American Psycho

Find myself next to the man I could have been. He's in the aisle seat. And we get to talking, about this and that. As best we can: the man I never was, sat directly in front, is shouting to the man he never could be next to him. But anyway, reaching a working volume we discover we've lots in common: same school; same parents; same birthday, though my hair is longer than his is, and he owns a crocodile briefcase. He knows everyone I know; and I know (you know the rest). But then he says he has yet to meet the man he is going to be, to which I reply I had dinner with him yesterday. And he gets agitated - he kicks the crocodile briefcase beneath his seat; he starts staring out the window, interrupting our exchange. And so when he speaks I hear myself in conversation with the guy behind, who keeps answering. Turns out he's the man I never want to be, and the reason he keeps replying is, he's trying out ways to avoid the man he never was sat next to him. So I say to him the best thing to do is tell him the man I am is only a phone-call away. And as I do the phone rings.

Design for a Flying Machine

I would cry when I thought. Not just the feel of it - that release that comes when the Ahhh! of a thought drops down to a shape on a page, or out through an ejaculate Yes! up from a great conversation, or when you're looking at your favorite painting again, tenth time this year, and you feel you've seen it at last - no: not just a feeling - an unfeelable awe. That tension connecting you to something sublime that comes from all that isn't there, to leave just thought, right here on the page. Especially a Vinci drawing, the way the humaness of it resonates still, into being right here, out from the ink that over centuries has silently reached into the page. And how he's penned his description beneath the image, allowing it space to hover up; give it room enough to escape out from the top of the page. And take me with it, tears streaming down my cheeks as we launch through a cold page sky untouched.

Matisse

you have no idea what you're doing. yet you persist. without consideration, even for yourself. how do you do it? people watch and ask themselves, how does he do it? I hear them all. and they turn and ask me, how does he do it? and I just turn, and keep watching. it's like you're almost there; it's like what you do is almost there too, offering traces of something gaseous in solid answer. traces that fail a color as it holds on a line; traces of line inventing themselves, issue color into boxes, boxes that wish for nothing other than release. I have a memory of tall sheer blue that has risen as height; I have memory of a view that's making itself, and out of a love for this, it keeps looking on in green; I have a memory of all those people asking here, their voices risen to right up there. how do you do it?

Us Shadow

Where the lines meet in corners. This gathered I, in the corners. I, always there and in corners - you know. That one, over there you'd say. And I know you'd say because I'd see you walk by, me in a corner; me in a corner, and the shadows, you walkin' by and all glancing, and you'd say. You'd be there and you're glancin' and there'd be shadows in cornerin's of lines. That corner across from Lists; that one you can see only if a game was on, floodlights going down and into it; and the one the wind never reaches, with a silence inside it, swallows up noise so you can stop and hear time for a minute. All these and this I know you know; all these lines and all the corners around here I know you've seen, me in these corners and shadows - all day and all night too. Times around the clock and always me in a jacket. But you won't see me now I got caught. 

The Inkling Man

I have an inkling destined to become a chore, for the damn thing just keeps returning: I give it away; I mail it away; I even gave it to the small man, with hands tattooed 'Yes' and 'Yes', but he refuses and gives it back. So I burn it; I build on it - I forget with what; I even arrange for it's double to replace it but no, still, the inkling remains. So I say it once to an old friend in an attempt to let it go. I even say it four times in a phone conversation to a stranger, thinking it might somehow disappear in the strangeness. I even write the damn thing on my hand and walk slow through the rain. But no. It remains. I'm going to call The Inkling Man: he comes in fourteen sizes now, and three different ways: I'll choose the best tomorrow, have him email me the chart, which I consider after lunch.

Worldy Goods

It's not the same here too you know. We have our fare share of the over-here's, over-there's, where's and where? But ours is a brighter chaos: our calamities much easier to see. And as such, their sound is sharp, crisper, to even the dullest ear - important this because there are many here. (Don't get me started....) You'll soon see: where all of yours are clearly the taller and wider, probably older too, ours are yes, bright and sharper, and yes more shallow - liable to blow-away with the next breeze - but our older is ancient, our over-there's vast, and our over-here's beyond even your tallest clock's tick-tock. And to your finest map's detail hear our parrot's chorale

New Yorker

Maybe just the light; recalling how it was - recalling itself into its shimmer, healthy and bright shafts of it. What was New York. The Los Angelesness of it all. Here at the window. How it thickened the view; how it broadened the park. See it fascinate through greens into themselves and out into shadows of trees. Yes, New York - or how it will be. A trembling of place: a once to a once was. As yearly I still walk it here: among the humming of the trapezoids - a honed a barely there; among trapeziums and scalahedrons that speak to themselves in chorales of sometimes 'Yes, - it's you'.

Paster

This is what happened the night - around a week ago now - that I wrote this. I can't vouch for every word I'm about to write of course, because all's from the memory. And he's using a new computer too: that's right, I'm using a new computer - much faster so they say. I mustn't forget also, during the week, he did once or twice lose his memory - only for a flash mind, on the freeway home, blinding sunlight straight into the eyes and whoosh, for about 10 seconds nothing. So there's that. But I feel certain everything I'm about to write about the night he wrote this is absolutely true: