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.
Tag: poetry
-
blankets for sunset
-
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.
thomasdanielvalls.com 