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

We Came Into Town Under Cover of Night

#1

The drives home were sluggish
Perfect for a heavy heart
To step inside was to catch the eyes
Of cats and mirrored lasting impressions
And heroes, what were they anyway?
Or villains, face first in the snow?
No, no, I don’t know
And I’m almost there
Almost to the edge of falling back into
What happened first, way back then
When the shadow light was just physics
And my favorite songs had choruses

I could romanticize that spring
And call Caroline my savior
With her little hair and little head
And little hands and big words
I gave her a book and a stack of papers
She read them all, I believe it
But she’s in Columbus and I’m still here
And in Columbus, as Mark says, there’s no spotlight
To dazzle and that’s alright because dazzle hurts the eyes

I listened to Tallahassee almost every night
As I drove the two big boulevards home
It made me feel better about my own circumstance
But it still brought out the hurt
That I wore in my eyes, wear in my eyes
As I pictured peacocks
And Cuban planes and empty roads in college towns
And you


#2

Hey you, “No”
Where did your little hair go?
To other towns with colleges
Big ones and little ones
Santa Cruz, Columbus
And hey you, “No”

I never went anywhere with you really
I only went outside and back in
I only went to Pico and that other street
And in the cruelest of ironies
I was in the goddamn Gap dressing room when you cancelled
Our second date and we still haven’t rescheduled

This is my own sweet time
I can say what I want, want what I feel
There’s a hundred years to live
And a thousand years to heal

The secret is, no one knows
Hey you, you never said ‘yes”
And I imagine you leaving Los Angeles
And then that other town and that other town
In the bright white dazzling morning light


#3

I slept on that floor for months
I slept on that floor for 9 long months
I slept on three blankets, sometimes two
And a soft thick rug on the hardwood floor

(The rug is gone now, sold or under the bed)
(Two of the blankets are still here but I only use one)
(And the hardwood floor’s still hard, with little short nails and splinters)

I think I’m going soon, I’ve got a feeling
Maybe down to Long Beach or up to where I’m from
And anyway this isn’t the town we came into under cover of night
That was 2002, that was some other place
Two cars and one truck and a posse of friends
All spread out, Midwestern now, like brown sugar on waffle plates

Santa Monica was misty that night
Santa Monica was misty every night
The mist cut into me, messed with my sinus and the bed wood
But whatever I loved and missed that air
So it was with heavy heart that I left
In the Caroline, No and Peacocks spring of ‘06
I don’t remember what the sky looked like that day
I remember it was Saturday
It was morning
It was heavy
And then I’m gone again
Some day


#4

So March and April I listened to Tallahassee almost every night
And April and May I dated a girl from Tallahassee once a week
I didn’t treat her as well as I could have
But we learn from mistakes and we shake up the breaks
And May and June I found a Milwaukee swoon
And June and July I was back in the heat and yeah
It was the hottest endless summer of my life
I can still feel it
(should move closer to the water)

But what about that girl from Tallahassee?
Where is she now?
She’s in Burbank
I’ve never seen her place
But I hear it’s nice
No air conditioning
Must have been hot that summer


#5

Sail on sailor, come sail with me
Sail away with me
Between the moon and Kansas City

Fly with me on paper planes
Feel the freedom in the middle states
Interstate, in the dark, in the light

They make the trucks yellow and orange
So no one misses the fact
You’re moving away and you can fit it all
In one vehicle

(I’d rather drive a UPS truck)

“There’s danger of me losing all my happiness”
Then she lost it
I can’t see it anymore
I can hear her voice
I hear the call
I hear it all
And if the words were 50 years old
The happiness was only 20
And still not hitting 21

There’s morning
And afternoon
And evening
And sleep
Floor, bed, side of the road
And you

December 7, 2008

I Don't Think Of You That Often

I have empathy
unlike you
this is why
I'm better than you

hot cocoa and s'mores
for all the poet's whores
is an appropriate reward
for years and years
of praising perfect verse

your best friend told me
you worked as a sailor
for months at a time
in the seventies
the implications of this
are too numerous to mention
until more data is ready
data that demystifies
the certain blurring
that such an endeavor implies

there's an intimate moment
at the end of our movie
that defines us as people
you know the moment
it's after the guns come out
and after the tension breaks

I love the way your green shirt
brings out the green
from your green green eyes
now here come the anesthetic
feel the pain, common worker

there's a part of me sleeping
a part of me you don't know
because you have no empathy
there's a part of me sleeping
out in the desert
next to the windmills
in the heart of the beast

I'm better than most
but not better than others
this sums me up
in the eyes of the caged one
and in the eyes of me
this tells you that
I'm coming home, but I'm coming home alone
that's the way it must have been meant to be

so where's your pride?
your pride's on the radio
I've heard the only song
you ever knew how to play
I've heard it sung badly
I've heard it sung falsely
you were the only one to do it right

October 26, 1995