Here, starry, open road
   the promise of finding God or Yahweh or Buddha
   on the highway,
the roof down, wind in our hair and dirt,
   red sand of the canyon vast around us, setting sun and personal American dream,
   drifting further into your arms and our souls mile by mile,
the burning blue of the sky ahead, inflamed by all the reds and oranges the dying sun can
    possibly bleed,
and my hand, drifting on the driving wind,
   finds its way into your heat-swept hair, soft and dark and handsome,
   all memory of cold end of '47 erased in the face of your warmth
as we fly down the street -
   I'm sorry I only gave us six decades,
   I would have aimed for more if I'd known about your untimely nightfall…
-but this Cadillac is stolen, fast, free and green;
   wheels burning hot in their devotion to carry us anywhere,  
   the leather backseat our warm and welcome marital bed,
for this, surely, is our honeymoon -
Yes, indeed, we got engaged in that small cot in Harlem,
   said "I do" on the cool, cracked asphalt of some nightly Texan road.
You promised me forever,
   swore me eternal love & friendship in your own voice,
  with your own words -
     the sweet, darkest-soul-illuminating true Western twang of your blue-eyed,
     full-and-clear-hearted vow.
What of it now?
   Where your voice? Where your face, your knees, your hands -
   Where your shoulders made strong by carrying all of
   America?
   Where your feet glued to gas pedals and roadside sand,
   where your soles -
Where your soul but up in Heaven, surely?
   Up in Heaven…

And us - him, me, her -
   left behind, to drown in ***** or go mad with longing,
   to be forgotten by the dead.
And nothing of you now
   but highway ashes and lovesick poems, black-and-white camera roll…

Holy, black typewriter, frenzied,
spits out strangers’ love letters, desperate, the ink band half dried
(but ultimately returns to its grave of  dust).
Withered books, yellow pages carelessly leafed through, devoured
(pay no heed to the traffic - walk and read),
falling from one pain into the next;
such are beginning and middle of these days...
And benzedrine fever dreams are fleeting,
as elusive as great insane private revelations
mentioning Ginsberg and Hendrix by name
- a swirling fata morgana of Buddha, Dharma, cult,
and a thousand angelic punks, punk angels, safety-pin-winged,
dreams about Neal and I (not I) being cops -
revealed to my hands in a crazy stupor, darkening and
illuminating the whole café, unaware-

and I know that Marlon knows a jeweler, knows
his hands -
how does that fit in here?

These days waste by, racing, crash-trickling like waterfalls,
like the Niagara Falls that made Joe cry -
and now I watch him cry,
shamelessly, inconsolable in the face of beauty,
crying like he’s never seen water,
as he hands me another case - Morpho menelaus -
dead, killed, (killed on Denver roads), escaping freedom
in the giant hands of a not-so-average Joe (secret hero of this poem),
his eyes glued on life, and full of tears
and his dad didn’t want a daughter neither, wanted no children at all-
And down in Mexico (where he is now, or was last)
the plywood violin plays the open-highway-blues
for a not-so-sober Jack who loves and hates and loses.
Somewhere amid the British-American chaos: a pair of twins
suffered at the hands of their mother,
suddenly forgotten on the road...

Speaking of “mother”: Soon I’ll miss a wedding, and
- come to think of it - so will Jack, won’t he,
the other one,
with his red lips and olive green canvas, with his
made-in-vietnam imitation of
father Dunkirk’s blood, fallen soldier, 1916 Jesus didn’t rise -
How to lose my mind positively, flush out the memories?
Swimming at midnight: the cold lake homely in my bones
all washed over by iodine-orange water.
Mark hums sweet country tunes, wheat between his lips, "hey la, my boyfriend's back" -
and the sun never sets
and the coffee is always cold
and all the pages are black.
And Springsteen lies on the nightstand, his spine turned to me,
sharing his makeshift bed with Kerouac and butterflies, and

a cruel storm of stories that sends my head spinning
makes it so that - unable to form in the hurricane -
poems cower in the back of my throat
like predators waiting to jump on their prey, and -
any minute now, I beg them, any moment-
but they shake their Rottweiler heads and bare their crocodile teeth,
taunting me, saying
that the wordy intelligence of others dumbs me down,
burns me out, charcoals my brain with the soot,
leaves me without originality; no
mind for my own words, no
regard for the verses crying to happen, only
the need to write, write, write,
stupidly, like a dog is forced by instinct,
the insatiable need to spill, to transform, to twist, distort, to prophesy, to-

Some  journal entry reads: healthy coping. Think:
Growth is inevitable.
God is inevitable!
Pain, and fury, and love, are inevitable! Luck -
To take this earth and make it yours,
this oyster,
and realize that it’s also everyone else’s;
(boys, no, kings of summer)
inevitably working together to create beauty,
only one glass case away from bewitching your living room,
from taking its seat right beneath the busy hand of God
and hold up the mirror:
this beauty was you all along. And me. And Him,
and everyone else.
This Father wanted a Son, wanted a daughter, even,
and,
suddenly,
this close to the face and hand and chest of God,
the old fear of 23 turns into excitement
with all our eyes, full of tears, glued on life -
still,
even now -

A song of shell and thunder whistles past my ear
the crack of distant laughter, empty and hollow,
your voice amid the terror stands out to me so clear
while heavy shrapnel nestles between my ribs.

"Mother of God!" one cries out in horror -
and clammy hands reaching for the collar of my shirt,
tugging, ripping, sending buttons flying steep as bullets,
for  frightened boys to burrow into my chest and pull out the lead.

Your eyes are focused in the blur, a raging sea of darkest green
bewildered at the sight of a deep red river
pouring towards the valley of my hip, the small dip between
bone and muscle, obscenely pooling like a strange lake;

Inviting you for a swim, had the barrel of a German gun then
missed its mark and pointed left; alas, I sit
and bleed to death underneath your fear-stained gaze; I apologize
and in the haze I lift my arm to gently graze the dried mud on your cheek.

The trench has lost another light, or what was left of its sorry embers;
I pray you will sleep sound tonight, ears shut tight from
screaming, laughing, crying, dying - just think,
if it bears not too much pain, of my love, and speak my name when

My mother asks about her son - with steady voice you tell her
that with a smile on my lips and a warmth in my breast
I thought of her, and passed on.

I exist between here and the deep blue sea;
here, and the olive tree;
between water and mango.
I sign letters in another's name
to profess my love to you;
like lilac in wind and rain
I endure.

Like rosehips in a summer breeze
swaying in their gentle dance -
bending to the higher force
in devoted trance.

And my love is wild and wicked
as a thicket of thorned roses;
my heart, that hungry, livid thing
twists itself in painful poses
at the mere sight of your face.

What is a soul when split in two,
if not a home to return to?

What is your gentle, tender touch
if not the ultimate reward,
a dream come true, an ache for more -
the yearning for "la petite mort".

I want to touch you like the ocean
crashing against a rocky shore.
I want to taste you like Eve
taking the first bite of sweetness.
I want to see you, hear you sing,
watch you throw yourself into the fire
of the night, the heat surrounding
your naked body, and mine.

I want to hold your legs apart
and flick my tongue against ripe fruit,
a peach-furry, strange delight,
red and eager, biting back,
licking scratching opening, not
in defense, but pleasure.

I exist between here and the deep blue sea;
between here, and the olive tree;
between thigh and hip.
I sign letters in another's name
to profess my love to you;
like a hummingbird at sunrise
I want to drink the morning dew.

The liquid
the suffering
the deep red so deep and red
that only the sea could be more blue
The glass, the green
The intoxicating colors
of a lonely evening
or a dinner date
The stains of anger or
happiness or
fear
Wine, wine
the liquid,
the joy.
The slowed reflexes and
the numbed pain and
the misfiring nerve endings -
the cerebral palsy of alcohol.
The divorced mother of alcohols,
the best friends reuniting,
the new house celebrating,
the variety of steak cutlery,
the funeral of alcohols.
Wine, wine,
the deepest end of a sea
everyone dares to drown in,
and words that can’t be taken back
and deeds that cannot be undone
and promises that are foolishly made,
and birthdays to be celebrated,
and weddings to be held,
and dances to be danced,
all under the soft, dark cloak of
wine, wine.

my church is a lake
the great big rippling dark green its hall
and the tree on the other side
(the big one with the slit in its trunk,
for the sun (God) to shine through)
is its altar
and I can hear Him speak as
the wind that rustles the leaves

a thousand brilliant-green leaves
shaking in His gentle breath
the branches studded with angels
His children that dance as spots of sunlight
on the leaves, on the water, on my head
and Emilio in the freckles on my shoulders

the lake is my church
I float in the water and pray
to God with my arms wide open, I pray
for you
to drift into my embrace
so I will never let you go;
I will never let you go.

You and I, handcrafted in lust,
borne of sea and blood -
you, of Aphrodite,
and I, of Ares.
The violence of your love
destined to be matched only
by the tenderness of my violence.

And my hands, war-given, strong,
made for battle,
grow soft at your hips, and
softer yet at the cliff of your thighs,
as they crash softly in the bay in-between.
And how these hands long for you, my child of goddess,

long for you like the armor of my chest longs
for your sweet mouth,
longs for your gentle fingertips
in the calm before the storm.
The passion of your tenderness a momentary reprieve
before I go to war;

and when I go, oh, the power that overcomes me,
and the weapons I will bring,
and the blood I will draw.
In the fashion of my father, as he tied Aphrodite's hair
in his fist, and
as he broke down her barriers, claiming her city,
her temple,
her soul.

The lullaby of her moans
reminiscent in your voice,
my favorite sound and
my chosen battle cry.