I am flesh and blood and vision

I am howling in the dark

                 -Joni Mitchell

City of the Fallen Angels

I’m a wild seed  

again, up and down the escalator,

truck cab, forearm, R and B and

Stevie and lately

I’ve had the strangest feeling

I call you baby

I call you heat

constellations beat and scream,

let’s keep driving

let’s hit the desert

the ocean the sky and we

fly into the haze of

wheels  on a  hot road

your skin of earth

your skin of clay and darkness

heat and smog, the maze of

stepping from one life into

another,  smoke and ash,  speakers,

currents, electromagnetic fields and

this book of brilliant things

casualties of the mind and here we stand

again, the same loop of road,

palms still in sun

your shoulders and how

small I am, so bright

watching the brake lights

weave like a river.

The last time I saw you

bubbles floated to the

surface of the green water,

electric and unrelenting.

***