diebenkorn pt one million

facing west on Washington, at the top of Nob Hill, the street falls away in front of me as I ease my way down the pavement, leaning back against the gravity, knees bent. I can see down into the flat valley of mildly-insipid shopfronts on Polk and the unfriendly, muscular, constantly-under-construction Van Ness. And then the snap-break in common-sensical reality: the street rears up again, straight into the air in front of me, the horizon higher than the peeling eaves of the apartments I’m passing. the absurdity of a folded-up landscape on a rigid, man-made grid: how is man rational?

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strange being the only one who stays on the road pt 3

Still i’m driving, skirting from south to west i’m tangled in a rash of highways intertwined and overcrowded, darker cars, fancier cars, lower cars, cars speeding in and out tailgating heavily, never using turn signals, honking. I collect assholes, accruing them and letting them fall away, but I stay. I’ll be on the road long after they’ve reached their places. Kudzu proliferates around me along with american indian names, Chattahoochee and Chattanooga and Waxahatchie. Winding roads become flat and straight again, cotton bales and floating puffs, straight-piped mobile homes, jesus 2020 signs, evangelical preachers re-congregate on the radio, again. I drive.

thank you baby

pearl strings of words in each story and memory bursting full, hearts opening violet reveal

storm torrent trickle, silk threads and sparks cradling sweetness and tough jerky leather

iron bleak and beautiful watery oceans held back by a string

shining knife horizon but it’s only more ocean, forever

but never the same a thousand billion gallons constantly roiling foaming lapping rocking thrumming idling lulling gently caressing imperceptibly shifting into another unknown ocean

sometimes blue-dark rough with jagged fear

for a long time for a long while maybe always

this ocean-wet dirt between my toes that grip the olive tree trunk