Burrito Bowl

I skip America this time, Arrive

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