You are the royal we to the left of Mohammed and the right of queen bee. The diamonds in the grass makes an effort to be a carpet for you because like a cat most of us rest in your lap. Nothing important exists outside you. The UN would be smart to be run by [...]

I note it driving behind them: the sly glance out their rusty passenger window to the three trees rooted temporarily in boxes. Easily steal-able (I imagine) into their GMC bed, drop down the rattling tailgate, late at night. They talked excitedly the two dirty fingernailed men, faded jeans, turning hard at the next curve in [...]

Why did you do it, what advantage was there to it for you wearing down like glass this marching toy of quivering, flowering confusion of radishes me? This is the journey, Alice or walk away to a sofa to lie on pillows and bury the roots away. Even dead, though, marks will appear on the [...]

It’s not a big thing when the BMW pulls over silver blue and German grace and the Guatemalan gardener adjusts his hip the nearby ridge with his leaf blower and rake noting the pure white man inside with his acceptable rock music choking weeping hands shivering over the eyes weeping till the cows come home [...]

The diamonds on your buckle, like the stars on old glory, demand attention, rising above your passing parade in which the light heartedness of children running to keep up belies the seriousness of those desperate wars now being celebrated. I salute it all (a hand over my heart) for nothing is ever as simple as [...]

I haven’t known him well, the chocolate man with his caramel freckles and sugar plum hands, weeds dancing in the exhaust of his pick up as it backs up to his green garbage cans at 5am. Does he feed on his rage that I sensed that day offering our gardener (”Slave” he called him) to [...]

Balloon tires rusty rattling roll to a stop on the melting summer black macadam, (braids undone), her foot (its journey from the humming pedal soft with ocean salt dune crust to tufts of roadside grass and dirt) is sneakered down to rest while our car passes and her short breath (sipping her back to this [...]

Axiom A rhyme a day keeps the monster away. Camera So you step off your metal steed all salt and pepper beard and panavision confident, gentle banners flying. You woulda been at home at some round table in the 14th century, a side kick to kings with an eye 4 the daughters (but subtle about [...]

He strides in w/a deep blue canvas bag over his Hemingway shoulder, thoroughly muscled. My age. And when the black (jovial) male nurse calls us pre-ops I overhear that he came by cab and has no relatives to contact. He moves better than the rest of us, the bile of fear rising in my throat [...]

The flickering morning bus to my right (passing the Rite-Aid at Beverly and La Cienega) proclaims from her metal flanks that the joyful black boy billboard prince wants a bajillion McDonald’s McNuggets. And a head turns. I spot it (the guy in the Caddy in front of me, dawn sun across his retrogressive bow just [...]