1-CALIFORNIA
a kaleidoscope of primary colors— reds, blues, oranges, greens—splashed across mass produced backpacks, massive and light as balloons hanging off the shoulders of a busful of children chattering and sporadically laughing and whining about everything all at once.
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A FOOL
sin city behind, matrimony all around. i am 30 years old and know love and commitment are essential to my survival. the only mistakes left to make could prove lethal: drown in bottles of expensive vodka and wake up a week later, fired. chase a hooker's tail and wake up with children, grimacing in aged judgment. punch a police officer in the face and wake up behind bars, wishing i'd been lucid enough to see the damage done.
yesterday i saw quiet lightning, today i hear Manhã de Carnaval, waiting for some god to disperse spurious summer into fog.
why do they favor me? what have i done to earn their blessings? i know i cannot always depend on their good graces. the gods are fickle, and luck is not love— one can run its course, like a pint of beer in the hand of a hard time.
WE'RE TALKING ABOUT MUSIC
sometimes after a long spring evening of love and drinking and psychedelic dreaming and african-inspired disco rhythms mingling with valerian root and fine wine, with pretty women exchanging dresses like black and white mages, making everyone wonder how many roses can bloom on a table how many glasses can break on a table how many sides a wooden table can have and how many people have actually seen the famous films that have inspired us all to languish in arcades and to laugh on rooftops and to recite famous choruses in creaky hallways and to brr embracing the windy night, one can find nothing more perfect than walking to the bus stop and disintegrating:
TINNITUS AT 30
i had an appointment with an audiologist but i canceled it because the receptionist stared into my face and smiled, glorifying my curly locks.
her smile was mine, and we glowed like a twin star system more powerful than serpents slithering up a staff, bleaching away the darkness.
TURNING 30
i came into life crying, shaking fists at the bright lights, clenched fright at the wild sounds muffled no more but naked as me, a carnival of flesh and compassion and madness and computer buzzing brains thousands of miles, every direction electric lines, signatures of destiny.
30 years old in a week, i will not go in crying or violent or whining because i am a man, deeply flawed, fucked in the head, fantastic in imagination, organs desensitized to life, in love, laughing at even the worst jokes and letting the tears flow at the most mundanely divine, beautifully worthless moments that drag by on slime.
TRUTH
i love things that are true, like
BEFORE THE SUNDAY CONCERT
the gold rush in my glass fizzes with loneliness, expensive for a sunny day spent in the darkness of dalva, a deserted old favorite where i wait for my brother and sister.
COMMUNICATION
navigating the wild seas of communication— the first, seen w eyes wide and amazed, another, familiar, new, energizing, another, a punch cocktail blast of a typhoon, another, a misty morning reflection, another, double dutch rainbows in the sky, another, just the expanse, breathing, the last, blowing in the wind— casts us into the most beautiful chaos.
MY HAIR
there are times i’m furious about my hair and just want it away from me, piled like a shitty pastry a million miles in the sky. and then
other parts of me like sand and like salt and like to let it all fall into a tangled mess of seaweed.
SIMPLE LOVE
my monarch butterfly woke me up, she showed me the mourning doves, and once we got back home she gave me a simple ring for a simple love.