if you find one happiness
like the barrel on your head
loaded with a pocket of air for you to breathe

then you know that if you sink
to atmospheric tides
you must find fresher barrels
when the novelty declines
and the oxygen gives way
to the oceanic brine

for the last moments of time
you’re chin-up on a water bed
the water cradles your esophagus
and then you find you surely must
find some fresher air to breathe

but to search is to be dissatisfied
to question once is to imply
that everything can be replied
with answers and with truth

that bucket on your head
running out of salty air
to stay is to slip into death
like listening to the ocean in a seashell
till slow blood flows in too few waves

but could you not also swim?
abandon the comfortable end
for the off chance that some underwater shelter
will serve you shots of oxygen?

the funny thing you find
when you let dying pleasure go
and you’re suspended, all alone
the gas trapped beneath
was too stale for you to breathe
but enough to buoy the unburdened barrel
into swiftly surfacing

Somewhere near the turn of the century, the walk was hot enough to burn your feet.
Sometime after that I was born in Phoenix.
My sister and I threw paint over a cardboard box in the garage and called it a spaceship.
My grandfather was too tall to be an astronaut, but now plastic tubes in his lungs keep him tied to earth while he waits for sixty years of smoke to catch up to him.
When we were younger, he drove us to the beach on the Chesapeake where we’d look for shark teeth.
Before that, A German Shepherd ripped a hole in my cheek.
Sometimes I feel the rough little scar inside my mouth.
But more often I see round little scar on my hand
When I was nine, my father taught me how to climb rocks.
The trick is you don’t worry about the flesh left on the granite.
Then a lake broke my mother’s back after she jumped in from the same height as I did.
We decide to hike from Yosemite to Mt. Whitney, and I walk most of the trail ahead, by myself.
But at night we all play harmonica and yell because we are the only ears around.
On the stage, we yell because our ears are tired of being lonely.
Then we’d stumble drunk and put out cigarettes on each other’s hands.
And later I would pull my brother out of pool of his own *****.
And later I would pull my brother out of pool of his own blood.
And later I would let a lover sink into her own mind.
Now my sister sees me through a screen, a brother is all foggy in Seattle, and my mother and father miss the way I’d play music all the time.
The trick is you don’t worry about the flesh you left behind.

should I lay claim to the towers around me?
to programmed ghosts in the machine?
should I reap the gifts and ease of another man’s dreams?

is it not a paradox
to eat what flesh still has not
surrendered just to me?

I can pluck a cherry from a bush
for my life until I find
a small stone I can wield
as a weapon; as a knife
if the rock does not decay
and my aim be born with truth
and arm as strong as it should be
uncrushed by blanket blue
then I should eat what comes to me
what I can take by force
what in my lone punctuality
I can chase without a horse

if I can build a stone axe
then I can start a war
If I can gut a fish
I’m as rich as caviar
but here and now all diamonds
are brought up from the earth
and my coal-free pores are too un-mined
to understand such worth

can I lay claim to the towers around me?
If I can build them all
and if I am no god
then I’ll have no Taj Mahal

With a curse, some wicked witch
drew and flicked her tongue
to **** the damsel to a fate
of  slumber till true love comes.

But ****, that damsel laughed
threw her arm around the witch
and poked a little gaff
at the self-assured ol’ *****,

I can think myself out of love
or in it, for that matter.
Do what you’ll do
but no love is true.
You could give the princes a ladder

and still I would sleep here forever,
which might pain me if I were younger,
but I like my dreams
and sleeping  seems
better than life and its hunger.

So she skipped up to the tower
two steps at a time
high-fived the dragon guard
and spit one last jab behind

*The more I think of it
there’s no bad way this can end!
I either wake up to great ***
or dream it till I’m dead!

I stalked into the brothel with
a cinnamon tongue
hot and ready to pierce.

The room tasted like child’s play
smooth banisters and
bunk beds and
upstairs, the double doors
locked where mom and dad slept.

Its not a love you feel
for the lump beneath the quilt
you just arrange it with your soles
kick it into place
until it no longer aches
or impedes your peaceful dream
until it no longer aches
or impedes your selfish, peaceful dream

assuaged and self-contained
without faces
without names
you can learn to share yourself
like a cactus shares its spines
you can stare right into cries for help
and tell yourself
you’re not powerful enough to do harm

And **** to hell the belle
that comes above the lace
looking as beautiful as she felt
but this time, with a face

eyes like submarine lights
uncovering this corner of deep id-rich sea
without which, otherwise,
I might be perfectly happy
To follow my hunger and
the little bright star
of some angler fish’s mottled lure
hungry like the man
into the monster’s
hungrier jaws

But empathy’s enough
a knowing glance
to give any monster pause
and to keep me from leaving there
without her on my arms.

I took this quilt lump
this time with a face
and told her in due time
I could learn to speak her name.

She clawed not to be stolen,
she had been once before
but in these rank and sweaty halls
between these ***** sheets
she knew what end she could expect
a luxury she would not have with me

Those double doors lay dormant
but soon they would erupt
and fury would fly out to find
like some low cattle thief
I had run off with a head of his herd

We slipped like stench out of the brothel, new gods within ourselves
picked a furnace of a day to hide and run
the sun was a lantern
to young old tourist moths
whose dead dust wings flipped like flora
into the Spanish fountains

we moved,
we found a hill that  stood alone
crowned with plastic turrets, that
someday would be sails in a landfill
but now they stood like great vats
for the mass to leave the masses
uncover their bare *****
and hide the fact that every
human tube takes the world
the living beauty
and turns it into truth

“Waste Not, Want Not”
“Waste None, Live None”


   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .    .   .   .   .


Resting on this hill of waste
under the gorgeous sun
the brothel coughed out another face
this one with a gun

I knew him for the fear
that he put into my prize’s eyes
and the goat’s head grimace
the same that once convinced
my hot and cinnamon tongue
now flicking to pierce
the back of my teeth

And he chased after me

I know the love was true for it came second to self-preservation
When violence came upon me
I let the ***** go free
I did not see her as we ran
hunter and prey
through Mission walls
and old stone alleys

I couldn’t wish for better aim
not a bullet found my feet
nor did fatigue, but I turned to met him
in some lone canyon of a city
some conquistador’s old drag

And there was no exchange of eyes
No quick game of words
No businessman charade
No Humanity deserved

I flew upon him like a coyote
and danced with tooth and claw
and pulled out little threads of red from
his eyes and nose and jaw

till finally the apple bruised
a little flattened spot
just pushed upon his brain enough

and then I saw his face
as if it had been laid
at the bottom of a box
where some red soaked marbles
were thrown in and
shook and rolled across
like finger paints from little hands
if I could push mine into his skull
I’d bet his brain
his thoughts and plans
would feel just like Play-Doh

Then I called the elected gods of judgment
and told them that in the historic district
some boy lay dead at my hands

As I walked to my awaking
I saw her once again
blank with the eyes of a beaten retriever
back into the brothel
where she decides to stay
inside, where no one dies in plain sight

I want to impregnate an Amazon
and father a great tree
that all can lean upon
as few can lean on me.

I want to fertilize a mermaid
who can birth the open sea
that will flow into the world
as little flows from me.

I want to have a hand
in building up a land
that will fight itself into great ranges
great mountains and great changes
without me.

my bed is just a velvet patch of comfort in this world
every night I curl into the earth
lay into the soft flesh of her lips and
lay unstirred until rising
like a breath

but what kind of lover is confined to a kiss?
should not I run a hand down the alleys of her throat?
press my ear to the heaving sidewalk
and hear arrhythmia in her heart?

go out behind the lot
of Greenleaf Woman’s Health--
the cheap abortion clinic
sink a tongue into the sewer
bathe in the spray of recycled water
and be purer by surrender
of barrier between veins

lay with this world in every ***** place
sleep with one side to a chain-link
the other to her tunnel
corrugated aluminum
and street run-off canals

and the run-out chaparral
where wind and sagebrush sweep
dry air across my tongue
to grow snail-trails on my teeth

to call this world a lover
I must know more than her face
and claw into the bitter brine
of every permeable place
so when they roll me over
I might reek of all her tastes
fermenting with her beauty
wrapped in sweat of her disgrace