At computers counting our eggs

a rediscovered excerpt from another 700-page book i forgot i wrote

As you’re going out
I carry bananas home like a football
Marching to the fruit basket hanging in the kitchen of the apartment on 14th Street in San Francisco’s Mission District where I lived from August 2015 to November of 2020, worked in recruiting, dated Jaime, played pickup soccer, ate pho and ice cream, walked alone and took pictures, read books at Dog Eared Books, met the mystic psychic Bret Reichenberger — pupusas, the grimy street, the Incline Gallery,

before I freeze to death
go home and regroup

writing my way to being ready to receive a love that doesn’t suck

untraining myself is more thrilling than what you will schedule me for
i don’t want to do shifts in your circus

too much friction
i won’t go slow
the electricity keeps me remembering the womb
i’m not divorced from the place that can no longer be
i don’t want to live only in this world
i don’t need to live only in this world
i BART or subway in, get my money and leave
my coworkers appreciate my mind and diligence
what can a woman love me for? what a lonely question
what has she been trained to expect? why ask this alone?
has she untrained herself as much as I have? my imagination must have been stupid at this time.

walking each active verb
back to the past from whence it came

rubbing my fingers in a park
let it rush up and scorn the
yellow note “paper”
my father
this is all
about him
and who I
had to be

i still don’t know what i see in pixels

my body has to reanimate the words
i have to decide to keep them or
try again
at saying that to make me
beautiful again
strong
connected
paid
dumb of me to make you hear that sorry
I can’t be smaller and further out of the way
I’m a speed bump
slow down
hear me murmur like a rabbit
as you speed over me
singing my song on the radio

pain is an event
to attend but
not send invitations to
because it’s gone

nowhere to go but in
then up to nod and wink
then down again

i know i’ll come back
here
to you
i have nothing
else to do
everywhere else is
cold

i’m not gonna delete as much
i’m gonna look around more

for love that blew away in the wind
for love that won’t sit still when i want it
for the fact that love is not
what i want

the net of nouns and
verbs
i’m off adjectives for
a while
I never
knew a
thing from
a song from
what you told me

it’s all art
to me and
we are the billions of
stars
asteroids
galaxies
all the nouns we
liked in school

what am I like when I’m not like anything?

what element is not my element
every element is my element
i’m that
periodic
table on
the classroom ceiling
so when you sleep in class
i see you there and
wave

not sure what will happen
not sure how this goes
actually
now that I’m here
I picked up style at the word store like I

sit here and feel the heat of being
I guess

can I etch
any more
page?
does this
still work

count as
work?

fuck man
just more
truth and
beauty
fuck
fuck

oh my god, we were so nervous
when you started out

I’ve been off the grid for
the entire Obama Administration

a very complex alloy

recounting my history in public
because it’s your history too

the medium is keeping the audience with you
sustain it
day to day

sorry I can’t attend your function
I have to worship the gods

we’re all riffing on the shape of a busted compass and a cracked heart leaking kerosene for a lamp that’s dim but bright enough to brush your teeth and get the grease out of your pores

writing it <==> carrying it

tab down
blank space
family I love

when all your downtime is spoken for
when some other human body
that is failing and leaping too
gets entitlement to your
salvation
restriction
co-habitation and co-option
I don’t envy you
Son
Moonlight should be
nice to see
by yourself in
the dark
~

this is from a document I wrote in 2017 I called “At computers counting our eggs”. Like my other Google Docs, anyone with the link can view and comment, and I would love and welcome your reading and thoughts, reflections, commentary or disagreement.

“https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EAVqNKupJRLAni0sY0piO1bIOwMA2X1yLpRvBU4elXQ/edit?tab=t.0