my dad and barbara

cuz he thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world but all we kept seeing every sunday morning was an average latina in her 30's shuffling out of the doors to his townhouse and saying goodbye.

cuz he said sex after the second divorce was a ten. after the third, it was her. he was much older

he said a couple of us children were love babies, made in love. we never asked what he'd call the others

i remember one afternoon in long beach he kept talking. he was winning back his eldest kids and talking to em over carne asada and corn tortillas and employing his artful storytelling and personal revelations and he could turn it on like that

and when he'd turn it on it was like a spigot into endless earth

i got video of him that i've privately uploaded to youtube, i'd take the video without him noticing cuz once he got going he was in a zone all his own

never told him about the film festivals. never told him about the financiers. never told him about the lovely girl i took to big sur for the night.

i guess you and your dad have something in common my mom told me last weekend, an admission that only scratches the surface.

driving up the 101

in clouds of smoke we remade the images of now fading '00's pop stars into imaginative disturbances and glorious wonders

esalen night waters

two nights ago i watched the sky slowly devour the orange rock moon above the blue black waters of the pacific ocean.

yesterday morning in big sur even the lizards were fucking under the trees in and out of the sun.

what i wanted to tell you: i was wrong about saying you didn't like sincere music. you do. what i meant was earnest music.

and after we made love you slept like a rock for an insomniac

anecdotal evidence

i wish i could've bought weed from you. at that calArts party where you found out your drug dealer boyfriend had been cheating. and he wanted 100 an oz. you could keep the rest. perhaps i could've been the rest.

a hot july day i remember

where i was. i was in the ocean.

where you were. you were on the sand.

how i looked. i looked back at the shore.

how you were. you were no longer looking at me.

and i felt. i felt so out to sea

los angeles

I woke up wanting to invite her to Big Sur. Like, want to drive there today on our day off together. But I didn't. I sat in my car and stared at my phone.

Last night we walked up to a cave in that kind of dark that's too thin to be dark. Like daylight on the moon. I told her about the girl I'd been with earlier in the night, how we couldn't find the moon.

But it was night. Sprinklers hit the road into the park. Heavy water bath.

She used my phone flashlight inside an Andy Gump. I watched the glow pour through ventilation holes and gaps in the plastic doorway.

She said what if a coyote came while I was sitting perched on that rock and it ate me in one big gulp and all that remained was my red Bard sweatshirt.

I said I'd assume her online identity.

We were talking about a couple she knew, guy and girl who made themselves into twins in New York City. I told her about the characters in Garden of Eden.

Her shoes were not walking shoes but we walked miles.

We had just walked through the bat cave. It was while she was perched on the rock imagining coyotes. Cloud covered the entire sky. I said, what if there never was a moon. What if I only dreamed it. Without missing a beat she said what's a moon?

what liv said

I have a good awareness of other people's motives but sometimes I'm not willing to acknowledge my own

new york

an idiot and his improper use of the word namaste

We met at a bar called Snake and Jake's Christmas Club Lounge in the uptown neighborhood of New Orleans. it was a glorious shithole. Popular, like all glorious shitholes these days. We like em, glamorize em, ruin em. Why? Cuz anything that smells like rotten beer soaked wood appeals to us over the synthetic cleaner days of our chemical laden youths. Linoleum. Clorox. Granite countertops if we were lucky. If we grew up in dirt, then it's a nice little reminder of it. My favorite little dive bar was the womb.

She said naked people drink free at the bar. She said she and her ex-girlfriend, the burlesque dancer on ice, drank there topless one night. It wasn't my problem. She said she might enjoy drinking a little too much sometimes. It wasn't my problem. She said she met the lonely fifty-year-old man slumped over the bar, she said she met him on New Years Eve and that they spoke for hours that night. She said he told her to be careful when I walked in. He gazed over at us, in love with her, or drunk, same thing maybe.

We touched hands. Hers were warm blooded. I paid for our Miller Lites. Takes a round or two longer to hit that ten dollar minimum when drinks are cheap and the night started hours before elsewhere.

She drove us to her place. I left at four in the morning. She said stay, I said we won't ever sleep. I wanted to stay as long as I could but never return once I left. I had the airport waiting for me in the morning. In the light. We were two candles melted and reformed. The bonds that can be made in a few hours of something like honesty.

The driver was majestic. We were talking about the sunsets in California. He brought em up. Maybe so he could bait me. To tell me about the most beautiful one he'd ever seen. In Iowa. I didn't ask him what he was doing in Iowa. He was eating in between two lakes. Watching the sun disappear below one lake to his west. While the full moon rose over the other lake to his east. He said it was green and purple at first. He pronounced "silhouette" in a magical way. He spoke for ten minutes straight, bragging but also possessed by what he had seen. He had seen a lot but that this was unlike anything else. That as long as his brain works, he will remember it. That a camera couldn't have shot east and west. A camera couldn't tell it like he told it.

None of it was my problem. I walked the Garden District. I saw my awesome friend Morgan earlier. We ate with his girlfriend. They saw me do comedy, it's fun in the south. It's fun everywhere. Then, on a whim, I met her. Met the driver. Slept a couple hours then got on airplanes to Florida in the morning. I was my only problem. The way all my organs hurt except for my heart.

I was with my dad last year. And the year before that. Now he's with me. Now I'm with me. Last night I was with her. It was only one night.

predatory features

i should write another novel. another sad one. ah, but fuck. no one read the last one. plus there are all these other stories i want to tell. but, the time. and the notion that my best might involve people skills. ah, but fuck. i am not running. she said i was running.

ok. i am running. but it's not from something, like she was implying. i am running simply to run

ah, but fuck. new york, that jaywalker's paradise. volcano national park and the noise the black crater made scraping and crunching beneath my wet boots. mexico, and that drug dealer's circle spinning eyes. the angry way the small guy snorted his own product next to the marina. then tennessee, the shark's restlessness