Votive candles, still pristine.
Unsorted slides
documenting our demonic possession
and spilling
out of this cardboard,
an overdose of image.
I'm mailing leather boots,
Melrose Avenue chain
hanging off them
for no particular reason.
Scarves, wraps, tops,
silks, neon gauzes,
polka dots, silver lame
and lipstick, so much lipstick,
colors not found in nature
you used to say.
And the $700 pea-coat
with the dominoes stitched in,
that one I almost kept.
But it's all going back,
back to your mom's place in Oakland.
You said you'd rather live
in a shack
in the tropics than here with me.
But your boots and coats are in Oakland
in case a chill sets in.

I'm pulling dusty poetry
back from the garage.
Corman, Eluard, O'Hara,
Reverdy, Cendrars, Hughes,
of course, Buk,
opening them for the first time,
breathing them in,
line after line
like new addiction.
You used to say,
what's the point
of these poems that nobody reads?

I'm standing
at the edge of the cliffs
out at Point Magu,
waving my arms
with great purpose:
flapping in the night.
Crazy signals,
no reply.

There is
in all men
equal ignorance.
Sometimes
you can only hope
to go mad.