I was raised in the desert.
I am bound to get ate prowling for the night.
Under the fresco
of an unstarred restaurant gnawed skeletal
my confidentiality is safe a news
cycle or until
some joker with his night vision camera
comes identifying the disappearing
jaguars of my deadbolted
downtown epistemology.
I consider these remembered streets
my streets, their immutable turn
tell me the most recent time you watched an out of town
reveler’s red red
thermal signature take slip unwitting into some
dim brotherhood’s catharsis
rite mashing out
an eros interrupted within hairs.
I understand that city grid now.
I reaped in its positive emotions, chipped in, had five
on night jaw wirings by my sympathies or ballpark cheer,
whatever.
Now I’m walking normal amid syncopated, sunny public music, I can’t answer
if I think I hear that name.
Diminished in the scrutiny, the magnifying glass angled by the child
who accepts she must become monstrous,
the power of a paid, commissioned prayer
under blacklight,
can’t not see the semen blots and menstruating
constant traffic liminal human conduct programming
us to kill, fixate on errata of museum placards,
swear your name was captioned on a crisis actress—
just as soon unsteeled to belief in its presence:
hearing some round, fine voice
interpret all your blues scrubbed is that.
Seating numbassed sorrys or complaints in virtual pneumatic tubes.
Jettison the space trash.
Would it be worth the couple stamps to me to throw these misgivings
I have tucked like ostentatious necklaces to the yanked–out
desk phone who administrates the final
extant Cafeteria of Distinction?
The Edward Abbey quote announced across the campus commissary wall comes on
like copy for an all–inclusive getaway, should you read it.