DRUGS, HARDWARE, BARBER, VIDEO

Sunday night voicemail: I’ve been humbled by circumstances.
Need some advice, seeming not crumbled by circumstances.

If you can find it in your heart to lend it, I would be
much appreciative: now uncoupled by circumstances.

Hadn’t heard from you in a long time. Crazy, you’d kicked me
real bad. Didn’t breathe you’d been sickled by circumstances.

Days before, splayed on the floor of an old church, your girlfriend,
your life work, your veneer unscumbled by circumstances.

You didn’t say Theresa’s dead. Didn’t say In trouble.
Just a lone cell phone hello, downscaled by circumstances.

Collected, praised, but pursued (you knew) by Scientologists
and CIA spooks, you felt spanceled by circumstances.

Paranoia. Conspiracy. How ’merican! A blog
behind every stinkin’ bush. Blackballed by circumstances.

Born in OK, your hero Ruscha’s boyhood stomping grounds,
you came to Venice canals, inhaled by circumstances.

When you finally met him at the Hammer, your downcast eyes
could barely look—you shook—so fondled by circumstances.

Romance with liquids. Romance with perfumed keeling mental
states. Sick, sick, to have your self misspelled by circumstances.

Your daddy died a suicide. Mine too. We knew. Advice?
I would have said Don’t go swim sozzled by circumstances.

Would’ve, could’ve: hell. If Not For You. Ambition made her
look pretty ugly, bombshell pigtailed by circumstances.

She left you and you survived. Survived for days and days, but
you could not attend her end, shriveled by circumstances.

Tuesday night, walking into Altman’s Long Goodbye ocean,
your witty death and life, subtitled by circumstances.