than one such as I and yet one such as I

could potentially codify this age.

I got a dog here won't stay off

my lower couch. what's that mean?



that univerals still obtain. I guess.

I wish my mind was ripe instead of salt.

Salt is never ripe and not quite dead it serves I guess

to hasten taste or to leaven the sea and in my other fantasy



I'd be merchant marine and just as gone. man,

all I want is a smoke. and tonight, as they say:

Mission Accomplished. I'll get you back next time

with the dream song



but tonight I just feel like crying. but no one's here

except my dog so I guess save it, swallow it, hold it down

send it back like some bizarre too emotional

Tantric reckoning:



ah women of earth you know what you are missing

and have avoided it and it is I.



Carmen long ago said I was too intense and it was

not meant



as a compliment