...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