Porch

Just one day
another hot day in the summer
closer to the sun than ever
bottle rocket screams and
Roman candle smoke
and lightning,
lightning on the mountains,
air so heavy it wants to
drop--
rain.

The concrete porch is a friend to me
empty cold and listening
as barren as I'll ever be
little red wagon wheels to fix
indefinitely,
broken spigots on the ground
cobweb floorboards and cracked welcome
bricks
and dried straw filters that smell of
mildew--
fog.

The fan cranks hot air over sweat hair
all night long
over me and the couch and the corner lamp
past my bike by the unwashed laundry,
third try still deflated
I tried so hard
I ride out in the
morning--
dawn.

Here

Here
in the alleyways, the temples, the fire escapes
the newspaper shelters, of mansions, of paradise

Her hand holds her skirt up to a pale thigh
betraying bruises and pockmarks--
so round, like that haggard stare
as desperate as the desert skies

Lain on the business brick another corpse,
embalmed in the sunlight remains--
an old army bag against cocoa skin
casts a shadow of contrast

Gravel boots and stolen steel carts
slalom through nightsticks and sirens
and the pole-supported, transplanted trees--
nurtured growth or a jungle of failure

Bedlam on a Tuesday night
and a family of strangers
between spiral attractions of colored light,
and they gather, magnetic

There
in their hideaways, the train tracks, the stairways
the monument benches, of judgment, of ignorance

Captive while we watch
In their cells they stray
and dissipate
until the appeal disappears

Ah

it smells of formaldehyde.
the floors are stuck with sugar and urine,
tracked in bootprints out back by the pallets,
and the plasma-woven high-definition screens
scream Las Vegas at the ruralites.

and it smells like a wet parking lot
with rusted shopping carts.
clouds soak us in their seaboard cover
against the backdrop of a single mountain,
newly devoid of snow.

the bums wander and talk to themselves
on glistening streets
while the Hummers brush past
with their glossy neo-modern colors,
and the whole scene is backlit by
a bright red neon bullseye.

ah.

must we always live in heaven.