A PORTFOLIO FOR THE NOT-YET-JADED 
or 
IF I TAKE THIS BOTTLE OF WINE TO THE ROOF, 
THEN I CAN THROW THE BOTTLE OFF, 
RATHER THAN MYSELF

a collection of work in verse
1983 — 1994

by Joel J. Rane
©1995.  All rights reserved.  This work is unpublished.


LOVE CAN OCCASIONALLY BE WORSE THAN IGNORANCE

I like to be at home to tell her 
With my city watching at the window 
The breeze in my hair 
The light in my eyes 
Her eyes always leaving mine

It’s been too many years 
The termites say as they eat me (burp) 
So why not give her some agony 
Now when she is left alone 
Leave her as she did me—for dread.

I wanted to tell her I loved her 
Twenty years before (Kimba the White Lion) 
I got a small white card in the mail, RSVP 
Dear Heart, come touch my white dress (Walgreen’s) 
And lay envious eyes upon the body, the soul 
That will now never be yours?  Never!  (Well…) 
The pen scratched out a small quiet no.

I sit at the window hearing dim bells (BELLS BELLS BELLS!) 
Put down my drink and my cigarette 
I wish you love, my darling girl 
I will just sit and wait 
For the three of us to fry (fly, die, ask “why”? etc.) 
ACTION IS CHARACTER.  (go FUCK YOURSELF!)
August 1983


FOR HOLLYWOOD’S SAKE

Neon!  Neon! 
The drummer drums and the knife falls 
Screaming sirens and flashing lights 
Sunset Boulevard 
Striped skirts and striped hair

Everything in color—night on night 
Light and cold stones in the alley 
A Cat scrambles over broken glass

Hair dripping with rain and sweat 
A thousand dancing gyrating bodies 
A thousand lines of white powder

Hollywood!  Hollywood!  Give me your money! 
I have found your soul!  Your money now! 
Bloodstains and half a face 
Flickering flame and men shrouded in blue 
Obvious lust on Sunset; buried lust 
in a heart slowed by alcohol

Guards at the gates—let us out! 
The cops will soon pull over a 
Thrashed Volvo in Beverly Hills
August 1983


THE SILVER STRAND 
(for Miss Barbara Sootkoos)

Tonight the moon is full and the air is cold and my hands are gloved. 
San Diego Bay is silence, deathly silence swallowing 
the hiss of jets and cars into black water.  I crossed the highway, 
however, I could hear the pounding of the surf on the Strand.

The Strand, ½ mile wide and five long, all gray moonlit dust. 
Low and narrow.  A freeway, light poles in an irreal constellation, 
the lifeguard stations abandoned for the winter.  No one is there.

It is the place to take a lover, holding hands and swinging arms, 
tripping into kelp and McDonald’s, death and decay.  Some rhythm, like 
the pounding, eroding surf.

The tide—ripping up sand and burying parking-lots.

And yet, at the Coronado Cays young people dance on, for this is 
their city.  They are unaware of it.  I have the eyes of a stranger, 
the ocean, tearing, ripping, eroding, using and driving off again 
into the darkness.  San Diego, where once nets hung from tuna boats, 
I have been away so long.  It is not San Francisco, or Los Angeles.

That is the secret.  No one is there.  The Silver Strand, the city 
has no character, it is just there.  The Silver Strand, it is not 
famous, it is not Malibu.

I was the only one on the beach tonight.

It is just there.  I am 
gone.
December 1983


TWO ASHTRAYS

A jet rips across the ocean sky 
I’m dressed in black, uh huh 
Black like my mom used to wear 
What fucking scum told you about color? 
God I hate these whining voices 
Black is strength black is brains black will take you 
Death is fearless get out of the hall 
Music is a drug like cigarettes, black smoke 
I have two ashtrays and no ashes 
What the hell—normality.
March 1984


COMPETITIOUS

Steve came down from San Francisco, beard and bandana, 
plane ticket paid for with stolen credit cards, seven hits of acid 
Daniel frenches a beer can on his acid. 
A technical sunset behind neon palm trees, and sheriffs on LSD 
cruise…a collection of ideas on torn pieces of the future. 
A busy signal at Stacie Kaufman’s, the stars wink brilliantly in 
time, at Malibu, above glowing cigarettes. 
Los Angeles is old old old, we’ve seen it all before.  But still 
the endless subtlety of the nights, to fill in the empty cracks.
June 1984


PISMO BEACH

Seafood appears in little dumps, graffiti attacks the beach, 
Let’s eat and see what happens. 
A rickety pier broaches the Pacific.  Seedy vistas are everywhere. 
Morro Bay in ten years, Half-Moon Bay in twenty. 
Bumpkins under the influence of city slickers.  No hope.
July 1984


SAN FRANCISCO AND BACK IN ONE SECOND

One long line of speed, and buddy ready to go! 
You wanna talk action.  I’ll give it to you.  Baby. 
Zip over to the SOMA with a girl in black, five dollars at the door, 
dancing whirling bored bodies and flashing neon light.  Drinks. 
Tars, the Bus.  Back to Berkeley, back to back.  A fight on BART. 
A faggot on the A Bus.  “Show it motherfucker!”  “Oh, your dress is 
fabulous!”  “Suck mine!”  “Elizabeth Taylor, reeeeally darling?” 
Don’t touch but write write write eeeeeEEEEYAH! 
More SPEED FOR REAL WORLD MY ASS BUDDY YOU FUCKING 
COLLEGE STUDENTS THIS PREPARES YOU FOR REAL WORLD 
DRINK YOUR BOURBON AND GO TO BED BED BED. 
Oh boy for a bed.
October 1984


SHE HAS BLACK EARRINGS AS WELL 
(for Miss Rosanne Kennedy)

You really had to be there.  It gets commonplace for me.

They understand, sometimes, that they must dress darkly.  Usually 
Not.  Then the tie-dye—but no sympathy here.

You figure the cat would be all black—but no… 
A patch of white here and there.  But mostly black.

It gets boring sometimes.  But not many people do show it.  A lot 
Feel it.  Right?  It’s not L.A., but it is a city of sorts.

Boy is it screwed up.  But you wouldn’t know to look.

It’s running like clockwork tonight.  Food—snack at 
Barrington Hall.  A bummed cigarette.  Hot Coffee, Cold Beer. 
The kind with the puzzles in the caps.  Hollywood memories. 
But there is no Hollywood here.

A swish, an ungainly step.  They read, sure they read a lot.

And they take speed, oh, a lot of speed.

But it gets so boring, everything so clockwork.  The clock 
Speeds up, yeah boy, then it gets interesting.

It defies description—the bullshit does.  But it works. 
The music is loud and heavy—not romantic.  Or very.  But it works.

She comes by for another cigarette.  Another smoke, screw it. 
I’d love to stay longer but snack is over.  They play Hendrix 
And Andy Clay busts a bottle.  Calm down.  It works.
October 1984


MARISA HANSELL

You watch, but you can’t change the channel any more. 
A clear night, the lights of Oakland 
looking out a window, looking 
as a girl bounces quarters into a glass of rum 
and sings in French, into dust. 
(Is there something to be said for being negative?)

Love is shit 
now, the color of the heroin being collected before me. 
A vein, New York fills my head. 
Marisa, Marisa, don’t die just yet Marisa, 
the Manhattan gutters are filled with needles 
Temptation and Discipline are going to fight 
I avoid marijuana but cigarettes rule me 
Alcohol is strong.

Forgotten cigarette butts crushed in ashtrays 
Cassandra, Dianna, Kathleen, Linda, Leslie…the list bores me.

Your hands are so beautiful, your cloudy hair, 
Your glowing eyes and your laugh like a record at the wrong speed.

Your smile is gone.  I drink to the void. 
I speed on the freeway.  I touch the hypo.  (As in Sodium Thiosulfate) 
The mirror broken, the dream interrupted 
The rest is easy.  The rest is boring.

Marisa, you have left me no chance to become bored with you. 
Your soul fled first to New York, and then within 
to escape the falling bodies of your dreams.

The day you left, 
I wore black and meant it at last. 
At a circus of punk rock I drank two quarts of malt liquor 
the falling bodies landed on my face. 
I stumbled out of the can, screaming at the singer, 
“Hey Rollins, Lydia coming up from L.A.?” laughing, 
blood dripping off my chin, feeling nothing 
Lydia Lunch being in New York also.

A ruin is always a ruin, 
restored only to collapse, devastation. 
The rest are so boring, it is so frustrating 
if you die, your soul burns my heart shut. 
As if you haven’t already done so 
Alive.
December 1984


ODE TO ALLA NAZIMOVA 
(for Miss Adelaide Leventon)

Black hair, heavy over 
eyelids, heavy with eyeshadow 
you could have been anyone but you 
were Madame Nazimova, Nazimova of Stanislavski, 
Nazimova of the silent screen.

In silence you pursed dark lips 
devastation in silver nitrate. 
A mime, a Rembrandt, 
no depth but for your dark eyes.

A Salome in the dress of Beardsley 
your pennies to art, your violin 
from the theatres of Moscow 
the dust of the Garden of Alla, Hollywood 
The dog-eared pages of a picture-book.

The Great Nazimova abandoned all words.  The 
whining voice.  Time is gone 
and stopped, a body and face devoted solely 
to celluloid.

The dope was fine.  The lovers were fine.  The lights… 
Shadows, black and white.  Flickering.  Heavy lids. 
You were made for it.
February 1985


PATENTED NAUSEA

A Quaalude will halt decay for a while, but it won’t erode it for good. 
This is something beyond drugs, this is something only people will do 
and they just won’t do it.  They won’t.  So a Quaalude. 
The point of wine dinners is, of course, to get fucked up 
just screw around, all night.  Barrington is too small to play. 
The people who play are gone, everyone is dead. 
I’m trying not to die, but having a hard time.  Alcohol 
tastes like death.  The blue soda tastes like defeat.  Pot 
tastes like hell.  Every cigarette I smoke brings tears.  There 
is just nothing interesting about listening to Mozart and watching 
television.  This must be the low point, stupid animal, 
stupid animal, school and Barrington Hall, 
so easy.  It’s easy! 
Listen, man, that white jive won’t do shit for you. 
What’s wrong with you?  You don’t look happy. 
If I take this bottle of wine to the roof, then I can throw the bottle 
off, rather than myself.  Things work out better that way, I can go 
downstairs and enjoy more torture.  Happy to survive. 
One good burrito on Hollywood Boulevard, that’s it. 
Are you fucked up?  Boy, you look trashed. 
We might as well stay up, we’ll feel worse tomorrow. 
Pass the wine and the speed, everyone else in the building is asleep. 
Malcolm was really psychotic, tell him Andy.  Did we tell you? 
Sorry to be rude, but… 
You’re just fucked up.  Oh, I wish I was messed up.  Things are 
happier that way.  Wake me up when things look brighter. 
Some people don’t go out in the sunlight.
March 1985


RENO NEVADA UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

It only takes a car and a lot of money. 
Last night in San Francisco, a minimal escape, now this is more like it. 
Reno, decadent neon palace of Rome, a post-weekend junket. 
They named their child “They Couldn’t Help It.” 
First night:  “Magic Fingers” and a joint.  X on the radio. 
Next morning:  Police on the radio.  Wet kisses on the mattress 
and everything on the floor.  Broccoli for Psyche.  Plenty of open 
full beers.  I am back in it, deep deep deep. 
Lake Tahoe, the hotel once blown up resurrected sheathed in gold. 
I should only be so lucky, but for the feeling of crazy love, 
desperate, 
love that clutches and seeks 
but will not find, will not want, will not reflect. 
I feel sick every morning.  I hope I will not in Berkeley, 
I want to die in Los Angeles, alone alone alone. 
This isn’t as much fun as I had hoped. 
The trap isn’t pleasant, it isn’t even a trap. 
I have created everything and I must finish it. 
I WILL NOT let it finish me. 
Lake Tahoe is so beautiful in the spring.  The sun sets behind 
snowy mountains, with the vast lake foreground. 
There is love in every tragedy. 
As Psyche said, “American culture is making something out of nothing.”
April 1985


THE DANCER

After an eternity in San Francisco 
The dancer came back to Hollywood. 
He had been up there, dancing. 
First year they take fifty out of two-thousand 
Second year seven out of fifty.  He was that good.

From his townhouse in the hills, 
all of L.A. sparkled and danced. 
He lit a joint and warned us about 
Artists.  He said a writer 
would suck the soul from all life. 
A painter would take the emotion, and a poet both. 
The actor would reduce humanity to a wink, 
the musician to a note. 
The dancer to a move, the most thoughtless 
of them all. 
The soul of art, he said, immortality 
of art or artist, the crushing 
of the human race into a psychedelic clock.

I told him of San Francisco 
He told me to watch out.  He would never dance again. 
“Here we do it for money. 
Up there we do it for keeps.”
May 1985


HEART BLEEDS INK

Suppose you could seal your heart in an envelope and mail it to yourself. 
I dialed New York and heard lonely static. 
I won’t use my address book again. 
Pain means less and less to me.  I will become a typewriter. 
The world will go directly to paper. 
Batteries are loaded, stamps licked.  (Still snow in Tahoe.)
June 1985


THE SUTRO BATHS

The view from the Sutro Baths, where slime grows onto flowers. 
Why fight over cities?  They exist.  And money?  Always there. 
More control, that’s the answer.  Women.  No inspiration, 
no cares, no worries.  What am I doing? 
Paradise—death.  At least something new.
June 1985


THE LOS ANGELES INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

The white ceiling is high and empty—sky.  A tropical rainstorm 
behind us.  Katherine is a small blonde hooray. 
The whine of jets and Andy Hunt eating his apple. 
Danny watches me.  Katherine smiles.  Everything is okay. 
Rosanne will not reveal her secrets. 
Our city will be great, but it will never be good.
July 1985


SPORTS

Speed, speed, Greg Gray says, his eyes rolling, his mouth 
laughing explosively, his body spotted with watercolors. 
A girl sits in her empty apartment, the TV soft, smoking and drinking 
white wine over the Sunday comics.  Occasionally she traces the outline 
of her mouth with her index finger. 
Nothing is worth dying for, except maybe life. 
“There is no philosophy in nitrous!” Joe Curren screams, a balloon in 
each hand.  Now we slowly pass out, nitrous and acid and beer and 
weed and cigarettes and MDA and speed and coke and DMT and 
mushrooms and vodka and heroin and jesus if I haven’t done a lot of 
drugs in my time.  Fuck.  I look into the future.  Fuck.  Fuck. 
Listen:  the magic word is “fuck”.  One night Cheetos and Ranier. 
One morning Coca-cola and Susie-Q’s. 
Things are not looking good, but I don’t care.  Living on the bottom, 
who said that?  I won’t shave my head, no, I’ll wear a suit and throw 
a big monkey wrench at the world.  Everything is fun.
September 1985


PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG CORPSE (PORTRAIT OF 
THE CATHOLIC AS A YOUNG HYPOCRITE)

Barrington Hall downstairs at midnight—NEVADA he cried. 
		DISFIGUREMENT LENDS CHARACTER.

	(New York subway—bad trip new year’s eve 1984) 
	(also a bar at Caesar’s Palace Las Vegas 3 am.) 
being polite I take my exit. 
Once I woke up in Santa Barbara.  Sometimes I’d laugh at the young 
queens, but usually I just laughed at myself.  You can’t be a good nihilist 
without first being a good Catholic, because you can’t be a good atheist 
until you’ve been a good Catholic.  Remember. 
		REMEMBER THE VENTURA FREEWAY AT RUSH HOUR?
October 1985


THE AMARGOSA DESERT

	The old man of my past is still laughing, still casting clouds of gray 
sand down around my head.  Death Valley, 7000 on one side, 12000 on the 
other, a stinking hole with campers racing across it.  The mountains just 
glare, the sun, only sage and creosote know home.  I am home.  Los 
Angeles is a desert still.  The planet in silence grows lips.  I understand.  
You DO NOT fuck with the desert.  All else is open game.  (Open game of 
Highway 93, 28 Sept. 85—Whomp that sucker!)
	A cinderblock with cop lights flashing at the corners reads 
SHAMROCK BROTHEL.  I am reassured.  I remember waiting for the bus 
at Hollywood and Vine on humid nights.  In Berkeley trapped, in Nevada 
abused, in California set free.  My pretty state, I never should have 
forgotten the American Dream.  America lies all to the east, all mystery, 
but I have met her people—no mystery there.  Atomic bombs melt it to 
glass, the Amargosa is as far as I go east.  (Nevada sucks—take the kids.)
October 1985


THE GIRL WHO WORE WHITE

YES, INDEEDY, the girl wore white, it came up around her eyes, it was 
rolled up around her ankles, she looked through these eyes out of the 
past, me, man, someone who never looks at a calendar, I was terrified.  I 
ran to Los Angeles and then I ran to silence.  Nothing worked.  She let me 
go a thousand times, but she still wore white and her eyes still spoke the 
past, except now it was my past.  I let her eyes take me prisoner, our eyes 
set up our cute little bars that only violence could break.  I refused 
violence, because the girl wore white.  I wish for the strength to free 
myself.

What is love?  Love is day and night, a 7-11 of pain pills and stale burritos 
and flying apples and very, very cheap beer.  There is a kind of warmth 
beneath it all, the unasked-for touch of a hand, of warm lips, of soft eyes 
that speak nothing but the present.  Yet I cannot find it, how desperately I 
wish not to wear black any more, nor the sterility of white, nor the lie of 
colors.  Just to wear nothing at all.
October 1985


MADNESS AT 3.24 A.M.

It’s unfair, being asked to analyze books 
that justify suicide 
when no birds sing, and everything is pitch-black 
including your clothes and eyes 
and postcards are sufficient to answer twelve-page letters. 
Letters cross continents, tongues are out of mouths. 
311 calls 211, Barrington calls a house on Blake Street, 
the U.S. of A. calls West Germany, and nothing is said 
except what is unimportant. 
But everything is unimportant, so let’s have another drink. 
Oh, you fool, reading Virginia Woolf at three in the fucking morning, 
listening to Wagner, you asked for it, you got it. 
Your whole life flashes before your eyes, a wrong turn here 
a wrong turn there, knocking on doors to empty rooms, full ones, 
forgetting to write phone messages on the little yellow notepad 
with the sticky back, or the plastic cardboard with Hello Kitty on it. 
America is such a wonderful, well-ordered place. 
Time is running out, and you, my dark-eyed fiend, have run out 
on me as well.  For you I write, my bitter sweetheart, 
run, run, run to your room, to the wine, your 
tall Nordic surfer musician boyfriend.  Play, eat, drink, 
and be merry, for it’s finals week again 
and your connection is out of speed. 
Tomorrow the sun will rise again—time will pass, but WILL YOU? 
My great passion, my great love, she sent me a postcard.
December 1985


EVEN THE SKY LOOKS FAKE

I am a puppet in the suburbs, hanging on telephone wires. 
Burbank may not look the city of broken hearts, but 
the telephone poles and the Carl’s Jr. signs and the 
parking lots full of cars prove it is so.

The asphalt in the parking lot is the lake of fire 
and Dante wends his way across 
the Valley.
24 December 1985


GHOST FROM THE PAST 
(for Miss Kara Bjornlie)

Is this L.A., my tomb, my tomb, poor Kara half-buried 
in red leather and cigarette smoke. 
The plane leaves at seven, back to hell, back, to hell, 
don’t take cuts, wait your turn in line.  I may have gotten it 
all wrong.  Kara, were you ever a dreamer? 
The game it swayed, back-and-forth 
and nothing more was said. 
The price nothing less than your WHOLE soul. 
I kissed brown lips; black palm tree silhouetted 
Neon blue sky.  Stars.  Moon.
April 1986


THE BUTTERFLY

The Chinese Philosopher said: 
Last night I dreamt I was a butterfly 
but did not know for certain if 
I the man dreamt of being a butterfly, or 
I the butterfly dreamt of being a man.

At six in the morning, at Dave’s Coffee Shop in Oakland, 
reality becomes clear; Joel and Joe and Robert and Gene order up 
Blueberry pancakes with onions, the Burger, the Chili 
I ordered the Frenchburger, fried on speed and sunlight, I asked 
what’s French about it? 
The waitress sends us into her own private oblivion, saying 
it comes on a French bun 
Robert begins to mumble, French dressing, French meat, or French cook… 
After the biorhythms nothing seems to matter much.

The next day we went out to the USS Missouri, and gray and flags 
sparkled in the sun, San Francisco in all its old lost glory 
yelling, Have a happy racist holiday! over and over, or 
Don’t be brainwashed! to which a sailor replied, Too late! 
I’d rather see my son dead than grow up to be a scumbag like you! 
These sentiments I find depressing.  Ralph and Anastasia take in 
the scenery, the cops popping authoritative wheelies 
Crissy Sullivan has a small exploding sun on her shirt, an 
exploding sun which has absorbed much of her body weight 
as it has to Steve Gonzales, David Verba, Leo, Bill, Andy, and 
god (or Vince) knows how many others.

The Butterfly goes into its cocoon as a caterpillar. 
Barrington Hall will be open, but six of us will apparently not be 
“good”, no, we are “bad”.  Cindy wears it like a medal, but me and 
Gene and others are tired tired tired, we want to wear an exploding 
sun on our chests, we want to go to Castro Valley or L.A. or N.Y. 
or in these times, even Salinas for the summer, but Berkeley has 
caught more lobster in its lovely gilded roach motel 
Confirmation from above!  The Butterfly would dream, emerge but not 
completely, waiting for the Final Check-out Slip.

Reagan hits the button and the Earth is VAPORIZED.  Whee! 
This time only the Missouri, the Statue of “Liberty”, the 
Mexican Navy is invading Daly City, whee!  A self-proclaimed 
“middle-class faggot” at Elsmere is raging about the Supreme Court 
telling Louie about the pyramid of drug dealing in Barrington Hall 
Tanja, by the way, may be organic but that’s no turn-on 
Crissy is also pretty organic but in that case certainly does it 
in a more Dionysian fashion, you know, dope and alcohol and the 
method that I have decided upon, for Berkeley, sooooo TACK-EEE. 
And in West Oakland, Louie cried out, Why aren’t there any bloods? 
Patrick asked the box at McDonald’s what was in a Big Mac, like the 
idiot he sometimes is.  The joke is that the box didn’t know.

Every asshole from Nevada east coming here to make it big.  The 
Butterfly, fly, fly, fly to Eureka, to Samoa, to Arcata, I don’t 
want to fall in love again, not with someone who might give it back. 
Nope, the Butterfly must fly, can only dream of being a man, 
I must fly.  Whoops, Barrington Hall; my feet are encased in LEAD. 
Party party party party party party party party arty arty arty arty 
Bonnie and Clyde, rushing across the empty Texas plains
May 1986


SAN FRANCISCAN CHARM

Sitting on Market Street, talking to a bottle of Southern Comfort. 
Telling it:  Hungry and very, very unhappy.
September 1986


THE CALTRAIN SERIES

I fall into deep gloom and melancholy 
When I survey the scene of human folly, 
Finding on every hand base flattery, 
Injustice, fraud, self-interest, treachery… 
Ah, it’s too much; mankind has grown so base, 
I mean to break with the whole human race. 
					— Moliere

San Francisco—O glorious city of light!  Coming out of the subway, the 
sky is blue, buildings tower and sparkle all about me.  Bands play on 
Market Street and crowds of tourists gather multicolored at the Powell 
Street Turntable.  The west breeze is fresh and cars spin madly along.  I 
paused for a moment to soak in all the beauty, but then I had to walk 
south again.  The train pulled into the station, beautiful silver snake, I 
entered the mouth willingly, a Fitzgerald novel under my arm, and a 
smile on my face.
Twenty-Second Street—The City collapses into solid gray stone, freeways 
shadow and junkyards rust, the commuters wait with mirror precision.  
Fitzgerald grows dark at
Paul Avenue—and I open a ragged copy of Celine.  The train is going 
faster, my face pressed to the glass.  What have I missed?
Bayshore—Civic madness fades and desolate hills open up before us, the 
fog adorning San Bruno Mountain.  Yes, there are others here.  I learn 
names, places, faces, dialogues, languages, secrets, bridges, tunnels. 
South San Francisco—Golden jets drift across the ocean sky, and we 
celebrate our passage.  Processions of angularity, intimidation and gaiety.  
I juggle John Fante and Nathanael West, and Romance and Precocity 
devour me.
San Bruno—Green cold trees and rows of sparkling alien cars.  The train 
is more subdued.  Is this doubt?  Our addresses conflict.
Millbrae—The childish clicking of rails intoxicates me.  In another 
carriage people yell, hypnotize, anthropomorphize, induce, vandalize, 
pirouette, seduce.  I am strangely attracted.  In my lap a poem of Alfred, 
Lord Tennyson.  I swallow Classicism as I would swallow Listerine.
Broadway—Yes!  The Bay Area is my playground.  Jessica Savitch dies in 
the Delaware Canal, philosophers ask for spare change but I digress, mein 
Kopf, Ihren Kopf, what the hell—normality.  Geometric streets sweep by, 
glowing stucco, and I eye the door to the other carriage.
Burlingame—Enough of pruned green trees already.  The other 
passengers do their nails and drink bad beer.  Nobody smokes.
San Mateo—A city rises up around the train, talk of croissants and foreign 
cities and David Bowie, I’ve got to move.  I get up and walk into the other 
carriage.
Hayward Park—Sounds of running water, marijuana smoke everywhere, 
a loadie beside me chain-smokes and reads the Bhagavad-Gita, what the 
hell kind of mess is this?  Someone spray-paints a window so the 
conductor sees nothing.  The conductor wears paisley and tinsel.
Bay Meadows—Crowds of color writhe and gamble, no need to get off, 
we pull our own slot machine and come up with four bars.  Long-haired 
elves with movie cameras film all and no one cares, people suntan, people 
dance.  Get with it!
Hillsdale—I awake dreamless in the aisle, the conductor poking me 
playfully.  Strobe lights and lava lamps twirl through the smoke, the 
carriage behind dissolves and is forgotten.  Another cigarette as I watch 
two preppies shoot heroin.  Uh oh, I feel around for a parachute, but the 
only escape is to the last carriage, divided into small, gray cubicles, 
tattered satin curtains across the windows whereas here the curtains 
shimmer new as leaves in rain.
Belmont—Hills drift slowly past the windows, mirror hills of bodies 
fondle each other inside, cats jump about.  I slip and fall on piles of 
quaaludes.  The commuters enter nervously, suckling briefcases and 
purses and Bibles and machine-guns, most of those run away but the few 
dance and stay.
San Carlos—Now actors are shaving their heads and slamming into the 
walls and diving off the luggage-rack.  I lean out the door for air, then 
back into the smell of puke and fake redwood, rollercoast into grams of 
cocaine, piles of pills, a Goodyear of nitrous oxide, enough marijuana to 
keep an American Bedroom Community stoned for a decade.  I read 
Nietzsche and understand him at last.
Redwood City—A hypodermic syringe flies across the carriage vibrating 
nervously in the seat a foot from my head.  Empty wine bottles float past 
the conductor.  The police run from broken chairs.  I dive under the seats 
as some jump through broken windows.  All right, who the fuck tied my 
shoelaces together?
Atherton—The screams of Europe-bound jets and Lou Reed wrecks the 
carriage, the Dead die and the living die, syringes fly like African darts, 
books spontaneously combust and sentiments rust.  I crawl to the door 
and at
Menlo Park—I fall out and hit my head on a “USA Today” rack.  When I 
am awake the black commuters are reading my last rites from Las Vegas 
motel Bibles.  Ouch!  Time to walk.
Palo Alto—Dentists and auto body shops.  Neat apartments.  Green tree 
streets.  Fog everywhere.
Stanford—Yellow foxtails pierce my socks, broken glass cuts my nerve.  
Tawny buildings with bloody roofs wall me in.
California Avenue—Shopping centers, falling money.  Where is the train?  
I’ve already lost half my brain.
Castro—Thumbing madly through scrapbooks produces no effect, some 
kind of defect, the way to survive is to stay alive.
Mountain View—Country-Western grows cactus in my ears.  Ignoring 
the blood does no good.  Mexican food and beer keep sanity.
Sunnyvale—The train pulls in slowly.  A pile of unused plane coupons 
litters the dirt as I pull out my train ticket.  The conductor is wearing 
paisley.  He will not take my ticket, I get on anyway.
Lawrence—Is this the same train?  Faces look familiar.  They paint, talk, 
laugh among themselves.  I sit and wait.
Santa Clara—I sit and wait.  Faces from the past run along the train and 
scream at me to get off.  From the next carriage I am invited in.  I sit and 
wait.  No one speaks to me.
College Park—Smog cloaks white stucco.  Hot air awakens old spirits.  I 
sit and wait.  No one speaks to me.  I sit and wait.  I sit and wait.  My high 
school yearbook smashes the window and hits me in the head.
San Jose—I get off, rub the cut in my head.  The Caltrain pulls away, back 
to San Francisco, it goes sadly, I forget to lay my head on the rails before 
it.  An Amtrak train pulls in going the opposite way, L.A., the conductor 
in shorts and sandals with a surfboard.  He invites me aboard.  I feel for a 
parachute but find only this notebook.  Laugh and I begin to write.
October 1986


VIVISECTION MALE AND FEMALE

Under fluorescent ice cream lamps a man and a woman sit 
blood running sweet and clasping hands sweat 
Say you that broken bottles do not litter hills overlooking cities 
decadent neon palaces of Rome, vibrating motel beds 
cable television, shy touching hands of dead years 
reborn in soft lips, burning 
Say you that lovers do not clasp on dark beaches, hanging on 
rather than fall up into that vacuum of grave-sparkled night 
lifeless ocean, barren earth, or concrete-towered city 
Say you that hair is not soft and perfume is not pleasant 
hands are meant for pockets and bodies for desks 
eyes for books and feet for shoes 
beds for sleep and earth for burial 
Say you that talk is cheap and truth is lie and love is death 
and life is death, 
Say you that and I will die for you.

On hills overlooking cities stand alone, 
the fabric of a million lives spun beneath your feet 
know no connection but your eyes, no life but your own 
and call yourself happy 
In crowds of dancing drunken people stand alone 
a hundred bodies twirl in a sweaty ballet about you 
sink deeper into your winter coat, your winter aura, no flesh but yours 
and call yourself fulfilled 
Say you that we are but snapshots, a pose here 
a partner there, another partner here, a mood, a moment 
staring at the past and laughing, regretting 
rejecting the present and forgetting the future 
Say you that we must certainly die alone anyway 
and I will believe you, 
and I will turn and walk away.
October 1986


THE COFFEE SHOP 
(for Ship’s Restaurant, Glendon and Wilshire; after Mr. John Abbott)

A crowd of thousands, daily 
once and forever, teenagers all 
stab the penpoint through the paper 
remove the handcuffs, decisively 
demand the shaving brush, expectantly 
and order a la mode, incredibly 
often they sweat in the heat of mid-August 
the money-wise, sneer and cry “Fiddlehead!” 
the stride of Sunset Boulevard, abrasively 
the green and brick through a microbe wall 
never knowing where the blow may fall 
and afterwards a cup of coffee, spiritually
October 1986


PERPETUAL NICOTINE 
(for the American Tobacco Company)

This cigarette kills the taste of 8 am Corn Flakes. 
This cigarette watches endless television. 
This cigarette waits on a bus bench in the rain. 
This cigarette ponders city lights on cocaine. 
This cigarette takes plane flights at sunset. 
This cigarette feels the salty breeze of the seashore. 
This cigarette fills desk lamps with a strange fog. 
This cigarette endures the hottest and most humid of days. 
This cigarette glows in the back of dark nightclubs. 
This cigarette keeps you from dying of boredom. 
This cigarette irritates you when there’s no ashtray. 
This cigarette can’t be smoked in (	).  (Fill in the blank) 
This cigarette is incense. 
This cigarette makes you cough when you’re sick. 
This cigarette is for writing poetry. 
This cigarette is for your friend. 
This cigarette is for some fool on the street. 
This cigarette rots in a beer bottle full of cigarettes. 
This cigarette entertains you in front of strobe lights. 
This cigarette loves the Pepsi Generation. 
This cigarette knows where your children are. 
This cigarette will make you want another beer. 
This cigarette will make you want another cigarette. 
This cigarette will make you give up smoking. 
This cigarette will mellow you out, man, hopefully. 
This cigarette cost you your last dollar. 
This cigarette controls you, or you it? 
This cigarette has nothing to do with philosophy. 
This cigarette is your next to last. 
This cigarette is your last. 
This cigarette is deadly.
November 1986


POINT FERMIN 
(for Miss Alexandra Stephens, Miss Cristin Sullivan and Miss Cinderella 
Walker)

If you fall asleep on the train, they usually do not wake you up 
High upon the cliff in the lifeless morning, the sea 
barely visible through a thick fog, the very sound of waves 
muted by the gray coffin, I stand silent and watch. 
The fog clears, only for an instant 
Across the harbor stretches a row of empty tankers rocking 
gently on the black sea.  The lighthouse beats halfway to the moon. 
Long Beach, invisible, divisible, hidden from the world, black satin 
The gaily lit city’s a deity supreme 
Below a tanker as the rest 
Broken and beaten on the rocks of Point Fermin 
the rest rocking rocking as blackbirds on a telephone line 
or doves at the feet of the sleeping men in Pershing Square. 
Further down there is a woman on a lower point 
leaning on a railing, mocking me 
a narrow inlet of the sea separating us, nothing compared 
to the nervous motions of our hands. 
She wears sunglasses, round and black, she looks back 
Behind the same gray emptiness I can see behind her frozen head. 
The fog returns, hiding the barren ships, the sea 
even as the hum of Terminal Island dies like mosquitos at dawn 
then the woman grows fuzzy, until all that is left 
is a pair of black sunglasses and my own black coat. 
I would cut my wrists just to have color again. 
I stand silent and watch from the tip of Point Fermin, looking down. 
The woman will surely come over to me, 
but this time at least I will be gone.
November 1986


CURSON LOOKOUT

The Downtown skyscrapers cut so sharp, so black, painless hurt 
The only thing on TV is Scott Baio and professional golf.
December 1986


HIGHWAY 126

In Fillmore at night you can see the stars.
December 1986


SANTA CRUZ

In San Francisco, rain and fog, a cloudy, downbeat day 
Madness eats the City, you need to get away, 
Your habit it is calling, and you haven’t got a dime, 
Well brudder, listen to my song, it will advise you fine.

Take the green Pacific Highway, it winds you know not where, 
When you smell the brussel sprouts, you know you’re almost there, 
Past the pounding breakers and the surfers puffing reef, 
Far from the City’s psychos, deviants and freaks, 
And remember, when you’re feeling blue, 
Tonight, there’s a full moon over Santa Cruz!

Santa Cruz, you can breathe the air, you can buy a cappuccino 
From a les with green hair, 
Santa Cruz, we can go to the Mall, or maybe just sit and 
Stare at the wall! 
We can surf, chat, drop tabs, have a fling, 
Go hike in Ben Lomond, ring-a-ding-ding! 
We can get punks to suck our toes, 
Oooh, it’s so erotic, don’tcha know! 
We could go to skool, sell our souls, save a coupla bucks, 
Go to a show, we could see Camper Van, we could have some fun, 
Man, Pizza My Heart, I could puke up my lunch! 
We could hitch to Salinas or Berkeley, 
We could even go to Watsonville and strike the Cannery!

So girls and boys, gather ‘round if you don’t know what to do, 
Your uptight suburban friends have you feeling quite uncool, 
You want to have some good clean fun, with tan lines not a one, 
Just remember, when you’re feeling blue, 
Tonight, there’s always a full moon over Santa Cruz!
April 1987


HOLLYWOOD

I’m not from Fresno, Sacramento, Gardena or Mission Viejo, 
I’m not from the Heartland, I’ve got an attitude that just can’t fail. 
It was hot that day, when we went away, 
I was sweating like a pig, or so you said,
We put the top down, on the convertible, 
We looked like movie stars and maybe we should, 
‘Cause we’re from Hollywood.

It was a dark night at the topless show, the Ivar was packed, 
Babe, I don’t know, the girl went home from work 
And put her lava lamp on, she had a poster of Andy Gibb on her wall, 
She ate Granola kept in a Hefty Bag, 
She had a kitty, but she fed it to her snake, 
She was creepy, but she looked okay, 
I suppose she should, she lives in Hollywood.

An agent’s party, man, what a fucking bore, 
Wait, check out her lip, she’s got an open sore, 
Hell, bring out the cocaine, do it up right, 
We’ll drive on Mulholland, off the cliff to the night, 
Society I love you oops goodbye, 
Beverly Hills is not the place for my kind of guy, 
I like low rent, I shoplift cologne, 
I wear a Walkman, fuck leave me alone! 
I want to please, I’d be on my knees, don’t you think that I would? 
I live in Hollywood.
August 1987


THE EXPLODING SUN

Squatting at a smooth bar, 
the world spins the sun into our faces. 
Helicopters spear the city with their searchlights. 
The black-and-whites swarm as gulping fish 
at Melrose and Normandie, waiting for their fantasies of us 
to materialize, and ours of them. 
Great roaches and rats, devouring the garbage below, cats 
watch above, licking teeth, I kick over the garbage cans 
and send them flying, controlling, waiting, powerless, pissed, 
happy.  Nothing seems to shock any more.

Maureen is talking about suicide and it sounds quite erotic.

We chat happily of the failures of our friends, a great 
communal psychic burnout, we’re all sailing a great happy 
stoned ship of speed and heroin and grass from Berkeley 
into the Golden Gate sunset.  Suppose the sun exploded?

Our karma would be instantly leveled, 
Beverly Hills and Willowbrook, Laguna Beach and Pico Rivera, 
cops and criminals, housewives and the strippers at the Ivar Theatre, 
UCLA professors and the lobotomized women in sundresses who scream 
on Hollywood Boulevard, me and everyone in soft-focus, black-and-
white, 
all reduced to ash.

No more driving off great imagined dead-end freeways 
into an exploding sun, no more Jim Morrison, no more Hendrix, 
no more elbow-to-table drunken frustrations, 
no more explanations about what Louie or Charlie or 
Karen or Alicia or Ellen or Robert or Crissy actually meant, 
because meaning is not crashing this party any more. 
Suicide is outski; the Statue of Liberty frozen in copper.

The sun created this mess 
and the sun will have to fucking end it.
November 1987


BORN IN TORRANCE 
(for Miss Alicia Orner)

Land, sea, and sky, oh yeah 
Horses, trees, paths, TV sets on all the time, for sure 
When yogurt drips on your shoes:  Del Amo Fashion Center 
When mountains crumble into the ocean:  Portuguese Bend 
Boats float, cars drive, houses sit on hills, people fuck 
You watch 
Everyone looks down on a flat birthplace 
Moon a dying headlight in Palos Verdes 
Formica is an easy clean with a wet sponge 
A glance, anger, frustration 
Disappearance.  The virtue of travel to distant cities 
never to return to Palos Verdes, the cliffs, 
Redondo, the white sand, or even to Torrance; the kids say 
Hey, let’s go orchestrate some damage in Torrance 
Everyone looks down on a flat birthplace
November 1987


MARGINALITY 
(for Miss Maureen Upton)

She reaches across a formica table for the stem of a glass, 
its precious intoxication glittering in the Santa Monica sun 
The flat city revolves past our window, gray maze 
later rushing past an automobile window for what must have been…

How many times did we smoke? 
Lips sought wood, lungs seeking pleasure, 
brain seeking unconsciousness.

We looked at each other occasionally, my city rushed by.

Television was watched, movies watched, friends watched.

Our parents are conversed with, subdued, lied to; phone calls made.

I am far away from the summer crowds of life, writing and watching 
and sometimes my fingers brush your sleeve.  Anger and 
confusion and desire 
are laughed away.  We roar into the night, 
city rushing by.  Lights out in elevator, Spanish for distraction 
Your red hair is still the same.

In early morning sun we awaken to unconsciousness 
A friend sits in her house, trebled by mirrors, glaring 
A babble of nervous relatives, every picture on the wall 
seen and unseen, smelled and unsmelled, touched and untouched, 
fucked and unfucked.  We see but go without 
change the channel, hang up the phone, get out of the car, the 
soaps are on, we count the minutes, arrange hair and schedules, 
slam the doors behind us, the race is on 
waiting for someone  
to drag us off  
to hell 
or home
November 1987


PICTURES OF ELLEN 
(for Miss Ellen Read Baird)

Waking up on Venice Beach, sticky with spray, the ocean’s cool hand 
burning with the western sun, lighting my first cigarette 
of the afternoon, alone, it tastes of salt

I look at pictures of Ellen, black and white 
lighting cigarettes, typing, looking into the camera 
at the man behind it, always black and white 
and beside her Bruce eating, Louie staring, Megan sleeping 
John drinking, Dan waiting, Belinda driving, James smirking 
my friends trapped, reflected through my glasses 
like a prism bending light into rainbows, yeah, that’s it

I a satellite, orbiting, over Los Angeles at times, 
Berkeley at others, looking down on them

Looking at Barrington Hall 
loving it from far away, hating the near 
loving Ellen from far away, hating the nearest 
myself I suppose, orbiting like a goddamn satellite 
spying on them 
falling into the atmosphere and 
burning up
November 1987


THE CENTURY FREEWAY

Weeds are now sprouting from dry earth 
where the Century Freeway shall be sown 
The stems and leaves twist, interweave 
coalesce into houses, roads, fences, cars, people. 
Every hundred years the Century Plant of the Andes sends up 
a thirty-foot shoot, growing, hardening, dying, scattering seeds 
The stem hardens into black towers, scatters seeds of light 
The root hardens into gray channels, binds miles of earth 
On fallow ground, houses fall; roots come in, the stem soars 
hardening, concrete conducts, glass reflects 
from Inglewood to Norwalk, a new root grows, already giving, taking 
Weeds are now sprouting from dry earth 
where the Century Freeway shall be grown 
waiting to be uprooted 
by the greatest weed of all
November 1987


APPLE OF HIS EYE

She comes and goes redly, yellowly, 
prancing the halls like the great drunken Queen of Babylon 
and all the while the Sun drags the Earth round 
trees drink from the mossy banks of the Santa Ynez 
the Mokelumne, and she mustn’t flush the toilet 
and disturb their equilibrium 
just because 
a certain shade of light green hangs low in the sky. 
A certain neon sign over Broadway is flashing flashing flashing 
Everyone has given up hope of ever being. 
There she is again, laughing and laughing, with some other hippie, 
proving all hippies look alike to some people. 
Driving screaming laughing, 
the apple of his eye, the apple of my eye, the apple 
that spins on the Beatles album as crinkled foil drifts 
drops drops drops sparkling, burnt 
measuring time and silencing mouths, making payback 
screaming driving laughing 
somewhere (maybe Hawai’i?) palms are gently swaying 
Las Vegas billboard charm on the Highway to Heaven Happiness 
looking at the trees and saying, you you you, me me me, nothing 
can stay 
but everything else must disappear.  Go 
like the apple itself, oblivion, whole, smooth, encapsulation 
rotting 
and then, you know, she will, grow anew.
May 1988


THE MISSION

The Phoenix arises from multicolors, brick and wood 
fanning the cold breeze, bringing light and sound 
and happiness to all in the Mission 
drawing a net from hill to hill, brick and wood 
Walgreen’s, shopping for batteries to power 
Sharon’s electric vibrator, camera, meter, existence, hanging out 
the dark, recent scars, musicians, beard, train, rush, bustle, 
of 16th and Mission 
hungry, hungry, walking amongst double-parked cars 
the rush of air from the subway, untuned motor 
rushing, rushing, from high ceiling to high ceiling, 
gilded mouldings, glittering neon, the great brown snake of eyes 
coiling down the Mission, Quetzalcoatl, tourists, the mission, 
saving, dancing, serving, being, feeling, ordering, wondering, 
walking, laughing, loving, puking, knowing, begging, 
bringing happiness to all, bringing light and sound, 
on a plate, arroz y frijoles 
a red apron, crooked teeth, soul, glittering neon 
stone-deaf in my collegiate agony 
I reach for the tequila 
the bell rings out, San Francisco melting into the night, 
dark, light, the time when it always assigns 
the task, the duty, the obligation, the trip, the need, 
the Mission.
May 1988


HOLLYWOOD HOPELESS 
(for Councilman Michael Woo and the CRA)

Closer, pal, closer, can’t hear proper over the jackhammers. 
Are you friend, foe, or absolute chiseler? 
Do you live within walls of stucco, or the great hot boundary 
of sea, sky, smog, subway, street, sympathy, sun, substance? 
A great disaster has befallen Hollywood, California. 
Every drunken biker, prostitute, madman and executive 
of Paramount (last of Them) knows it is so. 
Great brick edifices, defaced, crumble to fool’s gold and neon. 
You fellows in flowered shorts, do you feel the power in your feet, 
to turn, walk, buy, convert, demolish, develop? 
To demystify the Tick Tock, banish the Broadway, 
raze Hotel Hell to its venerable foundations. 
Tunnelling worms, surface!  Link the city, cripple the spirit 
of everything that was.  The Red Car, gone, Whitley Heights, 
divided, whores, busted, men, salaried, sidewalks, washed. 
Spirits that remain, hovering, fade into haze and memory. 
Pal, you can’t imagine a dry martini west of Vermont any more. 
A name, a place, a concept, an attraction, a planet, a galaxy, 
a plant. 
The name and the plant remain, up in the hills. 
But down below, as usual, is only money. 
H-O-L-L-Y-W-O-O-D.  Thank god for the Mexicans. 
Pink, gray, blue, brown.  Gold.  Silver nitrate. 
As Kenneth Anger said, sooooo TACK-EE.
October 1988


CHILD’S SHOES 
(for Miss Cristin Sullivan)

Racing bits of flesh, by car or plane 
entertaining thoughts of victory or gratification on the Interstate 
in cheap San Diego motel rooms, in our own minds 
living for closed mouths, brains, feelings 
knowing not then or when but only now are suffering the possibility of 
youth.

We rode a drunken Volvo across spans of steel 
into the lights of San Francisco 
kissing, touching, forgetting, scheming, 
but we mustn’t be unfair, no never unfair to anyone 
no matter the cost to ourselves.

She found a pair of child’s shoes abandoned in a playground 
shaking the sand off like evil spirits 
consulting the cards and finding doubt and destruction 
discovering degradation in self-knowledge 
fearing the fate of the child, her shoes cast off 
in San Francisco, animals prowl, the back seat of a drunken Volvo, 
letting fate abuse, people misuse one.

And after years of shattered faith and love, 
interspersed gyrations of dying suns, 
to say farewell and cast me off like child’s shoes 
may be right or wrong but never possible 
as a drunken Volvo under drifting stars, consulting the cards for chaste 
advice 
living and loving and tossing aside, 
if the shoe fits, wear it!
October 1988


DIANE LANE AS A SYMBOL FOR THE IMPOSSIBLE

Sheltered from the rains in a cold womb of Malibu 
I wait for dirty Kathy to slide across the dark pass 
Fleeing from our dirty Valley. 
An imported beer and a cigarette provide small diversion 
For my gloved hands, as I observe Them 
Sliding their credit cards, clinking their drinks 
Chewing their steaks, while cautiously keeping tabs on me 
A representative of the City come to haunt them 
As if the Seventies had melted into the hard rain. 
I am not from Malibu. 
I have no connection to it save the road I entered on 
Where I remember only the calamities I saw in my youth. 
Blood everywhere, gone by morning, and often 
On a night like this, and Kathy is late, and to be late 
On a wet Friday bides the end of everything. 
So this is Ali McGraw’s place, I’ve heard 
But that represents nothing but heavy bread 
And abundant cocaine and overplayed death scenes to me. 
In Malibu as in Van Nuys, but played out grandly 
An Olympus for us mere mortals to sing of 
The thick walls shielding Caesar from the mob 
Demanding the music of the poet, as the mob 
Goes about its business. 
And here’s Diane Lane. 
Diane Lane, I think, another one of Them 
Perhaps fresh from a strange interlude with Emilio 
Or River or Nick or Mickey or Matt. 
Or maybe your horizons broaden with impossibility 
You crave to follow the Sufis of Hyderabad 
Make the rocky climb from Searchlight to Fort Piute 
Touch Mabel Normand’s house on the Kill van Kull 
Cast for trout in the Idaho wilderness 
Or maybe just have a moment of anonymity 
With the comfort of an imported beer and a smoke. 
Kathy, you are really late. 
And here’s Diane Lane, my feet stuck in clay 
Put up on a coffee table, entranced 
As you tap the counter in boredom, waiting for a table 
Between Those envious of your success, They the blase bread 
And You, as we say in the Industry, are the hot meat. 
Maybe I should enter the fracas, nothing ruthless, mind you 
Just the urge to hang around and sample 
Piles of designer drugs as if it was 
The tiniest bit different up at the top, or the middle 
Or whatever position you have been handed this month. 
We may be just alike, Diane Lane, but I will not 
Stride upon your Olympus. 
I am lost in Malibu, and I choose not to enter 
With the slightest hope of toasting to Ali and Mike 
And Ryan and Barbara and Martin and all the rest. 
I have just recently vacated my own Olympus 
A gray cloud of dying friends and dope along Avenue C. 
I can smile at you knowingly 
And you can smile back knowingly 
But what we know is the impossibility of our smiles. 
Maybe, Diane Lane, you have flown high in Lear jets 
You have breathed fragrant Paris and Istanbul 
You have sat in the Taj Majal, seen the Sigue of the Dogon 
And caressed the breeze from the top of the Spanish Steps. 
I have crossed Death Valley in August 
And dropped acid on Kitt Peak 
And shared the wind of the Sespes with the rare Condor 
Swooping low and away from my rope-slung mortality. 
So we are not so very different, just merely impossible. 
I will not dine beside Francis Ford Coppola 
Sipping champagne with brandy at some Industry bash 
And you will not argue with a bum and a junk dealer 
About the Lakers at Sixth and Main. 
Today the dilemma holds me, fear and jealousy and anger 
And pettiness, as I wait on your turf. 
I smile, and you smile back. 
I appreciate the gesture. 
And Kathy, I wish you would hurry up!
June 1989


THE LEON TROTSKY

I am addicted to drugs. 
I am addicted to the Leon Trotsky. 
The Government knows my name. 
I know every dealer in Berkeley 
and a few people who don’t deal, I think. 
The Leon Trotsky is a shot of vodka and a shot of tequila 
(or more than a shot—be creative.  Ponder it.) 
The revolutionary spirit and warm Catholic decadence, 
Russian glasnost and Mexican pussy.  Chile peppers to taste. 
Can you dig it? 
I am addicted to the Leon Trotsky. 
The Government knows my name. 
Why not give them yours?
November 1989


WHY DO I CARE WHAT HAPPENS IN BERKELEY OR BERLIN?

I got the worst sunburn of my life 
on the roof of Barrington Hall, while building the 
stile next to the laundry room.  Yeah, that was me, 
I built that.  And I painted two doors and a few walls 
and one stairwell.  I believe this gives the right 
to me, to go to the General Manager of the USCA 
and kick out his front teeth.  I am 24 years old, and 
big enough to do it. 
But I won’t.  Berkeley can take care of itself. 
Ruca, estás en ganchos, ándale, bato loco, con tu fierro 
y tus frajos, ódale.  Vamos a Los Angeles, a libertad y vida. 
I have good news.  The Universe does not center on you. 
Die Berliner Mauer stand offen, aber 
meine eigene Mauer ist ganz fest, ganz massiv, 
danke.
November 1989


THE MACHINE

IT lies in wait, on its own table, the red-eyed cyclops 
unwinking, hypnotizing one into a force field 
of wires light power, hands mouths situations.

A network of coral lips, activists, Hollywood wet sidewalk 
crawlers, inveterate masturbators, hammer-pounding 
ex-musicians, my fairweather friends and friends caught 
in sudden Colorado to New York atmospheres, New Year’s 
think-aheaders and computer-bound bill collectors, 
poised all on cordless government-tapped receivers, 
they reach the machine.

The machine repeats my mantra, my motto, my password, 
my philosophy:  Sorry, can’t come to the phone.  Can’t be 
reached.

I reach the machine.  Pick up the phone, I know you’re home. 
You’re just hiding.  You’re dead, in hospital, at work. 
The phone rings on and on, you’ve forgotten the machine. 
I missed your gig, your party, your reception, your opening, 
your life, your smiles, your generous gifts of intoxication. 
Sorry, can’t come to the phone.  Leave a message, a hope. 
I’m just hiding.

Listen: 
hang-ups, curses, tearful plaintive wails, addresses, 
invites, forced comedy, information, disinformation, 
lying shitheel jerks and naive out-of-body requests. 
I am not a hospital, a clinic for battered egos.

My machine will be in touch with your machine. 
Maybe we will be together. 
I sit in the dark and stare into the unblinking cyclops, 
waiting for the machine, my soul, to be activated.  Me and 
my machine, we wait together, not for my love, she doesn’t 
call, she doesn’t write, she has no machine.  But I do, and 
in the dark we stare at each other and wait. 
I have a machine, or more properly, I have a world

BEEP.
January 1990


DIEGO AND ALTHEA 
(for Miss Amy Barbanel)

The club lights glitter off our wet eyes 
and in rings on the tables, through our drinks 
An unblinking light, warm like blood 
and as quickly cut off 
Never to know its convoluted patronage 
our half-hearted aspirations 
the mistakes of passion 
or childish times of Christmas and itching powder.

Days of snow and sand and faded photographs 
Forgotten remonstrance and delights of warm chocolate 
The joys of long sleeps, or a first night without sleep 
The joys of youth and backwards running 
and dreams of Diego and Althea.

Diego who stands up to every dare and challenge we shirked 
Althea who soothes every pain we suffered under 
Our love that was beyond words 
is transmuted into flesh, and thus destroyed 
Our eyes study the rings on the table 
the love stronger now in its emptiness 
Or is it?

The light sparkles in those wet rings, my eyes 
I lie in my car, listening to the rain pound it 
Our eyes separate, inconsolable, inconceivable 
for two make one, and we cannot even maintain one 
ourselves. 
The rain does not conceal any sobbing, 
but only a worse silence.
4 February 1990


CHAIN LETTER

To whom it may concern: 
	Take this letter, rush to the copy place and make five copies, then 
send them to five people you know.  Then kill yourself in the manner of 
your own choosing.  Do not fail to send this letter to your friends; do not 
fail to commit suicide; do not break the chain.  If you do, the human race 
will destroy all life on the planet Earth.  Thank you. 
						Sincerely, 
						Concerned Environmentalist
15 March 1990


THE SPANISH SOAP OPERA

My puffer fish is staring at the Spanish soap opera, 
and I am staring at it. 
Its weird eyes swivel back at me 
and I am staring at the ceiling 
whose cracks are shaped something like México.

On the Spanish soap opera two women are chatting frantic; 
her brother is a morphine addict. 
It is ninety-five outside, humid and smoggy 
the City is seething with Mexicans and their children 
and their hot peppers and their desires. 
The puffer nibbles at its worms 
a ball, like Shirley curled up on her couch, 
her rainbow skirt and her pained smile glittering 
in the dust of the barrio.

The women are still chatting frantic; 
their Spanish hot and stinging in the soporous air 
like a thunderstorm of beer and chile colorado. 
Outside they are screaming 
Spanish soap opera 
the bus roaring by 
the scrap yards smashing old Chevys 
while the families picnic in the dirt between pools of oil.

Linda and Rebecca puff off their bong. 
Dogs rage barking in the barrio, filling the air 
vicious happy anger, bringing out the snakes 
the Los Angeles white dripping sunlight and dust. 
The great plain of the City rises out of the dust.

I hear the Los Angelenos, yelling as they attack Fort Moore 
Richard Dreyfus races by David Hockney, where 
Valentino did, where Tiburcio Vasquez did, where I 
did, my splintered car 
Frozen like the eye of the puffer 
fixed on my frozen prostrate form 
eating tamales in fields of dirt and broken glass 
fields of Malibu wildflowers and the tracks of racing 
Porsches.

Nancy takes a nap.  Hank reels drunkenly across his apartment. 
Sin and Amy fly to Atlanta.  Planes are silent in the sky. 
Daniel mashes his guitar into the amplifier speakers.  Tom 
grins at the art opening. 
Ruca, estás muy tarde; rucas están siempre muy tarde, 
porque tienen sesos pequeños.  Todo, es verdad. 
The two women fading in and out of the static 
Spanish soap opera.
2 April 1990


VOICES 
(for Miss Maureen Upton)

I hang up the phone and your voice is no longer with me.

The rumble of resolve and the lilt of insight 
The rustle of smooth hair and the laughter hissing 
through your small teeth, full of control and wishes.

I shake and jones for another fix of your voice, 
I pace restlessly and fill ashtrays with your voice, 
and I dial again, taste another sweet fruit, the juice 
dripping from my mouth and staining my clothes 
and warming my coldness.

I call madly, hungry, and make my weak replies, 
to keep them on the line.

The voices soothe, they comfort, not as yours, but a little 
sweet, only a rush, a cheap high, a rip-off 
then the come-down, the tweak, the slow burn 
filled with silence and isolation, the telephone sits inert 
but it screams and laughs and begs and cries behind a solid 
door three-thousand miles thick, and thin as air.

Outside I listen to the voices, echoing in a fog, yelling 
over the music, whispering in a library.

I pulled my hat over my face, just listening, leaning against 
the wall and letting their voices coil like a rhapsody and 
put me to sleep; 
peering at their legs, imagining them to be yours, 
their voices yours, your blank salesgirl stare and your 
too-wide smile suddenly nearby, 
and my soul that is yours is then theirs 
until your voice climbs through the phone from your 
constant recline, to caress me and 
sound upon me 
again.
October 1990


TAKING THE WHEEL 
(for Miss Kay Koch)

The limousine rocks at anchor in a river of tinted light 
and you sway with it, subway experience 
your demon outfit glimmering, your horns shimmering 
with the chaser lights which find the vodka in me 
and blind me.  The world is 96 inches long and the air loud. 
Feet are planted on the plastiwood panelling in defiance.

The limousine bounces slowly along, directionless, 
and the alcohol reflects only from the lowest corner of 
its bottles, surrounded by reclining rock heroes.

You scream instructions through the partition to the driver. 
Legs cross legs and lips meet lips, one is just as good 
as any other one. 
You take the wheel, excuse me, LISTEN UP: 
plunge your trident into the tardy and the oblivious, 
wake them, yeah right, uh uh. 
Turn inward, eyes glaze over, sway, go away. 
See that bit of sleepy freedom, nod, lunge for it.  Brush your 
hair into your face and take the wheel.

Bodies are shoved together in our limousine, music wall style, 
and you are gone, roaring away, your hair flowing out behind 
and the motorcycle hopping in a friendly way across potholes 
on the southbound Santa Ana, the air alternately cool and warm, 
dream of it, the world now obscured by darkness 
bonded to your dark jacket in hazy brilliance.

Believe it or not, I’m trying to understand the lyrics 
of this heavy metal band, and you let your head loll on 
my shoulder, and I slam my feet hard on the plastiwood, 
and light a cigarette, and smoke it intentionally, 
as the limousine bounces slowly along, directionless, 
and you have taken the wheel 
and driven away.
31 October 1990


DESPERATION TIME

(This is for Lou Reed fans everywhere.  Idea thought of on a certain hard 
drug; day was spent at the unemployment office and the track.  Picked a 
6-1 horse in the ninth.) 
Boredom glare stands like a perpendicular white wall 
Needle invisible against fluorescent flesh 
Shoes & beers click loud on concrete floor 
Eyes small pupils but glitter dully 
Women blood red lips 
Melrose hamburger lip smack 
Blood dripping cold invisible 
Pulling on beards to establish their authenticity 
Art scene whoop-dee-doo no english solid symbolism 
Nodding head no interest throbs with VU 
Thinking about my front brake pads and of red-headed women again 
Bundled against white New York snows 
Not hearing you excuse me, pardon me 
Seeing her chest under a heavy coat 
Descending and rising in a hot icy whiteness.
November 1990


DOROTHY PARKER

There you are, at last:  I see you 
after two Irish coffees, sitting in the Algonquin, 
passing some remark to Alexander Woollcott, on some 
young dandy strolling in out of the snow, or perhaps 
that old codger by the door, ringing imperiously for 
the nearsighted waiter; 
drinking yourself into a lovely oblivion, from loneliness.

A lot has changed. 
Now I am here, speaking to no one, as the stockbrokers and 
the Japanese tourists wouldn’t catch on to the witty remarks, 
and the old codger only speaks German; 
drinking myself into a lovely oblivion, from loneliness.

In New York City there are three, four times as many people. 
You wouldn’t recognize them, Miss Parker, but they are out there, 
pimping, hustling, selling stolen car batteries out of 
baby strollers, trying to score smack on Avenue B, selling 
their clothes, living in boxes, living in the subway tunnels, 
beating and raping the unwary, bragging about the crime inflicted 
on them, hating each other, faking British accents, shooting 
each other at random, studying the ads on the D train, 
gentrifying, screaming, shopping, putrefying, 
getting rich and getting dead, making the grade and making 
the Post, tearing down everything you remember, 
dear Miss Parker.

And busy busy busy, this New York City, maintaining that image 
you gave it, that of Gotham without bound, or was that “Batman”? 
And even at the Strand you are gathering dust, while I sit in 
the Algonquin, drinking Irish coffee and eating the peanuts, 
while New York is not reading you, and probably not remembering 
you, except for me, dear Miss Parker.

Be glad of that, as one is usually enough, 
and as you might have put it, 
just getting one 
can be kinda rough.
January 1991


SLAM LOCK 
(for Miss Megan Howard and Mr. Peter Spagnuolo)

The air is thick and white around two bridges.

One arches high above the East River, 
glassy black and warmly inviting under the snow, 
which filters through the bridge cables and obscures 
the glittering mountains of Manhattan.

One divides the horizon beneath an obese red sun, 
which lights the manzanita afire, 
that grows out of the boulders and gravel 
clogging the width of the Tujunga Wash, 
until a fog floats down from the hard, sharp ridge 
of the Sierra San Gabriel.

Everywhere is the minty chatter of water, 
flowing into the yielding stones and 
loudly smooching with the wooden piers, 
trickling out of a fire hydrant and 
melting the snow in the gutter.

The snow crackles on my skin, as I rub it on my face, 
my eyes burning in an allergic reaction to Megan’s cats. 
The sand moans in my ear, as I wake up in a cold sweat, 
nearly buried in a cold, black beach, the tide at my feet. 
The water reassures, louder than the Golden State Freeway, 
louder than the D Train, overwhelming all the machines 
in all the cities of all the planets of all the stars, 
forever rolling forward in eternal love.

Sitting here in the Tujunga Wash, I look into the eyes of 
an iguana, and my watch bites me, and I run away.  The water 
hides my fleeing car, and the comforting whispers 
of Peter and Megan, as they help me out the door 
and into the snow.

The snow crackles on my skin, as I rub it on my face, 
hearing only the water, but then the scraping of their 
steel door, and loudest of all, 
the solid click of their slam lock.
March 1991


ABUL-HOAL

An ant marches into my desert 
and onto the face of the sun 
Under the gaze of Abul-Hoal 
whose tunnel eye stretches back and black 
to an invisible galaxy of innumerable stars 
scattered under the polluted breath 
of the city confronting itself in the mirror; 
a chain of bodies linked by genitals, 
by telephone cords, by hands holding forth cash

Help me, O Abul-Hoal, 
as I march into your desert 
the tips of my fingers tracing the line of stones 
under the sky that is empty, land that is empty, 
and my soul that is empty; 
I leave the auction, stand down, disembark, hang up 
on the world where souls are let and love charges rent 
My own soul not being a flower, 
no hovering bees or gripping hands 
to pick and trample; no, I am more like your stones 
My soul is not for sale, not for rent 
it is given away; but the auction continues 
the ants shred their prey 
and I am peddled off like a whore

Abul-Hoal, I am here, I am in your desert, 
your Bekaa, your As Sahra’ Al Libiyah, your Badiyat Ash Sham, 
your Kalahari, your Gibson, your Gobi Or Shamo, your Sonora, 
your Patagonia, your Ar Rub’ Al Khali, your Mojave, 
I wait beneath your sun, an ant crawls across 
the desert of that soul 
Ask me your riddle, and like my poor sister before me, 
in my solitude I will know your answer

Inshallah.
March 1991


EL ARROYO SALADO(for Mr. Robert Barkaloff)

Floating along that line, the double yellow one, into another 
the horizon, jagged and obscured 
one infinite, one indeterminate; 
We enter the Desert. 
Palm trees drop through the headlights in a warm haunting 
Scattered farm lights burn halogen stars in the 
far and few between, demarcating the sky mirror of the Sea 
We pull hard on our leashes, stretched taut 
a hundred miles of freeway, highway, dirt road, then 
pull harder, into the dead Arroyo Salado. 
A groundcloth our city; shortwave bringing news of empire 
to our distant outpost, wrapped in skins against the cold, 
puffing on cheap Mexican grass and suspended 
in the center of the great void of stars, 
hissing at us across light years, millions of civilizations 
chanting in German on the shortwave, 
dark but for the pink anticipation of the horizon.

In the morning’s heat I wake to a tiny plant 
with a huge white flower and a small green caterpillar; 
and then I see the desert of the Arroyo Salado 
teeming with flowers and caterpillars. 
The ocotillo reaches toward the sun with satanic fingers; 
the air is blood, mothering and burning, 
and as we cross the mountains above Borrego 
I look back like Lot’s wife; into the desert 
and see the indeterminate line, the horizon 
a million miles wide and a million miles away, 
the smile of my god, el Colorado, la Sonora 
until I turn back to the double yellow, the leashes 
pulling again on us 
suckers
May 1991


O TRAIN

O train, I sit on the warm stones 
along your tracks 
as you near with singing 
and roar with a brilliance ringing 
Cars rushing by, the darkness embodied in dust 
the rails rising and falling under your weight 
I crawl close, full of singlemindedness 
until a red light fades into the night 
and I am left laying on the warm stones 
the silence and time 
and the unchanged, shapeless silhouettes 
of the hills that are home.
June 1991


MALINCHE

La mujer como el vidrio, siempre esta en peligro. 
Out of your black heart rises Cuauhtemoc on blistered feet, 
above the roar of la Reforma, red-eyed in burning smoke, 
the peseros snap your bones; a cornada inflicted 
with every copita, every cheer of “Vuelta!” 
to the languorous somnambulist 
Mexico, el hijo de la chingada 
Malinche, la Llorona, rich daughter of Coatzacoalcos 
Sold and sold again, la Gran Puta 
Your lover buried in villainy 
Your name equated with treachery 
Premature ejaculation results in a miscarriage, 
afterbirth drowns the eagle in blood, 
the snake devours its tail, forever eaten, forever eating, 
and the cactus rots in the shadow of Spain. 
Look, la Malinche, look at what you have brought 
the lakes drained, the forest denuded 
Popocatepetl lost in the smog 
Tenochtitlan razed and Teotihuacan crawling with gringos. 
Your smile burns through the smog and the shit-dust 
onto your children, rushing to work and strolling the paseo, 
Your footfall echoes in the corridors of the Metro 
louder than all the trains and the musicians of Plaza Garibaldi, 
All eyes on you in the cantina 
and the jukebox plays a mournful dirge again and again, 
stuck on “La Que Se Fue” 
The city buried in your erotic moaning and brown skin results, 
La Malinche, Malinulli, Mexico, la Llorona, la chingada, 
la republica, tecuhtli and tlatlacotin.
3 October 1991


THE ARTIST’S SONG 
(for Miss Helen Chung)

I sit in the midst of it all 
and I watch you spin 
I see Roger Herman collect them 
to his sweet nectar 
and expect his world to win 
Henry parts the curtain drunkenly 
and Helen spins into the footlamps 
while Sue measures the parameters of the stage.

The art scene is set for the crowd 
A pocket of glamour off a drab street 
A glance meaningfully made through the window 
The time is ours and so they said 
in the pages of the magazine 
and a vodka tonic later 
life and art doth meet much the same 
and love settles between us in an alcoholic fog 
as I rest my hand lightly on Helen’s bare back 
and in parting kiss her cheek.
June 1992


THE PICTURE BRIDGE 
(for Mr. Matthew Thie and Miss Emma Parker)

At the Hotel: 
A thin, chilling fog, and the Mojave dust 
clinging to my windscreen 
create a double haze between the fluorescent sky 
and my watery eyes. 
I have just been with you, my sweets, for perhaps the last time. 
The radio’s pounding smothers my heart 
and the ornate Mediterranean hotel 
blocks the Pasadena horizon in the shape of love. 
Emma is on the floor without shoes, in a flowered dress 
in the deepening darkness of the suite 
a glass of champagne held, contemplated 
while recounting the story of a huge black man 
masturbating on a Greyhound bus in South Carolina 
and my eyes, my ears are full of you 
because you, dear Emma, are the only person in my world.

At the Delicatessen: 
The waitress ignores us, refusing us fresh water 
as we cross a desert of memory 
and a group of teenagers mock their food 
and eye us with the distrust of youth. 
The soup and knishes warm 
after two bottles of champagne 
and I see a vision of palm trees embracing you 
over a sun-baked Hindu temple 
where you soon shall be, my sweets. 
Matt, an animal, glazed look of prey in his eyes 
slowly devours his potato pancakes 
and probes Canter’s as if it is about to rape him 
and my blood, my brain flows with yours 
because you, dear Matt, are the only person in my world.

At the Picture Bridge: 
Flung out from the old Huntington Hotel, an arm of light 
in the humid night 
is the Picture Bridge. 
You stand apart, my sweets, disconnected from now 
suspended in the rafters 
while I focus my camera and work my memory’s tongue 
long gone and far away 
and at one moment you cerebrally recamp 
and the next you are wrapped about one another 
a tangle of legs, arms and soft lips 
and I leave you there, my sweets, upon the Picture Bridge 
or a Westlake parking garage, Clark Street Station, 
the corner of Fortieth and Broadway, a cafe on Valencia, 
a shack in Landers, a McDonald’s in Whittier, Terminal Five 
at LAX, a bus shelter in Death Valley, wondering if 
we would ever see or hear or touch again, you and I 
or any of those others whom I had left 
on a thousand other Picture Bridges.
29 July 1992


PLEASE WITHHOLD MY N.E.A. GRANT 
(for Mr. Roger Herman and Mr. Henry Vincent)

A glass of the base white wine caressed in one hand 
My eyes sculpt your form, as you share some 
intercourse with Doug Christmas, a honeyed, blooming flower 
awaiting my interlocution, my probing conversation 
thrusting through the perspiring crowds around Craig Roper 
peeping hollowly at Norton Wisdom’s passionate paintings 
goaded by culture into the most heightened degree of lechery 
the brackish, sweet essence of the grape passed 
from tongue to tongue, in a name-dropping foreplay 
After ringing your pager and fondling your machine 
I was restrained by the teeming traffic 
and slipped past Ray Pettibon and Mike Kelly from the front 
so that we could begin copulating quietly in the back 
yet somehow Robert Berman let things get out of hand 
Hi! yells the chorus, Roger!  Henry!  What’s the action? 
Slowly, on cue, everyone peels off their Westside clothes 
and initiates fucking with each other 
like a pack of wild, moaning, overeducated chimps 
an intense Sargasso of sweaty, humping flesh, writhing 
after the fashion of the Impressionists, flowing 
in the style of the Expressionists 
the ladies clutching at the men’s cocks, scratching them 
with their long, painstakingly painted nails 
and the gentlemen driving into receptive, humid pussies 
with their well-tended Charles Eames dildos 
all dripping with that quiet intensity 
well-known to us art critics, who finger ourselves 
while doing coke off an Ed Ruscha signed edition 
thinking, mmm, just like the Salon in gay Paris, 
Voulez-vous coucher avec moi, ce soir? 
And our eyes glaze over in drunken ecstasy 
as Robert Williams chants orders through his bullhorn 
at the army of homeless who provide 
the backdrop to our urbanity. 
Then I hold up my MOCA card, flashing silver for all to see 
and get invited to four parties in ten minutes 
up in those fertile, lustful Hollywood Hills 
where Mapplethorpe’s ghost haunts Karen Finley’s clique 
and, upon arrival, I am confronted by an Otis lovely 
with creamy skin, perky tits, a veritable young Diane Keaton 
in granny glasses (and you know we can’t resist those glasses) 
who grabs me, rubbing her mound on my leg, as I 
draw brush strokes down her back, and inquires 
as to my learned opinion of the art on exhibit 
and in reply I offer my humble evaluation thus: 
Please withhold their motherfucking N.E.A. grants!
1 August 1992


RATTLER

I crouch silently on the curb 
watching you slither in an angry circle 
around the place where I watched 
the tank-top men with their machetes 
hack the head from your mate 
in a spurt of red, cold life 
in an orgasmic jerk 
Those men who fear your fangs and their venom 
and your lifelong devotion 
Men who fear that which will not obey 
which will not be petted or trained 
who do not see you slither in the dry brush, 
hungry for days, until you sink your fangs 
into a slow-running rat 
and sip from runoffs cloudy with men’s venom 
already sick, as you curl along your mate 
until the men’s fire drives you 
into their concrete world 
where they hold you down 
and hack off your head 
Go find them, my pet, who is untouched 
except by the cold scale of your mate 
now dead, find them, 
bite them, drive them 
out of the hills 
back into the flatlands
28 August 1992


THE CITY OF JOSIES 
(for Miss Josie Wechsler and Mr. Andrew Durham)

Bouncing through the spotlights along the bar 
the stepping-stones to stardom 
glitter in a nervous, flashy smile 
one Josie alone 
in a city full of Josies 
in the low-ceilinged groove spot 
on a celluloid high 
timing your encounters 
like a whirly-gig, ever faster 
just trying to keep up 
Producer, Director, Actor 
waiting upon a gold statuette 
or perhaps a general consensus 
to disappear 
into the stellar Hollywood night 
while the drinking and dancing continues 
in our City of Josies
1 September 1992


IN THE EAST MOJAVE

The sun set behind the Kelso Dunes, 
all aglow in royal purple and shimmering gold, 
the distant Bristol Mountains black and cold 
against the red sky.  We drove down the empty road 
into the empty valley, down past the Joshua Trees 
and the desert rocks into Kelso, 
an empty town next to empty railroad tracks.

I stand before Kelso Depot, looking south 
at the dark Providences, and the dim light in the Dunes 
where the hippies are setting up their rocket.

Robert is on the phone behind me in the dark, 
the only phone for thirty miles in every direction, 
talking to Ralph in Vermont.

I hear him laugh through the sound of the wind, 
a warm wind blowing through the palm trees.

A dead cottonwood has fallen across 
the old brick path from the tracks to the depot, 
flanked by a pair of broken lampposts.

The old depot sits silent and boarded up, 
like the rest of the town, full of romance, 
waiting for the trains to roar through, 
the trains that never stop any more, as I stand there, 
watching the half-moon and wondering.

And the hippies launch their rocket, lighting up the Dunes 
and riding a tail of sparks a mile up above the desert, 
with no one but us to see.

I yell a huzzah, then turn towards the dome of light 
that marks Las Vegas in the northeast, 
and prepare to leave this peace behind.
6 September 1992


INTERSTATE FIFTEEN

The sun awakes me on my mountain peak, 
from which I can see from the Providences to the Panamints. 
Baker sits below, and passing it 
the traffic of Interstate Fifteen.  The cars and trucks race 
unseeing, caring nothing 
for those nameless valleys and mountains that I live in, 
racing from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, 
from one tragedy to the next, slowing only 
to annoyingly pass the slow drivers, the ones like me, 
the ones with a trucker’s tan who ride the Interstate 
only to get to the side roads, 
the empty cracked two-lane roads that dip and rise 
across the desert, barren save for the old houses 
and the hippies with beer under one arm, 
the other arm stuck out for a ride. 
From Las Vegas to Los Angeles it is thus, 
and I sit on my mountain peak, alone 
but for the great clumps of ephedra, waiting to rejoin them, 
to feel the blast of hot wind and the radio’s scream, 
to go home 
on Interstate Fifteen.
7 September 1992


PERSONAL AD

Are you BORED with the hand life has dealt you?  I am a SWM, 26, 5’11”, 
190 lbs., with a long and colorful past and no one to tell it to.  If you have 
the humor of Julie Brown, the charm of Sandra Bernhard, the beauty of 
Barbara La Marr, the wit of Dorothy Parker, the lifestyle of Edie Sedgwick, 
the intelligence of Jane Bowles, the smile of Teri Garr, the smirk of Laraine 
Newman, the voice of Vanessa Redgrave, the style of Lauren Bacall, the 
pout of Ingrid Bergman, the temper of Sean Young, the fortitude of Louise 
Brooks, the gaze of Hanna Schygulla, the strength of Petra Kelly and the 
craft of Frida Kahlo, then maybe you are the one for me.  But if not, try 
anyhow—I’m not picky.  Man-haters and strident feminists need not 
apply, nor should any Yankees or other uninvited scum to my Southwest.  
Sorry.  Bring your love and affection, your daily direction, no time for 
reality, but try it anyway.  Help!  Help!  Help!  Just kidding.
10 September 1992


SEVENTY MILES PER HOUR

From the peak of Keys’ View on a clear day 
Mount San Jacinto slopes down into the Salton Sea 
and you can see from Mexico to L.A. 
I stand with three hippies braced along the short wall 
My hat held in both hands and my great-coat buttoned 
against the wind that gusts 
Seventy miles per hour

In the cold embrace of the dark desert sands 
one house alone is lit among many, with a golf course provided 
and other weapons to battle life’s demands 
Beth and Bill fill our glasses to recall our past 
We put a little zing into a calendar-dictated thing 
toasting our life that flies 
Seventy miles per hour

The rock music blasts as Victoria crazily dances 
Five men give confused looks and I dance on one foot 
and Geri stands in her doorway taking no chances 
Our holiday redesigned to serve contemporary needs fine 
to get drunk and drive home in a Yuletide taunt 
avoiding the cops that roam 
Seventy miles per hour
24 December 1992


A VERY GOSSIPY DIATRIBE ON LOVE

Some people say that there isn’t enough love in the world, but no, I don’t 
agree, there’s plenty of love in the world; you know, I, for example, am 
still madly in love with my old friend Miss B, but Miss B, unfortunately, is 
in love with Mister M, and you all know how that is, yet I don’t interfere, 
even when she was furious at him for showing up at this party with me 
and his ex, Miss E, yeah, oh and then there was her birthday party, 
remember, where Mister V kept lifting up Miss J’s skirt and tried to go 
home with Miss L, when Mister M told one of Miss B’s colleagues how she 
was attracted to him, but you know I missed that, since I was on the back 
porch picking up on Miss T, even though she just kept talking to me about 
Mister F and how she thinks everyone wants to fuck her, even my old pal 
Mister S, which is ridiculous, because everyone knows Mister S is crazy 
about Miss G (even though that’s what they said about Mister S and Miss 
B), and a problem for him as Miss G won’t completely dump her ex and 
also demands a lot of attention from Mister S, even though he can’t give it, 
what with his work at UCLA and his brother, who I suppose you heard 
was out looking for his girlfriend with a gun, after she got a restraining 
order against him and then took off for Mexico, not her sister’s, oh no, not 
with those beatings going on, hot and heavy jealousy, and not Mister S 
and Mister W’s place, what with Mister W and his girlfriend Miss C, who 
also by coincidence is Miss B’s roommate, the two of them screaming at 
each other day and night, because everyone knows they just aren’t right 
for each other, I mean, that was what my friend Miss S said, after Mister 
W came onto her, but she was too busy messing around with Mister R, 
that is until she decided to dump him by sleeping with his roommate, 
Mister M, you know, massive games of strip poker, wink wink, until she 
met his friend Mister A and dumped Mister M for him, which is probably 
a mistake considering how many women he’s had, including almost Miss 
S’s roommate Miss K, but Miss K was fucking that guy over at Hollywood 
Billiards, you know, the guy who lives over on Doheny with Mister B and 
Miss C, Miss C’s the little redhead who used to work over at the Chateau 
with Miss M and my then-girlfriend Miss F, and I don’t mean the Chateau 
Marmont, if you know what I mean, but Miss C stopped working there 
after Miss M went crazy, you know, Miss M was hot for this Italian guy 
who thought she was a whore and just threw her away like a piece of 
garbage, and then Miss M flipped out, and did her best friend Miss P 
come to her aid, fuck no, she just cast her off, just like she reacted when 
Miss R went nuts on speed and Miss P rented out her room the next day, 
or when her brother drove Miss E out of the house, or when she tried to 
stab Miss S, her best friend, in the back over this record deal, and she still 
professes to love all these people, just like Mister V loves Miss D, who 
dumped him like a hot potato for some English guy, but I suppose I was 
just jaded from hanging out with Mister A all these years, you know, he’s 
been through about six or seven real hardcore relationships, and now he’s 
hanging out with Miss C, living in her place, of course, just like with Miss 
B, but you know, I heard Miss B moved in with Miss J, who was living by 
herself after breaking up with Mister R, but now those two are an item 
again, or are they, well fuck if I know, and you know that Miss B was 
seeing Mister K, who then followed Miss S out here to Los Angeles, but 
now he’s off living with these lesbian speedfreaks over in Silver Lake, you 
know, a tragedy every minute, of course, nothing like this Mister L and 
Miss W thing, with the guns and the stalking and all that, you know, no 
one imagined it would end up like that at Mister G’s party where they 
met, god, that was some party, with Miss R fooling around with everyone 
and I just thank the lord Mister G didn’t show up with his girlfriend from 
Venice, of course I suppose you haven’t heard but Mister G dumped her 
and married this French woman up in San Francisco, you know, strictly a 
green card affair, but then at the wedding he meets Miss L, this woman 
who works with his mother, and they just fall madly in love, he moves to 
L.A., they get engaged, and of course this French woman freaks, dumps 
her boyfriend, asks Mister G to move in with her, so he annuls the 
marriage and gets her kicked out of the country, do you follow me, and so 
they’re just as happy as two bugs in a rug and all I know, man, is that I 
have to get out of here before I go absolutely crazy, you know, I’m 
moving to Tucson, that’s it.  Say, maybe you know my friends in Tucson, 
Mister and Mrs. W and Miss R, Miss R went off for three weeks and the 
guy she had housesitting just stole everything she owned, her “pal” Miss 
V didn’t so much as lift a finger, you know, she was too worried over 
Mister B, Mrs. W’s ex, who had been accused by some chick of raping her, 
and it all boiled down to the fact that he didn’t really love her, and he 
joking sort of said, well, with everything else going on, who’s got any 
fucking time for love?  No pun intended.
16 June 1993


THE VALLEY IS A GREAT PLACE TO HIDE

Mountains define natural borders. 
A city springs up by the sea, and across the mountains the farmers toil 
unmolested; passes are cut through at great expense. 
At rush hour they are jammed. 
School buses from the inner city are discouraged. 
The residents send old white men to rule from the far seat of power. 
Movie stars flee to ranch homes, warehouses are tucked on streets without 
sidewalks or curbs, junkyards are forced up against freeways, huge gravel 
pits are dug, community colleges fester, bikers roam, old bars that stink of 
death prevail, crappy coffee shops are the zenith of fine dining, churches 
and 7-11s compete for space, the bus is always late, and the smog is 
always early. 
I live in the San Fernando Valley. 
We do not believe in art or music or culture or Los Angeles. 
We have erected a wall of heat and pollution and boredom to keep out 
you Hollywood hotshots, and we dare you to cross it. 
We set our standards for high fashion in the thrift stores, and our New 
Yorkers still have their accents. 
In West Hollywood my friends party like vicious dogs. 
The soap opera of my life goes to commercial as I drive through the 
Cahuenga Pass.  YOU are invited to attend: 
You bring the ice, 
and we’ll supply the booze, the barbecue, and the blondes.
24 June 1993


TRUSTING, TRIPPING, TRYSTING

Geri and Marko and I 
face each other across a table littered 
with emollients of the soul and decanters of the occult. 
We are scientists of the new millennium, 
conjuring up Love without Trust 
huddled within the scope of a single candle 
bound by the Tarot across a thousand years 
agents of the netherworld creeping to the crack corner. 
There is no safety in this place, 
victims and assailants both, lying and condemning, 
righteous and grovelling. 
Your work is different than mine. 
Our web is as fragile as a spider’s 
broken by a single telephone call, I wait for someone 
to catch me, but I am slightly overweight, 
particularly in emotional baggage. 
I was once a part of the sporting crowd, but time 
and a rollercoaster with the U.S. Mail has turned me off 
all that; now I stand by, as others take the ride, and watch 
cheesy Thirties movies and dream of Arizona in the fall 
and count the days until I get the hell away from here.

NOW FOR A COMMERCIAL BREAK. 
Standing here in Palisades Park, 
we see the youth making out, getting their hands under each 
other’s clothes, and old women hobbling by 
pushing their shopping carts, humming classical tunes. 
How do we make this transition, this leap in cognition? 
The magic number, I think, is THIRTY. 
Thirty years old, trusting, tripping, and trysting: 
Trusting in nothing, tripping on everything, and trysting 
with anything that will have us. 
We throw ourselves at work, the bottle, 
anything but each other; 
fill up my loneliness with books, books, books, 
did you ever meet someone in your whole life more destined 
to become a drug-addicted LIBRARIAN? 
I am sitting in a restaurant, trusting, 
slurping the Thai food and watching the sparks fly 
from friend to friend to the apple of my eye, 
smiling at me darkly with Southern charm. 
I am walking in the desert, tripping, 
bearing on a saguaro, the sun suddenly appears behind Kitt Peak, 
and I fill my mouth with J.D. and give the rebel yell thus: 
YeeeeeeeeeHHHHAAAAAAAA!! 
I am standing on the top balcony of a house, trysting, 
dripping vodka and gin and tequila on the Riot Grrl at my elbow 
fighting my way through a huge crowd, 
the full moon coming up over Los Angeles 
filling me with the cold fire of passion 
and I have finally achieved a state of grace. 
Once you are dead, then everything else 
becomes amazingly easy.
25 June 1993


TOW TRUCKS, HEARSES AND EX-GIRLFRIENDS

In my best dead Bukowski style, I think 
“A fire of Mexican food and you; you the beers cannot quench.” 
I am laying across the grass of Dolores Park 
concentrating on the skyline of San Francisco 
as if it were a pit a hundred miles down, full of hellfire 
trying not to think about my beautiful ex-girlfriends behind me 
their very presence like speed in my veins and cactus spines in my skin. 
This sunny day has shown me tow trucks, hearses, and ex-girlfriends. 
Even in darkness I know they are not the same 
but they send a familiar chill down my spine 
as I sit in a hospital room 
staring at the blood caked around Miles’ ears 
my car broken down at AAMCO 
dreaming of Ellen’s soft, beautiful mouth 
all playing the past off against the future to unnerve the present. 
HELLO AGAIN OLD FRIEND I’M BACK TO SEE YOU AGAIN, FRIEND. 
A dry sponge is brittle, a full one heavy and weepy; 
as Geri says, banter and bad sex 
we are conjuring up Love without Trust 
but suicide is quicker, cheaper, though less interesting, 
than the tow trucks that lay in wait, 
the hearses that are inevitable, 
and my wonderful ex’s, that justify the other two. 
JUST BECAUSE LIFE IS NOT A JOKE DOES NOT PRECLUDE 
LAUGHTER.
12 July 1993


IS QUANTITY BETTER THAN QUALITY? 
(for Miss Amy Barbanel)

My sister leans far over her strawberry margarita, her eyes wide. 
“I always leave twenty percent,” she says.  “I used to be a waitress.” 
The earth is tumbling through space, the surface rolling at many 
thousands of miles per hour, and we are clinging to it, 
and clinging to each other.

I sit on Amy Barbanel’s front steps, listening to Yvette explain 
her philosophy of life.  It is not a long speech, 
but, I imagine, as I intently study the streetlights for the nth time, 
it keeps her mouth moving.  Rafael begs me to ease his Catholic guilt. 
Hank waxes crass about some woman.  Amy sings “The Gambler”. 
If we are talking, then we must be living.

Are you listening, my hundreds of friends, or are you too busy? 
I have given up quality for quantity.  I have someplace to go 
twenty-four hours a day.  I will never be alone.  I will always 
be there, in my machine, in my office, at your party, at your barbecue, 
at your wedding, your get-together, your opening. 
And for us, there will always be drinks, drugs and light chat.

Amy, my poor Amy, who wanted to love everyone, this is my 
love letter to you, the only one you’ve ever gotten from someone who 
is dead.  I was standing in a room full of my friends 
and I was alone.  The babble of a hundred voices, the smell of a hundred 
perfumes, the shapes of a hundred beautiful faces, only raise the pain 
to my brain, a bubble floating in a volcano, the rice simmering, burnt. 
So goodbye, Amy my love, my soul sister who took quantity over quality, 
though wide-eyed you smile it off.  From place to place we fly, 
choosing between pain and boredom, waiting to die, 
the earth tumbling through space, bringing me a glorious sunset, 
which I give to you.
25 July 1993


HEIDI FLEISS

Early in the morning, while Hollywood sleeps, 
you, the embodiment of my anger, sneer at the District Attorney, 
while I cheer and throw my entire psychic being in your direction. 
I am your biggest fan, Heidi Fleiss, 
to me you are a true Hollywood celebrity. 
You are sex, drugs, and rock & roll, 
you are bitter and cruel and loveless and a smartass to boot; 
you cower from the phalanx of cameras and madmen, 
the City against you, the press against you, 
the moralistic American Ethic against you, the Industry against you. 
Here is your chance, Heidi Fleiss: 
You fucked them once, for money; 
now you can fuck them again, just for laughs. 
If not for yourself, do it for me, 
and the righteous indignation of all Los Angelenos like me.
9 August 1993


LA QUE SE FUE 
(for Miss Ellen Read Baird)

I am getting very good at love, I thought, as I stared sunward 
I taste the cherry coke in my hand, just as I taste the eggs 
in a sunny Oakland coffee shop, and already the dry taste 
of your lips is fading away.  But behind my shades 
my eyes are closed, burning with my love, my love for you 
that overwhelms everything. 
I step out of the snack shop, a cherry coke in my hand 
and suddenly I flash on your arm, laying across the piano bar 
at the Alley, my drink just beside it, and the rings that mark 
past drinks, and past attempts to just 
brush your arm.  In a photograph of us 
I wear a crazy smile, an Edie Sedgwick grin, of pure joy and no hope 
and nothing but love, it screams at me, it gives me a headache, 
it ruins my nights, it ruins my days, it keeps my from eating, 
but not from DRINKING, 
the sun blinds me, behind my shades, your arm blinds me, 
my love blinds me, but I swear I will kiss you 
with my eyes wide open.

IF TELLING IS CONVINCING, THEN TRUTH IS CORRUPT. 
I am writing my own epitaph, and for once I do not want to die. 
It does not matter that I live in Los Angeles, 
you in San Francisco, (except…well, we’ll get down with that shit later, I 
mean, can you dig where I’m coming from?  I HATE the City, except for 
this one groovy bar on Mission, but I won’t say the name, god help me if 
the groovers found out.  Uh, back to my poem), for you I will end the war, 
(but I still get to show off my scars), 
I will chill the thaw, I will crawl across the Interstate Five 
that the state has put between us, if you were living on Saturn 
I would put this message on one of NASA’s crippled probes, 
and tap it in your general direction. 
(I will stop reading Judith Krantz novels, and go back 
to Jacqueline Susann, for you.  Liked J.S. better anyway. 
Her dames were weaker but they were also lonelier.)

From Lakeshore I look back across Lake Merritt, the water silver, 
the hills yellow and green, the air cool and clean, and I 
more happy to be alive than you can know, because I am finally 
on my way to you 
and words are not meant to describe that feeling; I will not speak, 
I will not write, because words will disappear, books crumble, 
discs deteriorate, libraries burn, but our love will keep us alive 
until the sun explodes into space 
and tears the crust from the Earth itself. 
(Then I think, oops, I did write it down, now all I can do 
is share a laugh with you, and maybe one more profundity.) 
I am getting very good at love, I thought, as I stared sunward 
and like a compass, my direction is undying.
20 September 1993


A READING IN SAN FRANCISCO

Here I am again, twitching from my fourth espresso 
and ready to piss my pants 
standing up before a bored, smiling crowd 
trying to hide my neatly typed poetry, computer spell-checked, 
especially after the guy who just went, with his hand-painted leather 
jacket 
and his poetry scribbled on torn pieces of shopping bags; 
yeah, they loved that, but would they rather go home with him? 
In this city, yeah.

Here I am, hippies, standing up in front of you, 
a blood-sucking former punk from water-sucking L.A.

I’d as soon fight you as read to you.

Okay, here’s my chance, I just saw a babe in the back in a black nightgown 
with a reticulated python around her neck 
I’ll just read to you, baby, concentrate on you, make love to you with my 
eyes 
That’ll liven up the reading, and keep me from getting too bored 
or too nauseated.

I am confronted with blank stares at my blank verse.

“Take a cold shower!” a femme calls from the back of the establishment.

“Go FUCK yourself,” I respond, amazing the crowd with my witty 
comeback. 
I stomp out the door; nobody comes after me. 
Oh well.  I’d rather be at my friend’s Dolores Street pad, 
trying to score heroin over the telephone, anyway.

I’ve gotta have a little fun while I’m here.
20 December 1993


LAS VEGAS IN WINTER 
(for Miss Shannon McMackin)

I feel your love 
like the desert rain 
falling with a warm buzzing sound 
but never quite reaching the sandy ground.

Outside the entire horizon glows obscenely 
beyond that, the silent rock bursts with ephedra 
and sleeping snakes, and cold 
and your voice, as always, is so terribly serious 
I am filled with the desire to stroke your cheek 
but you would never understand 
one foot in a gaudy casino 
one foot in a hushed art opening 
and my snow-dusted sagebrush between, beckoning.
3 January 1994


RECIPE FOR DISASTER

I have an old metal box in which I keep my recipes. 
The top of the gray box no longer closes. 
Every Thursday I go through the “Food” section of the Times 
and clip out the interesting recipes, 
especially the Latino ones. 
I glue them to 3 X 5 index cards, and put them in the box. 
Whenever I look in the box, I think, 
“I’ll never cook all these recipes. 
I’ll die first.” 
And I realize with iron walls my limitations. 
Think of it; only a poet 
could extract mortality from a recipe box. 
How pathetic.
4 January 1994


NEW YEAR’S EVE

Every year, when I’ve just barely recovered 
from the sancrosanct depression of Christmas 
I must get on the phone to avoid a real depression.

Others gather around the television 
and do their countdown, and I stand next to you and wait 
one hand around the flask that has seen me through 
so many New Year’s.

I have survived another year 
and am preparing to do battle with yet one more.

Midnight strikes; the human race crosses an imaginary point 
in the orbit of its planet.

You clink glasses with me as Times Square erupts with noise. 
You kiss me gently as the moon hangs low over a Mexican beach. 
You hand me a bottle of champagne from between your legs as we creep 
along the Santa Monica Freeway, looking for action. 
You cringe from my embrace, complaining that it’s just another night.  
What of it? 
You catch my eye from across the room, and wink at me. 
You kiss me hard, as the punk rockers smash their televisions, and squeal 
happily. 
You raise your glass to me, on the balcony, as I knock a candle onto the 
grand piano. 
You kiss me softly as fireworks explode over the Empire State Building.

I would throw myself into the thick of strangers 
just to amplify my alienation 
and forget that I would just once 
like to be alone on New Year’s Eve 
The party in my head 
one hand around my flask 
your voice on my machine.
5 January 1994


LATE NIGHT OBSESSION

I would like to throw you down and fuck you 
and have your face burnt into my memory 
like the first full moon I watched drowning in the Pacific.
27 January 1994


LOS ANGELES HAS A WAY OF SHOWING ITS LOVE

After six months of abstinence 
I began smoking again. 
It was the seventeenth of January, I think 
at about five in the morning. 
Los Angeles had just shook us off 
like a dog shaking off its fleas. 
FUCK YOU I LOVE YOU 
I lit a cigarette celebrating our mutual climax. 
Inhabitants of the city huddled beneath a sky 
now brilliant with stars, usually unseen 
no light below but the fires of the gas mains. 
I am full of anger and pain. 
House where I played, apartments where I stayed, 
shattered, destroyed. 
My friends tiny in their fear 
leaping as our city quivers with love for the earth. 
FUCK YOU I LOVE YOU 
I dreamt of our own insignificant love 
supported by a weak infrastructure of  
telephone lines, post offices and freeways 
all snapped by my city with its own acting out, 
its unrepressible expression of oneness. 
FUCK YOU I LOVE YOU 
You have insulted me. 
You have insulted my family. 
You have insulted my friends. 
You have insulted my city 
by not acknowledging the terrible strength of its love for us. 
This ellipsis I cannot forgive. 
The outsiders have forsaken us 
friends with whom I played, lovers with whom I stayed 
shattered, destroyed. 
I have shaken all of you off 
like a dog shaking off its fleas. 
FUCK YOU I LOVE YOU 
Goodbye.
28 January 1994


MORTALITY
Every day at my library I read the obituaries 
and am pleased to see I am not yet within it 
but the names I do know 
every day grow 
and remind me that, contrary to Einstein, time does not slow.
28 January 1994

INDEX of Titles and First Lines


—A—
A crowd of thousands, daily, 46
A glass of the base white wine caressed in one hand, 111
A jet rips across the ocean sky, 7
A Quaalude will halt decay for a while, but it won’t erode it for good, 18
ABUL-HOAL, 99
After an eternity in San Francisco, 22
After six months of abstinence, 149
AMARGOSA DESERT, THE, 29
An ant marches into my desert, 99
APPLE OF HIS EYE, 65
Are you BORED with the hand life has dealt you?, 122
ARROYO SALADO, EL, 101
ARTIST’S SONG, THE, 106
At the Hotel, 108
—B—
Barrington Hall downstairs at midnight—NEVADA he cried, 28
Black hair, heavy over, 16
Boredom glare stands like a perpendicular white wall, 92
BORN IN TORRANCE, 59
Bouncing through the spotlights along the bar, 116
BUTTERFLY, THE, 35
—C—
CALTRAIN SERIES, THE, 39
CENTURY FREEWAY, THE, 64
CHAIN LETTER, 84
CHILD’S SHOES, 71
CITY OF JOSIES, THE, 116
Closer, pal, closer, can’t hear proper over the jackhammers, 69
COFFEE SHOP, THE, 46
COMPETITIOUS, 8
CURSON LOOKOUT, 51
—D—
DANCER, THE, 22
DESPERATION TIME, 92
DIANE LANE AS A SYMBOL FOR THE IMPOSSIBLE, 73
DIEGO AND ALTHEA, 82
DOROTHY PARKER, 94
—E—
Early in the morning, while Hollywood sleeps, 138
EVEN THE SKY LOOKS FAKE, 33
Every day at my library I read the obituaries, 151
Every year, when I’ve just barely recovered, 146
EXPLODING SUN, THE, 57
—F—
Floating along that line, the double yellow one, into another, 101
FOR HOLLYWOOD’S SAKE, 3
From the peak of Keys’ View on a clear day, 123
—G—
Geri and Marko and I, 131
GHOST FROM THE PAST, 34
GIRL WHO WORE WHITE, THE, 30
—H—
HEART BLEEDS INK, 24
HEIDI FLEISS, 138
Here I am again, twitching from my fourth espresso, 142
HIGHWAY 126, 52
HOLLYWOOD, 55
HOLLYWOOD HOPELESS, 69
—I—
I am a puppet in the suburbs, hanging on telephone wires, 33
I am addicted to drugs, 77
I am getting very good at love, I thought, as I stared sunward, 139
I crouch silently on the curb, 114
I feel your love, 144
I got the worst sunburn of my life, 78
I hang up the phone and your voice is no longer with me, 88
I have an old metal box in which I keep my recipes., 145
I like to be at home to tell her, 1
I sit in the midst of it all, 106
I would like to throw you down and fuck you, 148
I’m not from Fresno, Sacramento, Gardena or Mission Viejo, 55
If you fall asleep on the train, they usually do not wake you up, 49
In Fillmore at night you can see the stars, 52
In my best dead Bukowski style, I think, 134
In San Francisco, rain and fog, a cloudy, downbeat day, 53
IN THE EAST MOJAVE, 118
INTERSTATE FIFTEEN, 120
IS QUANTITY BETTER THAN QUALITY?, 136
Is this L.A., my tomb, my tomb, poor Kara half-buried, 34
IT lies in wait, on its own table, the red-eyed cyclops, 79
It only takes a car and a lot of money, 20
It’s unfair, being asked to analyze books, 31
—L—
La mujer como el vidrio, siempre esta en peligro, 104
Land, sea, and sky, oh yeah, 59
LAS VEGAS IN WINTER, 144
LATE NIGHT OBSESSION, 148
LEON TROTSKY, THE, 77
LOS ANGELES HAS A WAY OF SHOWING ITS LOVE, 149
LOS ANGELES INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, THE, 26
LOVE CAN OCCASIONALLY BE WORSE THAN IGNORANCE, 1
—M—
MACHINE, THE, 79
MADNESS AT 3.24 A.M., 31
MALINCHE, 104
MARGINALITY, 60
MARISA HANSELL, 13
MISSION, THE, 67
MORTALITY, 151
Mountains define natural borders, 129
My puffer fish is staring at the Spanish soap opera, 85
My sister leans far over her strawberry margarita, her eyes wide, 136
—N—
Neon!  Neon!, 3
NEW YEAR’S EVE, 146
—O—
O TRAIN, 103
O train, I sit on the warm stones, 103
ODE TO ALLA NAZIMOVA, 16
One long line of speed, and buddy ready to go!, 10
—P—
PATENTED NAUSEA, 18
PERPETUAL NICOTINE, 47
PERSONAL AD, 122
PICTURE BRIDGE, THE, 108
PICTURES OF ELLEN, 62
PISMO BEACH, 9
PLEASE WITHHOLD MY N.E.A. GRANT, 111
POINT FERMIN, 49
PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG CORPSE (PORTRAIT OF THE CATHOLIC AS A YOUNG 
HYPOCRITE), 28
—Q—
QUE SE FUE, LA, 139
—R—
Racing bits of flesh, by car or plane, 71
RATTLER, 114
READING IN SAN FRANCISCO, A, 142
RECIPE FOR DISASTER, 145
RENO NEVADA UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 20
—S—
SAN FRANCISCAN CHARM, 38
SAN FRANCISCO AND BACK IN ONE SECOND, 10
San Francisco—O glorious city of light!, 39
SANTA CRUZ, 53
Seafood appears in little dumps, graffiti attacks the beach, 9
SEVENTY MILES PER HOUR, 123
She comes and goes redly, yellowly, 65
SHE HAS BLACK EARRINGS AS WELL, 11
She reaches across a formica table for the stem of a glass, 60
Sheltered from the rains in a cold womb of Malibu, 73
SILVER STRAND, THE, 5
Sitting on Market Street, talking to a bottle of Southern Comfort, 38
SLAM LOCK, 96
Some people say that there isn’t enough love in the world, 125
SPANISH SOAP OPERA, THE, 85
Speed, speed, Greg Gray says, his eyes rolling, 27
SPORTS, 27
Squatting at a smooth bar, 57
Steve came down from San Francisco, beard and bandana, 8
Suppose you could seal your heart in an envelope and mail it to yourself, 24
SUTRO BATHS, THE, 25
—T—
TAKING THE WHEEL, 90
The air is thick and white around two bridges, 96
The Chinese Philosopher said:, 35
The club lights glitter off our wet eyes, 82
The Downtown skyscrapers cut so sharp, so black, painless hurt, 51
The limousine rocks at anchor in a river of tinted light, 90
The old man of my past is still laughing, 29
The Phoenix arises from multicolors, brick and wood, 67
The sun awakes me on my mountain peak, 120
The sun set behind the Kelso Dunes, 118
The view from the Sutro Baths, where slime grows onto flowers, 25
The white ceiling is high and empty—sky, 26
There you are, at last
I see you, 94
This cigarette kills the taste of 8 am Corn Flakes, 47
To whom it may concern, 84
Tonight the moon is full and the air is cold and my hands are gloved, 5
TOW TRUCKS, HEARSES AND EX-GIRLFRIENDS, 134
TRUSTING, TRIPPING, TRYSTING, 131
TWO ASHTRAYS, 7
—U—
Under fluorescent ice cream lamps a man and a woman sit, 44
—V—
VALLEY IS A GREAT PLACE TO HIDE, THE, 129
VERY GOSSIPY DIATRIBE ON LOVE, A, 125
VIVISECTION MALE AND FEMALE, 44
VOICES, 88
—W—
Waking up on Venice Beach, sticky with spray, the ocean’s cool hand, 62
Weeds are now sprouting from dry earth, 64
WHY DO I CARE WHAT HAPPENS IN BERKELEY OR BERLIN?, 78
—Y—
YES, INDEEDY, the girl wore white, it came up around her eyes, 30
You really had to be there, 11
You watch, but you can’t change the channel any more, 13