restaurant of unchecked appetites

(seattle, march 2008)

no, it doesn't feel like just yesterday : it feels like exactly 1073 days : it feels like 2 years, 11 months & 7 days : it feels like my skin has loosened & split : when i touch my tongue to my 2 front teeth it feels as though there is part of each tooth missing now : i am approximately 8 pounds lighter, but possibly 1/4 inch taller : on that morning i ate pancakes with bacon : on this morning, rye bread with salted butter : my right toe still makes a cracking noise when i walk, but my posture has improved slightly : i sleep less & dream only in color : & though i have loved twice since, my bones feel lightened, hollow & bird-like in their longing :

(seattle, march 2008)

on the top-backside of queen anne, just down the street from my house, there is a wet sidewalk that overlooks the Puget Sound just beyond Interbay : on a clear day i can see the white-capped monoliths of the Olympic range : & to the right, all the boats put to sleep in the Ballard waterway : last night i walked to the overlook thinking of certain friends & all the really important things i forget to notice : R. Blaser: you're astride something, if you pee/ powerfully and it tinkles in the depths/ splattering the awesome :

(seattle, feb. 2011)

if i have thought of dying 22,036 times, i've thought of living 66,108 moments, during, prior, or following thoughts of death : this is why it is absurd to me when d__ says i just want you to be happy : i could very well be the happiest human alive : at 1 i want to sleep & do : at 2 i feel like waking & do : Shackleton would surely perish at notice of the breadth of my living appetites : i would not deny myself the meat of dogs or man to make it to the pole & back again : but not for notoriety : all for the the pleasure of being : to realize my sudden place on this bridge : take in the view : then walk back home & let the fat drip from my fingers as i enjoy one last meal before sleep : & the same that tomorrow brings :

(seattle, feb. 2011)

i love to fuck : but more, i enjoy the taste of others : one of my proudest moments was standing alone on the subway platform at Jamaica Station, 5am, while 5 different languages were uttered at once : & people wondered to themselves why : i'm happiest feeding people : if i could cook for one person for the rest of my life i may lapse catatonic in bliss : but i'd wake soon : to be touched on the head affectionately : i love a lake of cold water & walking into it : looking back to shore exasperated & letting those there know it's really cold, & beautiful : i love making love in the morning & falling directly to sleep : only to wake up, do it again, make a breakfast of fruit & sit silently across the table from the other : the smell of western montana in autumn : its unsettling wind : letting myself unhinge, though hard for others, is the only sublime act : i spend the last of the best dollars i work for weekly, every thursday : emptying the bank account on oysters and champagne : waking up & knowing the whole world is happening all around me! : if i walk down queen anne avenue i can give $5 to the same asshole i gave $2 to yesterday : he needs a good pat on the head, too : here's $5 : how do my fingers feel? : let's both live a long time : for each other :

(seattle, feb. 2011)

today, wednesday, is already rocking unholy : from the kitchen to the closet is the same room : i've eaten all the bacon in the house & am thinking of Baden Wurttemberg : there was a time i could jump off any train at every hour and be fine : m. would arrive coat & tie from the night before to fetch me : then feed me warmed rolls with cream cheese & black forest ham before letting me sleep : i want him here now or i want to sleep a long time : this morning is moving lengthwise instead of forward : the woman i currently fancy fancies a noble future in knives : all i can do is wait for the clouds to wash this over : i remember returning home from boarding school in the winter : my tiniest sister posted the Superman logo on the doors to my bedroom & closet : the S for me : one vain letter : & i knew at least one person was watching :

house outside of home

(seattle, ballard bridge, feb. 2011)

an odd caption on the back of a postcard, such as : the Flatheads, among other Native American nations, once met a substantial share of their survival needs by hunting these massive creatures : or handwritten : are you the city's golden boy, yet? : all the bells & whistles of this short city : he is thinking of all the fish in all the seas : their blue backs beneath a monument of water : in the spring the flowers will rise & rise : they all die :

(seattle, feb. 2011)

i blink &/ am unable/ to see myself/ blinking : the sun is still shining today & the water hasn't moved an inch : if there were a hill higher than mine, i'd run up it : if there were a gun in the glove compartment, i'd grab it : if there were purple outside my doorway, i'd bathe in it : if i had a smaller hammer &, perhaps, a pin, my fingernails would be more easily removed : then the day could be continued as it should : unshielded :

(seattle, feb. 2011)

it is sunday now, & the mountain is still there : it is monday now, & the mountain is still there : it is tuesday now, & the mountain is still there : it is wednesday now, & the mountain is still there : it is thursday now, & the mountain is still there : it is friday now, & the mountain is still there : it is saturday now, & the mountain is still there : it is sunday now, & the mountain is still there : it is monday now & it is tuesday now : it is tuesday now & now it is tuesday : & it while my house continues roaring on this earth : & it while my mouth blooms choked with loam : & it is tuesday now : now it is tuesday :

like a heart dressed in black sequins

(seattle, jan. 2011)

here there are flowers in winter : here not even the trees bend up in cold : the grass is stoic when sleeping : & thus when a seed falls from a flower it doesn't matter the season : when a seed falls from a flower there is no reason for it to think itself part of that original flower : if it feels obligated to call home to petal 2 on sundays and petal 6 on tuesdays it is because it was asked to do so : when i walked out onto this glass floor i suddenly wished it gone : if just to see what would happen :

(seattle, jan. 2011)

on the way home i became slightly confused : i was leaving a more suitable home than my own : it was washed in warmth & the tension kept taught by a fantasized intimation of a shared world : in the past i've left portions of my life behind, assuming to know all possibilities of particular people : as though this understanding drowned forever an attraction : a more frightening knowledge of commitment : more intimidating than being locked in a room with 20 fat ladies with tubas pining for yr affections without break :

(seattle, jan. 2011)

i'm not at all frightened by this proximity : this closeness to an oppressive yellow & 4 tight-knit walls : & here, another person kept touching-distance away : if i close my eyes her breathing becomes miles : like a thumbprint on the lens of binoculars :

(seattle, jan. 2011)

this is what alone looks like : it's brothers are hearty and well fed : eating chili out of cans, they pick the stray beans from their beards & toss them into the thin air to catch them in their tired mouths : they laugh weak at all of this, & let the whisky drip slow from the corners of their lips : they live here whether you need them or not :

(seattle, jan. 2011)

still like a department store window display : my jealousy is a dandy : oscar wilde taking communion in an episcopal church on sunday : if i could take my nightly walks through queen anne, down to the docks, as anyone... : it would be as a father : pushing a baby stroller through the streets at 3am. : the mothers asleep in their houses would stutter & gasp in their dreams : bringing a baby out in this weather? : & at this hour? : baby & i take pleasure in our boldness : we are pleased by the warmth of our own hearts :

speaking in technicolor

(seattle, jan. 2011)

in toussaint's the bathroom, a young man decides it best to take up residence inside his own bathtub : he is afflicted by no malady & perplexed by no muse : it simply makes sense : his partner, Edmondsson, remains appropriately aloof & unflinching : she brings him food when he is hungry : she speaks to him from her perch on the bidet next to the bathtub : they even laugh together : far from an act of cowardice or push for notice, a bathtub seems like a perfectly reasonable response to any psychic turn : the problem is usurped from the porcelain bowels only when an other insists that a situation is problematic or odd : in this case there are 4, all willing to simply take things at face value : 2 bodies, 2 minds :

(seattle, jan. 2011)

though not fearful of the rain, this area provokes a general mistrust in me of whether or not nature here has the ability to regulate itself : i fear both the possibility of the rain not ending & the rain ending : if the sun peeks at me for more than a day i decide the desert is uninhabitable & begin digging : if the rain refuses to cease for several days i dream of water draining through the clouds for a green eternity & i worry of my house sliding down to the bottom of the hill : & what will be there to catch me : & how well will i adapt to living on the eventual flood : i'll have to build another sort of garden : i'll plant the onions in the interstices filled with the dust accumulating just behind my ears :

(seattle, jan. 2011)

yesterday i passed a pretty mother walking her son in a red stroller : he pointed to a patch of clear sky just beyond my head and asked what is light made of, mommy? : shadows, i replied :

(seattle, jan. 2011)

i was once in love with a woman who would often assert the presence of phantom funeral homes : there must be a funeral home nearby, she would say...i can smell it. let's take another street : i reassured her that there were no funeral homes within miles of where we were, but that i noticed a retirement home a few blocks back : perhaps that is what you smell : a proximity to death : no, she said, i smell the pre-funeral : if there is no home nearby, then there once was one here : or there will be someday soon :

(seattle, jan. 2011)

for several weeks i wake & return to sleep with errant & lost thoughts of the same person : there was a point in life when i might have labeled this love : today, that being impossible, i've tagged it night swimming : this evening it will operate under the moniker necessity : &, finally, when i sleep the thought will always be known as forever : to hide this from others i must fashion a new language of inquiry : it is a maze titled plainsong :

i think of this person in english, often : i think of this person in french, occasionally : i think of this person in image & i think of this person in the sound i wish to scrape from the interior walls of her skin :

(seattle, jan. 2011 : benoroya hall)

this is what the inside of a ship looks like : notice the sound it makes as the hull is slightly bent by wind & waves :

(atlantic ocean, 1835)

if given a choice, i may choose image over object : last week i had an imaginary meeting with my acquaintance b., who i've never spent any significant time with : & never been alone with : the hood of my coat was pulled tight producing a type of corona around just my eyes & nose : alone like a tunnel, i thought : but b. was there and she took my hand & held onto it without speaking : we sat like that for a few hours : when i woke, my right hand was clutching my left & my sheets were making the noise of grass sleeping :

(seattle, jan. 2011)

i sometimes forget that a tree grows out as well as up :

(seattle, jan. 2011)

it doesn't make a difference whether i weep from joy or sorrow : either way i am still weeping : & never is one weep unique from another :

if not, winter

(seattle, 2011)

this evening i followed a pair of very tiny footprints : those of a newborn baby walking barefoot in the snow : it was, invariably, walking home :

(seattle, 2011)

the emotional machine travels in circles : circles within each other & circles crashing into each other & even lone, rogue circles : there are some circles so large that they don't complete themselves : despite what i have to this point believed , a life as a thing is decidedly non-linear : nor, really, does it exist temporally : these are not the circles of Emerson, somehow divine & washed in light : these are seafaring circles : & thus, there is a weather, too : the sidewalk was cloudy where this evening, on the way home from a birthday party, i was asked to think of something i had never previously considered : for the rest of the night, i stuck to myself :

(florence, 1990's)

this evening i was plucked from a barrel filled with boys & led down a red street at night : in the cornerstone of a church there is a finger set in concrete : it points up : ten years later i would walk into a church in brittany only to take off my jacket & warm my wet hands above someone else's lit prayer candles :

(british columbia, 1997)

this evening i sat at a distance thinking that it is impossible to know just what you are : a moment i now consider best forgotten : on the hill opposite a brown wolverine lay in white snow picking at its teeth with one of its four paws : the water there is still trapped in ice :

(san francisco, 1999)

this is the day i thought of a friend who died 6 months prior : that evening i walked straight into the surf without thinking : an hour later i returned to the beach wet & smiling with shame :

(right now)

my mother used to opine that if you want something done right then you ought to do it yourself : she may have been right : i'm ready to make my own family now :

(north carolina, 1990's)

this evening i slept suspended a few hundred feet from the ground : sometime after dinner i began to see flashing lights around everything in my field of vision : i was convinced that i must be very close to enlightenment : later, it was explained that the flashing lights were the effect of the sun reflecting off the dust settled on my corneas : i wasn't disappointed :

(right now)

i have difficulty understanding what geography settles if it, itself, isn't quite yet settled :

(nevada, 1998)

this evening my tent was shredded in wind so i slept outside once the storm settled : in the middle if the night i woke thinking it morning : behind the eastern rocks the sky was glowing : hours later i realized that it was just las vegas somewhere in the distance : probably laughing :

the inaccuracy of distance

(seattle, 2011)

green glows edenic here : it is on the ground : circumscribing the horizon : reflecting from the water & sometimes in the clouds : green, coupled with the all-day darkness of winter, begs 2 more than one : though not frightened of the night, alone is best left to the light : i prefer to take my walks as one & when i can see what's ahead of me : since arriving i have walked roughly 5.5 miles a day : in 2 months i've probably walked a total of 330 miles : 330 miles is almost 3 quarters of the distance from here to my old home in montana : if this persists, i may require another set of shoes :

(seattle, 2011)

here the ocean washes out all scent of distance : in ohio, hot in the summertime, you can smell the rain pouring from ten miles away : long before a cloud touches your immediate sky : i imagine this bird had only an end in sight : it pulled itself fast & black & wild through the night air : there was probably no possible way it could see the wire that sliced off its left wing : this must have been the best way :

(boise : dec. 2010 : courtesy of c.)

travel belies any true notion of distance : one can not move to or from a person or place & expect to change the mean geography of a body's attraction : i've been a country away & aroused by the memory of scent so much stronger than touch : success is broken-backed & now the maggots have set in : it will take more than a lifetime to do the impossible work of pleasing the self : so, since we now deal in multiple epochs, why not just work on that, the self? : the only altruistic endeavor :

(chelsea hotel : nyc : march, 2010)

for 8 consecutive months i talked to the same person every day several times daily from a few thousand miles away : i would also write to this person, sometimes just after talking : a few times each month we would talk face to face : if in montana, i would often answer the phone at 5am while racing the headlight of a train running parallel to me along the highway : these conversations were a contact akin to touch : when separated by a distance i had the feeling of someone waking right next to me even though i was very much alone : in december of 2009 the temperature dropped several degrees below zero farenheit for over a week : my cabin rested on 2 train trusses so that the wind could move all around me : one morning i woke to find a frozen glass of water next to my bed : i don't remember a time before that when i have ever felt warmer :

(montana : nov. 2009)

recently, the same thing happened for almost a month & a half : there were various forms of contact with a person multiple times a day : while the perceived responsibility of contact from one side of town to the other shaped a new light inside me, it nearly broke the other : in years prior i have had the increasing desire to see a thing destroyed irreversibly, as though it were more tangible than a thing being : there is a necessity of scaffold : & there is no such thing as need : nothing feels much better than feeding someone, & being fed :

(montana : oct. 2009)

the feeling of being believed is, today, more important than the feeling of being loved : to be believed that one is capable of love :

(home : aug. 2009)

i've always taken walking for granted, which is unfortunate considering that just the act of standing straight up on 2 feet is somewhat of an anomaly in a world where the majority of mammals are quadrupeds : it is the upright posture that the french anthropologist Claude Levis-Strauss argues is the definitive evolutionary truss that makes a human being distinct from all other creatures : standing upright enabled us to evolve into one of the most advanced thinking machines on the planet : the foundation of humanity then, situates itself on the several inches of the soles of our feet : i often mistake soles for souls : & this mistake makes sense : in of the surface of things Wallace Stevens writes, in my room, the world is beyond my understanding,/ but when i walk i see that it consists of three or four hills and a cloud. : from my doorstep in seattle it is roughly 503.3 miles to the doorstep of my old cabin : if i were to walk from seattle to montana along major & minor roads, it would take me somewhere around 6 days and 22 hours : to achieve this time i must walk both day & night, without stopping for a moment : i must do this alone :