Couldn't Call It Unexpected #6

The biggest decisions are the easiest ones
Feel love in the middle stages of sleep
Shun sleep in the later stages of grief
Would I run
Far from the crowds of kids and their painted-on eyelids?
Sure I would run, who wouldn't? Who couldn't
Believe in something bigger than the tiny steps taken?

In the aisles of the big rooms on Bellflower Boulevard
He checked the texts from the sexy something sweet
He turned the corners carefully
Shunning the endcaps like cadavers
Don't want to deal with the badgers
No need for injuries with so little time to wait

In the spring of nineteen-ninety-zero
A tap on the shoulder leads to a loaded question
She keeps him guessing
For the rest of the semester
And Orange County skies look like blue-black bibles of bled-dry thought bubbles

The man in glasses - the little brother - wrote a history
With place names and fake names
Choruses and crushed corduroy
Faded labels in the neon commercial light
She might not have been part of this particular story
But her man without glasses read all these books
He liked the lines with lots of punctuation
Semi-colons unexpectedly launching exclamations
Now he's ready for his next big move
His last big move though there may be little ones left

He wishes he could have gone into her bedroom
The one in the old house but he made sure she made it in okay
While she made sure he had the right directions to the freeway
Still, he went the wrong way
Then they talked about the birthday

It's nice nice
The look in her living eyes
He was so tired that first night
But he got through it by narrating
The best tales, the ones he wrote himself
As he wrote himself into corners of laboratories
And she smiled like electricity itself

The easiest decisions are the biggest ones
Like yes he'll go to his third favorite city
With you you you

It was the summer she came back and he knew it
It was the summer she put the pieces together
It was the summer he discovered gummy bears
Softer than the hard soft rock swimming in his earbuds
But not as soft as Sunday night kisses on a subdivision street

August 22, 2009

Almost Summer

Almost summer in the almost city and the air is almost still
The green-eyed red-socked black-penned genius is thinking about the kill
His hair is cropped and brutal
His skin is soft and cold
He misses what he misses
He's in on the joke, out with the old

By the time I get to June
And its spare parts and spent hearts
I hope to be rid of
The broken pearls, the spy glass
I hope to be free of
The all-night curses, the never nurses
And their almighty grins
As I cleanse away their sins
And give mine another shine
For the first time

Now my task is
To clean my head, put on my tie
To learn if my fate is a good one
Or neutral, in need of a dislodging
Almost summer in the almost city and the air is almost still
There's a moment before that moment when he free-kills his free will

May 4, 2009

Unincorporated East Los Angeles #2

In each of the heart shaped boxes

Lives a night and a week and a month

They turned into each other, no sister no brother

It comes out in corners, under doors, through mid-air

A life for the dying, a death and then there's a struggle

He turns away or he doesn't

She gives her hand and he takes it or he doesn't

He's sleepy but soon he will wake

He's taken all he can take

He starts giving back, paying back

Tomorrow and love is the figment

Of imaginations crushed and coiled

Her hand is offered to a man in the misty south of her city

It's a pity he's nowhere around

It's tragic he's got nothing but his hand and his laptop and his bag

He stands up to leave but she's coming back

Again, he's not going anywhere

In love they have nothing but the loss of love

It hurts but he's here for the sweet duration

Which is likely 10 hours and maybe 2 more

And a month after that and a couple of weeks

Then his car, held together with black duct tape

Will make its way midwest

And he'll curse the summer he saw the sun rise through an uncovered crack of a papered-up window

written August 9, 2009

Unincorporated East Los Angeles #1

It's where they put all the cemeteries
At the turn of the 20th century
But they didn't wait long enough
For the rush of dead bodies
At the turn of the 21st
Not because of any war
Just critical mass and a city in flames
Every 24 years or so

Atlantic winds its way around the 710
And you have no idea why
They named the street after the ocean
On the other side of the country
Not the one you could almost see from there
If the buildings were a bit higher
And the skies a lot clearer

There are stairs and old rooms, never to be entered
There are plates and plastic spoons, for all the convenience
There is time and she nods her head at the sun coming up
The radio station pours in from the west side
Music defies the sun
Just as it defers the dark
To another sphere of up and down
To the border at the very next town
All six of them, wherever you happen to be

She called it the informal economy
But it looks like every other place
A few more 99 cent stores, a few more 98 cent stores
One more 97 cent store. not a single Starbucks or Trader Joe's
But there's a grid
There are gas stations with clean islands
There's a smog check guy
And just like the one in Santa Monica, he's not above being bribed
(A twenty plus the forty is all it takes)

He died in that one old room
She almost joined him until she shut it down
She moved across the hall
Except there is no hall, just stairs
And she needs to pin it all down some day
The reason she throws nothing away
She needs to pin it all down some day
The day they give her the back yard
She won't mess that one up, she tells me

Each day I drive away
Toward the freeway up there or the one to the right
I think not another day, never another night
I'm not going back, there's safety in not coming back
But it's not up to me, is it?
I hear the dead silence
As I inch my way onto the 710 south
There are corpses and gravestones beyond that wall
They're not coming back
And it looks like I'm clear to Long Beach once again

August 4, 2009

Three From 10 Years Ago

After Las Vegas

comfortable here, at ease somehow
far away from those who won’t
hear what I have to believe
speak what I need to believe
comfortable here, easy to slink in and out of places
unseen, unheard, disavowed
burn the fields that hold the trees
and keep it there, keep it bled and broken down
blues for the holy kid
and flowers torn in pieces in your hair

February 9, 1999


She Hears Their Stories

spread out like crowd noise
they call her to the quiet red room
and on splayed-out couches
she hears their stories
she notes their theories
she listens, nods, and writes it all down
for her own book of mercy
her own company of thieves
for her own cool divinity
her own taste in fallen trees
it’s a good pure way to be

curled up in cottons
they call her in her kitchen floor dreams
and with gifts for the children
she hears their stories
she notes their theories
she shivers, shakes, it’s January now
in her own winter city
her own town of counted sheep
in her own cool vicinity
of rested toes and rousted wolves
it’s a good cold place to be

February 9, 1999


The Gold Theme #2

Jesus doesn’t care about your hairstyle
Jesus moved to Brooklyn in 1997
Jesus doesn’t care about your golden birthday
Jesus is a monkey and he’s going to heaven
you lost your keys...so what?
it rained a little...it rains a lot

Jesus doesn’t care if you’re not hungry
Jesus likes his Thai food mild and weak
Jesus doesn’t care about your picture frames
Jesus is a martyr and he’s saving the meek
your roses wilted...so what?
it’ll rain tomorrow...it’ll rain a lot

February 17, 1999

Three From the Red Notebook

14th Street

If I get it all back
And I'll get at least half
I'll put it away
Until a sunny day
When the cloud cover
Disappears by 11
Like it used to
In my unemployment days

I'd get in the car
And drive to 14th Street
Park in the restricted zone
Listen to an upbeat song
Heaven knows I'm important now
But then I could breathe
Or cry in my sleeve
Which - I've got to admit - was something

January 31, 2009


Louder Roar

It would have been laughable
Trying to recreate
The inner world of 19
Basements, corners, dead spots
There would have been swan songs
Corrections to long gone wrongs
Questions of great length
Tears and rain and snow and ice
And the redheads with their sage advice

All of it comedy
True and fitting
A long great tribute
To a small good time
And my drives up the avenue
To the north, to the single digit streets
Would have had soundtracks of spent time
A scent of lime, discarded papers
It would have been nice
To sleep in peace

But here I am
A louder roar but the same man
I avoid difficult streets
I beg for better songs
I crave the kinder call
I have none of it, I have it all

February 5, 2009


The Competing Narratives #1

And if in this rain
I have no enemies
Just those who come to me
With their narratives in which I fit
Like jigsaw pieces, perfectly
Then I'm a happy man
In this winter rain
In this merry month, 20 years
After the fact
20 years
After it all came true

February 8, 2009

Santa Monica Cemetery

Next to the graveyard
it's a funny world
bushes and caper vans
motels with flags
soft serve

There you can find the secret, the key
to all happy, to all good
to bad and everything in between
to death and ice cream
palms and parking meters

The blue college
forever in its footprint
smells like chlorine and art paint
and planetarium dust
breathe it all in

The secret to all happy, all good
it's there as I read the news
I already know
let it settle, walk back west
step into the mausoleum
at sunset and close my eyes

January 24, 2009