sympathetic resonance

(32.7765° N, 79.9311° W)

the pitch of a primal scream

is not the startled shriek 

of a chance encounter

in a nightmare or

a squeal of ecstasy 

from a lover cumming 

or an angry squawk 

or a guffaw 

or a Soprano reaching crescendo.

its sound is a peerless frenzy,

a biological car alarm

that anyone with any ears

can hear.

formerly, I had no ears

to hear with.

I had no spine to stand

or feet to fetch my frame

and the space where there 

should have been valves and

veins and atriums

instead was blank.

disemboweled,

I heard no screams and

couldn’t hear her pain.

I ignored all else besides my

wretchedness, 

which I loved singularly

like some mongrel pet that scratched

and gnawed and endeavored 

to devour me 

while I smiled in sallow bliss and said to it:

“there there” and “bless you” and “shhh.”

(34.042986° N, 118.917518° W)

I returned to my own body as

a refugee rediscovering his

village after a war.

I had been shelled out

but, somehow still

identifiable to myself,

I traced my fingers

along the contours

of my arm

and I bit and plucked at the hairs disbelievingly and 

I felt the freckles and

rubbed my fingertips

across protruding moles

and caressed them.

along Las Virgines,

there’s a man with a shock

of wild white hair

like some supertramp Einstein,

and his limbs are caked

with a centimeter of dirt

and he’s holding a sign

that says “anything helps

except prayer.”

my Catholic grandmother

drowned

in the long island sound 

and her husband

shot his own head for the lack

of any better plan

and I myself had sat trying to make

some better plan and wondered

if this inherited sadness

was a birthright or 

a harbinger.

rounding a corner 

along the Malibu Canyon,

I’m seized by some very high beauty and

my car canters violently 

and I pull off the road

and I collapse onto the dirt 

and cry and

my dog, a less wretched pet

than my sadness,

looks concerned.

(30.3095° N, 104.0206° W)

there is no gratitude like

that of one who,

once self-forsaken,

has resolved to repair

rather than 

reconvene with the dirt.

tomorrow is Independence Day

and in some blinking 

cowboy purgatory 

two little girls and their puppy

sell cantaloupes outside

a trailer park called “Little Toledo.”

at night, the stillness

in the desert

is eerie to the coast-born like me and 

I wonder if the desert

is similarly perplexed 

by the ceaseless undulation

of the ocean.

you fall in love with yourself

in fits and starts.

it isn’t like the

sweeping sprinting love

of a green-eyed stranger,

it’s a slog through silt

in ill-fitting boots on a 

day too hot to make much

headway without stopping to 

sop up accumulated sweat

or swat away some sadist horsefly.

(29.7258° N, 84.9832° W)

it’s dusk and the sun

has lent its pastel to 

each cloud in the entire sky,

rather than only the westward ones,

and god, I think,

what a gracious thing.