pointless.

rome (& taormina)//two dueling images, filmfictions that prey on me:

1. the perfect murder, the suited man, shaved glass in the omelette. i believe this from alfred hitchcock presents. oh my, good evening.

2. the perfect outlaw, breaks the bottle over the bar and pours the whiskey down his raspy throat and stubbled neck. hoo-wee!, good night.

so, when i bottleopenerless attempt to open my big peroni in the park and the glass top breaks off (a-fucking-gain!), with possible whisper glass tendrils waiting gleaming terribly possibly within, well then what then do i then do?

ey?

istanbul//on the way hand, yes, i absolutely believe in the idea of life as art, of my every action and interaction and view of the world being the great living artwork that i spend my life creating. and thus so long as this piece is given my attention, concentration, my skill and love, my work towards mastery, then i am living the complete life, the life full and worthy. and my artistic endeavors, the silly songs and scattermess writings, are just a small part of this larger more important whole, my life, my god and love and child. this is the way hand, smiling and clear.

the other hand, is, such a raging jealousy everytime i read or see or hear something that ahs me to the core. and i want to do that! i want to do that! i want to do that! gallileo crying in the snow, this hurts so much. oh it does. it does! i want to write a novel, and have a platinum album, and make a series of internet sensation videos that get optioned by hbo. oh the fame and the quality are entangled, i know they are. i do, damn it, i do! oh hell! i do!

still, in istanbul we managed to get into a very posh club (having learned the hard way last time to avoid the nightclubs filled with prostitutes, unordered food {fruit, though, all delicous fruit!} and YTL40 drinks {$28ish}, closer to 100 should you buy one for the finebellied lady), in which we were originally refused entry because we were girlless. girl-less. three drinks and one horrendous turkish eighties cover band later (the slowest version of "blister in the sun" ever, with strange minor thirds in the happy melody. why, why?), we went back, and were unrecognized, and walked through confident and tall...then stopped half way in, but no, no, turkish girls, turkish girls told us to meet them here, young beautiful turkish girls, mira and sonya...here, at carvot, they told us to meet them...no, we dont have their number, they are up there, and we start to walk, and ok! go ahead! had ha! up four, five flights of stairs to the pulsing rooftop party with jamiriquoi (my band will be instantly spellable) videos projected on a screen against dark turkish sky. but thats not the music, the music is pure turkish, tambouras zinging and voices ayayayayayyaaaing over quarter tones triumphant. what a dance, and in the drunken darkness grabbing for a handful of spicy nuts accidentally grabbed a few shells and a butt from an ashtray. oh, terrible, terrible, wonderful craze and this music all around and people sitting raise their hands in the air and i realize i am in the midst of it, in the midst of one of those nights, where everything is interlocked tender. and finally clinches it is much much later on another roof i am brought to woolen warmth by mr bob dylan, oh you sweet you, anachronistic crooning "one more cup of coffee" of all things.

he gets me! he did it! i want to do that, i want to do that.

but on the cab ride home, i was the crooner. we are drunk and speeding and he doesnt speak a lick of english, and we not a lick or turkish, and so we are miming the cruise ship destination to our bedazzled cabbie. i swim airbutterfly! i toot airhorn! i aircast fish! all for him, and hes sir smiling crazy laughing and turns the music up as loud as possible and im drunk and gone and theres of course a doner in my hand. howling at the moon! the cabbie loves it, i love it. we are arting each other supreme.

arting each other supreme, that was the moment, that was the golden moment.

mr. dylan, did you ever do that? i mean, exactly that? precisely that ocombinationo of movement and sound? no, no of course not!
it was a hit, a real charttopper, the kids in my head were dancing smacking their dashboards to it all summer night long.

and so im okay, for today,

(oh but that thirst, that seldom acknowledged desert thirst.)

portifino//the boar is looking at me and breathing. burlap sides expanding. this is not a pig, it is a boar. it is burlap brown and its face horrendous. alien awful. we are staring at each other. staring. i have no idea what animals think like. it looks away, draws a circle in the dirt. rummages in some leaves, finds a wooden disk about the same size as the circle, moves it along with his snout. stares again. there it is. boar. it wants me to know about the circles, thats clear. and the circles rhyme. rhyme. oh yes the world rhymes! i rememeber.
boar, core, door, before.
a beast, a center, a change, a time...will i go like that?
theres more: pore, sore, soar, pour.

mustard makes her cry, the memory of her home mustard premortared makes her cry, and she rolls the r, crrrrry, so you feel it. her eyes black outlined, she draws on her eyes so i can see her seeing me.

the boar is a car with wash me on the windows. i go to pour sweet smelling soap water down its side, dripping into his pores which are golf hole huge when i become little. but my bucket is empty, and both ways are blocked; my bicycle is surrounded by bees, four of them, flying in and out of the frame silently. strange to not hear them, to only hear wind and her crying and the boars words in my head,
more, roar, four, gore.

what is this? what fantasy does this become? if i coax her crying to a lion roar, then may i pass? i dont want gore, no gore in my life.

theres a scratch on my leg.

taormina//cold blazing he is, frostbit boiling as he granites his gaze through the tour bus window, and of course to multiply his frustration the seat is there right at the window pane, and forward or behind the view is so cut, cutcut, and cut like his and unkindest cut with the frustrations of the job, feeling for the first time the bad boss feeling, the knowing of *i am right* over this boss who is not, this silly foolish man over man who does not deserve to be there, and this sole interaction, the previous nights events (a vindictive bass line, a critical comment, a smallizing meeting) pasted crude upon the possible italian beauty around and he is just raw, just dumb with anger and disdain, and all the morsels of the world lose their delight and see him in this state unsated to the land of darknod, sleep dead hate, the sun growling through the glass at just the wrong angle, how can the sun seem so ugly. this is the attitude of the approach, the space in which he approaches, taormina--

land of mcw's praise, holy culture radiant, and i know that i approach this place with the sacred ghosting that so much of this trip has had; for i am not the first fire, here, others have blazed these european paths, and i see these womens ghosts perfuming across the piazzas. god i want this subjective objective to end...but i am he, and they are she, and we twirl together through this space only, time irrelevant as i hop though the town that another woman so lovely so fine young traveled first, and hope i hope this ghostlight will beautify heal me...

and i want to believe that but dont--- that's critical here, i dont believe it, my whole bus drive from messina to taormina, sicily, i am bitter boy and every tune that ipod shuffler unto me is discredited under my headache bitter, and i am not buying it, i am ready for the bad days. some days i hate so much...its no use denying it, this is ahh i am, and they so stupid fill me with such rage and i unbuddhasize myself into such rage, so small my anger, so small a man i am in this mix, oh god you bastard you dave malloy bastard, and i am hate for this boss and this band and this life that makes me work when all i want is song wine and arms around me.

and so: heres the point: im committed to this bad feeing, i know ill have this bad day. and the bus drops us in taormina and the guests ask me silly and there the boring dancer asking me to sudden coffee and i am trapped and ugh my god this world and so own am i, my mind is convinced so low. i travel as a tour escort, pinned, a tattooed gecko on the wall, and i walk amidst tentacles and get out quick, rush ahead to the greek theater and there climb the stairs high up and sit in the bleachers and everyone looks small and pretty down there; and thats a little better.

and this is nice and lovely that i can sit quiet on their stair and the world calm of ease moment, but fundamentally i am still raw ajar boy, grr vinegar man, leave me far away.

thats when nature lady starts it really in. the map has two kinds of paths labelled: "archaeological ruins" and "natural beauty". i go for "natural beauty". which starts out pretty shit, a winding narrow sidewalkless road, killmecars whiz. grr! but, a respite at a cemetery, with the photos on the tombstones, old sicilians gazing blank into eternity, and then back to the road. mmm/grr. mmm, sure. but then: grr. im back to grr. fucking pebble, etc.

but only for a moment, because, hey hey. there. there, there! theres another off limit staircase!! oh, how lovely that my lifes author is working from a consistent symbol pool! this one leading down, down into overgrown green. im wearing pants and sandals, and the grass is dewy wet, so my toes get instant tickle. and this stair is crumbling, whole steps missing, just brown dirt, and the bushes are bigger and bigger and the prickers blocking my path require my careful thumb and forefinger attention. and my wet little toes, and the smells are everywhere, and my god look all around im in italy. im here. im right here right now. oh yes. and then from nowhere an elderly british couple appears, walking up, speaking cheery, and they warn me: wild hens. mmm.

and sure enough, wild hens. and im smiling in spite of myself. once again, my mind seems to have an infinite number of subsections, crisscrossing all dueling for eyesight supremacy. and so nice, for now the grumbler has lost and im healed.

hmm, mmm. thank god for mutable time after all.