#31

I lit a fire with my fingernail,
the flint face of an index point,
the creasing glare of direction,
the compass face twitching
south and north, sending
smoke signals upward, caught in
the parachute canvas of the northern lights--

catching them, reconfiguring them
into hum-songs for hemispheres,
the belly of a meditative om
and morning bell in the shape
of a crescent sun, eclipse.

#30

The quiet vein that is Ventura Boulevard
through the valley at 4:00 am,
every shop a frozen wink,
neon asleep--

the "Movieland Motel" that promises
adult movies free with every room
coughs up a dude who stammers
to his red car, sticking out

like a fire underwater at this hour,
where the sound of his closing door
snaps in the silence, startles
and shakes while he barely acknowledges.

His disappearing car moves on,
swallowed by the pavement that turns
glass-like in the moonlight,
a double-mirror for the people

underneath, watching us, taking notes
and laughing hysterically.

#29

Shadowboxing in a alley,
plank of a guy dancing on the balls of his feet,
a whitenoise television screen in the pavement.

Around the corner,
old man on a stationary bike, riding in place,
sharpening knives on the steel wheel.

The fighter is swinging at his own shadow,
lifted off the ground to the hum of the tires,
the empty warehouse strumming of North Hollywood.

A car pulls onto the main drag,
a long gray coffin of a car,
and a woman in a nightgown steps out,

promptly steps over to the bicycle,
takes her knives back, rounds the corner,
stares down the shadowboxer.

When he turns,
she opens her mouth--
the chorus of a thousand electronic feedbacks.

#28

A car upside down in the ditch that runs along
the 101, tires spinning like a beetle trying
to turn itself over.

A coyote that had run down to the pavement,
mangled and zipped open like a purse.

No one in the car, no footprints in the mud
pool it sits in.

The sky scans the landscape, looking for
any breath of human life here,
and you hold your breath--

trying to hide, to not let out a single
sound that will give you away,

holding your breath until it all moves
in reverse.

#27

There's a ladder to a stairway
and a stairway to a grave
and you're walking up its steps
with the necklace that I gave you.

Sixty miles from anything
there's a conrete set of stairs
coming staight out of the desert
growing straight out of the earth.

In the shadow of their hunchback
a scorpion is trying to sting
the ankle of a catcus
and let the dry ground drink.

Sleeping in your car,
stuck waiting for a ride,
the sunlight fills the insides
like water like sand like

concrete to freeze you in your place
and take you somewhere else
turn you to a monument
when that stairwell melts.

#26

Climbing a ladder of tourniquets,
a step-climb arm reach,
the clumsy approach of body parts,

moving along the cliffside,
mountain face revealing skulls,
the skeleton arm stretch of trees,

the messy movement heading
upward, upward, upward
in a skin of mud and slippery vein,

this place where the world was forged
in blood, solid like clay, the off-shape
size of a planet made of broken

limbs, molten torsos, the sweat
from a thousand bodies cooking
for a thousand years,

and you don't even realize
your feet are hidden in
the dirty, blood margin of its face.

#25

The black fog of the room is a thick margin darkness.
The inkblot blur-wash of night,
the curtain-hug vacuum elminates any light,
even a string from a distant star.

This is the blankness where the world was created,
empty shade where it was all forged in blood and clay,
invsible to the eye, it's molding shape.

And seemingly from a ceiling, the spider lowers itself
above you, its web the echo of a vortex-breath big bang--
it hangs above you, lifting its body like a marionette.

Its fat body, a swolen oval sphere,
hovers in anticipation. You breathe,
and its skin pulls back to reveal a planet,
the spiders' legs crumbling like so much ash.

Image #4

redon