silence

silence
will overcome, finally—
it has followed at my heels
because I always keep a treat for it with me
in my front pocket on the other side of my wallet—
it’s waiting, maybe,
for that day when it will finally
overtake me.
then I’ll be ready.
I’ll be more ready than anyone else,
cause I got practice, see.

to byron

On the way up, I met a girl with a streak of pink in her hair and a Siren Studios Hollywood shirt – we were introduced by a man I later found out she didn’t really know, who she called a weirdo, I said “he seemed nice enough,” and then a pervert – and we only spoke briefly, while boarding a north-bound train, she to Modesto and me to Byron, CA., about the breeze and the bad shit she’d been into before in Modesto. “Real bad shit,” she said. I wanted to talk to her more, and look at her more closely, study the way her eyes were. But then she put on sunglasses and I sat far away from her; I can’t forget, I’m the outsider, I’ve got to perpetuate that. Because I have to. We rode for hours, and suddenly I realized we were twenty minutes past Modesto, and, well, she’d be gone.

la sidewalks

Children of the sidewalks
and the gutters
of LA,
old children -
a woman a year too old for this
blotto on the sidewalk, seductively:
"only fifteen minutes till they stop serving alcohol,"
she moans. "the liquor store closes in fifteen minutes."
She pouts and then laughs and puts her cheek on the sidewalk,
holds up a cigarette,
in glitters and high heels,
"you want to go?"
"it's up to Allen."
she stands up, stumbles, sits against a wall,
meanwhile
the music from inside is like a lake
that everyone swims in

soft silent sight - some slow slightly sightly sprite

not brand echh

The opportunity never presented itself.
(I mix up some energy drink and scotch.)
It kind of slipped by, I guess,
it went away.
(I swirl it around in a dirty stained coffee mug.)
I don’t think it was ever
meant to be.
(it’s gone.)