Franklin Avenue in 2008
playing Twister in the back of taxicabs
every night was a natural disaster
songs like volcanic eruptions
sex like plate tectonics
tears like hurricanes
and the sun rose
on the most exquisite hangovers
humanitarian disasters
eyes destroyed by window light
heads like furnaces
voices like rock tumblers
but one more hour
with my eye socket resting
on your lips, and everything
would be OK again
There are snakes in some places.
Sometimes when I close my eyes
at night, I see them. Old wet leaves,
and a tank with some kind of polymer
foam hardened onto it, and the sun
barely making through the tall trees.
I was almost scared, then I heard
my mother calling me home for dinner.
Just Another Tuesday
Like the raven said “I want some more”
so I walked down 7th street
to the 8-liner lounge,
where purple greed flashed
off our wet eyes as a Puerto Rican
lesbian named Fish and I
fed our rent money into the machines.
The purple neon lights told me
that cacophonous happiness
was just a few pulls away, and
Fish said her cousin once won
twelve thousand dollars, but
now he’s back to selling speed.
Pockets empty, I kicked rocks
on the walk back home. The grackles
with their throats full of stones
hacked out their laughter, saying
“he’ll be back for some more.”
Dmitriy P, the Ukrainian Cowboy
Skullet peeking out of a black cowboy hat,
Dmitriy P darkened the door
of the pub today, high noon,
and he has admitted to himself
that only mezcal and Lone Star
will get him back on that horse:
stirrups higher even
than we were last night.
No one knows better than DP knows:
the most dangerous showdown
is with ourselves; the devil
in the sight of our pistol
looks just like us;
the dusty Main Street
Is really just a mirror.
More Excitement for the Change of Season
The late fall sun jangles
while I open up my house
and lay on the floor
while the north wind blows
through the screen door
taking with it all the summer
dust and the death
of my friend Rick. The angle
of the light could be ominous,
but it isn’t, it is cocky —
as if to say, whatever else
you have in store, you
beastly universe, we
are not impressed, we
have seen it all. Great things
have come and will come again.
Blue Norther
Late in the year in Texas,
when the wind turns,
ripping out of the northern
Panhandle, and scraping
the sky clean of any cloud,
the sky turns somehow
bright, blue, and black
all at the same time, it is
cold at last, and we are as
close to eternity as can be.
On Turning 50
Here’s to the ones who
said we’d never get here.
Let’s drop the curtain, and call
the rest of this an encore.
Sprawling Gambling Scandal
“What does the mafia
have on these ballplayers,”
my brother asked. They
all keep throwing games.
Chuck the bartender
replied “what don’t
they have” in this age
when everyone’s life
is one click away.
But it’s an older story,
I think to myself, as
old as the first human.
The yawning emptiness;
the burning need for more.
Some Guy
Some guy committed a crime,
and some guy investigated
some guy was bereft of life,
and some guy was beside himself
with loss. Some guy picked up
the phone to make a call,
but he put the phone down
again. Some guy waited
and watched, but the truth
was all knotted up
like a twisted cable
under a dusty end table.
The Long Night Shuffle
The nights are beginning
their luxurious winter stretch
as the northern hemisphere
tilts away from the sun, and
I realize how much we depend
on the haphazard wobble
of our planet in orbit.
Without it would there be
weather as we know it?
And if not, what would we
talk about? Without the seasons
would there be time at all?
Our celestial wiggle
turns our rock into Earth;
our planetary boogie
makes life wonderful.
No Kings
We don’t need a king,
we need a hand.
We don’t need ICE,
we need an ice chest
full of tamales.
We don’t need
another angry dude
on the internet,
we need a national
weather service.
We don’t need global tariffs,
we need a phone call
from our little sister at 3AM
when it seems like the last light
in the world has gone out.
