Maybe I don’t have enough to fill these
days, I mean pages, I mean, I do that
bit a bit too much but continue to
hope my pen can cobble some minor
magic as this glamour lately is
sea ice in February as I fail
to get the cheese out cleaning another
dungeon as the prophecies foretold
and then a tune but so softly I
must pay close attention or they
are lost as the kingdom slowly
dissolves in thin smoke debt and need
but the dog seems to like it she
gets to go where she wants and when
Tag: february
-
-
In February
IIIII
I sat on the couch with a little dog pressed against me as she sighed and licked and twitched and ran and slept and stretched. I can hear the clanking of the ships in the marina in my memory. I feel like I’m going in three directions and locked in place. I am enjoying a small glass of dragon well. I am trying to log out of certain sites as a means of slowing the waste. I hear the wind and check the weather app. I want to be honest, to a point. I want to play Skyrim rather than read The Satyricon. I see the Canterbury Tales hasn’t moved. I love a Sailor nib. I have checked my email, even though I didn’t want to. I think there are things I’d like to say to you that I’d instantly regret. I instantly regret and then again and again throughout eternity and back and back. I think I need more projects or fewer projects or different projects. I enjoy the afternoon light unless I’m trying to watch TV. I can hardly bear the profundity of my many sagacious remarks. I was listening for it for a long time. I am pleased that that anger has so far not consumed me as it seemed it might. I may give up trying to find the right word. I feel a sensation like warm jelly gently jiggling as it cools near this chakra. I’m surprised by how terrible and beautiful my handwriting can be. I suppose that goes for most things. I suppose I should do something about it. I think it feels accurate and like a cheat. I wonder if this project has reached its conclusion. I wonder if it will ever find its true and needed form. I was thinking of calling it I, ai ai, but thought that might either seem silly or pretentious, but we’ll see. I wouldn’t say yes, even if she found a way to be nice about it. I know I’m to blame as well but I won’t say that publicly right now. I am prepared to go without for much longer than you would guess. I got used to having no one and now I feel suspicious of every face. I don’t know how much longer I can. I am sure I’ve said this before. I’m running out of steam, and enriched uranium, but I have plenty of dark matter. I wanted to buy that Hello Kitty fountain pen, but I cannot understand why. I suppose the minutiae of one life could be enough to build some kind of something or whatever. I think the dog only wanted some company this morning. I wonder if I’m just writing down my stray thoughts rather than building a poem. I was thinking of the Lords of Death and how they triumph and how the twins defeat them. I suppose we will never know since all those priceless works were destroyed by our idiot ancestors. I imagine they will say the same thing of us in a few hundred thousand years if we run into some very good luck.
afternoon, Canterbury, couch, dog, dragon well, february, fountain pen, Hello Kitty, Lords of Death, marina, memory, nib, Sailor, Satyricon, ships, Skyrim, tea, weather, wind
-
In February
IIII
I close the door to bring the silence closer. I’m so fucking poetic. I’m trying to remember to call my sister later. I am trying to discover the best way to brew this tea. I have a pinching sensation in my left shoulder. I wonder if sitting and writing like this will be comfortable after 10 minutes. I think I have been figuring things out. I really wanted to use the old safety pen, but the ink bleeds through this cheap paper. I once really loved a Moleskine. I had a feeling that there should have been a final e, but I have corrected that and the reader will never know. I remember that e in Japanese means a painting or paintings. I wonder if this sense of tiredness could successfully be rebranded as quietude or some such. I think I’ll need new glasses soon. I feel fairly happy with a fair few of my sonnets. I can hear my neighbor sneezing on the other side of the wall. I think I’ll move to the couch. I was wondering about my need to generate rules. I brush the backs of my teeth for 30 seconds then switch to the front for 30 seconds then repeat one more round of each for a total of two minutes. I’m feeling very warm. I started to wonder where that fire and surrealistic vigor has gone is it sleeping or one more thing that only I enjoy. I am constantly taping myself into a box and trying to break out then crying over the ruins. I think of poor Waldo Jeffries. I think that was on White Light/White Heat. I used to know this like it was my job. I certainly don’t miss that job. I like the warm light from this lamp that we had sent from Australia after my father-in-law passed. I like the cold light from the tiny gooseneck lamp in the other corner, which reminds me in a small way of a big fluorescent desk lamp I had in the late 80s. I feel so old referencing stuff from those dark days. I would sometimes love to believe in a hell for some folks, but it’s all or nothing. I can’t believe I’m hungry already, though I don’t know what time it is. I want to read the news, but I can feel the waves of no already surging. I think I’ve had this before. I want to know if you can look for so long that the door opens and the mirror flips and you fall in love with the world because you finally see the two of you are literally the same. I worry that this is poetic nonsense. I worry that all my meditation, checking in, journaling, etc., are simply variations on sucking my thumb. I think that may be too far unless it isn’t. I think the thing would be to write this live with cameras pointed at the faces in the crowd so we could tabulate and adjust in real time. I wonder if this is all a way to overwrite the memory of showing mom a poem when I was 13 and she looks as the speaker rushes through sharp, close dangers, and, on the many spears of the trap of the last lines, is impaled, and dies, smiling, and that’s nice dear.
-
In February
III
I am afraid I have missed my shot. I’m thinking of whiskey or maybe mezcal. I admire the white jellyfish on the nib when I pause. I wonder if this is any better than what I was writing in high school. I find the tea too bitter and nearly cold. I try to wait as long as I can before the evening entertainments. I think about looking for a proper job with a 401(k) and all that and feel the concrete coconut slip and grate farther down my gut. I find it harder and harder to imagine a future in which I want to participate though I know my imagination is part of the problem. I wonder how many minutes the dog spends licking various parts on average during an average day. I wonder what I will make for lunch since disposing of the suspicious stir-fry leftovers. I wonder how many days I should do this. I’m aiming for Midwinter Lite rather than Maximus Junior. I find it slightly irritating how the paper slightly curls when I try to write in this notebook on top of this notebook on top of a pillow that rests on my lap. I do like the size of this notebook, the paper one, which is more or less the size of ones I used in college but much thinner. I don’t know why any of that seemed relevant. I’m not really sure how to judge. I’m concerned this may start to sound too similar to itself. I want to add fire. I just watched the episode of The X-Files called Fire which starred an actor I almost didn’t recognize because he was so young. I remember him from an episode of Firefly and Doctor Who as well. I have been enjoying The X-Files and Twin Peaks and Farscape. I worry that I’m falling into the poison idiot quicksand of nostalgia. I desperately want new toys. I wonder if I worry too much or not enough. I just sent the wife a picture of the pooch. I tried to record her snoring, but the beauty was far too subtle for these coarse machines. I wonder when the delivery will get here. I worry about my wife when she goes out to meet friends and the weather is less than perfect, which is how I was raised. I think my parents must have made themselves sick with my sister and then my own rebellions. I think I must be a late bloomer, but perhaps my sister is just faster than me with certain things. I can dish it out but I can’t take it. I remember finding a bit of poop on the carpet that was swirled with green and brown and red. I mean the carpet. I feel as though I was eating a sloppy joe and a pellet of joe slipped out and that is when I discovered the poop and why I never liked sloppy joes. I’m not sure if this is conflating two memories. I’m pretty sure it happened. I can see certain aspects of the home in my memory, but it swirls and is liable to be unstable. I think of the poetics of space and maybe I should try to read that again. I remember enjoying what I read, but it’s something you have to approach with plenty of time and patience. I already feel quite hungry and it’s only a quarter past ten. I recall the line time is an illusion lunchtime doubly so, but have to look it up to get it right.
coconut, Doctor Who, dog, Farscape, february, friends, imagination, lunch, Maximus, mexcal, midwinter, poop, sloppy joe, tea, Twin Peaks, whisky, wife, X-Files
-
In February
II
I am still tired and hungry and thinking about the sea. I mean tea. I am coming and going. I’m thinking of buying that pen. I am scratching my head. I was thinking about the dog who wandered into our yard and stayed two days four decades ago and we bought canned food and a box of Milk-Bones. I was writing about the past before. I was trying to put the jigsaw puzzle together in the dark with my hands battered and tender. I’m making up a few things and being honest about others, but that hardly matters. I’m thinking of Canterbury again, though we’re not a week into February. I wonder if it’s too late to bake a sweet potato. I watch the dog’s little rise and sink rise and sink the sun shading one side on the blanket her new toy by her head. I was thinking of a friend who used to live nearby. I hear the wind tour the chimney and out around the yard and back and watch the bare limbs of the locust try to scratch where they can’t quite reach. I’m thinking of Neil Gaiman again and I want to read the Vulture article and at the same time I’ve already heard too much and someone said can we expect the guy who writes creepy stories not to be creepy. I wonder if he thought of it as a kind of bastard research or as oh why bother with this. I really liked the few things I read and don’t know if I’ll ever read what I haven’t. I am tired of news like this and at the same time pleased people are speaking up whether or not folks I like get flushed. I thought of that song towards the end of Joe’s Garage he was such a nice boy he used to cut my grass or something like that. I fear I am falling into prose. I feel a certain energy rarely. I see shadows out of the corner of my eye wriggle and escape. I am second cousin to snow and icicle. I am half of what I once was and twice as something as I may have been or something. I think I should delete my Facebook account. I want to be familiar with GBV’s entire catalog but I’m already 50 and I’m not sure if I have the time. I am dissolving in abstraction and thinking of graham crackers and chunky peanut butter and maybe I’ll do more stretching, but maybe first more tea. I feel as though I’m hypnotizing myself. I wonder if that dream machine works. I think a somnolent mind might be somewhat more prone to an hallucinatory stimulus. I think that line sounds best in a quite post accent. I would like to rest my hand. I am worried that I won’t be able to something in the morning. I wonder why we never swim in the ocean. I would love to feel the enthusiasm I once felt for a variety of people, places, and miscellaneous whatnot. I would like to remember in a clear way unimpeded by the meddling mind unmolested by ego. I would write it down in a little book, once edited. I think it could be the inverse of Pandora’s jar. I hope you look it up. I will continue and try to say good.
Canterbury, february, icicle, Joe’s Garage, Milk-Bones, ocean, Pandora, peanut butter, sea, snow, tea, Vulture
-
In February
I
I am a little tired. I am halfway through this cup of tea as the next one cools. I am falling into daydreams. I am mad. I am really pissed off sometimes. I am searching the past. I am looking away from the future. I am already tired of this idea. I enjoy thinking myself an explorer of inner worlds. I have always been blue-black and green and orange and sometimes purple and largely red though in a small way. I used to think it might be with those folks and then sometimes the opposite. I am tickled and transformed by Ovid as always. I am gulping tea and moving on to cup two. I am feeling a pain in my back. I am pleased after only a quarter of a page this old pen feels like my finger leaking purple ink. I am a servant of the Secret Fire. I’m not sure if I mentioned that. I hear the wife open the fridge on the floor below and maybe I’ll call her Persephone but then who am I painting myself as. I thought I could be Hermes once, and yes we all know how intelligent you are and yes, you mentioned memory for trivia isn’t the same as intelligence and yes, you said trivia originally meant a crossroads and is associated with the various gods who loiter there blessed be their comings and goings. I’m looking up trivia on Wikipedia. I feel a pain in my toe and hear the neighbors on creaky stairs. I am trying. I am trying to remember what else I wanted to write. I am a wet fart. I am a defective salamander. I am a failed alchemist a ruined poet a lazy fuck a terrible true singer a reluctant pervert a secret squirrel enthusiast a sad sesquipedalian solipsist a collector of pens and tea bowls and bad memories. I am running out of steam. I am losing faith except in my time running out. I am really impressed with the ink capacity. Waterman really knew how to make beautiful simple precise pens 100 or so years ago and what was that. I am hoping you will excuse my handwriting. I got a second idea halfway through a word and bred involuntary monsters. I’m sure that’s none of my business. I am too small to succeed. I am the stone in the maze beneath your heel. I am singing in the shower, but so softly. I’m thinking about the nymph and the passionate shepherd. I wonder if it really was a nymph or if I misremembered. I’m grateful that I picked up a pen today and practiced drawing by copying one of Timm’s Cat Girls and a naked Vampira or is it Vampirella. I will look it up later. I hope to find things to celebrate. I hope I can drop maybe five more pounds. I hope I can buy less liquor in the future. I hope that I will find my people once again. I will try to wrap this up. I am glad the wind has died down. I’m thinking of Bernadette Mayer on this day one day after Groundhog Day in the year of the wood snake in the year of our great confusion 2025.
other animals 