at the corner I hit both crosswalk buttons
and wait, eyes closed, to see if I can follow
the walk sign chirps like the blind men

I choose the first street that whistles to me
and walk to the opposite corner
the way the lights rotate, you would walk circles
if you followed the signs
eventually you must choose some arbitrary avenue
and either wait for it to welcome you
or test your luck in traffic

I choose left

then look up, hoping
to invent some new constellation
but the big parking lot halogens
bleed like blue inked milk into the sky
and the stars are specks, painted over

maybe for the better, I know too well
that I would see those galaxies spiraling
and dig dig dig into big big big questions
hitting all the major points
time and space and self and purpose,
purpose

and the mental ******* would be
a million endless tangents like a million little bits of magnesium
flashing in a firework, brighter than those parking lot halogens
but like every independence day
they flash and fizzle and then the sky is just smoky

and I start to feel small
so I walk into Big Lots to calm down

rummaging through the shelves,
not a single pad of paper outside of monthly planners
not a single blank sheet, not a single open page
not a single ******* one

no one wants to buy anything unless they know it has a purpose first

otherwise, it’ll end up in their desk,
blank and staring every time the drawer gets cracked open

and no one will have an answer for it

the first thing I notice is the jetty
the waves littered with little feet and bouncing foam and
bobbing buoys of women, two of which
call me to remove my boots
and let water lick clean
old clammy toes

but I walk out on the jetty
past the rock where scuttling children fear their mothers will forget them
past the crop of young fishermen, smiling between tides of beer and
counting the fish they have yet to catch by the worms they have
in their new tackle boxes

past an empty can of Budweiser

past an old bucket of bait that even the gulls wont touch

deeper into the bird **** that paints this rock thumb
pock marked with bowls of orange soup-
carapace and minnow bones

denying a smoke in favor of the ocean’s oyster breath

trading the cooling molten gold of a California beach
for something I was sure would only be found
where this putrid jetty purged into the sea

and I was close

even as you drove me home
I couldn’t forgive you for following me there

her voice shakes like a mud wall
in an earthquake, slurry and moistened
with beer, struggling to stand
in my ear, each fall of my boot chokes
further up the hillside neck,
her left behind cry cakes into my footsteps

then bleats SEAN! I’m gonna fall
my legs hurt, I’m worried the poison
of fear will melt her to sand
but I trust she doesn’t need assured looks
or words, just strength in her back,
her spine’s solid as mine, but she forgets

I wait at the top, the dome
where all upward strides will always lead
an inverted pit for sinking stones
too stubborn to abide to gravity

there at the top,  the moon
pinwheels in time to deep and dizzy
breathing that yanks up my rooted bones
plants them in pieces outside of my body

her form summits at a crawl
but buries hurry in her voice and
comes near, commits a cold hand
SLAP
just begging to see my face broken
why would you run? you’re a ****
but my abandonment was a sign of respect

The harmonica is a brushed-steel magazine
a little chrome home for a loaded line of tones
like bullets begging to be drawn
through the barrel of a handgun
the cold friend I holster
hidden in my pocket
and some final night it will find me alone
where I can pull it to my teeth
and with a single squeeze
I can blow the silence straight from my skull.

To hell with maintaining a fire just so faces could be seen.
I danced on the embers extinguishing little stars and I scribbled in my notes and waited for that one girl to shut up about Twitter and Halloween costumes so I could hear—

the fog dragging its tongue up the valley.

Finally she began to realize the contest she was losing,
took the quiet advice of myself and the wind and went
to go tuck herself
into the tent,
into the safety of ceiling.

But,
you and I
opted to be
coyotes on the hillside.

I took the trail away from our sleeping counterparts,
and flayed you on the dirt where I stripped you of your fur,
howling to the fog and plowing valleys in your flesh,
your legs grew into roots, and wove length by longer length
‘round all the sturdy angles, the anchors of my hips
and you, oh you,
you would **** the marrow from my bone.

And when we lay out, raw and steaming
knees bleeding from the drainage ditch,
a gnawing fades out, falls to dreaming,
we, peeling off a well-known itch.
Then we play a game with satellites
Where bouncing mirrors reflect our minds
And laugh when the reflections never fit.

I gather up my skin, step one foot in and
stumble when the tightness traps my leg,
You pin up your *******, to please our sleeping guests
that wouldn’t take to anything irregular.

On the upward hike ten million lights, ten million lives
herded on the table of L.A.
A Serengeti of fire, a mass migration;
mammoths marching, tusks dipped in flame

Sitting around campfires once taught vocal apes to rhyme
but a million conversations
bleaches each the other white
and now a million electric campfires
bleaches L.A.’s lower sky.

And though I stomped out ours
the ash remains a scar
where we had nearly forgot
how to speak by choosing to not.

James and I just like sharpening our minds
iron on iron, and tonight we brag
we have evolved past the struggle for life

then tiny drops of red
shotgunned and glittered on the deck

silence, like a stalking cop
catches us off guard, saunters up the stairs
and points at the blood mist on the floor

then more, more sprays from our heaving friend
wrenched over a stolen desk
hacking at red roots in her throat
then drawing in her breath
through the gravel in her neck
sputters in a bubbling little choke

stillness is broken by her hand, batting,
at the sticky scarlet strings ******* on her chin

It’s just Redvines, guys
we hear it, unconvinced
eyes still stuck to a splatter of stained saliva
where something confident had been spit
but dribbled like a weakness from her lips

but after she had wiped clean
the candy bleeding from her teeth
we lit and toasted a smoke to long life and to health---

if on us it depends
*may it never come again.

Searching for bliss the mind is two
young men afoot in the desert.
Horses have long been beat to glue,
now feet, not hooves, are burnt on dirt.
Each hates the hunger in his gut
and fingers fit through whittled ribs.
Each shakes with thirst to stand straight up
like infants first displaced from cribs.
They find a leak from mountain vein,
one throws his knees in certain glee,
“I love this fount, here we can stay
and drink each time we feel thirsty.”
The other drinks then stands again
leaving, still weak, his tongue; wetter.
“I cannot stay, hunger remains.
Cannot there be someplace better?
If nothing more than death I find
‘what if?’ will not disturb my mind.”