the elephant is no longer in the room

malcom mooney is walking to work

malcom motherfucking mooney is walking to work

the allan b. locke school

the children are all out   side

the children are on the out   side

and the in   side

of the allan b. locke school

and they don't know

      no they don't know

they don't know malcommotherfuckingmooney like i know malcommotherfuckingmooney

and he is walking in the door

he looks typical

                                                               i'll say that again

he looks typical

         raincoat

      hat

   slim

      cropped hair

no longer wild and driven batshit crazy by the stylish but somehow still german

      with repetitious rhythms and

twelve years since ‘below this level there is none’ 

if that was 1998 and i live in buffalo now

then i don't live in atlanta no more and

      the elephant is no longer in the room

                                                                  most days

*art by Malcom Mooney

from 'Three Corner Symphony'

when lonely got me thinking i'd do anything to be without it

same story on the delay

        some things just take time

i'm happy you'll doctor up

               you can hear the dynamics

things are worse off than i thought back with since

      working know how to relate to    life's rich pageant

the twenty four will be difficult for a sentimentalist such as myself

good grades relish the role as curve destroyer

i am not ready to leave buffalo  

                  but the off chance you and bryan

considering talk and the south

excellent viewpoint both

    thoughtful   and reflective

add experience

  understand addiction

              be invaluable

in what is certain

            an expanding galaxy 

  isn’t easy to do

killing in singapore loan debt

      and maybe more

to get out from under the things they unfurl

the decidedly unreligious make it easy

       to forget the fervor that those beliefs can stir

             in zealots 

in conversation about networking with a fellow

    felt good until he muttered

‘all that work is well and good but it'll get you nowhere

unless you're with the network i'm with 

                     G*O*D

is the only thing i'll ever need

                to get exactly what i want’

but what if what i want

                             is fleeting
and there are so many competing
                    all i really feel like doing    is eating

                be there in about twelve minutes

stunned to silence 

                    and suddenly hungry

but what actually happened was that tipping point you see in people when they ask you to explain something   then realize it is more complicated than they’d like it to be and you see the words approaching their metaphoric ‘fill’ line  the eyes glaze forward with laziness  sloth and what spits out is derision for understanding anything that can’t be abbreviated

if it's difficult

      you quit

that’s the long and the short of it   then    
                                      you get something to eat

maybe we did that too           we don't recall  the how long of it all

                           singer has been taken advantage of  or   
                     maybe   she just called her own shot

                                                        i just hope she survives it

as i survived the cult of domesticity

              upon my move across the country’s height 
                                                                           not its width

when lonely got me thinking i'd do anything to be without it

Brion Gysin