Off Your Meds

Wander through a sunny afternoon off your meds
savoring the signficance of every gesture.
Each glim and glint seems to peak and trough in its pattern;
car radios sing jingles to you then dart away,
distracted by the cycles of the traffic lights;
blind men tap six feet of surrogate senses on the sidewalk
and cellphone solipsists wander, focussed inward,
listening to voices of their own
as invisible and insistent as yours.
Listen to the whisper of studded radials
on dry pavement, or the
sixty-cycle hum of a transformer
stepping down the voltage
to something mere mortals can conjure with--
Remember:
Ohm's Law tells us all that
resistance isn't futile—it's
something you just have to factor in.

Let Go

She's decided to let go
and follow every impulse that sings to her

She has taken on a number of lovers
and fucks one per night
in alphabetical order.

She's detours now through
the old landfill on her way to work,
so she can spend a few minutes each day
flinging liquor bottles at
stacks of cracked windows
to listen to the smashing glass carrillion.

She indulges her texture fetish,
touching everything she can reach,
comparing rough with smooth and supple,
and slack with taut and tingling.

She's picks up every finger-sized object
she finds on the sidewalk
and tucks it into a bowl on her desk.
Someday soon, she figures,
a whisper from a shadow
just behind her thinking mind
will propose a project for her,
and the whole bowlful
will be the key ingredients.

She drops five bucks in someone's hat every Friday
and calls it a cover charge,
even though she doesn't know
exactly what club
she's trying to get into.

Tiny Gods Hiding

The bohemian teenagers of Edgemere,
innocent of nothing but hygiene and regulation,
wear the public faces of tiny gods hiding.
Feed them tequila and they'll smooth your path.

Forty days in the wilderness
of alley canyons and rooftop mesas
flenses the plaque of propriety from their souls
and sets up sofas inside their minds
for godlings to surf, just for a while.

Wily urges take over their voices
and let slip secrets to each other.
Listen to them chatter while they
chain-smoke handrolled cigarettes
and gulp coffee on a sunny stoop.
They'll jumpstart your sense of wonder.

They'll peel away the touch-ups and repairs;
the cloudy lacquer that your mind has applied
to the fresco of your reality
and show the lowest layer,
brushed into the wet plaster of your childhood.

You'll be shocked
at how vivid the colors seem.