The incomplete works of AWD

Losing Count

Once upon a time
in a couplet rhyme

there occured no more
until there were four

and then that was nix
until there were six.

Suffice to say seven
made the thing uneven

but then it's made right
when the lines reach eight

and speaking of lines,
nine reaches to ten,

then of course eleven
takes a twelfth to even.

If thirteen were it
fourteen wouldn't fit.

Fifteen said, "oh no,
I've set up sixteen!" though

the pesky "though" seen
above set up seventeen.

Eighteen is plenty.
Nineteen tries for twenty.

Twenty-one is okaaay,
but twenty two no way!

Twenty-three's a must,
but twenty-four's a bust.

Twenty-five still alive.
Twenty-six minus six

Leaves you with twenty.
One more is one and twenty.

Twenty-one? Thirty-one?
Whatever, we're done.

Goodbye to both of you
says thirty-three and thirty-two.

i'm falling in love with blue
i'm falling in love with true
i'm falling in love with the lack of regret
i'm falling in love but it hasn't happened to me yet
i'm falling in love with the wrong kind of life
i'm falling in love with the wrong kind of right
i'm falling in love in with both black and white
i'm falling in love with gray
i'm falling in love with everything you say
i'm falling in love with the pink
i'm falling in love with the morning of the afternoon
i'm falling in love with the evening though it's dying much too soon
i'm falling in love with the next day should it come i'm already in love
i'm falling in love with the only you I know of
I'm falling in love with you.
you fit like a dove around my bar
like a butterfly alight on my star bright shine bright
i'm living a lie and it feels so right
i'm loving alright, i will love you all night
the next day just please be okay
you don't even have to love me back
i love you every chance you get
lest you forget i'm here in the song
sing along with me and soon we'll be free
i love the sky sheltering me
i love the trees and the clouds
and the birds and the bees
making honey for you and me
i falling in love with the song that i heard of
way back in 1992 when I did the soft shoe
on the street corner for you
i think it was to styx or some eighties band
i'm falling in love with you because you are so beau
tiful and i'm full up to my dutiful dick
so what the heck
let's dive into the hide
and get whacked on bubblicious cadillac
from your uncle joe
it's all the way down to your toe
you better reign it in or yo
you'll be in the sack
and nothing will hold you back
until you have a heart attack
just one look at you in the back with a broom
and zoom a zoom zoom
and a boom boom boom
and a little bitty boom

self song

A is for Alright
D is for Delight
A is for Alright
MMM MMM

D is for Delight
E is for Everynight
G is for Goodnight
R is for Really
A is for Alright
F is for Free
F is for Flight

--
Adam DeGraff

(\_(\           /)  /)
(=’ :’)--!*!--(':'=)
(,(”)(”)      (")("),)

John, I Hear You Knocking

For someone with such big ears you certainly do smell of resin.

Don't take it all so publicly. Really, that's a fantastic observation,

but I insist that never before have there been as many unnecessary accidents

as there have been during the revolution in Tuscon. I've countered with abstinence,

yet no one has given me an exerciser for my heart. How can anyone win?

The ride is long. You get more
than you pay for. The
specific vibration of the jah-
waiin pumping on the radio
is kept alive by pumping
on the ergonomic exer-egg,
an ingenious device for leg
to make the music go. Stop
at your own pleasure. When
you get ready to stop
I'll stay up all night. What
about all those suckers go
to sleep early? The cake
will eat the cake and space
and time will collapse. There
was only the you there this night
though every station was tuned
in to the exer-egg pumping
full blast. The sound slows
down to a low scratch of ice.

Hear the swan sing, dying
of the moon. See the loon
rise with the stars, forgotten
the next morning, then sought
again by your next of kin.

Who mocks the sure
in rubber style
of wood indoors,
the panelling a-bling
with cynosure
and capital no
to all but innocence
and obelisks erect,
leaves of Kyger
leave circumstance.

(I almost said recompense.)

What is it about
the move without
a doubt the sieve
of you redacts the count?

Berkson warned me about wit.

Just like he warned Yackulic about the look.

Looks kill.

Look, look is looking!

But what is wit anyway?

And what is there without it?

Shit, we'll always have

the squat and gobble.

We'll always have

feel more and hate.

Now if you'll excuse me

I've got to see a man about a horse.

41

I bit into the cake.
I wrote a message.
I got a message.
I made a book.

I went to the cirque
with nieces in tow
silly little larks
all in a row.

I ate the Mexican.
I do what I can
for all the brothers
and their others.

I read comics
at the club
with some licks
on the strat.

I almost went
into a trap
but was sent
a map

of the senses
by the deuses
ex machina via
phone call from ma

so I went out
dancing alone
in clown pants
(to keep off the dancers

hippy-hammer-time style)
meanwhile busta rhymes
a sexy co-ed
gives kid

a giant hard on
soft body upon
yourself to keep
a Creely creep

into the stance
that becomes water
and soon thereafter
becomes the dance

o, Harley in your motor
cade, cadence and soar,
up the riddle of the road
the born lead the dead.

ha ha, laugh a little
I also bought
the cover shot
of Anselm in Poets

and Writers,
he looked good.
And to think, sirs,
he's going to refine the book

That City Lights will turn
into a gown and churn
out the tunes to the gum
of the glum bum boom.

Keep it up, clover,
buy it under,
sell it over,
leave it for thunder,

leave thunder
for weddings
alight like the summer
despite winter warnings.

Abate and desist
in orderly fashion.
Soon we'll insist
on therapist sessions.

Who has the time
has water is water
and who comes after
is on time every time.

When I got home
I got a text
from the next
door neighbor, some

hot lesbian
named melissa, 3AM,
she told about a sixsome
I told her how tristessa

doesn't like it if it doesn't go
on forever like Berrigan's
mug on the cover of go
lock yourself hooligans!

second cut

41

I bit into the cake.
I wrote a message.
I got a message.
I made a book.

I went to the cirque
with nieces in tow
silly little larks
all in a row.

I ate the Mexican.
I do what I can
for all the brothers
and their others.

I read comics
at the club
with some licks
on the strat.

I almost went
into a trap
but was sent
a map

of the senses
by the deuses
ex machina via
phone call from ma

so I went out
dancing alone
in clown pants
to keep off the dancers

hippy-hammer-time style
meanwhile busta rhymes
a sexy co-ed
gives kid

a giant hard on
soft body upon
yourself to keep
a Creely creep

into the stance
that becomes water
and soon thereafter
becomes the dance

o, Harley in your motor
cade, cadence and soar,
up the riddle of the road
the born lead the dead.

ha ha, laugh a little
I also bought
the cover shot
of Anselm in Poets

and Writers,
he looked good.
And to think, sirs,
he's going to refine the book

That City Lights will turn
into a gown and churn
out the tunes to the gum
of the glum bum boom.

Keep it up, clover,
buy it under,
sell it over,
leave it for thunder,

leave thunder
for weddings
alight like the summer
despite winter warnings.

Abate and desist
in orderly fashion.
Soon we'll insist
on therapist sessions.

Who has the time
has water is water
and who comes after
is on time every time.

When I got home
I got a text
from the next
door neighbor, some

hot lesbian
named melissa, 3AM,
she told about a sixsome
I told her how tristessa

doesn't like it if it doesn't go
on forever like Berrigan's
mug on the cover of go
mock yourself hooligans!

2 MONTHS OLD

Goodbye tail!

Hello lung branches!

Yet Another Poem

I could write a million poems.
Jordan Davis is. That's his thing.
 
I need them to come slower.
Too many and I lose all meaning.

So many to write though, a million at least,
that the only solution is to grow really old.

Yield and fold.

or

Yet Another Poem

I could write a million poems.
Jordan Davis is. That's his thing.
 
I need them to come slower though.
Too many and I lose all meaning.

But there's so many to write, a million at least,
that the only solution is to grow really really old.

Yield and fold.

                               Magic Proof

Do you believe in magic? Not sure? You just need more convincing.

You can prove anything as long as you want to believe.

My proof can be found in Seattle, 1993. I swear this story to be true to the best of my knowledge, though possibly slightly distorted due the vagaries of memory.

I was living in Seattle for a year in 1993, an epic year in Seattle. I'll give you a taste of Seattle in '93.

I was working room service at the chic boutique Alexis Hotel on 4th and Madison, downtown. One evening I took dinner up to Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love. Kurt let me in and went back to pay attention to his daughter, Frances, while I set up the tray. Frances Bean was one year old and the first thing you noticed was her huge eyes. Kurt, like his daughter, was radiantly beautiful. New found fame and glory had given him a golden glow, but he still had sad, kind, almost saintly eyes, and a very sweet manner with his daughter.

Courtney on the other hand was sprawled across her bed gossiping loudly on the phone in the adjacent suite. I had a terrific foreshortened upskirt view of her lying on her back wearing the most sexy/slutty school girl outfit, about 4 sizes small. The babygirl thing was all the rage at the time and of course so was Courtney, all image and and lusty Lady Macbeth-like determination.

You could see at a glance the whole Miltonian story between these two starstruck lovers, the way his demon became her angel, the way her demon destroyed his angel. And you could see the shell shock from all that fire reflected in Frances Bean's wide blinking eyes.

When I went back to the room to pick up the tray there was a needle and a pacifier lying next to the stacked entrees. The juxtaposition of the needle and the pacifier is poignant, especially in retrospect. At the time Kurt Cobain was just breaking out into mainstream with "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and there was no way to know how big this whole thing would get, nor how it would end.

I took the objects in question into the hotel kitchen and told everyone the story.  I asked if anyone wanted the keepsakes. My favorite, a great cook named Chris, put his hand up like a shot. He knew.

But that story doesn't prove anything, except maybe that humans have problems. That story was only just the warm up scene-setter story.

The proof was to come a few days after this encounter with the Cobains. I was in a bar near the U of Dub with my brother and sister-in-law who were visiting from Kansas. There were a lot of raver kids at the bar and a DJ playing house, a genre I would learn to later hate in San Francisco when I had a House DJ roommate who played it all night long. At the time though house music was still pretty interesting.

In the corner of the bar I saw Timothy Leary sitting by himself and listening to the music. Timothy Leary was both a champion of and championed by the early Raver culture, for obvious chemically enhanced reasons. I recognized the great doctor right away having seen him lecture at a metaphysical show a year ago in Spokane. He had such a good time lecturing at the metaphysical show that he went over his two hours and had to be asked off the stage by the coordinator so that the guy who played Starbuck from Battlestar Galactica could give his speech on creative visualization.

Of course I stayed to hear what Starbuck had to say! Among other things I learned from Starbuck, perhaps the most important stemmed fom a self-visualization which lead to an unfinished statue which read at bottom, "Thou wilt be what thou wilt be." I remember wondering if this meant "you will be what you will be, no choice about it" OR "you will be what you will yourself to be, your choice." Having appeared from my deep subconscious imagination the inscription could be interpreted either way. I still haven't figured it out.

So back to Timothy Leary sitting by himself listening to rave music in a bar in Seattle. When this kind of alignment of the stars happens, I feel duty bound, as a writer, to play my part in making the moment memorable.  The odd thing I've found is that celebrity, especially when well deserved, creates a hole in the space/time continuum. If you believe in myth, then you don't want to let a prime opportunity like this go to waste. However, I am always conscious that the thing has to happen naturally, without disturbing the time/space continuum of the actual person playing the star.

I decided to ask Tim a question. I knew it had to be a perfect question; short, funny, to the point, yet open ended. I had my question. I walked over and sat down.

"Hello Dr. Leary, " I said as I shook his hand and introduced myself. "I saw you sitting over here and recognized you. I admire your work very much, so much so that I wondered if you might entertain a question?

"Certainly."

"Can I buy you a drink?"

"Is that your question?"

"Uh, not the question in question, no.

"In that case, certainly."

"What are you drinking?

"Scotch."

I ordered Mr. Leary and myself some scotch. He downed his prior glass and started on the new one.

"What's your question?" Mr. Leary asked.

I looked down and deliberately spoke, "Do you believe in magic?"

I looked up into his eyes. There was a pregnant pause.

He said, "I believe in chaos."

I said, "But isn't chaos just someone's idea of reality?"

He said, "Chaos is made up designer realities."

There was an awkward silence.

Dr. Leary returned to his drink.

I wished him good night and went away to think about his words for a thousand years.