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4/26/01-High cliff face descending each meter a hundred thousand years just above the helter skelter scree caves yield early hominid dig footprints by an ancient inland sea creatures similar to yet bizarrely different from our own familiar fauna forms swim walk and slide about the shallows banks and terra firma of that distant nether world age near exploding mountains sunsets vital and rich with color flooding fields of melting glaciers vast turbulent once frozen rivers migrating birds with nowhere safe fall exhausted into the icy ashen ocean mammals leap, flip, and kick away as aurora borealis curtains billow in at mid night immense fiery space rocks hurtle earthward threatening to transform life's luxuriant though fragile family tree...
4/19/01-Late afternoon a little stress at dusk but not so much as to imminently threaten the poet's life, limbs, liberty, or livelihood your child being slowly tortured to death and you must watch but can do nothing the doctors all are very sorry that's real tension everyone dies but not all are able to live a meaningful life Dietrich Bonhoeffer let's keep our perspective do not exaggerate in shadows the dark maroon crayfish slowly walks across the tan sand in clear as crystal shallow creek waters with fresh carapace its colors so new and vivid its long sensitive antennae fully extended almost quivering stalking inattentive gray and white minnows...
4/17/01-In great aste an a soarin exalted verve hi e the wey to er wid er long lush valley moist n ready for im to the ilt e plied is plumb firm n sturdy lanced in wee yon lass n she as eager wi juicy thirst n swollen lips grasped n pulled im in an fast squeezed at length to last drops is goodness in er oh swee jesus swee jesus oh swee jesus oh...
4/11/01-Still standing even taking steps every lurching once in a while the punishment the body can take and remain in a semblance of living amazing but something seems to be wrong looking in the glass surely someone else's image missing part of his head half his face one eye you think you cannot take one bloody thing more yet there's always one extra thing they throw at you been up this damned mountain so many times rolling this rock that keeps rolling back down what the hey my part to play in the county locked ward the doctor asked why I'd done it guess I don't like myself too well I said my arms thrashing hugged to me in frantic spasms clenching tensing tightening barely releasing relaxing then tightening again why are you doing that she said I don't know I said they just keep doing that themselves when I was drawing see first I started a suicide note with a formal title and everything the final thoughts of Phil Wagner after I'd taken the whole bottle of pills why not I thought then the lines I was writing began to run together like a room full of snakes they'd seemed to come alive and became drawings then my left hand was holding the pencil and making the drawings and I was just watching not knowing what it would draw next it drew beautiful bodies sexy dishes old men arthritic and ulcerated with horrible teeth and malevolent satanic faces innocent babies sweet animals nuclear blasts cities in flames scores hundreds of bodies to represent billions the third world war the end of everything absolute nihilism no meaning no matter no energy no notion nothing but out of the entropy a bright light an all-seeing eye and everything utterly absolutely lovely suddenly I wanted to live not die and called 911 this hand was out of control but it showed me why I must not cease today then it began to shake and jerk like that and it spread to the other I don't know why they put me in a room with pads on the walls but ironically enough left a steam heating cancellation register right by the barred window if I'd been so inclined I could have bashed my head in on that hard metal frame no blame what do they know the machine was necessary it blots out all bad thoughts and death wishes just like a cancellation machine in the post office cancels stamps you see the laughing fiendishly smiling conspiratorial ones talking about me over there think I can't hear he must have taken LSD the police officer was saying into his radio arm no I'm high on the real thing as they said I got out by wedging cancelled stamps between the wood frame and the wired glass pane they use to look in to see if you're still there or if you've been cancelled yet I needed to pee like crazy ha ha I whispered it knowing the bugs would pick up each word like the crashing of cymbals the blast of a heavenly trumpet they say there were electric shocks I cannot recall I do remember the metal mirrors no glass lest I smash it and use the shards to get at my living coursing red veins I remember trying to explain to the nurses about my mouth being too dry and shouldn't I have a drink perhaps one phone call but every time I'd get close a big wrestler looking fellow would shove me back take him to the bathroom they told him he shoved me there before him I threw up he made me take a bath but stayed there you mustn't stare his hair was silver sparkly he had a snake growing out of one nostril I finally got my call my friends came by except later I learned they really hadn't no one came at all for four days I had a pile of drawings by then a cute little candy striper volunteer all full of condescending fear tried to talk with me in a friendly way but she did not know she could not see pretty faces like hers would in a moment be blown away she did not see her own cesspool hidden thoughts she lived on the surface a shallow day tripper yeah I drew her picture and she liked it a lot but later while I was taking a nap someone took the picture and turned it into a hideous beastly old hag of a witch with a death's head skull showing though who would do that finally my friends did come I stayed with them in the Berkeley Hills till the running pictures became still once more and I could sleep alone without seeing into other peoples bodies and brains without knowing the meaning of everything all the time...
4/2/01-Natural gas leak scare pepper's raw ears allergic cold sore fever blister virus canker herpes aids ulceration irritation benedictions from our closest relations gonna re ha post coital drip click click of keys bits bytes collision diplomacy lets all go on the fright train frustration inter fear on a shovel full of rich pure compost sequestered rage creation compulsion west nile flagellate soup serpent consume coat mushroom doom air bladder some seals dive over a mile at a time for their deep sea bottom fishing come all the way up for a quick breath of air and repeat the trip over and over twenty-four hours a day for weeks and months at a time sleeping it is thought only briefly now and then perhaps while rising toward that far distant surface humans too many think were once aquatic but did not complete the transition before some unguessed shift in nature forced us back inland else we too might be creatures of the sea when we dream of mermaids and mermen are we perhaps remembering what might have been...
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