Los Angeles, Again.

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I am not here
In this lonely little room called home,
Anymore.

This place
Where
One day blurs
Into another
Then blurs into one more.

Pull closed the blinds
Block out the light
Close my eyes
Drift, softly into restless sleep
Soaring
On a lost melody
Drifting above a concrete
Desert in synthetic bloom
Pulsing, humming
With electric life.

I am home
Finally.
Within concrete canyons
Of
Electric
Starlight.

RUMORS OF WAR
Baby,
They’re not rumors anymore
At the sound of the tone
The time is now
One hundred seconds
Until
MIDNIGHT.

And what I wouldn’t give
For
Just a few of those
Wasted years
You know you know you
know
The ones spent weathering
The storms of resentment
And wrath
Back.

To spend a few seconds
As the second hand counts down,
Regaining love once lost
All wrapped up
In those fleeting moments
Of connection

Sleeping in the safety
Of
Whispered words that never wound
Behind closed doors
With the deadbolts locked up tight

Shutting out the cold
Closed against the winds
Of disaster

I always joke with my students
Writing is what I love most
Even though it will be
The death of me
That is
If warheads screaming
From the sky
Don’t put an end to me
first.

Before the curtains close
I would like very much
To write one more story
A story
That did not end in tragedy
But a tale
Of life
And loss
And triumph
That told itself
Until the end
Until the circle closed
And the characters healed
Lived full lives
Unbroken.

10.30.22

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In the studio on a gloomy Sunday afternoon,
(I have a studio now, I guess)
Does this mean I’ve made it?
Not quite yet
But it’s nice to pretend.

Too much coffee
Not enough food
Anxious dog pacing the room
Write and revise
Stretch my sore neck.

On the other side
Of the window, gray concrete
Greets a matching shade of gray sky
They’re building another parking garage
In a city where everyone I know struggles to survive.

The long Halloween

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Fall is the cruelest season, you know
It’s when the wind carries the softest lingering
Of cyclical regrets come back around
Like a familiar chill settling into my bones.

The Long Halloween
A sentence of seven years’ bad luck
Served concurrently in the shadows where minor inconveniences
Accumulate to the tragedy of futures mourned, lives unlived.

Yesterday I worked my spirit down to the bones
All day long in an empty room
Perpendicular rows of fluorescent false sun
Shine on, burning the shadow of my typing fingers
Into the plastic tapping beneath them.

Clock out, pick up the pup from daycare
Make the long, crowded commute home
With the Armageddon sound on the stereo
Greeted by an empty house and the sound

Of everyday drudgery echoing from the walls
Fix nothing much at all for dinner
Disheartened, watch the hours fade into frustration
Wrought by every page unwritten, every chorus that never comes in

I’m out here alone
Just like everyone else
Just like you
Waiting
Listening
Are you listening?

If you can hear me
I wish for you
All the softer things
We filled our hours with
When our days were so bright

Drunk on spit and blood and an unshakable love
For you to touch your dreams
Even the ones ones that reach all the way
To where the sky gives birth to light
I wish for you, everything.

For all of us, a respite
From the ill winds of annihilation
Blowing cold, heralding the last sunrise
A respite from the winds that blow cold
To bring the final war
All the way home.