LOOKED LIKE LAUGHING

she says, love, I need a home like you:
a kitchen equipped with osseous cookware —
your fibula to stir the honey pot
and your elbow to pound the dough;
I want your pruned fingers peering
into the small cavern in my mouth —
I want digits like yours to strike minor
chords with my hellfire piano teeth,
and I want gospel organ progressions
upon hanging my skin in the foyer;
I want, because I no longer reside in you —
as the frame of your glasses remains absent
I preach, even the line which struck across
the bridge of my nose is starting to heal

you are six crisp
budweisers
hissing and kissing
in griffith park 
you are red white
and blue stripes
smiling and smart

and secret linen lay outs
between bouts of air conditioned
exposition.

(desert cloud interlude:
space travel
and withdrawal) 

the city sirens
drop back seat
and palms cough
quietly as i ghost
through crowds
and now
crayola cooked
l.a. on mute
without you. 

wouldn’t you
believe it!
I came back
out of
black books
and attic
staircases
twisting
to Evil Woman

monday night
had hints
of fall
dripping windly
though the
trees
as we hot boxed
to Beach House

and this
morning as
the fingers
of dawn broke
past the blue
oblivion
i woke from
another dream
smilingly singing
to you.

how nice it feels to put
something in your pocket
something to nuzzle your
corduroy’d thigh
or your buttocks
feels so cupable and
a piece of paper
folds to your seat.

like to keep things in my pockets
and how like treasure
i wonder where it went
glide my hand down my side
and say oh hey
there you are
fit snuggly into my pocket.

you find things all the time
little simple things
soft leather and smooth lighters
sitting on your person
comforting and waiting
for your fingers to pry
like giants in a cave
looking for all the secrets.

i like my wallet
it is a big one and
i find scraps of paper all the time
with little markings like
paying for parking
or keeping teeth cleanings
underneath raised letters on business cards
spell the stories of mundanity
the little moments you forget but are so loud
like 346 and how that means that building
but it really means that feeling.

i like to keep my big wallet
because i talk too much, i talk all the time
and when you talk too much and you do it all the time
it is very important to hold on to some tiny secrets
no matter how small they are
little tiny secrets about driving directions
and what i need to buy at the mall.

when we grow older 
we’ll just be pretending 
to fit in with the crowd 
same as we do now 
same as it always was 
same as it always will be

i hope fathers and sons 
will continue to play catch
on those thick august nights 
when the air is sweaty
and no one is pretending
to be anything they aren’t

I like watching
the arrivals
in the airport.

Blinding fluorescent
white everything washing
suddenly the past and
future heavenly the
wrap of your father’s
arms you are magically
home.

In terry cloth embrace
the returning ivy leaguer
in a soccer sweater
doesn’t remember the fight
about defaulting loans
or her shining nose piercing
or her converted peach bedroom
now a trophy room or
sleepy office.

Two terriers yip and bounce
and the surrounding passengers
somehow, even in Los Angeles,
can’t help but smile.

Even the depressed and lonely
will walk down that long
hall as if for once the only thing
weighing down on them
was the exhaustion of flight.
 

(to remember your shared pulse
with the earth) 

directions, found on your body,
etched in your skin at birth,
folded and hugging
the cusp of your jeaned bottom
in colorado colors.

interstate fifteen
groans painfully straight
like the extended arm
of a sun-baked archery student
in golden rays
of 1979.

park the car
fifteen miles west of pueblo blvd
when you come to the 
wagon circles
like families
left wheel prints
in singing soil-

one hundred paces
toward the arc of castor oil plants
turn west
face warm
and lie down on the earth’s dashboard
to breathe in unison
where once roads never wound
and stars gasped at you
as if you were the thing
that was so goddamn startling!

an astrolabe for your gastronomy needs

a. ketchup: you are tenacious
b. hot cheese: you are creamy
c. spicy brown mustard: you are a vagrant
d. dijon: you are a piece of hardware
e. mayonnaise: you are damaged goods
f. honey mustard: you are certifiably the creamiest
g. hot jalapeño cheese: you know it
h. sweet baby ray’s: you are a genius
i. A1 sauce: you passed but I sure wasn’t looking

to my honeysuckle you,
the best Santa Clara could dish:
con ese tipo de cintura, how fun,
how sensuous and ever-present to
make my rambunctious laughter erupt

dribbling globes in them seersucker pants,
always asking for a-swoonin’, my Carmen Sandiego,
my own private Sophia Loren from the coast!

O’hara’s cokes, meng, they compare nothing
to the mango margaritas or el batidito de mamey
that we make, and here I dream and I sit, next to you
in our existential porch — we rock in our chairs and duly,
we speculate what is it our hooligan children will read next:
whether it be Doyle or their dirt-addled palms, as borne
(and surely they will be born) chiromancers do;

you’ll make loca faces, rile them up
with a tongue twister as good as: ¡qué cojines!
¡qué cajones! ¿en qué cajonera van? — and please believe me
when I say their bums will kiss the freshest pastures

my words are no better pentacles than they are tentacles
and yet here you stay, tiny palm on my shoulder, my archangel
of comedy and all that is perfectly good and fine — for me,
te ves linda, muy pero muy linda, and I love you, very, very much

in a gutter found
four empty packs
of menthol
cigarettes-
three Kools
and one Marlboro
(a last resort pack!),
a homeless man
enjoying the heat,
wild girls with
wide smiles,
Armenian Mercedes-fender
post ups, dice games,
desert clouds in
technicolor watercolor,
how i felt guilty smoking a
Camel while passing
a young blonde mother
with her young blonde
daughter thinking I too
want to be a young
modern mother
blonde and blissfully
bristling
teaching simple safeness
and the singing sun
jealous of my
illumination. 

i have one indian blanket
covering my window here,
and the sun seeps through
anointing me bluely.
I wake up,
bathe in the color;
and fall back asleep.

through these thick
mornings and into the
moon-horned night,
i’ve been pulling some
books off my shelf:

O’hara, the conch-
shell spiral of linguistic
amours; precise and
natural;

Brautigan, expansive,
a stratosphere in love;

Nin, whose words
i subtly shade with kisses
on the neck softly given;

Woolf, recalled in
huskily breathed conversations
in tents, under covers;

this mesh of words
separates us;
can ensnare.
but:

raise your arms!
and the orchestra of
your action snaps
to attention;

express that
desire.
untangle.
wiggle free.
someone’s waiting!

you find, and in this finding,
see your own body inverse;
welcome this confluence,

and see as they lustily laugh
passing you through kitchens,
sidewalks, hillsides,
smoking sections and diners

but move your own fingers.
don’t forget!
& melt like snowmen do
when the morning blooms.

push your teeth,
through the words that
excite your blood;
hear those voices talk,
be interested in your own talking,

in this way,
a kiss on the neck.
a sleeping-bag conversation.
a moment’s hesitation.
before returning home.

i peeled out
from a fanfare! 
and welcomed
the world’s fletching
to meet my naked neck.

flittering the hardwood
i practiced a new order
bass line and chugged

magnificent. ordering
coffee in thrashes of toothy
grins and aplomb felt fit-
crackling over the radio
age of consent! 

i wondered if you were
still talking your face off
at palermo but only
briefly as i bounded
illegally across hillhurst
beaming in california sun
thinking i could go a lifetime
without wondering again.

oh it’s love and symphony traffic
and whiskey in coffee cups-
i’m present and perfect
some mornings. 

i went to the moon
and all i found
was potholes
she said
through her fingers 

least you
took a trip
he said
without
moving a muscle 

and
with that
exchange
they floated off
into the night
forever 

while
i was left
behind
to count the dust

you look down at me with sleep in your eyes
singing a silent little poem.
after a hazy summer and an
uncertain oncoming autumn
i answer you with all the strength
i have:

i know your face
and your eyes,
and i know the movement of
your hair and lips
i know the songs you sang
for summer,
the songs you sang
for winter
i know what we buried by the sea so long ago.
and i will never forget what the moon promises
and I will remember what our childish souls asked,
i have no reason to fear the future, nor the
mistakes of the past.
i have learned my whole life to live, my
whole soul to breathe openly, and my smile to
dance in morning’s mist: and this i thank you
for teaching me

you can turn love inside out, you can
toss it in the garbage or take it to the
highest pillar,
you can spit and hack
and cry and come all
over it,
but it will not judge you.

how quickly can
you flip and cut
outside wherever
is inside this.

my middle finger
outside rodney’s
car towards the
beverly hilton
A$AP backing
my classist
distaste.

now again lost
once more in a
city i’ve never
known likewise.

but home in a
heart how europe
had left me.

welcome home
late july 2012
numbers mean
absence and past.

everyone was dying
the tips of their hair
vibrant colors- birds
buzzed down the bike
path; flecks of fluorescent
neon flickering in the wind,
halloween green, blacklight,
pink lemonade- all dancing
like bait on the end of blonde
fishing line…………………………..„„„„„„

we loved it.

in the park we were quiet
and many of us had soft
sandwiches wrapped in
white wax paler paper.

tomorrow knew nothing.