like a shuffled
ear
I can barely listen to an entire song anymore.
I can barely fall in love for longer than it takes
for the subway doors to close anymore.
I skip this thought and go
on to the next.
I’m searching for something
And I usually I find it
And I must find it again
And I must find it again
And I must find it again.
I listen to your voice on the plane
A recording I’d taken on my phone.
We won’t talk about that.
Arid California bashed with sea,
Palms imported from Araby.
Screenplays zilched in sunstroked Macbooks.
Starlets and tachycardia in the baked potato roads.
The day is jewelish, the traffic bewitches.
A cop car drives by, scalped of lights,
Black Xs over the badges on its doors,
And I think I’m Ice Cube in Boyz in the Hood,
Denzel in Malcolm X.
(L.A.: even the cars are sad and in costume.)
Kaleidoscopic graffiti cartwheels the underpass,
Lucille Ball in a falling Hall of Mirrors.
Plaster Versailles’ collapse, seguing epochs.
I don’t move that fast,
caught in the sleeperhold
of my brother’s apartment I’m falling
into the matinee dream of a nap...
I take the Metro, L.A.’s tropical tramway,
Palm tree’d columns holding up Hollywood Blvd.,
To Amoeba and find Songlines and War of Art
on the dollar racks, my only place in society.
I’m a discount Bourgeoisie: lunch specials and cups for
water,
Library cards and dollar stores,
Medicaid, unpaid taxes, Earned Income Credit.
I used to be an actor trapped in his headshot
Now I sleep in the grass and I read.
I eat eggs I eat pad thai I eat a burrito bowl
Guacamole, chicken, rice and beans.
Life, I’m no longer listening to you
This is not a collaboration
I’m going to do what I want
Even if it kills me.
I’ll pass on your bounties of cooled wisdom
Sitting in every open window
like pies nobody wants.
I’d rather read Apollinaire’s unstitched warwound,
His thin slit mouth sprouting blood.
I’d rather learn from a lazy paperback
How other men have made /my mistakes before me/
I am not inventing new ones/They suffered for them/
Like I will suffer/And that suffering can be
composted/with words.
I get about 10 minutes of good reading in a day
If I’m lucky. People tell me my mind is tired I don’t think
so
