gas mask cigarette tests & glass coffin disappearing acts… your long divided stance on mixing medicine multiplied by common sense: fingerprints on the ivory, brooklyn bound with half my teeth.  spin cycled silhouettes rotten to the core.

& later hooked through toronto skin; gets blurry where your pulse begins all switchblade soft & porcelain too far away to love.  arrival gate at laguardia, shitfaced since los angeles either too damn shy to speak up or buried in the new york asphalt.

ambrosia blue cemented to your gums , bicycle chain track mark sulfur blood.  foundered, it pulled me here in spades french-kissing them short circuited waves.  tick-tock on the boulevard, J-train love on the LIRR provided we are who we say we are.

atlanta’s got me in her grip, hundred dollar bills strapped around my hips.  i’ve been robbing banks, you’ve been robbing me blind.

for reasons undisclosed you rode bareback, filthy with spray-on gold as i fiddled with Nero over Rome, spittin’ whiskey on a city full of bullet holes.  to the bridges boys, we gotta soldier on i hope you wrote that last note home… because when daylight hits chicago we’ll be washing up on either coast.

i am a stack of chips that you can bet against the odds with.  you are a pattern-woven bracelet: tarnished silver mirror sheen.  clasped around a skeleton, missing four fingers.  one for every gutless mistake.  we swivel our guns up level, kiss our skin goodbye with diamond teeth.

so i’ve been in LA for…almost two weeks?  i have lots of aches & pains from being an idiot & walking around.  managed to lose my wallet on the bus/got pickpocketed while reading radio ads in spanish, so i’m shit out of luck when it comes to the ID department.  i’ve attempted to rectify this by going to the DMV & getting a California license, but have run into some minor opposition.  the lady who did all my paperwork last thursday? doesn’t fucking remember me & my Connecticut ID.  wants to see it again.  i articulated (very calmly) in two languages that NO TENGO FUCKING MY WALLET PUNTA!!!! but she wasn’t buying it.  asked her if maybe her computer had access to some sort of national database that links up with the Department of Transportation.  Y’know, the one cops have.  no dice, she’s stonewalling me.  i’m starting to look bad in front of the little people waiting nervously in line to get their picture taken.  smiling like her testicles are getting massaged by a dwarf under the desk, she slides a piece of paper my way:

“Sign here.  This is your driver’s permit.  Come back when you have an appointment to take the driving test.”

I storm off, right across the street to the bus stop on Vine.  Some dumb bitch in a mini-SUV almost careens into me at about twenty miles an hour.

“Hey, there isn’t a stop sign here! I almost hit you”

“FUCK OFF, LADY.”

“I’m just trying to tell you that…”

“NO, SERIOUSLY.  FUCK OFF.”

& I need to take a driving test? you let these West Coast lunatics crash their cars into each other all over Hollywood, & someone from a respectable-sounding state with an inkling of driving etiquette is required to engage in a four mile checklist joyride with a man who smells like cigars & insists you’re “going a little too fast, this is a school zone.”

So i’ve been back twice.  Connecticut said they’d fax over a letter or something, but apparently putting a piece of paper in a facsimile machine takes five days in Bridgeport.  must be all the caution tape & bullet proof glass or something.  I don’t know.  I give up, I’ma ride a vespa.

i slept wrapped in skulls & crossbones & bright blue fleece, like some arctic pirate flying a gap-toothed jolly roger over a turquoise sea.  i pass storm sewers every day claiming to drain to the ocean, but where exactly is the pacific from here? maybe this is some misleading gesture, a city intent on suggesting that in fact this is not the edge of the world… “there’s a fucking ocean, we promise, just please don’t clog up these drains with your garbage & your cigarettes & your frustration or it might dry up.”

whether or not the pacific is a reality, i can see the mountains from here

some insurmountable obstacles to the north & east

i see them every day

they seem too tall for me to climb sometimes, until i remember

you’re on the other side.

sick & oh-so-sorry of these cough medicine days

waking up at bus stops, as if every hour spent

was broken up into twelve minute metro timetables

we’ll do this dirty little dance, you twirl east & i’ll sway west

deafened by the clatter of our shaky steps

please be in on this, please be desperate

to feel my fingers on your lips

you slide your card against the pylon, a scapular twist resulting in a subterranean dive towards hollywood & vine.

through all these empty steps i miss the tickle of your breath against my travel-worn, bruised, & weary chest.

i have collected a box of things to send you in a blatant attempt to bridge this gap, even if momentarily.

i’ll be home soon, love.

you are a dirty, cheap whore.  i kinda like it.