Bread and rice

The People in this place, they did not want real conversations,

conversations about jobs or school or about where we were living.

They just wanted to talk about how inspired and creative they were.

But

I could no longer find inspiration in the places that I used to,

in the rails lined up like snow white caterpillars on the backs of toilet tanks

or at parties where everyone was an artist 
and you and thirty other people are crammed into

a kitchen with the D.J. having long forgotten the names of everyone around you.

One girl went to India and all she ate was bread and rice

and one girl was in the bathroom snorting MDMA

she is asking for a bill so she can snuff up some of that inspiration that I lost so long ago.

It’s Monday night and I’m looking at this girl in her punk rocker skin

with a face that looks so much like my own and I get tired.

They were every girl I had tried to be and at every place I had ever been,

except for India,

where I too would have only eaten bread and rice

Roller Skates

My roller skates are white with blue wheels.

I think that they are better than everyone else’s.

I want everyone else to think so too.

The strobe lights are pulsing and the music is blaring.

Hey Mickey you’re so fine, you’re so fine…..

I have made sure that my ponytail is just right and that my sweater is just the right pink,

Just like Lindsay Paulson’s.

No one has skates like mine,

And yet Justin Campino still doesn’t look at me.

Even though I have worn that carefully planned out pink shirt,

It still doesn’t look like Lindsay Paulson’s.

Her sweater comes with boobs and a bra that holds them up.

Mine comes with the undershirt my mother made me wear.

I flash around the rink one more time and I suddenly hate this sweater.

At least no one has skates like mine.

Especially Lindsay Paulson.

For you

I had one of those dreams again

of secrets and drugs

They leave my day so full of ache

and unnecessary guilt

When you asked how my day was and I told you

you didn’t say

How can a dream fuck up your whole day?

We have similar secrets with similar pasts

you used to smoke for your numbness

and I snorted for mine

We wear scars on the inside of our bodies

and when we lie

hip pressing hip

they match up

And so when I smile with my crooked smile

and say I love you like the hand needs the glove

you say

I love you like the dust needs the bunny

Zion

We were practically strangers crammed inside your 

Volvo with all our camping gear  and lust.

Driving along the I95, blasting music from my ipod that you said you loved but, I’m not sure you did.

Washington State greeted us with rain our optimistic August day turned to grey as we made our way to Cape Disappointment. It was disappointing.

We out drove the rain the higher ground we gained in Oregon. 

The lush ocean breezes giving way to brown landscapes and heat.

Northern California came with the anticipation of the well planned out map that told us of the campsite with a lake. I could already feel the loving tongue of the lake  as it lapped off heat and dust of the Oregon Mountains. But, there was no lake. Long gone we are told. 

All we can see for miles are dried out fields and cow rumps.

How old are these maps?

Maybe it’s like that story of the lake that freezes in an instant and the ducks fly off with it stuck fast to their webbed feet carrying it away to a land we will never meet.

The long stalks of dried out grass rustle in the wind, the tops of deer ears just barely visible

bedded down for the night, bellies panting from the high mountain sun.

I slip out my old ratty copy of Leonard Cohen poems and oh so quietly stretch out in Mother nature’s messy hair and read softly to my sleeping audience.

As my voice drifts out to flow with the wind it joins me in a chorus of Hallelujah’s

 Hallelujah…

Ears twitch and my lover sighs.

Las Vegas is a blur of lights and blow dryer heat.

I couldn’t get enough of the swimming pool.

The Canyon was Grand

but it did not make me feel like I thought it would.

I guess I thought I might find some inspiration in those vast gullies.

I guess it only tells its secrets to the birds.

It was in Utah where I found that inspiration mixed up in the thousands of years of that red sandstone that painted the landscape with one solid slap leaving its handprint in the most beautiful way.

Because Utah really is beautiful

don’t let the Mormons scare you.

God really does exist here, but what he looks like to me doesn’t look the same to you.

And after he saw what we did on the hood of your car on the side of the road

He will never let us back into Zion.