[ The interior of a large, but vaguely uncommercial, record store. It might be an Amoeba Music. A young MAN and young WOMAN stand, back to back, leafing through opposite sides of an aisle in the "Rock" section. ] MAN: Best Weezer album, go. WOMAN: No such thing. They committed musical suicide after or sometime [...]

THE MORTAL SIN ORIGINAL After a good fight my knuckles are bruised, bleeding. Whether I won or lost. The taut layer of skin over the knuckles turns to leather, scarring and rescarring. How many stitches today? Fourteen. No staples. The reception of this news is neither positive nor negative. I no longer have it in [...]

INTERIOR DECOR Six pigeons my dinner guests sing for their supper in permutations of schoolday odes. They heard cummings in the hallway. They breathed Bukowski through the ill-finished veneer on wooden floors. And from their pores effused vocal interpretations of Ezra Pound. How uneven, their stilted voices. Pockmarked pronunciations, so easily denounced. But it is [...]

AN UNGAINLY PROCESSION OF MULES Slow fuck untender cigarette Thrum drum thrum one lump two lump Bristling and gristling and growling Bump, bump burn and churn tooth and nail Claw, claw, claw. Th-thump Th-thump Lullabye Lull a bye.

AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDY OF THE CLASSIFICATION CHRYSOCYON BRACHYURUS At the winter carnival there is no carnivalling Only the carnal wailing of mothers and whores With their whip-sword words cut so nice To the bones of motherly whores And from them you stand apart You crouch low You leap up and out-of-doors And I track your [...]

Vowels are a harsh mistress, but I’ll break 500 one day, I think! (And I’m almost positive my friend Steven will accomplish that much sooner than I!)

THE DECAY OF THAT COLOSSAL WRECK: APRIL 30, 1975 The most tragic thing of all is a ghost town without ghosts. Ghost fathers sending ghost daughters to fight ghost wars with ghost guns. And if you do not believe in ghosts then you have never seen the bleeding of their ghost sons. Ghost love in [...]

Why so serious?

MYTHOLOGY Winged horse, silver Fire-breathing wolf Sleeping, naked girl.

IN THE KNOWING THERE IS FLESH I passed her on the stairs I paused I memorized the texture of her cotton sleeve against my cheek as I descended and she ascending paused with neck-hairs bristling and hackles raised and sharp fangs bared in a halfway-smile and I laughed because isn’t it a rare thing to [...]