Crossing San Francisco Bay

Blinking (yellow) bell, dinging. Open. Close. Deposit fee.
The fairer side of things, the slide of red jello lit streams
touches my chest; I feel it in my gulp. There's a woman
closing the window above her head, closing out the cold
bay air, "east bay" air.

O, metallic structure, O, false craft. Your beams over-linger,
trap, over-trap. My zenith, we turn. Together into a tunnel,
we turn. And your legs open, widening arms outstretch.
Steel chords soundfully center the shifting weight: the world's
bulging curve.

Lights in the city. A water of glimmer. Port of S__ F________,
ruby and glare. Greenish buildings stacked in a crowd out-
compete their predecessors, hundreds of years before. An
expanse of ocean shoaring at the coast, shaking hands in
greeting. Later there will be a toast.

Just In Case My Journal Perishes One Day

You're scared that we know all the crimes they'll
commit. Perpetrators on perennial train tracks:
the metallic rivets keep out the cold and the iron
rattles across the plane -you are so far we are.

I'd bathe you tonight; like the sea horse swimming
downstream looking for a place to open a garage
sale -a lawn, a driveway, some stones designating
a space. All is for sale, including my children he

says. They're only eggs at the moment. Give them
time. No doubt the perpetrating seahorse bathing
metaphor has shriveled to nothingness and nonsense,
and it's impossible to make conversation. I'm hell

bent, so scream hard when I stroke the split ends of
your hair. Pray the water runs down your shoulders
because they're where the elevator stops for some,
not you, as in North. The compass connotes your

direction: arrows dipped in murkiness, mixture of
molasses with intelligence, draining like dregs, con-
tained like the sands in all the deserts, no not desserts,
but the places where mules go to bury their bones,

salvage their remaining body fat for birds. Birds, she
says, save their wings for their mothers' bellies. Nothing
gets so bad. The vultures know. Their patient, the
perfect patient, the perfect patent. I think I'll design a

flowerbed in the shape of a hand. But what about the rings?
Not in images, not in words, not in thoughts, but in things,
breaking, pattering like the palm at the edge of a light-
house cliff. Fall in, drown, stir the waves with flailing arms.

(No More Sound)

Soco Amaretto Lime

You wish I was what I was six years before today.
I wish there was such a thing as you growing up.
But you'll stay eighteen forever and you'll never
miss a party. And I'll never have to listen to anyone.
We'll probably never agree on anything. Conversation
isn't a part of us, and neither is high-school love.
I don't call every ten minutes and you don't blush.

Don't Accept Rides From Strangers

With the slight of his hand, he too took off their clothes.
DANGER. CAUTION. WARNING. OH MY GOD.


((Sufjan))

Hysteria

is a more
or less
irreducible
state
character-
ized by
subversion
of the
relation-
ships set
up be-
tween the
subject and
the mental
world
from which
in practice
he thinks
he derives,
outside any
delirious
system.

This
mental state
is founded
on the need
for recip-
rocal charm,
which explains
the hastily
accepted
miracles of
medical sug-
gestion
(or counter suggestion).

[it] is not
a path-
ological
phenomen-
on and can,
in every re-
spect, be con-
sidered a su-
preme means
of ex-
pression.

Bay Bridge

Drove on the bay bridge for the first time today. Coming back from a stellar night with some friends,
drinks, seafood, and live music (not karaoke). San Francisco city lights luminescent in their gloss, barren twelve a.m. streets, a wharf stench rolling in. Kissing the bay bridge good bye in the rear view mirror,
then saying hello again minutes later, only to roll across her, all four spinning rubber weights. Her metal beams darting in diagonal up and downs, tunnels pushing the road under, the pacific ocean dabbling
sixty meters below.

Calories

Chug, chug, chug!
Jog, jog, jog!