Bad television

All the accidental accolades
from teenage degenerates
mean you're placed
in hot-faced disgrace
for the town to take a taste
and try to waste
what you made chaste,
but even 'copy/paste'
can surpass the past,
and unmask your caste
of casks and flasks,
of caskets and flashes,
of cash and fast crashes,
so relax! But not so fast
you relapse, pay your tax.
Keep your laughs,
mad gaffes and carafes
off our backs and our banks
though we owe many thanks
to your cranky pranks, fakes,
and mistakes for making us vain,
insane for your fame,
as we aim our name
for the same acclaim.
Although you came to refine your art
and find your start in a starring part,
about a starry-eyed heart
(who's funny and smart),
your jaded faith fades and
all the accidental accolades...

Los Angeles, CA

first, god and the soil
play Go with circle farms
on a board of New Mexico.

west, the hills
turn from chalk to pencil lines
all drowning in peach and gray-pink.

from thirty-two thousand feet
we follow the sun to Los Angeles.
but the haze disappears and the day ends.

evening hits like a dark marriage
of halogen and mercury vapor,
full of non-repeating beauty and quiet light.

second, my sister finds me in Burbank,
gives me water, and takes me home.
to be a foreigner and to be found!

our Orange Line city bus offers me
a five-dollar haven of rattled peace and pulls
the weary through palms and pawnbrokers.

family of the summer with
new life coming in September,
I had forgotten we stretched this far.

A haiku for yesterday

The park, the lake, and
the air hot with you nearby.
I can't read a page.

A haiku for travel

I hadn't ever
kissed a boarding pass until
I flew home stand-by.

A haiku for exercise

My treacherous lungs
wheeze, stab at me like Brutus!
Caesar, at least, died.

Dallas, TX

Here, I saw a jump-cut ballet of green skyscraper
dance across a Cadillac, scatter into a haze
and escape through a false night sky.

So I gave up faith in Orion's Belt, kissed Ursa Major
goodnight for summer, and found my home on Loop 12.
Moving tore me open, but now the architecture heals.

On the museum lawn, jazz wrapped the red, sprawling
sculpture and brought 75 to their feet to slide across the bricks.
Then, a black woman smacked my hip and said, "Smile, boy!"

So I smiled at the horse race in its colors of royalty
and beasts of speed.  I smiled at my place of rest,
my home for the Summer.

New York, NY

Here I pushed through the dirty thicket of all Manhattan
in breathless insomnia, a Van Gogh of lost lucidity
with the colors of madness, and the half-genius of delirium.

But in sewer's steam, in the humidity of industry, Williamsburg
brought me rest and distance. I stepped on soft grass
and sat near the water.

The Navy in white cotton rode for Staten Island,
and spent the ferry searching for company.
The air was cold mist and the city swelled into our wake.

Above Central Park, I heard the chords of a dense, hidden hymn
emanate from the MET, matching history with chaos,
where a green quilt is the lifeblood of this neighborhood. 

On each block, I found the constant chemical reaction
of hot life.  In each park, I found the holiness of empty space.
And in the street, I found a home.