Island Pill

You are surely lost.xxxxThe waiting room
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxis  teeming
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxwith pigeons.

Your birthday cake
takes off
andx  eats
xxxsome horse.

Here, take this pill.
xxxxxxxxxIt knows Vladimir. It knows
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxcommunists of all nations. It says
kids everywhere love life. And intend
to love lifexxxbeyond musicxxxxxbeyond breath.

If the Russian comes by
at midnight in the rain, just say, hey, Vlad.
Poets are assholes, tender
lambs of electricity. They have
mouths of mind open to the tone-deaf wind and
a sweet smack of “Ah, thanx, I needed that.”

xxxxx(Their hearts shine pure with the moon
xxxxxand swim to Satin Island true as midnight sky pollution. )

Oh to have birds cooing
bells ringing tofu frying and unusually
high energy levels!

To feel that stealthy familiar of a new poem coming up mechanical on the clank machine!

It carries you through a wall.
It knows just what you mean.

Santa Monica

She didn’t say anything
I hadn’t heard. I had a gram
of her in my mouth.

The dawn is emotions so she and I went
purely physical, spinning on one toe
in damp sand, the stars slipping yellow & knifing
out a place in us.

It was
our place &
there we slept,
Earth.

She said the thoughts
on my face saw me
and that I winced too often.
Her advice gave me
xxxxxthe mountains and a flight path.

(It’s a dirty dawn
the pink spark
xxxxxxxxof Santa Monica,

a light of sweet yawns, slow,
xxxxxxa dog cloud

xxxxxxxxxxanother life to know.)

As Solid

Joe
moans low
under clouds
in a town with only one payroll.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxDid you know
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxColumbus
knew this town
was round?

Joe knows it’s flat.
xxxxIt’s filled
with potholes and
two sons of no
ones. It’s scrubbed. Everyone is loose-
livered.

Joe knows there’s no place to go,
so he digs in. Forgets up. He holds

steady, keeps his soul resident, solid,
as solid
as closed space is open.