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I guess what I'm realizing is that I'm bad at consistency.
Dick Fancy wanted only this, wanted a place in which to put forth effort with minimal pressure and maximal joy, and yet the pressure seemed to override the joy at some point last week, making Dick Fancy a postless blog. Dick Fancy begs you not to pass judgement quite yet regarding its consistency. It is trying. All it can do is try. It wishes you only the best though, and hopes you wish for it the same. Dick Fancy aims for the best, wishes to ride the waves of bestitude into a brighter future of work and postings and love and pleasure and contentment and friendship and good-tidings and cheer and general benevolence. But, sometimes, good people of the universe, of that crudest of words, 'the blogosphere,' we are beset by our own perceived limits. See, Dick Fancy grew tired of itself. Grew tired of the smallness of itself, and took steps backward, further into the dim light its own resistance.
Dick Fancy, continuing to speak of itself in third person, also wishes to inform you it is on some strong homeopathic cough medicine right now.
Because Dick Fancy has a cough, not because it wants to get high. Just to be clear about it.
There are just these everyday struggles that come from being human and sometimes catching cold/coughs, and so many other things. It is frustrating being laid up in bed, for the third time in a relatively short number of weeks. It is frustrating feeling creatively stagnant.
But we shall all push through. We shall continue to abide our original promise of putting forth work without necessarily worrying on its perceived 'goodness,' or 'rightness,' or inherent value. It is work for the sake of work. For making work, and for delivering it, in whatever state it may find itself, to the good people who are kind enough to look upon it.
That being said, I have for you a mostly un-edited, likely still-to-be-completed poem. I will make no apologies for it other than those implicit in what I just said. No title as of yet.

And if she offered you her body

lord would you take it, though she is not

one of your terrible sons? Though she be

bereft of forehead marking

describing all the ways

she was built to disappoint?

Though she be clear-eyed

careful, too careful

perhaps, and though old men with crushed faces

do not call out her name as they pass through

the gates where she stands, waiting to be led, waiting

for the wood box before her bed to open

of its own volition, beaming

answers through its rice-paper

scroll. How many hours has she chanted

blind to the night, ceramic string of Christmas

lights tonguing the white walls

rainbow for a thing that cannot spring

full-formed out of nothing, hands

outstretched to pull her back to herself or to the self

still learning its parts, summing them

slowly to unsolid answer. Answer

enough, at least, to blurb herself

to strangers at parties. To make them wonder

who made her, at the songs she was sung

as she fell to sleep in her father's

arms, mother, too, singing

close by, off-key.

CAT PIC CAT PIC CAT PIC

Dick Fancy re-enters your life with a short post bearing excellent news: We've received our first cat-pic, courtesy of an exemplary viewer. Below, our humble reward, the fruits of our seemingly fruitless attempts to connect the individual to the world, to make sense of the cosmic trusses pinioned to the sky above our heads, cutting up the sunlight into strange triangles. Yes. You've got it. You've made sense of that tangle of thorns, gentle reader. And now, to reap the benefits of all our hard work:

Thank you, Woody Forrest (sp?) Leslie. You have served your country, and now you may continue resting with that nice-looking cat sprawled across your torso.

The rest of you: take heed. You are still falling dangerously below your potential, far as I can tell. The universe might be finite, and then you'll run out of time, and there will have been no recorded evidence of you interacting with cats. This will be a shame, perhaps a greater shame than any of us actually have the capacity to stomach. Think about it.

Take heed your brother in rightful cat-action. Take heed.

Love,
Dick Fancy

PET-A-CAT MONDAY

That's right. Here at Dick Fancy, we're proud to sponsor PET-A-CAT MONDAY. All you have to do is get out there and make sure you pet at least one cat today. It's much harder to pet a cat than it is a dog, because dogs have parks and leashes and demand walks, whereas cats generally keep indoors unless they're feral. SO, if you don't already possess a cat in your own home, you'll have to do a little groundwork in order to find one you might pet. Don't be creepy about it. Just call up a friend who you know has a cat, and ask if you can come pet it. Or, maybe a way to be less creepy about it is to call up this same friend and not mention the cat at all. Just ask if this friend wants to hang out at their place, and then while you're there you can get in a little cat-petting. Don't make it obvious that this is the only real reason you went over there. Your friend will be offended if you do. If they already read Dick Fancy (and WHO DOESN'T?!!!), they'll probably be on to you. So, proceed with caution. But definitely make sure you pet a cat.  Oh, and if you don't have friends who own cats, you'll probably have to go to the nearest feral-cat hangout with an open can of tuna fish. (If you're in the Brooklyn area, I definitely know of an outdoor lot on Manhattan ave between Driggs and Nassau that seems to be a very hip spot for feral cats to grounge (lounge and grunge.)) Good luck. 

I'd love to see some pics of you petting a cat, so if you're out there and you've got a camera, take a shot and send it to me.

If you don't, I'll be super embarrassed. I understand this is a distinct possibility. However, I enter into this request understanding there exist some inherent risks one must be willing to take for the sake of PET-A-CAT Monday.

Included below is a small passage from a story I'm working on. I don't know yet what will become of this story. There is much to be figured out. Thanks for reading.



And onward....
From "Unpronounceable Towns:"

Sofia crawled in her dreams. She was an adult who could not stand, no matter how hard she tried. Her husband floated in a fish-tank just beyond her reach, but he was alive, and looked remarkably happy there in the water.

WHY DON'T YOU LEAP OUT AND HELP ME, she would sometimes shout to him. She wasn't sure how long it had been like this: she, sprawled and helpless, her husband floating, flippered. WHY DO YOU DO NOTHING? She saw his teeth sparkling against the small waves he made as he flipped and twisted. It was very frustrating to her, to be without full access to her height. She wondered why, wondered what had happened, why everything around her was weirdly blindingly gold-white, why there was no furniture. No one else seemed bothered by it, but, then, there was no one else. There was her husband, the fish, en-tanked. There was her body, mysterious and uncooperative.

She crawled her way to the edge of the tank. It would be too high to climb inside, but, still, she clawed at it, desperate. Her love was inside, her love. He was so, so close. And he was alive—this was the important part. He had not been alive, she'd thought, not that long ago, though time, she knew, had been somehow bent. In what direction, she couldn't say, but he was here. That was what was important, some impressive meddling the universe had taken upon itself. A hand extended through impossible circumstances to save them, to return them to each other, despite the ropes of death. So, he was a fish. So her legs were lead and dragged beneath her, useless, without explanation. This could be overcome—all of it—as long as she could see him, as long as he existed. This was what was important: existing.

He pressed his cheek against the glass, near the bottom, where their bodies could have met if not for the thickness between them. MY LOVE, she cried out. She pressed her lips to the glass, and he in kind. MY LOVE MY LOVE. Her heart was full-up; her legs melted into the whiteness beneath her. He could not speak, or she could not hear him, but his lips moved. His fish-y lips. They'd always been big, the way she preferred lips to be. Womanly lips that bloomed upon his face, announcing his handsomeness. The lips of a fancy model on the face of a fisherman.

Before he was a fish and the world was entirely white, when her legs still worked and when most things made more sense than they did now, they'd wake together, pressed to the sun, the dirt-scent, the smell of horse shit rising almost sweet through the windows and he would run his big model-fish-y lips over her arm, shoulder, the tendons in her neck. Her mother was downstairs, clomping around on the cracked tile floor, stirring things in pots. Fernando and Ignacio were still sleeping, else frantically stunning themselves awake with internet porno or, more than possible, Fernando was at the university library, which he said was properly quiet in order he might study in peace. She'd heard him muttering the name Fermina again and again for the past several months, in the passing dark, when she'd creep downstairs for water or swigs of homemade wine from cloudy glass jugs in the middle of the night. As far as she knew, he had not slept in that long. Fermina, Fermina, like some demented, feverish man upon his deathbed, barely audible, pained.

She understood this now. Her husband, the fisherman, had become what once he hunted. This almost made sense, too, if she thought about it long enough. The hunter becoming its own prey. She prayed some larger thing would not swoop down and attempt to hook him at the mouth, gut him, make him flip wild in its big death-y hands, while she watched. The world was white. What color would his blood be?

His cheek against the glass against her cheek against the glass. This was what was important. He was here. She could be happy this way. She could learn.

POEM THURSDAY! love, DICK FANCY.

First, first, I just need to say that I realize if you happen to stumble upon this blog, or even if you've come here on purpose, it probably seems as though you've stumbled upon a relic of the past. Maybe, like, circa 1990. Blogs have since become pretty complex and spectacular. Lots of bells and whistles. At least a nice-looking banner. I'm not really up on the whole scene, because I'm both lazy and un-savvy when it comes to most forms of technology, but I have visited some blogs myself, and I know what potential they hold.

DICK FANCY wants you to know that it's fine just where it is. Stuck in 1990, which was probably a great year. I was four for most of it, until October, when I turned five, so I don't have too many clear memories of that time, but I'll bet it was probably decent. I guess H.W. Bush was still president, so maybe things weren't as good as they got starting in 1992, when Bill scooted his fine ass in there and dazzled the world with illegal blowjobs and a thriving economy and whatnot, but, anyway. Let's just put DICK FANCY somewhere in the '90-'95 region and stop worrying so much about chasing today's modern (and frankly OBSCENE) technology craze, spiraling out of control even as I type this. It is simply impossible to keep up. Some of us pick a year in our past and choose to remain there, content with what that year offered in certain arenas, like this one. I know it seems like I'm stressing out about about all this, but I'm not. I'm just worried that YOU are stressing out, and I'm trying to eliminate YOUR stress so that my own stress remains at a comfortable level. I had acupuncture today, goddammit, and it was goddamned relaxing and if you do ANYTHING to mess this up for me, I swear. I swear.

Let's get on with it then, shall we? Let's set the scene: it's 1993, Bill Clinton is exceedingly presidential, mainly because he's the president, it's summertime, the air smells of fresh-mowed lawn, the gardener's just put in some new mulch around the plants because they were starting to droop, what with all the heat, your stocks and bonds are all performing beyond expectation (can bonds perform?), and a woman (of your choosing) in an old-fashioned apron has just brought you some home-brewed iced-tea (Moroccan mint? I don't know?)

And now, for you, a newly-writ poem, about pubes:  -->

Pube-rty

Prayed I'd never bleed

because I couldn't figure how

I'd tell my mother—She—

quick to blush. She—

who once hid from me the spider-

tangle of her bush when, by accident,

I wondered into the bathroom, She—

mid-piss. She—squatting

nude upon the toilet. Her pale

skin my pale skin both of us

ashamed for being what we were,

for knowing

too much.

This was when the bible

made sense—mythology providing

context, at least, for the little things

bound to happen when you open doors

without knocking first—not that I ever

combed that doctrine of fables to explain

away gatherings of insect-y

womanhood, the plain awkward sight

of my mother's pubic hair, clotted

beneath her spread palm. Of what it meant

to be plucked from smooth ignorance

sudden, still unripe. Handed an apple

without Newton's law and made to parse out

what happens when it falls.

A POEM, brought to you by DICK FANCY

 Letter to the Future

Peaked and dipped, the crusty

earth—just a punched-in

punk—stumbled into itself in drunk

heaviness. Ribbons of salt

like a letter left to the future:

Dear Someone,

Once, I was thirsty.

Dear You,

Once I had not one drop of water to suck

and then I had too much. Guzzled it

up, fell languid into a bed of myself

because when you are everything, there is nowhere

else to go. My shoulders—bone

spurs, struck rocks, hunched and

painful, lopped by the wicked

sun who, himself, was cast out

of cool dark (the ideal

circumstances for celestial

hunkering) by the moon, soul-

sick of that quick-lash

tongue, passion's stove-

hot fingertips.

The Moon grew sullen, elusive

while the sun roared his complaints:

“I need my feet out while we sleep, the blinds drawn so I might wake with myself in my eyes.”

Talk of narcissism, selfishness. Love

for Love's sake. The Sun

slunk off, door-slamming. Rocks trembled,

mountains erupting in fire, burning

flesh to ash. All the wing-ed

things that might have risen

then burned too.

Dear Someone,

It is impossible

not to be thirsty in the desert. The word alone

recalls fable: mirage: drought.

Men in robes, staffs, Talmudic tablets of rough-hewn

stone. Dry heels skidding endless along open, empty

mouths of streams. Impossible

not to witness your own simple un-cloying aloneness

when staring out the small round window of a plane

into that vast hilly grave, 

girded by water, but without

privilege ever to gulp it.

Dear Someone,

Should ever I put mouth

to clear unsalted stream, I would 

suck the spout dry. In this mirage,

there is no space for self-control. In this mirage,

we are birds and I spit

half of what I've drunk into your leaned-back throat.

Were we to un-change, re-turn—

non-birds—to the drudge of human skin,

I would beg Dear Sweet Mirage

on dusty kneecap

to turn us so again.

And were we to emerge clipped

of wing—some punishment

dolled to the perpetually

dissatisfied—we might

huddle together in some furrow,

shivering ourselves asleep, releasing

unspent anguish with chirp-moans, blood

freezing solid while the moon grew

fat.

(At night, the Moon

tucks the covers

tight beneath the mattress.

(It was this transgression

destroyed all those trees.))

Inspiration culled while sick in bed.

I plan to use DICK FANCY to deposit writing and, potentially, drawing-things that don't have a proper home. Not to say that this home will be proper in any traditional sense, whatever "proper" even means. DICK FANCY will be home to us all. Or, we can hope for as much. All we can do sometimes is hope. Hope until our eyes start shooting rainbows, and I don't aim to disappoint MY PUBLIC. My hapless, admiring public. God, I hope my eyes start shooting rainbows. Wouldn't that be the dreamiest? Or, potentially quite alarming. Let's just wait it out before we decide what some hypothetical ocular rainbow-projection might really feel like.

This one is a few years old, I'm guessing from 2010, when I was living in Baltimore after I'd come home from walking the Camino. It's sort of silly. But discovering it got my dick-brain a little hard, thinking, well, maybe I should start one of these new-fangled blog-things as means to inspire more writing, without the pressure of wondering "what it will become" or "where it will go" or "what I'm doing with my life." Without further ado (adieu?):

OPEN LETTER TO A WOMAN NAMED NANCY WHO I AM NOT AND WHO IS NOT ME:

Dear Nancy,

A man in a baseball cap that wasn't actually a baseball cap but was, more accurately, nondescript headwear with a protrusive bill, mistook me yesterday for you.

I was sipping tea from a ceramic mug at that vegetarian cafe on Charles Street, and he waved as he walked in the door and said, hi Nancy. He was smiling; his teeth were showing. He was thrilled that you were there, believe me; he was clapping his hands together lightly beneath his chin. Is it possible the two of you haven't spoken in some time, though not because of any kind of tiff or lingering sourness between you? Maybe you're second cousins who came up in different parts of the state or country and provided each other much comfort as children and so to see you here, now, at this difficult time in his life, is the one single thing that he needed without realizing he needed it until the moment he saw you? I don't know. I didn't have the heart to tell him I wasn't you.

You're lucky, Nancy. There's someone out there, someone who wears nondescript caps and frequents vegetarian restaurants in Baltimore, who is, really, just out-of-his-mind thrilled about you. That being said, he wouldn't be my first choice of friend, seeing as--with full confidence--he waved at a person who wasn't you at all, as though he just didn't care enough to be discerning. An honest mistake, sure, but can we really call it that? I mean, as adults who've experienced a reasonable amount of social interaction and maintain at least an on-par if not above-average understanding of the workings of humankind, can't we just lift this veil of “uncertainty,” and live in the blaring, albeit devastating, realities of this situation? A person you call your friend, Nancy, a man who wouldn't hesitate for even a second to raise hand in air and call to you across a room full of people doing painfully quiet studying-type things--which leads me to believe the two of you are quite close—has no idea what you look like.

Let me ask you this, Nancy: when the two of you meet at a bar, or at that Indian restaurant on St. Paul that's apparently pretty good, or when he comes over to your place to enjoy a salad you've thrown together last-minute, and only after you've plated the bland thing do you think to yourself, well, why glum it tonight alone, again, with another pale bowl of dewy old lettuce when I can have my good friend/second cousin ________ over? Why, I bet he'll even bring a crusty baguette with him if I mention it, and wouldn't something like crusty baguette be nice to dip into left-over salad dressing? So, well, when he comes over--baguette tucked casually under arm, some hip German-made manbag slung over his other shoulder, and he sits down across from you and touches your elbow in thanks and begins to shovel the stuff past his greasy lips--does he look you in the eye? During any of this? Any of this time? Has he ever looked, I mean really looked, at you? At Nancy, the Woman, the Human Being? Or do his eyes seem to glaze and go bad-TV-signal-wavy at the exact moment you think to really bring up something big—like how you're thinking that you'd like to have a baby in the next three years and you don't actually know why you've selected three years but you had to pick some number and three felt right, or how some days seem to stretch so terrifyingly long and each passing minute serves as a reminder of how you continue to contribute nothing of value to the world or to anyone in it, and this'll bring you back to the baby thing because part of you thinks that if you brought a kid into the world you could just make that your really important thing, but, then, what if your failure is just this permanent, impenetrable feature, like skin, and even if you're shedding parts of it all the time there are new parts, maybe worse or more alarming parts, lurking just beneath? And he just sits there--doesn't he? Is there saliva bubbling at his lips? Little sinews of it, collecting in the corners? Disgusting little pockets of hot spit you'd like to smack clean from his mouth? Is that going on right now?

Nancy, what I'm trying to do here is simple: I'm urging you to reexamine the people whose company you keep. Because I know you've got a power in you that you haven't realized yet, but, oh, when you do, Nancy--Watch Out World! You may laugh now, or maybe you feel a twinge of resentment or displaced maliciousness or something creeping in, thinking that someone like Me has got the nerve to express feelings of great confidence in You. And who am I anyway? You don't know me. But, might I remind you, Nancy: I also don't know you. But the way I see it, someone's got to, someone's got to take those initial steps toward exploring who or what you might be; otherwise, what you'll be left with--what we'll all be left with--is men walking into cafes in nondescript caps waving at anyone at all and thinking they're you, because there will be no You. Not even You will be You. You will have no meaning anymore. Nancy, your Identity is sliding quickly into the sphere of the collective. You're losing yourself, your essential You-ness, and, soon enough, we'll all be infected with this confusion of self, this (may I dub a new term?) “Nancying.” We'll look down at our pale legs in winter and think Nancy. I'm Nancy; of course I've got legs pale as snow. But, we won't really know why, or how, or what it means to be this thing that's been foisted upon us, mysteriously and without warning. This self-nullifying, formless, blank thing.

You'll look at your own face in the mirror, Nancy, and think Nancy-- the word will be there-- but you won't be sure why. You'll think: who is Nancy?

It's a valid question, indeed, Nancy. And we'd all like to know.

Who are you?

Best,
Kate