11/30! A Scene We'd Usually Avoid!

Neckerchiefs. Cologne. Muscle relaxers-with a scent/how?
The grease in the hair and the grease in the thighs and the
grease the guy in the misfits shirt managed while sliding into
his pants. The one girl/guy couple, hottest in their near shirtlessness
by the window, attribute traffic to that.

We think the doorman suspects.

These lines of traffic-- we've come blocks just to
not get in. We are wobbling hard toward a club with
the right backbeat, we only want a slice and don't
care where we get it from.

The new city stomp, the old city hesitate.
The happy lipstick party inviting only half
of us. The crowd churned down Polk street

flying elbows, jutting knees, too much scent,
too much dirt for any where we'd go if--

but get the cameras right and
all you need is the rest of the
room and all you need is one good
picture, to say I've been here, I've
swung my fists, this is everywhere
I've been adult but so much worse,

better

10/30! Ashbury Heights!

"what's that flaming cathedral in the distance?"

this road winds like yarn. triangles and spirals and
houses clustered like apartments, apartments spread
like ramblers. Ropes around a narrowing hill.

When we talk about the city, we talk about The City.
Everything I know about this place I learned in
documentaries about Jefferson Airplane and
the film Basic Instinct. 

"you went to the mission and you got
tacos?"

a thick film of glass when we get over the
bridge from east bay, and the way that
everyone says "east bay" like a sentence,
after the show that starts awkward and ends
triumphant, the uber driver says "the city"

and the entrance feels like one
like it should, no long suburban
depression trailing into density,
too tired and building weary to
recognize.

This is not a poem about
san francisco,
it's a poem about knowing nothing
about it, but the hill, the
sillhouettes at midnight after
Oakland ends for us. It's about the imprint,
the "in a few years will Seattle seem--"

the new space forever,
frozen pizza thawing, the smell of
burning pepperoni spilling out into
the bay.

9/30! Going Cronenberg! Going Scott!

Give me an Existenz afterlife, so I can plug, unplug eternally.

That squirming, spirting tentacle, all ooze and grit and
eventually just wanting to be put down. Of course we want
masks here, of course.

I saw a TV show where people got their make up done,
piercings shrined and implants to look like cats, or dragons,
or the devil. They called it extreme, I call it trying too hard when

all anyone needs to do for assassination
is program a GPS in question into oncoming traffic
like that episode of The Office

we all laughed at for being
unrealistic.

Give me a car crash orgasm, so I can sync with explosions.

Somewhere between the caveman and the
robot porn, there is
a caveman jerking off to robot porn.

I'm no expert on these things,
vast expanse of flesh,
and plugs, and re-routes.

Laying on my collapsed futon
late night, falling asleep to sirens,
waking up to jackhammers,
reading a friends panicked e-mail about
more
bill boards
more drones

I'm too entrenched in Blade Runner's LA; it was a lot of things,
but never boring.

8/30! Addison Dispatch #4!

That molson ice pile by 306 hasn't moved for two days. The dog in 312 won't shut up

but a markered note offers to shut the bitch up in exclamation points. Seriously on

behalf of us all

shut the bitch

up.                                                    (with wire, with cloroform, with a baseball bat)

Head into the glass walls, Shane remarks that the max income requirements 

(a refreshing change)

would be considered middle class
(I thought we'd disappeared!)

                                                       in another city. In another city, I wouldn't need the requirements. I am no cigar maven, flicking his ash out against a movie about new york. A skyline in highlights that silences family who don't understand; like a movie star swoop from one frame to the next, the smith, columbia, municipal, hey.

The man in the stairwell isn't moving. Isn't smiling. Is yelling. Is swaying. Is dancing. Can of hurricane ice-- must be a different guy. Howling, screaming, dancing, the lady behind me asks if she can tell him to get the fuck out of the way or is that racist. The man behind her shouts "racist nothing," falls dick forward, they both hit two walls before landing. I shrink into walls.

Hammers on the left side. Drills on the right. Sirens every day. Not our fault. Not theirs.
Stacking piles of earplugs. New eyemasks. Prop up the bed with old hymnals. Shut down the door
with strings of tape. 

The walls are thin when you're trying to sleep, thick when you need help--
(is that you,
mark?

I was hoping you were dead, cussing out 

                                                     your mother
one last time in your braindead half-drawl

as they drove you to a 

landfill where scum like you grows 

                                                and

dies)

these heights bring out the best. Nod for a year at the lease-signer before
she remembers your name, 

(you are drunk, screaming down the hall

pulling

the fire alarm--
won't make up for no coats
or morning workouts--)

possibly for the best.

7/30! Warlockerbeef!

Every headline is a kitten or a bombing.
A heartwarming story about a veteran
or a heartbreaking story about a veteran.
Lines
Lines
Lines
to stand in.

Passing the Economist  on the way to the Onion,
the best of a bad situation, the slight hope for
some kind of peace, which ideally--
seems such light
language for
such
such
such. . .

If I had the magic, I would have a time machine,
and if I had a time machine, I would have the influence,
and if I had the influence, I wouldn't need the magic
just what to say to who to when
and

next to the atrocity centerfold
is a coupon for five dollars
off ground beef.

6/30! Jesus Didn't Die for You to be a Beggar!

If you can't get down with redemption-- If you can't get down
with resurrection, if you can't heal with an egg or crack for
children's paint---


then tell me about the way fjords burn under pagan rituals.
tell me about the aurora borealis scattering sky to everyone
in gaping wonder.
Give me a shaking excuse for why your aunt just wants to
point and laugh, why your uncle shouts "praise jesus" every
eight minutes. We don't need church fans out on the street,
we don't need reinterpretation systems for our favorite
music, we don't need a swab down for job interviews,
though it probably won't hurt--

--a day is just when you are off
work and you trust the boss
the pastor
the savior
the entrepeneur
hand greasy with coupons,
opportunities. Parents always nudging.
may recognize
beer/
or shots/
or nothing

and a crammed up road, tell me about the
persons shaking their fist out the side of their
vehicle, blocking my bus

burning my skin,
but the warmth

keeping me from cussing them out
once
again.

5/30! No One Wants to Watch You Fuck a Dog Tonight, Sally!

Seriously
   




         . . . dude. . .


are we





talking about this






again?