california

california i'm
lost in the valley
of your associations.
you appeared snapshotted
on a postcard from a girl i used to love
and all the passion
that i couldn't associate with her
across so many states
fell onto you.

you're a mess;
haight-ashbury, chinatown
the gold rush and mountains,
i've never met you
but your hair would be frazzled
and falling out.

you've been
misinterpreted thirty three hundred times
and you don't care anymore.
its a zoo out there you say
and laugh as an earthquake
kills the last two panda bears
and breaks your right leg.
you've got a mighty nihilism
through all that peace love and profiteering.

that girl i knew
she was beautiful
and she never knew what to believe.
she tried to be some
contemporary sort of hippie, and had once
cheered for the 49'ers in the
superbowl or something similar
watching the television with her father
because it gave her an excuse to be near him.

California she'll look like you one day.

i've zoomed through
about thirty-three hundred ideas a second and
i've met you, California
through a beautiful crystal
of indirect connotation
out of love, i ask you one thing;
don't let her become you.

Postcard from Naples

grass rigid and unfamiliar
waves in microcosms of palm flows above
riding the smoke which curls out my mouth
to perfect lawns and streets too empty to enjoy them
a cough breeds parasitic caution
(yet alltogether unnecessary)
remains unflourishing when the sicle touches my brain
and I still don't care
-
I yearn to leave this cage
where I will know no bounds
leaving no distance between us
as my being curls out your mouth
to wispy trees and roads
now, as Ive found out, full as the wind

For Alex and a woman named Squidkid

A friend of mine has a hernia the size of a Rubrics Cube.
Fifteen minutes and he pushes his small intestine in.
He can’t pee without thinking about it.
It makes me nervous just thinking about him.

A girl friend told me that this is all chauvinistic.
“Well…” she says bitterly, but I’m not going to correct it,
“We all lie,” I tell her, as if I have multiple literary friends.
She rolls her eyes. That’s when I know she understands.

A something something comma big thing period
Everyone knows that there is only one way to drone...
I continue with, “Did you know…”
I retell a story I read on CNN

Because I Can, Man.

Oh, and I'm on Vacation.

So things have changed and I can see it.
Like leaves or something cliché

In the city, feelings and things
They come together.

For like, “Real."

I can see by the face you made that I’ve got it right.
Yeah, I can see that. I’m feeling it right now. Captivating

Teeth like reeds on a sea-green lake. Obscure.
Ubiquitous.

Heaves. Heaving a something or other into a pile high of
Dirt filled ravines. It's a stretch, but I think I nailed it.
Coffins deep down like up in buildings packed three
By twelve

Grape it.
Ha, grab it you idiot.
Weak
Necessities

Leaves. Tangible.
Fragile.
Like human beings?

Desire. Delirium/Delight,
Dream.

Destiny.

Death,
Destruction and
Despair.

I got it!
Apprehension.

Like waiting to take a leak in a public restroom.
Someone turn the blowers on. Good god,
Someone run the faucets-What is this?

“We’re all trying to pee! so quiet!”

Alright, rock and roll all night.
Staying in. Drinking. Feeling mindsets.

Talking. Something like socializing.
A rare occurrence, specially on the weekends

By the way, are you going to catch me?
I'm riding way dirty.

it's weird.
treating every moment
as if it were your last.

i can't imagine
being here
without you.
and your quirks.
all your habits.
it makes me sick.

i was looking at
a book of pictures
the other day.

i was on your shoulders.
you made me laugh.
i fell asleep
upright
resting on your head.

we walked
around the lake
while glutons passed.

"he's asleep,"
they would say.

you still love
telling that story.

Vice

Do you remember what it’s like to believe in someone?
To really think that you’ve got a good thing going?
And then it hits you bluntly, you’ve missed
Good friends on weekends and countless hours of sleep.

I know how it feels to really believe in someone.
To think that I’ve got a good thing going
Only to have it blow up in my Face-
Book…. Welcome to the information age.

My mother knows what it’s like to really believe in some things.
Catholic priests caught her with fishnets when she was only
Fourteen. Now I go to church with her on holidays.
I think about the Virgin Mary.

Coincidence

A hiss. Something about a party resonates through his thoughts.
A woman. Today she’ll board a plane bound for -----.
A café that is musky and smells of sweat stained sheets.

Of all things in the 21st century, he dotes on the fact that he’s never going to see her again. A party last night for one of his friends still bleeds through the pores of his skin. Last night, a new bar opened. Last night, an old one shut down. He thinks about her three month trip to ----. She’ll be back in October. He hopes that he’ll forget about her by then.

A phone call interrupts day-dreaming. In response, he breathes out a hiss that sounds like a b-movie bombing. Hanging up, he mutters something bleak and continues to stare at a dull laptop computer screen. He’s lost in himself. He doesn’t notice a woman walking past him. Long hair. Small hands. She’s on the way to the airport to catch a flight that leaves at three.

He doesn’t see her as she walks down the street.

“Falling in love,” he whispers, “with the concept of a woman.” He doesn’t sound so sure of himself. He stares deeper into the screen.

A block down and she just checked her missed calls. Three from a man who wanted nothing more than to lay next to her in bed. She’s apprehensive. She deletes old text messages from him. A shiver strolls through the street. A block down and screaming, he feels its presence. He decides to pack up his belongings and leave.

“Feelings are trivial things,” reads a slogan etched into one of the café’s wooden tables. He thinks about how someone must have scratched it in with a black ballpoint pen.

And then a credit card is charged and then he heads for the street and then he’s cautiously sipping at a recently concocted latte. North of him stands a woman in a sleek black summer dress. She reminds him that someone somewhere said black was "in" this season.

"None the less, an otherwise listless silhouette in a summer dress," and turns his back. He proceeds south on the street but again, a cold shiver flushes over him…

“The warmth of a woman,” he sighs and thinks about one.
A block down, a lady hails a cab. In it, she passes a familiar looking stranger. She squints. She tells the drive to take her to the airport. Then she reveals that she is going to -----.

She's already forgotten about the man on the street.