I am in Kansas City

I am in Kansas City. Kansas City is a place. A long drawn-out kind of place with no purpose to me. It breeds a hatred of unrestrained ventures. This place! This place collapses my comforted spirit. I am no Lewis and Clark. I do not wish to find new corridors to new ideas. Give me my solitude, in a known idea, about a large and known city. Let me walk with a well rehearsed map, traversing its signs, along numbered streets, in search of a deeply referenced corner store, or dilapidated theatre, the stage collapsing under the weight of decade or more players. (I will have purpose then, touch a cleft here, a chip there, the known will be turned anew.) Let me visit these known places, huddled massively together, claustrophobically so. There, will raise in me a new spirit, seeking and touching things not known. I will be shocked into a sense of foreboding and immense pleasure—it will be undesirable among the adventurer, the visionary, as well as the go-between.

they talk of love . . .

They talk of love. They talk of death. To him, both are the same. Not as a suggestion—more like Sansara—for transformation, moving to the next level, or dying to a younger, more uncertain idea bred in his youth. She burns incense; it moves on air, for their souls' craving rumination. They make love in youth.
- - -
It is only the dead that seem exempt from love.

Just a thought.

There will be a day when we reminisce:
We were artists, wearing black
Creating originals, creating anew, even stylishly so.
We will pause for our probable glory
Between the licking of chicken juice from fingers; and think,
“We are the new Gogol and Satre!”
Then one of us will say something psuedo-profound,
Perhaps he will begin to choke and maybe die,
the other will be too afraid, too egocentric to give a pat on the back.
--Another pseudo-artist will be buried in an unpublished grave.

It was far more important to wear Banana Republic,
than to write about it.

Sometimes, there is Creation.

Sometimes, while he is still young, a boy moves away from himself. Sometimes a girl makes no sense to him. At others times she does. Usually it is when he is hard. He thinks about the first girl. He thinks about how, “I fit here, in her, and she moves, then I move. This is love.”
- - -
Sometimes, when he becomes older, the boy moves away from a God. Sometimes a woman makes no sense. At other times, she does. Usually it is when he is inside her, expansive, yet, comfortable; expansive like the universe or even certain planets, comfortable like a human under a warm blanket. He thinks about this woman, the first he has ever loved. He thinks about how, “I form a universe, with her, with me. And she loves, then I love; and this is Creation.”

He Dreams of Women Who Read Calvino. --Pt. II

Wake from your sleep, my wishful little Italian boy. -He does not want to give up the dream of love.
- - -
He reads. He dresses sharply. He crosses his legs to the right; he crosses his legs at the “right” angle. He sips his tea, not coffee. He reads Calvino, not Miller. He dreams that he is a “hypocrite.” “Opportunist?”
He is at work and thinks of the girl, on the train, who reads “Ti Con Zero.” He thinks of a different girl, on the elevator, holding “Primal Che du Dica,” to her longing, false, little heart. She is sleepy, dreaming of a man who reads Calvino. Which to choose? He is Italian, and this is not the Invisible City, in which she lives. This is Chicago. And how to choose?

She Dreams of Men Who Read Calvino. --Pt. I

This is about a girl, who reads Calvino, who dreams of her perfect man. How does she mourn at night? Does she rest uneasy, quietly deciding that she does indeed know him? No, she holds her yearnings in her soft delicate mouth. And upon wakening, she is held captive by the men, men, who like her, read Calvino. Her memories of loose dreams torture her through the day. --Maybe, he smiles at her on the Brown El’ while a copy of “Mr. Palomar” is held in his backpack. Perhaps he brushes, fragrantly, out of the elevator having just finished “Invisible Cities.”--
Each time she reaches, she prospers at knowing her man. Each time she declines, she submits to defeat. But each night, she lies down with solemnity, (For is solemnity not the way we humans worship or have our visions?), and she sobs at knowing his presence, she sobs to grasp his unknowable face.
- - -
It is disbelief that keeps us here on this wanting earth and not living our waking dreams.
- - -
We touch and we see faces. Belief is not enough. We are enamored by our features—our lips rather to kiss than speak. Our minds rather to forge the city than to explore, to seek a man, at a café, gently reading Calvino, sitting politely and somewhat apologetic. He is waiting for the girl with the solemn dreams to speak to him.

Blue Baby (a novel excerpt)

God created life.
---
I wished I had been born blue. Not blue, as in heartrending or permeating sadness, for I know that was already the case, just as I know any fact of life: this world can be a constant wheezing breath, a minute by minute movement, carrying on in an airy dance of elation toward our death. No, I’m talking the medical term, as in blue baby, as in born not breathing. Medically speaking, “blue babies” are born with a heart defect that causes the veins to pool the blood, which gives the appearance of blue skin instead of the pink skin of a healthy baby. This is how I wished my life had started, for I imagine after my miracle resuscitation there would’ve been a new appreciation of life for my infant self. This would not be merely because I was born blue, as in sad; rather, because this moment in my parent’s life would have been blessed in festive feelings -a sort of wild gesture to God. There would have been great exclamation, the kind of exclamations that are revealed in the Old Testament.
---
That would have been nice.

there is something exact . . .

There is something exact in a moment before a wreck. Across the street, the way the paint on the shutters of a house peel away, much like the way you are peeled away from under a dashboard. Conceivably, you notice the concrete staircase, how it is crooked, cracked, crumbling; as you are yourself, lying there, a cracked and collapsed soul in a confused car. And you want to laugh; because it is all so very fantastic that you could find yourself, lying in abandoned pain, and notice the neglect of someone’s house, yet not your own “dwelling.” This is called disorder —the sad disrepair of your own judgment.

it starts with life and moves to memory

It starts with a life and moves to memory. The hollow point in your stomach is too much to relive with different expectations. The surgery of the mind is that kind of surgery; it ends in false memories, it ends when you find yourself on the floor, in your underwear, in a blank space called your mind. There, in your most vulnerable state is your father staring at you as you plea for a distant memory. (He seemed fine before he became your father, maybe far-flung and invincible, unlike you.) And then you settle. You settle too much, like sediment settles when the ocean draws back --drawn down in bubbles until your recollections are too deep to fathom. This all seems contrary to you now, as if, when you were a small child you considered golden thoughts in a golden future. Were these thoughts away from your father, possibly with a friend, somewherere in secret? Were they near him, maybe lying on his chest, listening to his strong heart? It is hard to believe that you could be here, now, alone and naked, and soft in the tummy in this blank space without father. --The tragedy of this world is that I lie down in forgetful sadness