Lauderdale

Come on come on
and what I mean here is
get your ass in the car.

Whadye mean you left yer
phone at home?
That sonovabitch,
you don't need it anyway.

You smell 'at clutch dust?
I kinda like the way it smells.

When you go down
to the creek and kinda try
to wash the road
grit from your forearms
in the cold water.

Flying down a county road
to get there
chasing daylight
at eight thirty in the evenin'
the sun is still up
and it's 89 degrees

"whoooooooooo!
Y'all smell 'at polecat!"

And you're yelling over
a blasting radio, it's playing
something you really
jam out to.
It's "Hold On Loosely"
or even, "Caught Up in You"

We talked about
the gun show and the fair.

We drank cheap
smoked brown
burned regular
in smoking vapor
trails all over
the county.

Racing the Waterloo
Cop down
redneck riviera
into the sunset.

Ocean

I hear your quiet calling,
Those silent screams
That teach me how to sing in
Whispers and mumbles of
Inner streams bubbling over
Outer rocks and stones.

From behind the veil of time
I still hear your voice squeaking
Like mice in a barn
And your eyes little faint
Blue holes in a blanket.

I stare over the side, at the sea
And in the blue, like your
Eyes, I am
Terrified by its immensity.

Your brazen Sun
Burns but
Freckles me.
And in that hot
Pain
There is health
Or death. I cannot tell which.

Wind, whipping
Words that chap my
Face while singing me
A song of movement
And grinding metal.

Your breeze
Lyrics like pavement
And salt-rot.
I can taste you in
Seawater
And cheap whiskey.

Lady Bug

I hear

in broken heartbeats

a syncopation of

sound 

making music

for the lonely.

and too here I follow the

ladybug on

the late night computer

screen, 

woken up by

a space heater

from his

cryogenic

slumber

in the window panes,

and I ask as I follow

him

do you have a want to leave my screen?

or to hear my shitty EDM?

And what were you doing on my mouse and keyboard

when I first walked in?

Did you hear that noise?

that song of

hearts

cracked like

violins

with loose strings?

Or are you too

loose

in your beetle

shell, lacking

proper

heartstrings

to tighten

and snap?

100 Dollar Bills

Ketchup clutched the bag in front of him and had long ago stripped away his seat belt.

"The fuck you want me to do man?"

"Keep the speed above ninety and don't get us dead."

"Hey, hey what the hell are you doin'?"

The Buick Riviera was moving down the freeway at an excellent clip. A golden secondhand paintjob  was ripe in the California sun with white leather; softop and all. Ketchup's man in the driver's seat kept having to flick the long, surfer sheen hair out of his face, and when he did so his right foot would press the throttle ever so slightly more, as if to check if there was a sixth gear or not. Watching now Ketchup instead of the road, he became disconcerted at the sight of his accomplice and headman the man oh man Ketchup Himself reaching into the bag and fingering its contents.

"Hey, Ketchup man what the hell are y'doin'!"

"Why the hell you think we knocked that place over, huh Rich? Why the hell do you think we usin' the freeway, huh?"

Ketchup flinched at the sheen of brake lights ahead and settled back into his side of the bench seat as Rich swung the wheel just gently enough not to spin out the Buick and dodge the slower vehicle.

"Plenty o'weight on the rear wheels huh Rich?"

"Look, just put it back under the seat a'right? Pretty soon we slow down and make an exit. I dunno, dump it in Brady's backyard and let it stew for a lil' while, see if it makes news, shit like that. Then we come back for it," Rich laid into the horn as he swerved around another vehicle.

The greatest thing about California, for blind old ladies and robbers alike, is that ninety on the freeway laying into the horn, or doing thirty-five in the fastlane, either one is still inconspicuous. It is hard on those grand viaducts to stand out; the nuts go unnoticed.

"Then we come back for it give Brady a lil' somethin' for his troubles y'know,"

"Fuck that man you can't act like you dunno why we did this" Ketchup kept one arm in the bag, gently stirring.

"Ketchup you got dat look in yer eye..."

And, sure enough, Ketchup's dark blue eyes had a sheen, like he might be about to cry or go catatonic. But he pulled his arm from the bag and Rich settled for a moment; he even slowed down to about eighty.

"There ya go man. Just chill, anyway like I was saying,"

"No, Rich, I was saying, and what I was saying was I wasn't really clear about why we drove out here a'right?" Ketchup rolled down those smooth power windows.

"The fuck do you mean?" He glanced at the open window, then the rearview for the cops. "This a set-up goddammit?"

"Not particularly," That look remained. He slid his arm gently back down into the bag.

Rich thought about reaching for it, or crashing the car. No, try to reason with him: "Look Ketchup just talk to me man,"

Ketchup grinned, flashed his eyes, and slung his arm out of the bag and out the window, cradling
100 dollar bills that scattered in a flock, twisting and flapping in the wind throughout the car and in an exponentially growing cone behind the car. A few vehicles behind them swerved and a few even slowed down when they saw what chaff was blowing on the road.

"Holy shit no, Ketchup, no!"

Ketchup grabbed the bag with both hands and sat his bony ass up on the door of the Buick,

"This is it Rich! Like a-hundred mile an hour picnic!"

Rich saw the next cloud of bills burst in a greater blast than before, scattering over eight lanes of traffic and some flying so high as to cross the median and land in the far lane. Cars began to slow and swerve with greater frequency. some managed to stop in the highway.

"There! Isn't this what yer all in the car for anyways? Isn't this what yer drivin' for!"

Rich kicked the throttle some, hitting ninety-five: "Goddammit man, this is the last time..."

Ketchup didn't hear the rest, the engine noise and a shift in the breeze across his ears left him with only the sound of his voice: "You buncha fuckers! Here ya go!" As he shook the bag the last great cloud of bills flew into the air. They burst in green anger, flipping and spinning, and tormented in their flight, and Rich saw in the rearview all the cars that stopped, and a few that wrecked, steaming hulks under the blazing California sun.

As they hit 100 miles an hour, a careless tanker-truck driver a mile or two behind was fumbling for another tape and hit his brakes too late, smashing into three cars and jackknifing its payload almost over the median. The median played its part too, though, and ruptured a poorly welded seam along the side of the tank. The payload was a small amount of gasoline, to be fair. It was destined for a tiny gas station in Ocean Beach, selling out from under the parking lot for seventy cents a gallon. However, it was enough to fuel a spark into a fireball that killed two, injured seventeen and scared the bejesus out of god-knows-how-many.

Rich and Ketchup both saw the black tower that rose from the viaduct, high into the air the cars themselves now behind the horizon, the road behind them empty. A dull doppler-thud from the explosion reached their ears.

"Goddamn worth a million dollars Rich!  A million goddamn dollars! You shoulda seen the looks on somma their faces! Like Jesus came back!"

Rich finally smiled, chuckled a bit, and tapped the throttle a bit unwillingly when he shook the hair from his eyes, heading north.

A Poem To Friends After a Night Out

The cops at
the door
always scared me,
even when
there wasn't anything
to be afraid of.

Next it was a tall long and stretched
out place, it loomed and symbolized
a distant
power like
a guardtower
of the Roman
frontier.

Full of nobles in their
togas fresh
and their women
(mainly) on display
and the libations poured from fonts
forward in their thinking,
"Let us keep them drunk!"

And to spew the lies
and herald truths
and miff enemies
and salve friends,
to say that I would
do it all
again would be an
understatement

I Was a Bird On a Powerline Feeling Okay

Like a bird
on a powerline
I bore the winter's
wind to hang high,
and look down on
those happy people
and await
the crumbs
and hot dog pieces.

I watched them and
began to hate them,
in their two-legged
lowering flight, in their
hollow ways
and irreverence.

And the hot-dogs and crumbs
they made me love them.
I felt a way like maybe they
were not so bad.
And they all aren't!

My wing was broken from
the birthing tree,
and one of these
people
placed me back in the nest
to heal
and try to fly again.

(But many believe that to touch you would alienate you,
and laying soft-bodied on the ground they would
callously pass you by, as if to shun you from memory.)

Sitting lightly on a powerline I
still wait
for the odd
hot-dog or
the new puddles
on the clean
asphalt to
preen and bathe, and I
often decide to leave my
Signpost roost
and spend the night in
the pine trees and bamboo.

There I eat the seeds of grass and the
insects of the night
and I shiver in the wilderness cold
and the feelings
I had for those crumbs and people
fade away
into the hiss of wind
and rattle of
pine needles.

I thank them and forgive them
and may
one day
forsake them.

*Makes Crazy Gesture With Finger Beside His Head*

All at once
I saw
for a fleeting
moment
That Flash of
your flaxen hair
in the lights of
trash can bonfires;
but I was mistaken.

It was only a drummer for the band
and he
had not
your countenance
nor ever
will anyone
else.

And somehow I knew
that you'd
lose your phone
that night
and it hurt and burned
like a bullet
remembering
that you
are
diseased.

Diseased and dying, through
no fault of your own
and I in my ignorance cannot see
the sores
and welts
and lesions
that make you
the way you
are.

So I forget
I treated you like an athlete
when you should
have clearly been on the bench, or
in the hospital.

When I heard
you had lost your phone
later,
and my
suspicions were
confirmed,
I knew
then, and only then,
that the alcohol
wasn't the only thing
making you forget.

Somehow you forgot,
through no fault of your own,
and I in my ignorance
raged against the dying mind
like I could change it, like
you might
suddenly be cured
by
 a
   verbal
slap
or
dis       jointed
kindness and strength,
a
              hug
here or a
                 shake there
could bring you back to the world of
the living.

Hubris is the fatal flaw of many men
and I too
succumbed to it: Thinking that I was
stronger than
Any disease!
especially
one that inhabited
another.

I have been the bearer of
both the lash
and the stroke,
and to stripe the back of
another
only to
see the blood
after the fact
makes me recoil
from myself
in horror.