bad poetry

poems I’ve written, often when I was hungover or pretending to be better than I was.

• undertow

  
  
  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.
  
  
  
  
  

• Room, at home alone

  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.
  
  
  

• went East from the West

  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. 

• redacted monologue – little village – elise

  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. 

• wallabout

  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.
  
  

• redacted monologue – little village – trevor

                                      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.

• unshakeable feeling

  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.

• the say-nothings

  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.

• Katherine

  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.

• started walking down Beachwood again

  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.  

• leaves of elm in blizzard

  snowflakes of feathers dove;
  together dance in spiralled wind to the
  spring symphonies of gust and pine.
  
  They land and decorate the shoulder;
  the touching hand of Heaven’s glory.

• been thinking

  ’bout God and
  why I think of Him
  and don’t believe out of want but out of need;
  how He’s beauty and beauty’s
  the thing I choose over the LA euthanasia, it’s –
  the thing that reaches in,
  embraces the thing most cold that tells us not to go
  and nurtures into it like kneading
  the willingness to carry on;
  white jasmine tomorrow’s, cotton candy clouds
  present the palm trees with their power lines,
  the promise of fire, hot hot heat,
  the longing champion of one’s eternity
  despite the cold that tells us not to go.

• southwest flight abq > bur

  You ever feel that (?), like –
  God’s coming at you from the insides and
  his vigor’s shaking; like it’s…
  the mighty nature of knowing you know clouds;
  climbing mountains
  ‘That’s got you going?’
  
  ‘Magine, like San Gabriel’s
  with that ‘peaking poking peeking piquing’ light and seeing how it’s
  dancing(?),
  Making air
  outta light and rock
  the Green of spring and they’re
  flossing like they’re kissing this, His lover’s…
  affair,
  While,
  He’s popping off and somehow making mauve and tangerine from 14,
  no 13-B, and like
  the stratus is in the sternum, the cumulus ridiculous, man –
  just beginning to drown into something like glory,
  in the place inside we know it’s needed, the some place coolest, bro (?) –
  
  You ever feel that?
  That momentary surrender that comes and forever builds into a blip;
  knowing clouds,
  knowin’ mountains,
  knowin’ t’morrow’s coming?
  
  Like white jasmine on Bronson,
  sometime in a couple days.

• billie’s

  croon-swooning in my ear due to busted headphone and I’m
  dreaming of the Quarter on the balcony; its cobble stones(,)
  the swimming air so damp;
  suffocated Solitude unlike boating through the mangroves with my father,
  while it’s raining here; here L.A.

• pocket-square or, hello stranger

  I’d said I’d see you later and you’d said No,
  ‘I’d see you always,’
  not knowing then, knowing now by quoting me
  You’ve never left my side. 

  There you are, where you’ve always been, 
  tucked within my folded sheath of beating muscle, 
  weakened, made of steel, if only copper, weathered blue,
  my convulsion and conviction,
  lost intention and welcomed friend; 
  My love, there you are 
  overnight and found me once again;
  where we left us;
  
  Some place like departures at the Burbank airport.  
  
  It’s less that I’m in love with love and more that what I crave is knowing that I’m somewhere, someplace kept; 
  just make sure that leash is loose; your belly warm, your eyes on mine until it’s time to look away
  the way we always do,

  And then I’ll pick you up.
  Clean my car.
  Find you by the smoking section.
  
  . 

• (stupid title but) ‘I dream,’

  Of horizon; 

  of soaring seven feet above unwavering ocean, 
  speeding fast and high above
  the separated distance
  like inches from lips.
  Mountainous waves stretching higher and taller
  towards 
  (gravitated by?) 
  all the tribulations
  now steadfast and proud. 
  The swirls of blue enrapture, this tempest siren of sirens swirling as I —

  …towards horizon;

  in lieu of this shambled raft I grasp – 
  buckling under the rapture of this storm’s content,
  I see no Sun. 
  These blue walls turned shadows
  threatening collapse and promising pummel;
  tackled to the depths no creature has known
  as shadow turns dark – 
  and Oblivion, 
  Oh(!), 
  of the thalassic lateral depraved entirely –

  …of horizon.
  I dream. 

• ultimately a letter to a comrade

  A self-anointed socialist
  labeled this Cuban son of immigrants a fascist simply for wearing his favorite pair of loafers; 
  a single pair I have owned for many years. 
  His sweater was Carhartt like his reverend Fetterman, 
  his patched and tattered trousers ‘Dee-yor-ay,’ as he pronounced them
  and his shoes, 
  scuffed, perhaps every other morning, 
  with the hammer and sickle he keeps in the tank of his toilet; 
  before oiling his thinning curls of hair with some soy product attributing to the deforestation of the Amazon, more than likely, 
  eating avocado meat around the seed while burning capitalism with his iPhone 
  all while cosplaying as the fetishised poor, poor man he had no idea he already was;
  or ‘Un-fuckable,’ which I retorted 
  after being labeled the everyman Mussolini 
  by a most pious, noxiously all-knowing Che

  (‘That’s what I want the curls to be serving’).

  Even cosplay has its repercussions, Comrade, I suppose 
  that’s the message we’re making clear: 
  for all funded fashions and ad hominem attacks made towards my sweet and sensitive soles, 
  the moment your virtuous mind erupts over a heard idea contrary to your own,
  you become the very thing you’ve condemned me of being. 

  …Comrade, quick point of privilege, 
  may I suggest you review your indoctrination leaflet?

  You may have misread a couple points. And you might just be a little scared of a world that has never been better. 

  Sincerely,

  Your Cuban (and fuckable) libertarian

  (most of the time; you know my thoughts on the administration and their lack of action towards East Jerusalem, Ohio).

• white people got so bored

  during the pandemic they invented ways to be oppressed.

  a case of victim-nicotine; starts like a camel crush on Bushwick nights and roofs and slowly turns to

  ‘demisexual,’
  
  or,
  
  some newfound label identifying their inalienable right to tighten bands of pearls around their choked,
  dignified scrotums.

• on our second date

  he told me that he was a victim
  and that he fought against his oppressors with kazoos and convincing chants,
  spinning umbrellas; passionately and with a heart of gold.
  ultimately, though,
  that night he took me back to his place
  and the condo his parents had bought for him wasn’t as nice as I thought it’d be,
  
  so,
  we went our separate ways, said he’d never forget the times we shared and then doxxed me four days later.

• I was on a delta flight from Honolulu sitting in comfort plus listening to a couple of cultists speaking behind me when I realized

  Enlightened people talk too much.

  Oh,
  the tranquility of their own voice;
  
  the meditations on their every observation.
  
  The understandings in their sympathy,
  the empathy in their epiphanies, Oooo…

  How much they understand,
  how much they care and hold onto patience…

  Until you decide to recline your seat.

  Whatever you do, like, just –

  Do

  Not

  Recline
  Your
  seat, when sitting a row ahead of enlightened people who’d just come back from doing ayahuasca in Maui, baby, I am telling you, like,

  Not even an inch, not
  one

  beat.

  Those fuckers? All light and life?

  They will kick and they will cough and they will ring for attendants and they will whine and they will want to fuck the Chakras out of themselves in the lavatories in spite of you –

  especially if he’s in dreads and from Spokane and she’s a Pseudo-Puerto-Rican wearing a gender-bending dhoti and designer-matching pair of puttee’s, ya know – 

  real zen-faire shit,

  off the rack at Rag and Bone, ‘It spoke to me,’ or ‘Burning Man was yesteryear and yesterday,’ their journeys the cis-het men’s podcast in lieu of needed talk therapy, I am telling you,

  Heed 

  Caution.

  Do not recline your seats when sitting a row ahead of a couple of cultists sitting in comfort plus flying home from Honolulu.

  You will inconvenience these most enlightened spirits, 

  And they will get
  Fucking
  
  Pissed.

• ‘I have so many friends!

  Look at them!

  Don’t you see them?

  Count em’ all!

  Betchya don’t get that every day.

  Have you ever seen such a thing?

  I have. It’s in-sane!

  None of them know me like I do and

  that’s

  fine!

  They’re mine to have!

  You should really try it out.

  I think you’d really like it.

  I know I do!’

• on thursday’s story

  I took video of a disco ball. 
  I tilted it a bit, trying something new, added Paris filter, 
  went to bed, woke up renewed when Friday came to play. 

  That night, 
  I posted up a photo of a drink I’d had, 
  added animated glitter, something nice and something fun in filtered Oslo, 
  shoes in bed, renown and into Saturday, tbh
  I’m kind of like a God.

  Later that day, 
  a steak I always have at Disneyland. 
  Something special with a slice of mushroom, Autumn’s kinda gone I guess but at least we’re living life in Lagos, three sugar cubes in this old fashioned and before I post my postured smile with Mickey Mouse if only for a millisecond do I convince myself that this is living,
  glittered steaks and mirror ball –
  These things are my Eternity.

  Looking back at these stories,
  taking record of all who’ve seen my shared and walloped under my gains,
  I convince myself that’s true, 
  that I am living legend
  and in my euthanasia see as I replay these victories one last time
  that I have known the world and the world
  has buckled under me.

• monostich #45 – 50

  It’s probably good for you. 

  I worked at a restaurant once now I’m James Corden. 

  People are crazier than anybody so think of them as mothers; namely yours. 

  I think God could be an easy concept for me; I already feel judged, either way.

  Describing Sin’s easy for me: it’s the things you do that hurt and hurdle you to Hell.
  
  Ball’s in my court but the court’s in his stadium.
  
  

• with his indelible grace, I fear the

  Stroke of woe, my bitter complaint, 
  Contemptuous towards these pangs of Sin,
  Shackled,
  For I am wicked, 
  Shackled so I’m judged; 
  Still weak-kneed to be righteous,
  Mine affliction confused
  With these cold hands I wish to clasp
  together,
  Kneading the virtue of my Right,
  With the blasphemy of my Left,
  Weighted by His omnipresence, 
  His appointment to have me tried,
  Beneath His shadowed Light so brilliant 
  I succumb with fear before His eye, 
  As my heart goes soft, 
  This deserved pain of love,
  The agony of fools,
  For I know not what Man I am,
  For I have fear that comes on me, 
  Fear of what Man I might have become.

• universe cathedral

  I’m laying on a lakebed 40 miles North of Barstow 
  And I’m thinking about bucket hats as something you can
  barf into, 
  Heart strings that sting,
  And the magic’s hitting like it’s hurting, feeling like a
  horny Himbo 
  And the sky right now I mean like Jesus fucking christ — 
  A universe cathedral. 
  Milky Way the arches, 
  Praising something like itself and my back’s on the dirt
  and there go the desert gods of aliens, winking at me and
  the hand’s outreached and you come to view, at least to
  mind, I wonder where you’ve been, wonder if you’d stay,
  wonder if I’d keep you if you did,
  wonder if the Gods up in the sky that zoom and zoom
  are but tensioned boredom,
  precursor of grief which befalls always at the end,
  and if Gods like wistful love
  are just longing, laying, pining need for you
  to lift me off the ground,
  then perhaps this taste piercing my throat
  salivating for salvation,
  knowing how I want you knowing now I need you.
  that’s Venus rising to the left and just above our Moon.
  

• monostich #37 – #44

  Rolls his eyes at poetry but collects Funko Pops.
  
  Nonconformity is conformity.
  
  Careful who you give your love to; they may just be in need of your friends.
  
  After careful consideration, being a fool is existing in the middle place between idiocy and genius.
  
  Due diligence should be the name of a band.
  
  Hey, so I’ve been thinking (for once).
  
  Blasting music in the desert in fear of hearing nothing.

  We could taste the Sun from where we perched; tangy, soft, lemonade.

• re possumkingdomdc

  End of the day, days from then, moments from now – reached the end of the timeline there, 
  There was always going to be the 
  Uh,
  End. 
  The you of you, the men of you, the echoes after you, 
  Me getting over you, the end of that,
  
  That was always gonna happen. At least I thought.
   
  Now,
  It’ll be him who has me to get rid of;
  
  I mean you,
  
  I mean us,
  
  and your burner IG accounts
  (possumkingdomdc)
  (nother)
  (jasonruerennequin).

  Catch yourself up enough to bite you’re the one who winds up tangled. 
  
  Catch yourself tangled up enough you learn how to cut through the rope. 
  
  Unlike that of a fisherman’s, 
  Not nylon, 
  Not of anything that cannot decompose. 
  But of flesh
  And all its rotting
  Potential. 
  The inevitable promise of the mortal. 
  Of a name. 
  Of a family man now off to fetch a new visage, another one for himself. 

  I don’t blame you.
  That’s selfish and elementary. 
  The weight bears on my lungs. Close above my heart, 
  arrhythmia 
  Like the barren longing for his arms without him, 
  Or the smell of him when I try to forget yours,
  (despite yours being equated to soup)
  The jokes he laughed at versus the ones you didn’t. 
  The jabs you made versus the one he never could. 
  And now its him on the chopping block, 
  The selfishness of me; Lord, 
  Allowing yourself into me, allowing you to stay,
  The selfishness of me; Lord,
  Allowing myself onto him, allowing him to go. 

  Some deserve the grave, and others the world, gimme Purgatorio. 
  But him and unlike you, 
  Deserves the neither of us. 
  The stupidity of course, 
  Beyond you, I always known, said I ‘Should’ve known,’
  The allowed lingering of you. 

  Your perseverance isn’t an accolade you ought to boast on your pinned chest, 
  Rather, 
  Fine, 
  A weakness that has only come from being unable being to unbar myself of the majesty and tragedy of you, 

  And rather than ridding my grief of you once and for all,

  Have surrendered to the cop-easy entry of band-aiding all the ways my everything of you meant your every day for you,
  I’ve crushed love because of you,
  And that’s entirely my fault.
  Hiding behind your burners,
  and still,
  for some tormented reason,
  still hiding behind some wall of my heart forever stained
  With your smell of soup
  so long as I refuse to mop it off once and for all.
  
  perhaps, per chance,
  some stains are permanent,
  only over time are they forgotten, nay, tolerated.

• efficient s.d.

  You wouldn’t listen to me if I tried,
  Never tried and now it’s all I’m trying to do, 
  To prove to you that I should’ve done something then, 
  Trying to show you I’d do something now, but –
  ‘Now,’ now,
  not the now of the other day,
  The day I let you go, and I don’t know where you’ll go, 
  But I’m hoping it’s a place some day I’ll be,
  could it be some place I’ll be,
  Try to let it be a place I’ll be,
  this is me trying to beg, I want you hearing that, 
  The fear in my tremble, I always say being scared is pussy shit, but – 
  The thought 
  – Comes
  – up. 
  Should I surrender myself, 
  Cut myself off from myself, and concede, 
  To you? 
  No longer trying, but doing like an exhale into your arms knowing you’d carry me, 
  Allowing you to insert the way you do,
  Giving my ears to the words you choose,
  Given you my pain;
  Trusting you, your hue of blue,
  – instead of this stupid shit I’ve done?
  This knee-jerk crap with the little red button, 
  ‘Nuclear option,’ blow it up, 
  Trying there, I did, 
  Succeeding there, I do;
  That efficient self-destruction shit. 
  There I did and often as I do.
  – I cut it off when I fear what I’d become once it ended.
  – I’ve seen what happens when something like us does.
  So selfish of me to assume you don’t, 
  Selfish of me to have believed you’d understand. 
  You wouldn’t listen if I did, 
  But would you listen to me if I tried?
  So selfish of me to ask as I’ve evaded your patience, 
  Your fucking touch of grace, 
  – But,
  Would you take me back if you did?

• icarus

  I cut a limb to feel my heart
  To fix myself, at least to think I could
  Dragged feet to soaring wings
  I thought from the bounds of Earth
  But the depths of Hell. 
  I cost a love to feel my pulse
  To heal a thing, at least I’ve tried 
  Confused remorse, just missed the grief
  Realised flight not from the coldness of flames,
  But the abyss of self. 
  I left a life to feel some soul
  To feel some thing, some thing to feel,
  Blinded pupil of the approaching Sun, 
  I sought flight from my throat to the Universe
  And still found no way to go. 

• i don’t know what color the sky is

  When that passing-by, retractable roof decides to protect our lovely basin once again from the seven stars above, the color of the sky turns into something a little brown. 
  But with some purple to it, 

  don’t you think?
  It’s too bland and too basic, very
  ‘Show’s over, folks, grab the tarp from that end over there and will pull it over them together,’

  to be something suspect to grey. 

  It’s purple Brown, with

  Charcoal particle,
  covering our night sky and all those seven little stars, 

  under lit by the amber brilliance of those ever glowing, One 34 in the morning 
  streetlights, 
  One 34 in the morning and all two-hundred 23,
  thousand, 
  sodium
  street 
  lights. 

  (‘That’s it?’) 
  Eight hundred and 6
  high-rise towers in Los Angeles, 
  and that includes the ones that just light up at night to convince you people are working in them. 

  There’s also any of the following awake at night and driving (‘We’re thinking Blade Runner, baby’): 
  Five, 
  million, 
  484 thousand
  cars,
  one hundred and twenty-three thousand, 669 motorcycles and one million, 68 thousand, 213 commercial vehicles (‘Bjork probably eats this shit up!’). 

  That’s a lot of light. 

  Varied light, too. 
  Although there’s been no word from Bird. 
  LAX, 
  the purple lanterns lighting that one bit up on Riverside. 

  All of it. 

  Beaming upward. 

  Towards that 
  Tarp, that 
  combination of the charcoal particle, the 
  smog, the fog, all those cigarettes – the exhaust of cars, factory fumes, the coughed out black of 2-stroke lawnmowers illegal in California (I think) that turn neighborhood soundscapes into ongoing vamps of cystic sacs popping, the tar pus of them all blasting with expelled squalls of toxic gas out these hyper-active metallic sphincters of robot moose,

  And the fires… 

  (Remember that photo of the horsies on the sands of Malibu looking towards a blazing horizon, camels too, like Jesus Christ)

  And then it all blends in with the clouds? The lot of it all, you know, just all of it combined, the pollutions, 
  the light of it all, 

  With the fumes and …the clouds. 

  Clouds.

  Clouds of which – 

  Which I suppose we, hm. I see. 

  ‘What you could say. ‘Is.’’

  Well I suppose we could, we
  …could say…

  I suppose we could say that the clouds in this instance are something suspect to grey. 

  Sure,

  The lid could have some grey to it. Fine.

  By which case, in addition to another observation made moments ago, I stand corrected and renowned. ‘Renewed.’ proudly.

  The error here for real, is that the sky is sometimes just the cloud. Sure.

  ‘Obviously(!),’
  You know. ‘It’s just a cloud sometimes,’
  And now, 

  Here comes a single star.

  Could always be a drone, who knows. 

  And ah! There’s Jupiter. Could be, at least I’ll open up my app in just a beat. Looks big from where I’m sitting, there goes the cloud and here comes the sky. The sky, 

  Looking like a little indigo. 
  but with some green to it,

  don’t you think? Huh!

• mountain time

  Science is boring but there’s a thing to the sky, the wind, the mountain time, 
  
  the height and the light and the way these clouds just glow under the cuff, pillows
  billowing
  cirrus and stratus knowing no form, aside from maybe those taffy puffs that stretch across the sky (like heartstrings, stinging like they’re plucked when you come back to mind). 

  Due west, (how’s your hair, and how’s the dog?), there’s this
  return
  to a wonder-less basin, most days,
  but here,
  most times,
  box winds closer to the ground throw themselves East as the ones above (I suppose I’m fine), Westward.

  West of honest smiles (and roadrunners), Natives pumping gas too slow and seasons called ‘monsoon.’ 

  There’s the violins of the pines right now, their needles quivering in some sedated symphony (they’ve been doing it for years), with the blows we never see but always strike familiar (desert dust like jasmine white, you never thought it special).

  All of it heading for you as the magmatic moon grows smaller the more we turn away and move in revolutions (the ache sizzles just the same, always less the more I stay away from you), and,

  The thoughts of you, the longing, and the dreams of showing you what’s up Central, the bliss and kitsch, the Runaway’s hideaway, the Sun burning over some shared horizon (you’ve seen everything I’m talking about with those private IG accounts you use to stalk me), and the heat,
  
  Good God,
  as it mirrors off the bottoms of whatever label we’ve decided to give these, 
  mountainous, 
  floating,

  Carbonations, of everything that remains constant and yet so ever lovingly promises, 

  I dunno, 

  ‘Inconsistency?’

  Or the promise of demise? The end of things but the continuation afterward, that old, fabled telling of time, forever fading, although moving, dissipated, like sugar in Colorado blue, these thoughts of you, again, sorry (don’t hate me) – 

  They’ve grown so weak. The longing once and for all replaced with grief,

  and some day soon, some time after tonight, like the light and the wind and the clouds of no form, I suspect,

  And I hypothesise (I don’t mean to sound excited),

  The grief will turn towards the unknown, born again, like continuation, for some other winds, for some other boy, for some type of adoration.

  The sky for now, due without the labels (but I think you’re finally out of here).

• by way of the 101

  I’ve always wanted church on Sundays, though I’ve never gone,
  all that
  
  noise,
  
  The knowing God loves you, just not enough to save you (?), you know,
  all that
  
  hoopla,
  
  that spooks.
  
  Though,
  
  Sitting here, I gaze,
  
  Knowing something else is true,
  or fine.
  
  I suppose.
  
  The dolphins feed Northbound at 6,
  ‘Cue the fins,’
  Knowing coasts, the mountain lines singing with the sky in stanzas, those motif connect-the-dots upon the staffs, amongst nimbus songs,
  Standing, stalled silhouettes negotiating crumble always.
  Laughing with them, in this chair, with the fried chicken from the Ralph’s at the Pacific Palisades, where Lizzie once wrote poems too.
  
  Solar flares chill you into embrace and the grains of sands from faraway lands tumble as they dance and flow, into something viscous between your toes,
  as he comes to mind (and rubs your shoulders too the way it felt when he held you at night and you trembled low),
  
  (Those hands are gone now),
  
  But there’s your dance, the beach set-up, pomp and circumstance of Sunset deconstruction, that’s kneeling at the altar, Incubator Isle’s empty and you know the water will be good come June.
  
  As His burn sears your neck like a sober kiss,
  We peel away and remember:
  
  Body of Christ by way of the 101 to the 405,
  Steadfast down Chappaqua after tapping cards at Ralph’s,
  onwards towards the Pacific,
  church on Sunday’s by way of Saturday,
  by way of surrendering to the presences you always knew were always there,
  His kingdom your pew,
  vice versa, vice versa, Ad Infinitum,
  
  and there’s a 17 minute slowdown on Sunset,
  but you’re still on the fastest route.

• to rise.

  Dazzle as She soars towards the setting Sun, forever rising higher that she flies,
  this, beautiful,
  clipped sparrow of Earth, ascending through the cirrus ribbons of Heaven, 
  weaving for you the ladder you’ll one day use 
  to arise,

  and to follow, to
  at some point, dear chick, join Mother by her side,

  to regale her with the time you saw her climb,
  into the mysterium of divinity after all those years chasing wind under the wings,
  
  the feathered wraps that will enrapture you then,
  as they already do and much closer than God,
  or the breath in your lungs,
  you’ll feel them someday, just feel them today
  and weep as you may,
  and friend, 

  Dear friend,
  
  Bury the burden into the branches. 

  Let your mourning light dry the fear in your tears,
  and you allow your grief to someday turn to song. 

  The broken tree you stand on is not your stage to mount,
  but the platform you’ll use one day,
  
  to rise, 

  to rise,

• listen to the wind

  Listen to the wind va-room va-room va-room,
  with exhaust that ashes on white jasmine.
  The groan of its engine washes out the welcome raven,
  and the fumes that coat the Priuses make the palm trees sway their way.
  Never mind the scraping rakes that used to come over carports, no,
  hoist the blowers, make them loud and make them howl
  and make the hummingbirds repeat themselves.
  Hear the breeze as it learns to choke,
  the billows as they always suffocate,
  while PJ’s on repeat with the hopes that within the hour
  calm will overcome the plumes of smog,
  the patron saints of nothing can wander through their hilltop chapels once again
  and wallow through the bellows of their hearts twinge
  that come alive,
  that come alive when listening to the wind.

• matcha latte

  There’s God in the wind
  his fingers solar flare and point to you
  with the measure of His force
  He combs over flesh
  and through the thick of your hair
  The magnanimous heat of his touch cooled,
  As it soars above the crests of the Pacific
  and to you and your matcha latte
  He finds his way. 

• they’ll still watch your IG stories

  Even when they’re mad at you even when they love you.
  
  They’ll block you from the lives they’ve curated, conjured and salvaged,
  lied to preserve and present.
  
  They will convince themselves they’ve known no wrong while spying for your demise,
  
  Bitter with the walls they’ve built to save themselves
  from the fires thew two of you ignited
  
  upon the world.
  
  They will want to watch you burn, assuming they’ve preserved their veneer by climbing onto higher ground,
  
  not for hating you, but for needing to see what would come of them should they surrender the futility of their masquerade. The price to pay, to pretend, to them,
  to hope you fail so that they never will, so they can get away, and get away with all.
  
  Not getting caught is winning.
  
  They’ll still watch your IG stories even when they’re mad at you even when they love you even when they’ve loved you needing kneading your and having you, hating you for calling out their bluff when honesty was all there was,
  hating you for seeing the thing about you two.
  Blocking you to unsee themselves, hiding them to unsee you, hoping that you fall and flail,
  simply to avoid acknowledgment
  
  that they already have.
  
  They’ll still watch your IG stories and you’ll convince yourself you’re the bigger, better man,
  
  but then again, who the fuck inspects to check who’s checking in, you fucking egomaniac?
  

• perfectly us

  The glasses that I wear are fake.

  Speculative drag, sure, 
  From the moment I put them I assume at least a bit of you for once will think I’m going somewhere 

  with something. 

  Well, 
  I’m not, 

  Because these glasses that I’m wearing are fake.

  And yes, I hate them.

  But,
  They compliment the brows nicely and when I’m hungover,
  the lips of the lens hide the bags my Thursday evenings always bring, and
  
  sure,  

  They were expensive. And I think that’s kind of cool.

  Besides,

  I’m growing older, 
  eyes are going colder and 
  sometimes the light that mirrors off of them is the only kind I’ve got.

  When I take them off, I’m just – 

  a balding pretty boy, ‘boy’ used loosely,
  ‘pretty’ I’ll hold onto for now, I’m a

  Cuban muscle crisis, crisis being they’ve begun to weaken. Just the ass is peaking, and the cock, 

  You know, 

  When I’ve drank enough water. 

  I keep them on and I’m salvaged from age.
  
  I keep them on and I’m free,
  no,
  
  clean 

  of disease. And I keep them on hoping you’ll listen to me when I say

  What it’s like to have it 

  When my glasses are in my pocket.

  But for now,
  they’re on and I hate them, okay?  

  It’s the confinement of periphery, 

  the, 

  Admittance, 

  Of going extra for the ordinary,
  masking all the extraordinary,
  and settling for the fractured light off of them, 
  instead of the one inside,
  and relinquishing being anything more, 

  For fear of being what we’d be
  for fear of what we’re told,
  what’s been said
  what we’ve had to hear before constructing our veneers.

  they’re shelters of our wounds, 

  shutters on the windows, exteriors to our interiors, erected so that finally

  We can rest in peace each night knowing no one knows we’re having trouble sleeping.

  With them built, with these glasses on,  

  We can smile through our screams.
  We can wear kaftans to Ralph’s, in Ojai,
  distressed Marlboro tees to Republique
  and chicken nuggies at the SoHo House heaven high above 

  unwashed seas,
  burning man and burning up you’ve taken on the crystal fad, I see,
  VIP LA Phil presents that conductor guy who did the Star Wars thing so pack your lightsaber bought from Disneyland,
  and when people ask about that painting of yourself you bought for you just find the thrill in knowing someone wants to know 

  the more of you. 

  They wanna know
  all
  about
  you. 

  That thing that’s you,

  That thing 

  you do that thing 

  your wallet got.

  That thing about you. Just

  combing over the bald spot.

  Unlike all the times before. 

  When we’ve always kept them glasses off.

  Before we knew we could even buy them.

  Unlike all the times before, 

  When we were ravaged for being bare. 

  Unlike all the times before, 

  When we weren’t all

  perfectly happy. 

  Perfectly cured. Perfectly clean.

  Perfectly, 

  perfectly…

• on dryades street

  I had a smoke in the rain and a fella asked if I’m okay,
  said all was well, my man,
  I’m just coming from L.A.

• there is no freedom (and I hate the fucking title, but)

  Yeah,
  There is no freedom.
  Not for me at least. 
  Bottles of pills, the three for months,
  the ones I need and sometimes skip,
  in a paper bag from Kaiser crunched up 
  in the glove compartment of my pick-up truck. 

  Driving from the Sunsets I used to seek
  the dog is sitting next to me,
  Lucinda and Sharon’s strumming all for me.

  Searching for my farm in Nebraska unknown,
  where the job awaits 

  and my man slow-dances at the bar on Tuesdays.

  He forgets my name but not my drink, 
  his denim’s stained, his toothpick
  soaked, 
  looking like he’ll hit you with his eyes, 

  that’s when he cries, 

  when a strong man dies, 

  it’s what his daddy used to say, 

  Daddy’s something he likes to say. 

  He promises he’s never satisfied, 
  promises he’ll fade away, 

  it’s what he wants

  His only want, 
  the power of his certainty, 
  the tears on his cowboy cheeks over the stars outside the club, 
  the muffled sounds of neon crust his skin with dirt and 
  the tilted hat masks his pain. 

  He sets the five AM alarm to work it out, 
  always working, never thinking, handiwork, 
  the medicine of using hands, 
  sweating blindly, parched for water so he lights a fag and drinks his milk, 
  has a rocking chair that overlooks the oaks
  but,
  prefers the wooden steps instead, 

  The ones that lead him to his farm and to his work where he works to pass the days 
  and gaze 
  at the nautical sky as the Sun dips beneath the plains behind him, 
  in his Nebraska unknown, 
  the one I found for him, 
  the one that’s far from what he used to know. 

  The Tuesday’s rolls around, 
  those tumbleweed days into nights, 
  slow-dancing at the bar like the ladies we are, 
  lassoed and roped from whiskey to groped 
  Daddy this and daddy that, 
  safeword’s the whispers mother never shared with you 
  the secrets of what you are, 
  the maps of where you’re going, 
  where they wanted you to go, 

  And boy
  were you going. 

  But where you going now? 

  The bottle’s running low. 
  The other two are shot to hell. 
  Too broke to have the farm 
  but broke enough for handouts.

  The ones that

  That keep you in California. 
  Bring you back to California. 
  Trap you lost in California. 
  For that 

  crinkled bag, 
  the three bottles for months, 
  
  the pills you need but sometimes want to skip. 
  Sure to die, but sure to ignore,
  to flee with Ruffy in that pick-up truck 
  and daydream of slow-dancing at the bar with what you are, 
  no, what you wanted, 
  knowing what you wanted but you’ll never be. 

  Wanted the Nebraska unknown and tumbleweed dreams, 
  blackened journal lines, line-dancing too
  Something else that’s more for me,

  Driving back to L.A.,
  prescription filled,
  every day and every time,
  wanting to be free. 

• headed towards cathedral city

  and driving through the turbines that spin up on the hill
  I wonder,
  How many screws remain until California decapitates itself?

• so,

  There’s this
  paralyzing stiffness
  of a red-hot poker 
  with the head-shaped heart of a bull
  that pulsates with a pumping gravity
  up and in until it’s through, 
  
  busting through,
  the trachea and coming out the mouth,
  that’s,
  that’s what’s pinned me
  
  into the ground.
  
  What was once the silence of agony
  now
  but a
  gaping hole in the refractory.

  After the I Love You’s bust 
  the load’s for you but no, none for me, our hands began to slip. 

  Cold feet,
  the cold sweats
  the
  terminology for whenever the body stops shaking but the soul is still rumble-ing, the uh –
  
  Catatonic
  save the dread.
  
  The euphoria of your skin, 
  pressed-pasted into mine
  now shrouded 
  by the knowingness of one day growing,
  going,
  
  ultimately limp. 

  That the fires dwindle into ember, 
  as the air we breathe begins to freeze,
  the sun you used to shine on me, turns its back for good. 

  And not for nothing, 
  but the yearning desire to mourn for the moon, 
  to dream again of what was had, what’s needed now,
  needing to knead your presence into absence
  into something now forgotten, all of it my fault,
  with that

  stupid
  fucking
  paralyzing stiffness.

  That comes from having you.
  
  Of
  having you.
  
  Of knowing you, you knowing me,
  not knowing what to do, knowing that you’re knowing me, 
  the
  matter of time
  before someone goes for good.

  For fear of what you desire, I can’t give to you
  my
  
  my moving deeper-closer into you,
  it was never something I could be.  

  Fuck man
  that pulsating agony, 
  the impotence,

  Of never knowing who to be.

• inside in spite of what we knew was best for us

  we took our hands into the pines and
  pined
  for the view we knew we knew,
  and begged it to be new, at least renewed,
  setting Sun, speckled, caught
  in the pools like tears we sought
  looking down the hill at Cedar Grove.
  
  Mistaken mounds for mountains climbed,
  ascended once again
  for that view of Oz on Bunker Hill, the one I showed you once
  the one you promised was ours at last.
  
  Asking how it’s been, insisting nothing’s wrong,
  there’s nothing wrong, but something’s wrong
  and sometimes people are simply wrong,
  
  the placation in omission,
  the appeasement of a view.
  
  Cross-wired fires, deathscrolls inspired,
  everything’s fine with talk of wine
  and where to go once we’re down at our cars
  
  that are parked by the Greek.
  
  Keys in the ignition, there’s the thoughts of our position
  do we flee or drive into a tree, fucking
  tired of the rhyme and reason.
  Our
  pathologies in treason, inside in spite of what we knew
  was best for us,
  that view we knew we knew
  renewed.
  
  Until the inevitable flames of Indian summer come around
  and the mistaken mounds of mountains climbed
  are once again scorched
  by the cross-wired flashes of all things hot
  and we incinerate into phoenix ash with the promised blossom,
  or unfurled crimson wings
  and blinded flight towards our setting
  Settling Sun.
  
  Asking how it’s been, insisting nothing’s wrong,
  there’s nothing wrong, but something’s wrong
  and sometimes people
  we’re simply wrong.
  
  Some things don’t know what’s best for them
  it’s why they don’t know what’s wrong with them.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

• dad chair II

  In my dad chair and at the beach,
  just south of Incubator Isle
  I found a parking spot on West Channel Road.
  
  Crotch-forward watching presence of boys with their volleyballs and lambskin speedos,
  dancing for pose the lot of them, though not one in particular,
  intimidated by the dude alone, ‘we will never be like him.’
  
  All the while,
  
  The sand’s ahead of me,
  the overlook from my balcony on Dumaine.
  
  I wonder, thirst,
  
  to swim in the bath of Sun and drown in each other’s moonlight,
  our names forgotten and tomorrow’s ‘You Said Something’s’
  
  before longing for the promised view, those parched dreams of you,
  
  in my dad chair and at the beach.

• dad chair I

  The way speckled dust soars
  like flocks of gulls behind the closed curtain of eyelids
  the beating Sun lights them from behind.
  
  In my dad chair and at the beach
  I only dream of desert,
  and not because it’s colder here than I thought it would be.
  
  The pier’s to the left of you.
  
  Tide rising,
  at Five the dolphins break the surface of the horizon as they return from feeding.
  
  At Six,
  the gulls line up behind you to bathe in amber wind,
  and the boys in speedos pack up as the molly returns them from Oz.
  
  To know these things, the knowing waves to ride,
  bucket basket of fried chicken plucked from Ralph’s,
  the goodness in knowing the familiarity
  
  that’s company of the most completed variety. It’s presence.
  
  But who gives a shit about that.
  
  Dig your feet into the sand,
  they’ll keep cool and white.
  Bulge pointed towards the sea the completed man and all alone,
  legs crusted, sea salt, hell White Sands,
  Truth or Consequences is a name of a town I know,
  the Pacific brings you to New Mexico if you let it,
  the wonder, rippling flesh of canyon land,
  
  Far away from sissies sipping slurpees, skipping stones,
  while kelp forests swerve and sway just under our surface.
  
  Beasts and dominion,
  the certainty of soil and sacred rock preferred.
  
  Yes, crashing tides approaching
  and
  
  yes,
  waves likes mountains seen off of Blueberry Ridge,
  the dad bods of Winter, abso-fucking-lutely,
  fawning thoughts of running into the ex who ridicules the sea of gratitude coursing through the veins,
  it’s all here all of it if you let it,
  
  But
  There is some place, some place with
  an exactness,
  the decisiveness of the Earth,
  where the moon rises above Albuquerque and I see it in your eyes,
  
  With promise of a rising Sun as mine begins to dwindle beneath the sea.
  
  At least in about an hour.

• ego

  I don’t read as much as I should.
  
  The thoughts of people busy me.

• on meditation

  It’s boring to me, it isn’t necessary.
  Not if you’re already looking,
  listening,
  fucking all around you.
  The forcefulness of it all feels obligatory,
  immediately offensive to the worlds
  
  breathing around you
  All of it combined into a singular
  
  throbbing
  pulsation that ignites
  brilliantly
  
  like soaking in the mirror of the Sun,
  the breeze of the Pacific hitting the back and front of you, but like it does back East and South,
  Bahia Honda,
  the electrifying cool and warmth that hugs us so desperately,
  yearning for eternity for us
  
  to
  
  Worship it like it were a God.
  
  Like cock,
  it wishes for us to worship it for the God that it is,
  
  powerless, all powerful and grateful,
  the submission to the world meditation only dares to dominate.

• this one time in the pacific theaters lobby at the grove

  An old lady with a hunched back had just left the Bar @ Pacific Theaters (at The Grove)
  and was headed for the door. 

  She was pulling a parking voucher out of her purse to get it stamped.
  And she had just finished her beer,

  I want to say after watching ‘Overboard.’

  Voucher in hand she slowly lurches off her stool and with a crane cranks herself towards the
  revolving doors that would lead her out of the Pacific Theaters at The Grove towards the fountains that dance for Sinatra and always Sinatra even during Christmas
  
  Outside the Pacific Theaters at the Grove.
  
  Some dude on a date with a guy nudges his newfound boy-toy’s shoulder,
  Points at the lady as she tries to push herself out and through the doorway.
  
  And like,
  She’s caught in some sort of kinetic vortex,
  battling at the handles for the cycle to go her speed as an eager couple late for their movie tries to barrel on through,
  Leftover quesadilla in their Cheesecake Factory plastic bag with the emblazoned cursive red print that allows them to assume they’d just dined and died in Vienna,
  
  But with quesadillas.
  
  Meanwhile this dude with the baby-trick’s just getting a kick out of the shit,
  Nudging on and pressing it onto his bought-out ass piece wearing Penguin and some
  Florsheim’s,
  You know,
  dressed to impress in LA (he should’ve worn a graphic tee),
  And he knows it with his hands in his pockets
  You can see his upset from his being asked to look at what makes his ride-home feel vindicated and immune to the amorphous curse of time,
  As him and his other buddies crack yes now,
  Something about WD-40 on the bitch.
  
  The young man does nothing to help the lady
  
  As she hobbles onward and into the night light off dancing fountains and 20 dollar salads without salmon at La Piazza.
  
  Quesadilla couple makes it to their movie.
  
  I think the boys with their boys were headed for the same auditorium.
  
  I would’ve done something but I was a next in line for a beer,
  
  at the Bar @ Pacific Theaters,
  
  This one time in the Pacific Theaters lobby at The Grove.

• bronco baby

  What’s your burden, baby, out of bourbon, baby?

  Why you so mad, sweet thing?

  You’ve got the world bending over just for you
  it’s got you on its shoulders,
  
  sweetheart,
  it’s no one’s fault you’re not doing what you should with it.

  You’ve got the stars and you’ve got the swagger,
  
  You’ve got the waves at Will Rogers and your legs in denim, kicking tires, lighting fires all the way to Bandelier.
  
  Big guy,
  You’re always on the move. My man,
  You’re always burning through the never-ending fuel. 

  So why you always drowning to scream alone?

  No te preocupes, mi corazon, don’t dry yourself out.
  It’s not your fault you move so fast pero it is your job to ensure you never slow.
  
  Put the glass down, baby cakes,
  keep the ice for you to cool,
  you ain’t reigning in your bronco spirit by forgetting how to run at night.
  
  You were meant to be the dude who exhausts and explodes
  
  towards infinity.
  
  Infinity like a stardust snow
  
  Blanketing

  an unwavering ocean,
  
  Worlds deep, fifty thousand fathoms deep,
  And you’re resting just on top,
  Forever moving as you rest.
  Resting as you always move, resting cause you always move,
  
  So why you angry, stud?
  
  It’s no one’s fault you’re set to see it all and feel it all and scream it all and fuck it all
  and it’s no one’s doing you were always going to tire
  
  From never being tired. 
  
  From always being hungry.
  
  From always wanting more with your insatiable grace.
  
  It’s no curse. There is no haunting.

  Resign to your fury,
  the blunder of your gluttony,

  There you’ll find your peace.

• from 090820

  Fires in the sky of California and sunset in the desert’s been chased beyond the sepia void,
  where mountains once screamed for the title of what’s left on our horizon.
  
  It’s as though they’d all gone fucking mental, but now they’re gone, too, don’t you see?
  
  They were onto something.
  
  I never thought I was insane,
  just that I allowed myself to be treated undisputedly towards and through the brink of my own,
  regenerative,
  nuclear
  meltdown.
  
  Keeping cool,
  For now, though, thinking of when you asked me if I’d ever been to Aspen.
  That helps.
  
  Instead of separate homes, a part of me wishes we were riding towards the Gas Lite, at the end of the line,
  Down on Wilshire, Karaoke Wednesdays every night,
  And you’re in your board shorts and flip flops and once we’re there we spill the spells, and you
  
  tell me there’s a secret reservoir somewhere apparently in Malibu, where
  If you keep going straight down old Crags road, there’s a lake nearby made from a dam.
  You say we’ll find a Left up ahead and once we take it that’s where we find our spring,
  So.
  
  After singing Kokomo (there’s PBR’s in there somewhere), we drive onward upward onto Kanan road,
  And at the dead of night,
  The deadest before Dawn,
  We mistake the moon for the 5 PM we used to know two hours ago and suddenly my bumper’s not falling off like it used to (You’d pulled over and fixed it while I napped through the blink of an eye) and when I woke we were flying and you were talking about barnacles in Massachusetts.
  
  There’s no longer a light to the heat but lower the window, see?
  It feels like it’s still there. It now brims and breathes, but from below, the peddled ground, you feel it don’t you, it’s become what made it so?
  
  On the way after our dip at the Century Reservoir,
  You’re sure to stop for some slushees and airplane liquor to quench my lungs from the American Spirit that scorched my breath a pack ago today.
  I hold your hand and you
  My crotch. Your grip’s a kiss,
  Mine’s
  Raspberry lisps
  As we’re driving onward through the Mojave,
  Towards the snows of Colorado and you’re driving,
  the thoughts of ski lifts
  and thrusts in some hot tub keep our eyes ahead of what’s already become of us now,
  In this moment here,
  driving towards the fires
  In the skies,
  
  of California.

• playlist I

  I made a playlist and titled it ‘Suspect you’re driving from Albuquerque through Madrid towards Santa Fe,’
  Thinking at some point we’d listen to it
  All at once,
  All of it in one sudden moment like when
  we’re at some point walking along the bend at Sandoval towards the Georgia O’Keefe museum and we’ve dared the attempt at holding each other’s hands in public. 

  You’ll point to the painting of the Pelvis and I’ll cry to the video where she talks about the importance of loving America, 

  Not that I know what that means today
  (only what my father said it meant when I was a child). 

  You’ll point out her affinity for New Mexico and I’ll weep myself out of bondage, 
  all knowing you’re knowing the only way to dry the droplets of my doubt are to surrender me to the cuff to nutsack device you procured from Mr. S; the leather shop in San Francisco 
  (Or so I hope).

  I think I’d maybe start it off with Cassandra Jenkins, 

  She’s got a tune about finding one’s center and repeats the motif of ‘1, 

  …2,

  …3,’
  as the orchestration climbs a mountain, gasping and entirely out of breath, David Carradine but with a climax,

  Elongated breathing
  in

  The summoning of accepting existence 
  in those loafers of mine you adore. 

  We’re sometimes hesitant of the company that makes sense, even when it hurts at times and know that’s per the course.  

  More objectively, worse off, we try to go after the kind of love that makes sense, but only to the periphery, 
  we settle.

  Norman Lear once wrote a line of script about the sanctity of a home. Of coupling. Of the connection between two souls that fortify a preserved dimension of the Universe that belongs

  Soul-ly
  to its inhabitants. 

  I think that’s true, and very real; 

  a confirmed reality that works for the two. 

  This is the narrative now. 
  The truth we choose to inhabit; hold.

  Such as the amber light of Sunset hitting the darkening corners of February in Brooklyn, and taking a photograph of it. Choosing that over the steam of a humming radiator. Or the onyx cool blue of cold. 

  The word Clandestine always reminded me of the word Casual, 

  perhaps it’s so easy to feel it when you say it out-loud. 

  The happenstance. The uh – 

  Unprovoked familiarity. 

  I thought of opting in some Fleet Foxes; they sing of transcendentalism through the guitar strums of Appalachia. You look up at the night sky when in Hollywood and Fall powder-blankets over you, teleported directly above, from the twilight night of Tennessee.  

  Driving,                
  
  
  road-head has a specific rhythm. 
  It goes to the tune of Dollywood.
  

  There’s an ownership that comes with saying ‘I love you.’
   
  It’s a commitment to acknowledging the one day the person you’ve always told that to no longer does.  
  Scary and exhilarating yet so many say that they don’t gamble. 

  Maybe it’s something less of. Perhaps it’s something you sometimes keep to yourself, 
  not to protect but to cherish. 
  Sriracha smudge on the cheeks not protected. Rib sauce maybe but because the cowboy fantasy slows down the bat lash at least in my head, 

  There’s something to the man that expects you take in what he’s driving through. It’s a level of dominance that should never be taken lightly. The impressionable gleam behind the frame that implores one to look all around them.

  I’ll throw in something from the new Lana, 
  her patriotism convinces me it’s still alive in me, and some Silvio,
  Keep it acoustic and get that one song off of Evermore, I’m a millennial,

  Kate and Carly, the Kills, Hypnotize,

  Tornadoes loving you and is it heaven or Las Vegas? 

  Plum mountains skyscrapers and origin cliff basins, 
  I want it to sound like view head-turn towards the prism bouncing off your glasses,
  as you drive us over the gorge

  And towards the Sun. 

  Especially when the light tucks under the horizon and the Rio Grande becomes nebulous
  and in the dark. Good eyes with intent don’t have a thing to say out-loud.

  That’s why there aren’t enough songs about Santa Fe.

• thanks

  for the champagne.
  
  Sipped it slowly,

  tasted the months unheard, unseen,
  the charcoal rim of my glass mistaken twice as an ashtray,
  No idea what we’re looking at right now,
  
  it’s legit 2 AM.
  

• above you

  It’s not the wind you hear
  but its breath
  blowing between the leaves above you.
  
  Somehow always there to remind,
  like a cool can on Summer-burned cheeks,
  Or the grazing with his fingertips
  Against the back of your neck.

• towards gallup

  Skin of the Earth, fingerprint ridges of America,
  Winslow towards Gallup, 
  Driving from the West, Manifest Destiny. 

  Train veins, their double-decker Snowpiercer’s, 
  Light cucking cliffs and desert land thirsting, 

  While sandstone breasts and tent rock popsicles 
  perk
  as the Sun teases to set 
  And horizons melt while God begins to knead,
  Hands enmeshed 
  Blood pumping and chugging, downwards, upwards, East and West,
  Birds cue their soar and circuses of cirrus lay you down to rest. 

  
  

• sometimes three

  If all of time’s the two weeks we’re apart,
  or sometimes three,
  
  Then four must be infinity.

• it’s the bosque

  But say it like it’s Boss Key
  Bosque,
  
  Say it like it’s boss ski
  Bosque
  On the Rio Grand(e).

• doored

  Cities change 
  And stranger’s faces stay the same
  
  I look for you in all of them and I’m hoping you get doored, 
  That way I can rush to you 
  
  And hold you too 
  The way city boys do (you’ve never ventured out of Chelsea) holding back the tears you’ve bottled up in me, I’ll patch your scars with the palm of my pain and
  
  you’ll see my eyes for what they are, 
  hoping you get doored so I can rush to you, 
  
  there’s a bike shop down on Grand.

• matter

  I have built the corners that scream at me, 
  and suddenly I’ve got myself a room. 
  At night, there’s a growing shadow,
  I’ve seen it out my window when I was looking out on Mars.
  
  It’s a figure of a creature
  Made of gold but made of clay 
  Limbs like rolled-out play-doh, through the palms, the squiggly worms, 
  Lanky limbs with big hands and big feet and a neck 
  cracked through and through that carries a massively oversized egghead skull with no features but it’s hang. 
  
  No ears and no mouth, 
  Eyes, 
  Piercings. Indents. Dimples, grins. 
  A void 
  Instead of a soul
  And yet somehow and
  Every time there was just something about it where 
  You could still 
  Tell
  That it was there
  For you
  Beyond hearing you, smelling you, seeing something you’ve did, done, are, 
  After that, or maybe before
  It’s,
  There
  
  For
  You 
  
  Through it’s glaze refracted shadow upon the eyes, it’s just awful
  
  Even on the brightest of nights,
  
  As if the world surrounding it succumbed to its event horizon, washed away upon its touch, for he was not of this world but from the world where
  Coming over here, to me at night
  Like this, all the fucking time as though it were a gloved figure,
  But as a being. Sentient. Mew-Two level shit. And,
  It needed this 
  Cloak 
  
  It needs this cloak
  
  Whenever he wanted to come inside to the room with all the corners, 
  He just
  Sifts through the walls and into your home, as though it bled through the pores of concrete and what was once your view is now your guest,
  In this cloak, this
  Nebulous, black gown of the static that comes after one’s settled down and is laying down in bed, face up, the lights are off and you’re eyes are adjusting but then once they have you sort of like,  Accept the darkness, or some shit and like
  There’s that static – that comes after the blackness? And the more you let it go the more it festers but the more you try to pin it down and night-focus on it it just dissolves back into the regular hue of night this thing doesn’t wanna ride or die in. 
  
  So, because it’s trying to avoid the obvious of startling me so overtly,
  It settles in the corners. Cause it knows,  Corners are always the darkest bits of the room, whatever light goes in, 
  It ain’t coming out. 
  And so it’s able to use it’s static drapery in those corners because between the static and the light going in and never coming out, 
  It blends in – so that corner – within a second or four’s consideration – is only ever gonna look like that corner of night
  
  Whereas
  Same token
  You could beat the system in a way, and really the way you beat it is also unfortunately the way you first went about doing things the first time you ever knew he was actually there, in the shadows, 
  In the periphery is where you see the most 
  And this maneuver tricks the creature, but ultimately, renders one exactly where it wants you to be. 
  
  Directly under it. 
  
  Through the periphery is how you see it move. Like a headlight through the blinds when a car makes a turn down the road, it flows through its effusing shroud of clouding, clumping tulle, knowing translucent, especially at Four 
  
  Twenty-seven A
  M,
  It makes no sound, for it cannot hear. 
  Not that it intends on avoiding the things on my dresser, my lamp, my passport, the artichoke ceramic 
  Or that accidentally does so on occasion
  You know, a little ‘Oops!’ 
  A little ghost oops,
  It flows through it all, gloved finger
  
  From one corner 
  To the next! 
  
  It looks like the fucking grinch from the side of your eye, hopping chimney to chimney,
  Santa’s bag of tulle
  
  And you keep shifting with your head in the pillow, you know, now that’s you’re on to the motherfucking piece of shit, 
  
  As it goes
  One corner, to the other corner 
  
  Grabs a sip of water, then another corner 
  Until finally, 
  It’s only at the bottom periphery, where you imagine the lower bit of your eyeball can see, 
  
  And that’s because he’s now at the foot of your bed. 
  
  And usually that’s as far as he goes. 
  
  Night after night
  He lingers there,
  Maybe taking notes, snap-chatting Tik Toks like a goon
  But he’s looking at you. 
  And it’s then at that moment and every moment like it when you’ve figured to think that by turning to the side of your pillow or bringing up the duvet to your scalp you would suddenly make him go away. And the sensation he brought with him,
  The drenched chill of vodka dripping down the underbelly of your spine, the cognizant mind and a pumping, warm heart at once existing within your frozen corpse. And that’s how you freeze in place until morning. 
  
  But then there are the other times when he comes closer. 
  
  He’s got Gumby limbs, you see, he’s able to stretch out from where he’s standing, He’s capable of looming – No!
  Stretch
  is the wrong word. 
  It’s as if, from its ankles, where ankles ought to be, it’s like
  There’s this never-ending bit of leg coming out, rolled tightly within its feet or something under his sole, a fucking
  Soft serve ice cream machine
  You know, 
  With the lever
  But in reverse. 
  And fully retractable, without any spill,
  Same thing with its arms, but not it’s neck
  It’s already got that big fucking head on it
  And when he’s going bout it this way, you know
  Starts hunching over 
  Quasimodo but on intermittent fasting 
  Not even reaching out for you
  You’re not his snack
  If he had pockets, that’s where he hands would be the way he leans in on you, keeping his arms curved the exact same way as his back, almost as though he were made out of paper,
  And clay and gold
  But mostly of construction paper with the way it all bends the same way at once while still stretching over you
  And
  
  You’re doing the best you can, right
  You’re holding out and your spine is drunk as hell 
  But you can feel air from his lurching in just
  Pressing tighter on your lungs, like you’re the one side of a harpsichord unsung at the moment 
  And 
  The closer he gets at you the more he grows out of the periphery but because you’ve looking at it this long you may as well just find some focus on it, the two of you are there and the bar is looking a little empty. 
  Maybe it’s the surrender or the curiosity (there’s something about the two of them) but the head follows after the eyes. You realize your toes have pulled at your sheets and knotted them and kicked them to the floor and you realize you were straining your neck to begin with and now your head’s on the pillow the way it ought to be and you realize that this is it that we’re going in and you look up once last time for closure and he’s looking at you just the way he wanted to, you under him 
  
  And the thought of screaming comes to mind
  And you run with that for a while
  Until you realize after the fifth or sixth time you can’t produce a noise. 
  
  Nothing for you to hear. Hours made endless wailing for a whimper. It kills you a little bit, the futility. After a while you pick up on what’s going on and you’re just testing to make sure it’s actually true, that this is what’s happening, that this is what has happened, that this is what will happen.  Sometimes. The sometimes that last an eternity. 
  
  And it wasn’t until I began picking up on that bit – 
  It’s true frequency, I mean, the eternity that only lasted sometimes, the
  Conjugal visitations
  At the mid-top of 20 Seventeen
  
  Um,
  Just exactly what it was. 
  Who he was, after all the shifts in belief
  
  You’re too afraid of people doing to you what you’re unwilling to do to them
  
  You’re too afraid the things you’ve done to people you suspect no one has done to other people
  
  You are a raging narcissist
  
  Daddy’s in you
  no. 
  
  No,
  It was a matter of the blood. 
  The news of the recent at the time that had happened within my blood. 
  The stranger looming over me not there to antagonize or terrify but rather welcome me into the clan of the undead. 
  After the years in the nights of the screams and the face without a face that’s what all of it deduced itself towards. 
  The inescapable neighborhood welcoming committee, 
  Pills instead of pies, the shakes instead of hugs 
  Or shakes, 
  This ain’t Miami anymore. 
  I cut the screams and settle in, looking up as I spell its name, 
  There are almost jokes shared and stories told as he reaches with his hands the first time I’ve seen him do it and grabs my blankets off the floor and tucks me in, 
  His head’s now shaping out like mine, I remind him when I was young and would run and my head would pull behind the rest of my body and now he dances for me like in Body Double and makes some tricks of his drapery and with time increased and settled 
  Finally one day left me as I said goodbye and he pointed to my window
  Promising the comfort of company the next time I stepped out onto Mars. 
  The growing shadows receded, 
  No telling what’s become of my room
  As its corners crumble like Pompeii 
  And all there was
  was Space again. 

• 224 / metropolitan

  It’s snowing on Halloween.
  I’m a cowboy and you’re a Zombie Mister Rogers. 
  I nearly broke my horse-on-a-stick at some point, on your roof. Manhattan in the distance.   
  
  I’d slipped on some ice, I think. I think I’d called him Sugarlips, the horse I mean,
  And at some point you’d asked if I knew any of Andreas Gursky’s work,   
  That part I always knew.   
  
  Sometime later nearer towards December we’re paper-bagging Sapporo’s and you’re teaching me the meaning of ‘schmear,’ according to what’s-her-name at Bagelsmith
  (It’s more than just a serving on the bagel, it’s the heaping of the cream, a fucking pint, that’s the point) 
  As you say we’re here and crush your camel blue into the dark,
  
  The
  Cherry lights your eyes,   
  
  I take it in and at once I know I’ve known it all immediately, me
  But with you
  Here,
  At Grand Ferry Park.   
  
  We’d sit at our bench at the time
  And all of the time,
  Before the sugar factory became a place for the yupsters to walk their children and pencil-dick towers shafted into the Autumn sky and redefined what we’d know from eight years ago,
  Drunk love in those moments, 
  Hands held but together always somber, as though between our fingers, within the sweat atop the webbing, the preservation of what we knew would soon become extinct,
  Come September at JFK,
  Where we’d hug and mourn the last giraffe of Brooklyn.   
  
  It’s been a year since I’ve been back, 
  I’m back again but with an N95 shipped to my place in Hollywood from my friend out in Albuquerque.     
  
  At first when I’d arrived, I sat on the rocks that overlooked the river,
  And the bridge, by our spot in its exactness, 
  The thunder of the subway trains trudging towards Manhattan. 
  The Hasids with their payot sidelocks lapping in the wind, lapsing waves like curtains over the East River (while their wives with Rebooks walk the bike lane up above) 
  Shoo themselves away 
  For an all-black wedding parading out of Crown Heights (or so they thought) setting up between the bench that was always ours (or so I thought)
  And the other one we never needed. 
  
  Matrimony for them,
  But with a view of the Baruch Houses that at night transformed into a heaven made of halogen, laid out just for us along the horizon.    
  
  It was brief,  
  A seven minute affair, they kissed and all clapped as ferries kept on schedule, and soyboy queer boys devoid of attention raise their voices as they talk into their phones, 
  Demanding photos of spreadsheets for the influencers they track all day on Sundays, 
  Yeah,
  A word for them comes into mind, I won’t say it but it’s fucking
  Fathomable. You know which word I mean.   
  
  The wedding leaves with no remaining signs of the Hasids.   
  
  The other seat over there has a mother now,
  Watching over her Albanian granddaughter, a Maltese in some Chinatown Gucci in September on the rocks, barking at barnacle. 
  Under the trees behind me, 
  Muslims salat al-‘asr-ing by the smoke stacks from yesteryear towards tomorrow’s Sun, 
  Soyboy unhappy with his life has gone as well, god-willing on his end he’s sniffing out his second frozen marg, née rosé, 
  Hopefully another stranger looks his way when he’s on his phone, He can raise his voice again and make it count, you know (feel good).  
  
  The wedding party of 20 wanders onto Kent.   
  
  Sea planes landing, I wish they’d field goal through the ConEd towers on 14th (in Manhattan), 
  And with the parties gone, I take my chance and take our seat, I’m looking out and, God, 
  How skylines change and maybe this one isn’t mine anymore.    
  
  It’s my first Sunday back in over a year and
  Walking past 224, Metropolitan, 
  And recollecting how all it took was just one glance and one smile to nod and carry on, 
  I think about the things people say about time, I think they may be true.   
  
  Weddings where my ass dreamed of always being, 
  The potentiality of this bench just being mine forever now and onward makes no sense to me, but
  I’ll always say I’m very good at sharing
  Just don’t get me started on beaches, those are mine for good.   As I type the water breaks on littered rock, a sailboat wanders by,
  I heard a train derailed today, an A, it caused delays. 
  It’s the first Sunday that I’m back and I remember you without the pining or the pain, I guess the good work’s done or at least the bad times over, 
  Putting you to rest now knowing for once and for always,
  To cherish you but once a year like this counts for all the years before. 
  Missing you was my immortality, 
  But like skylines all things fade,
  Usually for something larger that crumbles just the same.

• blankets for sunset

  I want us at a forever Sunset, 
  On a wooden deck overlooking the lake we forget was a reservoir
  With a slipping slide that would lead us straight into the water.
  There are sofas everywhere, pointed in the direction of the slide, towards the lake, and tables too, 
  With cups of unmeltable ice, made of unshatterable glass. 
  
  The sea is somewhere always near. Your nose can taste it.   
  
  The sky’s light’s like you’re in a grapefruit
  ruby red towards the very center of it all, 
  clouds of pulp trace the flight-paths towards the places never been. 
  There’s indigo of course, brimming in place behind the Angeles mountains, beyond the Oz of Glendale. 
  They’re unsure whether or not they should be turning on or off their office lights and radio tower signals because of the perpetual Sunset you know, so it’s like
  Every seventeen seconds or something there’s always a set of lights turning off and another set of them turning them on, 
  The emerald city twinkles.
  
  Throw in the sounds of airplanes while you’re at it.
  Occasionally. 
  And the wind of the exhaust from down under when you’re walking the Williamsburg bridge towards Lucky Dog. 
  In fact, 
  At all times, like at 20
  Percent, 15 percent even
  
  People in the distance with their dogs, walking them, walking at least, a
  Couple minutes apart from one another.
  Let the cycle last a month, 
  then stick with them and let them grow and age and once all the dogs are dead you know fuck the owners and start with a new set of frenchies and then run the cycle again. 
  On what used to be Sundays, we’ll play Willy Chirino, whenever to whenever, because the family’s coming over with a bevy of shit from Islas Canarias (the one on SW 26th) and we’ll dance and drink black label and shoot the shit while tia talks about the time Alberto did the thing for Franco at his Valle de los Caídos,
  
  There will be trumpets to play and pianos to touch, abuela’s got La Comparsa down like she was seventeen, and dad’s playing the Strad like we used to. 
  
  And then they’ll go home and they’ve left us all of the leftovers and now we’ve got like a hundred croqueticas de hamon until the next time they get here and we’ll do our fucking all-boy workouts while we sleep before we wake and we’re greeted with the bounty of the lay so who gives a shit how many we eat
  
  We’re tending to the self-watered herb garden, 
  We’re pouring Havana Club into buckets of mint because that’s how much our self-replenishing herb garden presents us with every morning,
  Whenever it is we decide when morning will be at our Forever Sunset. 
  
  Not that we’re only drinking on our deck, in fact we’ve taken a liking to water and our infinite supply of Crystal Ice, the drinks of orange chemical you used to buy for four for seven at Gelson’s.
  
  But there’s also a self-scrubbing grill (I know what you’re thinking, don’t worry you’ll chop wood for fun like they do in the movies) and,
  
  There’s also a self-scrubbing grill eleven feet long and beneath that
  A huge fridge of (you guessed it) self-stocking food items, 
  Items mostly including those square slabs of ground beef you buy at 365 when you’re looking to impress with the plastic wrapper,
  And 
  Anna’s corn dip 
  and his chicken salad 
  and 
  those beers we like that taste like mango
  And
  And cold macaroni maybe 
  Or pizzas we could slap on the grill if we ever learned how,
  Same thing with chicken wings, really, but 
  
  That’s okay!
  Cause
  When the friends come over in between the time the parents come over and, you know,  separately, 
  They’ll know how to grill the things we still can’t admit we don’t know how to work with. 
  
  Now,
  
  These friends come at different levels. 
  Different speeds. 
  Different groups, 
  usually the ones we’d always wished would work,
  
  But also sometimes they were entire tribes, incapable of breaking a goddamn thing, not even spilling a drink and yet more miraculously (somehow), 
  
  We’re already, always ready for them. It sweeps something within us, this Sunset, fingers for its rays, prying us open before entering to indoctor, 
  Until for once and suddenly always (or instantaneously forever) we suddenly believed everything would always be okay and we were finally able to like who we lived to be, 
  Even at the moment, 
  Especially going forward. 
  
  When they’ve gone, 
  We’ll read. We’ll also write. We’ll
  Try recipes and eat ramen over a 97-hour session of roller coaster tycoon 2 on the biggest, best graphics computer screen 
  if
  Possible,
  And we’ll use the French press while the Mr. Coffee’s coughing up his brew and we’ll 
  Just for fun, 
  Without the need of a wank, a nap,
  
  Until waking up to having been already edged by our dreams. 
  
  We’ve got the dog with us. 
  He leaves the room when it’s time to nap. 
  
  And you know, there’s also the TV in the living room,
  That you can access through the wooden deck. 
  
  I suppose the wooden deck is part of a larger home, okay, we’re at a home with the lake and all that shit but we prefer the deck but also, yeah, you know
  There’s a TV in the living room. And a fully stocked kitchen. And the bedroom, with the master bath and the swing, throw in a solarium, sure. 
  
  But be sure when I tell you this: 
  
  There 
  is, for certain,
  
  One 
  Other
  
  Room. 
  
  Always been there, even before I started talking to you about our deck and our slide and our lake of a cement hole. 
  It’s the bit of the sky that is beneath our feet. 
  
  Should it be accessed through the garden, the garden accessed through the wooden deck then round the back, past the hot tub and tetherball court, 
  Or, 
  You know, 
  Through the house, too, 
  Whichever way you see it fit and work for you, 
  Us, 
  It’s where he’s at and it’s always there man always ready for you when you’re ready for it cause I dunno if that part of us will ever change.  
  
  But you can go in, baby. 
  
  Cause that’s where he’s waiting for you. 
  
  And 
  
  Through the door, you know
  Either of em, 
  
  You’ll find Kokomo. 
  
  You’re in the Keys. Bahia Honda. We’ve been there a couple times.
  Bottom of the country, top of the Caribbean. The sand is white, Parrotfish kiss your toes If only parrotfish got so close (but here they do) and 
  
  And it’s all a little different. There’s the sea and the palms and the sugar sand and it’s after midnight but midnight’s got this hue of purple to it now and on the far horizon you’ve got the teal neon of the end of Days
  
  The stars finally scorch the skies as though every one of them were Mars and its hue marching towards our melancholy, the breeze is gentle and the mosquitos have gone extinct and there’s a fridge of tacos and another fridge of tacos and lechon and his warm stew,
  And all of it’s there for you should you come and sit with him on his couch, 
  A couch 
  Impenetrable to the polyp dust, should the wind ever dare blow in its direction. 
  
  All of his books are there. His magazines, his blu-ray player, his
  Chinos, and
  
  He’s wearing them too,
  
  And he hears you coming and he’s still reading and not to ignore you but because he just he wants to finish his intake before he gives you his attention and when he’s ready to he smacks his book shut and down and his chin raises with his brows and then with his eyes that say ‘hey I love you,’ it suddenly
  
  It suddenly becomes up to you 
  unfortunately and forever
  To decide if you’re gonna sit there and eat tacos with him and drink the rum you’ve buried out of the sand and laugh as the neon of the horizon turns the night sky into a flash fire nuclear Costco while you hold each other’s wrists and feet and the heat chars the heart of vision and the belly of the soul and together your bones burn before your guys’s wedding bands and 
  You’re back at the deck. And he’s still reading in his room. 
  
  Or
  
  You decide to lead him out into the Sun. Knowing you can’t keep him there forever. He’s got his own wooden deck, his own room for you, or maybe not, beyond the garden path or through the woods of the laundry room, I think he’s got us sitting on a chair by a pool. 
  
  And it’s nothing personal, it’s just, 
  
  Circumstances over there are always the same. Every dog has its own patio it crawls under when it’s time to go
  
  And unless he’s really into that crossword and is gonna need a couple of a minutes before the world explodes so that he could be the everything you’ve wanted out of Heaven, 
  
  He’ll come with you right away. 
  
  And his shirt is crisp. His skin is how you knew it to be. 
  He’s kept the beard. But only because he wanted to for you. 
  He lets you smell the back-top of his head, 
  Years recounted as you comb your fingers through his hair. 
  There’s a sticker on the bottom of his shoe. 
  A water stain just under his left collar. 
  You ask him if he’s cold. 
  He says he wouldn’t mind being a little warmer. 
  And so you wrap each other in blankets for Sunset. 
  And you’re sitting together and there’s a playlist going on that needs no curation and the both of you know to look at the same things at the same times, 
  And you hear the doggies with their walkers and you’re guessing which of them’s gonna croak next. 
  He asks for the moon and you bring it out for him.
  You’ll ask him if he wants some stars and together you’ll map out the sky with them. 
  You’ll have your meals together. 
  Take, 
  Day-long naps and wake up in time for lunch. 
  You’ll take out the neck ties for ties for after dinner and after that
  There’s usually dessert,
  Usually sorbet. 
  Eyes closed and chins on each other’s shoulders you’ll be dancing in Paris. 
  Eyes open and with thrusts on cold pillows and through the windows it’s raining now in New York
  Until refractory hits and coyotes dance for us in Joshua Tree. 
  And there’s movies we’ve never seen. 
  There are songs we’ve never heard,
  Drives from the garage never mapped, somehow always known, bridges built as long as our hands can hold. 
  Until it’s time to go. Until the next time at least. 
  You guys will have the ceremonial goodbye, like the embrace before he’d walked down Cheremoya. 
  You guys’ll listen to and rewatch the favorites, 
  On a cycle,
  Depending on the light of a very dependable window out in Glendale that flickers on or off every thirty-seven years give or take.
  
  The both of you have watched The Brood three hundred and seventeen times, today you mark another tally. 
  The two of you have an American Spirit that drags as long as an entire pack. 
  There’s the final bites of Petit Trois,  Big Mec’s like listerine our wiped mouths clean and ready for air
  With one final embrace and locked-lipped kiss at once you both drown.  
  Lungs filling with the water of every day playing through every day that had come before, as
  Houdini’s chains wrap your legs together and suddenly hurl you down the slipping slide, 
  There’s the slope but it’s in freefall, 
  The both of you in the home of the car of the bed of each other’s arms of each other’s heads on each other’s torso’s, 
  before the both of you fly high into the air, eyelids closed but the both of you clearly seen through the light of Sun that pierces through the frantic flesh, 
  and break the surface of the reservoir,
  Immediately, at once, falling deeper and deeper to the bottom of the sea, 
  The last of our bubbles the same as stars we drew
  The water in our lungs now replenishing with oxygen, the womb of the couple 
  Hitting the lakebed with your feet 
  You’re breathing like you used to, the both of you are and
  The shirts on your both look like they’ve just come out of the dry cleaner’s
  And there’s the deafness of the deep and as if for the very first time the both of you are able to speak. 
  
  Hours down below and looking at one another he’ll finally ask, ‘See you later then?’ 
  You’ll break if you hold his hand any longer. 
  And so you let him go and tell him that ‘I’ll see you always’
  
  Something the two of you had finally ended doubting, for after a millennia it was something said that had always proven true. 

• edgelord

  There’s a man who
  Thinks he’s a boy
  There out on
  His patio
  At night
  It’s almost Three
  I had to pee.  
  
  He’s always there
  There on that
  Chair of his 
  His Feet’s up on another
  Chair
  There
  They’re identical
  Laptop on his 
  Legs
  Watching something
  Something bright
  And light
  With light 
  The light of a tunnel
  Tunneled black mirror
  I think he has a dog
  And 
  Smoke Always
  He’s always smoking
  Eyes tired but
  From watching
  Something over &
  Over
  Until he needs
  Another breath of muddled numbness
  This month it’s whiskey
  Last month was whiskey, too.
  Sometimes up until
  Five
  I think he drowns to stay alive and
  Rid the hurt
  To hurt again
  Where did it
  First begin
  The kick to the train
  Down the 
  Tracks sloping
  Down something steep
  A mountain upside Down,
  its 
  Scratch of horizon too steep to climb
  You’d fly instead
  But from your feet
  Wings On his feet.
   
  Another glass with Roommate’s ice
  He coughs
  The 
  Scraped Grind
  Of his chair
  He should be writing
  Should be sleeping
  Should be
  Working but there’s
  Nothing
  Nothing’s Working
  And there’s never tears
  But pours
  And porn and poppers, too
  He’s never fixed his blinds
  There’s a glow
  But on a carcass.  
  
  Boy the things 
  I’ve watched him jerk it too
  Re-watch central over there
  The struggled
  Pain that gets him off, or going
  Is it what he wants or 
  How he feels the
  Relatability?
  Of the primal urge to lose control 
  And (or) want it stripped by rope and bourbon
  He only drinks until he cums
  No, I’ve never heard him cry
  
  Stop asking.
  
  But how he sobs in his sternum,
  
  Forever
  Playing a Lead in his
  Movie version of this
  movie land,
  Foothills of Hollywood
  Looking for an ending but liking all of the attention
  Looking like
  He’s blaming others
  But still stiff to think of blaming 
  Himself,
  
  the edgelord.  
  
  By his door
  The one I can 
  See it
  Looks like he’s getting out
  Or going somewhere else.
  
  Another patio
  Or 
  Tunnel
  Maybe somewhere 
  Where he needs or can knead
  Maybe what 
  He
  needs
  is
  
  Somewhere new to live 
  In and with himself
  Maybe The light of Sun
  Or presence 
  Of men 
  He will see,
  Want him as something other than an ottoman,
  Imprisoned trophy bitch to men who live as boys.  
  
  Does he plan on changing or does 
  He already feel it’s too late for that
  Perhaps
  If only one thing then
  The change of believing that. 

• nightclouds

  Night clouds of thunder their 
  Lightening forever lit and stalled and netted, 
  Window frames of ember-ed gold –
  Champagne cherries, lit cigarettes 
  Tangled down by the smoking swaying 
  Canopies of the hills, 
  Looking down 
  Towering over 
  While us down here in the grid,
  The shining rows of halogen and brake lights, neon too 
  Somewhere in there that’s where the Pikey used to be – 
  Down further
  Nordstrom memorializes yesteryear Beverly Park with its Kiddie Land and laughs and screams,
  Soon imported like just the other day 
  Towards down the bend just past the beanery, 
  Where pastels shine like moons
  And swings are reserved for Mickey’s.
  Stolichnaya’s closed for the night but the flour’s set to pour in and float with plumes within a couple hours, 
  Before the birds squeal over territory,
  Though after mic drops echoing of cheering crowds finally fade
  And Jacarandas still sway with greeting for Spring,
  Lilac into mauve into indigo at night, 
  No matter the light up until dawn. 

• vaseline alley

  I can’t recall Vaseline Alley
  In fact I’ve never known it, 
  But the sensation sure, 
  Kate waltzing through her Sensual World,
  Her Machavellian kneels, afterward 
  Gargling over at Gold Coast Listerine, fresh-minted moscow mules still tasting of warm water and salt but with ice. 
  Smoke breaks with e-pens, the new cruise, 
  Pay no regard the new what’s your number, bumped shoulders the ASL,
  Ever been to Basix, the new Have we done this before. 
  Pining eyes leaned against the dumpster,
  Or so I was told,
  Beyond the backroom at the Circus
  the jostled down service entrance with broken frames, the broken promise one would 
  hope to break with a score,
  in a time before it became nothing but for pissing in secret and the piece 
  of the night’s 270 feet away, so says on the phone, 
  but the line at the Abbey’s gone on way too long to hone in on one’s instant connection. 
  The scraping of boots and Levi’s against asphalt gone – 
  Along the way said goodbye to the initial heave and thrust against brick walls and 
  signs that read No Loitering, 
  Surrendered for deafening noise
  and crinkling bottles of water,
  No need hearing what one’s saying, 
  so long as glazed eyes read and gauge the lips,
  A pondering wallow for the alleys of men whose men took the knee 
  before the G, and in knowing dismissal of the 
  fluid death decades later would soon resign without a halt
  fortified through kneading and needing,
  the nurseries turned nightclubs where most now so secure would
  forgo the bated pining for tough and being 
  for the grasp of the excessive, the night forgotten until 
  recounting the evening with 1 PM morning’s chilaquiles. 

• troubadour

  I read Elton performed Honky Tonk Woman
  Sometime before the lines were no longer a thing, 
  at least the lines before we knew them, 
  six feet apart at least a gaggle of twenty 
  cramped merch tables and spilt Fireball, 
  pressed against the wall opposite of the bar, guitars hung, their strings, they’re totems 
  
  Joni Mitchell 1968 
  Amateur Tom Waits discovered some time later, thanks to Herb 
  Some time before Miles brought back the cool sounds of jazz 
  and Bob plays for Roger’s encore – keep the car going, 
  in this Sad Cafe, red neon into blue
  and Eagles meet before they soar. 
  
  Persian rugs laid into plates of spaghetti wire
  With the ladies of the canyon driving down in their trucks and double-parking, 
  Carly’s worth the tow. 
  Baths of sweat come with sines from wood
  With pressed chests and shoulders making rested pillows for lovers’ chins, 
  Until the noise rings only in the drum of the hearts 
  and is once released outside in the air of the desert basin, 
  the towering Oz of Century City, a reminder of footing outside euphoria, 
  and exhaust of Santa Monica Boulevard the standing fans that cake the sweat and plunges the skin into a plaster of grunge.
  
  New York comes to mind, 
  Troubadour the city of its own institution, 
  Friends made hours in shared lyrics, sure, shared sips of course,
  Scattered into the night for good before ascending back up into Laurel Canyon or up the block through Norma Triangle, where, Billboard lights on Sunset Boulevard now gone LED
  Shine bodies turned mannequins fossilize 
  The forever ago of the set into a single moment, a single noise
  out of the wood temple trappings amidst a town of the boys
  lays the city of gold, 
  two doors through towards the stage, 
  Catching rocketman at age 2-3, his America sold. 

• cars slipping down the’s

  Cars slipping down ‘The’s’
  Cascading river of fuming light
  They don’t know what they’ve made for us 
  Up here or up above
  I don’t think they even give a shit  
  
  I know I wouldn’t  
  
  Bjork had a video once,
  Something about us
  Us
  Super computer humans with
  Microchip warehouses 
  And Datahouse condos
  Prius coffins also all
  Overheating
  Pulses
  Avid clicks
  On fire
  We always look it, don’t we  
  
  The Sun
  That’s blood orange of Northern Italy 
  Milan on the horizon
  Where’d you get that from It looks very nice on you, doesn’t it
  
  The speckled congregations of halogen and pathogen
  You should see how Berlin divides from Space
  You mass
  Metastasizing
  Turnpike veins
  Lumpectomies for Costco’s
  Strip-malls the historic brownstone
  You’re post-modern babe
  Googie temples
  Drive-thru Mecca
  You wouldn’t want Paris 
  But its recipes, Republique,
  Or AirBNBs
  Its grams and IG’s and the cobblestone 
  No maybe not that
  Digging for the finest ideas, though, you
  City harvesters
  Acting as gatherers
  Sometimes the gesture does us in enough. 
  
  An idea of you as home as always frightened me
  ‘I’d rather be buried elsewhere’.  
  
  But yes I suppose there’s something more
  Now I see you
  Something you’re brought on me
  You tumor of grids 
  Masses of galaxies 
  Trons of Jons and Vons and Lawns 
  People yearn for the maps of our stars
  They always fall but 
  Never across the sky
  For all the gravities you push into your orbit
  Bunch up
  And pull up
  Into the hills
  Constellations overlooking Milky Ways 
  You’re just all of me
  And all of us 
  Us dreamers
  Weilding tongues of snakes and shamans 
  Saturn Sirens
  Vegans of Neptune
  Peasants of Pluto we meme-share without desire for contact
  Elitist loner-dom
  Echoed shadows my denizens 
  I’m home and I’m landing
  How God I wish I could see you at night when I look up at the sky the way I look at you on the ground
  Landing now, I’ll need a smoke
  Maybe then I’ll say I’m home
  Here it comes, the tires down
  Our Landing gear in set
  Concrete burn and skid
  $60 Uber
  And standing idly on the escalator no matter which side you wish to lean
  I taste the dry
  Air cakes the face like a mask
  Smog-filtered movie-glasses
  Rose
  Into Rosé and violet and Aperol Spritz
  Heavenly graffiti.  
  
  Being here’s like always waiting on the gates.  
  
  Fuck being buried, 
  I don’t know if we’re ever getting in. 

• saint mark’s

  They’ll have robotic bees soon
  Halal quarrels over Venmo
  Muji distopia
  Fanny-pack disphoria
  That’s the lack of, not the opposite 
  White men run the counter of Mamoun’s
  Rest in Peace St. Marks
  Can’t wait for your
  pencil-dick towers 
  to shadow over rivers
  Keep your Ben and Jerry’s 
  Fuck it with the Continental 5 for 10
  Generations for steel and cork facades
  Grates like griddles
  Steam heat of an underbelly Sun,
  Hell here and Hell under
  At least the buses make less noise.

• beachwood

  Today on a walk through Beachwood I’m looking down at the reservoir,
  The Sun that shimmers there, that’s what matters here.
  Cement holes mistaken for lakes that nobody minds.

• something about cities

  People are like cities here
  But you’ve always only been yourself, haven’t you
  Rooftops in Brooklyn got
  Nothing on your sneer 
  Or twinkle of eye you don’t yet know you’ve got.   
  
  At least this time around.   
  
  Hipsters have their babies now, 
  Canon satchels
  Warby Parkers
  ‘Manhattan on Safari’ 
  That’s what we’ll call it
  Dickie couture
  Yves Saint Laruarnt
  Cut offs tucked into running shorts
  Fanny packs are back
  You’d think they’d run out of ideas by now
  Scuffed shoes
  On
  Lorimer, though I counted them all 
  All
  Scattered and flying through like stars, or
  Streets I used to stumble
  Or like there in our L.A.,
  The houses that belonged to Simon Cowell. 
  They say he’s drinking beer, 
  You never liked the taste
  You prefer a whiskey Erasure.   
  
  There’s still magic here I’d forgotten, you know. 
  Mothers pressing hands on baby’s ears, 
  Smiles down under on the platform,
  As their C to High Street’s rolling in
  The baby keeps on sleeping. 
  Poet Fathers with Picasso sons
  Cardboard signs 
  ‘Love and care our Earth’
  I want to see you hold a child’s hand.   
  
  I ride a train towards another person’s home,
  Another man I’ll fuck for the view. 
  Where are you now? 
  
  I’m somewhere under still,
  Someplace between 14th and up.
  You’d hate the heat,
  At least the way it’s been
  Swamp dick, a musty ass
  The desert suits us more.   
  
  Here there’s other men.
  Different flours,
  Water always never tastes the same
  Depending on the hangover 
  And or the avenue
  These island boroughs have stayed the same
  However
  There’s now a Starbucks on Allen and something or other
  God this heat 
  Week-long Summer. 
  Beads of sweat that taste of tears
  down here
  I know you don’t like those
  And yet 
  I’m beginning to think I need them
  If not to love song 
  Then to plea for you
  For you to hold me in your arms
  For me to know you mean it tight
  It’s not an errand 
  But something that you want
  For me
  Or for us
  Or for you so I’ll keep
  The train’s a station away
  It’s getting hotter by the second
  Breeze of the underground 
  Break this Earth I stand on for a living
  That’s a living
  Living to want to Live
  I beg of you
  Submit my fever dreaming heart into 
  Knowing that you’ll want me back 
  So that this home I wish to 
  Show and brag with you
  Will simmer from Hudson river aqua into rat-trash fumes
  Into yesteryear until it’s finally gone.
  Even if you only say it I’ll think of it as true, 
  I’ll hold off that demon air in corner number four
  And tell my aches 
  I’ll still be wanted after Christmas Season
  After parties
  When Winter People are no longer wanted
  And tossed with flipsides of high life
  ‘At least we had prosecco.’   
  
  There was something about cities, here,
  I was working hoping leading towards concluding with, 
  Something like the other shoe.   
  
  I wish you were parked outside my house like that one time,
  The time I pretended I wasn’t home. 
  I wish I were home and looking out the window
  Watching you
  There was something to you hoping
  An
  Embodiment of something 
  Someone 
  Wanting me.  
  
  I suppose.
  Let’s just meet at the Grove? 
  Valet in the parking garage
  There’s a gin bar I’ve been meaning to try,
  They say Constance Wu is fantastic in Hustlers. 
  Maybe cities are the people you do things with. 
  I don’t know what that makes people.   
  
  It’s too easy calling you L.A.   
  
  Re other men, 
  I’ll swallow all explanation for later
  Please trust me,
  For I will no less and inevitably self-destruct 
  The way you know I can
  The way that irritates
  Yet makes you think you’ve done it right,
  Your stronghold my frailty 
  Kamikaze dreams of arms
  And laughter 
  Plastic cup cupboards
  And overcooked falafel.  
  
  I wish they had Mamoun’s in Chelsea.
  I’d love to watch you act as if it’s something you’ve had better somewhere else. 

• l.e.s. but also somewhere off of sunset

  Your honks
  Now come with trigger warnings
  Right of way to shark boy and his three-wheeled scooter
  Mommy’s on the Gram
  Pleasantries her traffic light 
  Right Fake on Go
  Daddy’s pushing stroller for the akita  
  
  Your Uniqlo’s swapped floors
  Women take the stairs now
  Must be the patriarchy.
  Your men no longer navigate the elevator
  In fact they think it’s theirs 
  Pizza parties fifteenth floor
  This hotel is for them too.   
  
  You’ll no less bring back cargo pants
  Guy Harvey tees to follow
  And then froyo 
  Post-modern Tasti-D-Lites 
  But like pus I love watching you
  seethe under pressure, this island your pore.  
  
  Bile-puddled paths
  Neighbor nestled nooks
  For retweets and spritzes
  And avocado toast that doesn’t fucking belong.  
  
  You’re growing soft, you old fart
  Soft and pudgy
  Pop-up shops for drove-in Four-Wheeler Photo booths
  Chino shorts on your mother’s credit card
  Self-fulfillment you’re all Trumps. 
  
  You’re working on your trash
  Your notice taken with the rats
  Your bins overflowing still
  You keep digging yourself into a maze.   
  
  Astounding really
  I hope you’re proud and loud
  No Grace filter for your Selfie? 
  That’s really at the marrow, isn’t it
  You think you’re hyper cool and
  Hyper-safe
  I was roofied once in a ghost building now a Gelateria
  You walk now with your head facing the opposite direction Slower now
  No jaywalking now
  And yet you’ve become indignant
  Dare I say boring
  Good job my Prince
  You’ve turned yourself into Vegas.   
  
  Fuck you. 

• pocket pet

  I dream of you in daze
  Into nights when I see you
  And I’m reminded of the
  Familiar fear of never worrying – 
  I’m used to worry: 
  It’s a pocket pet I’ve fed over the years
  With years
  And stamps 
  It’s a 
  A Bracketed lapse in living
  Where I see the known ways I could hurt 
  You, possible even 
  Break you
  End us Tear away the familiarity and turn it
  Into shadow.   
  
  I worry.   
  
  There’s many ways I’ve gone about it
  Before
  Many ways repeated
  Many more ready for another run.   
  
  I could sleep with another man. 
  Perhaps a friend
  Or worse a foe
  Get you to worry our one on one’s got us 
  Turned on you, Us
  Knowing more now of the more of you
  You chose to give us
  I’ve done that.   
  
  I could do ayahuasca in a suite in New Orleans
  Northernmost city of the Caribbean
  Seeing all the alien Gods
  Or the insides of my coffin
  Both the box I’m in but also the body that I am
  And see what needs feeding then
  ‘Not you’ ‘No you don’t supply’
  I’ll return to Beachwood and sit in my chair 
  And ghost you into phantom yesteryear
  Yeah, I’ve done that too.   
  
  I could love you only when I’m pistol-
  Ready, Bulleit made, foggy-brained
  And say it till it’s obvious and 
  Predictable
  And text you after that I’m gonna 
  Marry you
  And drunken-drive to you with 
  Twenty dollars worth of dollar Del Taco 
  And make you watch 
  Videos of 
  Me
  Or Stevie and pass out and half cum in the Morning
  And
  slowly over time
  Mistaken hangover for you and loving you the most and
  Decide that I need re-centering and
  Distance (but never from the bottle) 
  And worse! –
  That all of it was only what had ‘happened in the night’
  That’s been me.   
  
  I could touch you.   
  
  Shit that was the other one, no
  You like it when I’m holding onto us –  
  
  I could hit you.   
  
  Worse, I could say the things a person isn’t allowed to say
  The dagger proclamation
  Of my silver-tongued knife
  Wielded by this Monkey on my back I’ve 
  Forgotten about otherwise 
  And once it’s in you I’ll twist 
  And 
  Let
  It
  Pour
  That’s all been me, too.   
  
  I could be an executive at a studio
  Sign on your mortal enemy 
  The Nemesis 
  In spite of you –
  Get him two seasons 
  Something
  About how he’s misunderstood but 
  Still molests at Akbar or the Dome
  Going buddy-buddy with him to dinners
  Or at your favorite spots
  Karaoke singsong, songs about paninis 
  Or Pre-teen demigods who think 
  They’re bad guys. 
  And I’ll play nice with you
  Because it gets you going
  Gets me ahead
  Oh
  Always nice
  Nice nice nice
  You hate nice
  ‘boy, can’t that betray a soul?’ you say
  Yes sir, I agree –
  Edit: No, I probably wouldn’t go that far. 
  I don’t know that I’m even capable
  Keep it, as they say.   
  
  I could keep believing what I fear is true
  The spring of all my doubts that
  I am
  Not good. 
  Particularly at being good which is
  Different than just good enough for you
  I worry.   
  
  There’s a lot of things I wouldn’t do
  Anymore. 
  A lot of things I’m incapable of
  Maybe even
  Tired of trying?
  Getting away with. 
  Weak-kneed but in the stomach with dry eyes
  Over
  The galivanting
  And the schmoozing 
  I just want home already I worry. 
  But also
  Maybe there’s also something there? 
  In that? 
  In that
  I dunno
  You know me better sometimes
  You’re the one who reads me
  Has to see me I’m just living ‘me’
  I
  Just
  Think it, will you  
  
  West elm sofas. A loveseat. 
  Something local for a coffee table. 
  Dinners. 
  Dinner in general 
  Memberships to Wagville
  Never Disney+
  And
  The movies you’ve wanted to show me. 
  The words I’ve wanted you to know. 
  Maybe the place has a bathtub. 
  Two bed. 
  Luxury tomb. 
  Patio parties and proud soirees and
  Top shelf liquor with that CVS discount
  Cluttered glove compartment stuffed with receipt scarves. 
  A little less drinking
  Maybe at the start at least until doors 
  Close more
  And I’m working when you’re watching
  Or I’m watching while you’re gone
  And it all goes back to what it used to be 
  Before we promised something new
  I worry.   
  
  For when it’s done and the dog is 
  passed and stuffed 
  makes a doorstop and you’re
  Thinking Hancock Park or Paris and I’m thinking New York, Brooklyn or dead
  A love is a lifetime I worry.   
  
  But  
  
  What if something happens 
  Something different dare I say
  Something weird that could happen
  Doesn’t happen
  I don’t see 
  Happening
  To me
  But just me I haven’t thought of us that way –   
  
  What if we grow old together? 
  There go promised memories of your
  Hand holding mine
  Scratching the back of your head
  But now –
  A forever-adding flipbook –
  Our same hands
  But with new spots Thinner skin. 
  Closer every day towards our Wither Away
  The chances of who will fade from us
  First. 
  For to die alone is to go in peace
  But in the arms of a lover, their forever agony. 
  Is all of that worse? 
  Is to love to know what will be lost? 
  Is it to hold it regardless of these
  Boundaries in time,
  Angelino mountains,
  And drown our lungs in the vapor of now?
  
  Of-fucking-course it is.
  
  I worry. 

• santa fe

  ‘Welcome,’ she said and 
  meaning it too.
  ‘thank you’ I 
  said, needing to pee.

• noise of the wood

  Noise of the wood
  A clink with a spoon
  Skies in its colors
  Mahogany to quartz
  And into it too
  Like pillars of salt yet
  Rested on sand   
  
  A dinosaur.  
  
  Bark cut-ted to glass
  Shard-ing jewels, city towers
  Their speckled roofs of different heights
  Grooves and floor to ceiling heights  
  
  Helicopter pads, too. 
  
  Just   
  
  Jurassic tenacity with teeth mazes, maps needed
  With Latitudes and Longitudes
  The stump 
  Now that’s the hemisphere  
  
  For these crystals of a crystal of time
  Now polished and chromed over
  Drilled into bits for a hose
  Then gutted and fitted 
  And set in a corner  
  
  A sheltered space
  Protected from the meteors that first
  Turned this tree to rock
  And
  Left forever to be ignored 
  Or set next to the garden gnome
  
  $2804.

• mason

  Last night you told me you were going to be married 
  That you’d found your choice 
  your settlement 
  That you’d known fear and 
  found the means of which to live with it 
  A chosen partner for the shadows 
  Except for the ones deepest in your skull 
  A willing commitment 
  towards the fires 
  except the ones you light with your feet 
  A tangible hold on purpose, apparently.   
  
  A determination towards happiness, never mind to ride of grace  Your sincerity lacks subtly.  
  
  Scythe to my scalp 
  Rebar to my veins 
  Napalm your wax of Paris 
  The holes you’re trying to fill in were dug with your very fingernails 
  Tears in your styrofoam cup, let it settle let it muddle a 
  molotov cocktail of sympathy and of drastic proportions
  I’ve never trusted what you call reliant. 
  Thrown towards your subject of protest
  I think that’s me  
  
  The me in you
  Or rather the you in me in the back of me
  the me in you you only know for certain –  
  
  How you’ve hurt and betrayed 
  and laid it all on 
  me and with your sincerity you hope 
  and aim 
  for alleviation of your character 
  You think to tell me is to bury you, to command the pyre
  to hold in what we were
  what you are, once again, what I am 
  I am the ghost and
  you can’t dream the weight of these shackles that hold in all that is long and of knowing you, your fists to my cheek one thing
  the way you told me my days were limited, the same
  But how I was New York  
  
  Fuck
  Your sorrow and earnest degradation
  of what’s left of my heart
  And lately what that’s been
  A yearning for more
  The desire for cliffs and empty oceans of Moab
  Looking at mountains as the reefs
  they once were or islands belonging to a Jurassic sea
  Now
  On my last night in heaven you spew me your words of Hell
  That it is with him you’ve decided happiness
  Though it’s with memories of us you’ve preserved freedom.   
  
  God
  Though how I envision it.
  It.   
  
  Ours
  You’d
  We’d have,
  
  Polished concrete. 
  White linen. 
  Ironed. 
  A southern barbeque.  
  
  Rooftop in Red Hook.
  We had dancing pandas  
  
  And
  poFinally  
  You’d rapture me  
  
  Yeah.  
  
  Sans shirt or contentment though I fetishize a tux  
  
  A B-n-B.   
  
  Probably off of an AirBnB.   
  
  Edison bulb lights and mason jar tartars.  
  
  The songs we used to dance with brood  
  
  Now caricatures of our adolescence and not what either of us have remained.       
  
  That’s as far as I usually get.

• he’s a good egg

  He only cracks easily.

• lucky dog

  Little kids are playing soccer
  The ones acting like I used to
  Tangling themselves in goalie nets 
  The parents we never turned into never-minding. 
  A daddy plays his boombox
  For the crowd 
  Empire of the Sun, remember them
  His playlist blaring louder now
  You know the one
  Remember when we’d heard it 
  My first time was magic but for you a chore
  Over at that spot we used to know 
  That Extra Fancy
  The one where a lady-turned-mommy served us Gansetts 
  And the lighting looked good enough for oysters?  
  
  Do you remember Steve?
  That dude
  The one
  The guy from Full Circle 
  Cracked us tall boys of Genesee I think
  Fixed us skee-ball that one time, then handed over tally chalk for scores?
  I think saw him wearing Chinos
  Outside of Artichoke
  The one on North 7th 
  By Starbucks
  By the Dunkin’
  By the train
  And fussing with his iPad
  Sweat-back looking grody
  Did you know they’d one day grow into what we’re close to becoming?  
  
  I suppose I never thought ahead,
  Too much looking down
  My hand with yours
  Or any time we walked along something new For me 
  Polished concrete
  Or that hallway towards Larry Lawrence
  They closed it down
  It’s gone for good.       
  
  There’s also people here
  
  Who look like what we used to do
  Doing things we used to be
  Though now they’ve got their White Claws
  And Triple-Lens phones
  Lounging on our bench-shaped stones
  And dreaming upon towers
  We never knew or cared would one day exist for them to ponder on
  This never was our spot, was it?  
  
  Wishing wells erode
  Over time
  And yet there 
  Still remains,
  Some times at least,
  Yesteryear precipices
  Those Mesas on top of pillars 
  Floating glad-ware lids for canyons 
  Too large to fresh-seal shut for good. 
  These plateaus are carved around, 
  Speckled relics sometimes close 
  But often far in way
  Luckily still
  Lucky Dog and Allswell 
  They’re still there
  The promenade at Brooklyn Heights 
  I suppose that one’s all me  
  
  The ones once ours 
  Were they really that
  Or just new for me and still fun for you?
  Did we fall upon a world of our own disgraces 
  Camel Blue kisses
  Or without regard
  A concoction of totems familiar enough for you to bleed freely? There remains however
  Our temple of our Four Corners, though.
  You remember it, don’t you
  You must
  How could you forget
  I won’t allow you to
  Their Grand Ferry Park
  Our Sapporo’s in paper bags
  Hands held after
  Even after fights 
  Outside Vanessa’s 
  The one by you
  Transplanted from the village
  Oils for the hangover.  
  
  The smokestack there Still remains 
  The bench where words were said
  You said something Like on your roof
  I’ve never forgotten
  PJ knew it too
  I knew her after you but
  ‘You are this city to me.’  
  
  Two times you’d told me
  The first a proclamation
  The second a surrender to decision 
  To you leaving 
  We won’t go there yet
  But the first my God
  Muttered whisper ignites the waterworks
  Lullaby under bridge’s rumble 
  Commotion of stampeding thunder
  You mumble
  Soft rain in Spring
  But Spring between Barrow and Morton only
  I look up under bridges
  Because on top is where you showed me where the river bent
  You hold me
  And the Hasids are watching
  And the Freedom Tower’s going up
  And the Empire’s not knowing what reigns will trump its spire.
  The Domino sugar factory was still there, wasn’t it? 
  Remember the cranes? 
  Or Glasslands for rock? 
  And the rock
  Gone
  Mostly 
  You’d think this space was separated with glass
  No touching.  
  
  Camel Blue’s from your pocket
  Another Sapporo. 
  Clouds of smoke…
  Though with certainty we’d know
  It’d all soon change.
  We knew we’d leave. 
  
  The geotag was ours but so soon 
  These towers would be new again
  And they are 
  Bleaching skyline and our promises
  Into something out of Mars.  
  
  The playlist is still going.   
  
  Mommy’s thrown a football 
  To her little boy 
  ‘Good one, Adam’
  They’re playing sports now
  The ones who’d grovel for a taco at our Union Pool
  No, Theirs.
  
  Perhaps they always did.
  Grow, I mean
  Grow into something they had to be, by choice or missed train
  That shaped into them Gwenyth Paltrow yuppies with cleats and doggy-walking apps.
  Perhaps I never noticed
  Seeing now
  As city people grow
  And move and have
  And watch and grow I held on expecting it to stay the same 
  For a dream of you and me
  Perhaps Should LA ever burn
  We’d have concretes where Blue Bottle used to be,
  Remember when that was new?
  How’re your wedding plans coming along?   
  
  Wishing wells erode over time and 
  Yet there still remains
  Our chiseled
  Relics of the beaches for which we would lay for even dead Winter’s Sun. 
  People like rivers and water, I
  I wish
  That these canyons
  Came with drains
  So once all was dry I could climb down and spelunk
  Maybe then I’d find
  The reasons why you left me 
  After choosing me
  Your City
  Your place, apparently, 
  But yes,
  Your ghost,
  Searching the streets that led us through our high lives I haunt them now,
  Right now
  These mesas
  And these bars of cities we once knew,
  As if for the first time, and always that
  Whiskey’s tasting old.

• anasazi

  There’s a city in the cliffs
  Where at night I know you wish to hear
  Yourself as silence. 
  
  There are the birds in the cracks that swarm 
  With kamikaze formation during
  The day,
  Singsongs of war and territory, 
  Fights for nests in holes 
  Once Sprouted springs 
  Of sandstone rain. 
  
  There are the crickets of the setting sun  
  Layered chirps sounding like a river’s near, 
  Sonic bowings on their wings, 
  As Earth as mulch or air, 
  Constant and assured. 
  
  Crumbles echo
  Down go fallen rock
  One squirrel, 
  Scraping ground far above on heaven’s ground 
  Pebbles drop and they flee
  Cascade towards the bed of their canyon,
  Yearning with
  Pounces of desire,
  They scream 
  Like you, they want them known.
  
  The shivering leaves in the dead of Sun — 
  
  Too tired for the siren glow of the rising moon. 
  
  They’ve all calmed. 
  
  The crimson of our setting star,
  Its reprise of mauve and marigold, 
  All has calmed and settled for you,
  You
  Now
  Standing in the city in the cliffs
  Back turned from the shadows of these relic tales  
  The ruins of the Anasazi – 
  
  Not a breed of man but neither the translation of ancient man, 
  
  Its definition, the term, the term’s definition
  Needs defining. 
  
  But you don’t know that do you? 
  
  The Hopi neé Anasazi, 
  Neé Ancient man, 
  They too knew that cities become tombs. 
  
  Like Pompeii, 
  Present day LA
  Mausoleums of traded resource, 
  The emboldened passion for survival and luxury, 
  Dried corn and roasted yucca, 
  IG stories, DSLR, 
  They’re all the same to you. 
  
  Your phone is your kiva, 
  Your veiled pleasantries desiring affection and attention, 
  The need to be seen your mortar. 
  
  You hear yourself in silence, 
  Amongst an orchestra of ghosts
  And yet
  Your eyes scream towards your Black-mirrored ally, 
  
  It’s not enough to be alone
  No, you need them all to see you alone. 
  
  You take pictures of your feet at the 
  Grand Canyon
  Then face your back towards its Sunset 
  
  To ensure the colors you want other
  People
  To know you’ve 
  Seen came out the way you wished to have truly experienced it. 
  
  You edit to form, 
  Edit towards expectation, 
  Never mind the reality you’re given. 

• are you trying to disappear?

  Are you trying to disappear  
  
  Is that why you hold your screen so close to where your heart should see   

  Compass driving, Enterprise rented  

  Your face but a foot from the window before the world –   

  Rays of light can pierce through glass but do they even know it’s there?   

  Lower the veneer  

  Let the air wipe the jerky-stifled air out of our cabin   

  Let it bounce and burn, all of it  

  Direct contact  

  The singe, amber hue of promise  

  Southwest of our America 

  Landscape of dreams your father promised you 

  The Wind our God, the stability of its billowing wallow 

  Given to us for today and yesterday and hopefully tomorrow  

  It keeps us  

  A presence  

  Tick and the tock of the world  

  Quick  

  Lower it now  

  And let us breathe

  The brush of the desert crunch   

  Soil burying untold legends,   

  Arid cough of dirt  

  And Turbine breeze 

  Wiff of rattlesnake and canyon –   

  Our interior-dried Slurpee, 

  Crumbs of banana chip and scattered tic-tac   

  Planned sips of Seven-Up Zero

  Or your un-known, done-branded bottle of berry-serumed sparkled drink, 

  An act of forced away from the projection of your purchased lens,  A yearning to capture without process,   

  Without concern 

  Or placement —   

  Don’t tell me that’s what you’d prefer to breathe? You capture so that you may not see,  

  But you know that, don’t you? You must, 

  My God  

  At least I hope you do.  

  Knowing that you photograph to look away, I mean   

  It hurts to assume otherwise 

  Although

  I’ve come to settle a knot in my own stomach 

  That perhaps 

  In truth   

  While you may know what you need you may not know how to keep it.

  Or analog   

  To you, to document with time stamps 

  Blockaded lengths of moments in which one may memorize over time as only those   

  select   

  Fragments. That were real. Even only existed.  

  Maybe   

  I get it.  

  We had been fighting just an hour before. 

  Come an hour later, everyone you and I know will come to know we’re having the best of times, aren’t we  

  Can’t you see that you’re beginning to disappear? 

  The alloy before your gaze,   

  The blockade,   

  The yearned desire to redirect while still facing dead-on   

  What you capture   

  Is it to re-remember?

  Or is it something worse  

  Something like to disregard  

  Or the preservation of a tale? Are you tired?   

  Are you finally set in what has become of you

  And in doing so Come to assume what will become as me  

  Fabled promise of your wisdoms  

  Another deviation from the truth that our world has decided for you?  

  Is that why you face the window to your side? 

  Yes.   

  Yes, I told you of a secret. 

  I do not know that I want to be what I always knew I’d become   And that my home has always been a stay-away 

  From where   

  The heartbreak of nostalgia tethers at my sternum   

  The falsified promise of a future never lived   

  A shadow dancing with a glisten

  Over points of constellations but of paralleled skies –  

  I’d left a trap for a chair in the corner,  

  For a disease of the blood, 

  And another of my society,   

  The lust for wonder wander fading like the pink to the blue of a lip,  

  Lungs filling with sand 

  Ashes of the American Spirit 

  I’ve admitted the fadation — the process of fading 

  I’ve just made it up 

  of my soul –   

  That is the stamina to yearn, 

  To yearn so much it has already been said three times 

  Now four I suppose I like the word  

  No longer your boy I am now only my name.   

  Our anger with one another now stems from the fractaled realities of two separate lives   

  Skies, remember   

  Yours and mine,   

  Mine with consideration of you and yours in consideration with mine considering yours,   

  The closeness of our time together has revealed just how far apart we truly are,   

  Not laterally of course  

  Again 

  Constellations, plains  

  Sliding Doors, Gwenyth Paltrow, that guy from the Mummy. 

  To live is to suicide by grace if you’d like, 

  Mine by twist of an arm  

  Or the drip of the drink  

  All of it  

  Chosen disregard for the abbreviated chapters of a man – 

  They’ve chosen marriage, Rite Aid backyard furnishings, 

  Trips to cabins with pre-frozen chocolate-covered strawberries,  Shared Facebook spaces,   

  I think I’ve chosen Joshua Tree

  My patio   

  Take-out preselected my lover.  

  I wonder if you see me drive and speak without awe,  

  No wow’s   

  No Look at that’s  

  No wow’s –    

  No points     

  No jabs towards rivers

  No prescribed desire to the awe,   

  You tell me rocks look like children,   

  And those like men,  

  Lions and Sons,   

  How they kiss the sky  

  And cut it so the clouds may stick their landing  

  And then me   

  I think now that you see it  

  My fizzle, postmortem pedal to the metal –   

  Perhaps it’s not you who wants to disappear. 

  You’d hate being an Angelino.   

  Death Valley comes before landing in LA  

  Granted it’s little North of that   

  But what’s that say about the basin?

  I fear you’d hate being me. 

  About as much as I fear you’d hate to need me.

  That’s what this is starting to feel like.  

  I don’t feel equipped. 

  That’s why I get so mad.   

  Not because you annoy me –  

  But because it feels as though the way I’m going  

  We’re going, really  

  I could never help you  

  True  

  Buckled knees buckle less when with woman with hope

  At least that’s what I’ve come to understand from sharing this cabin here with you  

  But  

  What of a man devoid of any?    

  Perhaps you see that of me too.   

  No wow’s. 

  I’m starting to see it now. 

  I don’t think you want to disappear. 

  No  

  I think it’s someone else you don’t want to vanish.  

  For your two lens,   

  I’m beginning to think not both of them are just for you.   

  Your timecards, points I convincingly feigned happiness, if only for you.   

  At least so, I pray it’s worked.

  If only that were enough.   

  Don’t let me disappear.   

  Mother who knows me no more  

  Don’t let me disappear   

  From the man that I’ve become   

  Who still sings for the boy we both used to know  

  Somehow still in me  

  Gypsy-dancing over coals  

  It’s getting hot and  

  The car AC’s blaring blindly.

• summer’s started changing, already gone

  Miley did this thing where she 
  Wrote a song about this guy she used to love,
  Now grown distant from,
  Something about needing the city, and no longer the ocean,
  The woman’s got like nine homes, alright, and 
  Apparently this guy, Chris, 
  Sorry, his brother,
  Like,
  He never knew how she’d felt about any of it, 
  Up until one day he’d gone off in his car and just heard it on the radio, 
  That new song of hers
  About that pool and pill life and having to leave him for the city and she’s got an orchestra playing for her when she’s performing it live and all and she’s forcing these tears of hers and all of this heartbreak she’d hid off from ever admitting to anyone but papa dollar, knowing she’d never get off it of it the right way, singing it to his face and making sure her eyes are locking in with hers. 
  
  Thought she sucked but look at me now. 
  
  Summer’s started changing, almost gone,  
  I’m weary if this time apart should have been 
  For the better
  In that I’m sorry, but, 
  That maybe we should have 
  Simply stayed where we were the first time we stayed apart, 
  And we both assumed we’d done what was best for one another. 
  
  You need me like a box. I needed you like a pedestal. 
  
  If not to get higher than at least to feel as though I already were. 
  You’d put me where the linens were. 
  I was good at thinking that maybe they were made of 
  Lace or paper flowers
  And this closet is just us on the floor
  Of some home
  Not yours but maybe partially mine
  And there’s a mattress
  And you don’t mind the smoke
  And I don’t mind the plastic cups
  And there’s a distance Though my ankle’s on your shin 
  Some sort of cracked-back lullaby’s playing out of the AC.
  
  Even though the window’s open
  And the sounds are dancing with the 
  Breeze between the clapping of the blinds
  And our groans sound as crisp as the air, 
  Until it was time to wriggle out of bed and time to play 
  And masquerade and hide the poles we truly were of our uncompleted world. 
  
  You admitted you wanted a man
  Someone who stood equal to you and your stature, not your back but the other kind you favor, the
  Hi-Tops likeability 
  Round for the table, back and forth 
  Nights of nice
  But of kind
  Of holding
  Needing kneading,
  No.
  
  I was the parched starvation of your larynx. 
  
  ‘I loved you at a 10 and you loved me at a 24, I win.’
  
  Once your words of dismissiveness 
  Somehow forgiven again, when yes, I clung, 
  And yes I crazed 
  But it’s how I loved back then
  And lurched with bated stillness 
  Towards your critique of the quirk
  The things I’ve got to fix
  Always fixing
  And wrenching
  But apparently
  A different pipe or beam, every time
  And I did it, I fucking did it
  So I could house you
  In this house of mine
  And fix me
  So that perhaps you 
  Could finally see you fit in 
  Within the carcass of all that was my love for you, but. 
  
  I don’t know that you even wanted that. 
  No, I forgot. I’d always known that about you. 
  
  You say I taste disgusting 
  From the flavor of my tongue
  
  The moment 
  After I have smoked That’s it 
  No more kissing or touching
  Your ticket to leave me
  No longer even out front of 
  My home
  Lately even
  It’s just been at the bar
  Goodbye from the bar
  The one you loved
  The places you always took me to, those places with names and  Shadows of acquaintances
  Who see me not by name
  But by the docile, broken sweetheart
  Chosen finally and 
  Sided with the enigma of your ego. 
  
  I was tired. 
  
  Yes of you
  But of this city
  Perhaps you are LA after all,
  Unless of course
  The city’s made you right in its eyes, just
  Nice.
  
  November of last year. 
  I’ve only known you for so little. 
  You’d said you’d got my number. 
  Akbar after downtown with my mother
  She’d come to visit me Remember 
  And I went on over and
  you jabbed me with your finger
  Lower than my shoulder
  ‘hey, you’re cute’
  Remember that? 
  
  Leaning up against the bar,
  T shirt
  Kid jeans but for a man
  I said ‘thank you’
  Needing to pee.
  
  There it started getting blurry.
  You’d asked me what I did
  Almost excited, knowing I’d ask you in return. 
  
  In between the drinks I’d 
  Go out for myself To smoke with myself and Talk to myself
  And 
  Be with myself 
  The chemical mix
  That erasure is mine
  Feeling like a man Who’s made the mistakes of a boy
  But in those fine moments
  Something spectacular in my head
  Had played 
  A movie of a dream
  That injected my veins
  With the pop rock crackle of
  Wanting tomorrow
  Until knowingly tomorrow morning Hit.
  
  You never minded the smoke back then. Was it bait? 
  
  We moved to the jukebox and continued on
  Excited to ask me where I lived 
  So you could tell me you had a roof, and so 
  I followed knowing I was an easy sell
  But also thinking
  Something about you
  There was something hidden
  Deep in you but maybe I could hit 
  And nerve-connect 
  With you
  Like that scene in Avatar 
  Ponytail sex
  Or maybe even just a sling
  Maybe you had something more in you you’d admit but then for now It was just a roof
  And a TV outside, a TV roof, that never fucking worked.
  You’d always try to finagle
  With the fucking thing
  Instead of looking what was
  Just beyond the ledge –
  A pool of stars littered in a basin bucket
  Hills so dark they reminded me of thunder.
  For just a moment I had it 
  With you
  My arm around your waist
  Plastic cup of ice and the expensive shit
  A view made ours but 
  Only for a moment, Until I saw it in your eyes and saw you looking out and thinking that that’s what people did with views they savored them like steaks, 
  Remember when you said that thing about
  You seeing the forest while
  I stay focused on the tree? 
  
  The things said over text
  Still only 
  Six blocks apart.
  The need of being right over the need of being with each other. 
  
  Part of that bar conversation,
  You know, that night we first met — 
  
  It was the fact in a long ass while 
  I hadn’t really,
  You know
  
  Come out.
  In the sense of like.
  Coming out.
  With what I am.
  Have.
  
  Even now I have trouble writing it outloud.
  
  But I told you.
  And maybe the song was right. 
  And we’d only kissed four times. 
  
  I’d said, you know, 
  And you’d said, you know, with a shrug but without a shroud, you’d asked me, really, 
  You’d said, 
  ‘But aren’t you still you?’
  
  You did. 
  
  Knowing now what’s left of what I know of you today, 
  I’ve teetered the thought if that you or you being nice or you living with your liver, 
  But no, I’ve deduced over time and with time because I’d be a fucking lunatic otherwise by giving into my paranoia that, 
  No, 
  All of that – was the most you’d ever be with me, and that was also the most of me I’d ever be with you. 
  
  I said yes. 
  ‘And you’re taking care of yourself?’
  ‘Of course.’
  ‘Then what’s the problem? You’re you. Staying you.’ 
  
  I don’t blame you for not remembering. If in fact you had. Thinking you’d forgotten has made it easier for me, at least. 
  
  You were being you. And I was being me hearing something I’d never thought I’d hear out of a guy with your proclivities and habits, status. I’d come to assume things like guys like you, and with your words in my ears, I was willing to do all that I could to ensure you wouldn’t prove this – phenomenon of a man – you – just like all the others. 
  
  I deluded myself into thinking I could help you there. In fact, I’d deluded myself into believing I could keep you there,
  And in retrospect
  That wasn’t an assumption
  But rather an ignorant
  Obligation
  Towards a man who’d already
  Believed he was one and therefore is, you know, a
  Completed one,
  But I admit, Yes. 
  Something that I pegged as
  Something worth expanding upon was just me, 
  Trying to course-correct you, 
  I.
  
  I guess at first that’s what made me stay,
  Thinking I could iron out the kinks
  With you I’d yet to see,
  Ignoring that we didn’t know what we’d yet become, 
  Even though, 
  With everything in my power I tried to find untrue, you always  Validated me. 
  I’d always known you had. 
  
  You gave me back my presence, by offering the extra that was yours, freely. 
  I hadn’t felt it in me 
  That power, 
  Since before that day at the clinic back in 2016. 
  
  It was enough for me. 
  Needle in my arm, I was running with you baby, 
  Never looking for something new to inject
  Into my poison-filled blood and soiled liver,
  Until those times I let slide, 
  The times you brought it up with the hurrying and the towels so you wouldn’t get it, ‘that’s how you get it,’ you were wrong, but who was I to argue you’d just bought dinner and everything I’d ever wanted without earning, God, or needing, to the point when I was gifted anyway I thought my God, I could poison you, why on this fucking Earth did you decide to stick it out with me? Why me if you’re so fucking scared? Why me if it meant the surrender of the refractory ? Why me if the ways in which I could make you feel the way you’d make me feel alive were subpar, half of a gift card, a drive down to Palm Springs with a broken-tired SUV on the ride back to LA. I felt inferior, and perhaps what it fucking was was that throughout all of these goddamn days in these goddamn hills I’d become convinced finally, after years, that there was nothing to me,
  When there was so much to you. 
  No one was you. 
  
  Maybe what you are is how
  You make me feel
  What more is ever a person? 
  
  I wanted to stay with one foot out the door,
  Others no less seeing it there, my foot, 
  They’d ask me ‘Man, what’s up,’
  And I’ll smile knowing you’d be coming 
  Down the steps any second now,
  Hopefully holding that door open so that I could carry in all that I was and of this world. 
  
  I should’ve never made you carry my shit. 
  But maybe you shouldn’t have told me all of what I had was shit to begin with. 
  
  I believe I loved you
  And that one day maybe you’d know how to love me too
  Or more
  To love being with me and
  Take my hand
  At least for now, back then, I mean, maybe just the finger, I’d think – 
  
  ‘Quick!
  It’s turning into Winter!
  The Wet Season lies ahead and there will be 
  parties to attend
  And whiskey to sip and 
  Suits to wear
  And lights convincing us
  Now with these festive 
  Feasts Of fervor and froyo 
  Or Yayo
  And we can show the world 
  And we still have each other
  The blind with the Mute
  Maybe it’s the other way around
  Who cares
  Just
  Get your phone out
  Put it on the both of us
  Until the both of us are looking good
  Good enough to be
  And or convince 
  People will be happy 
  
  Lol
  
  To see us, at least
  At least it’ll sound like that to us
  When to them
  Those we really care about believing us
  Will see us as just a moment
  Of their night
  In their own worlds
  Feigning convinced admiration
  For the both of us
  Sticking together
  Until they go home 
  To who and what they are and need
  And we’re in our Uber
  And my street’s just coming up around the corner.’
  
  Poles, remember?  
  
  Perhaps in that capacity
  We were perfect for one another. 
  
  When the light of your eyes
  Come across these final words
  
  I expect you will say no thing…
  With the same amount of time it takes
  For me to
  Hit up my stories on IG and pull up to see
  And hope to God at the bottom of my scroll there you are just peeking in your cave 
  And by graces of wind and fortune I’ll catch your name and your handle and at once like it’s always been the case I’ll know deep down that you will have me always. 
  
  Just. Know that.