Silver paint
on particle board

made
to look vintage

Times Roman Font
painted on sheet metal

water lapping at the shore
speed boats growling

clouds moving in then
moving out

sun
piercing through

I'll stop talking

She left Reno
in a satin slip
the color of hot coins
pouring from slots,
wearing chewed-up tennis shoes,
mirrors multiplying her,
the marquee burning out
letter by letter,
a hush pressed between her teeth
as if saving the last note.

I followed,
a gangly shadow,
mother’s voice in my ear:
life is not a freeway exit.
But she was the exit.
She drove west
through a glittering throat.

In Tonopah she was a waitress
with red stains on her wrists,
the sleeves tugged low,
coffee pouring thin as blood.
In Barstow she was a sun-bleached Madonna,
halo blistered, mouth lit in stained glass.
At a gas station in Needles
she shimmered into a coyote’s shadow
and slipped behind the pumps.
Everywhere,
a new disguise,
a flicker at the edge of vision.
Not the whole leap,
just rehearsal.

Casinos blinked like electric relics.
Truckers called her sugar,
greedy hands counting her ribs
as if she were a paycheck
sweating in their fist,
but she slipped away each time,
her silhouette already moulting-
a serpent skin, a smoke-trail,
a saint’s shadow burning off the wall.

By Malibu the night
had softened to velvet.
The pier at Zuma
leaned into the Pacific
like a broken rib.

She sang once-
low, cracked, unfinished-
and the slip fell from her
like the last lie.
Her body cut into the dark tide,
this time there was no disguise.

I waded in after her,
ankles bruised by rock.
The sea lit with jellyfish,
not lanterns but wires,
each pulse a warning,
each glow a wound.

Standing at the highway’s end-
no exit left,
just the Pacific’s mouth
closing around her.

I wrote a word and let it go,
A seed it was, I did not know;
It fell to earth in secret ground,
And there a living tree was found.

I gave a word to one long dead,
It rose to life and gave them bread;
I whispered low, the branches grew,
And clothed the land in morning dew.

I read a word that made them glow,
I took a word and watched it grow;
It bore a fruit I could not see,
Yet filled the world with mystery.

I spoke a word I can’t take back,
It darkened sky and turned it black;
The fruit was sweet, the poison whole,
It sowed a storm that stole a soul.

I pass by cafés and shops
with eyes as wide as narrow boulevards
I feel it, certain ideas consume the oxygen of mind
I pass by myself, lose track of routes or hyperbolic sensations
poetry drips down from this quiet space where
splendid contradictions resist the temptation
to capitalize on exclusion, where fullness and emptiness
talk to one another as mimes do
for a change, wide boulevards pass through my narrow eyes
imagination plays its alchemy on my mind like a sugar spike
I rest on an origami isle - your smile

Time is uncertain
Everyday we live
Trying to give back
Crying out in happiness
The gift of life
Enjoying everything on earth
Time is uncertain
Each day we try
To make a way
Everyday we live
Trying to give back