in that space unrecognizable,
scotomata perforating your visual fields
the mind fills in the gaps
elides the ragged, raging ends of
punctured, gaping reality
all is well with the world
as far your aching mind is concerned
ignore something long enough and
trust me
it will eventually go away
and all bleeding stops eventually

in this oxidizing atmosphere
you forget every exhalation is a puff of smoke
and every breath causes every cell in your body
to burn

it is fitting that the Holy Spirit
came upon the Apostles like a tongue of fire
not the exhalational gust of spent breath
rancid and tubercular from God’s ancient mouth
but the fuel for the fire
oxygena
that is
sharpness-former
pointed-beginning

and each breath is like a knife like acid burning in your chest

we die by burning, one way or the other
even when we drown
our neurons go up in flames
sharp-pointed, keen-bladed free radicals
come charging in
at knife point
they steal electrons,
tear them off our quivering flesh
and that electrical fire that courses through our nerves
goes out out out like Broadway finally closing
on the eve of Armageddon
like the foundering Titanic sucked down into the vortex
created from its own fractured ruin
drowning to the plaintive cry of violins

Oh, T.S. and I
We’s tight, no lie
what he makes out with his profundity
I make up with my profanity

Like the bastard children
of this post-modern world
forever feeding on Lacan’s tits
searching for that veritable penis that can never be found
(and whys you always gotta be thinking wit yo dick, man?)
that center that is no center that flies from the center that seeks the center

That crossroads that is a tangle
that madness that grows on vines
lifegiving blood feeding a cancer
dead bodies mutilated, littered along the desert floor

Oh, this desert shore
come sea, come dusty winds
Satan farting across the Anza-Borrega
the Mojave
the Sonora

Oh noosphere
like that monkey-eating eagle
between the twilight sky
and the deepening sea

On the interstices of the boundaries of the peripheries of the limits
God’s 10,000 fingers interlaced
interspersed
every dust mote
fragment of star dust
every raindrop
every meningococcal bacterium
(breathe in and let it burn)
every grain of desert sand
every soot particle
(this is cosmic fabric, my friends
this is what universes are made of
what 9 out of 10 deities recommend)

Oh, this desert shore
that is the past and the present and the future
fantasy, modernity, madness, and impossibility
all intersect with the 101 and the PCH
with El Camino Real and the Mother Road
The blueprint of America
a working scale model
and what America could only hope to be

This noospheric ephemerality
this transient indefatigability
‘cause California was never real
and yet we’re as real as you can ever get

La Republica de las Californias
Alta y Baja Reunidad

In this occupied territory
stolen by the gringo
(don’t even pretend that this isn’t true)
And a brown man who don’t speak Español
Soy buscando para la verdad
lantern in hand
worse off than some Greek fool who is probably still wandering all of Tartarus
looking for something that just don’t exist

Worried that some puti hopped up on some crystal meth
is gonna make an example of me
show those brown guys who’s boss
put that uppity bastard in his place
(And hell yeah, Kanye
my degrees are gonna keep me safe and warm and bulletproof.
I truly believe that. While I’m fingering that hole in my belly,
still incredulous that I got shot.
But whateva, cous’
All bleeding stops eventually.)

Circles upon spheres upon helices upon spirals
vortices and whorls
Scylla and Charybdis
Jorgumand eating his own tail
like a dog licking his own balls
Two Klein Bottles opening up into each other
like some eleven-dimensional educational demonstration of the reproductive systems of galaxies
or maybe it’s just porn
(and ain’t everything just porn?)

Everywhere but here
here in this circumscribed
delimited, defined
assayed, appraised
every bit tallied and marked
every penny accounted for
everywhere but here
(and the target keeps moving
goddamn it! Why don’t you hold still?)
You’re moving around the sights
like a tweaking berserker in an unbreakable trance
Keep still, goddamn you!
Keep fucking still!