"And now! What did we wish to say, that we were not able to say?" --St. John Perse
"Love is a stranger in an open car" --the Eurythmics



When love is a stranger, things can get twisted.
A girl can get sick, being the McDonald's drive-thru of eating ****.
She may cop an attitude, or hear the cop say
to his partner, "That chick might as well just shoot herself."
That stuff sticks.

When daddy and his strophe wife, the replacement who shoots up Thomas Mann say,
"We'd like you to move out," after just a month of nervous dumbshow confusion,
the mulligans are running out and the road calls.
Where else you gonna go, baby?

When love is a stranger, there are still poets, painters,
failed academics, leering dittybops, locust nutjobs
and grandfathers walking with canes into
the roaring pandemonium of downtown San Antonio.
There are still stricken drunks on pulpit stools
to tell you, baby,
let's get out of here,
I know a slaughterhouse on the south side
where a girl like you could see god in fumed gold Krylon.

When love is a stranger and the bones bend
like spines of books with pages knifed out
to hold some lack-rent new straw man's works,
it's time to get knocked up with an idea,
blood out a new plan and join the shanghaied sailors
at the 12-step dock in the free lunch church downtown.

When some oxford-cloth **** tells you not to come back,
You come back anyway, you find a new high,
you start scudding down San Pedro with no idea
and no wheels, but a sacred heart, a votive candle,
and maybe a shine-ghost mirage of something better.
Slide into the Olmos Theater,
start tatting together the film edges until you spill
out with the rest of the film buffs,
find a tarantula on the pavement on the way home and say,

"I will not die here."
That's when you pick up some pride, some Spanish
and some mom and pop Texican deliciousness
before doing the dishes to pay.
Hey chica,
it doesn't have to be this way.
New friend Jake tells me that til it rings in my ears.
He buys me the leather jacket I was jonesing for,
and suddenly it's my world too,
holy ****, I have the right to be here,
and I am walking down Alamo towards the cenotaph
thinking maybe being a live coward or dead hero

are not the only choices that I have.

Miroslav Jubert Hans Barinsky
was fond of candied apricot whiskey
and drank so much, so cheerfully, so often
that they stuffed six bottles into his coffin
then down the side of a mountain on skis
they sent it, helped by sail and breeze
past the graveyard and off a cliff
poor Miroslav...come to this.

Warm mellow breezes brush against my face
The sky turns light purple as the sun goes down
Carmel cappuccino sits on the table
Waiting for me
While a candle burns
Bossa nova music plays
In the background

As the sun continues to drop
The breezes increase taking some of the heat away
The smell of the cappuccino fills the air
As the bossa nova plays
It’s a special time
A time of magic

in october mornings
numb
purple leaves
drift down a little
more fluttering by
angelic winds,
but i could not trace which
node released them
nor the mother stems from
which they unlatched
their mouths
loosening their connection
isn’t it a heavenly scene?
something falling from
huge structure
uncountable,
unseen like god
and inevitable
and when they fall, they
descend
from the middle
of a population,
of hidden foliage in
a garden that’s
still breathing.

Let us be like a field of flowers.
Flowers under the sun
Always turning.
Always sharing all this light.
Together.
What a beautiful sight.



Shell✨🐚

except that you have
attached your parfumed,
par~col~odored exhalations
into our shared airs,
with uniqued fumes,

   thy airy
essences
to thine own chosen words,
in combines never before
seen or heard,
but worn by you,
draped from chains abound your neck,
dripping from thy tongue,
dropping from thine eyes,
leaking from your pores,
from fingers in rose gold
adorning rings bright shining

so more, so unique,
impossible to misidentify
as anything anybody any anything,
but
yours, yours…yours,
     but not belabor this
fact basic,

disguise your name,
hide your fame,
make your locale,
somewhere in the unreachable,
unreal,
multiverse,
none the less,
and allthemore,
cannot escape,
the ultimate reality,
when first you press that
keyed
SEND,
you have parted, done with,
an immeasurable
small but grandeured piece of
your unique self,

if that makes you anxious,
here my eyes crinkle sympathetically,
am please to blurt
this major alert:

u have nothing to fear,
too late, too late,
you are now made,
part and particle,
past participle
futured history in
the partculared,
longest continuum
on this tiny, tiny
planet

oh well,
just thought you'd
like to know,
despite your guises,
your are now
100 per cent,
immutable ^