this guy's playing online chess

this guy's playing online chess, wierd you know, and my head sorta hurts and my jaws kinda funny. it was good to see you there, that write-up in the city paper, nice but the title made it seem like maybe it wouldnt be. but it was, you know, i don't miss him. you asked me where the cat came from. i saw her on the street wearing heart shaped sunglasses, pleasant. i was going for a beer. i was going for the mountains. i never got there. where have i been all this time? where have you been all this time, i could have met you first indtead. i didn't. and they said i should stay away from the one wearing glasses. i met the one wearing glasses in line at the cvs. the cigarettes are always cheapest at the cvs. he gave me 4 coupons and camel lights were 1.19. it helped out. i wanted to say thank you, though, i didn't want to say anything. i never claimed to be an a-student. a's and d's and proud of that. when did you leave the bar? i wasn't looking and john keeps trying to steal my lighter. tedeschi food shops, they haven't been around for some time now. i could have been a writer of manuscripts. i could've made out at the party, hit up william blake for some of that opium. max don't leave town again, ok? i love you. i love you all. i hope you know that. we've all slept together somewhere, there's no need for the secret-keeping. here, help me out, i held the gates open and watched the world as it flooded.

titles (from 35 poems strongest to weakest)

Things I have not said in cold weather
Backwards: redemption
I built a little businessman…
& a clean kitchen
Notarize mine
“Coffee? I think we can do better than that.” –John Wayne
At the upper deck…
I tried to get ther and I couldn’t…
Someone’s dead and we’re all sad about it
On pity & the state of things (a good man moves to texas)
A textbook case of fine & beautiful
On electricity
I forgot I’d even known his name & definitions
Half a thought on clockwork
Some, but not all things…
There’s this picture of you and me I keep seeing
On electricity
Two rooms
This one time
This is a love song
All I want in life is a dance partner with an affected accent
Throw me down frankly
Here’s where I asked for modernity and was handed a damp tuna sandwich in a zip lock bag:
The gas stations
Foolish & constant: the forgetting of endings
Or a better title, at least
Farm factory
On feng-shui
They came back looking different, acting different…
Odetta & tomorrow is a long time
It is always this way, isn’t it?
Just imagine that one
There was a small brown hole
There I go too long
The impossible appearances
Partly cloudy in the front room

"art is the elimination of the unnecessary"- pablo picasso

a true story? ("art is the elimination of the unnecessary?)

maybe i make a pie and you make a stew. maybe we don't instead and order chinese food. maybe we crumple up the menu or return it to the register. there are two white cars and then a black SUV and we are naming them and then the cab says yellow. maybe i think the cab says yellow because i called the first two cars white. maybe the company is called yellow cab. i've been in a lot of cabs but never once was i found in a limousine. someday i'll probably get put in a limousine, its not so fancy. its true one time i drove the cab. i have this way of bonding with junkies and old men. maybe the cabbie was both. maybe he kissed me on the cheek & gave me a five. maybe he was full of it or tired or neither. i lost all my belongings then. it was all i had. it was hilarious. some thief with a fistful of watercolors, 5 cigarettes or so, a 20 dollar bill i hadn't planned on spending, markers, pens, receipts & crayons. it was my whole life! i lost it all! every receipt and stolen coaster from every delicatessen in paris! how can a thief rob a thief? easy. how can a thief blame a thief? maybe. after the pie explodes and the stew has burnt a hole in the ceiling, we get to the bottom of a brown paper bag. maybe at the bottom of the brown paper bag is just one fortune cookie & this could be something cut in half. maybe the fortune in the cookie says "your winsome smile will be your sure protection." Maybe you will remember sure protection and i'll get stuck on your winsome smile. if saying things casually can make them happen, then everything was beautiful & nothing hurt. then, no i take it back. then, bring me to the money man pawn and notice my back is sealed with electrical tape. give me back to myself. you know andy warhol has more religious paintings than any other american artist? he kept them in a secret room. you know my dad ran a road race with larry bird? you know you're wearing my pants and i thought i'd lost them. i can tell by the two small blotches of gesso by the knee, so i guess i spend time looking at knees and not just my own since you're wearing my pants. no smell has stayed in my nose longer than the smell of a dead puppy that i couldn't keep from dying. my neighbors lived on a farm, they came from Ireland. there is more than one thing in this world that smells like dead puppy. i knew that puppy was dead right after school, right when i got there, right when i smelled it. so maybe i make a dead puppy-pie, eh? maybe you make a cat-in-the-fence stew? between the two of us we come across like a full meal. I thought maybe there was an outhouse in the upstairs hall. I saw it in the middle of the night. it was a genu-ine outhouse, went all the way down. through what, i don't know. there is an urge in me, i know it. we are never sure is what i wanted to say. i'm not sure i said much of anything. it was nice though the way you played with your eyelids & i pantomimed time travel and will got it on the first guess. there were three scenes i couldn't sleep through. i was imagining the apocalypse. i was thinking about art, about instruments of art, about decisions, limitations, decisions, what little change i'd ever have sparing. i saw the fire & mountains made of paper giving up like they enjoyed it, the paintings, all gone in a fell swoop, easy. a life's work. i thought of instruments breaking and burnt down, too. i thought of voices singing and the words left, to remember, to sing. I thought of voices singing without strings and the rest of it was gone. bye, bye, miss american pie, and if i'd bet on poor stewball, i'd be a rich man today. these are the things i remember. every sight i've ever seen is with me in this naked space, there is color here, an old man pumping gas in a yellow cardigan, a black lab named misty looking up from her pups, stewball and i on the front porch saying GOD, my mother traipsing across the backyard with a half empty bottle of gin, she is sloshing towards my father's back, my father's back bent over in the garden, your face in the dark moving in & out with the glow from some far-gone commercial on the t.v. set, you're shaking you say, its ok. this is real, can i tell you? this is real: a true story.

i built a little businessman out of steel wire, braized him together,
dressed him. I swung him up on a swing.
I strung the string to the ceiling. I said swing and I pushed him.
My father spent most of each day in the office. He used to steal my hair dryer,

dressed him. I swung him up on a swing.
drying circuits. Once he had a car,
My father, spent most of each day in the office. He used to steal my hair dryer
with a broke ignition, strung the wires up so the ignition started

drying circuits. Once he had a car,
pressing on the floorboards. In Michigan the squirrels were so big,
they foraged in packs. We called them snow gophers, bent down and watched them eat.
invention is invention is invention and so on.

there I go too long once more & cover his ears
& scale his shiny leather, ask me does it hurt, Syd?
they foraged in packs. We called them snow gophers, bent down and watched them eat.
Here he slides into a wallet, there I count him

& scale his shiny leather, ask me does it hurt, Syd?
and to tell the truth, i saw him there, a pale grey,
Here he slides into a wallet, there I count him
He breaks glass jars without me, rattles my teeth on a chain.

And to tell the truth, I saw him there, a pale grey,
between snow drifts, like a lost thing, undone
Here he slides into a wallet, Syd, I count
his glass jars. I count his broken teeth on a chain.

between snow drifts, like a lost thing, undone
& I lied about him, i lied his teeth,
& his glass jars. Syd, I count
things with no numbers, i add them

& I don't think I'm much of a liar
I strung the string to the ceiling. I said swing and I pushed him.
Things with no numbers & too long once more,
I built a little businessman out of steel wire, braized him together, dressed him.