perhaps this is where it gets patchiest

i remember my mother kept multi-colored sugar crystals in a pretty vase/bottle thing on top of the stove
she’d give us a few in the palms of our little hands when we were good

i remember one time trying to reach up onto the stove to get it
and knocking down a pot of boiling water
scalding my chest
— i think i had to go to the hospital
— i think i had a gauzy-bandage covering my entire chest for a few days (or weeks?)

i remember microwaving M.U.S.C.L.E. men, watching their pink bodies distort and meld; the stink

i remember the toaster catching on fire

i remember my mother screaming at me about knocking over some of her potted plants

i remember sitting in trees in the back yard
feeling the trees
supporting me
feeling their life
— they were my friends

and the turtles and the frogs
i would be scared
but touch them
catch them
make little houses for them

they’d die
or i’d let them go
or they’d escape
and i’d find other ones

my brother (or father) decided to keep a stray dog
golden retriever/yellow lab mix
they named her Cindy
and she was often moody
sometimes violent
sometimes playful
she liked to hump us
and we pretended to be scared of it
but i think we all liked it: i know i did

we had two close neighbors who were friends
i think one was called Brian Ellis (maybe?)
we would play with dandelions’ white puffy heads
and lay down on the earth, trying to feel it’s warmth (this probably happened later)

the other was called Neil — ah, what a story

there were two other boys who lived down at the end of the row of houses
their father was a welder
and their mother used to dress them up as girls before she actually had daughters

then there was that kid who was actually from a farming family
he didn’t live in the row
but in an isolated house in the middle of the field (right?)
and i remember seeing mushrooms growing in his ears.

.flickr-photo { }.flickr-yourcomment { }

I just ate my first bowl of
very watered-down curry.

it’s so nice to return to the land of the body

on my fourth birthday my uncle Rick (also my GodFather) gave me a set of keys
he was a locksmith
and i think it was just a ring of all sorts of duplicates he had made for various jobs that he no longer needed
they were on a huge ring bigger than my hand
maybe 30 keys
maybe a million
i don’t know
but there was ONE that was cut in green metal
and i knew that THAT one was the one to take me home
that is
i knew that when i was done with this life
i could use that key to open the door and go back to the world i was from
(?!?)
that was late spring, of course
and it wasn’t many months more before it was mid summer
the heat
and the awkwardness…

i’d decided i’d had enough of this world
and was ready to go

i walked into the middle room
which was no longer my brother’s and my room
it had been turned into the guest room
and we’d moved back into the corner room with my year-old sister

i struggled against the bed to move it away from the wall a bit
and stared into the wallpaper
seeing the white dashes move over the dark blue
then looked down into those strange and magical key-holes around our house
that made the lights shine and the appliances flicker
i pulled out the green key and stuck it in the socket
.
.
.
and flew across the room in a blue arc

i cannot describe my confusion and disappointment
when i opened my eyes and found myself laying on my back with my mother and brother looking down at me
“What Have You Done?”

for perhaps about 20 years after that i was disgruntled for having to be here when i had chose to leave.

.flickr-photo { }.flickr-yourcomment { }

I got my computer today

… and around age three
my sister was born
so for that year
my brother and i lived in the middle room, while my baby sister was in the corner room

we had bunk beds
and i often “had” to sleep in the lower one because i was the younger
— it was like a cave.. which was a good safe space for me to delve into my fantasies
… the wall paper in that room was dark blue with white stripe-type patterns on it
many verticles, then boxes, circles, with dashes and hashes through it
i would look into it and see faces
all sorts of creatures and characters
my eyes would go far and wide
and i would disappear into reveries in some far off reality
where we didn’t have bodies or even such distinct personalities
… how can i speak of such things…

back then
i always slept with stuffed animals
i never had teddy bears
but i had some sort of dog thing, and something else and something else
i remember waking up one night from a nightmare
and in the gloam i thought the animals were some huge three-headed monster (like cerebus, two headed dog…)
and ran screaming into my mother’s room
she told me everything was alright, of course
nothing to fear

and i thought about that

it may have been in those years
or shortly after
that i learned how to control my dreams

being followed by some gigantic towering stick-figure monster
chasing me over verdant hills
terrified
i suddenly realized i didn’t need to be experiencing such fear
and stepped back from the whole thing:
it was suddenly just happening on a TV i was watching
i reached forward and changed the channel.

(i just wrote out a long blather, then cut it, here’s the short part i like)

i had reason to be over on York Avenue today
really far east around 60th street
i intended to walk down through the beautiful sunny day to 53rd,
across to get the E to the A home
crossing under the bridge
i was
all of a sudden
on Sutton Place
and there were beautiful old buildings

does anyone know the history of this?

i was a bit mesmerized
thinking of how most of manhattan used to look like that
(and around grammercy park…)

i instantly wanted to know someone who lived in these houses
to go up into them…

how?

maybe post something on craigslist asking?
but my iPhone wasn’t connecting, somehow

i walked down to the bottom (after having explored a few of the parks
at the end of streets)
and saw a triangle park overlooking the FDR and the river
a man sat with his shirt off
i came up to him and sat next to him and said
“what a brilliant idea”
and took mine off as well
i was sure he was gay in an instant
… maybe he lived here?

he lived over between 1st and 2nd avenue
and i quickly forgot to ask him about the history of the area
just commented on his sizeable nipples and how we might enjoy eachother sometime

i was so spaced out from the fasting
i just lay back and enjoyed the sun on my naked torso

i gave him my card
and walked down 53rd

everything is so exciting when i’m fasting
because i can’t have any of it
that mexican food
that indian

the little porn store run by two dykes called “Come Again…”

hmmmm

when i got home
the computer wasn’t here yet
the internet was still down
i was infuriated and made a bunch of phone calls

i got the internet company to reset my modem
and it seems to be working now (i’d done plenty of hard-rests myself)
and i got the cards saying i could pick up the computer tomorrow at
the post office

Phew

i think i’m going cook some congee tomorrow morning too
it’s time to get back to food.

i remember very little from my childhood
and as far as i can remember
nothing from being a baby

i think my parents had it changed as i grew older
but i remember the carpet when i was very young
was a mottled orange/red/brown shag
— it looked like vomit
i noticed once, when i was sick with the flu
that it blended in perfectly

there were plates hanging on the wall
above the toaster
i don’t remember what they were
collectable something

there was dark wood paneling, i think
a large sliding glass/screen door lead to the back yard

a large “master bedroom” for my parents at the back of the house
ours across the hall

ah, i remember one thing
— i hated being in a crib
the cold isolation
the bars
the endless black to stare into
though there was a mobile over it the light would catch
… and i will always remember the car lights driving across the walls and ceiling
(we were close to the road)
but that happened every night
and i’ve always been the sort to lie in the dark a while
before finding sleep

My parents grew up in Michigan: father in (a suburb of) Detroit, mother in Grand Rapids. They met pretty close to 30 (though my mother is older), and decided they should get married… coz they were getting on.
When my mother was pregnant with my brother, they moved to Harrisburg Pennsylvania and lived there for a year. Louis was born there and my mother was quickly pregnant with me. I don’t know the details, but they left PA for Indiana. It’s cheaper and “nicer” and “whiter” i imagine. They bought a little house in a row of houses surrounded by cornfields on a road called “975 E”. Little yards, eight houses. acres and acres of cornfields in all directions.
I was born there at 1:55pm on a Thursday afternoon, June 1st, 1978.
apparently i was jaundiced
maybe i was just olive-skinned?
i was named after my father’s mother’s father’s brother: Domenico Guiseppe Palmozo. . . and one of my mother’s favorite saints.

(back-posted because my internet was down yesterday)

.flickr-photo { }.flickr-yourcomment { }

there is a “beach” in my neighborhood
this is the first time I’ve come out here to lay naked on the rocks

so thick and green
the crashing waves
and planes
and the men walking through the brush..,

in 1978 i was born
undeniable
this day affects me

some say i am a Gemini
some know i was born on the same day as Marilyn

i like the idea of growing
i do my best to work with the energy of changing

years ago
when i started studying astrology
i learned about this thing called “progressions”

in astrology
for every year you are allive
your chart progresses about one day
in the ephemeris

?

June First, 1978
the sun is 10º Gemini (in tropical astrology)
so June Second, 1978
the sun is 11º
and the rest, it moves too, but at different time frames
you can see in an ephemeris…

similarly
when i started studying astrology
i learned about the Saturn Return
which happens, generally, every 28 years
– i always associated that with Becoming a Man (or, rather, grown-up)
more than i ever thought 30 would
But, to be admitted, the number 3 is a bit more powerful, one might say
1 is the most powerful, but the lonliest
2 can be a nightmare, always being a reflection, always being a consort
but 3 is lucky, it’s magical
not just boring and conformist
this working towards the fourth decade

So, i feel i’ve gone through the initiation to become, finally, my own person
though that process, i gather, won’t be complete until i am 33
so they say

more numbers and time games

but my progression is now in sway . . .

in the year 2001
i became “23”
and shaved my entire body
every day
for 23 days
until i was 23
and also, my sun had crossed the threshold, that year, of being in
Cancer instead of Gemini

now i’m 8 years into that
growing into not only my own Father, but Mother too
being able to give myself my own shelter and nourishment
a new project
blesse’d

so this year, my birthday is complete on July 1st
i will have a birthday party then
if you’re reading this
you can come
just comment if you’d like to
and i’ll let you know the details as i know them. . .

my idea, though
is to meet up here near the place that i live
and walk around all the beautiful “forests” of northern Manhattan
then come back to my apartment
and eat
and drink
and talk

on a Tuesday evening. . .

thank you all for being here

.flickr-photo { }.flickr-yourcomment { }

While I’m fasting
all the fat men of NYC
are even more apparent
more alluring
more grotesque
more terrifying

I want them to share
I’m so hungry
I want to eat them
I state at them in wonder and amazement..

… this guy is little!
I’ve seen such giants today
but not in a way to capture them
… so huge …