Raised.

Family business says the pitch,
swollen octave unspun.
Here we came
through decisions not our own.
Here, we realized
obligation is coercion.
The numbers mean nothing,
scratched out in spindly script,
conveying children as median,
reaping fruit from sapplings
rooted in fault lines.
This is a mode of torture
not suitable for dinner table talk.
Impregnated with histories,
there is the giver
and one who loves the kill.
Rate the return
ages thirteen and eleven,
anger is the dividend
and there are many interests lost.
This doesn't add up:
wringing hands and cowboy boots,
the stains pooled beneath perception,
stressing vertebra three and four.
Capital raises the octave
and abacus shoulders buckle.

Big Sur Poems

Taking Cover

Covering tracks
    with spoons on the way up Sinai, fingering index cards with pencil-scraped directions.

    with Communist leaflets and clever condoms wrappers never put to use in our copper rims.

    with ground incisors and redwood bark, peeling away at something fearsome.

   with single light refractions that dim the lens.

    with crocheted feeding tubes and a Xerox - the last will and testimony.

 Color Theory

Switching film from
black and whit to color feels
like switching religions
where we answer to
the same god but
the latter lacks fire and
brimstone and
my worship seems forced
without that contrast.

You ask me why I
take colorless photos but
my calculated reply sounds
hollow: in black and white
I show definitive place but
keep the colors for myself.

This passion sways on secrecy
like you and me
and settling for color film
is sign of developing.


Postcard from Coast, pt. 1

After I've come,
my back to you I turn.
I see you
in an evening down-
pour, your naked body
pressed to the stump
of a fallen redwood.
You were yelling
something about condors.
The windows are open
and it is December.

Points
In a photo:
We are standing on a rocky outcropping
surf spray sticking to our cheeks.
It is dim, violent
the air and water shake.
I hope we are exposed.

Filling pockets with pebbles of jade
weight hanging in our balance
through a wooden tunnel with
piss-stained boots and crumpled tissue
a view.
I wish the Beats hadn't seen this first.