You went to him because you’d never been
loved the way you deserved.
You’re neglected
time and time again. Childhood was stolen
somewhere between “It’s a girl!” and heaven.
I know you think you try.
You’re dejected.
In the shade of the damp one a.m. din
his tongue opens you like children do
Christmas gifts.

You went to him because you’d never had
so much attention from older guys.
So much attention, stained with the dyes
of lust. Is it that the ******* grains
staggered your mother’s ability to
care for you?
You hide beneath an eating disorder.
All the shame spills out
when you’ve got a finger deep in the esophagus’ veins.

You went to him because you’d never seen
a truly sweet smile.
Not that his gleans
away the pain inside you, but that
you’ve never really felt real sweetness.
Every time, when you seem to bat
your lashes,
I know you’re fighting back thick tears;
it’s not an exhibition of sexiness.

You went to him because you’d surely been
afraid of my honest feelings for you.
I’m sorry if the honest love I’d offered was scary,
but I’m not akin
to casual flings. That love was so true,
and ran so **** deep,
I’m sure I’d almost have drowned,
if your deceit hadn’t pushed that bright-blue
river so deep underground.

Their bars are bars there.
It’s just that the taps
have all run dry.
Behind a wall
computers clank, buzz,
dilapidate.

Behind thickened glass
clerical workers
patter like hail
on shingled roofs.
Beyond walls and glass,
sallow-white leaks.

I sit rough somewhere.
Cold, unfeeling stone
everywhere.
A payphone stares
jeeringly at me.
I curl up tight.

Mother and father
surely spite me now.
Brother won’t know,
no, he won’t know.
Others never will.
Don’t comfort me.

I’m in pajamas.
I’m grasping at straws.
I’m falling fast.
I’d like to know
how much is the bail.
“Sixty-thousand.”

My fingers are pressed
on a copier
like those old, dear
library books.
Copied and copied.
Next I’ll be shelved.

The lambasted streets
in summer sing children’s songs.
Now snow scolds them mute.

From the visions of sparrow vanguards
that fly insatiably onward.
From the tombs of ancient hearts draped
in flowing, moth-eaten fabric.
From the fighter jets stalling somewhere
above solitary and succinct farmlands.
From the bottom of a broken purple
sunset that lies embossed on my brain.
From the silliest half-thought left
unvoiced in the vagrant light of a damp
and desolate lamp lying in a landfill.
From several mouths at once.
From oracles cross-legged in caves.
From the gills of a catfish on a hook.
From mythical forgeries and the perjurer's tongue.
To the subdued hope resting in a
trembling hand gripped round its pen.
To satisfaction that is oneness that
seems to never arrive but is there
all along.
To the peaks of the Himalayas.
To my spidered desk light, shallow with doubt.
To my flustered and torrential page.

Seagulls hit the horizon's backboard
off the sands of Pacific Beach.
In my lungs breakers burn out
some forty feet from shore.
They will return.
This jetty'd be a monolith
if this ocean were a sky.
Silt on this deserted
coast scene is encumbered by
bits of driftwood and sun-bleached glass.
The living in this town
are accustomed to the weight. And
tidepools are their hearts:
shallow, mossy, little things
fending for breathe.
This jetty'd be a monolith
if this ocean were a sky.

"Like the gambler's eye
fixated
on a tumbling die
my mind fixes upon emptiness."

I
The stars are double-weighted tonight.
bulging, beating, they sink
from their proper lurches.
One by one across the murky
evening they sputter out.
What natural light remains
seeps from that subtly gaudy
bauble of a moon.

II
Peeled eucalyptus, ice-plant, new-mown summer grass,
dandelion, sloping hill, carved stone bench,
the view, the reflected city-light off the bay water,
white-washed near-tenements.

I am firmly locked up, chained in a bone cage
of chemically manipulated cranial plates;
serotonin, synapses, dopamine, dendrite
create a web like seaweed constricting the sea;
this computer of a head calculates, oscillates,
and processes the sensory.

III
My body is a tattered jib sail
flowing in the light sprinkling rain:
the simmer of the gale:
a hollow cathedral abandoned
by the believers:
a vessel for my marrow:
an imaginary catalyst for profundity:
an incarceration: a hull of particles
arrested: some part of an experience.