Author: thomasdanielvalls

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Maybe in undertow, I’ll find your shape,
From coral hollows, learn escape.
Through cosmic maps where tides collide,
Find hymned frequencies we define.

In the haze of this forgotten place,
Let me find your friendly face.
Your silence draws topographies,
And our echoes, new mythologies.

‘Cause we’re crest-lines, fading light,
Whispered promise, fatal flight.
Forever sun, my haven in the night,
Longing still, give me fight.

The distance wears your name,
It stokes a longing flame.
Once unburdened by the bourbon—now,
A love song, wild, untamed.
Maimed then tamed, my strings remain,
Burn me with your sweet refrain.

Drift me down where silence hums,
Through wrecks of all we’ve come undone.
Stars dissolve beneath the foam—
Your every light leads me home.

The distance wears your name,
It stokes the longing flame.
Once unanchored by the ocean—now,
I’m clinging to your frame.
Maimed then tamed, some strings remain,
Burning through divine refrain.




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I’ve missed the comfort of my worlds, at home, 
Alone, 
even when the nighttime beckoned me towards the city. 

I’ve missed the cleansed stillness of silence, 
even on the afternoons I knew Dad was gonna bail on one of our Tuesdays. 

Warm baths and warmer tea, bodega treasures. 
When walking around the Village knew no things of the American Spirit, when, 
the mind would tire and I would retire back into the work; 
the makings of my worlds with words – 

the comfort of an embrace
like no other or the one I was denied; 
the absence of which as of late, I’ve tried to fill through hangover. 

Gotta try again, like trying for the first time; 
liberate the lungs and go Burke Williams on the liver – 
Till all of me billows with Sundays at the beach and petaled cyclones of cherry blossom,
Till the wind blows through and flies me to the comfort of my worlds, 
In my room, at home alone. 

Even when the nighttime beckons me to repeat yesterday.

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Went East from the West
looking for some respite from the true,
kissing North of Winslow 
with no relief of recess,

Save the buzzing void of Heat and 
Record scratch of gravel,
the stillness and the 
breathing wind; roughed lungs and mourning doves,
a sniffle. 

As alone as the locomotive loud,
that drained knowing the city’s made me tired as I wonder
why I ever go back. 

And I know the answer, I know it’s for love,
not the love I finally admit I have but a love
for that basin, its cigarettes and coyote hills,
loudest when it’s at its quietest,
yearning to be heard as it spits you out; 

A love something paternal for a place that’s been a proving ground
for someone still there; long gone. 

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If you try hard enough, helicopters can remind you of the ocean. Especially when they’re circling over you. The humming of its proximity the low rumbling of the Pacific. It’s approach, waves crashing. And as it continues on, the fizzing retreat of the surge, from shore, pulled back into the sea. 

No matter how hard you try, helicopters remind you of home. They sound the way the ocean sounds made up the wind. Even from the street where I used to live. One, perfect little street. Buckeyes and Douglas firs; silhouettes of palms stalking you from afar, hiding in the forever blanket of Maritime overcast. And June, season of the white jasmine. The town perfume. Potholes, and. Old cars, small jobs, easy people with easy prospects, just trying to live. ‘Trying.’ With said ‘small’ ‘jobs.’ And you grow up, realize the crowdedness on the main drag, on the weekends, fancy people with fancy cars, when you’re younger you imagine the rich people in town are just hiding away until the weekend comes and now that it’s here, they’re ready for fun, but then, you get older and land a gig at a coffee slash reused, paperback feminist bookshop, and they all start flooding in asking for the vegan butterscotch – cookies – and you, you let them ask you questions about where you live and how you ‘like it out there,’ and then you begin to realize that maybe, these people aren’t even from your town at all, and that, maybe your town never had any rich people to begin with. 

And that’s when they talk about visiting from LA, you know, ‘just a little R and R,’ and sure, makes sense they’re city folk; they’ve all got Amexes and dressed like they’re – dress like a stereotypical houseless person would dress (although I’m not one to speculate, not really on the outside, at least). Everything’s distressed if they come from money, looking ugly and bored – even with themselves – unless they happened to find their riches in that city, for the first time in their entire families lineage. Then they dress in their polos and chinos, groomed hair and – carry – an utmost fascination with themselves for they worked towards the ability to not only find others and other things fascinating, but to go meet those things for themselves. Again, sure, you imagine that’s what comes out of this city, and, for the most part I think I’m right – although I couldn’t tell you what the world out there looks like, or dressed like South of the 10. I never fascinated myself with that part of town. I don’t think I can be hated for not wanting to. Tee shirts probably. Sunday best? Blue collar looking to go White. Black and Brown looking to go White, too. Maybe not looking to go anywhere at all, but. I think you always hope for different people to suddenly make up all the people you already know. But the folks who came from nothing, became something? With their pretty clothes? Their emblems of right choice? I thought I could be one of those people, too.

And so you sit with yourself. On the porch on your perfect street, of the perfect little home you and your brother began renting with your dead father’s money; no word from mom. And your brother’s beginning to get mixed up, but he’s found a woman who makes him happy, sort of, but in thinking he’s all you got, him and that house, you decide – FUCK reused, paperback feminist books AND their bookshops – FUCK – fascinating over fascinators looking at you, tapping on the glass at the zoo – FUCK – the white jasmine and the shore and the air that seeps through even polyester. You look at the moon and you sit on your porch and remind yourself or convince yourself that you are worth more than whatever she made you believe; or what your brother suggests at times, what we have been reduced to. And so? I moved to LA. And I got a job working for Alamo Car Rental. Close to the runways of Burbank, the thoughts of travel were a song. I would build a world and promise of myself, capable of returning to see my brother whenever he needed me. Or whenever I had decided I wanted to see him. I would – read, and write – something, join the forces for good, neighborhood council, the People’s council, ACLU, Democrats Now, the food shelter, the regular shelters, and the shelters that give out all those identical tents seemingly for the houseless and campus protestors? I would make – a name – for myself by doing good for others, offering aid and offering Camrys, speaking up for what was right and shouting down what I disagreed with. Soon? I would make it to the big leagues, something at the mayor’s office or some other office oversaw by a, preferably, brown or black person of color who climbed the ranks through the system and has never at all ever once done something corrupt. I would be, their knight – I know coffee and books, compelling ones – I know the lay of the land, the people, the people who gawk, the people who look at me – the same way they do a person on the streets! I would soar, high and above my street of fir and buckeye and white jasmine and my brother’s BITCH girlfriend Lily Rose, I would write an autobiography of my work serving the disenfranchised while also noting my own disenfranchisement, my OWN – BITCH mother – and then soon I would have a service clinic for all women and women-identifying convicts and would liberate ALL of us! 

The dreams get bigger the more the city holds you down, begs you to beg yourself not to go. My brother’s getting into deeper trouble and I could see a world for myself where I surrender the desire of fascination and retrieve whatever world of family I have left. At Alamo, you’re giving out better cars than the one you drive. And In Los Angeles, you’re always putting out for those who don’t need a single thing. This garden ledge, my porch back home. The strangers, the fascinators, all of whom I hope to get bored by, and inspired to, soon, one day go home. It’s better than this shit. Living off sloppy seconds, the second halves of your lunches out of Popeye’s, 7-11. Coming home to cheap wine, a dirty roommate, a neighbor ingratiated with himself, and a Moon seen better through a fog. In Los Angeles, you only get to leave once something about it spits you out. And if you try hard enough, maybe something finally will. I sort of hope it does. I sometimes think I’m not cut out for dreaming as a living. 

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I remember Heaven when you held me
at the middle of the bridge and
showed me where the river made its bend,
after the Pier K Dock and at the Wallabout Bay, 
some time in Autumn when the Sun went Crimson into Marigold before the Mauve when your stubble grazed my neck;
some single moment of some single place maybe you didn’t know I’d still keep tonight,
with the Vincent Thomas thirty miles away
and your embrace sometime a decade ago.

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                                    TREVOR

Years ago, I think I told you this, but two guys. ‘Men.’ You know, got me where they wanted me. I think the one guy had an aquarium in his bedroom, even though his bedroom was carpeted? Choices, I guess. And I wasn’t exactly as loose as they’d hoped I’d be according to the package details of whatever they bought off their guy for me to feed, and so, fed me a bit of crystal, got me loose as I tried to figure out where I was, and. They didn’t even wait until I was dressed to kick me out of the house. Got all sorts of things from them, a couple of them permanent. The kinda permanent you can get when they rip you loose. Guess it’s fine, these days, but. Imagine if it had happened in the 70s. 80s. You know? I do. Anyway. Weeks later, began having this dream. Of this – entity. Long and sinewy, made of static, human clay and aluminum as if the Dark had molded it itself. Egg-shaped head with sorta indents where the eyes ought to be and endless arms and endless fingers. Looming outside my window and just looking in. Looking in for eternity as I looked at it for eternity until the shadow static sifted and in the corner of my room the growing dark turned into It. And a corner closer to me metastasized of that same Memory, Grimace, and my marrow turned to boiling ice, paralyzing. As I drew my blanket closer to my eyes, I’m unable to look away, until it emerged from the closest corner of my mind and stood at the foot of my bed, just standing, staring still, blanket now over my eyes as I see the shadow of this Shadow now slowly, surely, looming, leaning over me, its endless legs firmly in place, just it’s endless torso tilted over 90 degrees right over me and I feel as though I have no choice but to see and so I lower, and there it is just – inches from my face, God, and – I try – to scream, God I try as hard as I can but nothing’s coming out and it’s just looking at me, not even mocking, not even curious, I don’t know what it wants but somehow I know I need to know what IT is, what it was, forever until morning ultimately came after all of its endlessness. For months, every night It would return to me and I would scream in silence, cry without tears, unable to make a single movement, unable to make a single sound, produce a single droplet of moisture. Until one night of its endlessness, I decided I wouldn’t scream. I would not try to wake up, I would not try to hide or shy away from its non-faced face, and it lingered over me in my safest space and I simply looked back at it. Endlessly I looked, and began to understand, as the scar of my heart began to break open once again and embraced all that leaned on top of me. And I looked through the non-eyes of a most singular, isolated, isolation. I had to understand that I was alone. At least just once, at least, just with – everything that came out of that room with the aquarium. How this was to be my Alone. How we all got it, but all got it differently which practically means, even in a collective, you know, it’s still just Us, with It. And then I never had the dream again. It never returned. I think maybe because I allowed it to come live inside. Better that, maybe, than the alternative. I never wanted to see that face again, outside of that dream. So I had to hold. I had to accept It.

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of holding you inside of you
and offering myself the glory of liberation –
the freedom of bliss, a physical love
the embrace over weeping
may be a thing paternal but also a latching belonging,
to squeeze and not to thrust
to clasp but not to choke;
Release,
the most glorious of omnipotent offerings,
beyond pain and anguish for in the shadows of all failure comes
the giving of pleasure,
a world fulfilled and pain gone extinguished –
no longer tears but the trembles of frailty
atop crisp sheets,
all of life so suddenly alive,
Life, the All of it suddenly so clear.

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We sit with sandwiches and talk about the cheese
or the way things used to be, old homes, the weather
and the city or how the trees give us oxygen
but not enough for us to breathe 
and try the re-try of ditching the yesteryear to
return to promise of whatever’s left
before the silence finally consumes 
and we become living relics
just nods and ‘Sure’s’ and Yeahs
and Yeah and
all there’s to say is that we tried and failed
Say-nothings into do-nothings 
Father-son’s into guys and dudes
Brother-bro’s into men
Mothers-Children into wanderers lone and 
longing; lost resigned.

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I miss Katherine from the Quarter
That night above Street Chartres where she’s
flinging cigarettes from the balcony
for the bums and bros and biker boys below and she’s
slinging sweat until the toss of her hair
it
slows
like syrup against the railing, you know the kind,
the
syrup with some Southern Drawl, drawling to evaporation and she
talks about the saints and the instruments she paints them on and 
lights
me up with her eyes like turpentine still
glistening at Twenty with Seventy years of age,

the number veils
as she leans back to take in the Creole vista
 
with cliffs of plaster and weatherboard canyons and gaslamp constellations,
missing the Mississippi breeze that lights 
Desire through Tennessee and takes my hand to say it all
about the place where I know I’ll die, that, ‘Did you know, New Orleans
was the Northernmost part of the Caribbean?’

Green skies of night and revelation I laugh to feel
the kiss on my neck as her lived-long hair turns 
debutante
and on my shoulder her mind wanders to 
the days of never-minding the cobblestone
the second lines and slow dances with pirates
porting in from Galveston, lips whiskey-plush as below,
the boys
and bums,
the biker boys all relight flung fags, then
gleam upward at their Goddess with gratitude,
as from filter, lip to lip they taste their saintly woman,
my Katherine, the instrument
and just for tonight
the city itself.

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when I felt the spice in my nostrils, 
the burn I’d forgotten about up until right around then, 
all white jasmine and cologne,
chrysanthemum and crystal meth, 
the smells of our homelands
beating up against a setting Sun
ducking behind the San Pedro mesa.
And thoughts of you and paper planes,
the sofa our four-poster and the blu-ray games we’d play 
filled my lungs with yesteryear,
the grooves of my fingertips with memory of your hair,
your head resting on my body while the world restored 
each night for the two of us and
the two of us only.
I felt excitement,
excitement walking down old Beachwood drive, now passing Temple Hill,
towards Franklin and the home we tried to hold
when the city was on fire
and our hearts were full of life eternal.