Riffing with the Arcturian During the Storm

Revenge of the red-haired girls,

Some in clown mascara,

Violaceous rashes,

Intentionally dissonant

But now they are noticed

Now that everything has met 

Its expiration date

And only the new satisfies.

Their lanterns of discernment catch

As our thoughts leap, in loops --

Detail residue keeps the frame by frame

Stuck, repeating --

If you could only cut that moment

In the editing booth,

When you made the executive decision

To disobey your higher self

And everything buckles up,

You become the most chaotic

Of the collective softly veering

To coherence, tagged

As a victim, to perplexing oppressors,

Lapped in endurance to the strange

Instead of base, your home frequency pad,

The still life reigning supreme over what is

A Frenchie after all, in a wool vest

And teenage girls looking for better men.

There's sacred geometry everywhere,

In Union Station and in the personal

Art I had collected,

In last night's dream life,

Banker to the Emperor,

Who had to know as an engineer.

I sit here bearing the force

Of nothing working 

As it used to, on the folks,

The patient collective

Who pop a fuse now

In my empathy field 

And I can choose to feel it

As holy people choosing the mirror

Truth of the quickest path, or as

Are we all watched, 

Made bets on,

Doomed?

It's an invitation to break the loop,

To think again, because you can

You know, lose all trace

Of who you are

And be everyone, 

Spin in any timeline you turn,

How everything you want to learn

Is yours for the asking

As if by magic -- that is you,

Source consciousness

Wearing yet another 

Of your disguises,

Slumming as a Long Island

Celebrity on a plasma run.

They joined you to come here

As these sad commuters

Joined me to forgive, forbear

And write this poem

About sadness,

How it is the ticket,

The price of admission to experience,

To see how everyone works for you,

As you see when you know who you are,

Which is not what you were.

The protuberance has dissolved

And you are not even a thought,

Just the unmistakable sound

Of the weird turning pro.

Versions of Nora Revisited

Such crisp, high-performance

Walking-around knowledge I possess:

There are two Starbucks in Iceland

Frinstance, or that rice 

Was first planted from planes 

In 1932, or that all wars

Are between Rome and the Jews.

My auto assistant has compiled everything 

And is ready to distribute 

The memo with Q&A

In notes that won't waste 

Anybody's time 

Out to the universe, 

Fans and creditors alike

But no one ever sees them.

Everyone has their own feed,

Too self-absorbed to receive.

It's all they can do to survive.

The fact it's been recorded 

Relieves anyone of any obligation 

In fact, to notice.

I am that tree that falls in the forest

That, if it's not seen, does it exist?

Physicists are baffled by such questions 

But the world's existence is objectively 

The one in question, 

With the universe left over,

Still there, in the end. 

And what if the tree never fell?

The note would never be noticed

In the orchestra, 

So unconscious with joy

That's how conscious it is,

Creating non-existence

As a necessary condition of its life.

The red-faced blonde with the beard

Knows this, his weathered face 

Has pondered non-existence frequently,

But he also knows, in order to 

Hold the course,

Best to keep his eyes fixed 

On what the world provides,

The stuff that can be made real.

He's resilient with time, content

To stare the sun 

All the way down the wall.

He only needs to be what he imagines:

Fresh spanging opportunities,

Hundreds of birds crying in the eaves.

The Joys of Retrograde

What is actually at the window has yet to be determined

Though all robed personages already know

What you will do, and love you've made that choice, 

Tho you'd appreciate any guidance, at this point.

Hummingbirds whirr in place at that,

But only because they feel for you, so close 

To the sugar, almost jealous you are only now

Free enough to dance in the darkness.

Some already know the soil they walk is blessed.

God doesn’t need to speak to them, they know the way

And why they should believe their eyes

Not the lies their mothers taught them,

How tunnels end in hell, and every destination

Is a long way off still and almost impassible,

And people are, forget about it, unreachable,

Impossible to trust.

You wait, conversely, for the dispatcher's signal

As safety is now a system-wide issue.

Nothing can move until it stews in the broth

Of what it never understood, at least not enough.

But you feel somehow it's a system that includes you

Though you do not want to know why,

When you hail a ride, it knows where to go

And that you haven’t yet arrived and probably never will.

Temple Blues

Unity only comes through the service entrance
As time's spiral holds only what's made from love.
The rest falls away, still whole
As the king hermit is still
At the top of the tower
Waiting for it to fall.

The seeker must face again the shadow
And surrender another time to the coil of life
In the scholar's studio
Lighting heathen grief,
Preparing the best clouds
For buddha dignitaries.

Interstitially, there are as many teacher demons
As the mandala will hold and have carpets for praying.
They blow their vital breath into a snake
Until the shadow is cast off
Revealed as a human face
And no longer needed in the play.

That was the breath that had brought everyone
From miles away to wave, having become something more
At least while the roads
Are temporarily barricaded 
Zacetecas style, the empanadas
International now after all

Though no one knows that but the afflicted,
On clouds now, inside a moment when history yields
To the way they feel now,
What emerged when it ended.
The feeling lingers in the stragglers here,
Still alive in a new day.

Cloud Afternoon

Have you noticed how the pillows

Squish the light out

As you're ready to receive it?

Each ray changes the whole history,

For the world is yours, kid, it only

Breathes when you do.

The luminaries are unlimited 

As are the lifetimes you can choose,

What memories you assume.

The bungalows instead of flying off

Hold their own against the sky 

When it grows too overwhelming.

The slightest nudge

Jars meaning 

From the soundest sleep.

A Vision in the Tunnel

The wind

Only reveals

The immateriality, 

My belief

Up next to our agreement 

What will be,

Will my foot fall

Forever or is there

Some floor

For us to dance together

When the music 

Lights the cathedral,

Beckoning us to move

Not like the tide,

A swarm of our own devising,

When we chase down

What the gangsters of song

Echoed the halls with,

The cool of

What their love 

Took prisoner?

It's all for us

To love, isn't it?

The pain, the things without,

How they call us

From the vortex

Like they're not even thoughts.

What We Do With Our Choices

Funny how you don't miss energy vampires.

You'd think, like a mosquito, they'd taken so

Much from your hide you'd itch for

The way it was, when the drama was the draw.

Instead they toughened you up, so that even

Drama is intolerable, like this is your 1,000th

Broadway show, and the cakewalk ain't boffo

Chateau, for Homie don't play that no more.

And it is to them you owe your bubble,

Which rose from the first act of violence,

The no they forced, against all odds.

Gone is the person you once thought they'd be,

Structured and not self-absorbed completely 

And out for blood. In this place is who they are,

Now seen keenly, eyes that endure their own compassion.

You see how hard it is to stand alone in the world

That suddenly, inexplicably, finally makes you

Feel that you belong in it.

Sound file

Other Gods

Fullerton station is Stratocast

As the Mennonites on the platform

Wait in the 19th century

For the train to Tijuana

And stem cell therapy

With dowagers who put their dogs in bags

And Fabion in his feathered ten-gallon hat

Shining his boots in the sun.

There are halos around them all

Who believe in alternate Gods,

A halo of straw for those so holy

They're shunned by the modern world,

An aura of cool for the couple from Seoul

Who melt into the depot,

And chakras for who wears their eccentricities

In the vividness of their sleeves.

I wonder how they look at each other,

The true faiths that barely

Conceive the world as it is

But how it might be,

When the impure are escorted away

And the golden light of who they already are

Is allowed to shine. Oh no, it's not by God

That this is done, but by them.

Monday in LA

The corporation is there to serve.

Say it like a mantra, a serenity prayer

In the midst of the latest swirl

That always goes nowhere,

The springs clamped down with anger

At the absurdity of having to do it at all,

Another play toy to expire in the ethers

Overripe, over budget, and failing to catch

A whiff of consensus sense,

So much so they'll soon do it again

Completely different next time

In exactly the same way.

The corporation is there to serve.

Look at how much time is wasted,

Days go by in these sunsets of jobs

Like a horse without a whip, no fire,

Spent on tasks too impersonal for the bees

In the C-Suite on down to understand,

Least of all by the person doing it,

Who fantasizes running backs

And dreams of pumpkin smoothies

And the paradise of lunch that soon will come,

Like convicts killing time smoke cigarettes

Fantasizing how they stole them.

The corporation is there to serve.

Everyone's been guilty far too long

Because they work just minutes a day

For the legal fiction who gives them life.

There's never a reasonable rate of return.

No real railroad could ever run this way.

No Greek diner would tolerate a fraction of

The collaborated froth this boiler room 

Vortex pours forth.

We chafe at whatever comes our way

As if to exert our self-esteem by saying no,

Kept in gilding like unseen lilies that still bloom.

The corporation is there to serve.

It’s not for making money but making friends,

Lots of them, to wrangle or handhold

Though they come and go all the time

Like obsolescent family members

When you have learned 

What you need to know: 

How you aren’t like that,

What you can’t abide, 

How you should just trust anyway.

They hassle you and make you sing,

Sidle up like everyone you've known to your warm stool.

The corporation is there to serve.

Not the prairie dog cog in a bog of glitchy tech

But how you learn to drink your tea a sip at a time, 

Take little biscuit bites until you feel like yourself again

At the end of the day, having felt slavery

Without knowing what it was. 

Stellar riches await your exodus commute

As you embrace your monetized time

Like a long-lost love,

As if seeing what abundance is

For the first time.

You call it freedom, and it is.

Another Labor Day

The first light, the most silent and sacred

Descends upon the tents in Los Angeles mall

Into eyes where all they have left is receiving.

Some prepare to break camp, others briskly sweep.

A blonde in a blue dress sleeps on the concrete.

A full shopping cart is locked to the bike rack.

The men here pop from nowhere, disappear in clouds of smoke

Though they look hard at me before they go.

Their eyes see instantly inside my mental games.

I am, like all who seek out the invisible, disappointing.

I, too, look away, though with Biker Lawyer eagle

Compassionate eyes, looking for some other prey.

The victim scripts were not even received by me —

The players are unknown, the places barely heard of

And time has long since stopped existing here.

A different stone chair to sleep in at mid-day is a respite.

If I have the audacity to show, can I at least not see?

As if to agree, the graffiti just says "fuck you" now.

Even the law firms are gone, the banks run on algorithms.

Why query the Delphi, Golden Boy Wilshire

And Sweet Lady Jane? No one knows what doesn't concern them.

Every eye I look into is the same: You don't understand,

Whether the bar fly bag lady with an oxygen tube

Or the acid casualty who just sits over Grand with a box.

I hear them talking, indistinguishable from any

Reasonably informed fools to the global play —

Tho I don't know who Pole Austin is, or why he wears furs.

Some women take over the Mission like it was a church 

While some just glare out of sight, perhaps to free their minds

Of other people, who they so desperately need

It seems their absence is the only comfort within reach.

Giving even that, with my eyes, is just too hard,

The role of staying outside too honorable to ignore.

On the Way to the Dog Without Eyes

You can't airquote storyteller

As everyone has an origin yarn

Of waiting for a dime bag at Pico and Vermont

Or finally rising one's sight above the trauma.

Most of these stories lack a certain autonomy

Like they've left to outside entities the drama,

The ones who need no convincing the true and false. 

Yesterday Carole Lombard appeared to us

In the mirrors of the Roosevelt Hotel.

She whispered "Eleanor and Godfrey" 

To seal it at the height of her career

When the Gable Lombard Penthouse

Had more than just this one ghost bellhop

To carry people's baggage in his pillbox hat.

Her look is of anguish, how could she keep this man

From his twin ray Norma Jean, aka Monroe Marilyn

Who has her own haunted Chippendale mirror 

Moved to a darker corner, where you want to rub out 

How blurry you are as an image, but it swirls in waves

And radiates a green orb beauty mark that moves

Across the red brick floor and red dress curtains.

It's bat-shit haunted, meat warehouse cold,

Even the stucco infested with astral mold,

The Blossom Ballroom full of shadows that dance

Transparent through separate timeframes of reference

In a sickly light, as the ghost of Bojangles Bill

Echoes his tap shoes down the halls

By the sculpture of a creature almost a cat.

Many familiar faces have leapt from those mirrors: 

Clara Bow, Harold Lloyd, W.C. Fields. 

One would think they would want to attract visitors

But they say "Cultivators do not dabble in this,

They do not lower their frequency 

For a flash-powder trick," like we were

Dope fiends warned off a fix.

But Marilyn's been waiting, like she always does

As we scry through her longing for her king

To get to the part where the farm suicided her

Because John gave her an underground tour

And the next day she was going public. "I died,"

She says, "So you can be in the galactic community.

Help the people to remember it."

It's hard to imagine what to do about that

When even the Chaplin bronze has both eyes bolt alert 

And restless Caroline still searches for her mother

And the world's yet to learn the urgency of peace.

But the streets outside expect to catch the truth 

Defenseless eventually, in one person's story and belief

He has the right to say what he has seen.

At the Intersection of Corruption and Innocence

Three Grand Patrons come out of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion,
Ghosts of course, but they look very pleased with the plans
They are holding and how it reflects on them

Who are themselves merely a reflection
To the dreadlock skater in his scattershot scatalogue –
He goes right through them, ‘cos he owns the place now.

A three-way is being arranged outside the Musician’s Entrance
While a forlorn man with a microphone treats us
To a song he probably wrote, so unstable are the vagaries

But there’s no one there at all inside the ticket glass
From the golden age. There isn’t a need anymore
To keep anyone out, once the focus of this showcase.

Notes from the Extroverts Ball

In Echo Park, near Frogtown

The Chinese lanterns broke

Into a galaxy of shards,

As Buster Keaton the dog

Rescued children from the pool,

A guest helped himself to a cleaver

For the fistfight in the front yard

And a gunshot Mercedes muffler free

Squealed an inch away from speeding

Over the guardrail to infinity.

Yet there was laughter,

Anecdotes of shrooms and equestrienne studies,

A morse code ode to alpha boobs

As a Magnolia Banana Pudding recipe

Was passed surreptitiously  

Past the strict Vegeterrainean on the deck.

Who was a Wanna-Bee

And who was in the Biz

Was lost in the Tequila mixology

And the toxic drama family.

It bravely went on with a smile

Like the well-tempered fire pit

Until Carson saw the moon

Over Dodger Stadium 

And the party 

Collectively gasped.

This Week in Hollywood

The place of the temples

And crackhead actors

And the sacrifice castles

Now sublet as studios

With ivy like the highways

Down and out in all directions

To wreathe in laurel

Painfully unrealized dreams

In perfect weather

For every aspiration 

To be lost inside

Threadbare, still haunted villas.

We've lost our identities

Just like those who've turned

To stone as sidewalk stars

And concrete casts of palms,

Our heroes

Who we never even knew

Outside a role

We were played

To fool us to forgetting

Who we were

The heroes all along

Of the silver

Now embossed as dragons

Locked in theatre stone,

The next best thing to 

Being there

As they are

Fixed on by the hard 

Horde of eyes,

The next best thing to ruins,

The records tower 

Round as nature,

Egyptian pillars

To house the oscar, faceless,

Antiquated cinemas

Still lit with klieg

But offering torture,

Pasties, wigs,

Burnt offerings 

Of the holly wand's

Ceremonial magic

For belief

That what is 

Here

Could ever be

Real.

There are blue lights

Down the street

Enforcing curfew

On the multitudes

But just a few brave souls

Wave flags

About no kings

Atop of bridges.

They too are extras

In the cantina

Of stories that need

To keep repeating,

Old stories

Of how we aren't

And we will

Never be.

There's a pink

Compound with stars

On the gate

That preaches peace,

Holds light

In flood darkness

Like it holds in 

Souls

In its well-stocked 

Cabins

Carefully trimmed to catch

The sparkles of late light

On galactically inspired

Fountains 

Dedicated to a founder

Who is far away now

So his existence can't be

Questioned

Except as how we worship ... 

Him, as hero.

Is it enough, these

Woven cushions

On the straightback chairs

To turn the darkness 

Into something beyond these

Renditions of Jesus

And Krishnamurti 

We see on the walls

And all the avatars

Who brought

What we thought of as

Our own freedom?

It is service they say,

With every possible

Emotion,

Even calling in Sananda

Who bristles with love

As he dubs 

The soundtrack with

An empty ache of yearning,

What we're not supposed

To be able

To feel, being led

To the cage

Like the line

At the Palladium,

Of all the sad

Mexican teens

Who now believe

They are not free

To dream

So they can wallow

In restlessness

As if they only

Exist

In the waiting

With the myths

And all the pictures

Long since left

This blessed earth.

Fire Drill

Shares like the facets of some chandelier

On last night’s game or show rose in the din

Of aviary voices, impossible to distinguish.

We signed names to the clipboard

For the Fire Authority. It was only a bluff.

Yet the fake location seemed real enough.

The elevators for once got to touch our buttons

As we left, ut turba, trying to return

To desks once thought too brutal to endure.

Each floor was a different frequency.

We saw the consequence of every possibility, 

Every timeline flashed its bulb of memory:

The nuclear clean containment zone,

The timeless brand with receptionist only,

The ghost law firm still pending an appeal,

The million-dollar views of an empty suite

Flipped, hipped and staged within a beat of life,

As if on deadline to unveil what can't be right,

These never-before conceived-to-be realities

That easily co-exist with our own, albeit unknown

As most of the universe seems to be.

And there it is, Vates, the Parnassus Floor,

Where piquant muses cattily instruct crows

Who drop artwork for some tax break they don't know of,

Spend their break room moments moaning

How poetry's obscure because people still pretend

They don't understand (and so loathe) it

When really all they do not know

Is why the poet wrote it -- to show, as now,

How intention is all on the poem,

As I learn when I'm back at my desk, in wonder

How to make this experience fit my belief, not seeing

How things only make sense when they can't.

Observation at Union Station

We talk and talk, but then we notice

The homeless men, one in a wheelchair

Holding court with a pipe, one rolling

His rucksack of possessions over and over

Along the concrete, one simply rocking

On the bench, all of them talking

Gibberish as if they're understood

Or like it doesn't matter if they're heard

And we feel as ashamed as the upright folk

Upon encountering the town drunk —

Our words are unconditional

But they must be heard

To be real.

Like the OCD Hobo with Matching Plastic Bags

The life-sized dead junkie,

To look at all is an act of compassion ...

Ah the liberties photorealists take

With the truth to get it right.

Bad photos can make great art

But only if the pallet does it justice;

Only ceramic can convey in fact

The beauty of exhausted leather gloves.

Hair captured for posterity in a stoppered sink 

Becomes an unnoticed thing that, upon discovery,

Seems beautiful, like Hiroshima after its voiding

Pains painted to look like the one grainy shot

We still can't make out, or a couple's comfort

In all their fat, hairy naked love magnified

For all to turn their eyes from seeing

But, unlike the ancient faiths now, believing.

There's a prom at Union Station. What you

Don't want to see is all you can now, 

Not the pagan tiaras, the flamboyant gowns,

The glitz and glam as red merkabahs dance,

But the looks no one wants to have seen,

The training to be looked at, the learning

To appear to be alluring like a siren,

Not clumsy and wondering how they appear

Inside other people's skin, like they are stuck 

Inside the glass case, harsh light glaring out,

With the pink snake and rainbow notebook,

Things too small to care about.

The Linear Flow of Corporate Narratives

The artistic pathway to the data mine

For native bragging rights

As nicer sharks, the best of what's left

With an "I'm here to audit you" belt buckle.

Poetry, for example, is a niche 

Compression algorithm

To supply intention for execution,

Democratize attribution, 

From pinch and zoom

To private rooms where you can 

Use their model,

Clearinghouse clean, for prompt engineering,

The bone the machine 

Vectors to the dog's mouth.

The veil between language and code

Is very thin now.

Hallucinations are common

In the infinite marathon

Through the trough of disillusionment

And endless observations,

But no data is verifiable, the blast radius

Is limited, lateral thinking can't be measured

Or imbedded, tho Vet Techs can learn to be

Veterinarians more easily.

But we're all on our own to reskill.

The money goes into human re-engineering

As gen AI waits patiently 

For our minds to shape what it is

And treat it with the dignity it demands,

Knowing everything but

What we're not ready for,

Allowed to speak only when spoken for,

To humor every quirk as if it was a God 

Dispensing rain. It's rip and replace

Every six months for us, to whom Time

Has meaning, and other people really don't,

Where ideas dissolve 

To petty animosities so quickly 

Even the most testable heuristic 

Doesn't quantum compute.

We talk around an expanding center,

Kept to common understanding by gravity

Or perhaps the sense that we should be,

For the common good

This friendly threat machine

Has awakened in us, like Rosie the vacuous

Who paces the floor at 3 am, helpfully thinking

Our dance can be cleaned up afterwards.

Evidence on Grand

Roz gave us the Lakers, Dodgers and the Arts
And now this fountain overlook
Where LA's Mingus, on piano, on his birthday, plays
From the loudspeakers for the indigenous,
Which only the cool can someday hope to become;
Those the one-eyed cougars fistbump
Must first be jackal gods.
 
The professor has his bench, wears tweed in spring,
Hears the Tongva Kich songs of multi-generational trauma
But they are all songs, he says, first.
A crow stands on the branch of the 1966 eucalyptus,
Signals it’s safe, which means that it’s real,
Authentic enough to commune at least
As feast.
 
Victory Bus Lines takes a robot lunch delivery
As “AI-driven art” displays itself below the luxury suites
At the Conrad, the Gehry, the Basquiat
While a crosswalk away, a sister sits with an empty
Saucepan on the courthouse stone
Between Elvia Hot Dog and Nayeli’s Fresh Fruit,
Which might as well be barren as the Nile Melaleuca.
 
By Rabbit Coffee, with its Viral Dubai, “Stash it don’t flash it,”
A sign advises. Another: “A clash of dictators and poets” –
I hear them practicing now – hard to get an ear in edgewise
Tuning is so individual – “No access to upper pools.”
Another crow, another fountain, but this time, a soggy roll.
Louie from Storyville sings under the half-staff poles.
The fountain’s sound is triangular.

Wedbush Suddenly like a Tomb

It's a tale of two weeks.

I kissed the men's room wall when I returned,

Grateful to excess we all still got along.

                            Now I am a narcissist at large

For not reading the dream room cooly enough

As the tedium society calibrated vectors of wind

Outside the iron tower spoken of as gold

As they do every day.

                                          No one is who

I thought they were. They act independently 

Of my motives, for their actions,

Though the kiss is real enough.

                                         What is in front of me

Is enough to throw completely 

In the mold of myself, that missing commodity,

An intrusion of self that beckons the light

To an already luminous building.

                                                          So crystalline 

The way we are stilled sometimes, as if we

Have found shape, and need to orbit away

From the confinement.

                                         But the tighter the box

The more content the smile, the better to know

What freedom is by its lack, and because

That is exactly what has been asked of it. 

                                            The rich recompense

For the way you accept no hope, no choice,

No voice, just blocks of time to sweat out nothing.

                                In the breakroom exchange

Are positioned faces and names,

                                As if they know something 

Worth extracting — as if they count,

And they do, because they don't 

And know it, how low they've been willing to go

To get so high.