She Would Drive Me in Her Car

It’s an expensive cigarette, the one you buy an entire pack
For that you then cast out in the bin.
And the honey that really does seem like it comes from the gods
Has gone up several bucks from inflation.
You won’t get me on your hamster wheel,
I’ll continue running every morning;
Everything falls apart,
And then it comes back together.
I won’t let it break me down
Or label me abnormal.
Hope is ultimately the most essential desire.
The sweet scent of a memory, like when
We stepped out of the hotel room
To buy our chosen packs
Together. You wore creamy tan tights, under a skirt,
Coming undone for me, very deliberately.
She had that smoker’s laugh which makes a hot lady
Seem much older,
And yet as libidinous and reckless as you.
An English charm,
Makeup in the Japanese fashion,
Sexy Chinese journalist.
I wrote a poem about the Hukou Waterfall
The instant I fell in love with you.
The rushing brown rapids churned,
The immense slick muddy rock faces
Poured their cascades like a steaming teapot.
Oh how would the human race keep revolving
Were it not for crazy and reckless decisions?



Ends And Means

Truth in art is like nature,
Simply there for all to see
Although it cannot be told entirely why.
So for as much as one may try to explain it
Or cover it up with artifice
This will never work.
You can lie to people and tell them that art is true
But the science of it will one day prove you to be a liar.
I’ll get to it partially,
Dash out my feeble song
But make no claim on its wider significance
For I doubt it has none.
Otherwise I’ll probably have to die for some cause,
Because I can’t see how I can afford growing old.



Could Use A Fan

Fame is the uneven spread of love
In a world plagued both with starvation and obesity.
California is like its gold pan.
Shiny monads of affluence throng in the circuitry of roads,
where nowhere leads to the compassion of our basic needs
And everywhere leads to capitalism.
The one hand controlled by an insatiable desire,
the other it’s the conquest of its safety.
While some fight to see their name in lights, for others
it’s to be seen as a person at all.
Sunny California,
have you ever seen such handsome homeless men?
Feeling the burn on your skin increase
Like the frequency of wildfires.
Scorching our vain neglect of a future that is certain
to view us most infamously,
who stuck their white necks in the ground.
A majestic Tuscan villa
the classiness of which is in its unoccupied space,
Reminds me of those quaint little towns in Burma.
The elegant and orderly palms stand like pillars
As if lines of famous literature
Or a heartfelt speech that makes for the activist a career.
But there’s no more of it to go around.