Opening 6 am eyes
To squealing leaf blower,
time-squinching
******* tightening siren,
a drone for your eyes to
float inside,
A sudden soundtrack
to text  Message suicides,
, bitterbombs ,
from New York

The words pop up wobbly,
glossy, bobbling around
to the beat of their sender’s
notions
Distressed as he wakes to the sting in his eyes
And envisions your eyes
opening after,
succeeding,
Not alarmed yet.
still separate from the void
where his thoughts
haven’t occurred yet.

Projected comics
play out in both minds,
saracastic kids,
bouncing around like
blotter acid making
escstatic pangs of
it all.
While the world drives on
A steaming freight train
heading straight through Kansas
To Alberquerque
To beyond
Until were back again going to sleep
In love with our pillows.

Ed’s Speak-Easy hides behind its windows
draped and shielded from the sunset west-

-on into morning their unaware eyes
time-glossed in the sun rise east.

I sat in my studio above them,
over nine seasons in solace
never sights, just sounds of
girls dancing in lacy fluffed skirts

trampling glasses and hollow cans
sharp moving heels in heavy shadows
creaking toxins aged and seaped
into hardwood misery

Whiskey shouts and poker faced insults
high-toned energy, rising and fading
explosive bursts of high money
high life, high scheme delight.

I could see their sounds and feel their rhymes,
my blood feeding off their nicotine from
the smoke rise, a cascading surprise
to the carpet fibers rising up the walls
into my webbed lines of breath

One eyed Doug is dead,
Mario told Trey
at the foot of the trail
where they caught each other
sneaking up to the old civil war fort.

they walked up together
where the trees made it
seem later in the day,

catching the stride
through the deep shadows to the top.
They heard the fire
cracking and voices stirring the embers,
stirring all the Coyote and Deer
to the outskirts, away from
Justin and Nick, resting at home,
Sitting with newly lit eyes
Glazed against the giant logs
Lava-tinged
Gargoyle’s roasting
slowly in the fire

Mario lifts the log
where Doug always sat, that somehow
never got burned.
He lifts it high,
like a ghost
they see in the slant
of the train bridge walls.
Shoves it hard
breaking open new fires
breaking apart
the civil war owl
rising up from the ashes

I’m driving laps around
Urique’s unpaved streets
with Arnulfo, the world’s fastest
ultra-runner up front
Chugging tesguino disregarding
Young son, Mateas in the back
Handing us the 2 liter Coca-
Cola bottles, full of the mashy
corn brew.
The cholos are drinking
Tecate, mumbling under the palms
stalking the river, watching us
break down at ever lap.
Arnuflo heaves the truck
from behind, alone,
screaming and pushing.

I snap it into second gear
Mateas trembling,
and off we go. Arnulfo hopping in
smoking more cigarettes
passing the tesguino around shouting
Rapido! Poco a poco! Andale!

Rancherra bumps full blast, the
Eternal bumping,
beem, boom, up and down
Beem, boom, beem, boom
Tubas and brass echoing through all the adobe walls
meandering all the way
down the arroyo
to God know’s where.

The cholos challenge Arnulfo
to a race in their harsh stares
under flashy hats and shiny mustaches,
Ed Hardy models with sharp pointed
snake-skinned boots
Ayyeee, Arnulfo says, He won’t race
gainst Oscarine who they say
is the fastest young Chabochi
better than the elders
who used to chase down deer,
gently twisting their necks
after  tracking them to
an ending exhaustion.

Arnulfo tells them I can win
as Oscarine snorts more from the bag
they pass around from his pocket

Off we go twenty yards
Around the farthest tree
And I win because of
Arnulfo's ancient
assurance

patterned brilliance.

losing touch with a setting sun
trance-like
in the lilac sky.
familiar, inopportune
words fill my wounds
like people flocking towards
dramatic settings.
They make a hum,
A chatter of awaiting smiles
stifled by the sound denied
by their silence

too far deep
a lack of care

Intense realization
that I’m steady
in the sky

speak easies and sunsets
the rip roaring tide
of each season
plucked from
a particular
map of heart
a wilted plant
brought to
fruition
through
journies posted
reconciled and branded
out of their
terrain of gloom
with terrain too soon
the hardy way
of blues
‘infidel rider
of the box car
whiskey sunrise
alarm clock for BBC
snowy icy white lot
sky feasting
on schizoids
orchestrating
the busses
the pistols
silenced
and silent
the train

I love the brilliant frenzied
        stillness
Earth rotating, an opaque of
        beaded matters
The buckling transfixiated
           openings of bleeding
     ground.
Blue green brown blood
    teeming with movement
disconnecting features
    rapt in water
      and other lives
  repeating, inserting
    maelstroms of
thought.