streets like deserts

there is no difference
in the bleakness
of the city's streets
and my endless deserts

I prefer streets empty
the pretense gone

ashes ashes we all
live like rain streaming
down old windows

remembering once was
a familiar friend
who spoke quietly
words I've heard before

now memories collapse
like landmines

women look like mountains
on a hazy day

I like the smell of rain
after a long dry spell
when the desert's smell
explodes alive with flavor

don't forget that deserts
aren't empty

their expansiveness accentuates
the diminuitive pieces
belying the distant
and the immanent self

Emboddied

a body is meant to disappear
wisps in radical displays
tastelessly sung breaths

breaks

temples crumble with new religions
as time fails to remember anything

once was built of skin and flesh
slowly I am becoming stone

as I become weathered
my face will smooth away
until I am innominate

I will lose my identity
and become more human
in my mystical emptiness

I will remember my skin
after a long meditation
and move again filling
my newly built face

the modern world continues
churning lives in production

inevitably I will be recast
I remember how to move
and forget all else

Eating in Bed

1) Oven

the oven is a foreign object
littering my kitchen's space

I have nightmares of my oven
opening itself mouthlike speaking

food expunged from its maw
dripping on my cabinets

and deep in the back
beyond my sight rattling sounds:

my inability to suffice
independently

2) Convenience Store

late at night a depressed wind
rustled with rain and leaves

its not quite hunger
but something lacks

and sleep incanted
swells and decays

like a feigned blink

put the dog on a leash
I need to go buy something

3) Dreams

I don't dream of food
but my dreams know
what I ate

last night I dreamt
in sordid colors

these lives touching me
just enough to retreat
and fade like Autumn

so far away

I went to bed hungry
like the night before

Five Sequential Devolutions

1) Freedom

the world is under arrest
and people, once arrested
play the roles of criminals
plotting in their confinement

great stories of redemption end
with the innocent freed
oppressors hopelessly defeated
cleansing rain and remote sunsets

redemption is not the American story

like prisoners who sell cigarettes
for sexual tricks and future favors
we play the game of the institution
while dreaming of freedom

2) Birth

I was never born

in the middle of the night
thieves stole me from a grave

woke me up

and placed me crying
on a stranger's doorstep

3) Death

I'll never die

America is my bones
forged of destiny manifest

onward and upward
sea to sea

4) Cartography

when I learned to write
I took snapshots of letters
and pasted them on the page

my first book glowed
under neon lights

when I drew maps
my satellite fingers
grasped the earth
to smear on electronic walls

flickering
these maps
complete

5) History

when I am old
and settle in
to retire

history
will decide