Night time. Hotel, small mountain town.

thinking about Whiskey Row

coffee

how in the day

you break a sweat

and in the night

you see your breath under

a clear, white moon.

This morning, walking the

town square around the row, the courthouse

my dog tracking something

under a spine shaped

cloud offsetting an otherwise perfect sky.

cobalt.

The classically trained paragraphs cross over

sloppy riffs of hope in my head

while I walk the boy around the corners

around the cafes

around the homeless couples

and the shag-haired artists with

tattoos on their fingers.

All of it spills over into the nights

here, when you think you should be back out there

and you will

but not while the

heater hums and warms the

room

and not while the

nights ahead of this one

wait with such

ease

and

allure.

Author note:

When Prose. presented the opportunity for me and my dog to go on tour for winter, to find writers and readers with a grassroots, gasoline-fueled literary mission, two words ran across my mind in scrolling neon red letters against a blackboard of subtle space junk: Hell, yes.

To ride along, follow the tour's hashtag above.

__________________________

Do you write or read?

I might be drunk, I might only appear to be drunk. I might approach you uncomfortably to ask you a question I already know the answer to, to get your eyes on Prose. I might give you a pocket journal and pen. If we get this far you will download Prose. And we get this far, every face, every time. Another addict, another writer for me to read. I've never seen something this explosive. We always knew you were out there. And now we're here connected. The honor is both of ours. I write this Prose. in the desert, 2.5 hours north of the room where I wrote my first poem decades ago, and here this stands now: 2014. November. On the road for Prose., bending sunlight, breaking the odds. The Arizona sun shines high and perfect while the tentacles of Prose. feel around the country for kin, for the doors in the dark, to show them home never died, it only paused.

Murderer eyes, sharpened teeth, arms bigger than legs, leather-looking hands gripping your arms and breaking them easily. Dying old, young, alone, or slowly in pain are nothing compared to being ripped apart by a gorilla. The key word here is horrific. While the other demises are sad and even horrifyingly sad, nothing is more horrific than the approach, foreign feel, lift, eye contact and first pulse of pain that overrides the fear of death by gorilla. You can't outrun him, you can't out-think him in close proximity. Being dropped down or somehow face to face with a pissed off gorilla, even in the same room or ground, the fear of that alone, then the pain of being pulled apart like you were made of nothing. The hard reality of his strength ending yours. Hearing your tissues and cartilage ripped, your bones snapped, limbs torn away but near you, while your head is twisted off and your brain is still functioning, while you look down at his face: he's holding your head up over his and screaming in anger still, not even close to satisfied, and the last thought before you go is him squeezing your head to a bloody pop and then ripping apart what's left of you.

Author note:

When Prose. presented the opportunity for me and my dog to go on tour for winter, to find writers and readers with a grassroots, gasoline-fueled literary mission, two words ran across my mind in scrolling neon red letters against a blackboard of subtle space junk: Hell, yes.

To ride along, follow the tour's hashtag above.

__________________________

Pig's In Zen.

At a rest area twenty miles north of Sacramento, two old ladies were leading a huge pig up a ramp into the back of their Winnebago. We talked, and I shot photos. They were used to it: two old ladies and three pigs on the road, one passed out on a couch, one on the floor, and the other in the back. I wanted to ask why it wasn't sleeping with the others, but I didn't really want to know, just like I didn't want to know if the old gals were a couple, because even though my instinct already told me, I had to empty my mind of any bad black and white independent film visuals concerning them, the Winnebago, and their passengers. But a few scenes played out anyway, and I scratched my nose to stop the laughter.

"They're lazy," one of them said, "but whatta you gonna do?"

We said goodbye, and I was back behind the wheel. Chico watched the pig being closed in, and my phone chimed with a text from the social media director of Prose.:

-Web app launches Monday!-

I sent a reply, then texted my buddy in the city, an Android user, and told him not only was his desktop altar almost built for him, but he will soon be able to Prose. from his phone via his web server, while the coders get the Android app locked down in the meantime. We went back and forth, and I looked at the day on my phone: Thursday. Monday would be a good day.

Check the time: 4:35. Rush hour if I don't haul ass to Sacto, where I'm staying for a week to pimp Prose., where the sun shines hot on the house of dear friends and the rain starts up back home, where Elliot Bay is getting pummeled by rolling, grey clouds: Relentless. I crank up the last track on Nothing's Shocking, and think about the pig in the back of the RV, the life it must have. Up ahead the traffic slows into a long, still line, and the vocals come in above my coffee:

Pig eats shit

but only when he hungers

pig's in zen

I know the pig's in zen.

Author note:

When Prose. presented the opportunity for me and my dog to go on tour for winter, to find writers and readers with a grassroots, gasoline-fueled literary mission, two words ran across my mind in scrolling neon red letters against a blackboard of subtle space junk: Hell, yes.

To ride along, follow the tour's hashtag above.

__________________________

The Devil's Chasing Me.

It began yesterday.

Fully loaded, the Northwest

winter with two days of cold sun

paving the way

we escaped down the 5

going south

blew through Oregon and

peered toward California while

the music shuffled over to

Reverend Horton Heat:

Sunset lights the sky

And there's a shadow over me

Black clouds in the east

And there's a twister underneath

I cranked up the song

reached back scratched

Chico's ear

the Sun was fading to

dark orange

and I glanced around

the sky in the rearview

north and east

it was dark with

fists of rain

red eyes

black teeth

I smiled at the boy's blue eyes

in the mirror:

"Not this year, boy."

We stared ahead and

I felt the old blood again

the old soul

the good feelings

returning

and

repairing damage.

This morning

after a long sleep

in a room

in

Yreka

the streets are wet

but the sunlight

shines south

and the road is

ready with

words.

The voices, Helena, uncaged, the sound of sun and honey. The words, though adopted from a culture and religion undeserving of their faith, left their tongues like color. I stared at the group while they sang and I inhaled the moment, the sadness of it. I held the coffee in my palm, feeling it get cold while they sang themselves closer to the end of the felony pod, which I was reminded of when a new one in the pod, a black guy with braids in his eyes, a tall, menacing, and annoying jumpsuit, folded his hands behind his head and started winking and blowing kisses at one of the choir ladies, who sang there anyway, ignoring him. He blew some more at her then licked his lips,“Tha’s right, I’m lookin’ at you, boo.” Helena, I wanted to leap out of my chair and slam him to the tiles by the braids, over each of my shoulders to the floor, to feel his bones loosen, to release the anger released by a typewriter session, by a long walk, a climb, a long drive down the coast. A couple of jumpsuits were laughing next to him. The moment changed, Helena. It became a pool of feces wrapped in orange before the beauty of Japanese flowers, azaleas and rainbow colored roses pulled alive and standing from a photo in Aoyama, in Tokyo. I thought about that, the exotic, a sakura shower, flowers whose pet names I would carefully assign by beauty, and I looked back to the voices until they finished. Two C.O.s walked them out, while the food cart waited outside the vestibule. Upstairs to grab spoons, waiting by the rail, called down, then at the tables looking at the same shit from every Sunday.

It was warm out there. I was shirtless. The Sun sat dark red on the horizon and it was huge. You could look right at it. The black water stretched to reach its feet. I breathed in and held the handrail, watched the horizon melt around the Sun. How small we were against the grace of the heavens. Our petty dreams, our need for self. Our weak assurances.

I was the only one out there. I saw a whale emerge from the water and twist out there in front of the red. It hung there upside down in front of the Sun, it hung there careless and lazy, totally oblivious to us, to the human refuse of the boat, sacrificing our luck and lives for a goddamned dollar. It went back through and my heart swelled in my chest so fast that it cracked my bones. Something happened to me which I could not understand. I wept. I stood there and wept at the beauty of what I saw. I wept when I thought that the moment was meant for me and me alone, as I so badly wanted it to be that way. I so badly wanted to be chosen by the God there, to be pulled out amongst the clean cold blackness of the water, to stand naked on the back of a whale before the harmlessness of a sun which was now trained for damage. I wanted that scene, I wanted to be transcended into that scene forever. I wanted everything to be beautiful again. I wanted to be beautiful again.

November first. The rain washes in. The feeling washes in.

Heart full of heaviness

the liquid weight of regret

thinking about the

tables of the past

hands in yours

eyes on yours

the blood in the air

aimed on you

life spread out across the

tabletop, the sidewalk, into the city

while you knew you were going to

be something

before the years beat you down

before success came too late

and merely put a stop

to suicide

a phone call from the past

an old song from the radio

of your decade

playing across your heart

in hopeless recapture

of things you can’t do without

outside the rain beats down

upon the driveway, the car, the

garage holding all the things

that were once almost mysterious to you.

Back in here listening to the rain upon the roof of my study

missing the little things

that made me feel

at one with the blood

in the air

the love

the hands

and eyes

and hair

across the table

the beauty within

those things

that kept

flesh young

kept the blood

moving toward

something

better

than

good.