“she broke down and let me in”
playing at the café in Venice

at my computer i squint
my coffee is cold and a hooded dude
beside me looking also at my screen
“if you’re going to san francisco”

i’ve never seen my mother cry
without also crying

mirror neurons
ancestral cue
unutterable sun
baristas
hooded guys
encircle me
& they sing
& sing

until a maniacal laughter
about which there’s something French and dark
like my mother’s time in France
bathing in the kitchen
looking at the English channel

& i chug the coffee
& i run to the sea
    the hooded guy remains with me
& “all across the nation such a strange vibration”

i require quick synaptic vigor
prayers for the dead
Californian liturgical glance

i require snickers and sour patch kids
jolly ranchers and Godiva truffles
chocolate milk and sneakers

“strange vibration” of the hooded guy
in my throat urging me now to consume
more saltwater whatever will desiccate

i’m accidentally smiling at him
so i do it again i’m smiling at him
so i do it more but i have to go
“to get set up with the spirit in the sky”

 

Technically Feral

in Hollywood

near the oracular canyon

at the start of fire season

i looked into the eye of a suspended

possum & yelled

into her mouth

that light stretching over

to X out a madness i looked

at my deficient reign

quest for fullness freakily

Black Cherry Vanilla seltzer

fizzing over miniature cakes

down my throat some octilinear perturbance

faux snow seeming to dive

at The Grove in illumined flurries

like the hair of an animal technically feral