It’s been a long time since I seen my baby
I’s doin’ fine till the waves’ wat’ry sheen
Hit me like the sight of my all-night lady,
The day she caught me, queen of common things.

It’d been a long day and I’d lost my taste for breathing
So I stumbled my way to the tides’ in-out
Rise and fall gather-release, and its briny seething
Crept in my lungs’ creases, inspired a fell shout:

I twirl’d me ‘bout, hands to sky, fell to sand,
Unable to stand the ground’s harsh feel
I clawed reeling at sky to deny the land…
Then above me she appeared, so real

With briny breath to flavor unsavored ideas;
Wave-shine gaze to corrugate all dull metal mental haze;
Root-firm hands that delve through false-floor sterile veneer
Through fearful surface to grasp hidden, solid ways;

Hands that suddenly grasped me by my sailing palms,
Tugged me to gasping feet and flailing thoughts as my heart raced to keep up
As she dragged me smilingly to give thanks and alms
Through acrimonious, grungy alley’s blues-rock and hubbustling boulevard’s bebop

Of people like pebbles jostling through a landslide.
On a stroll like a cyclone we took the town by storm
Taking objects in our path with such force in our minds
That they took on new life, from freezing wrath to bliss-hued warmth.

Plastic tatters flagging the breeze from brightly barbed fence
Were transformed into hula skirt for the vain
As she crowned me king of uncontainable nonsense
With thirteen steely links of newly broken chain…

Somehow, after so long balanced by her passion spell
I lost her in the clenched teeth grind of the crowd’s respiration
So now I stand drenched on the shore of despairing pell-mell
And can only chant this disintegrating song’s aspiration:
Return, my love!

It’s been a long time since I seen my baby
I’s doin’ fine till the waves’ wat’ry sheen
Hit me like the sight of my all-night lady,
The day she caught me, queen of common things.

every passing thought that you discard, disregard, or partly destroy,
that flees the best of your mind’s ploys in the moment of its finding,
that dives to the deep without warning, as far gone as widows’ mourning,
must be followed down the steep descent into dark, like the reflection
of the eye’s shiny spark in the mirror, the neverending gaze amplified
regard in regard and never dies no matter how hard you try, how deep you fly

oh
so
bright.
spotlight blinds
you quite as surely
as it gives others sight.

Carwheels on gravel
like teeth crunching Grape Nuts
like rain on rubber stretched taut
like sizzling onions
Powerline poles
like marching soldiers suddenly surrendered
like strung-together marionettes
like synchronized swimmers
Thoughts on the road
like wildly, slowly growing ivy
like the water cycle (liquid-solid-liquid-gas)
like metaphors

When I was a young student, stuck in the limbo of still wearing my pigtails but already bearing my period, my two most powerful educational experiences:

One of my teachers told me he had something that he wanted to show me. So he brought me into the most out-of-the-way bathroom in the school, on the fourth and top floor, where few people ever went. He brought me inside, and since I was just a child, I was not worried until I saw him shut and lock the door behind us. He walked toward me, and I started to feel panic pounce, but then he continued past me. My worry turned to confusion as I saw him unlatch the window, slide up the pane, and hoist himself through to the roof. As he turned and extended his hand to me, I understood: he was inviting me to escape. We walked to the edge of the roof and peeked at the pavement below, the neat rectangles of the sidewalk. My teacher gestured vaguely at the view, and told me that sometimes in order to get a better perspective you need to get above and beyond the structures that have been made to contain you. He risked everything – job, career, reputation – in order to tell me that. As if I didn’t know it instinctively already.

One of my classmates was taped to the post in the center of the school cafeteria. I remember I was sick that day, or on the other side of the school or something. As I remember it, I was terrified upon hearing this story with its grisly details. The detail that really destroyed me was not that practically the entire school, which habitually mobs the cafeteria during passing periods, had looked on as the bullies manhandled their scrawny catch, looped duct tape around him and left him bound to go to class… but rather what killed me was when I was told that not a single student out of six hundred set him free once the bullies left, leaving him there for five minutes until a teacher happened along. I remember being horrified by this event, grateful that I wasn’t there to witness it, yet fascinated by its implications.

Anyways, I have a terrible memory. So I hold on to what I remember as if it were a teddy bear and I a baby.

Oh Jeez,
please give me the strength to do what I know I must
trust you to bring me to the place I need
feed me with the breadcrumb trail if necessary
scary, you know, so although I understand the hunger
no longer do I know why it’s so meager
eagerness to have real sustenance and permanence
sense calls for striking out for the territory
for the fresh shave, the blank slate, the sweet horizon
I been there before, though, and I’m sick of reason
seasons without cycle are fine for me
we can just follow the leaves, right?

Aaaahhh!!! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh!!!!!!
The market is falling! The market is falling!

He’s jittery (of course he: only a he would so kill)
and he can’t quite keep his invisible hand quite still—
does it shake ‘cause he’s a speed pill-poppin’ fiend
or ‘cause, guiltily self-indulgent, his pants he has creamed?
He’s spooked, the kook, by his own reflection,
as he gets depressed by the thought of depression.

So, I’ll make a confession: I never liked him anyways,
what with his materialist craze and greed-glazed gaze,
not to mention his brazen pillage, setting the world ablaze.

So let him shrink, contract, take a downturn, and crash,
and maybe we won’t all die from affluenza,
the curse of too much cash.

In order to sleep soundly, I recommend:
Build a road, then let it fall into a reasonable level of decay, then construct a windowed box on wheels with shocks within which you can sit reclining back on cushioned seats while being rocked back and forth to the sight of landscape passing.

In order to be awed, I recommend:
Get dropped off in the midst of the jungle in the middle of the night, then walk towards the nearest bridge, making sure you time your arrival so that a fine mist is surrounding you that can be illuminated by a truck’s lights approaching from behind, which will cause a rainbow ring 50 meters in diameter to encircle the bridge and you.

In order to be satisfied, I recommend:
Spend hours wandering hungry and lost in an area without sustenance, and make the method of your wandering frustrating and tiring by constantly nearing promisingly bright signs of satisfaction that then dim as soon as you eagerly approach, and then stumble by chance across a dumpster overflowing with perfectly good but irregularly shaped fruit, bread, cheese, and wine.

Cuesta (duras penas, vacilantes emociones, fe) trabajar.
Cuesta (penosas dificultades, vacilaciones emocionales, fe) no trabajar.
Si extiendes la mano para tocar el cielo o no, queda igual de lejos, igual de cerca.

Notes Wishing They Were From the Underground
(Actually Coming From Suburbia)

dejá vu
(eerie, inexplicable, deeply true),
which used to pounce in strange places you’ve never been
– places so different that seem the same –
this feeling is gone
(tamed, explained, now shallowly wrong).

for no, you’ve never been here,
but yes, you know it well, don’t you fear,
because this store is like all the other stores,
– a lot so similar that should be different –
but you know what to expect, nothing’s queer,
and there is nothing new here.

He does chin-ups on the metro… while I simply hold on to the overhead bars to keep from falling and being trampled.

There were once upon a time dragons here, but they are long gone.

When their nests were paved over with strip malls, they circled for hours until their wings ached. Yet they could not find any aeries from which chainstore eyesores were not visible. And they are romantics when it comes to the view.

Enraged, they screamed with foul, belching fire. But only to be sterilized by fire hydrants. The remaining wisps of smoke were quickly protested by furious NIMBYs.

Confused, the beasts were easily manipulated. Their unexpected flight patterns were predicted and rerouted and GPS coordinated. Soon they were captured, emprisoned, tamed, and groomed. Their haphazard, reason-defyingly strong scales were arranged in grocery store aisle uniformity. This last, seemingly superfluous act by the suburbanites in fact allowed for the fatal blow: razor-sharp logic which cut them to pieces. There was to be a great feast, with well-groomed, well-fed families from all the land.

And then the once would-be feasters got distracted, each in their own solitary way, and the meat sat until it rot.

I do not pretend to master my fate

I feel my insides gradually vanish
(leaking slowly into other dimensions)
And my skin become translucent
(as my pores become fully porous)
And my mind become tubular
(a protosensitive, pregnantly empty conduit)
And I am flooded with a rush
that I could never contain
(even if I were still with my formerly solid grasp)
that washes me like my great-great-grandma
washed her daughters’ clothes in the river
(violently, lovingly, deeply)
And I am smoothed and polished like a river stone
(cleansed of consciousness’s claws and burrs)
And I am ready for the world to seize me,
possess me and propel me
(beyond my stagnant state, into a formless shape)

I implored my ancestor for a story.
Okay, okay: I wanted her story.
Okay, okay, okay: she is an unwilling, unwitting ancestor.

But I got it anyways:
although she denies that she ever had a child
or that this supposed child engendered a long line of descendents…
this line ends with me,
and I can gaze back at her
and see the never-cut cord
connecting her with her offspring…
she denies that the bastards even exist,
and so has never cut the ignored connection.

I see some descendents oblivious to their connection,
and yet still an unbroken stream of nutrition reaches me.