If I did it
I’d do you first
sparing the next one
the note would read
“imagination is a maladaptation”

fingernails in the bone ash
buried half of you
the women shudder
and move on
“let go”

whips of memory and attention
molar sharp but twisted neck
a drug mimics and muffles
surrendering
“deal with the harm”

If love was believable
it wouldn’t need so much evidence
the women sing
“I do pretty well,
til after sundown”

1.
I am angry in my dreams more than I remember them
but dad turns to look at me like a boy in one
and joy in his eyes is joy in mine
I cry until it feels like an orgasm
wake up and write that the good memories
make me cry in my dreams more than remembering
the terror of my fingernails on the embalming of it
and it fills me with dread

2.
Like the dread that I felt in a fluorescent thrift store
reading the titles of forgotten religious books
in the background, over Conservative talk radio
a man in a tattered coat screams at us
“you all are devils and witches, all of you”
under my breath, I whisper,
“in the absence of any evidence, why not”

3.
I walk to get a burrito
I step over a man with no shoes
packing a pipe with the pile of dust
on the following block, are smeared human feces,
now in line for food,
a man is talking to himself loudly behind me
the barista asks him to pay for the coffee
he tells the barista, pointing at me,
“He will pay for it”
I look at the man, his eyes looking straight down,
Knowing he knew I knew the score so far,
I try to pay.
The barista says no, paying encourages violence and customer complaints.
I hand him the coffee,
and proceed to debate the barista about philanthropy’s secondary affects.
After paying for his meal and mine, I am now talking to the owner who says its fine to pay for people, even saying, “there’s not enough of that going around, but sometimes customers complain.”

4.
The heater is out in my rented studio
during the coldest months for months.
a man in the hallway with tools
tells me it was thieves looking for copper
the other tenants trip the breakers from space heaters
I found a rat in my car the next day
making a nest out of a burrito wrapper
I stepped on it
it made me cry

5.
I am alone for days again
talking and pacing
I saw my neighbor out the window putting her recycling away
and one day, I thanked the drive thru attendant for their help
another day, I thought the neighbor across the street died
I found his obituary online
I saw a man rub the back of another man in the dead grass in the front yard of that house while he cried.

6.
I watched a federal lawyer read verbatim
the Constitution of the United States
on my cellphone while driving to and from
picking up my son from his school
my son showed me his drawings
the drawings were coming along nicely
We stopped at World Market and I argued about
there being more than 12 grams of cane sugar
in the products he chose
he thought I was being mean and it made him mad
as he ate unsweetened pretzels and water
I told him that it made me mad too but
he’ll remember this lesson if I teach it enough
and so will his doctor, if he can afford one

7.
I took away a video game from my son
over missing school work
he says, “It isn’t important”
I say, “I know its redundant,
and it was that way when I was a kid
but if you can’t stay off their lists,
and you can’t organize tasks,
they won’t let you live.”
He says, “but I have a C”
I say, “That’s the part where you stay off their list, but you still have missing work”
He says, “I didn’t do those because I don’t want to”
I say, “I know, but that’s the point.”
He goes to his room.
I sit down alone
and work on a client’s project until 10 PM
while the new video game I bought with that same money goes unplayed,
then I do the dishes at 11PM while watching
Jon Stewart poke fun at trickle down economics and neo-liberalism.

8.
Me and three people are the only ones in a nice restaurant on a weekend night for my partner’s birthday. The salmon was good but the dinner conversation was unavoidably sad and politically tense for no discernible reason. The staff and waiters kept staring at us peculiarly either for what we said or who we are. At 8PM, a waiter informs us they are closing. The waiter then walks away and sits with the owner at the bar laughing over wine and cheesecake.

9.

Toasting organic 12 seed bread,
watching YouTube on my phone,
While listening to a RevCom, that Andrew Callaghan interviewed in LA, who was protesting recent immigrant deportations, I thought:
Woke and America First need each other. How else would they make money, and it made me chuckle, because the day prior I heard a man describe influencer culture generating wealth as the next iteration of economics after the Post-Industrial era as if marketing your personal podcast was a 1-to-1 comparison to the Agricultural Revolution. Then I ate my bread, and read the bag, which said, Product of Mexico, Sold and Distributed by an LLC in California.

9.
The things that brought me relief:
– hot black coffee in a hand made mug on a cold morning
– finishing a collage of a giant frog
– seeing my son try hard
– eating plain mixed nuts
– the smell of vegan gummy bears
– yelling at a person after not getting angry at that person for 10 years
– a video game that was pure art
– a Triumph vinyl that was surprisingly good
– a quote from RuPaul’s biography: “The Devil is the ego; God is a frequency that cannot be explained. Jesus is a term for the potential that we all have, the potential to transcend the physical illusion, and to remember who we, which is an extension of the God-force.”
– a dear friend I haven’t seen in person in a year is visiting soon
– the lady at the vinyl store told me about how she listened to “For Whom the Bell Tolls” on her childhood bike rides to make her faster
– I am writing and creating every month

an air conditioner and sunglasses on Christmas
the winter sun peeling my cheek, I’m squinting at
an ad for a lawyer looming above a freeway accident
the responding officer in a Santa hat

we arrive with headaches to dinner
at the last inn across town
that will still let us in
to take a knee and smoke in the backyard

did anyone hear the angels?
I thought their one job was to hark
when and if someday
family is friendship is fairness

but ALL I WANTED
is a land memory so sweet
it cannot be stolen from
if someone loses their keys to American dreaming