fear and self-loathing in LA

spring hides between petals of flowers, and
a limp shoe sits cross-legged on the floor and stares back at me.
somewhere an underwater current, a dark artery: quiet, turbulent, railroad crossing,
__finds a peaceful spot, and feels comfortable, and raises his head:

(all our secrets disband,
and the lines of foreheads and palms strip off

____and i find a way to say everything i'm too scared to say
__(and too made of nothing to say)
__(and hate myself too much (for) to say(ing)

these coins on the carpet are cold and planetary
when i need them, there are no sounds-
__(i have never been so loveless)
and the session at the cinema across the street already started,

(somewhere a dark muscle presses inwards, and sends streams of warm, viscous, humanity
through tight nooks and cracks, and my head throbs, and my eyes quiver and cannot see
anything that's not a blur,
and all this inside a thin layer of skin that's warm and cold)

someone's kicked a rock.
it rolls to a stop. __finally.
nonmotion. a stagnant potential grows slowly violent, __shivering with frustrated fury
and the rock shuts its eyes and urges herself to grow fingertips
__(and manages at best a salty layer of sweat)

(and floating above my head
are all the things i dare not say

and all the things i dare not hear

and all the things i dare not know

and all the deaths i dare not

And God presses His warm cheek to cold glass,
and exhales a little winter cloud to water His garden for Him.
rubs His too-unslept weary eyes,
and twice-blinks a cat to stroke, a flutist to play, and still feels lonely;
and sighs Cassandra's barren curse upon Himself:

____believe me, it's for the best

(and middle-aged men sit at steering wheels and stare at cement roads and leak their faith out
of unknown springs
(and youths kick rocks and spit His three-lettered-name out their mouth
(and babies stare at rainbows, and watch the Old Man cry in green and violet and blueberry
dews, all He'd hoped we got about all we didn't.

the afternoon kills me.
____Time, Gravity, failure... perhaps success, Faith, disappointment, apathy:
______squeeze my chest tight and drench my limbs with too much red-stuff
________(i haven't breathed in years)

i am all water
____and moon
____and dream
and impossibility.

(i hear a baby cry
____and mimic her voice

(and outlive that too)