A slippery here

LA to NYC and back and there and again

)LA(

, the first is never a first, there’s always something in the oven, I remember next year, where do the taxis go to sleep?

(NYC)

Landed three nights ago, forgot to shower and walked to the park
where the skateboarders slid in the empty fountain,

it’s been all kaleidoscopes lately,
while I stood near a trumpet that danced through piano
and watched years of self walk in five directions,

like I’ve been here before and never,

fragmented patterns that eventually pattern,
and I look through the hours with one eye open,
the other in your pocket…

)LA)

…lots of things happen backwards:
you land before you fall…
…..you hear chords before god strums…..

+

on hillhurst two men nail a bar of styrofoam gold to a sign that says, “Feed a philosopher.” One tells the other: “The latest I pitched Steve on is…”

+

Two of my fingers have fevers. All these hand maladies and I wonder about their relation to my writing, my touching, the way I interact with the world. And yet—

)NYC)

In this buzz
we seek channels
to shoot from one pool
of meaning to the next,
never sure, never fully there,
always arriving,
wet.

(LA(

I can’t just walk past a body in the middle of the sidewalk like that. I cross the street and try not to look. A lot of times I’m just trying not to look. Maybe that’s awful. That’s awful. But then, what? I feel bads in my chest. Last month I gave Hannah an old iPhone, a meal, a ride. It’s never enough. It’s something. At the light I look back and the sleeping bag moves. The body props itself up on a forearm, alive.

I asked Hannah what her vision of the future is.

She said, “Kingdom.”

She said, “We all just need to rest and lay with the trees.”

I said I agreed

)NYC(

, and the fountain turned on the next day.

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