A PORTFOLIO FOR THE NOT-YET-JADED
or
IF I TAKE THIS BOTTLE OF WINE TO THE ROOF,
THEN I CAN THROW THE BOTTLE OFF,
RATHER THAN MYSELF

 

a collection of work in verse

1983 — 1994

 

by Joel J. Rane

©1995.  All rights reserved.  This work is unpublished.

LOVE CAN OCCASIONALLY BE WORSE THAN IGNORANCE

 

I like to be at home to tell her
With my city watching at the window
The breeze in my hair
The light in my eyes
Her eyes always leaving mine

 

It’s been too many years
The termites say as they eat me (burp)
So why not give her some agony
Now when she is left alone
Leave her as she did me—for dread.

 

I wanted to tell her I loved her
Twenty years before (Kimba the White Lion)
I got a small white card in the mail, RSVP
Dear Heart, come touch my white dress (Walgreen’s)
And lay envious eyes upon the body, the soul
That will now never be yours?  Never!  (Well…)
The pen scratched out a small quiet no.

 

I sit at the window hearing dim bells (BELLS BELLS BELLS!)
Put down my drink and my cigarette
I wish you love, my darling girl
I will just sit and wait
For the three of us to fry (fly, die, ask “why”? etc.)
ACTION IS CHARACTER.  (go FUCK YOURSELF!)

August 1983

FOR HOLLYWOOD’S SAKE

 

Neon!  Neon!
The drummer drums and the knife falls
Screaming sirens and flashing lights
Sunset Boulevard
Striped skirts and striped hair

 

Everything in color—night on night
Light and cold stones in the alley
A Cat scrambles over broken glass

 

Hair dripping with rain and sweat
A thousand dancing gyrating bodies
A thousand lines of white powder

 

Hollywood!  Hollywood!  Give me your money!
I have found your soul!  Your money now!
Bloodstains and half a face
Flickering flame and men shrouded in blue
Obvious lust on Sunset; buried lust
in a heart slowed by alcohol

 

Guards at the gates—let us out!
The cops will soon pull over a
Thrashed Volvo in Beverly Hills

August 1983

THE SILVER STRAND
(for Miss Barbara Sootkoos)

 

Tonight the moon is full and the air is cold and my hands are gloved.
San Diego Bay is silence, deathly silence swallowing
the hiss of jets and cars into black water.  I crossed the highway,
however, I could hear the pounding of the surf on the Strand.

 

The Strand, ½ mile wide and five long, all gray moonlit dust.
Low and narrow.  A freeway, light poles in an irreal constellation,
the lifeguard stations abandoned for the winter.  No one is there.

 

It is the place to take a lover, holding hands and swinging arms,
tripping into kelp and McDonald’s, death and decay.  Some rhythm, like
the pounding, eroding surf.

 

The tide—ripping up sand and burying parking-lots.

 

And yet, at the Coronado Cays young people dance on, for this is
their city.  They are unaware of it.  I have the eyes of a stranger,
the ocean, tearing, ripping, eroding, using and driving off again
into the darkness.  San Diego, where once nets hung from tuna boats,
I have been away so long.  It is not San Francisco, or Los Angeles.

 

That is the secret.  No one is there.  The Silver Strand, the city
has no character, it is just there.  The Silver Strand, it is not
famous, it is not Malibu.

 

I was the only one on the beach tonight.

 

It is just there.  I am
gone.

December 1983

TWO ASHTRAYS

 

A jet rips across the ocean sky
I’m dressed in black, uh huh
Black like my mom used to wear
What fucking scum told you about color?
God I hate these whining voices
Black is strength black is brains black will take you
Death is fearless get out of the hall
Music is a drug like cigarettes, black smoke
I have two ashtrays and no ashes
What the hell—normality.

March 1984

COMPETITIOUS

 

Steve came down from San Francisco, beard and bandana,
plane ticket paid for with stolen credit cards, seven hits of acid
Daniel frenches a beer can on his acid.
A technical sunset behind neon palm trees, and sheriffs on LSD
cruise…a collection of ideas on torn pieces of the future.
A busy signal at Stacie Kaufman’s, the stars wink brilliantly in
time, at Malibu, above glowing cigarettes.
Los Angeles is old old old, we’ve seen it all before.  But still
the endless subtlety of the nights, to fill in the empty cracks.

June 1984

PISMO BEACH

 

Seafood appears in little dumps, graffiti attacks the beach,
Let’s eat and see what happens.
A rickety pier broaches the Pacific.  Seedy vistas are everywhere.
Morro Bay in ten years, Half-Moon Bay in twenty.
Bumpkins under the influence of city slickers.  No hope.

July 1984

SAN FRANCISCO AND BACK IN ONE SECOND

 

One long line of speed, and buddy ready to go!
You wanna talk action.  I’ll give it to you.  Baby.
Zip over to the SOMA with a girl in black, five dollars at the door,
dancing whirling bored bodies and flashing neon light.  Drinks.
Tars, the Bus.  Back to Berkeley, back to back.  A fight on BART.
A faggot on the A Bus.  “Show it motherfucker!”  “Oh, your dress is
fabulous!”  “Suck mine!”  “Elizabeth Taylor, reeeeally darling?”
Don’t touch but write write write eeeeeEEEEYAH!
More SPEED FOR REAL WORLD MY ASS BUDDY YOU FUCKING COLLEGE STUDENTS THIS PREPARES YOU FOR REAL WORLD DRINK YOUR BOURBON AND GO TO BED BED BED.
Oh boy for a bed.

October 1984

SHE HAS BLACK EARRINGS AS WELL
(for Miss Rosanne Kennedy)

 

You really had to be there.  It gets commonplace for me.

 

They understand, sometimes, that they must dress darkly.  Usually
Not.  Then the tie-dye—but no sympathy here.

 

You figure the cat would be all black—but no…
A patch of white here and there.  But mostly black.

 

It gets boring sometimes.  But not many people do show it.  A lot
Feel it.  Right?  It’s not L.A., but it is a city of sorts.

 

Boy is it screwed up.  But you wouldn’t know to look.

 

It’s running like clockwork tonight.  Food—snack at
Barrington Hall.  A bummed cigarette.  Hot Coffee, Cold Beer.
The kind with the puzzles in the caps.  Hollywood memories.
But there is no Hollywood here.

 

A swish, an ungainly step.  They read, sure they read a lot.

 

And they take speed, oh, a lot of speed.

 

But it gets so boring, everything so clockwork.  The clock
Speeds up, yeah boy, then it gets interesting.

 

It defies description—the bullshit does.  But it works.
The music is loud and heavy—not romantic.  Or very.  But it works.

 

She comes by for another cigarette.  Another smoke, screw it.
I’d love to stay longer but snack is over.  They play Hendrix
And Andy Clay busts a bottle.  Calm down.  It works.

October 1984

MARISA HANSELL

 

You watch, but you can’t change the channel any more.
A clear night, the lights of Oakland
looking out a window, looking
as a girl bounces quarters into a glass of rum
and sings in French, into dust.
(Is there something to be said for being negative?)

 

Love is shit
now, the color of the heroin being collected before me.
A vein, New York fills my head.
Marisa, Marisa, don’t die just yet Marisa,
the Manhattan gutters are filled with needles
Temptation and Discipline are going to fight
I avoid marijuana but cigarettes rule me
Alcohol is strong.

 

Forgotten cigarette butts crushed in ashtrays
Cassandra, Dianna, Kathleen, Linda, Leslie…the list bores me.

 

Your hands are so beautiful, your cloudy hair,
Your glowing eyes and your laugh like a record at the wrong speed.

 

Your smile is gone.  I drink to the void.
I speed on the freeway.  I touch the hypo.  (As in Sodium Thiosulfate)
The mirror broken, the dream interrupted
The rest is easy.  The rest is boring.

 

Marisa, you have left me no chance to become bored with you.
Your soul fled first to New York, and then within
to escape the falling bodies of your dreams.

 

The day you left,
I wore black and meant it at last.
At a circus of punk rock I drank two quarts of malt liquor
the falling bodies landed on my face.
I stumbled out of the can, screaming at the singer,
“Hey Rollins, Lydia coming up from L.A.?” laughing,
blood dripping off my chin, feeling nothing
Lydia Lunch being in New York also.

 

A ruin is always a ruin,
restored only to collapse, devastation.
The rest are so boring, it is so frustrating
if you die, your soul burns my heart shut.
As if you haven’t already done so
Alive.

December 1984

ODE TO ALLA NAZIMOVA
(for Miss Adelaide Leventon)

 

Black hair, heavy over
eyelids;, heavy with eyeshadow
you could have been anyone but you
were Madame Nazimova, Nazimova of Stanislavski,
Nazimova of the silent screen.

 

In silence you pursed dark lips
devastation in silver nitrate.
A mime, a Rembrandt,
no depth but for your dark eyes.

 

A Salome in the dress of Beardsley
your pennies to art, your violin
from the theatres of Moscow
the dust of the Garden of Alla, Hollywood
The dog-eared pages of a picture-book.

 

The Great Nazimova abandoned all words.  The
whining voice.  Time is gone
and stopped, a body and face devoted solely
to celluloid.

 

The dope was fine.  The lovers were fine.  The lights…
Shadows, black and white.  Flickering.  Heavy lids.
You were made for it.

February 1985

PATENTED NAUSEA

 

A Quaalude will halt decay for a while, but it won’t erode it for good.
This is something beyond drugs, this is something only people will do
and they just won’t do it.  They won’t.  So a Quaalude.
The point of wine dinners is, of course, to get fucked up
just screw around, all night.  Barrington is too small to play.
The people who play are gone, everyone is dead.
I’m trying not to die, but having a hard time.  Alcohol
tastes like death.  The blue soda tastes like defeat.  Pot
tastes like hell.  Every cigarette I smoke brings tears.  There
is just nothing interesting about listening to Mozart and watching
television.  This must be the low point, stupid animal,
stupid animal, school and Barrington Hall,
so easy.  It’s easy!
Listen, man, that white jive won’t do shit for you.
What’s wrong with you?  You don’t look happy.
If I take this bottle of wine to the roof, then I can throw the bottle
off, rather than myself.  Things work out better that way, I can go
downstairs and enjoy more torture.  Happy to survive.
One good burrito on Hollywood Boulevard, that’s it.
Are you fucked up?  Boy, you look trashed.
We might as well stay up, we’ll feel worse tomorrow.
Pass the wine and the speed, everyone else in the building is asleep.
Malcolm was really psychotic, tell him Andy.  Did we tell you?
Sorry to be rude, but…
You’re just fucked up.  Oh, I wish I was messed up.  Things are
happier that way.  Wake me up when things look brighter.
Some people don’t go out in the sunlight.

March 1985

RENO NEVADA UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

 

It only takes a car and a lot of money.
Last night in San Francisco, a minimal escape, now this is more like it.
Reno, decadent neon palace of Rome, a post-weekend junket.
They named their child “They Couldn’t Help It.”
First night:  “Magic Fingers” and a joint.  X on the radio.
Next morning:  Police on the radio.  Wet kisses on the mattress
and everything on the floor.  Broccoli for Psyche.  Plenty of open
full beers.  I am back in it, deep deep deep.
Lake Tahoe, the hotel once blown up resurrected sheathed in gold.
I should only be so lucky, but for the feeling of crazy love,
desperate,
love that clutches and seeks
but will not find, will not want, will not reflect.
I feel sick every morning.  I hope I will not in Berkeley,
I want to die in Los Angeles, alone alone alone.
This isn’t as much fun as I had hoped.
The trap isn’t pleasant, it isn’t even a trap.
I have created everything and I must finish it.
I WILL NOT let it finish me.
Lake Tahoe is so beautiful in the spring.  The sun sets behind
snowy mountains, with the vast lake foreground.
There is love in every tragedy.
As Psyche said, “American culture is making something out of nothing.”

April 1985

THE DANCER

 

After an eternity in San Francisco
The dancer came back to Hollywood.
He had been up there, dancing.
First year they take fifty out of two-thousand
Second year seven out of fifty.  He was that good.

 

From his townhouse in the hills,
all of L.A. sparkled and danced.
He lit a joint and warned us about
Artists.  He said a writer
would suck the soul from all life.
A painter would take the emotion, and a poet both.
The actor would reduce humanity to a wink,
the musician to a note.
The dancer to a move, the most thoughtless
of them all.
The soul of art, he said, immortality
of art or artist, the crushing
of the human race into a psychedelic clock.

 

I told him of San Francisco
He told me to watch out.  He would never dance again.
“Here we do it for money.
Up there we do it for keeps.”

May 1985

HEART BLEEDS INK

 

Suppose you could seal your heart in an envelope and mail it to yourself.
I dialed New York and heard lonely static.
I won’t use my address book again.
Pain means less and less to me.  I will become a typewriter.
The world will go directly to paper.
Batteries are loaded, stamps licked.  (Still snow in Tahoe.)

June 1985

THE SUTRO BATHS

 

The view from the Sutro Baths, where slime grows onto flowers.
Why fight over cities?  They exist.  And money?  Always there.
More control, that’s the answer.  Women.  No inspiration,
no cares, no worries.  What am I doing?
Paradise—death.  At least something new.

June 1985

THE LOS ANGELES INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

 

The white ceiling is high and empty—sky.  A tropical rainstorm
behind us.  Katherine is a small blonde hooray.
The whine of jets and Andy Hunt eating his apple.
Danny watches me.  Katherine smiles.  Everything is okay.
Rosanne will not reveal her secrets.
Our city will be great, but it will never be good.

July 1985

SPORTS

 

Speed, speed, Greg Gray says, his eyes rolling, his mouth
laughing explosively, his body spotted with watercolors.
A girl sits in her empty apartment, the TV soft, smoking and drinking
white wine over the Sunday comics.  Occasionally she traces the outline
of her mouth with her index finger.
Nothing is worth dying for, except maybe life.
“There is no philosophy in nitrous!” Joe Curren screams, a balloon in
each hand.  Now we slowly pass out, nitrous and acid and beer and
weed and cigarettes and MDA and speed and coke and DMT and
mushrooms and vodka and heroin and Jesus if I haven’t done a lot of
drugs in my time.  Fuck.  I look into the future.  Fuck.  Fuck.
Listen:  the magic word is “fuck”.  One night Cheetos and Ranier.
One morning Coca-cola and Susie-Q’s.
Things are not looking good, but I don’t care.  Living on the bottom,
who said that?  I won’t shave my head, no, I’ll wear a suit and throw
a big monkey wrench at the world.  Everything is fun.

September 1985

PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG CORPSE (PORTRAIT OF THE CATHOLIC AS A YOUNG HYPOCRITE)

 

Barrington Hall downstairs at midnight—NEVADA he cried.
                        DISFIGUREMENT LENDS CHARACTER.

 

            (New York subway—bad trip new year’s eve 1984)
            (also a bar at Caesar’s Palace Las Vegas 3 am.)
being polite I take my exit.
Once I woke up in Santa Barbara.  Sometimes I’d laugh at the young queens, but usually I just laughed at myself.  You can’t be a good nihilist without first being a good Catholic, because you can’t be a good atheist until you’ve been a good Catholic.  Remember.
                        REMEMBER THE VENTURA FREEWAY AT RUSH HOUR?

October 1985

THE AMARGOSA DESERT

 

            The old man of my past is still laughing, still casting clouds of gray sand down around my head.  Death Valley, 7000 on one side, 12000 on the other, a stinking hole with campers racing across it.  The mountains just glare, the sun, only sage and creosote know home.  I am home.  Los Angeles is a desert still.  The planet in silence grows lips.  I understand.  You DO NOT fuck with the desert.  All else is open game.  (Open game of Highway 93, 28 Sept. 85—Whomp that sucker!)

            A cinderblock with cop lights flashing at the corners reads SHAMROCK BROTHEL.  I am reassured.  I remember waiting for the bus at Hollywood and Vine on humid nights.  In Berkeley trapped, in Nevada abused, in California set free.  My pretty state, I never should have forgotten the American Dream.  America lies all to the east, all mystery, but I have met her people—no mystery there.  Atomic bombs melt it to glass, the Amargosa is as far as I go east.  (Nevada sucks—take the kids.)

October 1985

THE GIRL WHO WORE WHITE

 

YES, INDEEDY, the girl wore white, it came up around her eyes, it was rolled up around her ankles, she looked through these eyes out of the past, me, man, someone who never looks at a calendar, I was terrified.  I ran to Los Angeles and then I ran to silence.  Nothing worked.  She let me go a thousand times, but she still wore white and her eyes still spoke the past, except now it was my past.  I let her eyes take me prisoner, our eyes set up our cute little bars that only violence could break.  I refused violence, because the girl wore white.  I wish for the strength to free myself.

 

What is love?  Love is day and night, a 7-11 of pain pills and stale burritos and flying apples and very, very cheap beer.  There is a kind of warmth beneath it all, the unasked-for touch of a hand, of warm lips, of soft eyes that speak nothing but the present.  Yet I cannot find it, how desperately I wish not to wear black any more, nor the sterility of white, nor the lie of colors.  Just to wear nothing at all.

October 1985

MADNESS AT 3.24 A.M.

 

It’s unfair, being asked to analyze books
that justify suicide
when no birds sing, and everything is pitch-black
including your clothes and eyes
and postcards are sufficient to answer twelve-page letters.
Letters cross continents, tongues are out of mouths.
311 calls 211, Barrington calls a house on Blake Street,
the U.S. of A. calls West Germany, and nothing is said
except what is unimportant.
But everything is unimportant, so let’s have another drink.
Oh, you fool, reading Virginia Woolf at three in the fucking morning,
listening to Wagner, you asked for it, you got it.
Your whole life flashes before your eyes, a wrong turn here
a wrong turn there, knocking on doors to empty rooms, full ones,
forgetting to write phone messages on the little yellow notepad
with the sticky back, or the plastic cardboard with Hello Kitty on it.
America is such a wonderful, well-ordered place.
Time is running out, and you, my dark-eyed fiend, have run out
on me as well.  For you I write, my bitter sweetheart,
run, run, run to your room, to the wine, your
tall Nordic surfer musician boyfriend.  Play, eat, drink,
and be merry, for it’s finals week again
and your connection is out of speed.
Tomorrow the sun will rise again—time will pass, but WILL YOU?
My great passion, my great love, she sent me a postcard.

December 1985

EVEN THE SKY LOOKS FAKE

 

I am a puppet in the suburbs, hanging on telephone wires.
Burbank may not look the city of broken hearts, but
the telephone poles and the Carl’s Jr. signs and the
parking lots full of cars prove it is so.

 

The asphalt in the parking lot is the lake of fire
and Dante wends his way across
the Valley.

24 December 1985

GHOST FROM THE PAST
(for Miss Kara Bjornlie)

 

Is this L.A., my tomb, my tomb, poor Kara half-buried
in red leather and cigarette smoke.
The plane leaves at seven, back to hell, back, to hell,
don’t take cuts, wait your turn in line.  I may have gotten it
all wrong.  Kara, were you ever a dreamer?
The game it swayed, back-and-forth
and nothing more was said.
The price nothing less than your WHOLE soul.
I kissed brown lips; black palm tree silhouetted
Neon blue sky.  Stars.  Moon.

April 1986

THE BUTTERFLY

 

The Chinese Philosopher said:
Last night I dreamt I was a butterfly;
but did not know for certain if
I the man dreamt of being a butterfly, or
I the butterfly dreamt of being a man.

 

At six in the morning, at Dave’s Coffee Shop in Oakland,
reality becomes clear; Joel and Joe and Robert and Gene order up
Blueberry pancakes with onions, the Burger, the Chili
I ordered the Frenchburger, fried on speed and sunlight, I asked
what’s French about it?
The waitress sends us into her own private oblivion, saying
it comes on a French bun
Robert begins to mumble, French dressing, French meat, or French cook…
After the biorhythms nothing seems to matter much.

 

The next day we went out to the USS Missouri, and gray and flags
sparkled in the sun, San Francisco in all its old lost glory
yelling, Have a happy racist holiday! over and over, or
Don’t be brainwashed! to which a sailor replied, Too late!
I’d rather see my son dead than grow up to be a scumbag like you!
These sentiments I find depressing.  Ralph and Anastasia take in
the scenery, the cops popping authoritative wheelies
Crissy Sullivan has a small exploding sun on her shirt, an
exploding sun which has absorbed much of her body weight
as it has to Steve Gonzales, David Verba, Leo, Bill, Andy, and
god (or Vince) knows how many others.

 

The Butterfly goes into its cocoon as a caterpillar.
Barrington Hall will be open, but six of us will apparently not be
“good”, no, we are “bad”.  Cindy wears it like a medal, but me and
Gene and others are tired tired tired, we want to wear an exploding
sun on our chests, we want to go to Castro Valley or L.A. or N.Y.
or in these times, even Salinas for the summer, but Berkeley has
caught more lobster in its lovely gilded roach motel
Confirmation from above!  The Butterfly would dream, emerge but not
completely, waiting for the Final Check-out Slip.

 

Reagan hits the button and the Earth is VAPORIZED.  Whee!
This time only the Missouri, the Statue of “Liberty”, the
Mexican Navy is invading Daly City, whee!  A self-proclaimed
“middle-class faggot” at Elsmere is raging about the Supreme Court
telling Louie about the pyramid of drug dealing in Barrington Hall
Tanja, by the way, may be organic but that’s no turn-on
Crissy is also pretty organic but in that case certainly does it
in a more Dionysian fashion, you know, dope and alcohol and the
method that I have decided upon, for Berkeley, sooooo TACK-EEE.
And in West Oakland, Louie cried out, Why aren’t there any bloods?
Patrick asked the box at McDonald’s what was in a Big Mac, like the
idiot he sometimes is.  The joke is that the box didn’t know.

 

Every asshole from Nevada east coming here to make it big.  The
Butterfly, fly, fly, fly to Eureka, to Samoa, to Arcata, I don’t
want to fall in love again, not with someone who might give it back.
Nope, the Butterfly must fly, can only dream of being a man,
I must fly.  Whoops, Barrington Hall; my feet are encased in LEAD.
Party party party party party party party party arty arty arty arty
Bonnie and Clyde, rushing across the empty Texas plains

May 1986

SAN FRANCISCAN CHARM

 

Sitting on Market Street, talking to a bottle of Southern Comfort.
Telling it:  Hungry and very, very unhappy.

September 1986

THE CALTRAIN SERIES

 

I fall into deep gloom and melancholy
When I survey the scene of human folly,
Finding on every hand base flattery,
Injustice, fraud, self-interest, treachery…
Ah, it’s too much; mankind has grown so base,
I mean to break with the whole human race.
                                                                                — Moliere

 

San Francisco—O glorious city of light!  Coming out of the subway, the sky is blue, buildings tower and sparkle all about me.  Bands play on Market Street and crowds of tourists gather multicolored at the Powell Street Turntable.  The west breeze is fresh and cars spin madly along.  I paused for a moment to soak in all the beauty, but then I had to walk south again.  The train pulled into the station, beautiful silver snake, I entered the mouth willingly, a Fitzgerald novel under my arm, and a smile on my face.

Twenty-Second Street—The City collapses into solid gray stone, freeways shadow and junkyards rust, the commuters wait with mirror precision.  Fitzgerald grows dark at

Paul Avenue—and I open a ragged copy of Celine.  The train is going faster, my face pressed to the glass.  What have I missed?

Bayshore—Civic madness fades and desolate hills open up before us, the fog adorning San Bruno Mountain.  Yes, there are others here.  I learn names, places, faces, dialogues, languages, secrets, bridges, tunnels.
South San Francisco—Golden jets drift across the ocean sky, and we celebrate our passage.  Processions of angularity, intimidation and gaiety.  I juggle John Fante and Nathanael West, and Romance and Precocity devour me.

San Bruno—Green cold trees and rows of sparkling alien cars.  The train is more subdued.  Is this doubt?  Our addresses conflict.

Millbrae—The childish clicking of rails intoxicates me.  In another carriage people yell, hypnotize, anthropomorphize, induce, vandalize, pirouette, seduce.  I am strangely attracted.  In my lap a poem of Alfred, Lord Tennyson.  I swallow Classicism as I would swallow Listerine.

Broadway—Yes!  The Bay Area is my playground.  Jessica Savitch dies in the Delaware Canal, philosophers ask for spare change but I digress, mein Kopf, Ihren Kopf, what the hell—normality.  Geometric streets sweep by, glowing stucco, and I eye the door to the other carriage.

Burlingame—Enough of pruned green trees already.  The other passengers do their nails and drink bad beer.  Nobody smokes.

San Mateo—A city rises up around the train, talk of croissants and foreign cities and David Bowie, I’ve got to move.  I get up and walk into the other carriage.

Hayward Park—Sounds of running water, marijuana smoke everywhere, a loadie beside me chain-smokes and reads the Bhagavad-Gita, what the hell kind of mess is this?  Someone spray-paints a window so the conductor sees nothing.  The conductor wears paisley and tinsel.

Bay Meadows—Crowds of color writhe and gamble, no need to get off, we pull our own slot machine and come up with four bars.  Long-haired elves with movie cameras film all and no one cares, people suntan, people dance.  Get with it!

Hillsdale—I awake dreamless in the aisle, the conductor poking me playfully.  Strobe lights and lava lamps twirl through the smoke, the carriage behind dissolves and is forgotten.  Another cigarette as I watch two preppies shoot heroin.  Uh oh, I feel around for a parachute, but the only escape is to the last carriage, divided into small, gray cubicles, tattered satin curtains across the windows whereas here the curtains shimmer new as leaves in rain.

Belmont—Hills drift slowly past the windows, mirror hills of bodies fondle each other inside, cats jump about.  I slip and fall on piles of Quaaludes.  The commuters enter nervously, suckling briefcases and purses and Bibles and machine-guns, most of those run away but the few dance and stay.

San Carlos—Now actors are shaving their heads and slamming into the walls and diving off the luggage-rack.  I lean out the door for air, then back into the smell of puke and fake redwood, rollercoast into grams of cocaine, piles of pills, a Goodyear of nitrous oxide, enough marijuana to keep an American Bedroom Community stoned for a decade.  I read Nietzsche and understand him at last.

Redwood City—A hypodermic syringe flies across the carriage vibrating nervously in the seat a foot from my head.  Empty wine bottles float past the conductor.  The police run from broken chairs.  I dive under the seats as some jump through broken windows.  All right, who the fuck tied my shoelaces together?

Atherton—The screams of Europe-bound jets and Lou Reed wrecks the carriage, the Dead die and the living die, syringes fly like African darts, books spontaneously combust and sentiments rust.  I crawl to the door and at

Menlo Park—I fall out and hit my head on a “USA Today” rack.  When I am awake the black commuters are reading my last rites from Las Vegas motel Bibles.  Ouch!  Time to walk.

Palo Alto—Dentists and auto body shops.  Neat apartments.  Green tree streets.  Fog everywhere.

Stanford—Yellow foxtails pierce my socks, broken glass cuts my nerve.  Tawny buildings with bloody roofs wall me in.

California Avenue—Shopping centers, falling money.  Where is the train?  I’ve already lost half my brain.

Castro—Thumbing madly through scrapbooks produces no effect, some kind of defect, the way to survive is to stay alive.

Mountain View—Country-Western grows cactus in my ears.  Ignoring the blood does no good.  Mexican food and beer keep sanity.

Sunnyvale—The train pulls in slowly.  A pile of unused plane coupons litters the dirt as I pull out my train ticket.  The conductor is wearing paisley.  He will not take my ticket, I get on anyway.

Lawrence—Is this the same train?  Faces look familiar.  They paint, talk, laugh among themselves.  I sit and wait.

Santa Clara—I sit and wait.  Faces from the past run along the train and scream at me to get off.  From the next carriage I am invited in.  I sit and wait.  No one speaks to me.

College Park—Smog cloaks white stucco.  Hot air awakens old spirits.  I sit and wait.  No one speaks to me.  I sit and wait.  I sit and wait.  My high school yearbook smashes the window and hits me in the head.

San Jose—I get off, rub the cut in my head.  The Caltrain pulls away, back to San Francisco, it goes sadly, I forget to lay my head on the rails before it.  An Amtrak train pulls in going the opposite way, L.A., the conductor in shorts and sandals with a surfboard.  He invites me aboard.  I feel for a parachute but find only this notebook.  Laugh and I begin to write.

October 1986

VIVISECTION MALE AND FEMALE

 

Under fluorescent ice cream lamps a man and a woman sit
blood running sweet and clasping hands sweat
Say you that broken bottles do not litter hills overlooking cities
decadent neon palaces of Rome, vibrating motel beds
cable television, shy touching hands of dead years
reborn in soft lips, burning
Say you that lovers do not clasp on dark beaches, hanging on
rather than fall up into that vacuum of grave-sparkled night
lifeless ocean, barren earth, or concrete-towered city
Say you that hair is not soft and perfume is not pleasant
hands are meant for pockets and bodies for desks
eyes for books and feet for shoes
beds for sleep and earth for burial
Say you that talk is cheap and truth is lie and love is death
and life is death,
Say you that and I will die for you.

 

On hills overlooking cities stand alone,
the fabric of a million lives spun beneath your feet
know no connection but your eyes, no life but your own
and call yourself happy
In crowds of dancing drunken people stand alone
a hundred bodies twirl in a sweaty ballet about you
sink deeper into your winter coat, your winter aura, no flesh but yours
and call yourself fulfilled
Say you that we are but snapshots, a pose here
a partner there, another partner here, a mood, a moment
staring at the past and laughing, regretting
rejecting the present and forgetting the future
Say you that we must certainly die alone anyway
and I will believe you,
and I will turn and walk away.

October 1986

THE COFFEE SHOP
(for Ship’s Restaurant, Glendon and Wilshire; after Mr. John Abbott)

 

A crowd of thousands, daily
once and forever, teenagers all
stab the penpoint through the paper
remove the handcuffs, decisively
demand the shaving brush, expectantly
and order a la mode, incredibly
often they sweat in the heat of mid-August
the money-wise, sneer and cry “Fiddlehead!”
the stride of Sunset Boulevard, abrasively
the green and brick through a microbe wall
never knowing where the blow may fall
and afterwards a cup of coffee, spiritually

October 1986

PERPETUAL NICOTINE
(for the American Tobacco Company)

 

This cigarette kills the taste of 8 am Corn Flakes.
This cigarette watches endless television.
This cigarette waits on a bus bench in the rain.
This cigarette ponders city lights on cocaine.
This cigarette takes plane flights at sunset.
This cigarette feels the salty breeze of the seashore.
This cigarette fills desk lamps with a strange fog.
This cigarette endures the hottest and most humid of days.
This cigarette glows in the back of dark nightclubs.
This cigarette keeps you from dying of boredom.
This cigarette irritates you when there’s no ashtray.
This cigarette can’t be smoked in (            ).  (Fill in the blank)
This cigarette is incense.
This cigarette makes you cough when you’re sick.
This cigarette is for writing poetry.
This cigarette is for your friend.
This cigarette is for some fool on the street.
This cigarette rots in a beer bottle full of cigarettes.
This cigarette entertains you in front of strobe lights.
This cigarette loves the Pepsi Generation.
This cigarette knows where your children are.
This cigarette will make you want another beer.
This cigarette will make you want another cigarette.
This cigarette will make you give up smoking.
This cigarette will mellow you out, man, hopefully.
This cigarette cost you your last dollar.
This cigarette controls you, or you it?
This cigarette has nothing to do with philosophy.
This cigarette is your next to last.
This cigarette is your last.
This cigarette is deadly.

November 1986

POINT FERMIN
(for Miss Alexandra Stephens, Miss Cristin Sullivan and Miss Cinderella Walker)

 

If you fall asleep on the train, they usually do not wake you up,
High upon the cliff in the lifeless morning, the sea
barely visible through a thick fog, the very sound of waves
muted by the gray coffin, I stand silent and watch.
The fog clears, only for an instant
Across the harbor stretches a row of empty tankers rocking
gently on the black sea.  The lighthouse beats halfway to the moon.
Long Beach, invisible, divisible, hidden from the world, black satin
The gaily lit city’s a deity supreme
Below a tanker as the rest
Broken and beaten on the rocks of Point Fermin
the rest rocking rocking as blackbirds on a telephone line
or doves at the feet of the sleeping men in Pershing Square.
Further down there is a woman on a lower point
leaning on a railing, mocking me
a narrow inlet of the sea separating us, nothing compared
to the nervous motions of our hands.
She wears sunglasses, round and black, she looks back
Behind the same gray emptiness I can see behind her frozen head.
The fog returns, hiding the barren ships, the sea
even as the hum of Terminal Island dies like mosquitoes at dawn
then the woman grows fuzzy, until all that is left
is a pair of black sunglasses and my own black coat.
I would cut my wrists just to have color again.
I stand silent and watch from the tip of Point Fermin, looking down.
The woman will surely come over to me,
but this time at least I will be gone.

November 1986

CURSON LOOKOUT

 

The Downtown skyscrapers cut so sharp, so black, painless hurt
The only thing on TV is Scott Baio and professional golf.

December 1986

HIGHWAY 126

 

In Fillmore at night you can see the stars.

December 1986

SANTA CRUZ

 

In San Francisco, rain and fog, a cloudy, downbeat day
Madness eats the City, you need to get away,
Your habit it is calling, and you haven’t got a dime,
Well brudder, listen to my song, it will advise you fine.

 

Take the green Pacific Highway, it winds you know not where,
When you smell the Brussels sprouts, you know you’re almost there,
Past the pounding breakers and the surfers puffing reef,
Far from the City’s psychos, deviants and freaks,
And remember, when you’re feeling blue,
Tonight, there’s a full moon over Santa Cruz!

 

Santa Cruz, you can breathe the air, you can buy a cappuccino
From a les with green hair,
Santa Cruz, we can go to the Mall, or maybe just sit and
Stare at the wall!
We can surf, chat, drop tabs, have a fling,
Go hike in Ben Lomond, ring-a-ding-ding!
We can get punks to suck our toes,
Oooh, it’s so erotic, don’tcha know!
We could go to skool, sell our souls, save a coupla bucks,
Go to a show, we could see Camper Van, we could have some fun,
Man, Pizza My Heart, I could puke up my lunch!
We could hitch to Salinas or Berkeley,
We could even go to Watsonville and strike the Cannery!

 

So girls and boys, gather ‘round if you don’t know what to do,
Your uptight suburban friends have you feeling quite uncool,
You want to have some good clean fun, with tan lines not a one,
Just remember, when you’re feeling blue,
Tonight, there’s always a full moon over Santa Cruz!

April 1987

HOLLYWOOD

 

I’m not from Fresno, Sacramento, Gardena or Mission Viejo,
I’m not from the Heartland, I’ve got an attitude that just can’t fail.
It was hot that day, when we went away,
I was sweating like a pig, or so you said,

We put the top down, on the convertible,
We looked like movie stars and maybe we should,
‘Cause we’re from Hollywood.

 

It was a dark night at the topless show, the Ivar was packed,
Babe, I don’t know, the girl went home from work
And put her lava lamp on, she had a poster of Andy Gibb on her wall,
She ate Granola kept in a Hefty Bag,
She had a kitty, but she fed it to her snake,
She was creepy, but she looked okay,
I suppose she should, she lives in Hollywood.

 

An agent’s party, man, what a fucking bore,
Wait, check out her lip, she’s got an open sore,
Hell, bring out the cocaine, do it up right,
We’ll drive on Mulholland, off the cliff to the night,
Society I love you oops goodbye,
Beverly Hills is not the place for my kind of guy,
I like low rent, I shoplift cologne,
I wear a Walkman, fuck leave me alone!
I want to please, I’d be on my knees, don’t you think that I would?
I live in Hollywood.

August 1987

THE EXPLODING SUN

 

Squatting at a smooth bar,
the world spins the sun into our faces.
Helicopters spear the city with their searchlights.
The black-and-whites swarm as gulping fish
at Melrose and Normandie, waiting for their fantasies of us
to materialize, and ours of them.
Great roaches and rats, devouring the garbage below, cats
watch above, licking teeth, I kick over the garbage cans
and send them flying, controlling, waiting, powerless, pissed,
happy.  Nothing seems to shock any more.

 

Maureen is talking about suicide and it sounds quite erotic.

 

We chat happily of the failures of our friends, a great
communal psychic burnout, we’re all sailing a great happy
stoned ship of speed and heroin and grass from Berkeley
into the Golden Gate sunset.  Suppose the sun exploded?

 

Our karma would be instantly leveled,
Beverly Hills and Willowbrook, Laguna Beach and Pico Rivera,
cops and criminals, housewives and the strippers at the Ivar Theatre,
UCLA professors and the lobotomized women in sundresses who scream
on Hollywood Boulevard, me and everyone in soft-focus, black-and-white,
all reduced to ash.

 

No more driving off great imagined dead-end freeways
into an exploding sun, no more Jim Morrison, no more Hendrix,
no more elbow-to-table drunken frustrations,
no more explanations about what Louie or Charlie or
Karen or Alicia or Ellen or Robert or Crissy actually meant,
because meaning is not crashing this party any more.
Suicide is outski; the Statue of Liberty frozen in copper.

 

The sun created this mess
and the sun will have to fucking end it.

November 1987

BORN IN TORRANCE;
(for Miss Alicia Orner)

 

Land, sea, and sky, oh yeah
Horses, trees, paths, TV sets on all the time, for sure
When yogurt drips on your shoes:  Del Amo Fashion Center
When mountains crumble into the ocean:  Portuguese Bend
Boats float, cars drive, houses sit on hills, people fuck
You watch
Everyone looks down on a flat birthplace
Moon a dying headlight in Palos Verdes
Formica is an easy clean with a wet sponge
A glance, anger, frustration
Disappearance.  The virtue of travel to distant cities
never to return to Palos Verdes, the cliffs,
Redondo, the white sand, or even to Torrance; the kids say
Hey, let’s go orchestrate some damage in Torrance
Everyone looks down on a flat birthplace

November 1987

MARGINALITY
(for Miss Maureen Upton)

 

She reaches across a Formica table for the stem of a glass,
its precious intoxication glittering in the Santa Monica sun
The flat city revolves past our window, gray maze
later rushing past an automobile window for what must have been…

 

How many times did we smoke?
Lips sought wood, lungs seeking pleasure,
brain seeking unconsciousness.

 

We looked at each other occasionally, my city rushed by.

 

Television was watched, movies watched, friends watched.

 

Our parents are conversed with, subdued, lied to; phone calls made.

 

I am far away from the summer crowds of life, writing and watching
and sometimes my fingers brush your sleeve.  Anger and
confusion and desire
are laughed away.  We roar into the night,
city rushing by.  Lights out in elevator, Spanish for distraction
Your red hair is still the same.

 

In early morning sun we awaken to unconsciousness
A friend sits in her house, trebled by mirrors, glaring
A babble of nervous relatives, every picture on the wall
seen and unseen, smelled and unsmelled, touched and untouched,
fucked and unfucked.  We see but go without
change the channel, hang up the phone, get out of the car, the
soaps are on, we count the minutes, arrange hair and schedules,
slam the doors behind us, the race is on
waiting for someone
to drag us off
to hell
or home

November 1987

PICTURES OF ELLEN
(for Miss Ellen Read Baird)

 

Waking up on Venice Beach, sticky with spray, the ocean’s cool hand
burning with the western sun, lighting my first cigarette
of the afternoon, alone, it tastes of salt

 

I look at pictures of Ellen, black and white
lighting cigarettes, typing, looking into the camera
at the man behind it, always black and white
and beside her Bruce eating, Louie staring, Megan sleeping
John drinking, Dan waiting, Belinda driving, James smirking
my friends trapped, reflected through my glasses
like a prism bending light into rainbows, yeah, that’s it

 

I a satellite, orbiting, over Los Angeles at times,
Berkeley at others, looking down on them

 

Looking at Barrington Hall
loving it from far away, hating the near
loving Ellen from far away, hating the nearest
myself I suppose, orbiting like a goddamn satellite
spying on them
falling into the atmosphere and
burning up

November 1987

THE CENTURY FREEWAY

 

Weeds are now sprouting from dry earth
where the Century Freeway shall be sown
The stems and leaves twist, interweave
coalesce into houses, roads, fences, cars, people.
Every hundred years the Century Plant of the Andes sends up
a thirty-foot shoot, growing, hardening, dying, scattering seeds
The stem hardens into black towers, scatters seeds of light
The root hardens into gray channels, binds miles of earth
On fallow ground, houses fall; roots come in, the stem soars
hardening, concrete conducts, glass reflects
from Inglewood to Norwalk, a new root grows, already giving, taking
Weeds are now sprouting from dry earth
where the Century Freeway shall be grown
waiting to be uprooted
by the greatest weed of all

November 1987

APPLE OF HIS EYE

 

She comes and goes redly, yellowly,
prancing the halls like the great drunken Queen of Babylon
and all the while the Sun drags the Earth round
trees drink from the mossy banks of the Santa Ynez
the Mokelumne, and she mustn’t flush the toilet
and disturb their equilibrium
just because
a certain shade of light green hangs low in the sky.
A certain neon sign over Broadway is flashing flashing flashing
Everyone has given up hope of ever being.
There she is again, laughing and laughing, with some other hippie,
proving all hippies look alike to some people.
Driving screaming laughing,
the apple of his eye, the apple of my eye, the apple
that spins on the Beatles album as crinkled foil drifts
drops drops drops sparkling, burnt
measuring time and silencing mouths, making payback
screaming driving laughing
somewhere (maybe Hawai’i?) palms are gently swaying
Las Vegas billboard charm on the Highway to Heaven Happiness
looking at the trees and saying, you you you, me me me, nothing
can stay
but everything else must disappear.  Go
like the apple itself, oblivion, whole, smooth, encapsulation
rotting
and then, you know, she will, grow anew.

May 1988

THE MISSION

 

The Phoenix arises from multicolors, brick and wood
fanning the cold breeze, bringing light and sound
and happiness to all in the Mission
drawing a net from hill to hill, brick and wood
Walgreen’s, shopping for batteries to power
Sharon’s electric vibrator, camera, meter, existence, hanging out
the dark, recent scars, musicians, beard, train, rush, bustle,
of 16^th and Mission
hungry, hungry, walking amongst double-parked cars
the rush of air from the subway, untuned motor
rushing, rushing, from high ceiling to high ceiling,
gilded mouldings, glittering neon, the great brown snake of eyes
coiling down the Mission, Quetzalcoatl, tourists, the mission,
saving, dancing, serving, being, feeling, ordering, wondering,
walking, laughing, loving, puking, knowing, begging,
bringing happiness to all, bringing light and sound,
on a plate, arroz y frijoles
a red apron, crooked teeth, soul, glittering neon
stone-deaf in my collegiate agony
I reach for the tequila
the bell rings out, San Francisco melting into the night,
dark, light, the time when it always assigns
the task, the duty, the obligation, the trip, the need,
the Mission.

May 1988

HOLLYWOOD HOPELESS
(for Councilman Michael Woo and the CRA)

 

Closer, pal, closer, can’t hear proper over the jackhammers.
Are you friend, foe, or absolute chiseler?
Do you live within walls of stucco, or the great hot boundary
of sea, sky, smog, subway, street, sympathy, sun, substance?
A great disaster has befallen Hollywood, California.
Every drunken biker, prostitute, madman and executive
of Paramount (last of Them) knows it is so.
Great brick edifices, defaced, crumble to fool’s gold and neon.
You fellows in flowered shorts, do you feel the power in your feet,
to turn, walk, buy, convert, demolish, develop?
To demystify the Tick Tock, banish the Broadway,
raze Hotel Hell to its venerable foundations.
Tunneling worms, surface!  Link the city, cripple the spirit
of everything that was.  The Red Car, gone, Whitley Heights,
divided, whores, busted, men, salaried, sidewalks, washed.
Spirits that remain, hovering, fade into haze and memory.
Pal, you can’t imagine a dry martini west of Vermont any more.
A name, a place, a concept, an attraction, a planet, a galaxy,
a plant.
The name and the plant remain, up in the hills.
But down below, as usual, is only money.
H-O-L-L-Y-W-O-O-D.  Thank god for the Mexicans.
Pink, gray, blue, brown.  Gold.  Silver nitrate.
As Kenneth Anger said, sooooo TACK-EE.

October 1988

CHILD’S SHOES
(for Miss Cristin Sullivan)

 

Racing bits of flesh, by car or plane
entertaining thoughts of victory or gratification on the Interstate
in cheap San Diego motel rooms, in our own minds
living for closed mouths, brains, feelings
knowing not then or when but only now are suffering the possibility of youth.

 

We rode a drunken Volvo across spans of steel
into the lights of San Francisco
kissing, touching, forgetting, scheming,
but we mustn’t be unfair, no never unfair to anyone
no matter the cost to ourselves.

 

She found a pair of child’s shoes abandoned in a playground
shaking the sand off like evil spirits
consulting the cards and finding doubt and destruction
discovering degradation in self-knowledge
fearing the fate of the child, her shoes cast off
in San Francisco, animals prowl, the back seat of a drunken Volvo,
letting fate abuse, people misuse one.

 

And after years of shattered faith and love,
interspersed gyrations of dying suns,
to say farewell and cast me off like child’s shoes
may be right or wrong but never possible
as a drunken Volvo under drifting stars, consulting the cards for chaste advice
living and loving and tossing aside,
if the shoe fits, wear it!

October 1988

DIANE LANE AS A SYMBOL FOR THE IMPOSSIBLE

 

Sheltered from the rains in a cold womb of Malibu
I wait for dirty Kathy to slide across the dark pass
Fleeing from our dirty Valley.
An imported beer and a cigarette provide small diversion
For my gloved hands, as I observe Them
Sliding their credit cards, clinking their drinks
Chewing their steaks, while cautiously keeping tabs on me
A representative of the City come to haunt them
As if the Seventies had melted into the hard rain.
I am not from Malibu.
I have no connection to it save the road I entered on
Where I remember only the calamities I saw in my youth.
Blood everywhere, gone by morning, and often
On a night like this, and Kathy is late, and to be late
On a wet Friday bides the end of everything.
So this is Ali McGraw’s place, I’ve heard
But that represents nothing but heavy bread
And abundant cocaine and overplayed death scenes to me.
In Malibu as in Van Nuys, but played out grandly
An Olympus for us mere mortals to sing of
The thick walls shielding Caesar from the mob
Demanding the music of the poet, as the mob
Goes about its business.
And here’s Diane Lane.
Diane Lane, I think, another one of Them
Perhaps fresh from a strange interlude with Emilio
Or River or Nick or Mickey or Matt.
Or maybe your horizons broaden with impossibility
You crave to follow the Sufis of Hyderabad
Make the rocky climb from Searchlight to Fort Piute
Touch Mabel Normand’s house on the Kill van Kull
Cast for trout in the Idaho wilderness
Or maybe just have a moment of anonymity
With the comfort of an imported beer and a smoke.
Kathy, you are really late.
And here’s Diane Lane, my feet stuck in clay
Put up on a coffee table, entranced
As you tap the counter in boredom, waiting for a table
Between Those envious of your success, They the blasé bread
And You, as we say in the Industry, are the hot meat.
Maybe I should enter the fracas, nothing ruthless, mind you
Just the urge to hang around and sample
Piles of designer drugs as if it was
The tiniest bit different up at the top, or the middle
Or whatever position you have been handed this month.
We may be just alike, Diane Lane, but I will not
Stride upon your Olympus.
I am lost in Malibu, and I choose not to enter
With the slightest hope of toasting to Ali and Mike
And Ryan and Barbara and Martin and all the rest.
I have just recently vacated my own Olympus
A gray cloud of dying friends and dope along Avenue C.
I can smile at you knowingly
And you can smile back knowingly
But what we know is the impossibility of our smiles.
Maybe, Diane Lane, you have flown high in Lear jets
You have breathed fragrant Paris and Istanbul
You have sat in the Taj Majal, seen the Sigue of the Dogon
And caressed the breeze from the top of the Spanish Steps.
I have crossed Death Valley in August
And dropped acid on Kitt Peak
And shared the wind of the Sespes with the rare Condor
Swooping low and away from my rope-slung mortality.
So we are not so very different, just merely impossible.
I will not dine beside Francis Ford Coppola
Sipping champagne with brandy at some Industry bash
And you will not argue with a bum and a junk dealer
About the Lakers at Sixth and Main.
Today the dilemma holds me, fear and jealousy and anger
And pettiness, as I wait on your turf.
I smile, and you smile back.
I appreciate the gesture.
And Kathy, I wish you would hurry up!

June 1989

THE LEON TROTSKY

 

I am addicted to drugs.
I am addicted to the Leon Trotsky.
The Government knows my name.
I know every dealer in Berkeley
and a few people who don’t deal, I think.
The Leon Trotsky is a shot of vodka and a shot of tequila
(or more than a shot—be creative.  Ponder it.)
The revolutionary spirit and warm Catholic decadence,
Russian glasnost and Mexican pussy.  Chile peppers to taste.
Can you dig it?
I am addicted to the Leon Trotsky.
The Government knows my name.
Why not give them yours?

November 1989

WHY DO I CARE WHAT HAPPENS IN BERKELEY OR BERLIN?

 

I got the worst sunburn of my life
on the roof of Barrington Hall, while building the
stile next to the laundry room.  Yeah, that was me,
I built that.  And I painted two doors and a few walls
and one stairwell.  I believe this gives the right
to me, to go to the General Manager of the USCA
and kick out his front teeth.  I am 24 years old, and
big enough to do it.
But I won’t.  Berkeley can take care of itself.
Ruca, estás en ganchos, ándale, bato loco, con tu fierro
y tus frajos, ódale.  Vamos a Los Angeles, a libertad y vida.
I have good news.  The Universe does not center on you.
Die Berliner Mauer stand offen, aber
meine eigene Mauer ist ganz fest, ganz massiv,
danke.

November 1989

THE MACHINE

 

IT lies in wait, on its own table, the red-eyed Cyclops
unwinking, hypnotizing one into a force field
of wires light power, hands mouths situations.

 

A network of coral lips, activists, Hollywood wet sidewalk
crawlers, inveterate masturbators, hammer-pounding
ex-musicians, my fair-weather friends and friends caught
in sudden Colorado to New York atmospheres, New Year’s
think-aheaders and computer-bound bill collectors,
poised all on cordless government-tapped receivers,
they reach the machine.

 

The machine repeats my mantra, my motto, my password,
my philosophy:  Sorry, can’t come to the phone.  Can’t be
reached.

 

I reach the machine.  Pick up the phone, I know you’re home.
You’re just hiding.  You’re dead, in hospital, at work.
The phone rings on and on, you’ve forgotten the machine.
I missed your gig, your party, your reception, your opening,
your life, your smiles, your generous gifts of intoxication.
Sorry, can’t come to the phone.  Leave a message, a hope.
I’m just hiding.

 

Listen:
hang-ups, curses, tearful plaintive wails, addresses,
invites, forced comedy, information, disinformation,
lying shitheel jerks and naive out-of-body requests.
I am not a hospital, a clinic for battered egos.

 

My machine will be in touch with your machine.
Maybe we will be together.
I sit in the dark and stare into the unblinking Cyclops,
waiting for the machine, my soul, to be activated.  Me and
my machine, we wait together, not for my love, she doesn’t
call, she doesn’t write, she has no machine.  But I do, and
in the dark we stare at each other and wait.
I have a machine, or more properly, I have a world

 

BEEP.

January 1990

DIEGO AND ALTHEA
(for Miss Amy Barbanel)

 

The club lights glitter off our wet eyes
and in rings on the tables, through our drinks
An unblinking light, warm like blood
and as quickly cut off
Never to know its convoluted patronage
our half-hearted aspirations
the mistakes of passion
or childish times of Christmas and itching powder.

 

Days of snow and sand and faded photographs
Forgotten remonstrance and delights of warm chocolate
The joys of long sleeps, or a first night without sleep
The joys of youth and backwards running
and dreams of Diego and Althea.

 

Diego who stands up to every dare and challenge we shirked
Althea who soothes every pain we suffered under
Our love that was beyond words
is transmuted into flesh, and thus destroyed
Our eyes study the rings on the table
the love stronger now in its emptiness
Or is it?

 

The light sparkles in those wet rings, my eyes
I lie in my car, listening to the rain pound it
Our eyes separate, inconsolable, inconceivable
for two make one, and we cannot even maintain one
ourselves.
The rain does not conceal any sobbing,
but only a worse silence.

4 February 1990

CHAIN LETTER

 

To whom it may concern:
            Take this letter, rush to the copy place and make five copies, then send them to five people you know.  Then kill yourself in the manner of your own choosing.  Do not fail to send this letter to your friends; do not fail to commit suicide; do not break the chain.  If you do, the human race will destroy all life on the planet Earth.  Thank you.
                                                                        Sincerely,
                                                                        Concerned Environmentalist

15 March 1990

THE SPANISH SOAP OPERA

 

My puffer fish is staring at the Spanish soap opera,
and I am staring at it.
Its weird eyes swivel back at me
and I am staring at the ceiling
whose cracks are shaped something like México.

 

On the Spanish soap opera two women are chatting frantic;
her brother is a morphine addict.
It is ninety-five outside, humid and smoggy
the City is seething with Mexicans and their children
and their hot peppers and their desires.
The puffer nibbles at its worms
a ball, like Shirley curled up on her couch,
her rainbow skirt and her pained smile glittering
in the dust of the barrio.

 

The women are still chatting frantic;
their Spanish hot and stinging in the soporous air
like a thunderstorm of beer and chile colorado.
Outside they are screaming
Spanish soap opera
the bus roaring by
the scrap yards smashing old Chevys
while the families picnic in the dirt between pools of oil.

 

Linda and Rebecca puff off their bong.
Dogs rage barking in the barrio, filling the air
vicious happy anger, bringing out the snakes
the Los Angeles white dripping sunlight and dust.
The great plain of the City rises out of the dust.

 

I hear the Los Angelenos, yelling as they attack Fort Moore
Richard Dreyfus races by David Hockney, where
Valentino did, where Tiburcio Vasquez did, where I
did, my splintered car
Frozen like the eye of the puffer
fixed on my frozen prostrate form
eating tamales in fields of dirt and broken glass
fields of Malibu wildflowers and the tracks of racing
Porsches.

 

Nancy takes a nap.  Hank reels drunkenly across his apartment.
Sin and Amy fly to Atlanta.  Planes are silent in the sky.
Daniel mashes his guitar into the amplifier speakers.  Tom
grins at the art opening.
Ruca, estás muy tarde; rucas están siempre muy tarde,
porque tienen sesos pequeños.  Todo, es verdad.
The two women fading in and out of the static
Spanish soap opera.

2 April 1990

VOICES
(for Miss Maureen Upton)

 

I hang up the phone and your voice is no longer with me.

 

The rumble of resolve and the lilt of insight
The rustle of smooth hair and the laughter hissing
through your small teeth, full of control and wishes.

 

I shake and jones for another fix of your voice,
I pace restlessly and fill ashtrays with your voice,
and I dial again, taste another sweet fruit, the juice
dripping from my mouth and staining my clothes
and warming my coldness.

 

I call madly, hungry, and make my weak replies,
to keep them on the line.

 

The voices soothe, they comfort, not as yours, but a little
sweet, only a rush, a cheap high, a rip-off
then the come-down, the tweak, the slow burn
filled with silence and isolation, the telephone sits inert
but it screams and laughs and begs and cries behind a solid
door three-thousand miles thick, and thin as air.

 

Outside I listen to the voices, echoing in a fog, yelling
over the music, whispering in a library.

 

I pulled my hat over my face, just listening, leaning against
the wall and letting their voices coil like a rhapsody and
put me to sleep;
peering at their legs, imagining them to be yours,
their voices yours, your blank salesgirl stare and your
too-wide smile suddenly nearby,
and my soul that is yours is then theirs
until your voice climbs through the phone from your
constant recline, to caress me and
sound upon me
again.

October 1990

TAKING THE WHEEL
(for Miss Kay Koch)

 

The limousine rocks at anchor in a river of tinted light
and you sway with it, subway experience
your demon outfit glimmering, your horns shimmering
with the chaser lights which find the vodka in me
and blind me.  The world is 96 inches long and the air loud.
Feet are planted on the plastiwood paneling in defiance.

 

The limousine bounces slowly along, directionless,
and the alcohol reflects only from the lowest corner of
its bottles, surrounded by reclining rock heroes.

 

You scream instructions through the partition to the driver.
Legs cross legs and lips meet lips, one is just as good
as any other one.
You take the wheel, excuse me, LISTEN UP:
plunge your trident into the tardy and the oblivious,
wake them, yeah right, uh uh.
Turn inward, eyes glaze over, sway, go away.
See that bit of sleepy freedom, nod, lunge for it.  Brush your
hair into your face and take the wheel.

 

Bodies are shoved together in our limousine, music wall style,
and you are gone, roaring away, your hair flowing out behind
and the motorcycle hopping in a friendly way across potholes
on the southbound Santa Ana, the air alternately cool and warm,
dream of it, the world now obscured by darkness
bonded to your dark jacket in hazy brilliance.

 

Believe it or not, I’m trying to understand the lyrics
of this heavy metal band, and you let your head loll on
my shoulder, and I slam my feet hard on the plastiwood,
and light a cigarette, and smoke it intentionally,
as the limousine bounces slowly along, directionless,
and you have taken the wheel
and driven away.

31 October 1990

DESPERATION TIME

 

(This is for Lou Reed fans everywhere.  Idea thought of on a certain hard drug; day was spent at the unemployment office and the track.  Picked a 6-1 horse in the ninth.)
Boredom glare stands like a perpendicular white wall
Needle invisible against fluorescent flesh
Shoes & beers click loud on concrete floor
Eyes small pupils but glitter dully
Women blood red lips
Melrose hamburger lip smack
Blood dripping cold invisible
Pulling on beards to establish their authenticity
Art scene whoop-dee-doo no English solid symbolism
Nodding head no interest throbs with VU
Thinking about my front brake pads and of red-headed women again
Bundled against white New York snows
Not hearing you excuse me, pardon me
Seeing her chest under a heavy coat
Descending and rising in a hot icy whiteness.

November 1990

DOROTHY PARKER

 

There you are, at last:  I see you
after two Irish coffees, sitting in the Algonquin,
passing some remark to Alexander Woollcott, on some
young dandy strolling in out of the snow, or perhaps
that old codger by the door, ringing imperiously for
the nearsighted waiter;
drinking yourself into a lovely oblivion, from loneliness.

 

A lot has changed.
Now I am here, speaking to no one, as the stockbrokers and
the Japanese tourists wouldn’t catch on to the witty remarks,
and the old codger only speaks German;
drinking myself into a lovely oblivion, from loneliness.

 

In New York City there are three, four times as many people.
You wouldn’t recognize them, Miss Parker, but they are out there,
pimping, hustling, selling stolen car batteries out of
baby strollers, trying to score smack on Avenue B, selling
their clothes, living in boxes, living in the subway tunnels,
beating and raping the unwary, bragging about the crime inflicted
on them, hating each other, faking British accents, shooting
each other at random, studying the ads on the D train,
gentrifying, screaming, shopping, putrefying,
getting rich and getting dead, making the grade and making
the Post, tearing down everything you remember,
dear Miss Parker.

 

And busy busy busy, this New York City, maintaining that image
you gave it, that of Gotham without bound, or was that “Batman”?
And even at the Strand you are gathering dust, while I sit in
the Algonquin, drinking Irish coffee and eating the peanuts,
while New York is not reading you, and probably not remembering
you, except for me, dear Miss Parker.

 

Be glad of that, as one is usually enough,
and as you might have put it,
just getting one
can be kinda rough.

January 1991

SLAM LOCK
(for Miss Megan Howard and Mr. Peter Spagnuolo)

 

The air is thick and white around two bridges.

 

One arches high above the East River,
glassy black and warmly inviting under the snow,
which filters through the bridge cables and obscures
the glittering mountains of Manhattan.

 

One divides the horizon beneath an obese red sun,
which lights the manzanita afire,
that grows out of the boulders and gravel
clogging the width of the Tujunga Wash,
until a fog floats down from the hard, sharp ridge
of the Sierra San Gabriel.

 

Everywhere is the minty chatter of water,
flowing into the yielding stones and
loudly smooching with the wooden piers,
trickling out of a fire hydrant and
melting the snow in the gutter.

 

The snow crackles on my skin, as I rub it on my face,
my eyes burning in an allergic reaction to Megan’s cats.
The sand moans in my ear, as I wake up in a cold sweat,
nearly buried in a cold, black beach, the tide at my feet.
The water reassures, louder than the Golden State Freeway,
louder than the D Train, overwhelming all the machines
in all the cities of all the planets of all the stars,
forever rolling forward in eternal love.

 

Sitting here in the Tujunga Wash, I look into the eyes of
an iguana, and my watch bites me, and I run away.  The water
hides my fleeing car, and the comforting whispers
of Peter and Megan, as they help me out the door
and into the snow.

 

The snow crackles on my skin, as I rub it on my face,
hearing only the water, but then the scraping of their
steel door, and loudest of all,
the solid click of their slam lock.

March 1991

ABUL-HOAL

 

An ant marches into my desert
and onto the face of the sun
Under the gaze of Abul-Hoal
whose tunnel eye stretches back and black
to an invisible galaxy of innumerable stars
scattered under the polluted breath
of the city confronting itself in the mirror;
a chain of bodies linked by genitals,
by telephone cords, by hands holding forth cash

 

Help me, O Abul-Hoal,
as I march into your desert
the tips of my fingers tracing the line of stones
under the sky that is empty, land that is empty,
and my soul that is empty;
I leave the auction, stand down, disembark, hang up
on the world where souls are let and love charges rent
My own soul not being a flower,
no hovering bees or gripping hands
to pick and trample; no, I am more like your stones
My soul is not for sale, not for rent
it is given away; but the auction continues
the ants shred their prey
and I am peddled off like a whore

 

Abul-Hoal, I am here, I am in your desert,
your Bekaa, your As Sahra’ Al Libiyah, your Badiyat Ash Sham,
your Kalahari, your Gibson, your Gobi Or Shamo, your Sonora,
your Patagonia, your Ar Rub’ Al Khali, your Mojave,
I wait beneath your sun, an ant crawls across
the desert of that soul
Ask me your riddle, and like my poor sister before me,
in my solitude I will know your answer

 

Inshallah.

March 1991

EL ARROYO SALADO
(for Mr. Robert Barkaloff)

 

Floating along that line, the double yellow one, into another
the horizon, jagged and obscured
one infinite, one indeterminate;
We enter the Desert.
Palm trees drop through the headlights in a warm haunting
Scattered farm lights burn halogen stars in the
far and few between, demarcating the sky mirror of the Sea
We pull hard on our leashes, stretched taut
a hundred miles of freeway, highway, dirt road, then
pull harder, into the dead Arroyo Salado.
A groundcloth our city; shortwave bringing news of empire
to our distant outpost, wrapped in skins against the cold,
puffing on cheap Mexican grass and suspended
in the center of the great void of stars,
hissing at us across light years, millions of civilizations
chanting in German on the shortwave,
dark but for the pink anticipation of the horizon.

 

In the morning’s heat I wake to a tiny plant
with a huge white flower and a small green caterpillar;
and then I see the desert of the Arroyo Salado
teeming with flowers and caterpillars.
The ocotillo reaches toward the sun with satanic fingers;
the air is blood, mothering and burning,
and as we cross the mountains above Borrego
I look back like Lot’s wife; into the desert
and see the indeterminate line, the horizon
a million miles wide and a million miles away,
the smile of my god, el Colorado, la Sonora
until I turn back to the double yellow, the leashes
pulling again on us
suckers

May 1991

O TRAIN

 

O train, I sit on the warm stones
along your tracks
as you near with singing
and roar with a brilliance ringing
Cars rushing by, the darkness embodied in dust
the rails rising and falling under your weight
I crawl close, full of single-mindedness
until a red light fades into the night
and I am left laying on the warm stones
the silence and time
and the unchanged, shapeless silhouettes
of the hills that are home.

June 1991

MALINCHE

 

La mujer como el vidrio, siempre esta en peligro.
Out of your black heart rises Cuauhtémoc on blistered feet,
above the roar of la Reforma, red-eyed in burning smoke,
the peseros snap your bones; a cornada inflicted
with every copita, every cheer of “Vuelta!”
to the languorous somnambulist
Mexico, el hijo de la chingada
Malinche, la Llorona, rich daughter of Coatzacoalcos
Sold and sold again, la Gran Puta
Your lover buried in villainy
Your name equated with treachery
Premature ejaculation results in a miscarriage,
afterbirth drowns the eagle in blood,
the snake devours its tail, forever eaten, forever eating,
and the cactus rots in the shadow of Spain.
Look, la Malinche, look at what you have brought
the lakes drained, the forest denuded
Popocatepetl lost in the smog
Tenochtitlan razed and Teotihuacan crawling with gringos.
Your smile burns through the smog and the shit-dust
onto your children, rushing to work and strolling the paseo,
Your footfall echoes in the corridors of the Metro
louder than all the trains and the musicians of Plaza Garibaldi,
All eyes on you in the cantina
and the jukebox plays a mournful dirge again and again,
stuck on “La Que Se Fue”
The city buried in your erotic moaning and brown skin results,
La Malinche, Malinulli, Mexico, la Llorona, la chingada,
la republica, tecuhtli and tlatlacotin.

3 October 1991

THE ARTIST’S SONG
(for Miss Helen Chung)

 

I sit in the midst of it all
and I watch you spin
I see Roger Herman collect them
to his sweet nectar
and expect his world to win
Henry parts the curtain drunkenly
and Helen spins into the footlamps
while Sue measures the parameters of the stage.

 

The art scene is set for the crowd
A pocket of glamour off a drab street
A glance meaningfully made through the window
The time is ours and so they said
in the pages of the magazine
and a vodka tonic later
life and art doth meet much the same
and love settles between us in an alcoholic fog
as I rest my hand lightly on Helen’s bare back
and in parting kiss her cheek.

June 1992

THE PICTURE BRIDGE
(for Mr. Matthew Thie and Miss Emma Parker)

 

At the Hotel:
A thin, chilling fog;, and the Mojave dust
clinging to my windscreen
create a double haze between the fluorescent sky
and my watery eyes.
I have just been with you, my sweets, for perhaps the last time.
The radio’s pounding smothers my heart
and the ornate Mediterranean hotel
blocks the Pasadena horizon in the shape of love.
Emma is on the floor without shoes, in a flowered dress
in the deepening darkness of the suite
a glass of champagne held, contemplated
while recounting the story of a huge black man
masturbating on a Greyhound bus in South Carolina
and my eyes, my ears are full of you
because you, dear Emma, are the only person in my world.

 

At the Delicatessen:
The waitress ignores us, refusing us fresh water
as we cross a desert of memory
and a group of teenagers mock their food
and eye us with the distrust of youth.
The soup and knishes warm
after two bottles of champagne
and I see a vision of palm trees embracing you
over a sun-baked Hindu temple
where you soon shall be, my sweets.
Matt, an animal, glazed look of prey in his eyes
slowly devours his potato pancakes
and probes Canter’s as if it is about to rape him
and my blood, my brain flows with yours
because you, dear Matt, are the only person in my world.

 

At the Picture Bridge:
Flung out from the old Huntington Hotel, an arm of light
in the humid night
is the Picture Bridge.
You stand apart, my sweets, disconnected from now
suspended in the rafters
while I focus my camera and work my memory’s tongue
long gone and far away
and at one moment you cerebrally decamp
and the next you are wrapped about one another
a tangle of legs, arms and soft lips
and I leave you there, my sweets, upon the Picture Bridge
or a Westlake parking garage, Clark Street Station,
the corner of Fortieth and Broadway, a cafe on Valencia,
a shack in Landers, a McDonald’s in Whittier, Terminal Five
at LAX, a bus shelter in Death Valley, wondering if
we would ever see or hear or touch again, you and I
or any of those others whom I had left
on a thousand other Picture Bridges.

29 July 1992

PLEASE WITHHOLD MY N.E.A. GRANT
(for Mr. Roger Herman and Mr. Henry Vincent)

 

A glass of the base white wine caressed in one hand
My eyes sculpt your form, as you share some
intercourse with Doug Christmas, a honeyed, blooming flower
awaiting my interlocution, my probing conversation
thrusting through the perspiring crowds around Craig Roper
peeping hollowly at Norton Wisdom’s passionate paintings
goaded by culture into the most heightened degree of lechery
the brackish, sweet essence of the grape passed
from tongue to tongue, in a name-dropping foreplay
After ringing your pager and fondling your machine
I was restrained by the teeming traffic
and slipped past Ray Pettibon and Mike Kelly from the front
so that we could begin copulating quietly in the back
yet somehow Robert Berman let things get out of hand
Hi! yells the chorus, Roger!  Henry!  What’s the action?
Slowly, on cue, everyone peels off their Westside clothes
and initiates fucking with each other
like a pack of wild, moaning, overeducated chimps
an intense Sargasso of sweaty, humping flesh, writhing
after the fashion of the Impressionists, flowing
in the style of the Expressionists
the ladies clutching at the men’s cocks, scratching them
with their long, painstakingly painted nails
and the gentlemen driving into receptive, humid pussies
with their well-tended Charles Eames dildos
all dripping with that quiet intensity
well-known to us art critics, who finger ourselves
while doing coke off an Ed Ruscha signed edition
thinking, mmm, just like the Salon in gay Paris,
Voulez-vous coucher avec moi, ce soir?
And our eyes glaze over in drunken ecstasy
as Robert Williams chants orders through his bullhorn
at the army of homeless who provide
the backdrop to our urbanity.
Then I hold up my MOCA card, flashing silver for all to see
and get invited to four parties in ten minutes
up in those fertile, lustful Hollywood Hills
where Mapplethorpe’s ghost haunts Karen Finley’s clique
and, upon arrival, I am confronted by an Otis lovely
with creamy skin, perky tits, a veritable young Diane Keaton
in granny glasses (and you know we can’t resist those glasses)
who grabs me, rubbing her mound on my leg, as I
draw brush strokes down her back, and inquires
as to my learned opinion of the art on exhibit
and in reply I offer my humble evaluation thus:
Please withhold their motherfucking NEA grants!

1 August 1992

RATTLER

 

I crouch silently on the curb
watching you slither in an angry circle
around the place where I watched
the tank-top men with their machetes
hack the head from your mate
in a spurt of red, cold life
in an orgasmic jerk
Those men who fear your fangs and their venom
and your lifelong devotion
Men who fear that which will not obey
which will not be petted or trained
who do not see you slither in the dry brush,
hungry for days, until you sink your fangs
into a slow-running rat
and sip from runoffs cloudy with men’s venom
already sick, as you curl along your mate
until the men’s fire drives you
into their concrete world
where they hold you down
and hack off your head
Go find them, my pet, who is untouched
except by the cold scale of your mate
now dead, find them,
bite them, drive them
out of the hills
back into the flatlands

28 August 1992

THE CITY OF JOSIES
(for Miss Josie Wechsler and Mr. Andrew Durham)

 

Bouncing through the spotlights along the bar
the stepping-stones to stardom
glitter in a nervous, flashy smile
one Josie alone
in a city full of Josies
in the low-ceilinged groove spot
on a celluloid high
timing your encounters
like a whirly-gig, ever faster
just trying to keep up
Producer, Director, Actor
waiting upon a gold statuette
or perhaps a general consensus
to disappear
into the stellar Hollywood night
while the drinking and dancing continues
in our City of Josies

1 September 1992

IN THE EAST MOJAVE

 

The sun set behind the Kelso Dunes,
all aglow in royal purple and shimmering gold,
the distant Bristol Mountains black and cold
against the red sky.  We drove down the empty road
into the empty valley, down past the Joshua Trees
and the desert rocks into Kelso,
an empty town next to empty railroad tracks.

 

I stand before Kelso Depot, looking south
at the dark Providences, and the dim light in the Dunes
where the hippies are setting up their rocket.

 

Robert is on the phone behind me in the dark,
the only phone for thirty miles in every direction,
talking to Ralph in Vermont.

 

I hear him laugh through the sound of the wind,
a warm wind blowing through the palm trees.

 

A dead cottonwood has fallen across
the old brick path from the tracks to the depot,
flanked by a pair of broken lampposts.

 

The old depot sits silent and boarded up,
like the rest of the town, full of romance,
waiting for the trains to roar through,
the trains that never stop any more, as I stand there,
watching the half-moon and wondering.

 

And the hippies launch their rocket, lighting up the Dunes
and riding a tail of sparks a mile up above the desert,
with no one but us to see.

 

I yell a huzzah, then turn towards the dome of light
that marks Las Vegas in the northeast,
and prepare to leave this peace behind.

6 September 1992

INTERSTATE FIFTEEN

 

The sun awakes me on my mountain peak,
from which I can see from the Providences to the Panamints.
Baker sits below, and passing it
the traffic of Interstate Fifteen.  The cars and trucks race
unseeing, caring nothing
for those nameless valleys and mountains that I live in,
racing from Los Angeles to Las Vegas,
from one tragedy to the next, slowing only
to annoyingly pass the slow drivers, the ones like me,
the ones with a trucker’s tan who ride the Interstate
only to get to the side roads,
the empty cracked two-lane roads that dip and rise
across the desert, barren save for the old houses
and the hippies with beer under one arm,
the other arm stuck out for a ride.
From Las Vegas to Los Angeles it is thus,
and I sit on my mountain peak, alone
but for the great clumps of ephedra, waiting to rejoin them,
to feel the blast of hot wind and the radio’s scream,
to go home
on Interstate Fifteen.

7 September 1992

PERSONAL AD

 

Are you BORED with the hand life has dealt you?  I am a SWM, 26, 5’11”, 190 lbs., with a long and colorful past and no one to tell it to.  If you have the humor of Julie Brown, the charm of Sandra Bernhard, the beauty of Barbara La Marr, the wit of Dorothy Parker, the lifestyle of Edie Sedgwick, the intelligence of Jane Bowles, the smile of Teri Garr, the smirk of Laraine Newman, the voice of Vanessa Redgrave, the style of Lauren Bacall, the pout of Ingrid Bergman, the temper of Sean Young, the fortitude of Louise Brooks, the gaze of Hanna Schygulla, the strength of Petra Kelly and the craft of Frida Kahlo, then maybe you are the one for me.  But if not, try anyhow—I’m not picky.  Man-haters and strident feminists need not apply, nor should any Yankees or other uninvited scum to my Southwest.  Sorry.  Bring your love and affection, your daily direction, no time for reality, but try it anyway.  Help!  Help!  Help!  Just kidding.

10 September 1992

SEVENTY MILES PER HOUR

 

From the peak of Keys’ View on a clear day
Mount San Jacinto slopes down into the Salton Sea
and you can see from Mexico to L.A.
I stand with three hippies braced along the short wall
My hat held in both hands and my great-coat buttoned
against the wind that gusts
Seventy miles per hour

 

In the cold embrace of the dark desert sands
one house alone is lit among many, with a golf course provided
and other weapons to battle life’s demands
Beth and Bill fill our glasses to recall our past
We put a little zing into a calendar-dictated thing
toasting our life that flies
Seventy miles per hour

 

The rock music blasts as Victoria crazily dances
Five men give confused looks and I dance on one foot
and Geri stands in her doorway taking no chances
Our holiday redesigned to serve contemporary needs fine
to get drunk and drive home in a Yuletide taunt
avoiding the cops that roam
Seventy miles per hour

24 December 1992

A VERY GOSSIPY DIATRIBE ON LOVE

 

Some people say that there isn’t enough love in the world, but no, I don’t agree, there’s plenty of love in the world; you know, I, for example, am still madly in love with my old friend Miss B, but Miss B, unfortunately, is in love with Mister M, and you all know how that is, yet I don’t interfere, even when she was furious at him for showing up at this party with me and his ex, Miss E, yeah, oh and then there was her birthday party, remember, where Mister V kept lifting up Miss J’s skirt and tried to go home with Miss L, when Mister M told one of Miss B’s colleagues how she was attracted to him, but you know I missed that, since I was on the back porch picking up on Miss T, even though she just kept talking to me about Mister F and how she thinks everyone wants to fuck her, even my old pal Mister S, which is ridiculous, because everyone knows Mister S is crazy about Miss G (even though that’s what they said about Mister S and Miss B), and a problem for him as Miss G won’t completely dump her ex and also demands a lot of attention from Mister S, even though he can’t give it, what with his work at UCLA and his brother, who I suppose you heard was out looking for his girlfriend with a gun, after she got a restraining order against him and then took off for Mexico, not her sister’s, oh no, not with those beatings going on, hot and heavy jealousy, and not Mister S and Mister W’s place, what with Mister W and his girlfriend Miss C, who also by coincidence is Miss B’s roommate, the two of them screaming at each other day and night, because everyone knows they just aren’t right for each other, I mean, that was what my friend Miss S said, after Mister W came onto her, but she was too busy messing around with Mister R, that is until she decided to dump him by sleeping with his roommate, Mister M, you know, massive games of strip poker, wink wink, until she met his friend Mister A and dumped Mister M for him, which is probably a mistake considering how many women he’s had, including almost Miss S’s roommate Miss K, but Miss K was fucking that guy over at Hollywood Billiards, you know, the guy who lives over on Doheny with Mister B and Miss C, Miss C’s the little redhead who used to work over at the Chateau with Miss M and my then-girlfriend Miss F, and I don’t mean the Chateau Marmont, if you know what I mean, but Miss C stopped working there after Miss M went crazy, you know, Miss M was hot for this Italian guy who thought she was a whore and just threw her away like a piece of garbage, and then Miss M flipped out, and did her best friend Miss P come to her aid, fuck no, she just cast her off, just like she reacted when Miss R went nuts on speed and Miss P rented out her room the next day, or when her brother drove Miss E out of the house, or when she tried to stab Miss S, her best friend, in the back over this record deal, and she still professes to love all these people, just like Mister V loves Miss D, who dumped him like a hot potato for some English guy, but I suppose I was just jaded from hanging out with Mister A all these years, you know, he’s been through about six or seven real hardcore relationships, and now he’s hanging out with Miss C, living in her place, of course, just like with Miss B, but you know, I heard Miss B moved in with Miss J, who was living by herself after breaking up with Mister R, but now those two are an item again, or are they, well fuck if I know, and you know that Miss B was seeing Mister K, who then followed Miss S out here to Los Angeles, but now he’s off living with these lesbian speedfreaks over in Silver Lake, you know, a tragedy every minute, of course, nothing like this Mister L and Miss W thing, with the guns and the stalking and all that, you know, no one imagined it would end up like that at Mister G’s party where they met, god, that was some party, with Miss R fooling around with everyone and I just thank the lord Mister G didn’t show up with his girlfriend from Venice, of course I suppose you haven’t heard but Mister G dumped her and married this French woman up in San Francisco, you know, strictly a green card affair, but then at the wedding he meets Miss L, this woman who works with his mother, and they just fall madly in love, he moves to L.A., they get engaged, and of course this French woman freaks, dumps her boyfriend, asks Mister G to move in with her, so he annuls the marriage and gets her kicked out of the country, do you follow me, and so they’re just as happy as two bugs in a rug and all I know, man, is that I have to get out of here before I go absolutely crazy, you know, I’m moving to Tucson, that’s it.  Say, maybe you know my friends in Tucson, Mister and Mrs. W and Miss R, Miss R went off for three weeks and the guy she had house-sitting just stole everything she owned, her “pal” Miss V didn’t so much as lift a finger, you know, she was too worried over Mister B, Mrs. W’s ex, who had been accused by some chick of raping her, and it all boiled down to the fact that he didn’t really love her, and he joking sort of said, well, with everything else going on, who’s got any fucking time for love?  No pun intended.

16 June 1993

THE VALLEY IS A GREAT PLACE TO HIDE

 

Mountains define natural borders.
A city springs up by the sea, and across the mountains the farmers toil
unmolested; passes are cut through at great expense.
At rush hour they are jammed.
School buses from the inner city are discouraged.
The residents send old white men to rule from the far seat of power.
Movie stars flee to ranch homes, warehouses are tucked on streets without sidewalks or curbs, junkyards are forced up against freeways, huge gravel pits are dug, community colleges fester, bikers roam, old bars that stink of death prevail, crappy coffee shops are the zenith of fine dining, churches and 7-11s compete for space, the bus is always late, and the smog is always early.
I live in the San Fernando Valley.
We do not believe in art or music or culture or Los Angeles.
We have erected a wall of heat and pollution and boredom to keep out you Hollywood hotshots, and we dare you to cross it.
We set our standards for high fashion in the thrift stores, and our New Yorkers still have their accents.
In West Hollywood my friends party like vicious dogs.
The soap opera of my life goes to commercial as I drive through the Cahuenga Pass.  YOU are invited to attend:
You bring the ice,
and we’ll supply the booze, the barbecue, and the blondes.

24 June 1993

TRUSTING, TRIPPING, TRYSTING

 

Geri and Marko and I
face each other across a table littered
with emollients of the soul and decanters of the occult.
We are scientists of the new millennium,
conjuring up Love without Trust
huddled within the scope of a single candle
bound by the Tarot across a thousand years
agents of the netherworld creeping to the crack corner.
There is no safety in this place,
victims and assailants both, lying and condemning,
righteous and groveling.
Your work is different than mine.
Our web is as fragile as a spider’s
broken by a single telephone call, I wait for someone
to catch me, but I am slightly overweight,
particularly in emotional baggage.
I was once a part of the sporting crowd, but time
and a rollercoaster with the U.S. Mail has turned me off
all that; now I stand by, as others take the ride, and watch
cheesy Thirties movies and dream of Arizona in the fall
and count the days until I get the hell away from here.

 

NOW FOR A COMMERCIAL BREAK.
Standing here in Palisades Park,
we see the youth making out, getting their hands under each
other’s clothes, and old women hobbling by
pushing their shopping carts, humming classical tunes.
How do we make this transition, this leap in cognition?
The magic number, I think, is THIRTY.
Thirty years old, trusting, tripping, and trysting:
Trusting in nothing, tripping on everything, and trysting
with anything that will have us.
We throw ourselves at work, the bottle,
anything but each other;
fill up my loneliness with books, books, books,
did you ever meet someone in your whole life more destined
to become a drug-addicted LIBRARIAN?
I am sitting in a restaurant, trusting,
slurping the Thai food and watching the sparks fly
from friend to friend to the apple of my eye,
smiling at me darkly with Southern charm.
I am walking in the desert, tripping,
bearing on a saguaro, the sun suddenly appears behind Kitt Peak,
and I fill my mouth with J.D. and give the rebel yell thus:
YeeeeeeeeeHHHHAAAAAAAA!!
I am standing on the top balcony of a house, trysting,
dripping vodka and gin and tequila on the Riot Grrl at my elbow
fighting my way through a huge crowd,
the full moon coming up over Los Angeles
filling me with the cold fire of passion
and I have finally achieved a state of grace.
Once you are dead, then everything else
becomes amazingly easy.

25 June 1993

TOW TRUCKS, HEARSES AND EX-GIRLFRIENDS

 

In my best dead Bukowski style, I think
“A fire of Mexican food and you; you the beers cannot quench.”
I am laying across the grass of Dolores Park
concentrating on the skyline of San Francisco
as if it were a pit a hundred miles down, full of hellfire
trying not to think about my beautiful ex-girlfriends behind me
their very presence like speed in my veins and cactus spines in my skin.
This sunny day has shown me tow trucks, hearses, and ex-girlfriends.
Even in darkness I know they are not the same
but they send a familiar chill down my spine
as I sit in a hospital room
staring at the blood caked around Miles’ ears
my car broken down at AAMCO
dreaming of Ellen’s soft, beautiful mouth
all playing the past off against the future to unnerve the present.
HELLO AGAIN OLD FRIEND I’M BACK TO SEE YOU AGAIN, FRIEND.
A dry sponge is brittle, a full one heavy and weepy;
as Geri says, banter and bad sex
we are conjuring up Love without Trust
but suicide is quicker, cheaper, though less interesting,
than the tow trucks that lay in wait,
the hearses that are inevitable,
and my wonderful ex’s, that justify the other two.
JUST BECAUSE LIFE IS NOT A JOKE DOES NOT PRECLUDE LAUGHTER.

12 July 1993

IS QUANTITY BETTER THAN QUALITY?
(for Miss Amy Barbanel)

 

My sister leans far over her strawberry margarita, her eyes wide.
“I always leave twenty percent,” she says.  “I used to be a waitress.”
The earth is tumbling through space, the surface rolling at many
thousands of miles per hour, and we are clinging to it,
and clinging to each other.

 

I sit on Amy Barbanel’s front steps, listening to Yvette explain
her philosophy of life.  It is not a long speech,
but, I imagine, as I intently study the streetlights for the nth time,
it keeps her mouth moving.  Rafael begs me to ease his Catholic guilt.
Hank waxes crass about some woman.  Amy sings “The Gambler”.
If we are talking, then we must be living.

 

Are you listening, my hundreds of friends, or are you too busy?
I have given up quality for quantity.  I have someplace to go
twenty-four hours a day.  I will never be alone.  I will always
be there, in my machine, in my office, at your party, at your barbecue,
at your wedding, your get-together, your opening.
And for us, there will always be drinks, drugs and light chat.

 

Amy, my poor Amy, who wanted to love everyone, this is my
love letter to you, the only one you’ve ever gotten from someone who
is dead.  I was standing in a room full of my friends
and I was alone.  The babble of a hundred voices, the smell of a hundred
perfumes, the shapes of a hundred beautiful faces, only raise the pain
to my brain, a bubble floating in a volcano, the rice simmering, burnt.
So goodbye, Amy my love, my soul sister who took quantity over quality,
though wide-eyed you smile it off.  From place to place we fly,
choosing between pain and boredom, waiting to die,
the earth tumbling through space, bringing me a glorious sunset,
which I give to you.

25 July 1993

HEIDI FLEISS

 

Early in the morning, while Hollywood sleeps,
you, the embodiment of my anger, sneer at the District Attorney,
while I cheer and throw my entire psychic being in your direction.
I am your biggest fan, Heidi Fleiss,
to me you are a true Hollywood celebrity.
You are sex, drugs, and rock & roll,
you are bitter and cruel and loveless and a smartass to boot;
you cower from the phalanx of cameras and madmen,
the City against you, the press against you,
the moralistic American Ethic against you, the Industry against you.
Here is your chance, Heidi Fleiss:
You fucked them once, for money;
now you can fuck them again, just for laughs.
If not for yourself, do it for me,
and the righteous indignation of all Los Angelenos like me.

9 August 1993

LA QUE SE FUE
(for Miss Ellen Read Baird)

 

I am getting very good at love, I thought, as I stared sunward
I taste the cherry coke in my hand, just as I taste the eggs
in a sunny Oakland coffee shop, and already the dry taste
of your lips is fading away.  But behind my shades
my eyes are closed, burning with my love, my love for you
that overwhelms everything.
I step out of the snack shop, a cherry coke in my hand
and suddenly I flash on your arm, laying across the piano bar
at the Alley, my drink just beside it, and the rings that mark
past drinks, and past attempts to just
brush your arm.  In a photograph of us
I wear a crazy smile, an Edie Sedgwick grin, of pure joy and no hope
and nothing but love, it screams at me, it gives me a headache,
it ruins my nights, it ruins my days, it keeps my from eating,
but not from DRINKING,
the sun blinds me, behind my shades, your arm blinds me,
my love blinds me, but I swear I will kiss you
with my eyes wide open.

 

IF TELLING IS CONVINCING, THEN TRUTH IS CORRUPT.
I am writing my own epitaph, and for once I do not want to die.
It does not matter that I live in Los Angeles,
you in San Francisco, (except…well, we’ll get down with that shit later, I mean, can you dig where I’m coming from?  I HATE the City, except for this one groovy bar on Mission, but I won’t say the name, god help me if the groovers found out.  Uh, back to my poem), for you I will end the war, (but I still get to show off my scars),
I will chill the thaw, I will crawl across the Interstate Five
that the state has put between us, if you were living on Saturn
I would put this message on one of NASA’s crippled probes,
and tap it in your general direction.
(I will stop reading Judith Krantz novels, and go back
to Jacqueline Susann, for you.  Liked JS better anyway.
Her dames were weaker but they were also lonelier.)

 

From Lakeshore I look back across Lake Merritt, the water silver,
the hills yellow and green, the air cool and clean, and I
more happy to be alive than you can know, because I am finally
on my way to you
and words are not meant to describe that feeling; I will not speak,
I will not write, because words will disappear, books crumble,
discs deteriorate, libraries burn, but our love will keep us alive
until the sun explodes into space
and tears the crust from the Earth itself.
(Then I think, oops, I did write it down, now all I can do
is share a laugh with you, and maybe one more profundity.)
I am getting very good at love, I thought, as I stared sunward
and like a compass, my direction is undying.

20 September 1993

A READING IN SAN FRANCISCO

 

Here I am again, twitching from my fourth espresso
and ready to piss my pants
standing up before a bored, smiling crowd
trying to hide my neatly typed poetry, computer spell-checked,
especially after the guy who just went, with his hand-painted leather jacket
and his poetry scribbled on torn pieces of shopping bags;
yeah, they loved that, but would they rather go home with him?
In this city, yeah.

 

Here I am, hippies, standing up in front of you,
a blood-sucking former punk from water-sucking L.A.

 

I’d as soon fight you as read to you.

 

Okay, here’s my chance, I just saw a babe in the back in a black nightgown
with a reticulated python around her neck
I’ll just read to you, baby, concentrate on you, make love to you with my eyes
That’ll liven up the reading, and keep me from getting too bored
or too nauseated.

 

I am confronted with blank stares at my blank verse.

 

“Take a cold shower!” a femme calls from the back of the establishment.

 

“Go FUCK yourself,” I respond, amazing the crowd with my witty comeback.
I stomp out the door; nobody comes after me.
Oh well.  I’d rather be at my friend’s Dolores Street pad,
trying to score heroin over the telephone, anyway.

 

I’ve gotta have a little fun while I’m here.

20 December 1993

LAS VEGAS IN WINTER
(for Miss Shannon McMackin)

 

I feel your love
like the desert rain;
falling with a warm buzzing sound
but never quite reaching the sandy ground.

 

Outside the entire horizon glows obscenely
beyond that, the silent rock bursts with ephedra
and sleeping snakes, and cold
and your voice, as always, is so terribly serious
I am filled with the desire to stroke your cheek
but you would never understand
one foot in a gaudy casino
one foot in a hushed art opening
and my snow-dusted sagebrush between, beckoning.

3 January 1994

RECIPE FOR DISASTER

 

I have an old metal box in which I keep my recipes.
The top of the gray box no longer closes.
Every Thursday I go through the “Food” section of the Times
and clip out the interesting recipes,
especially the Latino ones.
I glue them to 3 X 5 index cards, and put them in the box.
Whenever I look in the box, I think,
“I’ll never cook all these recipes.
I’ll die first.”
And I realize with iron walls my limitations.
Think of it; only a poet
could extract mortality from a recipe box.
How pathetic.

4 January 1994

NEW YEAR’S EVE

 

Every year, when I’ve just barely recovered
from the sacrosanct depression of Christmas
I must get on the phone to avoid a real depression.

 

Others gather around the television
and do their countdown, and I stand next to you and wait
one hand around the flask that has seen me through
so many New Year’s.

 

I have survived another year
and am preparing to do battle with yet one more.

 

Midnight strikes; the human race crosses an imaginary point
in the orbit of its planet.

 

You clink glasses with me as Times Square erupts with noise.
You kiss me gently as the moon hangs low over a Mexican beach.
You hand me a bottle of champagne from between your legs as we creep along the Santa Monica Freeway, looking for action.
You cringe from my embrace, complaining that it’s just another night.  What of it?
You catch my eye from across the room, and wink at me.
You kiss me hard, as the punk rockers smash their televisions, and squeal happily.
You raise your glass to me, on the balcony, as I knock a candle onto the grand piano.
You kiss me softly as fireworks explode over the Empire State Building.

 

I would throw myself into the thick of strangers
just to amplify my alienation
and forget that I would just once
like to be alone on New Year’s Eve
The party in my head
one hand around my flask
your voice on my machine.

5 January 1994

LATE NIGHT OBSESSION

 

I would like to throw you down and fuck you
and have your face burnt into my memory
like the first full moon I watched drowning in the Pacific.

27 January 1994

LOS ANGELES HAS A WAY OF SHOWING ITS LOVE

 

After six months of abstinence
I began smoking again;.
It was the seventeenth of January, I think
at about five in the morning.
Los Angeles had just shook us off
like a dog shaking off its fleas.
FUCK YOU I LOVE YOU
I lit a cigarette celebrating our mutual climax.
Inhabitants of the city huddled beneath a sky
now brilliant with stars, usually unseen
no light below but the fires of the gas mains.
I am full of anger and pain.
House where I played, apartments where I stayed,
shattered, destroyed.
My friends tiny in their fear
leaping as our city quivers with love for the earth.
FUCK YOU I LOVE YOU
I dreamt of our own insignificant love
supported by a weak infrastructure of
telephone lines, post offices and freeways
all snapped by my city with its own acting out,
its irrepressible expression of oneness.
FUCK YOU I LOVE YOU
You have insulted me.
You have insulted my family.
You have insulted my friends.
You have insulted my city
by not acknowledging the terrible strength of its love for us.
This ellipsis I cannot forgive.
The outsiders have forsaken us
friends with whom I played, lovers with whom I stayed
shattered, destroyed.
I have shaken all of you off
like a dog shaking off its fleas.
FUCK YOU I LOVE YOU
Goodbye.

28 January 1994

MORTALITY

 

Every day at my library I read the obituaries
and am pleased to see I am not yet within it
but the names I do know
every day grow
and remind me that, contrary to Einstein, time does not slow.

28 January 1994

 

INDEX of Titles and First Lines

—A—

A crowd of thousands, daily, 46

A glass of the base white wine caressed in one hand, 111

A jet rips across the ocean sky, 7

A Quaalude will halt decay for a while, but it won’t erode it for good, 18

ABUL-HOAL, 99

After an eternity in San Francisco, 22

After six months of abstinence, 149

AMARGOSA DESERT, THE, 29

An ant marches into my desert, 99

APPLE OF HIS EYE, 65

Are you BORED with the hand life has dealt you?, 122

ARROYO SALADO, EL, 101

ARTIST’S SONG, THE, 106

At the Hotel, 108

—B—

Barrington Hall downstairs at midnight—NEVADA he cried, 28

Black hair, heavy over, 16

Boredom glare stands like a perpendicular white wall, 92

BORN IN TORRANCE, 59

Bouncing through the spotlights along the bar, 116

BUTTERFLY, THE, 35

—C—

CALTRAIN SERIES, THE, 39

CENTURY FREEWAY, THE, 64

CHAIN LETTER, 84

CHILD’S SHOES, 71

CITY OF JOSIES, THE, 116

Closer, pal, closer, can’t hear proper over the jackhammers, 69

COFFEE SHOP, THE, 46

COMPETITIOUS, 8

CURSON LOOKOUT, 51

—D—

DANCER, THE, 22

DESPERATION TIME, 92

DIANE LANE AS A SYMBOL FOR THE IMPOSSIBLE, 73

DIEGO AND ALTHEA, 82

DOROTHY PARKER, 94

—E—

Early in the morning, while Hollywood sleeps, 138

EVEN THE SKY LOOKS FAKE, 33

Every day at my library I read the obituaries, 151

Every year, when I’ve just barely recovered, 146

EXPLODING SUN, THE, 57

—F—

Floating along that line, the double yellow one, into another, 101

FOR HOLLYWOOD’S SAKE, 3

From the peak of Keys’ View on a clear day, 123

—G—

Geri and Marko and I, 131

GHOST FROM THE PAST, 34

GIRL WHO WORE WHITE, THE, 30

—H—

HEART BLEEDS INK, 24

HEIDI FLEISS, 138

Here I am again, twitching from my fourth espresso, 142

HIGHWAY 126, 52

HOLLYWOOD, 55

HOLLYWOOD HOPELESS, 69

—I—

I am a puppet in the suburbs, hanging on telephone wires, 33

I am addicted to drugs, 77

I am getting very good at love, I thought, as I stared sunward, 139

I crouch silently on the curb, 114

I feel your love, 144

I got the worst sunburn of my life, 78

I hang up the phone and your voice is no longer with me, 88

I have an old metal box in which I keep my recipes., 145

I like to be at home to tell her, 1

I sit in the midst of it all, 106

I would like to throw you down and fuck you, 148

I’m not from Fresno, Sacramento, Gardena or Mission Viejo, 55

If you fall asleep on the train, they usually do not wake you up, 49

In Fillmore at night you can see the stars, 52

In my best dead Bukowski style, I think, 134

In San Francisco, rain and fog, a cloudy, downbeat day, 53

IN THE EAST MOJAVE, 118

INTERSTATE FIFTEEN, 120

IS QUANTITY BETTER THAN QUALITY?, 136

Is this L.A., my tomb, my tomb, poor Kara half-buried, 34

IT lies in wait, on its own table, the red-eyed cyclops, 79

It only takes a car and a lot of money, 20

It’s unfair, being asked to analyze books, 31

—L—

La mujer como el vidrio, siempre esta en peligro, 104

Land, sea, and sky, oh yeah, 59

LAS VEGAS IN WINTER, 144

LATE NIGHT OBSESSION, 148

LEON TROTSKY, THE, 77

LOS ANGELES HAS A WAY OF SHOWING ITS LOVE, 149

LOS ANGELES INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, THE, 26

LOVE CAN OCCASIONALLY BE WORSE THAN IGNORANCE, 1

—M—

MACHINE, THE, 79

MADNESS AT 3.24 A.M., 31

MALINCHE, 104

MARGINALITY, 60

MARISA HANSELL, 13

MISSION, THE, 67

MORTALITY, 151

Mountains define natural borders, 129

My puffer fish is staring at the Spanish soap opera, 85

My sister leans far over her strawberry margarita, her eyes wide, 136

—N—

Neon!  Neon!, 3

NEW YEAR’S EVE, 146

—O—

O TRAIN, 103

O train, I sit on the warm stones, 103

ODE TO ALLA NAZIMOVA, 16

One long line of speed, and buddy ready to go!, 10

—P—

PATENTED NAUSEA, 18

PERPETUAL NICOTINE, 47

PERSONAL AD, 122

PICTURE BRIDGE, THE, 108

PICTURES OF ELLEN, 62

PISMO BEACH, 9

PLEASE WITHHOLD MY N.E.A. GRANT, 111

POINT FERMIN, 49

PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG CORPSE (PORTRAIT OF THE CATHOLIC AS A YOUNG HYPOCRITE), 28

—Q—

QUE SE FUE, LA, 139

—R—

Racing bits of flesh, by car or plane, 71

RATTLER, 114

READING IN SAN FRANCISCO, A, 142

RECIPE FOR DISASTER, 145

RENO NEVADA UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 20

—S—

SAN FRANCISCAN CHARM, 38

SAN FRANCISCO AND BACK IN ONE SECOND, 10

San Francisco—O glorious city of light!, 39

SANTA CRUZ, 53

Seafood appears in little dumps, graffiti attacks the beach, 9

SEVENTY MILES PER HOUR, 123

She comes and goes redly, yellowly, 65

SHE HAS BLACK EARRINGS AS WELL, 11

She reaches across a formica table for the stem of a glass, 60

Sheltered from the rains in a cold womb of Malibu, 73

SILVER STRAND, THE, 5

Sitting on Market Street, talking to a bottle of Southern Comfort, 38

SLAM LOCK, 96

Some people say that there isn’t enough love in the world, 125

SPANISH SOAP OPERA, THE, 85

Speed, speed, Greg Gray says, his eyes rolling, 27

SPORTS, 27

Squatting at a smooth bar, 57

Steve came down from San Francisco, beard and bandana, 8

Suppose you could seal your heart in an envelope and mail it to yourself, 24

SUTRO BATHS, THE, 25

—T—

TAKING THE WHEEL, 90

The air is thick and white around two bridges, 96

The Chinese Philosopher said:, 35

The club lights glitter off our wet eyes, 82

The Downtown skyscrapers cut so sharp, so black, painless hurt, 51

The limousine rocks at anchor in a river of tinted light, 90

The old man of my past is still laughing, 29

The Phoenix arises from multicolors, brick and wood, 67

The sun awakes me on my mountain peak, 120

The sun set behind the Kelso Dunes, 118

The view from the Sutro Baths, where slime grows onto flowers, 25

The white ceiling is high and empty—sky, 26

There you are, at last

I see you, 94

This cigarette kills the taste of 8 am Corn Flakes, 47

To whom it may concern, 84

Tonight the moon is full and the air is cold and my hands are gloved, 5

TOW TRUCKS, HEARSES AND EX-GIRLFRIENDS, 134

TRUSTING, TRIPPING, TRYSTING, 131

TWO ASHTRAYS, 7

—U—

Under fluorescent ice cream lamps a man and a woman sit, 44

—V—

VALLEY IS A GREAT PLACE TO HIDE, THE, 129

VERY GOSSIPY DIATRIBE ON LOVE, A, 125

VIVISECTION MALE AND FEMALE, 44

VOICES, 88

—W—

Waking up on Venice Beach, sticky with spray, the ocean’s cool hand, 62

Weeds are now sprouting from dry earth, 64

WHY DO I CARE WHAT HAPPENS IN BERKELEY OR BERLIN?, 78

—Y—

YES, INDEEDY, the girl wore white, it came up around her eyes, 30

You really had to be there, 11

You watch, but you can’t change the channel any more, 13