heavy-lidded remote manifestation, carnal

smoke dream. come here. the midnight console

lights dim and sultry as any club. hues of orange,

deep magenta, white blue, hazy red. behind the

scenes the selfsame agent inserts his modules, going

by instinct, eyes moist and lambent

as the blessed buds

arrest this poem



sweet thursday is more than just a Steinbeck

fable; it's the warm hand of fall and a day

like today when there's a fair chance

of airing out the neurotransmitters, taking

them for a little ride (come on,

you know what I'm talking about,

and 2 days into this pungent, fraught

season of angled light and leaves

is when the Molson tastes best)



ah, shit, it's the dying days of the world

and America

the tony robbins of the mind



must always remember there is only one chance for me now and that is to write and write long and write serious with Kafka, Van Gogh, Jimi Hendrix as spiritual guides, with Charles Bukowski methodology, and with something else I can't quite mention or else lure the jinx even more but I bet you can guess



man I feel like such a loser sitting up here in this state and yet I wouldn't be anywhere else, only doing something else and that is why it is critical for me to remember that there is only one chance left for me now either way, whether get paid or no, no matter what level of success achieve, the goal is to do this and to do it some more and once have done it to perform the follow through things one must do once have done it



shit may have to do it drunk some nights, might have to do it in front of the Red Sox on TV if do it starting right now rightexactlythisweek and month, but must do it and will do it, will cheese it up if necess., will do with abandon, the key is lots of dialogue and scenes from one to another and the waking dream. shit. why not do it now. no I mean right now. why else have a dead-end job in loserville 45 minutes from where you were born. but that's OK. because



there is only one chance for me now, only one watchword, only one key, only one thing



to do.

uneven strain



brian meniscus



what a fuckin laugh,

this is a "That...is why

you fail" moment



standin smokin by my truck

this morning I felt a pang of worry

for my observatory powers

such as they are



got bombed on Zhenka last night

and missed the best parts of Schilly's

best game



it occurs to me that I could use

a vacation from

the bullshit, well,

who couldn't?



but I'd take just being baked

concomitant with the, um,

rightexactlynow



or else fresh sober in some more northern woods

with a bow



or else at home writing a story



or even writing from this vein of crap I write in here



or else driving to New York City concomitant with the condition

that it's to somehow get crazy paid and then leave



nah, on second thought,

fuck NYC, you

can have it.

destroy these instructions



what's been wrong, what's

been going on, he asked. It's in the vodka,

it's on the paper, I said, it's

in something I put on the paper

while I was in the

vodka



the all the time whisper

ethic

uneasy sleep suspiration

gambit lisps,

chanteuse...



yeah, then I reach back. but the past

is no fun anymore, my specific masochism

requires some blood in the now,

I want some rack tragedy, Becky,



I want to be hurt by your intrigue and better

you be drunk and livid. Score me

with them green fingernails again write

on me one last time your snailwise reverse

blossom tragedy of woe and lust



and later smoke cigarettes with me at 4 a.m. in that blue diner

by South Station above hot black coffee

wiped out among tacit afterglow sadness, no tell,

no motel,

we did it in

your truck, now

your black hair's woven

through your palm, wrung for grief of what?



I never had no trouble playing fool,

look here, I'll play it once more for you



tell him it's the puppetry of fate,

eggs on a plate;

let's find a rooftop

and get blazed this morning



(you see it's so no place here and

this coulda been something this coulda been

a contender)

fool subliminal sandbagging the piper

haha who lost his guitar



the phrase"they who claim the Reign of Al Bazeel is here"

just flashed into my upper consciousness - take that as

an indicator of how the motherfucking life is kicking



right nowrightexactly now



neutral causes conspire man

arboreal pauses require and

adverbial clauses from liars

suck the air straightup out my tires you

fat motherfuckerthat'swhyIfuckedyourbitch and



I turned to one man and said:



What I can't figure out is all this time

I thought you'd straightfront abandoned me

but your real scene is evidently way more devastatingly

banal



And I turned to another man and said:



Hey you go gobble that head pill



then I dropped that line with decamp,

and snuck off into the bed night dream arbor

with you. her. one

business card dipsomaniac bathe

slave garbed



in diurnal ejaculate

negativity, man

pin pains in the left knee

Parliament Lights

too short nights

of no illumination



job woes

so it goes

feel like I can't win

in my picayune disaster

life



sucker

bad



I had to run back in the pines and scratch into the earth the map of how bad it all sucked



rather than tell her



it was a fucked up pentatonic dream

and I couldn't wake up