#15

A vertigo of strings,
blurred lines wrapping you,
spinning and releasing like a yoyo,

a dizzy stance, the laundry machine
stomach turn, the slight step
to the left for balance.

Focus on the sun, or a plate
on the wall, or that red dot
from weak eyes that only make out red,

a curved wall making all vision
panoramic, and the camera pans
out to repeatedly show the same

fly, twitching its thin wings
on the white wall, next to the red
spot where you blink into visibility.

#14

Kicking dirt toward the sky
dusty ghosts begin to fly
their faces all begin to cry
the moon is bleeding from its eye.

#13

The jaw of the Pacific,
a dragon loosens itself as fog
from the cliffs, inhales.

Tail of the beast,
lifted cloud scales,
transparent white blur.

The dragon, the stongest
for knowing this all
does not exist.

A leap from the mountains,
a tumble through the redwoods,
a landing on the rocks

that grind the ocean blue,
that make the water the sky,
that ends all distinction between the two.

Image #2

#12

In a peapod supernova, your eye bursts
in a swolen firecracker of light.

Under the teardrop of your fingertip,
a blood globe of gyroscopes.

In a tooth-sized vial, the floating
air of heart-cloud.

Inside, the airplane flies as if
tied with floss to the radio tower.

From the passenger seat, the dizzying
sway of the sights, the mountains.

A twitch, a song, and it all circles back,
an echo, a dive, and lifting.

#11

Smashing glass--in the middle of the night,
the sound of a rock through a windshield--
and shouting--brittle explosion and shouting.

Looking out the window, there's a guy
ransacking a car in front of your building,
shouting where is it? Goddamn it, where is it?

You don't understand how no one else is awake
for this. So what if I lied? He's shouting, and
for a moment, you think it's just that your body

hasn't caught up with your voice outside.
It quiets down, and you go outside.
God knows you've told lies, too.

You've never smashed a car window, at least.

It's dark and quiet. The marine layer is sleeping
between buildings, in the road.
Broken glass in a puddle on the sidewalk.

Down the block, a woman in a nightgown
reveals herself from behind a dead lamp post,
raises her hand.

#10

Come on, baby, we're going out tonight--
the lights over the hills are twinkling
like a thousand shards of neon.

Along Hollywood Boulevard, there is a line
of teenage kids looking up at the giant
pouring sugar on their tongues.

All of them dancing like quotation marks,
curving in the in hot pink night,
alternating between fast and slow motion film.

We'll glide through like ghosts,
ghosts, baby, through the moss glass
glitter crowds, under the eyes of a giant.

#9

The gas station at three am, the flickering
light above a metal mirror sends
morse code to get out.

The toilet seat with initials
carved with a blade, could be a message,
or could be an alien anagram
sent to give instructions for what’s next.

Leaving the room, the morning sun
peels the layers of halogen green
off your skin, and there’s a guy
in a wheelchair in the middle of rush hour
traffic, steering left off Cahuenga.

He ignores the screaming suits and ties,
reflected black SUVs with disembodied
middle fingers like ghost-held candelabras--
he’s looking for you. This is not coincidence.

There’s a playing card in
the spokes of his right wheel to give you,
and it has a message.

#8

Along the Cadillac's tire,
a boa of mud.

The passenger seat, a day-after-
tickertape parade of photos,
torn and quartered.

Alabama trees hunched over, a conductor
mid-note, awaiting the strings,
crescendo ringing leaf song.

Spotted white car, stetched long
in the driveway, the held song
of an empty tank, a million miles,

and a woman painting herself
into a stained glass window.

#6

If I breathe into a diamond,
my breath sounds a thousand voices.

If I hold a sand dollar,
the DNA's mandala face reveals itself,
and I can see through my hand.

Down the beach, two kids
run in circles and shout and laugh.

Over the wave crest, an empty
raft eases its way further from shore,
its string trailing behind like a sigh.

#5

If suffering is a boulder,
it is also a stone.

If it is a stone,
it is also a cloud,
and if it is a cloud,
it is clay.

If it is clay,
suffering is a boulder.

#4

There's a spider in my palm
and if I'm still
he's calm.

There's a fire in the hills
and a black balloon of smoke.
There's a necktie of a flame
and the brush the ashes took.

There's a spider in my palm
he'll stay sleeping
till the dawn.

There's a pickup truck behind
and it's packed with bark and wood.
There's a scar along your neck
in the shape of the moon.

There's a spider in my palm
and he'll bite
when you get home.

There's a fleet of red and brown
and it's moving up the coast.
Leaving past lives in sight
look like tainted frost.

There's a spider in my palm
if I'm still
he's calm.

#3 B

Mosquito on a white wall, lifting
itself to the color, mistaking it for light,
marionette legs hang in the parking garage.

#3

Mosquito on a white wall, lifting itself
to the color, mistaking it for light,
almost pathetic the way its marionette legs
hang in the parking garage.

Plastic cup dome, the dried beer inside
hugs the bug--it twitches in flight
then settles on the surface. Inside
those wings, satellites singing a message

and before you know it, you are feeling
sadness, a taste for blood, the closing in
walls of the structure. Your back tickles,
pins and needles before the mosquito is gone.

#2

The sun, the swolen eye of the giant
boxer who holds the world,
glares through the dusty window.

Ringed stains on the table,
the bell of an old bird on the porch rail,
the boiler plate face of the sky closing in.

There's nothing in rock but rock,
but that didn't stop you from slamming
rocks onto the driveway all night--

one rock makes two rocks, two
makes four and there is no secret language
inside any of them.

There are some cuts on your fingers--
at the very least, you could have sliced up
your palms for the dramatic effect.

The sun's pupil dilates and it all goes black,
a ticker tape parade of ants stepping from
a gigantic brown bottle and out the door.

Image #1

#1

This is a test.