Dude

I was eating too much cinnamon. It was making me light-headed. It is a blood thinner, cinnamon. It was giving me vertigo, the cinnamon. I'd been putting it on my oatmeal every morning. Too liberally. I'd be walking and getting like I was going to fall down and I thought it was the stress or caffeine or skimping on food but it was the cinnamon. I stopped and the problem went away.

The story is too long. So I won't tell it yet.

When a bus goes by and I'm on the skateboard it is a smooth wave of wind. You'd be surprised because there is nothing worse than being on the sidewalk when the bus fires up again into your face. There are worse things but you know what I mean, it is an expression. But when moving at a speed closer to that of the passing bus, it is a smooth feeling.

I am almost 30.

we are a naked baby getting diaper changed on sidewalk

Sir, we are going to have to ask you to leave

Wait. What. Why.

Sir, we have had complaints.

Complaints. Complaints. About what. Wait. Is this because I told the barista I wanted my coffee black and then winked at the barista and stuck my tongue out like a lizard. like a lizard at him. Is that it. because if it is. I am sorry. It was a bad joke. I could have sworn it was only in my head. I get these bad jokes in my head sometimes. I don't mean to ever let them out but I get that me doing it may have been offensive. So I am sorry.

That would have been cause for removal absolutely sure. But we do not currently have a black barista.

Who said anything about him being black.

We have not had one in months. Not because we are trying not to have one. It has simply just worked out that way.

For the record it was not a racial thing. It was a-- It must've been somewhere else that I did that then.

Sir, your admission about race and coffee would have indeed been enough. For sure. But we must ask you to pack up your-- is that a typewriter.

No. Yes. I am done with the lies.

Your typewriter and please leave immediately or we will be forced to call the cops. And you know that the police are not friendly in this town.

I still do not understand. Am I being persecuted because I keep staring directly between the legs of each woman and man who walks into this establishment without ever looking anywhere on their bodies but directly between their legs. Is that it. Because if it is then let me tell you I am just curious about their private arenas er---areas not arenas - though when you think about it our private areas do become arenas of sorts. Mine would be like the Lousiana Superdome post-Katrina. A total mess. An arena in disrepair then hit with a hurricane and thousands of lost souls.

Sir. I am going to have to cut you off. You must leave because one of the customers overheard you talking to yourself.

Oh! Is that all! We all talk to ourselves! Survey the populace. Do it anonymously if you must! Survey them! You! You must talk to yourself!

I do.

See!

But I do not do what you do. I do not say what you say.

What. what. did I say. that was so horrifying.

It's really not appropriate for me to repeat in this coffee establishment Sir. We have too many members of the tech industry here with too much start-up capital and clout. I do not want to offend the members of this evolving community's virtual lifeblood--

That I'm a poet. Is that it. That I said I was a poet.

Sir.

It's that I'm a poet. That I said that I was a poet. You are kicking me out because I am a poet.

Sir. Please. I am going to have to call the police.

Fine. Fine. I will leave. I will pick my typewriter up and leave. I get how shudder worthy it may sound to folks these days. That there is no path. No interest. Not even fleeting click-bait. That this is not a world for the poet.

Sir.

I placed my heart into a case
with her own

Sir. Please. This is embarrassing

in a case
in case
what we did
became too messy
and there they were
like clowns packed into a tiny car
our hearts
unrecognizable
indistinguished
from one or another
so that
they were one
our hearts
a blubbery unified
heart
and the case
was above us
and we were moving
in motion
on a bed
for hours
and
hours
and
hours
and
sweat
I did that part
to give her so much pleasure
so that the other ones would have to become unrecognizable
that
she would be so overwhelmed
her senses had to start over
that
they would have no trace
and it was selfish
the best lovers
are selfish
we are selfish
the best lovers
the best lovers
the best lovers
want to haunt their lovers as the only ghost
the best lovers are selfish
they want to haunt their lovers in a way that has nothing to do with love
and it was selfish
that
after I had left
that
her body was empty of any trace
of any other touch
and haunted
that
I left her haunted
and that it took
a long while
for her blood to return
and
it took a long while
for her to take her heart back out
from that
already left-opened
solely inhabited
case

Sir

I'm going. I'm going.

The Bechdel Test

He got off the RV somewhere near Topeka

I hate to leave you babe but I can't stand it anymore, this is where I gotta get off

Is it what I think it is, Johnny?

I don't wanna lie. Yeh.

What? You promised! You promised!

I know babe but addiction is stronger than love sometimes so it's probly stronger than a promise

Fucking asshole. You fucking. asshole! Get out then! Get out!

And she did let him get out and off the RV and she drove on. And she thought about herself more than anyone else. It was unexpected. Her thinking grew very clear, it bloomed in a way it rarely did these days what with technology and all it bloomed. And it was a bliss because for the first time in god-knows-how-long all she did was think about herself.

all the animals

It's gone. What I wanted to tell you. With mindfulness comes a full spectrum of colors and patterns. A ladybug on my window screen. The yellow monarch fluttering in the far depth of view. This lady walking in a bright neon peach t-shirt. On my friend's street near the train tracks, late at night, there are white bunnies. White bunnies lingering in the middle of the street, and on the sidewalks like cats, the bunnies. She says they belong to one of her neighbors. I once tried to drown my sorrows only to realize that they'd been keeping me afloat, my sorrows.

I Swear It

You'll write her like a mystery. The necklace she insisted on wearing. That relic to the brand she'd been creating. She hacked computers. Obsessed over data. Wanted to build an ideation factory beneath the ground in a house made of soil down on the property she owned in Central America.

I'm an underdog darling. I'm an underdog baby. You may not believe it. But I'm an underdog.

I didn't give you a tenth of a preview to a teaser of a sneak peak of a trailer to 1/10 of my love.

How long can he go on feeling the pin-prick of everything. It's an--ouch. I can withstand the--ouch. One night I might even get brave enough to start digging into that buried well filled with the best of my dark material and--ouch.

I am the mineral rich Earth you forgot to bring in your bags. I will visit you in the jet black days of your winter. You told me I'd like it there.

why you had to quit drinking

I want you to picture yourself. No selfies tho. Picture yourself in an entirety seen from the sky. Laying there like a clothed fetus on a womb of flat grass. The POV, that of a whirling drone hovering from half a mile above. It zooms in on you just before it leaves to go spy on Americans and/or deliver packages for Amazon.

You are laying on the grass of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Trees. Tar Pits. Museum. You, like clothed fetus. A speck floating atop a sea of green.

Here, I peer. I am peering down at you like an invisible Benjamin Franklin, spectacles low on my nose, hands behind my back. Picture me looking at you like that. Me like Benjamin Franklin and you with Johnny Appleseed bags sagging beneath your closed eyes. Beads of fermented sweat rolling down that prominent Neander brow of yours. Getting closer to you. I am borrowing a cinematic angle a little like what we remember the opening image from that film "Boyhood" by Richard Linklater to be. Only it's not a boy we are talking about. It is, you.

Butt feel the gentle blades of green grass, tiny, cut low. Invisible Benjamin Franklin is gone. It is the middle of the afternoon during a bad heat wave in Los Angeles. The temperature is aggressive like a man at a bar who is wearing hair gel and a golden wristwatch. The heat is like that aggressive. You, not me, just drank a bunch of beer at the Old Farmer's Market. And that pale bartender woman with the bandanna was serving you. You know her name right? She has been there for many years. You know her name and things like that because you are no longer a boy like that boy from "Boyhood" was at the beginning. You are much older. And you have been to this bar many times before. And that boy had nicer eyes than you. The boy from "Boyhood" did. What? He did.

Anyway. Staying focused. This is about you. It is the middle of the afternoon. Scorching hot. And you are on the grass at LACMA. Asleep. Your sister, not my sister, is sitting there like a fawn, watching you like slow television. She will need a ride to work. She has been watching you sleep. Passed out on the lawn. She ate a salad while you drank another skunky beer at the LACMA cafeteria. Why has she been watching you so intently by the way? Your sister. While you sleep. You wonder. But don't be so paranoid. She is your sister. If she had wanted to cut you open in your sleep, she would have done so a long time ago. Like when You cut open her diary and showed the innocent, amorous, sexually-themed passages to your dad as he drank ice water at the desk of his office, growing up. You are the one who did that, not her. 

But as she was nudging one of your numb shoulders you awoke near one of the lesser La Brea Tar Pit puddles feeling like a collection of fossils and mankind's last hope. The air like black sludge, crystal clear and heavy like black sludge. She said she would drive. Your sister. You don't remember if you listened. Your stomach was bubbling. It was only a couple of blocks. Middle of the day. She got to work safe. You kept the air conditioner on and parked near a bunch of duplexes. Closed your eyes. An ex-fling of yours drove by, and texted you something sarcastic. Then moments later your ex-girlfriend called. What are the odds? And you answered. You spoke to her on the way home. While you drove. And you experienced losing her again. Like you did every time the two of you spoke. It happened still in faint echoes across the pane of her voice.

Zoom out. Further. Drones. Airplanes. Space Satellites. Then God. Then the one watching God like fissured television. Then the one above the one watching God. All of them. Feeling like their trillions of spider eyes were focused everywhere but on you. That they had lost sight and interest in your journey. That you were truly alone. Flailing in the unseen forgotten energy dots of the Universe. It's all there when you picture it, if you can just picture it, why you had to quit drinking.

Light You On Fire

"You are a hateful little Martian," he said. "I've never met anyone like you. I remember seeing you get up on stage, piss drunk, ranting the most unintelligible stars in the sky I had ever heard. You fucking loud mouth."

She dragged on not giving a genuine care, or at least posing in an artful disdain that was convincing enough to fool all us remaining members of the crowd.

Volcanoes

I was just talking with two baristas about the phenomenon where numerous people will come in one day and uncannily order the same damn thing that never gets ordered usually. We attributed it to three things 1. They briefly even momentarily observe another persons order 2. They are vessels of the collective unconscious 3. Similar people are attracted to similar places at similar times then per #2 we began talking Joseph Campbell and how nearly identical myths sprouted all over remote parts of the world and how the same thing happens with inventions. And that it makes sense on a physical level how we are all such similar mechanisms operating from the same type of physiognomy in somewhat similar environments. They had other customers so I walked away. Looked at my phone, twitter feed, and this story from The Washington Post was at the very top of my feed.

 Synchronicity is uncanny and observable all around us how integrally connected we and everything else is in operating together. Even if it looks and behaves on entirely opposite ends of the world.

finding my people

This is an ocean of white. Published, the ocean is lettering. The rest becomes black. I was sitting in a bar drinking soda water and eating fish and chips feeling like the festive millenials weren't me. That I didn't belong to them. But that barista in Oakland, her and I both apologized a lot. We kept apologizing for our apologies and then to the yogi behind us, we apologized. I'm sorry. No, I'm sorry. Love means never having to say you're sorry. I'm sorry then.

I will burn a hole in you until you are a whole.