PILGRIMAGE TO TIKAL

​

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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

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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

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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

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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