...and the stars don't really care

shooting stars

like legends

[evaluating a cherished symphony

we saved more than you understand

for that day

when all explodes deeper in the sky

and dismisses the choir

vaulting from legends]

drenched in the sky

triumphantly dedicated to the trickling

[flows] from mercury flutes

lightning

through colorless hotel rooms

above

The Sands

The Majestic

The Desert Pavillion

aridly drenched

[savoring the sun]

slipping through

half-lit corridors

filtering tobacco haze

over sapphire stained benches

line-up line-up

and drive us down

the stars don’t mind

they rapid fire across celestial systems

ripping skin 

evaluating their chances

for long-term survival

purity marrow

into night

trickling

like lute strings 

tuned taut

Then we're back 
at The MGM Grand
The Mirage
back in the bleached pool yard
pacing like filters 
that fell from cigarettes
kicked around the alley 
between clanging unfiltered stand-alone spins. 

EKG

Let me think momentarily

about the pleasant surprises that filter down through the tall clouds

summoned by the humidity of cotton fields and ravaged dirt

seedling of blood sporuting new directions

of vast haste and electrocardiographic imagery

the charts elucidated what i knew already

the electric meter ranging across the scale, bouncing coiled off the edges on either side

fully resting momentarily

as if to curl up in itself on one end, bounding to the other with all the manic might of a golden trombone

the EKG told me what I already knew - which was danger in short form

danger in strides

danger before the meter broke again, and mercury ran across the kitchen table

sucking down dust

while we sucked down the last of the blueberry banana protein pancakes

the mercury relented and the meter struck the barrel on the side of the leather belt

the refrigerator humming

the consistency even then knowing

that the hydro tubing, and rustic fans would give out

either before or after i did

regardless, they would too

red-tail hawk

carbon on the inside

charred, luminous, baffling

scorched in its own kiln at dawn

like red-tailed hawks

stretching out,

barely recognizable

circling above the meadows when we first saw them

when i didn’t think anything beautiful lived in jersey

spring, 1993.

sedona, arizona.

standing in an empty wash out in the high desert

starring above the blood-dust walls

mesas and buttes

sharp edges underfoot,

spiked flowers.

pale clouds against a paler azure sky

black crescent flakes flicked above the rocks

too high to be ravens,

too brooding

too soft

like fingers swollen at dusk

grandpa's affairs

my fat grandfather used to fuck all the ladies in the bronx

to be fair, i don’t know how fat he was back in the bronx

or how many ladies he fucked

but he fucked at least some

and he got fat at some point

and he left my grandma when my mom didn’t understand

that her fathers cock made the women crazy

and caused my grandma to throw him out

he ran his auto shop down the street from where my grandma lived

eventually moving in with some woman he was fucking

who then gave birth to two of my uncles.

they would pick up my mom in the summer, with the windows rolled down

him in his short sleeved buttoned shirts

cigarette eternally hanging on the corner of his dry-caked lips

and my grandma shrieked somewhere in the background

down on 171st st

mildly psychotic

Koalas Stream Like Bluebells In Oregon

The last time I saw you, we ate in the sun in a villa near the Ligurian sea.
You spoke of what you had been doing for the past month - which was little more than walking through the heat in Tuscany, over the interplanetary hills and fields - the mounds of endless clay that appear Jupiter-like from the farmlands and horses. cypress tress speculating the horizon, punctuating your tressles.


The last time we soaked in that hot tub at Esalen, staring at the ocean from the cliffs of the sur, the big sur,
I felt you moan in a way that I hadn't felt since we took off to the mountains back in '93 when we took off to avoid the mentality of diamonds,
the triangulation coordination of virulent koalas.

The last time we talked, you said you were going away, that we wouldn't see each other again for another twenty years at least, and by then we would have changed so much that we wouldn't recognize each other anymore, except by smell.

the trip

 kathy and larry went to the bahamas. they were on vacation. their first vacation together in the eighteen months they had been dating. 
it was larry who proposed the trip. kathy was touched. she didn't think he had it in him to suggest a trip. she had reconciled herself to either trying to awkwardly bring up the idea and the possibility of a lengthy discussion about the edges and nature of their relationship, or to relegate herself to vacation alone or with her friends, wondering why he wasn't with her and whether to break it off and move on.  
larry asked when they were out to dinner at The Bells - a cute restaurant on the south side of the newly hip area. the place had the requisite atmpspheric edison lights, dark wood, full -wall distressed mirrors, unpolished brass and a waitresses who looked dusted with film glamour of the '40s. they got two dozen oysters, a split between malpeques and welfleets. they laughed about one of kathy's friend's alice, who told kathy about how her boss fell on the stack of papers he gave the temp to shred, right after the meeting where he chewed out alice for using the wrong stock paper for the presentation to the new clients. 
after their giggles died down, but the oceanic ooze still sloshing their giddiness around, larry tenderly took her left hand into his right from across the table, and kissed the third knuckle. his saliva glistened on her hand in the textured lights and a strand hung tenuously down his chin. 
in the glowing mirrors, he said - hey babe, let's go down to the bahamas. let's go down to the beach. let's see some rotting fish wash up on the sand at sunset, when the ocean sheds itself of the day's old relics and the salinic detritus appears charmed for a few minutes in the cooked egg sun on the horizon and magenta cloudstreaks. she breathed in shallowly, squeezed his hand and with cracking voice, said - that would be lovely. 

more from american hotel

the american dream still hooks me, even when i have abandoned the underlying nature of the same semblance of other dreams compiled from american romanticized imagery of european transience.  like that time i was in rome following a ragged cat, and decided to get on a train to civitavecchia to catch the ferry to sardinia. while in the waiting area for the ferry, a fat man with a bird in a cage sat next to me. he stunk the way fat men stink in the summer when they don't shower for awhile. i couldn't take it. so i got up and bought some french cigarettes and a pair of six euro sunglasses to replace the Persol's I bought in Rome two years prior but lost right before I got on the plane, and right before I was separated from my job at the firm back in new york.