It was a Friday night a winter California night

& it up against her growing up in the Midwest

                                                  icefishing in Minnesota

meant a California winters night 

wasnt winter

               anymore than silicone breasts were real honest-to-goodness home-grown breasts          

a gas fireplace was a split-wood fireplace hearth and mantle

or a Viagra-sprouted cock was a bemused hard-on

evidently demarcations were necessary on the Left Coast 

                                                             to vie between untruth and truthbetween fabrications and ripenings

she choked on fake

but could swallow real meat

was terribly disconcerted

some Californians didnt seem troubled by the idea of meat grown in petri dishes under electric lights UV-rays or another

anymore than some Californians were untroubled by Adolf Hitlers written affection for the states vanguard Eugenics program

          the Unfit vs. the Fit

  

perhaps not having suckled at a breast

they didnt seem troubled by slabs of manufactured meat or spas to breathe from tanks of oxygen

although requisite she had to concede one might be able to eat meat and never suffer 

killing a living thing -- beyond that first killed meat to set in motion its cloning

                                                                                   sterile radiant and bloodless

no carcass to bleed out or swab up afterwards

“Go West!” said Horace Greeley

she might not have gone far enough West

betrayed by the line of sand and Pacific at the continents end

not far enough West for this round blonde

10ishness,  Friday,  18  12. 09

he couldnt hear her over the racket

he couldnt hear her through the dead space  the walls

the acoustic in the old house were lousy

and their roommates consumed their words jealousy   unforgivingly

emerging into the hallway

walking out towards the livingroom

--   Im sorry  I was in the bathroom taking a leak  I couldnt hear a word you said

and she repeated for the nth time what she had said

never 

 --    If you would just listen to me when I speak

at first blush it was irritating

but you learn things when you move in with people

learn unseen or unrevealed habits

that maybe the only way you ever would would be by moving in together

but they had learned

they learned they could shut them down by simply acknowledging them

everyone wants to be heard  not ignored

they were no different than anyone else

but the dead space  from room to room  was hard to tolerate

not that there was a choice

inadvertently  and not a bad lesson  they learned to speak face-to-face only

eyes-to-eyes

as people should when they address to one another

not that vacant hideous gaze  off elsewhere  as weve all done  when the fake-listening 

machinery kicks in and the head goes into mechanical programmed nods

funny how that nod is so similar to the nod ones head makes when they are falling into 

slumber                                                                                                                           

while watching TV reading or at class ambitiously scheduled too early in the morning

she repeated herself

and he was glad he asked

she had this keen possession and way of looking at things he hadnt imagined

she refreshed him endlessly

far more often than she tread on him

their conversations were spirited

they were passionate  quick-tempered  confrontational

but they knew that of each another

they learned their roommates were abrupt too

demonstrative

HAD to captured their attention

if it was waking them  to then whisper to them

brushing their cheeks as they slept 

or stomping around in other rooms long after they had turned into bed for the night

although

                the dead has limited venues and has to be resourceful

1346,  Monday,  21  4. 14

              the deeper

the deeper we sound

                        obscure notes tantalize our ears

               held Whole  they force a howl that paints foolish space

      or are stabbed to death by staccato

                                                                       splashing slick gobs on humid walls

and then desperate to hide their flinty steel

deeper

and deeper

our eyes and noses are negligible  blinded and stuffed

we try to touch our original foundations

                                                                  although they are lost    there were no thoughts

or imagination that they could be preserved for future suns because their lives

were so very tenuous  lacking surety   without a founding for themselves

                                                                                                                        so our basis 

is spoiled

its remnant  like dried clay  resists reconstitution     it rides like fractured ash on misted

beads

            it seems irradiated    it shimmers with reflections

deeper

I have tried to sound my own depth   my earliest reckonings   but they elude me as 

perhaps they should 

                                   I am extemporaneous  they have no need of me

I think I need

though I know I want

and this wanting is no reason to be met

deeper

deeper

I should be satisfied   I am

begun 1120, Monday,  5  8. 13

from Thomas Mann’s Joseph and His Brothers: “The deeper we sound, the further down

into the lower world of the past we probe and press, the more do we find that the

earliest foundations of humanity, its history and culture, reveal themselves

unfathomable.”