Step outside so we can talk about the weather.

step outside so we can talk about the weather

i want to be genial.

sure it is my opening act and how the audience is warmed.

it is fun

and to the distracted-- my exit is close by.

but you have charmed your way into my first floor

and I have quieted down and studied your steps.

reality curiously waits above you; waiting to come down for some tea.

But you are tired; you have thinned yourself in the material.

'step outside so we can talk about the weather'---because from here i cannot be too comforting.

not sure what my meta is for, you say.

no time to think about that, you nod

you need it direct much more.





taking ten things out of a hundred

and giving just ten to them all.



you are everywhere

but never ever aware.



let's step outside

where I can still be cordial

where you can ask for it as long as you need.

While all humans feel ashamed of weakness and afraid of rejection, our Western culture is a breeding ground for the kind of shame and self-hatred the Dalai Lama couldn't comprehend. Because so many of us grew up without a cohesive and nourishing sense of family, neighborhood, community or "tribe," it is not surprising that we feel like outsiders, on our own and disconnected. We learn early in life that any affiliation—with family and friends, at school or in the workplace—requires proving that we are worthy. We are under pressure to compete with each other, to get ahead, to stand out as intelligent, attractive, capable, powerful, wealthy. Someone is always keeping score.
After a lifetime of working with the poor and the sick, Mother Teresa's surprising insight was: "The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis but rather the feeling of not belonging." In our own society, this disease has reached epidemic proportions. We long to belong and feel as if we don't deserve to.


-unknown

Anthony is in the gutter.

"I am a behavioural racist."



"Coffee isn't meant to be drunk after such a reckless use of a condiment."



"I am always sexually safe. It is like a code. And irregardless, sugar always says 'hello' to me...it always says hello, how are things?' You know? When no one else does."



"Of course. it makes life worth living."

"I'm just off the train I go down the stairs and out the door and this kid just got all in my way..."

"You take the southshore?"

"Blue Island."

"Dig."

"I can't get my stereo to work in my car and I hate being that alone with my thoughts, so I train in."

"Of course."

"He's got his hood up and is taking in this girl, you know? He is blocking the sidewalk and I have to almost walk into the street to get around him. He knows I'm there."

"The city keeps the gutters pretty clean."

"So I start thinking--not too much, you know, but it sets on me that I'm angry, not at him, but this fuckin' behaviour of his, right? I mean this is my own race and I got these crazy racist thoughts rollin around in my head, but it was only triggered by this mope's behaviour."

"Don't give me you've solved racial conflicts, without mentioning; the religious, social economic and political ones."

"I'm just talking about me. You can dig right?"

"Right."

"You know?"

"Right of course."

"I'm just getting this right in my own life."

"Yes of course."

Lilly Hardy

~











"That's when I told him I graduated from Brown..."

"When did you lose your virginity?"

"What?"

"When did sex leave the tiny northern town of Theory and enter the southern city of Experience?"

"Three days after the Prom."

"You were in High school?"

"I graduated early, and if you could believe I was still trying to decide what school I was going to attend. I had already..."

"Why do you act like you don't know anything about sex?"

"Why are we talking about this? I'm sexually savvy. No ones called to complain to their Congressman after sex with me. I just want someone who can keep up with me in all aspects."

"Fuck the resumes; look for chemistry and someone who is gentle. I mean don't do what I do. Women who whistle while tying their shoes can easily lose their value when I am looking for directions in a snow storm."

"How long were you lost?"

"Triple A would eventually pull us out of an embankment."

"I'm not looking for Henry Kissinger. I just want someone smart and caring and hot."

"But you are getting your tips from George Plimpton instead of Anais Nin.

"Well."

"Yea."

"I'm just glad I'm not you."

"You lost your virginity, but you're still a virgin."

"What?"

"Yea."










~

Nicholas to the stand

"This counselor is in my head." He said searching his hands for a moment. "He has always been there you understand..."





"You mean its in mine too? This is where you're leading, based on the nature of our past conversations."



"Yours as well, yes, if it dries your bed, then yours as well , but can I just say mine for the moment, you know? Just to make what I am saying easier? Just to get the fuckin' words out before I'm interrupted."



"Yea, OK. Whatever you like...I will allow it. Why the hell do you talk to me again?"

"I don't know yet."

"Of course."


"I have this person I think I am, right? This so called idea of myself, based on how this counselor has censored all of my experiences, right?



"Censored?"



"He's a counselor, right? My prom, marriage, the relationship to my Mother etc...."



"The strippers."



"Some of the strippers, yes. He has interpreted all of this so that I stay comfortable and keep him employed."



"He gets you off though, of course, you know when it comes to life's heartache. Keeps you out of trouble."



"Temporarily off. So in the mean time he has created this person who I think I am, right. I think I am a pimp, philosopher or overall admired, even though I give a good 23 percent when it it comes to life. He gets me the easy way out; with the most limited use of my intuition, right?"

"Helluva lawyer."

"Yea. But check this out; when I meet up with a real person, a authentic person, a person and or situation that has fired this motherfucka' long ago. I see another person in me, one that is untethered and new, one that's scary and free. No lawyer needed just someone to witness incredible feats. You understand what I am saying?"

"Of course."

"Right. Do you know that unstoppable force that you might use Jim Beam, sex or hatred to quiet it, because you are afraid of this person's independence. "

"Or just a little bud--just a little, when you are in the privacy of your home on a late Friday night before a friends birthday party."

"Right, of course, where's my gift?"

"Me sober."

" You know, we dull this person because we are afraid of being venerable, and instead go back to the counselor who meets us at whatever sorry degree we retreat to.You know?"

"Dig."

"Right."

"You've spoiled my appetite."

"In this restaurant's case that's good. We should leave before the Health Inspector gets here."

101

you have wrecked the arts

you have gulped and threw it down;
Wynton's blood on the fields
Moby's Dick
and
Jasper's Johns



hey Immanuel Kant

you have done it all--smartly
bulked and obesed your body full of humanities to go.

no sipping, no enduring
no witnessing

Sinew

the platitude
gristle
not around for that




i am called up for the tangible
the sinew
hello' i say
salut i say to that

Again

The person who, being really on the Way, falls upon hard times in the world, will not as a consequence, turn to that friend who offers him refuge and comfort and encourages their old self to survive. Rather, he will seek out someone who will faithfully and inexorably help him to risk himself, so that he may endure the difficulty and pass courageously through it. Only to the extent that a person exposes himself over and over again to annihilation, can that which is indestructible be found within them. In this daring lies dignity and the spirit of true awakening.










Karlfried Durckheim

no need to be
well read

or religious




20Th century

or baroque

I do not care-in detail about your convecting Viking

or your esquire smoke.


just

*you

honest

true
and loving


that is all.

Slowie can fly

"I started choking."

"Choked by a choker. That seems on the side of the odds."

"My neck swells during sex."

"Why was this thing still on? Why is it still on?"

"Waiting for my neck to go down. This is too pretty and expensive to cut off." She said now rifling through her purse."

"What did this do to your evening?"

"Huh?"

"What does a self inflicted choke do to the momentum of sexual relations."

"Well Senator, it had me-bare ass naked, running into the living room, all while clawing at my neck." She said studying the face of her cellphone. "It didn't loosen up until after a part of my vertebrae snapped back into place."

"Please, grant me permission to be your video biographer."

"Well that appointment will never happen again, after he stayed in bed smoking a cigarette."

"He could have confused your flight into the living room--to break out a window for air, as the effects of his prowess."

"I keyed his car after I left."

Lanvin is an apparition

"He can have me in texts, phone, and conversations in person. I would sit next to him at a hospital, church, football game. I love him. But we are not built for sex."

"Trying can make this a clear cut determination, and I don't say this because I want him to enjoy himself. Please enter that into your Moleskin. I'm just saying as all."

"Your just saying."

"I'm just saying."

"Well I go with a feeling."

"I do too."

"A feeling that works beautifully as a guide. I needed to find a better way of seeing the people who enter my life. I got tired of looking in bathroom mirrors saying 'How did I get here?'"

"I'm still available for that."

"Don't you wonder who these people are who coming in and out of your life?"

"I don't know. I figure it was just a gender based question."

"You ruin relationships don't you?"

"Burn them to the ground. One way to get the insurance money, of course."

"Of course. While I keep looking before matches come into play. Well in fact I let them try to, or think they have..."

"No one can have this much control. Who stays and wait around for your incredibly equipped load of beauty to run and guide the fucking show."

"People who are supposed to be there. If you leave as you might say 'I don't give a fuck'" She said smiling.

"I might say that, yea."

"You think I'm going to be lonely and this worries you?"

"I don't know."

"Again you sit here entertaining me. Following some imaginary script."

"The man who hangs around at the end of this apparition of a philosophy--helping you clean up; usually finds himself getting laid."

"You are the devil."

"Apparitions abound."

never leave them.

no one leaves







no one can leave anybody










only their behaviour







where will you go?












whatever it takes, whoever it is




run



save yourself




but you can never leave

it is your behaviour.

don't speak

i have no fucking idea what I am saying





forget my proclamations





my utterances


my ideas






it can all be overturned





all of it




it is based on the easy; the comfort. the past.





love remains the only immutable.

the tear down

Just past the ceremony




i forgot




I forgot beyond the parade and the cotton candy that I enjoyed the tear down



It is first, the lasagna at midnight

the gift instead of the colorful wrapping and bows-- and its container.




During the pass and review I forgot I enjoyed the vulnerability instead of the prettiness. I put my mobile home there and splayed myself out.
I found it is where secrets are met and wounds are healed.









It is all far beyond the parade

it is home.









it is the beginning.

about yourself

What do I own?


You have to be


predictable


you have to know it


in the middle of the constant unsuitableness




you have to know this

the

floor
the people
the circumstances


fall about




put into a constant pile of different. A obscene amount of otherwise.


you have to know this one thing

Compelled

The day attacks

and the sun still shines







(till it can't anymore)







it is inspired to do this from somewhere.




it ignores the wars
and its own opinions







except when inhibited.





As long as it lives it it is compelled to shine.

Mae's heart is always broke.

"Love isn't what it use to be."

"Me without my hearing aids."

"Is it just my legs that get your attention?"






"Yes."

"Idiot."

"Right."

"I don't think I told you this before, but I don't know the difference between love and hate."

"Hate is one feeling I don't need to rehearse for."

"You are method."

"Dig."

She lined her cigarettes on the table. "I practically moved all of my furniture into his house. I wrote sonnets to him and saved all of his emails." She picked one and rolled it between her fingers. "I bathed myself in his cellphone self portrait's, and watched--in my mind our future kids tumble down the stairs."

"Even the banal ones?"

"What?"

"The emails."

"Yea. All of them."

"Ah banality. I knew this about you."

"My smoking?"

"No, with relationships you get embedded. I don't hear from you; and then every now and then I get these cryptic messages from the front, on how his braided chest hairs are so beautiful... "

"Sigh."

"Yea. Sigh."

"That's my problem though I keep looking. I don' t know what for, and maybe shouldn't. I'm doing all this looking around, waisting all of this time, all of it seems like something other than love.

"Somethings wrong."

"Yea, and comfort is proving to be brief from both polarities."

Anthony is out to lunch

"I told her to stop looking at the size of my head."



"When it comes to you guys having kids? And she persisted?"



"Well now that I bring this up, it was a bigger relationship than just having kids with me, you know?"



'Right."



"Well we were still in talks when it came to just having sex."



"Dig."



"But in the end she really wanted to move to Buffalo."



"And wanted you to go with her?"



"No she didn't."



"Of course. It sounds like love. It sounds romantic."



"I don't understand why we even got together. I must choose women based on their naivety in the future."



"Of course."

remember

you are at the spot


i know this spot





imagination runs wild
and fear sets out the chairs





even the venerable make it here



counting the hairs on their head in disbelief







Here the sighs are heavy

and every-- so called loving behaviour from the past is remembered




there are those who need you here

as validity is their comfort




and they will serve you with tea,warm pie and unease




but this is that spot we must forget









here we must listen instead of plan.





we must remember to forget.

melody

the way they are composed




the texture




the framing


the softness






it is like you are playing.




fingers across the compass
playing generously

playing lovely.

William is learning

"I know a lot of life's foibles do not come into play for you, because you spend most of your time sitting in this place."

"Foibles?"

"Dumpin' sugar and stirring coffee with your finger."

"I have a habit. Why should I get silverware involved."

"But I'm sitting in this woman's office and I feel disdain filling me up and shit forming in my mouth. She could just say anything remotely close or even in the suburbs of contempt to anyone else in our meeting and disorderly conduct bubbles out of me."

"You don't like her."

"No."

"Is it the perfume she wears?"

"What?"

"I read somewhere in the New Yorker that the perfume a person wears can cause disorderly conduct to be evoked from another person."

"Evoked? The New Yorker? What is this?"

"Well I am in the city of well read."

"Right. You know this women doesn't even have to say anything and I feel my blood pressure increasing and my thoughts dimming." He said resting his elbows on the table. He pulled himself back for a moment. "You know my whole point is that I am learning something here, right?"

"What?"

"Can you hear me beyond the music that is playing in your head?"

"Not really, but I have tile I could be grouting at home--I'm sure, and you are dragging me through a carbon cloud."

"Well my point is--now that you have properly highlighted it: I have learned something about myself by the level of irritation that is in my life."

"Of course."

Nicholas Flinch

"Look, my mother grew up in this town that now has chickens crossing the road a mile away away from a new--and only golf course. A Jack Nicholas golf course."




"Which came first?"





"The chickens."







"Of course."






"I'm no communist." He circled a cigar around a lit wooden match and quickly inhaled.



"Fidel might disagree."

"Dog, I'm not!"

"I know. But when does it matter that anybody cares 'what you're not'."


"What?"


"Try not to get me to say that again."


"I think my sentiments have shifted."


"What?"


"Sentiments. A emotional thought."



"Of course, but a man smoking a cigar never says sentiments."


Again he inhaled deeply, and surrounded his face with smoke. "I say whatever the fuck I want to say."




"Right. Of course you do. Your a communist."




"You know, I don't care about the uninterested. I don't care that there is gentrification; this city is 5 miles squared and horse shooed by water. Where can they move those people?"




"Is that why you don't care?"




"No I don't worry because...listen I will say 'I don't worry.' instead of 'I don't care' that's inaccurate. So, I don't worry because I believe in helping the willing."


"You."

"Me."


"What?"

"Yes"


"Not the helpless or the handicap?"




"Are you trying to trip me up with this blanket sentence?"





"Its fun making shit up."





"It is just the willing or the unwilling." He pressed his cigar into an ashtray. "Once you become willing there is always someone waiting to take you higher."

"I'm unwilling to pay this check."

You bring them, but I'm ok.

you brought them to the pier






they are noisy








but they dress so nice












comfort you with adulation (the outstanding needs no one to tell them so) and your favorite snacks
you take it all--yes--uneasily because your standing at this pier


of course they also hand you their worries
despair
and their darkness
and you wear them so you can feel you exist






you exist




you're expansive










the boat comes, and you can only sail when you have left them all behind.