+++
SOME RUN GUNS.
Not everything is vicarious in my new life as an adventurer,
But what is imagined is better, best,
Beats living it out on most counts,
Like Domingo at the top of the John Hancock Building,
After crossing the desert alone at 16 to come to America,
He wants only to take pictures to post to Facebook,
The experience itself is moot, something that barely registers,
But the cityscape below, the lake, gaining the likes of friends
Is What Matters.
I want to be invited to parties. I do not want to attend parties.
I want to be desired like anyone
Sometimes it is necessary
The motions of sex like a puto
Basking in the glory
Dulled to the experience
Guatemala lies ahead, the lost city of El Mirador,
To hike through the jungle with mules, mud, and mosquitos,
In training for Choquequirao
To skip the party at Machu Picchu
The credo is No Tourists! except for me.
Go directly to Tikal. Do not pass Go. Do not collect 200 Quetzales.
But first, I need a new tattoo.
The God of Love gets a new tattoo.
My wife went missing last year.
Actually, she died.
What song was it, We don't know who we are any more?
Who sang that?
I walk the leftover dog and try to remember.
I'll be packing. And collecting the rents.
Someone is coming over at seven tonight.
He wants a massage, ostensibly.
I was once criticized for using the word ostensibly.
I was working for the census. In the office.
What? I said. You can't say the word ostensibly any more?
We do things out of grief.
We sleep with strangers or starve ourselves,
Slowly it becomes clear,
A long settled cenote,
A Polaroid finished since the age of dinosaurs,
Blue and blue and deep,
Fathomless pain wandering foreign lands
With a magnifying glass,
Seeking what will never return
And I will always live alone
Until my last ten days of life.
There is money to explain
About the way the rich buy underground bunkers
Forged from former nuclear missile launch sites
for the end of the world
so they can continue to harbor the illusion that they will live
ten more days
than anyone else.
Their job is hard, finding ways to spend
Instead of ways to make.
I do not envy them
I am one of them
Yachts to rowboats
On my last day in Mexico City,
The peso jumped while I was texting
Sentimental nothings to the prostitute
the scort, he calls himself
How much today, I asked.
"Five hundred pesos," he said.
It was 850 the day before.
We still have never met.
We actually seemed to like each other.
I can't remember his name.
Maybe some day I will be generous
But not while chemicals enable me
And no prescription necessary in Mexico
Now I remember. It was Hedwig who sang
How the Germans lost their identity
Who forgot who they were
After the war
We don't know who we are anymore
And that marks, appropriately,
this Centenary of Dada
+++
ENLIGHTENING THE SAINT.
I am charging my phone in the restaurant
Chicken broth with carrots and squash
The lime kicks it over, makes it
I am taking notes while eating this 60 peso
Three course lunch
One block from Bellas Artes
Neruda would have noticed
the thumbs of the subway riders
Their hair standing up black and shining
Ginsberg would have seen political machinations
And joined the march taking place in the streets
Even as we eat
I will inhabit their ghosts here and throughout Latin America
In my quest for more ghosts
Carrying Lee's ghost with me
And when I die
I will disperse the ghosts of all of us
Into the wind passing by all ruins, until the last pyramid crumbles
Into the jungle I am about to enter with a mule
Next week God willing and the moon don't crash.
In the Frida Kahlo house,
a father is explaining art to his young son
The names of Frida and Diego
Spelled out on the kitchen wall
In tiny coffee cups
Her supplies and easel are as she left them
Diego had a cubist period
Drinking chocolate at El Jaroche
Eating pozole in the Zona Rosa
Valentine's Day
In Immigration Court
with Guatemaltecos
The judge signs deportation papers
"Things aren't the same as they used to be," she sighs
I am here or there
My borders blur
This is not a leap year
But just the same I will celebrate our anniversary
Trekking to the pinnacle of Tikal
Where Lee once read poetry
Before the tourists arrived
The jaguars and I will howl
The phantom Mayan martyrs
Cradling Lee's ghost in my arms
Smuggling her ashes and feeding them to howler monkeys
"I don't know who I am anymore," I told the escort
Who has yet to escort me anywhere.
The therapist, twirling his pen over paper,
Legs crossed, pursing his lips, listening,
speaks, a rarity
"Find a new word for what you are now."
Maybe you are no longer a writer, he said.
Or maybe I suggested it.
You need a new word
For crossing international borders,
Traipsing through the jungle in search of the unexcavated worlds,
For letting homeless sex offenders squat in your house,
For driving undocumented Guatemalan workers to their court dates
Hundreds of miles for free
For loaning your truck and lifting their beds
For crawling through dumpsters to salvage good furniture
For giving free massages and happy endings
For never saying no
For trying to fix everything
Boy scout? The pun distracts.
Invisiblist?
Uber Gratis?
Saint?
Ginsberg wanted to be a saint
Addicted to Time Magazine
I never felt comfortable calling myself a writer
How different could it be to call myself a saint
Bodhisattva in training
Look back again with gratitude and joy
Look down into the jungle from the pyramid above
Discover the footpaths beneath mystery vegetation
To the uncharted branches
of the Energy
+++
GRIEF
When the Christmas choir is weak and out of tune
And the congregation praises it regardless
Grief doesn't sing along or follow the notes
Grief stands there unsure if he is holding the right hymnal
There is always too much food after cooking now
Whisky has no effect at all, like liquid lead
Grief walks through the house naked at any hour
Grief doesn't know he's alone
Grief starts to take a walk
And turns back
Having forgotten to empty the emptiness
+++
THE TEMPORARY NATURE
how sweet falling over the mountain
tasting the wild strawberries
along the way
before i can arrive in guatemala
i have to cherish this last winter walk
how i will miss it
before i return to the cold prairie
i will have to relish the jungle growl
how i will miss it
