On the Way to Chacras

A wild pack of mutts kept their heads down and looked for food. They had mastered the art of look-no look, not even moving eyeballs in vain, save for a few glances to throw off the rest of them. They were everywhere as stand in ghosts for the barrios further out from the city center, out toward Chacras where a couple was abruptly warned by a cyclist of the danger- not of a bored policeman, but a serious threat- one embodied by the general rule that noone ever got hurt from crossing the street at the sight of some doberman/labrador mix, or the appearance of such anyway.
The heat smells of pine and blueberry bushes, nanking cherry pits spit on the lawn next to the crab apple tree that used to trick the birds into flying into the window too high to reach, even on tiptoes. We had to close the curtain on the sliding door, even at night because of the bats.
On tile, warm as body heat, this is written. Arid desert breeze juxtaposed with fountains not auspicious as the lincoln, not minimal but rather grandiose in a suggestion of aquatic sprawl, dim lights offering more than the satire previously provided. Some highlights of the central construct, the stoic recipient of the aqueous innuendo pick up the last glimmer of airbrushed sunspots across the tits and right cheek (grapes and book in ornamental slumber) as the last of the beast's horns are squeezed into the evening like a tube of toothpaste or the application of a condom, the fountains start giving purpose to the reflected illumination.
A pair of waders turns on the arachnid-wrought iron lamps- still done by hand, might as well be oil lamps- naptha still fresh in the nose as pine and blueberries.
They had to close the back door because of the bats. He walked across the pond each morning, that murky green the color of an army uniform, with an old pickling bucket, mostly used for eggs. It made all the dishes smell like egg salad sandwiches when mother used it for washing. To this day, empanadas on wrought iron display cases always bring the ghost of all the pickled yolks backlit by naptha lamps ooooh and the tile, warm as body heat, red sand and the murky water the color of pickle buckets the flacos on the corner use to douse the fiats and fords for a 2 peso note with a wild mutt look- no look, trying to squeeze out the night like a tube of toothpaste.
Palates of blueberries and nanking cherries shade themselves under a crab apple tree among the red dust and the arachnids who inhabit the nearby wrought iron fense. A stray cat gives a masterful look- no look up towards a window not unlike a bored policeman watching the aqueous sprawl squeeze out the night like the applicaton of a condom, first the grapes, then the books, the tits, and finally the bull's horns.
A pair of waders lights the lamps as a mutt drinks from the murky green water. A faint smell of naptha and pine drifts through the crab apple trees overhead. Sunspots like stand in ghosts offering more than satire dot and slowly fizzle from display cases and old pickle buckets as curtains squeeze out the night like a cyclist's warning on the way to Chacras

Dead Weekend

“The smell of decomposing flesh was so intense
that lighted candles, passed through the opening into a vault,
were instantly extinguished” -Catharine Arnold.

I.
It was yesterday earlier
when the nightlight sunburn
chaffed against the Anguilla Japonica flesh
braised to pure fascination
in the mind of the reader
sick with non-fiction sweat.

My brother saved the package
the gloves you knit him came in.
He liked your felt handwriting:
it took from the hairs knelt
before the lobe of your right ear.

Relationships, broken down
to dime-sized nipples, harden.
How intellectual!
How po-mo!
rang a miasma of sinful tolerability;
A necropolis of soul.

Imagine the conversation turned
to the form forbidden lust takes
when acted on.
A feather can say what I won’t.
As one falls moon dust feels off
an always sun burnt chest.

II.
When eels are prepared in Tokyo
they are filleted through the back
to not recall the calligraphic cut
of a samurai performing
seppuku unto himself.

III.
It was yesterday earlier,
and a dead weekend,
when I visited a cemetery
splayed out like an arm folding.
It was rapt with trees once considered
to be pagan by the Romans and as
I searched for my great-grandparents
druids danced among yew trees
whittling themselves into projectile weapons:
Crossbows to fend off grave robbers
or finish off the nearly dead
dying in urban plague pits.
It is true that exploding coffins
terrorized many religious tombs.
It is true that felons were buried
on the northern side of cathedrals.
It is true the feet of old world dead
faced east so, come resurrection,
they could stand up more easily.
And It is true
that I thought relationships hardened
in the absence of loved ones
But, memories decompose faster
when they are not around.

I got lost on the cemetery
and failed twice to find
any of my dead.

I’m sorry,
sometimes your grandson
gets distracted.

Customer Service Complaint

It's not fall that makes me depressed,
not the dying leaves or the birds flying south
or afternoons that arc into evening,
waking up to a sun half-set.
It's not mice crawling back into houses
and sad wet cats meowing for help
in the alley, hiding under dumpsters
from the next pummeling of rain.

It's not fall that makes me depressed,
not the tired-looking evergreens
wondering when, if ever, they'll get a break
from their relentless color,
or the last of the bees still wandering,
starving mad, aching to please their queen.

It's not fall that makes me depressed,
it's the fact that regardless of what season
it is, how many birds or bugs or vermin
are all holed-up, every day remains
the same deluge of self-important people
with the same self-important problems
feeling that I am somehow obligated
to help solve them.

Moon Moths, Slugs, and Insects

"So steadily moves the solemn procession"
-Andrew Carnegie

Nothing if not
the feelings of sunny afternoons
when blinds draw to breathe
loose teeth in dreams.

Good sex!
says the third condom
sobered enough to get hard
after a massacre of foreplay
written on a bathroom stall
in Denver.

Made up like an eating disorder,
roadside or not,
I attempt a lost earring
for two years and six months
I named my microwave Montana
for it being easier to navigate
than an oven,
stove, or the distance between want
and a loathing to be clean.

A footnote in military history:
Terrorism should be a bomb.
It was a european beach
in the nineteen-forties
until i moved from the bed
to a futon in a windowless room

where dark but expecting
the stark moon a raven,
where I your young
bemoaning stomach aches
spoke

Feed me

Being home.

I’m starting to realize how much im like my parents,

picking up on similar habits. Dad’s sense of humor.

Mom’s too. Living like I travel, only a few different articles

of clothing to mix match. The theatricality of our world

and I buy into it. Coupon clipping what comes in the mail

for buy one get ones at the shoe store or getting stoned

before watching the perfectly fake gore of Sweeny Todd

or the strangely erotic gore of True Blood. The first time

we watched Interview with a Vampire since we were kids

and wondering if I should admit it was getting me off.

It wasn’t until the end that you said something.