Arizona, I don't recognize you anymore
Your creosote roots lie beneath
the perfect piles of McDonalds parking lots

Arizona, an inequal symmetry
of rubble piles collect
Ten thousand miles from here

Arizona, you are responsible ...
The middle-aged businessman
with expendable income
sweats for pleasure

Arizona, when can I stop sweating?
I swear in the heat like a pizza oven

Arizona, you are a car part store
but you got no glass to see through
and the beige collection
of air conditioned caves
is conditioned to respond
in all the right ways

The forests are in ashes
as the governor gapes
from a helicopter high

Arizona, I can find no fluid,
no friend, nor car phone to lean on
for company

By GPS, you can find me in the living room,
darkly lit, with rayolight flashing
bible black blurbs

Arizona, not even Ginsberg
would gripe about your tripe,
so blurred with anonymity
hell hardly matters anymore

Arizona, my life's belongings
are melting in a storage facility
and there are more things that beep
here than I can count

Arizona, you haven't hassled me for a while

The world is flooding as you dry up and blow away

Arizona, a kid almost got crushed in your parking lot
and I went to one of your social service buildings
and was amazed about how many homeless lurks
were sleeping in the lobby

Arizona, I can't get assistance at the cash register
and the mountains are closed, cats run free
and all the lizards are gone

Arizona, you are sucking in souls

I think you should battalion
the borders with snow

Four pigeons
by the whirlpool
coodling up chlorine

Flying life, safe as ginger
in a cabinet,
extrapolates lifespan

The wingspan
of swimming pool pigeons
is dependent upon supply,
depth and demand

It is to the good fortune
of the young chicks
that their short necks,
soft beaks, cannot
reach down to drink

Six poisened pigeons
find survival in the short-term
risk at the swimming pool lip

Later, they will plummet
to the floor of the concrete
cooridor

Anonymous slaughterers
break off with the wind,
bleached and careening

Genius, dense as cobalt
resides here, breaking the glass
shattering fortgetfulness

Masters of accident and intention,
the labored conceits of high words
timed for ill effect, for pens
warmed up in hell, for swords
thrust in God’s eye, as the rivers
run thirsts for bloods,
mocking heroes, making
heroes of mockery

During the program,
the light goes through
Numbers one, zero, zero,
zero, Oh ...

I stay low beneath the sun
running a game in my head ...

Look short, lean on the high side
trust is a gap-toothed old friend
real or imagined as concrete blocks
on the walk rolling on to forever

Cheese steak, Philadelphia,
never liked the place, though
I’ve never been there, but in the long drawn out
portal of impairment there are those I’ve met
who taught me not to like the place

They were no morning doves, blasphemers
or cowards or other kinds I can relate,
mostly just commercial power dogs
blind to trees, my tears, my river
of grotesque memories to which
I fill in my familiar streets

Manic miss, the mourning missy mists
as the sun comes out as I learn
everything I have believed
since I was a child was inexact,
not exactly wrong, but incomplete,
a pyramid of obscenities,
between the brick and eye
I cannot delete

The older you get, they say,
the less you know
Orange blossoms die
in the drying sun

But you can ignite your morning sock
with a drink of chlorine to ignite
adrenal glories, borderline stories
since the gory truth of the matter
is I need scatterbrain automobiles
of desire to burn up the road
in order to get out of my own way

Progress is personal that way

Hip quirks of commerce, commerce
of caffeine, piped-in music to drain
into the ears, the mouth, the throat ...

Benjamin Franklin is dead. Capitalism is
fascism outside the box of the electorate
and all that remains for the taking
is democracies dropping dull
as the thirst for beer, cigs, cokes,
loads of little pills, drowning out
any chance of waking

The other day a storm came
and left puddles in the parking lot
and then some guys came by
and washed the water away

Six hundred miles of the Colorado River
snakes it’s way toward oblivion governed
by the rush toward disharmony

It rained that night and it was not enough
to feed the liberal arts retreat

I got robot leanings
I crave firm meanings
but I’m not a very good robot
and it gets me blue
though I’ve rediscovered my
A-dee-dee in your certainty,
your bricks and blocks,
your methods of narcotic
information, your great ideas
for getting lock-step
with the city scape,
your clean machine
your hearts of vogue
disclosure, opening through
my donut hole of despair

This is not enough
Somehow, I don’t end
up screaming out during
this naked lunch along
the narrow channel
you provide, narcissistic bastard
of bazillion rooms for an empty house

And now that Dan Brown has co-opted,
made corporate all disblief,
the endless cosmic paradise of history
is elusive as the facts of nature
we no longer need to disprove
as the physical universe
shelves the metaphsyical self,
and the shadow people squeeze
this lemon dry, leaving only
the seeds on the tarmac
for birds to eat up,
for birds who can only squak for answers,
birds to serve up the shallow
surface of a simmering deep dark well
that appears to be nothing but
a cast of inbreds gripping for power

Revolutionary monsters,
collectors of hebrew letters
chained up by white knights
who scoured the Holy Lands
for relevant ricches
for an everpresent dream

Yes, the world is replete with guitar stars
and assasins capable of spinning
schemes to make us feel better
then comes clever wordplay,
then comes prosaic pop,
then comes the heightening
of the humdrum, of novelty
of pathetic little stories,
wrought Beatleesque
as we test the business end
of this busted bus, for young bucks
worth singing of

If my brain is a factory
churning up dread, then I wish
I had a camera for those
brief moments of ecstasy
when I am the real me
reverent, at Fenway

Stephen King is multiplying
nightmares by the boxcar
and conservative talk show hosts
roam free on the pricey shelves
of liberty

How do I not wake
in tremors of fear?

The boatman loads
a gunny sack
The boatman is prolific
in waves and waves

The hearse is an alliterative
anticipation of the worst

Shakespeare drums up three sermons
based on new product by Paul Simon
Garfy yoddles, icons deconstruct

late in life, late in life
doling out snippets
for old yups
Great artifice
served up like
cold cuts
a generation so far
from their overrated riots
in the streets of the 1960s
they can barely crap over
the latest name-brand smash

Fortunately, Neil Young does
remember, a lonely man doesn’t
need him around anyhow
and each time I enter your aisles
the need diminishes for the media mad
toggles for what used to be
known as chaos, but now
is regarded as proof
the liberals were wrong

I know too much
I’m a stoneface
an Edward R. Murrow
without winking
can’t even drink rain,
quit drinking

The broadcast is leaking

City life is the poverty of seeing

Poor bleached white boy
on the sand, sinking

At night it’s different,
the open desert
(now that’s a funny one)
goes on notice as missing

Closed in, safe, hot burn
bags of bones
The bookstore is a parking lot
for words

And at night, body part theater
passes the time while my
little ark of verbs lie in wait
as a final sacrifice
for the final fire

I am cloud cutter,
a palace of clutter
sifting around for words
that, when I find them
die again

I am the sheet
that keeps us cool
your protected dark
is my sanctuary

I am the dim prize fighter,
clunked down dung, dumb in
memory, the asphalt gets
titled and I fall back
the hill to you

I have eyes that wear down
from wondering