the men end lunch with strands of glowing spit
webbed to the tips of their boots.
they huddle and coagulate, chanting as one,
then bloom with loud whispers into
heat and steel beam ******* meat to the city grid.

my father once stepped on a nail.
he turned yellow
& his leg disintegrated.

eloquence in this. kiss
& cough.

from dirt to
light to
love.

days begin
with dreamcoast, cast, and chase the air,
or rhythm of rain.

raygun.
& flashpoint to ember.
to knuckle.
to cortex.

she smells fantastic.
she she she
like, a
sweet kind of thing.
like, a
nice incense.

& i feel today is a holy day of the week.

you approach the house in zebra-print pants, wet matches and ice’d driveway,
you stumble to ignite.
spark to flame to enchant the neighborhood with midnight light.
you of the timeless once-was,
of grass or great oak,
you held the family together.
you tried to scotch-tape a butterfly’s pulled-wings back on.

                 [the momentum of love.]

teen boys breakdown in vacant lots
thinking of what you were to them. they
drag girls up and down the hillside, thru holes of the old factory fence,
attempting the ritual of you.
the aluminum hum if wind and night,
of highway lights on the distance.
*** on a tomb of plastic curlings.

you appear in pixels and dark bars,
face painted clown-like.
hydros in your palm, knife in your hip.
you were that girl lost between city sprawl
& old woodwork,
old wooden chairs carved upon and passed back and forth from *** to ***
class to class.

bell.
pizza delivery boy.
grease-ring soaked box and to touch his knees.
the channel changes, and he holds his breath for years,
in the wake of you.

she’s the girl who sets a room on fire with laughs or real flame,
         and she stands in that same flame; ranting about herself
         with blissful intention:
                        aries.
she’s the girl who mows the lawn all day to throw a memorable party
          on perfectly pitched grass; but then spends the entire party
          with that one guy on that one roof, just the two of them:
                        taurus.
she’s the girl who ***** you fiercest only to then display sudden and
          crippling bouts of madness; she’s one of a kind, or two of a kind,
          and she means some kind of love:
                        gemini.
she’s the girl who you fall for so easily, and she falls for you so easily,
          and everything is a dream; but a dream transforms, seasons transform,
          and the peopled cities with them:
                        cancer.
she’s the girl who steals the show every time, and she leans on you
          when  she’s tired and lonely; she reads science fiction books
          and tells you all the endings, strange planets fixtured in her dreams:
                        leo.
she’s the girl who thinks too much, drinks too much, and weighs you for all
           your words; but words are her demise as she digs her arms deeper
           into the dirt to catch that feeling:
                        virgo.
she’s the girl who piles a shrine of shiny occult objects and spools through
          men like shiny other objects; she has a beautiful heart, holy or not,
          but without a doubt, entirely stylish:
                        libra.
she’s the girl who doesn't believe a ******* thing you say but kisses you
          harder when you say it; she takes you up the hill to her folks
          and they sacrifice you for blood mana:
                        scorpio.
she’s the girl who knows you best and knows even better she’s far beyond
         the depths of your league; she has deafening dreams, with or without
         you in them; for ruins she will climb or create:
                        sagittarius.
she’s the girl who buys the popcorn and eats the popcorn and sulks on
         the couch while tonguing kernels out of her teeth; she will never
         truly love you, just the idea of you:
                        capricorn.
she’s the girl who saves your life with a tracheotomy when you nearly die
         on that plum street seed; she will leave you for a another man, a man
         with a good rifle and a warm little tent:
                        aquarius.
she’s the girl who sees synchronicity in all things, all life, all dreams
         and emanations; she will love you until the smell of mexico drags her
         away upon a neverending weekend:
                        pisces.

no weapons, no drugs.
he had the eyeballs of an aztlan prince.
touches water.
touches hot-grill to meat /repeat/
/replete with cerveza.
                to roil in love of sun said lights, all things lovely.
                to return by city driven lights, lake to shore to shoulder.

[to sleep.]

[to dream.]

dad is on the grill, cookin’ up something scorched.
swill is on the lake, skiin’ up something else.
sweat &
stretching lungs, the sun busting gut.
unseen, bikini pink
& green sauce.
pass the tortillas.

winterous: awake.
ice-fish and stoke the pipes of flash and holy hash.
ice-fish our favorite frozen mass.
we all grow beards,
untrusting of men who wobble blades to their faces on the daily.

spring sprung and spigot. we
return to blushing shores of wet rocks
& girlfriends.
girl bands exploding amps from atop houseboats
in styles of the highly drunk and tameless.
plucked in memory
of the ******* to come before them.

rotting horse carcass.
green glowing filament by moonlight ******
& mistrust us.
radioactive drums of waste &/or dreams.
boys swimming.

fistfights at night
by headlight & tooth crackle. (spit) then bonfire pallets
lit & danced upon.
plumes
of gas-can outcries.

the days & abuelitas
& ghosts
pinched cheek - pinched cooler - grandaddy
on the grill.
his gasping yellow dogs.

judy is in the underbrush with a walkie-talkie
& a p.b.j.
desmond leaps from high rocks; he
descends into another world by way of molecular-mishap.
dove deep.
riding the portal boar.

wasps hover above spilt wine
& declare war upon brothers with b.b. guns
& firecrackers
& spf 50+. the saturday/sunday sagas
between beams of heat laughter breakdowns
to knees, to bees,
honey.

homecoming queen dead & wrapped
in plastic.
body found with
turtle bites.
fungi.
the slabs of granite.
old iron tractors bent & held by tree wives.
toast.
jam hewn hwedges of crisped bread.

the skull and spine of seventy seven men, extracted.
retribution far past putrefaction.
a pile of bones in the center of town, at the corner of washington
& rochambeau.
gather around.

           do you believe in the boogeyman?

a glitch in the darkness.
an echo of rage, high chroma bacteriophage.
every faithless father,
every sister spared,
every ritual sung just right, a brief blackout,
reconfigured pixels of outer night.

                     [bobby’s sega genesis awakens on its own]

thirty three years to the day, he
died on that suncrest boulevard, returned today just to say “hey.”

graveyard family tree and the moon.
first as a manifestation of electromagnetic phenomena
            in a videogame’s cpu. 1993.
second as a fully-fledged entity materialized via videocassette,
            hungry for pizza and pure vengeance. 2001.
third from beneath bedrock, the quarry belly baste,
            a body buried thrice, undead toxic tumescence,    
            a walking corpse heaving black plasma. 2020.

the sequel.
the son.
the spectral chosen one, he
rips out a throat or two, quite fashionably so,
a man about town throttled and disemboweled,
as friends and neighbors stumble and sprint to escape with their own godforsaken skin.
let the bone collection begin.
emerged in afterschool hallways to **** old classmates turned teachers.
emerged in afterhours offices to devour old buddies turned bankers.
emerged in the quiet dark homes of neighborhood flesh and folk.
blood soaked socks.

why? you ask, must all these people die?
vengeance?    no.
that was a lie.
he killed those people for a laugh
& that’s that.