shame is the shadow of love

This morning I received the following email from Andrew, jetlagged, somewhere in the British countryside:

New car spells silence
commute becomes easy now
haiku dies, friends weep.

in which I'm mistaken for a lifeguard

A and I were riding our bikes to a party in West Oakland. Close to midnight, we careened toward the lawn crowded with beer cans and people dressed in black and dirt. In that context we must have looked like a snake-hipped Flossie and Freddie, both in our favorite red hoodies, our blond heads cutting down the middle of the street like headlights. A tall, gloriously drunk guy with old school metal hair stood alone in the middle of the lawn, a drink in each hand. As we cruised up to the house, he raised both beer cups to the sky and called out to us:

"Baywatch! Save me! I'm drowning!"

June 4 pm

What cherub babies
I'd lick like tiger cubs. If
you weren't arrested.
-for AT

June 2 am

Still life shadow holds
wolverine, aprium, thorn--
held shadow lives still.


June 2 pm

Piano concert in
a closet. When Frank Zappa
died, you took to bed.
-for MH

near miss, Peppermill

May 29 am

Central Park Whole Foods,
your face still tired. At Milton
your eyes sagged like plums.
-for PS


May 29 pm

Animatronic
hot tub mascots, mirrored walls,
a year for snake eyes.

happy birthday

I'm a dilettante. I start things and don't finish them. The only thing I have a consistent, high-level of interest in is my cats.

Easily enough put off course that the fact of running out of paper in my Festiva notepad left us haiku-less for a month. I also returned from the Grand Canyon with a blissful, relative quiet in my mind where all those syllables had been lurking. That's pretty much gone now.


May 28 am

Rattlesnaked dizzy,
forehead to the cool floor, wound
held below the heart.


May 28 pm

A melt of vodka
tears, I'm wrung out on your old
cure: a cool Thai heart.
-for KF


Kiki, happy early birthday.
You always took care of me.
I love you.

May 1 am

Adored with a cool
offering of wrists, I wept
into bandages.
-for ST


May 1 pm

Unearthed by sleep,
slim slate mannequin, forgotten
books, artifacted.

Coachella '08

You can't make this stuff up.


April 30 am

Pool bus capsized on
drowned piñata. "This dive is
called 'Call 911.'"




April 30 pm

3 am hangar.
Malt liquor half-mustache bar
kept. Car on the moon.