Driving out of the valley
stoked on lasting passion
I’ve decided to escape the scorched
roads and sands of Coachella
and go home for a visit
to Los Angles,

Pop music blares from storefronts, as I move
through them, the hungry boys in skinny jeans,
strutting with collars up, peacock hair, latest
smart phones flashing, the cute girls in dresses
and strappy sandals, flouncing the shopping street.

Put a haggard dollar in his cup
This Monte shill blows
Mumbo and frozen
Breath to fog a mirror
For you to scratch your ancient
Hieroglyphs of terror and despair

Your idea of a kind of success
lickspittle
is to be drunk on the saliva of your masters
spitting profusely
pardon Flaubert this obtrusion of the ridiculous upon the sublime
afflatus and effluvia

When the dream began it was vague,
the colors ran together like
cheap dye and some winged someone spoke,
hissed at him:  “You should run. Take your
darling elf, hide him in a sack,
get the hell out of Dodge before
it’s too late.”

At the dying cottonwood with a bleached-out

rag, an inner tube hanging from a limb, I pulled

off the gravel, desperate for a friend, following

the empty creek curving back and forth through

steeper hills under dry mountains.

the memory of that ache, love gone taut,
like a good exhaustion,
unravels backward,
so it might as well have been for always

On my 9:30AM break I walked down to Rite Aid
and bought a sugar free Red Bull and a bag of Sour
Patch Kids.  I held off on the Sour Patch Kids until
around 11:30.  I ate half the bag.  I only stopped
because my teeth started to hurt.  My face was peeling

I know a woman who can write
a lover into being, alive with tattoos

and a German accent. I wish she could show me
how to resurrect you.

But this alchemy cannot be taught. 

Your fedora looks stupid
and your hair is frizzy.
I hope you don’t think
you’re going to impress
the Starbucks barista
with that look,