Day N Night

Block houses and dry heat

My mouth tastes of garlic

And my feet are swollen

Slipping into flats

My mind flashes to water

And my body aches for Santa Monica Boulevard

I would run through Beverly Hills

Barefoot, even,

If I had the chance

Cabin Fever

Is a bitch of a muse

She sits on my winged shoulders

And wheedles her way into the back of my mind

I am too impatient for the pen

Too bloated to run

So sensitive to changes in the weather

I loathe the stair

And relish the concrete

Preferring flat planes

To escalators that lead to nowhere

Twirling on my tight-skinned toes

I am finding that

I am incapable of moving

Beyond the reaches of this box

Or traversing these walls

Wishing I would end up in West Los Angeles

Sickened air and all

But clean-

er somehow.

I am skepticallllllllll.
(of myself).

The start of something

Seeing you come through
is a good reason
to think about the El
at Jackson
and that amalgam of stores I never went into

In A White Space On Sunday Morning

"_______ ! Where you running? _______ ? Why you running?"

And I lay still
Caught in a white space on Sunday morning
Submerged in my covers
Thinking about a Lolita dress
And a semi-impotent man on the underside of 40
Reminiscing and imagining
the time that we ate side-by-side
Smiling
under the disapproving glare
of a young woman with her family
Yes, I am too young
And to me too,
this seems dirty
But when he and I went to
make out in the parking lot,
I forgot about everything
Now it occurs to me
that there might have been
Something else
missing from our lovemaking
And I wonder,
Did I tell him not to
Or did he just not like to
Or am I simply blocking out
the memory?
When I look down,
between my imaginary legs
I see two eyes glinting
and his familiar sneer
But I wonder if I am just
imagining him there.
He says that I made him
happy
When I was with him,
I only remember his sinister voice
And when he told me
"Your legs are abnormally
large for your body."
I can thank him for nothing
except his sweet sweet dog
who would spoon with me
when he would go to get
coffee, early morning
or the symbol that he was
for me
Something I made up in my
memory about the proof I needed,
A reason to go on running

Is there such thing as too late
Such a day that I can no longer say to you
That I'm still ok
I'm still in love
with the idea of us
We are friends
And that for me never goes away
I would like to ask you about your parents
Tell you funny stories
Relate about our embarrassing moments
And push the envelope like we do
You are the embodiment of an era
and a memory
A time and a place
A voice and a laugh
I might know what your body looks like
I could have memorized it before
Or we weren't that close
But I know
what your eyes look like
And I know how you write your 'i's
So why don't you tell me about that tattoo
Or those few years when we thought
we were something else
I miss you