Poems

In San Francisco we moved from hotel to hotel. We finally stayed for a while at place on the edge of Chinatown, near the Embarcadero. It was like a Disneyland version of Cuba’s sea wall, the Malecon. The hotel had a long exit ramp that emptied into a Chinese cultural center park, and at the bottom of it we came across some old Chinese ladies gathered around a upside-down cardboard box fashioned into a table.
They were playing cards for coins, and I took pictures of them until one of them made to get up and she chased us out of the park in a shower of curses.
We walked through the Mission on our way to the Haight-Ashbury and stopped at an art center that had an installation on the theme of old barbershops in the city. We were the only people there so Remi explored the equipment while I snapped photos.

I like to torture myself
with a terrible vision
of my best friend
who doesn’t know how to live in this world
I toss her out in the snow
from the back of a van
naked except for clown shoes
and a hula-hoop
I laugh at her, making fun of her distress
as she panics and starts to cry
She doesn’t understand why this is happening
The van pulls away

My body didn’t want to rise up this morning and I had to drag it with me to the store. Losing everything I worked so hard for on the West Coast and having to start over. The unfairness of it is like a punch in the gut. We dragged the display case out of the store and smashed it. Big Mike attacked me and we hightailed it to the cops. There are many ways to leave this town, and I chose one that doesn’t have a way back.

I see the vultures circling overhead, in the dry, San Diegan sun. Relationships shatter like spun candy windows on movie sets. The meat that should have been muscle is mostly gristle and diabetic fat. Shifty eyes and corporate espionage wrapped in one Mexican skin like a yellow corn tortilla. We are men and will not break. Alpha alpha, this is a rallying call. On to LA. We may not be angels but we will be stars.

I got a huge pimple under my eye
The stress has been relentless
My bottle of conditioner exploded
in the cargo hold above Texas