My connection wasn't juiced so I called the company. They were notorious for being difficult but I was determined not to be angry about it all. The first fellow on the other end was apologetic enough, but still tried to sell me the cable package. The second fellow on the other end was cool enough, but still wasn't who I needed. The third guy was a student. I asked if he was a student, and he bristled, I could tell. He asked, then, if I was a student in polite retaliation. All my information was up for grabs, they needed the passcodes, the last name spellings, the last four of the social, the zip. And to disperse this notion that we are just numbers, I asked if he was in new york. I thought maybe he was in Nebraska (like the lady from AT&T, or St. Louis) or what. "I am in the Philippines," he told me true. What time is it there we determined that it was eleven. The only question when I realized it was eleven here as well was, well am I behind or ahead...? 12 hours He said he was from the future this student solved my measly problem, the lights on the modem blinked the right way, the connection was made, I told him. "Gratitude from the past to the future." Hew solved my problem from 8 or 9 thousand miles away. I'm talking to a stranger so far.

What we've lost

and so much was lost with her, the brothers gone to war, and the husband who returned. the last time I saw jesus, I was only months outside the womb, and the tale-tell signs of ignorance were already accruing: cheap television, bill-paying, yearning, yearning for congratulations. so much was lost: the dobermans and chicks, the broken Model T, the notes passed in the hollow space discovered by the 8 or 9-year-old she was, within her favorite tree, the monthly passing, dancing at the station and the untold things. The things she didn't share. and I am like an insurance agent, cataloguing what we've lost, the evidence of which is only incomplete receipts and evanescing bills of sale.

Rinsing off the Sand

The me outside my self
tried to enter this flesh,
for a moment in the outdoor shower,
like my mother slipping
cough syrup down
her sick son's throat.
Quick - the metal spoon against the teeth,
the rotten cherry bouquet,
the long burning finish -
There, now it's done.

I didn't see it coming,
soap in my eyes,
but it entered my flesh
in a moment.
The pain of living,
birthing, dying,
my body desperately,
Stop! There is no room at this inn!
Vacancy, yes, but no room
for that kind of miracle.

This island I am on,
if I permit my self
to be some where,
is sacred enough, The Block
in its sound, between the Newport Bridge
and Montauk.
Far enough,
and close enough,
like all the other midway islands
which tend to keep me well.

When something changes here -
a new shop in Old Harbor,
the minister retiring -
the locals say, My God,
What has become of our little town?

The paint flakes into the sea salt air,
the cupolas ricket in winter,
but comes the spring the desk clerks
will divvy out the room keys,
and fill the ledgers with New England names,
and the locals...

I am writing this in order to survive!
These are not abstractions!
MY paint is peeling,
MY structure falters,
not from the wear and tear of use,
but from the perpetual battering of the Atlantic.
MY tent is swept away in the desert storm.
I was the virgin mother turned out
in her dilapidated sandals
(or were they the pumps
with the lipstick corrections?),
and I was the child inside her turned away too.
I was the incompetent father,
and Incompetence itself,
and the child born too soon.

Walking the labyrinth here,
halfway down the hill to Sachem Pond,
past the hens on the side of the road,
and the rooster somewhere crowing,
under the admonishing watch
of the lighthouse on the North tip,
tumescent on its rock,
like a boyhood virtue,
the me outside myself says,
Patience. There are no shortcuts
on this path. And to walk,
to find my feet, I look down.
They are blistered, swollen, stepping still,
but I know that I will cool them
in the surf soon enough.

Getting Fat

Another? Here's the first one.
I take back my shaggy hair -
Oh! it blankets my forehead.
It feels like an old bathmat,
festering in grandma's basement.
I take it back.

Take back your years.
And I take grandma back too -
her pie crust dough
and pancake batter.
And the toys -
so pink and rainbowlicious
that they couldn't stink up
even the attic,
that they had to go to grandma's
green-as-moss, damp-as-fungus
basement.

Trade me: take back your black
ink chasm. Your night abyss.
I am shining light here!
I am a New Yawkah here!
I inherited your inheritance,
and cashed your chips.

OK take the money.
Money is all we're worth.
Buy pot pourri, and hand towels.
I'll stick to the script.

You were my little playfriend.
Could you laugh with me still?
Don't grow so old.
Don't fit the bill.

The stair slats in front of me
are the same ones you had painted.
Mine are rotting underneath
the whitewash, mine are the field stones
in the old house's foundation.
Let it out, Sugar. Let it out...

You Make Me Want to Take on My Years

It's no big deal,
you good, good girl,
you artist in infancy,
the best kind the only.

When we move in,
our home will be one
because you create
like you can't help it.

I trip over my precious words,
as gangbangers shoot the lampposts
and you are wanting everything white,
and greeting stray cats
like old friends.

Back at it

I run down to Matador
looking for the trailhead.
I'm dreaming of cliffs,
the rocks jutting up
from the Pacific -
like they did in Capri. Paradise.

But it is a facsimile again.
And back in the barrio, the localbirds
copycat car alarms,
and the neighborhood Tom mews pleading
for love. For love. The least of us
pleading for love.

I am waiting for the inevitable racoon
now, or possum to break the night.
How they survive in this parking lot
I'll never know, and the coyotes are
beyond the beyond.

Should I tie it up?
I haven't written in a while.
The trailhead is not at the beach
(tho this be California). The trailhead
is here in Echo Park,
and on this page,
about to move again.

Thursday

I want my mother
to vote for Obama,
because she deserves
that freedom.

I want my grandmother,
to vote for a Democrat
for the first time in her life.

Imagine you are a Young Person,
in 1960, and JFK
Wins IT. And 3 years later,
his very mind is blown apart,
reduced to fractions, particles,
the unknown flesh
which ties ALL us niggaz
to reality,

and in your unspeakable.
rage.
you.
love...
you love,
in cities like san francisco, you
work - continue,
working (to put food on your family)
y'all, and you'ens TRY, TRY,
you try to remain human,

and time keeps slipping,
and your children, and theirs,
and the storefronts jigsaw in cubicles,
the typewritten tally of the day's receipts
become uniform, crunched
into X's and O's.
They firebomb the rice paddies.
You run a flower shop -
jackknifes into a cor-po-rate en-ti-ty.
Less blossoms than fades,
but you don't mourn it -

You are responsible, responsive,
dutiful, practical, logical -
you have a daughter,
with a name.

You see the numbers rise...

You see the good guys
make enemies, take potshots
and subsidies (rain makers, spillage),
but HOLD, grasping to
that little light of yours.

I want my mother to stand.
I want my barber to stand.
I want the comfortable
to stand, and say,
WE ARE NOT AFRAID
of losing everything we are not
AFRAID of dying we aren't opposed
to our end, or the mocking,
or the underdogging it up Mt.Cavalry
(sweet Jesus) or forcing a smile
at the devil himself.
Who only wanted debauchery.

We have beliefs, and they are ours.
We have wrought them over centuries,
they are sticker-stuck on the steamer trunks from Italy,
etched in the Austrian engine parts,
sewn in the Syrian carpets,
sown in the English garden rows,
wrapped in the china-dolls'
undergarments, lurking in the jungles and bouncing -
like gamma rays -
from the moon and back now,
stellar, radio-active, infrared...

They will not be commodified.
They will not be played against us.
They will not be sketched
by a court room sketch artist
and plastered onto our schoolwalls
like evidence.

You, who would speak of BELIEF
would do well to know our names,
would do well to fasten the boots
of humility, tightly and march with us.

No talk, lest it be humble.
No thought, lest it be honorable.
No law, lest it be painstakingly crafted.
Our policies will be as exquisite
as Faberge eggs on icebergs,
as needlepoint sails,
as diamond-tipped rocket ships
running guns to the better angels,
made to be ridden
by mice wearing clover.

Don't, do not ignore
what your heart is surely screaming.

Do not ignore that which,
by now, must be a terrifying cry
bellowing in your night.

For Sam

The way you keep one foot
anchored to the seabed,

but find a way to stretch your neck
above the water's surface

amazed me, amazes me.
So the music comes

like old friends on the telephone,
like places we visited

as children, but never forgot.
I want to run into the street,

and advertise: There are still
Truth-Seekers among us, people!

Keep rocking, and keening,
please. It's important.

For R

Have you ever been
to the place beyond silence

We wear grown-up clothes
and chatter all the while

but have you been to the cellar,
or the attic alone

There was a boy, I remember
How little he spoke

watching always,
he floated on the surface of the day

and at night,
left us for the everywhere.

Some Kind of Monastery

I am parking the beamer -
got tickets for parking wrong,
and not seatbelt-wearing
(the jackals, the less-than-nots)-
check the gear, pull the brake,
up the windows and wheels
towards the curb,
and a small voice from someplace
higher says, Hey, Boy!

I'm in front of the building
I think is a church
for Asians, from Asia,
or a refugee place,
or some kind of monastery.

The boy in the window (Hey, Boy!)
is his shirt off waving, says:
That's me Andy!

He is thrilled
to be Andy
in the place on the corner
in Echo Park
waving to me,
and I am Hello, Andy!
waving too now.

Back off, I'm sleeping

and I realized,
There is that poem,
where so little happens.

I laid myself down,
and wanting my glasses,
went on a journey
to the bathroom.

I looked all over
and realized, of course,
I'd left them by my bed.

So I didn't get the satisfaction
of looking high and low,
and finally finding it,
but I did get the one

where it was in your own backyard,
click your heels,
all along.

The founding fathers
would have been grateful,
I think as I pull the down comforter
over me,
for this warmth.

But they never lived in LA,
and never lived
the difference between
church and state.

And all the monuments
are crumbling.
I say,

you're lucky to know me,
and Oh, my god if you left me I'd die,

but both are drama, and less.

You should see the things we see,
this blinding light.

Sezchuan Delight

And taxes.
These words,
like the made-up numbers,
you enter in forms
come time.

You will see a return,
or owe,
and feel that way.

We used to keep ledgers,
but now enjoy the afternoon's
murmuring 'cross the street,
warm in bed
on a cold day.

Home is here,
in someone's breath,
on the phone line,
the airwaves,
in outerspace.

And we are at home.
Like astronauts,
waiting,
waiting,
launched,
and good luck.
To return
someday, or not
(losses, gains)
but the experience is ours,
is home.

There are four rivers, Szechuan:
Your Life, and This Life,
each flowing either way.

Mode I

Wherein wine is like life
(or life is like wine).

She tastes vanilla,
and old photographs;
I, cherry and plum.

Who is lying?
My parents were young.
Once.

Imagine a bungalow
with me
again,
a different housemate.

Here.
Here we are.
Sipping.

Don McLean

Somehow, music.
I was a boy but still at home,
no real muscle yet
or coarseness,
but something inside
pumping

and the den,
which was a living room,
on the Hi Fi,
before we had money
(your money)

playing music.
Your songs,
as a gift

I see now,
how the songs that haunted your own
youth stayed so nutted
and encased
in the you
of you,

I see how when you laid the vinyl
on that amazing turning table
which moved like the world,
and the arm of god came round
with its diamond tip

and scratched mankind
into singing, into being.

You played your songs
on that special thing,
and what you could not feel aloud
you watched for signs of
in your son,
and it was like a gift.

One, you might have later
tried to take away,
or perhaps knew
too well
would be taken anyway

by that same spinning world,
and taloned arm of god,
your father,
his father, the cold machine.

Now I think I know,
what you tried to say to me,

the couch, the carpet,
the old wooden speakers,
a quiet sort of spot
to swallow that brief vial of life,
before
it would all be tested
so relentlessly.

Like a Magnifying Glass

So you gonna stay hidden?
OK, okay, I'll.
I'll.

I will talk anyway,
maybe not so out loud though,
or often,
or honestly.

I want your big bang -
so I can run with it.
So I can make little bangs,
and feed the fish with it.

Are you listening
to my thoughts?
Are you seeing these?

Let's go:
I can't rope a steer,
I can't lasso the moon, George.
I can't shoot the cherry off The Bad's cigarillo.
I can't fly.
I can't boss, or chair,
or le petite prince,
or emcee,
or captain the high school football team,
or rappel like Papa Noel down your chimney

Here's what some:
I can dive off
whatever stable surface
I find has wedged itself between
my feet and the abyss

I can huddle myself into a ball,
like an armadillo,
and play dead

I can stealth, like a cat,
through the junk and moonstuff

Give me a little light,
and I can illuminate this canyon,
and that one

I can look out these eyes,
after these many years,
and see the The Union,
but shimmerings;
not enough to draw him out

Yadda Yadda

This is how it happens.
Somewhere there's a place,
but not here.
It could have worked out if,
so many things.
Too many things.

This magic,
is free anyway.
But I don't mean cheap.
None of it was cheap.

We paid for our pinot,
and for our time.
We drove off in foreign cars,
and let go of it,
clung to it,
we were sloppy,
and neat with it.

I know that I will never be enough.
When you stop looking for more,
let me know.
But I'm not even sure whose fantasy
we're riding.

Open/Closed

The kitchen staff
press palms
and then knuckles.
We are open,
then closed.

Note to my father:
At another point in my life,
I might have had nothing
but everything things to say.

But now, I will straighten my tie
and mention oblivion.
That was your best,
and that was all.
I could not have asked for more.

All this nothingness.
We were open,
then closed

Nevertheless

Everything you've been running from,
but I know this,
is what you're running toward.

Every constellation
you're trying to escape from under,
is where you're headed.

I met a girl from Canada,
and delightfully informed her friends
that I was from New Jersey,
because they all got a kick,
and I don't know why, Marya,
we push away the ones who love us the most.
I don't know why it is
you can feel so all alone,
and so smothered by familiarity.

When I was young,
I crossed the football field
in winter and saw Orion staring down.
Tonight, on Santa Monica,
I see the same three stars
which make up his belt.

There is no escape from oneself,
from the truth-lies,
from the family friends.
I don't know what we're running toward,
but running is saintly nonsense.

I left the ones
who needed me most,
and changed my name,
and changed my city-state,
but they are still in my pockets.
Every mountain I climb,
the dirt from it gathers
in my shoes and socks
like I'm five again,
or twelve,
or twenty-seven.

And the stars
are still
the same.

I have been fleeing a past,
which is coming upon me
nevertheless,
nevertheless.

Seen at Massimo's

A movie star,
well, as darn cute
as ever there was one,
with her famous boyfriend's mother,
sighing into a non-fat.
Smiling a sad, beautiful, gracious, rote smile,
wearing something.

It is overcast, she's wearing a shawl.
Seen at Massimo's: two top agents,
pissing together in the men's room
with the door
slightly ajar.

Seen at Massimo's: Mexicans

The flame kisses another butt
on the 10 east,
with the navigation system
pouting orders
and the beamer making fresh noises.

Seen at Massimo's: me mixing drinks,
me leaving, me reading the menu
and chatting up two
from Sacramento,
or St. Louis.

Massimo himself
is staring down
in black and white
from the ceiling
stirring us in his pot.
The baby is born.
The gnocchi is prepared
with spinach and riccota,
no potato, and that's different,
and that's why we can charge you
what we will.

Someone double-tipped,
someone paid for the missing
bottle of wine.
The smoky sky,
the Reisling chill
of Los Angeles
of Beverly Hills
the busboy running
to put change in your meter,
your last fifty cents
buys you an hour.

Your last fifty cents
buys you an hour to sit.
Your last meal,
was spaghetti di mais
with chicken sausages and veal.
Your last coast
was the east coast.
Your last coat
is worn.
Your last love
was a movie star.
You held her when she was cold.
Your last meeting
was operatic.
She met your mother,
you served them cafe.
Fifty cents
doesn't buy a cup of coffee.
But coffee makes you warm.

You are the grape,
and the winter which tries the grape,
and the hand which picks it,
and the feet which press it,
and the sommelier who serves it,
and the mother's lips which taste from the bottle,
and the girl who watches
bleeding internally,
and the man who clears the plates.
All this costs.
Someone eats pie.
Seen at Massimo's: corkscrews.

Love

The busboys are between
lunch and dinner
talking about women,
how Asian ones are all about money,
and Italian ones are all about sex.
If you have money, then you're set
with the Asians, and if you can fuck,
then you will never lose an Italian girl.

Sicilian men can fuck two or three
thousand women, but not their wives.
American girls like danger.
Be a bad daddy for Americans,
and give Latina women babies.
German girls want your mind alone.


I ask for more information.
They say,
Love is unearned.
Love duplicates
itself and breaks you,
and you are grateful.

You are in a room alone.
You are in a room with your lover,
naked, angry, lit.
You will fuck and fight,
forgetting to remember
the breath in winter,
the unexpected bumps,
and the, Oh, she's got my number.

What does love owe me?
No answers.
You will not deserve them.
Love is undeserved,
don't do, don't ask.

You will still be itching afterwards.
These wounds don't close,
they needs be cauterized.
This rash,

this bleeding will stop
at length, and you will mourn its absence.

You will not die of love,
and that will be the tragedy.
The tragedy will be it didn't kill you.
The tragedy of love is that you live.