Again.
before
Consistency
Drowns
e v e r y
foreshadowing,
Grenades
head
Insistently,
                      ­                                     Juxtaposed
                                                   keenly
                                                               ‘long
                                                      My
                                                           Newest
                                  Oath.
          Petition­s
                     Quickly
                              Reveal
Satire
        Tucked
                 Under
V    a     c   a   n     t,
Withered,
     Xysts.
                             {Youthful
                                       Zeal.}

Did you hear it on the news?
Cancer is *******.
They took it up to the supreme court and now my friend in the hospital bed ain't feeling blue.
His bail is a million.
Some rich Jewish dude wearing maroon is going to spare Cancer from the noose.
All the synagogues smell.
Like ember.
Everyone is saying that they're gonna go to hell.

It’s there,
Where water meets fire,
Where lightings strikes the ground.
That’s where my heartbeat goes.

My chest feels like it was filled
With tampered strings.
Once so sharp and precise,
Now dull and inconsistent.

Mother always asks where my love is.
I tell her it hasn’t moved in years.
Her dumbfound look
Meets my half smile.

How do I lie to a broken mirror?
Where even my reflection is fake.
How do I mute the cannon fire,
Deep within my chest?

I had a dream in the middle of the day
          About a boy with springs where his legs should have been
        He jumped so high he got tangled in barbwire clouds
             And it rained blood and viscera for a month

The warm moisture dripping from my hand
Sweat forming from the intense heat
The California air warming the animal flesh
Searing my skin

The burning of both the heat and the energy spent
On wasteless efforts

Forget Portland and Austin and Santa Cruz.
Those famously strange places,
where the tourists gawk at local weirdos.
Here is not there.

Here is the place of advice such as:
“When life gives you meatballs put a wig on a dog.”
—True story.

Here is the place where:
“With all good things in life you just have to wipe the bird **** off.”  

The place where steel and marble Confederate ghosts,
watch the wealthy renovate their westward homes along a cobblestone road.

Where paintings are propped to rot up in alleys,
and buzzing twenty-somethings on their way back from a show,
shake it and tilt it and carry it home.
—Gilded frame and all.

This is the place of painted concrete where walls are canvases,
and red bricks pop out of the ground,
the tree roots poking through to trip you.

Here’s where the People’s Beer comes from Milwaukee,
but we replaced the R in ribbon with here,
and sell it by the caseload when it rains and when it’s Tuesday.

Where young people go to find themselves getting lost becoming someone else,
remixing history to not admit naivety,
before they’ve been sandpapered through experience.
        —To a core.

This is an ink-stained but not splattered place.
Where lines are careful, permanent and abundant,
and on Fridays can cost 13 bucks.

Here is the place where people roam like that restaurant rabbit:
listless and nomadic and stuck.

Where there’s a wild streak in its heart that follows the tracks,
and cuts the city in half.

This is the place that Carvers itself out into cultures,
and you can be from the Bottom,
or proud to be a Rat.  

Here is where you night-drive over the bridge,
see the skyline and feel restlessly content.

Here is home.
—For now.