King of the Surf Guitar

when you come to the end of the desert
there will be a great city on the shoreline
assembled from gasoline and light

this is the Idea of California
it can sterilize oceans
run aquifers to dust

find an all-night diner
order some apple pie and coffee
get comfortable

no more frontiers --
just this last chance
to watch the sun go down

almost went to bed early w/out a poem

Look, novice ember
No vices? I've got a laundry list...
You've watched me
Drink
Smoke
Fuck
Fight
Myself into oblivion
I started this fucking shit
As a way to get my mind
Off the ways of the world
And you all are wonderful
Reminders of its pain

But thank you.

Nietzsche's got a hold on me

a simple kind of man he

walked into my classroom told us he

majored in business for lack of

alternative ideas gets to

go to work in jeans and a t-shirt

the ground covered in masculine sweat that

smells of the oil he trades in some made up online

universe

he works from home now

so tranquil

says his alma mater's sports aren't quite as

good as they were in his prime 80's days

this Christian nihilism this

tranquility to watch the earth be

sucked dry in order to be able to

go to work in jeans and a t-shirt

today I wrote myself a note

"listen to the killers until you feel better"

today I did not follow my advice

people told me

I wasn't my usual self

and so I went to the bathroom

stared at myself in the mirror

concluded that

whatever was in the mirror

was a warped human of a thing

exercising demons, pt. 3-- night terrors

In the museum basement there is a glass
case with a handwritten note
“Please keep fingers off the glass, Management”
a smiling face
dots the end of it

in the room with the mummies
and shriveled lips, pickled fetuses in jars,

inside this case is where they keep her--

they say she has slept since birth

her eyeballs toss back and forth,
back and forth, under thin-skin sheets:
eyelids the only movement in a still room

her hair has grown to the floor

above eyelids that flicker like
faulty connections,
the wood-grain smudge of her fingerprints
thicken the glass from the inside

sometimes she must wake up and want out

the guard rubs his bald head

when I ask,

tells me, “at night, you
should hear it—how weeping
fills an empty hallway”

living lamps
float on a silent sea
my jellyfish and me

dear light,
how will you reach me?
they are all gone into another world
and I'm left floating on an empty sea

every morning
she falls down six
flights of stairs
in her size nine shoes
and avoids every
look she gets and

every morning
she counts six
steps to the next
landing and three
more out the front
door

every morning
she takes six
pages of notes
and the stars she
doodles, she inverts
every one them

learning every shade of blue

on a spectrum isn't strange 

it's a convincing argument

for sanity and wellness

ocean aquamarine

is beautiful this close to the edge

you can pull the curtain shut

listen to the tide on either side of us

start lining up decorative shells

in neat little lines 

like world weary soldiers

soaked in foreign salts