Like Hogan with his golf, he is always practicing. 
Sometimes he practices so hard his hands bleed which makes
for messy keyboards, computer failure.
This year he has bought two new machines
and taken to wearing latex
in the hours of his writing.
With this effective waterproof barrier
his words come more easily.
Interviewed by his company’s in-house news organ, Wilson
tells them there is not enough daylight in a day to
practice all the words you ought to be practicing.
Thank God for electric light, the editor says. 

I wake up in the wrong womb:
cat vomit or perhaps it is my own.
This movement backward,
what misplaced exaltation—
and too much champagne at Chaya Venice with an ingénue half
my age.
When I was half my age, a taxi brought me to a film premier
where paparazzi rushed the door.  In the white light of
all their strobing, I believed I saw the face of God.
Then someone shouted, He’s no one.
Now I feed the cats and wait until it’s light.
While my tea is steeping I rake the litter box restoring
symmetry in the sweeping of my tool, I would add rocks
and a few perennials but the cats disdain the
decoration: they want to pose in peace.
This is sad.
The Beloved is an actress shooting out of town.
The Beloved was once an ingenue.
Our faces melt with age and though I hide mine under a beard
hers must go bare.
How does an actress name herself, take off her clothes so
the head shot features skin?
Now producers look past her when she walks into a room,
cameras point their lenses elsewhere.
                     
When the Beloved returns
she will signal, edging closer to the bedroom door.
Although she doesn’t want them, I hope to give her sons.
I decide to call in sick,
decide to lie back down.
Tomorrow, when the Beloved returns, we will eat vegetables
grown by the deaf and hand out money to the homeless,
we will give up meat and drink holy water purchased at
the store, take our fruits organic, then have to beg
for bread.
Hallelujah.

I have flounder tonight,
think trout tomorrow,
tuna on the weekend.
It was fish that sent me to my parents, overhearing
conversations about the true nature of love.
Still I wanted to fall in love,
love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, until the
word stopped making sense.
Instead I fell down the stairs.
Tripped, I’m sure.
Years later I learn the pains are much the same.
I have a tendency to stumble
while talking to a woman.
Every long bone has been broken twice.
Their words make me tingle.
I saved all the casts.
On rainy days my ribs grow hot and I suppress the urge to
rip them from my chest.
Cher had her floating rib removed as did Bo Derek.
This is why I avoid Seattle and flee to drier climates at
the first forecasts of rain.
Strangely, I am unaffected by snow although in the higher
elevations my interior tissues swell and I am prone to
an endless bleeding of the nose.
I have lived at sea level all my life within sight of the
ocean.
Safety in the swells.
I can’t imagine life under a bridge with all my world’s
possessions tied up in a sack.
Once I pretended I ended up in North Carolina in a monk’s
cloister learning how to write.
The woods encroached and there was too much nature.
My feet hung over the bed,
and that gruel they served us daily began to green.
Surely there is a story here, though
this is not the necessary.
Beyond the scattered words I offer throughout the day at
work, I am alone for hours with the door closed
breathing artificial air.
I am earning. Something.
Once I imagined myself a hockey goalie
unable to find the net,
a fisherman without hooks who calls out to his fish.
How Zen are we this morning?
When I die, I want no trace of me to linger. 
Cross out all references to my name.
I want my body burned and then my ashes burned again.
Immolate my papers.

          2.
Without the lights on, at what angles do bodies collide?
In this equation, when a train leaves Chicago on Wednesday
at 3:24 heading due South and another train leaves
Topeka the day before will they ever meet? 
I have forgotten to factor in the speeds.
Don’t worry—I was protected.

          3.
This morning another natural disaster of suspicious origin: 
no milk.
Yesterday, a breakdown in juice communication.
I believe we are holding out from going to the store. 
Without paper products or soap, things could get edgy around
here.

         4.
When I met her she was an actress on a cable access show and
I was the second grip. I had to stay out of her way.
She looked lovely with a scrim shading her face.
But now on the sudden morning of January, when we fear the
presence of El Niño and are sure we’re going to drown,
she is groggy and the backs of her arms are sagging.

          5.
I have forgotten the taboo of intercourse with strangers, on
eating and drinking, on showing the face, on quitting
the house, on leaving food over. 
Iron is taboo. Blood is taboo. Sharp weapons are taboo.
Spittle is taboo.  Knots and rings are taboo.
To speak the name of any god is to invite the failure of
crops. 
At my company we do not mention the chairman
except as Himself.

          6.
Remodelling doesn’t change
the color of my rugs.
Dust flies
when the Beloved slams the door.

          7.
Last month I stopped going out.
This month I unplug the phone,
end my newspaper subscriptions
toss all magazines into the trash, unread.
I cut the phone cord and break the television’s screen.
Now at work to get past language,
I trip the breakers, still the radio, turn out the lights.
At last, isolation. From outside, I appear to be a man lost
in thought.