WWCD?

With Cuba in the rearview mirror
You land in Veracruz
with ships of tired men,
Aztecs to the west
and no way home
the rest of it gone,
ablaze in the Caribbean,
the tides pulling the ashes out to sea
and I understand; I'm with you on this;
when there's no way home
you've got to make your home
where you are, with what you have left,
and all I have left is a good sword
but that's all I need now,
the house, the job,
the marriage, the money
Burn it all, fuckers,
go ahead, I dare you.

6 1/2

I'm running north
from the Balboa Pier
on a pathway next to the sand,
it's late afternoon
and I'm looking ahead at
Newport Pier a mile
in the distance,
it juts out into an
uncommonly still Pacific,
it seems to connect to the
end of Catalina Island,
the sun, orange, descending
down into the heart of it,
light bathes the houses I pass
in orange and pink light
and makes the glassy water
a metallic blue,
crossing the pier I run towards
the river as the sun disappears,
passing men on bicycles
and women running,
I'm not wearing my contacts
and their faces are blurred,
I just see their shapes against
the water, the purple sky,
the haze over Long Beach,
the sun has gone behind the island
as I reach the end of the strand
and I run up 36th street
and onto Ocean Front,
I take off my sunglasses
and it's dark now on the narrow street
in between two story buildings
and quiet, I listen to the sound
of my own breathing and run
faster, looking straight ahead now
and my stride shortens but gets quicker
and it feels like I'm gliding on the asphalt
and I hold my head still and run faster
thinking of nothing but movement
and my eyes defocus and everything is
blurred around me but the river jetty
a mile in the distance, my breathing
getting louder and louder
and night coming, night coming.

Indian Winter

Lovey walks ahead of me,
he is following the tire tracks
of a jeep that's driven in the sand,
beyond the track, he reminds me,
is lava; we cannot step there.

We follow the tracks across
the beach to a blue tower,
I put down our bag and
we walk out towards the water,
running after receding waves,
retreating as they approach,
we draw a line in the wet compacted
sand where we think the water will advance to,
people lay on surfboards in the water,
play volleyball in the sand,
we take our shirts off and the sun feels
good on our skin,

The wind gusts and blows grains of sand
up into us, we turn away from the wind,
closing our eyes,
it is the middle of January,
this cannot last.

Perigee

I smoke outside under
silver light that casts shadows
through the barren branches of
my fig tree, I exhale and watch
the smoke wisp upwards at the moon,
almost directly overhead, as large
as it will be this year, and
I begin to realize that this
is as close as we will get
to one another.

When Your Phone's Not Ringing, It's Me Not Calling

I stood in the front doorway
as a full moon began rising in late
afternoon light, the wind blowing
cold and dry out of the east,
the fig tree almost bare now,
its leaves strewn across my yard

Yellow, brown, these leaves that once were
alive, connected, attached to something
larger and alive, now alone, dead, disconnected

The last leaf goes in a Santa Ana gust,
the moon up now over a purple sky,
the tree's been blown clean,
stripped of everything that breathed air,
absorbed light, the tree's alone and dormant
and the cold wind still blows.