Friendship

The best people I've ever met
are the people in the shadows.

To see them you must bring a light.
The first who sees it tattles

on the rest.  They'll pick they're very best
who'll meet you in the room

where they live out their days.  Tune
your guitar when he sits by you

and strum a song by Neil Young
(they're also partial to John Denver.)

Pilar's Mitsubishi

Blue, navy blue blur:  A pick-up
truck, low and not for show.
Gray nebula blossoms:  the hood's

adorned with a corona from headlights
to wipers.  It was etched there during
Saturday afternoons by the salt air --

when ocean breezes ruffle her hair.
Once a week she parks there off 48th.
That secret thrill:  lanky surfers

changing, unashamed, out of wet suits
on the beach parking lot.  Manuel,
her husband, knows nothing of this

ritual, nor of the one cigarette she has
for dessert before starting home. The engine
purrs a low, Olmec-panther rumble

sparking memories of her father.
He drove it in Clovis, bussing field hands
in the back -- friends and cousins --

to their dreams of lives for their children,
who would never need fear la Migra.
A smell of retail and greenbacks

wafts in through the open driver's window
as she hurtles North, up Sixth Street.
Pilar never smokes at home.

Vanity

- a Bret Easton Ellis poem

My spa consists of cold cream
made from the semen
of Malawi altar boys and ichor
brushed once a day on my teeth.

My mind awash in scotch
(single-malt), I lovingly touch
the oxblood leather chair's arm
while scouring the back page

for prostitutes so desperate
they would not be missed.
I look outside to behold a night kissed
by pearl light.  I reach for the phone...

Enemy Mine

Just
_____minding my own
__________copping rock
on_____the_____wall.

Cuidado!  Los federales are having a ball,
riding 'round town on their broomsticks.

I vow to fix her
with a dead, lead-lined eye --
_____to look up from within
__________my small shooting gallery.

See how I dig in my heels?
Like the doc said, when the sky
_____opens there will be only
__________me and my memories.

My enemy pulls my string as though I'm a top.
Watch the whole theatre district catch fire.
_____Stopped, at the center I shall remain.
__________I'll breathe flames, inspiring

One million souls to fling wide their doors.
_____Leave work early,
__________give your girl an STD.

From Ocean Beach to Carquinez Strait
Pacific winds bear gray, solemn freight
with which they level the state.

Mountebank

A vision within a vision within a vision
______Vaseline-lensed,
a barely audible impression of a voice.
______Delirium next:
one several-second burst -- light-speed free
______association.
"Come on down," yells Bob Barker from Hell.
______"The price is right:
perception unbound."  Wake up, little maggot,
______you're squirming in shit.
Get off at the next exit.  Grow buzzing
______wings.  Lay an egg.
Hallucinate your fit, holy ass off for seventeen
______years.  You'll get it right.
It cost billions to frighten you.
______What can we do?
___________You've always been unglued.

Note to an Android

Flesh knit closed over bloodless wound.

Hit a guy's foot with the broom,

he goes back in.  Getting high

is not the sin.  You don't ask, "why";

no one's entitled to that.  Spat

your way before.  Sore, and apportioning blame.

There is a game you're not allowed to play.

Be grateful, do not what we do

_____but rather what we say.

City kid, you got balls.  You know there's no grace

_____from which to fall.

Menhir

Squat granite sentry,
steady, lichen-kissed.
Its shadow clean, black.
Fumbling with the camera,
your man strikes me
as incapable of mirth
or self-deprecation.
I vacillate
between pity and hate.
For his sake
I wish us all
back on the road.
I would return alone
to this greening wasteland
some winter's dawn
when I might hear
rocks veritably explode --
pop open along instant,
God-struck seams --
audible from as far away
as Tahoe.  Maybe a spring
will well up then;
in such an event
I hope to drink
the freshwater tears
this earth cries
for our forgotten.

Fables

Remind me some time --
I shall tell you the tale
of the tortoise and the hare.

Have you ever longed
to be loved by a man
for your gem-like rarity?

Have you felt the warmth
glow from his palm
through your sleeve as he

examines your eyes
the way a jeweler inspects
the facets he's laid bare?

I've heard you aver
you grew up to fast.
But what if you finished last?

Better that, I contend, than to drown
at the halfway point, drawing
the scorpion down with you as you sink.

An App For That

Capricious:  quicksilver light -- stream
_____flows East.  Idling
cars bumper to bumper on the I-5:
_____strained faces stare North.

A man stands astride the meridian.  He shouts
_____until he is hoarse.  He's a prophet
in this age of diagnosis, of explanation.
_____Labels and pills.  Charts

some overworked nurse in blue scrubs
_____spills, sheet by sheet (each
bears crabbed notes someone crammed like commuters
_____on a Shibuya-bound train.)

Pulse steady, blood pressure nothing to worry about,
_____but keep an eye on it.  A beep, beep, beep
you could set your watch to,
_____if you still owned one.

These days you tell time by your iPhone
_____(call it European, not military.)
Only the patients in the intensive care unit
_____seem remotely sane.

Identical

Same shirts, same boots.
Eyes gleam, yours, yours --
not mine.  I am
sick with hidden
rot behind paint,
primary hues.
You would not dare
reveal more truth
to the stranger
I became quite
overnight.  Fly
to Sweden or
even England --
would if I could.
Mutternacht lit
by fires that cleanse.
I insist, don't
invite me in.
Instead I choose
cold under stars,
implacable.

Noir

Chuckle.  Flash a badge.  A knowing look.
_____"Oldest trick in the book."
_____"There are tricks even older than that,
Chief -- give the mirror a harder look."
Crimes I've committed by the score!
I confess them all:
The pains I took;
success and bust;
thought and not.
Even when disemboweled
I made sure to have a ball.
Fifteen minutes:  wasn't I hot!
Gag me with a spoon --
the interrogation room
splits open to holes
shot in me from head to toe.
Oh, flatfoot, remember back when
we were just idiot kids?  At ten,
teevee intoned, "The Shadow knows!"
Of Janus and gaslight we muse
over lunch on what I'm owed.
Let's die of euphoria!
Let's die of fright!
Let's die with minds not our own!
Deep down inside I'm just a hard-boiled dame
who yearns to be done right,
weighed down with what she's been shown.

Capital Punishment

Fragile crepe petals wave:
poppies, blue and red.

__________Morpheus
crafted a puzzle
_____to solve you,
__________your beautiful
mind a cloud
_____cut loose from the moon.

Hatchet men bled you to soon
_____into the gourd
a Masai warrior, tall and dignified,
_____tips to my lips.

I don't suppose dung stuck
_____in that mortal wound
__________will help you one bit.

The fall of man is what irascible
four-star generals in sunglasses
__________had aimed for.
_____Some said, "Quit."

Others got gypped, and the remainder
won just what you bought:
__________War.

Fremere

Lead shot punch through wood.
Spot the hole:  curlicue wisps
rise, white smoke.

Infintesimal dragon, hide
deep as you can in a two-by-four
and die there.

A man and his wife tried
finding your loot.  Brass shells roll
by his boot.

Girls of Juarez, here we come!
Santa Muerte's roses fly
skyward -- love

and hunger lie buried in a ditch.
Decapitated Lothario!  Your novia
was a witch:

innocent if she drowns,
guilty if she floats.
Wear a coat.

The Lepidopterist

This room would rather be a closet.
White lights on a string garland
the shelf.  In one dusty

corner, a moth in repose --
dead legs bent point at the ceiling,
as if entreating some moth deity

to wreak vengeance.  Against
the cabbage rose-papered wall, sideways,
a relaxing chamber loosens

a Western Swallowtail.  Abel,
the collector, wheedles, plaintive,
his furred voice larval.

"Please don't talk about leaving!"
He's just booked passage
to humid, troubled Sri Lanka,

where he hopes to wander,
dazed, through a blizzard
of yellow-winged beauty

with his indulgent queen, his pinned monarch,
by his side:  a scene from a movie
documenting his pride, flaunting.

Man-Killer

Savannah_____teeth
bared_____yellow, dull.
Relentless sun.

Stand behind the man
with the gun.

Rumbling bass
__________mimicry
_____of Victoria Falls.

__________A missing face
among the soiled, sweat-drenched
rogues' gang at the beer hall.

Here, kitty, kitty.  Look
__________over here.

Coal-black skin juxtaposed
with red, gold and tan --

someone throws meat laced
with ketamine, folds
__________his hands --
__________a prayer?

The Rape of Myt-ser'eu

- inspired by The Soldier of Sidon, by Gene Wolfe

Kitten, quiet and still
balled up among sharp rocks.

Seven men
maybe eight.  Knife, throat, walk

to the cave.
Lucius, his mind like a sheep's:

each new day
the first one of his life.  Greet

him wordlessly,
river-wife.  He forgets so many nights,

your laughter,
the pleasant mockery shining in your eyes.

Torchlight trembles --
sky blackens.  A great panther eats stars.

Once unfaithful,
you've nevertheless loved him with your life.

Timberline

Stone, smooth.
__________Cool
mountain stream.

Sharp crack:
__________branch
snaps off, trails

pine sap --
__________small
rivulets,

slow gold.
__________Moss.
Scouring scent.

Clear air.
__________God
absolves us.

Sunrise
__________lifts
dark arms high.

Honky Tonk

Green neon
flicker hard_____nighttime
_____awash in starlight.

Cowboy bar
Closer_____indoors_____hard
women with dark roots

hope the men
beer guts_____farmer's tans
look twice_____grunt assent.

They cannot believe
they've become their mothers,
yearning

for a Patsy Cline song
not to manifest.
The next meal

comes courtesy of a citified
sister's plastic -- a sister
hated and loved.

Try harder next time.
Reincarnate on the rez
up the road.

Your fourth-grade teacher
spoke so highly of you.
Girl, I wish you'd heard.

San Francisco Doggerel

Winking_____gold_____red
blue__________electric
_____city
of one million eyes,
each turned inward.
Windows of a high-rise
betray not telescopes
but the closed curtains
of modest folk
who attend therapy
and ingest their pills
as prescribed by a shrink.

A toast if I may

to the twisted freaks
who in this town's heyday
raised binoculars
to spy across the way
a neighbor, likewise
unattired.  Masturbating
to the sight of each
other, uncaring
yet tender:
love__________magnified.
Lights_____render_____memory
_____relevant
as__________ghosts.

Hecate

- dedicated to Nova Mana

Ripples_____pond
hematite black.
_____Water pierced
swallows itself back.

White walls of San Quentin
from this angle
a butcher's apron, vestal,
_____anticipating blood.

Air dances in sun
mummifies our lungs.
_____"What about that one?"
_____"Which one, sweetie?
That one?  That's a cypress."
_____"Could I climb it
to heaven?"

_____Sky blue as an eye
steps down concrete
to meet a girl.
_____She waits for pain

_____promised by God.