Sitting in a corner and staring at the screen, my eyes glow but fingers remain still. An alien wants to be born from my chest, but my surgeon’s hands have gone numb and claw weakly at my rib cage. Fumbling with a scalpel, I slice my palm, flinch. Can’t get the damn point in. How do I use this again?

Once, this was my world. Burning eyes and precise movements knew every step on the path ahead, every rock and shrub. Now, I discuss carbohydrates and rude clients and stare at the door. I know that it won’t open, but the lights of the city run cackling along the horizon and speak of stumbling drunks on a Wednesday night, chasing pennies down the street and into the sweaty dens of card sharks in cheap suits.

I feel blood returning to my legs. It is almost time.

These people experience life in categories and prefer respectable shelving. When they are moved, it is because they fully understand the repercussions. Approach with reckless eyes.

—

The city is never dark. Short of the occasional broken street light or back alley, Denizens of the Concrete rarely encounter the loss of sight that otherwise accompanies the onset of night. Now, after three years in San Diego spent laughing at friends stunned by even the most mediocre display of stars, I found myself staring upward, awed by the expanse. A long sigh, and I look around. About twenty minutes previously, I was rolling north, pushing hard and staring down road signs in my anxiety to get to a place where I could stop and rest for the night.

But I get ahead of myself. Before that – this:

It had been a long day, and the bike was tired. As a sign for “Manzanar State Historic Site” went shooting by to my right, I felt us begin to slow. A cough, and a soft groan. Blackie the Wonder Bike was done for now. Time to stop. Sleeping bag, tree branch shade and an early hello to the sky. I disagreed. We needed to move onward. Forward through space. Bishop, a point now associated with victory and caffeine, though the rubber flying out behind my leather would soon make such maps obsolete, devoid of their original purpose. Mind, memory, and then nothing but a distant rumble.

Not now – not yet.

Throttle.

Throttle?

My will is unheard as Blackie turns against me. Her word is final, and I do not argue further. Find a sign. Wait, wasn’t there a sign earlier? Yes! A location of interest, not to be missed on your tour of the Great State. Come inside! We have magnets for your gas tank. Take a load off, you look tired. Witness time in progress, removing everything but fundamentals and the sign for Block 14.

Pain no longer moves through this place, and the dust gives rise to orchards. An empty shack welcomes desert owl, so with soft pavement whisper he enters. Slow. Kick stand. Boots on gravel. Do you get the picture? Block 12.

The path is long, and movement seems illusory. Darkness hides recent history because no one wants to know the names. This is a family institution, after all. It belongs to the public, and the public wants the lights off. There have been budget cuts, however, and regulations are defied as the sky reads the sign at my feet. Block 10.

Trucks are honking on the road, but their voices are those of a distant friend that you just sort of never kept in touch with. Block 8.

A lost child runs by, looking for butterflies. Block 6.

Do you understand where we are?

Block 4.

—

Old Bear greets the young owl underneath a rustling canopy. The sound is true, and he does not speak.

History in his eyes, trees in mine.
Not contradictory, but an impossible state.

Goodbye doesn’t make sense,
But it is getting late.

And it can’t always be high noon.

You are standing in a room.
IMAGINE, because this is your life and you need to
remember it.

It’s all coming back now.

The smell of summer wheat
The hesitated sweat of the palm as
you become aware.

Brief glimpse of momentary recognition
in her eyes.

Now!

The edge of the abyss is underneath your feet
and you had better learn to dance real quick-like,
but your body is a stranger to you.

Tango foxtrot in quicksand
Swing your partner
but she can’t dance either.

She has been here for hours and
you for years.
She sees you, and
walks out anyway.

Exit stage left.

Rest easy, friend.
I am here for your best interests.
Your time has been brought short by
lines.
Ticket please.
Punch card paperwork
forcing unnatural juxtaposition of space and potential.
I am only here to help,
but your prayers are not heard.

Curved space is making straight lines
impossible,
So you look away to find
a proper trajectory.
Escape is inevitable.
Gasp for air.

Heisenberg is laughing at you, saying
“I’m not sure.”
He revels in uncertainty
as you grasp for affirmation.
Who is wiser?

The king and the fool are in the courtyard,
dancing.
The king: “I’ve never danced before.”
The fool: “I am old and weary.”
A heartbeat flutter and the king continues.

Notes: [Titan orbits with no consideration for possible alternatives.
Resolution is not necessary in my line of work.
The real death knell is recognition of
the dying.]

Rest easy, friend.
I won’t hurt your daughter.

My red coat gives me away in this weather,
But the rain keeps it clean
And it wouldn’t shine as brightly in the sun.

Rest easy, friend.
I am here for your best interests.

You drive a White Truck,
And I met you through a mutual friend.
Now necessary!
A redefinition of your context.

This requires forms in triplicate
That I swallow with buckets of iodine.

Constructing an environment on pavement.

Reconstructing a natural state inside of a glass bottle.

Run away, friend
But laugh while you do it.

Pat’s brain is SWELLING and I am off GO. Had to see him since Paul ditched now I count my blood cells under a microscope and wait for headaches. Raves happen and I am another festive kandy peacock but suddenly the string snaps and I understand that I am needed elsewhere TOO BAD stranded in Long Beach with nothing bumming calls from people in front of a faceless grocery store greasy sweat-stained kid in a furry white hat – who the hell are you? Trip to the beach and I know the waves don’t normally do that but oh GOD she’s a CRAZY ex now and I go swooping on to avoid the unnecessary calamity as the giant crashes through social circles and safe havens but ah well I’ve seem worse until Jordan: “So apparently Dan’s dead.” Kayaking
can be fun, but the memorial is scheduled and I am face-to-face with watery eyes and friends at night needing company. We joke about a memorial party IN HONOR but no one can stomach the beer foam breakdown in a dingy bathroom.

FEBRUARY

A big blank page in a black-covered book indicating forgotten stories
that I will never know to regret, save for the one imprinted on my front tooth. Motorcycles are dangerous, kids.

MARCH

Shit this quarter is interesting so would people stop DYING left and right
(I wink at fifteen-pounds-the-lighter Pat still with us), but finals must
be done and I trundle on with half-sleeping coffee-filled red-eye in a
haze of old psychology and auditory neuron firing. Classes are bombed but
I pass and move on joyously into utter freedom of SPRING BREAK the crack
between new dawns of academia JUST wide enough to stand still and sssSSO
many possibilities as I hoof it to Pat’s apartment. Clean, fresh sunlight
with nowhere to be and a cool, Santa Barbara breeze washing over
travel-weary pores. Peace. Then, a thunder crack and The BIKE. Dear Lord!
RACING hundreds of miles behind Pat weaving dodging HONK-FUCK! Almost died
there, but only for a moment and I must TRUST in the bondage of pavement
and rubber with stretched lung and clenched jaw. So it goes on and on but
he won’t slow DOWN (the natural masculine response to female touch) and
the bike is…rippling? Sixty five is a dream and five a reality for
hours. FINALLY desperately clinging handlebars take me down the
intersecting ramp and I DID IT. The Band is playing in my head.

APRIL

HAPPY BIRTHDAY! April Fool’s comes quickly but I am far ahead racing at
top speed EEG rhythms and kicking ass name please? The Book is left empty
while I contentedly struggle to swim and rearrange the various puzzle
pieces that lost themselves under my couch in Winter but PROGRESS in
routine! Weight-lifting my brain soaked with multi-modal self-knowledge
and the first real poem since Ramm! Then the Event Saturday Night with
Fourteen Bottles of Wine. A decent crowd that does well to highlight the
bathroom stall genius of Thom who stands and projects himself and doesn’t
give a shit, and neither do I even though trust-issues ex is still trying
her damndest to kick me but I’m not down and I realize looking out at her
how much I have learned and GOD does this vaccination feel good. At last,
no more pacing. My hair grows back and mesolimbic tobacco cries grow
fainter. Equilibrium is achieved through both struggle and stillness.

I don’t understand their cleaning policies here.

Why am I on my hands and knees with stethoscope in hand, analyzing bifurcations in symbiotic rhythm of beat on a mouthful of bullshit spewing to grow its own progenitors? I can’t possibly understand where this comes from, though technically my nicotinic receptors are doing the talking. I’m just a pawn to their devious game, those bastards. I do what they say that consequences be borne fruit within my visual field right at the center where I can see them.

I haven’t slept in forty days and forty blood-filled nights. My eyeballs are impaled on the tiny spires of my ceiling, dripping stalagtites but I’m not sure if that’s the right word. If I cared you’d know by now, but my grammar is terrible at this time of day and I can’t drown out the words bouncing in my skull the SOUNDS that they make! Ping! Ping! Ding ding dig! Who the fuck would have thought that stray words sounded like that?

You wouldn’t understand. You don’t hear them…what to do? I can’t rape you, so there’s no plausible way to put you inside of my head but at least you can see a shadow of the hollow cavities where rats live and squeak the fuckers add to this Dada din what clever alliteration! Good job! Even when refraction has ceased there still exists some bizarre little motherfucker amusing himself with the sounds of words and meaning be damned.

FUCK SYNTAX. WAIT NO THAT WAS semantics oops.

Stupid words all sound alike anyway did I tell you the crazy shit that happened to me last night? Oh, well I can’t because I have a test that I have to study for it’s worth a huge portion of my grade and I haven’t studied for the damn thing so I’m kind of stressed out bye.

My legs keep heading west before they realize I can’t swim,
But it’s only been twelve years and regrets are for the dying.

I ride a motorcycle now.
It lets me chase myself over fading horizons and yet somehow,
when I return,
the front fender still shows my face
with a banshee wail borne from missed connections,
Insistently citing evidence against my current grazing practices.
I should never have waxed that goddamn chrome.

When I saw you last we were boxed in by canyon walls,
Clawing at wet soil for any sort of desperate surrender.
It seemed hopeless, a doomed enterprise.
(Those boots were a terrible idea.
No fucking traction.)
Yet when I woke, the gravel at my face was reflecting light and water onto my trasparent eyelids
that remained somehow uncut by the indigenous motorhomes threatening thick-boot authority figures.
Breathing a sigh of relief, we took a piss into the morning mist
and saw the river that had been a black gurgle through the night.
The clarity of brush and stone as we returned that day is gone now, and sometimes,
when the sun is asleep,
I wonder at its absence.

But I can be patient.
And I can wait.
And I won’t try calling you…
Because we both know that if I did,
It would destroy the point of the entire idea.
And it was a good idea.