in the evening and again in the morning
i sit and listen to the record spin

i've met a couple sweet talkers
but they dont know the shape i'm in

i used to know her well she was a real woman
and those real women get what they want

i used to know him well he was my friend
and we'd talk as we drove 'round the block

in the evening i'm the only one listening
the house is asleep

he's sitting by the fireplace
playing with a bootlace
and trying to catch a glimpse of the stars

and you're sitting on the staircase
pullin' a face
as you drink the cough syrup that you bought from the drugstore darling.

my music is
the melancholy circus anthem
the psychedelic carousel tune
(house of mirrors house of mirrors
100 reflected images of
displaced child on mood stabilizers)

neon has long repelled me
is this innocence lost?

the painted ponies
with their saddles ornate
go up and down but
never run free

(of course)

jaded carny stole my bow!
i was but five!

the scrambler spun
i chipped a tooth

I imagine a man
with crackhead talons
a few teeth and no joy
though who am i to judge:

"we are all outlaws
in the eyes of america"

my music is the last and lonely waltz
(i just want to be in big sur)

my music the quiet convergence
of a few little notes

the sort of person
who sits alone a lot
with just their mind
recalling thoughts of
california

and
my music
the crackling record's buzz

the falling duck feather
the sound of a house
settling into warmth after
a long stretch of
having been uninhabited

the creak and groan
of protesting pipes - - -

the wicked and brilliant
carnival's song
the old pond at the mission

my music is a
sentimental little arrangement

(but who could expect

otherwise)

aztec calendar

stumbling through our days
we approach the end of the aztec calendar
and we're all going down


a brilliant light of
tangerine and pink
the end of the world looks just like a cocktail from the poolside bar

if i could be assured
that what happens here
would stay here

i might stray beyond the lines

it's not as if i believe in a
judgment day
and anyway my crimes are not so great:

piled up across from me
they cannot weigh more than
an orange-beaked finch or a small hand grenade

comparable i assume
to the weight of the deeds
done by every girl in my bracket

ruled more be desire than duty,

these are after all the heady days of my youth meeting their technicolor demise

(high on a monument
all lined up to meet
some vibrantly plumed deity)

i only hope he does not physically pull out my beating heart,

mercy, mercy, from the age old tradition!

i prefer the quick blow, the scalding cacophonous explosion,

i'll go out singing,
disappear into the dissolving panorama...

life in lompoc?

life in lompoc refuses to thrill
these days


yet colorful characters linger

spoiled sons some, living alone in little houses downtown
payed for by their parents,
key bumps and cannabis plants,
white lines abundant, they try to get me
to vacuum the floor

but i cannot stand to vacuum
especially when high
the drone so loud it could strip paint with its volume,
always seems an angry monster
feared by cats and dogs alike

and so the carpet stays a dusty sea of blue synthetic
and paw prints

life in lompoc is boring as hell

most of the real thinkers have been sifted from the pot and now only the dregs remain
the smart kids either too lazy
fucked up indifferent addicted or disoriented to leave

and i do not count myself among them
but i am

until i go, until i go, until i go!
then i'll be gone then i'l be gone then i'll be gone
and you shant see and you shant see and you shant see
me around these parts no more

life in lompoc continues as if under a microscope's slide
sometimes we drive to the beach and then turn the car around and drive right back
it is a journey without a real destination, drive there turn around drive home
but the sense of direction comforts us

on the gray days with high wind
driving past union sugar avenue
toward the sea

life in lompoc is brutally slow but never fully stops
i wake early and wish i were still asleep
when the room is dark and everything very quiet
and my head pounds a pulsating beat

i make barely a sound

the tea bag is where i left it on the kitchen counter, a depressed transplant heart
leaking brown bile, still a
pillow for a child's head

and
not to seem rude--
but may i ask why you are allowed to be so happy?

what makes you so free and easy, so many exclamation points in even your most
thoughtless welcomes, as if your heart weighed no more than the feather
tattooed on my back

when even my heart weighs tons, heavy pewter in comparison to that falling feather?

why are you so free: when did he not do something similar to you?
and to that part of you that is no longer virginity but is neither reputation, that part
that can be taken and not returned but cannot fully vanish without your permission

although permission is eagerly sought and even for the most fragile of us
the ones hidden behind thoroughly obscuring mantillas, not just my scrap of veil
that became too easy to displace all too soon

we sometimes grant it so easily
doors after all being much easier to unlock than they are to lock
and lock-and-key being such a loved and petted notion to
us all

i wish i could make off with your joy and swallow it
until it was absorbed by my blue blood and became mine
heat and life!
some semblance of pink would perhaps return to my cheeks

finally to resemble a Klimt girl
as i always wished i could
as i've always secretly believed i do

but without the telling gush of
the phosphorescent stream of life fluid

that gives them that liquored glow,
their liquor being the only real kind
what i take to be liquor is really just
tomorrow's sickness and sorrow

replaced instead by exhausted tea bag,
still a pillow for a child's head

every morning i wake as if i were just born
and my chest aches with all the sadness of
everything i have yet to be left by
have yet to pay for
have yet to lose
and have already lost

every morning i wake the patient lying on the operating table:

force myself out of bed
seek my own ether
and tranquilize myself

relying crippled on that exhausted tea bag
a bowl or two of pot so that my head feels less like
it has been paved to the ground

morning, noon, and night my friends
and sometimes more
but try not to judge:

there is no ward for those of us who
cant remember happiness

no transfusion and i so wish i could have a transfusion--

heat and life!
finally to resemble a Klimt girl

i think that the truth is that my sadness is
the sort of thing that cannot be watched

no one wishes to be infected by this particularly debilitating blue and i harbor no blame

adjust your mantillas
enjoy your warm red blood and
sometime soon i hope
more than i hope for anything else

that i will be able to wake on mornings
with lightness again

no longer reliant on exhausted tea bag to soothe this
prevalent pain in my chest that shocks me
with its strength every time

and someday maybe to walk without
a train of thick smoke

held off the ground by the attendant incense and match fumes

i have no alibi:
caught pale handed in the bedroom
with the pipe
trying to steal your liveliness

only some you know, i would not take your entire store:

it is a terrible thing to do,
i wouldnt do it

morphine may

morphine May, you came like a lover from the ether
of everything i had yet to come to know

but once introduced i found you irresistible
a hot and sweating fever high and a delirious joy

in bed i would lay and sweat out my weight
until i was only one body made only of one thing and that thing

was all the elation for
life friends love the cosmos music mystery and the human heart
that had been gathered by my own hands as time
inconspicuously passed

and how when the day was warm and life was simple i
could morphine the hours away

i remember much
but little
i remember time falling like feathers


all around in a beautiful universe
as little as my bedroom and as big as

the constantly pulsing undercurrent of love
that i'm so tentative but faithful exists

now let me lay beneath that heavy air again
that air heavy with a sweet and reliable promise

dont worry darling you'll be alright
dont worry darling
see how right it already is?

christmas takes the prize
i hate it most

serves only as a twisted reminder
of how happy we all used to be

i feel as if i'm the only one who cant hold up

climb into the bathtub
get out of the bathtub

every morning feel again the expanding pain in my chest
measure the severity

have a long stoned talk with myself:
you need perspective
etc etc etc
always darkest before the dawn
etc etc etc
where's your faith in goodness?
etc etc etc

cry a very long time
put the kettle on
these are my mornings

stumble impaired through my days
and find that i hate
mostly everyone and mostly
everything

until it is cold and dark
another of a ceaseless chain of nights
i crawl into my constricting pain

and the christmas lights blink on the tree
on
off
on off

i sedate myself with smoke
a friendly nurse
here, this and then you'll feel much better

til i come down and feel much worse
and the christmas lights blink on the tree
on
off
on off