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over. this is it.

I sit on the couch watching her arrange

her long red hair before my bedroom

mirror.

she pulls her hair up and

piles it on top of her head—

she lets her eyes look at

my eyes—

then she drops the hair and

lets it fall down in front of her face.

we go to bed and I hold her

speechlessly from the back

my arm around her neck

I touch her wrists and hands

feel up to

her elbows

no further.

she gets up.

this is it, she says,

eat your heart out. you

got any rubber bands?

I don’t know.

here’s one, she says,

this will do. well,

I’m going.

I get up and walk her

to the door

just as she leaves

she says,

I want you to buy me

some high-heeled shoes

with tall thin spikes,

black high-heeled shoes.

no, I want them

red.

I watch her walk down the cement walk

under the trees

she walks all right and

as the poinsettias drip in the sun

I close the door.

I made a mistake

I reached up into the top of the closet

and took out a pair of blue pan ties

and showed them to her and

asked “are these yours?”

and she looked and said,

“no, those belong to a dog.”

she left after that and I haven’t seen

her since. she’s not at her place.

I keep going there, leaving notes stuck

into the door. I go back and the notes

are still there. I take the Maltese cross

cut it down from my car mirror, tie it

to her doorknob with a shoelace, leave

a book of poems.

when I go back the next night everything

is still there.

I keep searching the streets for that

blood-wine battleship she drives

with a weak battery, and the doors

hanging from broken hinges.

I drive around the streets

an inch away from weeping,

ashamed of my sentimentality and

possible love.

a confused old man driving in the rain

wondering where the good luck

went.

she comes from somewhere

probably from the belly button or from the shoe under the

bed, or maybe from the mouth of the shark or from

the car crash on the avenue that leaves blood and memories

scattered on the grass.

she comes from love gone wrong under an

asphalt moon.

she comes from screams stuffed with cotton.

she comes from hands without arms

and arms without bodies

and bodies without hearts.

she comes out of cannons and shotguns and old victrolas.

she comes from parasites with blue eyes and soft voices.

she comes out from under the organ like a roach.

she keeps coming.

she’s inside of sardine cans and letters.

she’s under your fingernails pressing blue and flat.

she’s the signpost on the barricade

smeared in brown.

she’s the toy soldiers inside your head

poking their lead bayonets.

she’s the first kiss and the last kiss and

the dog’s guts spilling like a river.

she comes from somewhere and she never stops

coming.

me, and that

old woman:

sorrow.

The High-Rise of the New World

it is an orange

animal

with

hand grenades

fire power

big teeth and

a horn of smoke

a colored man

with cigar

yanks at

gears and the damn thing never gets

tired

my neighbor

….n old man in blue

bathing trunks

….n old man

a fetid white obscene

thing—

the old man

lifts apart some purple flowers

and peeks through the fence at the

orange animal

and like a horror movie

I see the orange animal open its

mouth—

it belches it has teeth fastened onto a giraffe’s

neck—

and it reached over the fence and it gets the

old man in his blue

bathing trunks

neatly

it gets him

from behind the fence of purple flowers

and his whiteness is like

garbage in the air

and then

he’s dumped into a

shock of lumber

and then the orange animal

backs off

spins

turns

runs off into the Hollywood Hills

the palm trees the

boulevards as

the colored man

sucks red steam

from his

cigar

I’ll be glad when it’s all

over

the noise is

terrible and I’m afraid to go and

buy a

paper.

car wash

got out, fellow said, “hey!” walked toward

me, we shook hands, he slipped me 2 red

tickets for free car washes, “find you later,”

I told him, walked on through to