these realizations I keep having
as I get older are becoming tiring
as they consistently remind me
of my poor shape
the subtle lilt in your speech
wood and felt slammed against timpani

You pass a finger between
one tattoo and another,
find that I cannot make amends
with every copper thread between my ears.

 Jesus has a tattoo of La Virgen De Guadalupe
covering his back. turns out he’s your cousin
Jesus from the block. turns out he gets reincarnated
every day & no one on Earth cares all that much. 

all my people fold into a $2 crunchwrap supreme. the white woman
means lucky to be here and not mexico. my dad sings por tu
maldito amor & i’m sure he sings to america.

my monsters, coyotes in the
chase, look almost human
in the sterile office light.
my monsters say they just
want to be friends.

you have lipstick on your collar I say
to my father the priest that’s just the Blood
of Christ my son he replies by and by
(the milky thigh of Mary in my mind)

dear god-and-a-half dear action painter
dear compassionate sloth and hammerhead
shark who willingly gave up the hammer

The 1960s was an era of big thoughts. And yet, amazingly, each of those thoughts could fit on a T-shirt.

Tonight is a drunk man,
his dirty shirt.
There is no couple chatting by the recycling bins,
offering to help me unload my plastics.

I can’t tell why I think the dried corncobs
in the gravel and the mattress under the tree
were not put here by children who bite so fast
they leave rows of kernels.

know why they despise vibrato.
Hovering suddenly above the alley,
into the open dumpster they fly
sucking Slurpees singing “I lick
the wind’s behind”…

And when the reds arrive moving as if toward a name
Or a distant cabana, zero in on a shelter
As a generation glides with ignorance and grace