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too old for vision I must settle for dreams specific forms of cloud (body surrounded by body) every sensation con- ceals a dream fresco figurine sculpture in low relief (a motor halo a mental blue) cleft in the logical space (wilderness or wrack) we have lived on a ladder to the window of a room to which the key is lost (words lost in the music)

She was pretty swacked by the time she Put the spaghetti & meatballs into the orgy pasta bowl—There was mixed salt & pepper in the “Tittie-tweak” pasta bowl—We drank some dago red from glazed girlie demi-tasse cups—after which we engaged in heterosexual intercourse, mutual masturbation, fellatio, & cunnilingus. For dessert we stared at a cupboard full of art critic friends, sgraffitoed into underglazes on vases. We did have a very nice time.

Let’s make a movie called Dinosaurs in the Hood. Jurassic Park meets Friday meets The Pursuit of Happyness. There should be a scene where a little black boy is playing with a toy dinosaur on the bus, then looks out the window & sees the T. Rex, because there has to be a T. Rex. Don’t let Tarantino direct this. In his version, the boy plays with a gun, the metaphor: black boys toy with their own lives, the foreshadow to his end, the spitting image of his father. Fuck that, the kid has a plastic Brontosaurus or Triceratops & this is his proof of magic or God or Santa. I want a scene where a cop car gets pooped on by a pterodactyl, a scene where the corner store turns into a battle ground. Don’t let the Wayans brothers in this movie. I don’t want any racist shit about Asian people or overused Latino stereotypes. This movie is about a neighborhood of royal folks — children of slaves & immigrants & addicts & exiles — saving their town from real-ass dinosaurs. I don’t want some cheesy yet progressive Hmong sexy hot dude hero with a funny yet strong commanding black girl buddy-cop film. This is not a vehicle for Will Smith & Sofia Vergara. I want grandmas on the front porch taking out raptors with guns they hid in walls & under mattresses. I want those little spitty, screamy dinosaurs. I want Cicely Tyson to make a speech, maybe two. I want Viola Davis to save the city in the last scene with a black fist afro pick through the last dinosaur’s long, cold-blood neck. But this can’t be a black movie. This can’t be a black movie. This movie can’t be dismissed because of its cast or its audience. This movie can’t be a metaphor for black people & extinction. This movie can’t be about race. This movie can’t be about black pain or cause black people pain. This movie can’t be about a long history of having a long history with hurt. This movie can’t be about race. Nobody can say nigga in this movie who can’t say it to my face in public. No chicken jokes in this movie. No bullets in the heroes. & no one kills the black boy. & no one kills the black boy. & no one kills the black boy. Besides, the only reason I want to make this is for that first scene anyway: the little black boy on the bus with a toy dinosaur, his eyes wide & endless his dreams possible, pulsing, & right there.

There is a heaviness between us, Nameless, raised from the void, that counts out the sprung hours. What ash has it come to purify? What disappearance, like water, does it lift up to the clouds? God of my fathers, but not of mine, You are a part, it is said, an afterthought, a scattered one. There is a disappearance between us as heavy as dirt. What figure of earth and clay would it have me become? Sunday again, January thaw back big time. The knock-kneed, overweight boys and girls Sit on the sun-warmed concrete sidewalk outside the pharmacy Smoking their dun-filtered cigarettes. Nothing is bothering them—and their nicotine dreams— This afternoon. Everything's weightless, As insubstantial as smoke. Nothing is disappearing in their world. Arrival is all. There is a picture of Yves Klein leaping out of a window Above a cobblestone Paris street. A man on a bicycle peddles away toward the distance. One of them's you, the other is me. Cut out of the doctored photograph, however, the mesh net Right under the swan-diving body. Cut out of another print, the black-capped, ever-distancing cyclist, as well as the mesh net. Hmm . . . And there you have it, two-fingered sleight-of-hand man. One loses one's center in the air, trying to stay afloat, Doesn't one? Snowfalling metaphors. Unbidden tears, the off-size of small apples. Unshed. And unshedable. Such heaviness. The world has come and lies between us. Such distance. Ungraspable. Ash and its disappearance— Unbearable absence of being, Tonto, then taken back.

It was winter, near freezing, I'd walked through a forest of firs when I saw issue out of the waterfall a solitary bird. It lit on a damp rock, and, as water swept stupidly on, wrung from its own throat supple, undammable song. It isn't mine to give. I can't coax this bird to my hand that knows the depth of the river yet sings of it on land.

Stand close around, ye Stygian set, With Dirce in one boat conveyed! Or Charon, seeing, may forget That he is old and she a shade.

If you stand on the corner of Mabini Street and Legazpi Avenue, wait for an orchid colored mini-bus with seven oblong doors, open the fourth door— an oscillating electric fan will be driving, tell her to proceed to the Escolta diamond district— you will pass Maneng Viray's Bar, La Isla de los Ladrones book shop, the Frederick Funston fish sauce factory, and as you turn left into Calle de Recuerdos, you will see Breton, Bataille, and Camus seated around a card table playing abecedarian dominoes— roll down your window and ask them if Mr. Florante and Miss Laura are home, if the answer is, yes, then proceed to Noli Me Tangere park and wait for a nun named Maria Clara— if the answer is,Je ne se pas!, then turn right onto the parking lot of Sikatuna's supermarket to buy a basketful of lansones fruit, then get back to Calle de Recuerdos until you reach the part that's lined with tungsten-red Juan Tamad trees, on the right will be a house with an acknowledgments page and an index, open the door and enter this page and look me in the eye.

Macy’s                               Hickory Farms Circuit City                         GNC Payless ShoeSource                   The Body Shop Sears                                Eddie Bauer Kay Jewelers                         Payless ShoeSource GNC                                  Circuit City LensCrafters                         Kay Jewelers Coach                                Gymboree H&M RadioShack Gymboree                             The Body Shop Hickory Farms Coach The Body Shop                        Macy's Eddie Bauer                          GNC Crabtree & Evelyn                    Circuit City Gymboree                             Sears Foot Locker Land's End GNC                                  H&M LensCrafters                         Kay Jewelers Coach                                Land's End Famous Footwear                      LensCrafters H&M                                  Eddie Bauer Cinnabon LensCrafters Foot Locker                          RadioShack GNC                                  GNC Macy's                               Sears Crabtree & Evelyn                    Crabtree & Evelyn H&M Cinnabon Kay Jewelers Lands's End

1-2-3 was the number he played but today the number came 3-2-1; bought his Carbide at 30 and it went to 29; had the favorite at Bowie but the track was slow— O, executive type, would you like to drive a floating power, knee-action, silk-upholstered six? Wed a Hollywood star? Shoot the course in 58? Draw to the ace, king, jack? O, fellow with a will who won't take no, watch out for three cigarettes on the same, single match; O democratic voter born in August under Mars, beware of liquidated rails— Denouement to denouement, he took a personal pride in the certain, certain way he lived his own, private life, but nevertheless, they shut off his gas; nevertheless, the bank foreclosed; nevertheless, the landlord called; nevertheless, the radio broke, And twelve o'clock arrived just once too often, just the same he wore one gray tweed suit, bought one straw hat, drank one straight Scotch, walked one short step, took one long look, drew one deep breath, just one too many, And wow he died as wow he lived, going whop to the office and blooie home to sleep and biff got married and bam had children and oof got fired, zowie did he live and zowie did he die, With who the hell are you at the corner of his casket, and where the hell we going on the right-hand silver knob, and who the hell cares walking second from the end with an American Beauty wreath from why the hell not, Very much missed by the circulation staff of the New York Evening Post; deeply, deeply mourned by the B.M.T., Wham, Mr. Roosevelt; pow, Sears Roebuck; awk, big dipper; bop, summer rain; Bong, Mr., bong, Mr., bong, Mr., bong.

Why were you born when the snow was falling? You should have come to the cuckoo’s calling, Or when grapes are green in the cluster, Or, at least, when lithe swallows muster For their far off flying From summer dying. Why did you die when the lambs were cropping? You should have died at the apples’ dropping, When the grasshopper comes to trouble, And the wheat-fields are sodden stubble, And all winds go sighing For sweet things dying.