A poem from last summer:

Every day I count the states
of mind, fragile and endless
the states, built up like burnt plaque
the forest fire echoes through the tundra
and the quiet trembling harlequin winces
Every day I count the states
7 of them to be exact
slammed together by borders
where glue trickles down in the form of rivers
and the heart drips like an archipelago
my tongue a peninsula for your aqueous,
open mouth
Every day I count the states
Texas bulges like a fat cowboy
a stomach the size of El Paso
and an appetite that grinds the heartland
and churns out the savory sediment of rebellion
rolling down the rio grande
Every day I count the states
fraught with urgent letters
spelling out names of cities
like corpus christi
the body a pale entity
breathing in topography
like oxygen, fingers tasting
the papered method,
the lay of the land
Every day I count the states
Arizona sparks the orange based
silhouette sometimes wearing a purple cloak
so hard to look past the transparent
superhighway of Phoenix,
flying toward Albuquerque,
the marsh land waiting with wet
anticipation, your moist palms
the dearest things
Every day I count the states
Maddening outbursts of spitfire
Louisiana and Mississippi
Tank topped and alive
nose in mouth and the cantankerous
rickshaw twiddlin' my message
with lackluster echoes
bouncing from inside the spittoon
Every day I count the states
of shattered love, the ghost of you
somewhere in my voice, crawling out my mouth
in the crudest form, the veins of your skull
shining through shoe polished countryside
shining through trailer land, and Alabama
glistening with the sweat of your mind
the rind of your cerebrum tasting how
hunger must feel
Every day I count the states
7 of them to be exact
the states of mind, caught in between
rubbing up like a prickled backscratch
fighting the flaring sirens of
interspersed distance.
Somewhere down below
the pacific floods inside the atlantic
down there in panama
but for my blood
i must count the states
perched in mental holograms
the finest memory
just a bleached out
corollary of your
alabaster artifact.

It's amazing
how a place
is alive
functions as a living creature
grows and morphs
spins on axes
in junctions
and districts
and geo
locations,
it's amazing
how the buzzing
neon signs
can twist
the night to create whispers
and silent messages
that dust their way through
people's minds in waves
and dreams
floating through
boulevards
and avenues
and alleyways
to get inside 
the average man
the average woman
and find a place
to breathe
and grow
and procreate,
it's amazing
how this process
is fundamentally different
depending on the place and time
of your standing:
sitting in a corner cafe
the cold winter
of new york city
the feeling
is sometimes destructive
snowflakes fall crisply only to melt
traffic stops only to push further
the gridlock
remains tied up
only to unravel 
as an exasperated
signal of resignation,
winter can feel like a capsule
whereby movement is constrained
whereby impulses and synapses bottle up
and the buildings all around
seem to shout:
it is time for hibernation
for death to come out of hiding
for dirt and soot and other things
to be covered by a blanket of whiteness,
understand that you are inside here now
and the only way to escape
is to travel through time and space
using the laws of physics
and the resoluteness of your mind,
or driving through the subway
through the bowels of a place
with fellow human beings,
variations of a universal form:
without exception
two eyes one nose two feet
two ears one mouth two hands
but the immensity of variation
the plentitude enough to fulfill 
an innate desire or thirst for 
binaries, differences, colors
derivations, bloodstreams, beliefs
platitudes, assets, styles, principles
is there anything more holy than the subway ride?
the black man with black shoes, black jacket, gold chains, afro
the quiet mousely woman, feet tucked inward, book in hand, papered fingers which are licked before the turning of a page
the silent beauty holding onto the metal skeleton of the vehicle, mind adrift, lips pursed solemnly, staring towards some indistinct concept of the future
the musical chairs of to and fro of point a to point b, the magnificent lottery of crossing destinies only for moments only for seconds how brief how short never enough moments to take in and breathe in the silk dresses, piercings, tattoos, delightful complacencies, hairstyles, sighs of grief or joy, wicked laughter or terminal illness
no, never to be seen again in precisely the same order, in precisely the same design, only presented once for those whose attention and awareness has reached the proper level of attunement, the proper level of i am here, i am in the now, eyes wide open,  
it's amazing
how in such a place
you can drift into different versions of your self
and the concept of your singular self
comes directly into question
you realize
you are a responsive being
that consistency, too, is an idyllic tablet we impose upon ourselves
that, in reality, we are drifters, constantly searching, constantly changing 
and all is flux
that gramercy place
and bleeker street
and astor place
and washington heights
are just names of places
dictated in the past
for hope of constancy
for the undying dream of symmetry
but these places are reactions
to chemical and physical changes
in structures constantly 
evolving as we walk over them, through them, underneath them
most usually unobservant of them
and as we live and inhabit such places
these physical manifestations
subsume us, enter us, permeate through us
as a collective entity
as a living and breathing thing
connecting us like finely crafted tissue
like delicate yet indestructible sinew
the triptych of mind place and being coming into one,
it's amazing
how this phenomenon
also varies depending on place
so that new york city infects the soul with 
the sense of grandiosity coupled with the pettiness
and smallness of your own self perceived limitations
and all the alterations and altercations of past histories
aggregate and move forward and move into you
remnants of dutch architecture of art deco of roaring twenties of great depressions and the mosaic of everyone that has walked through the same poetic landscape only to further change it if only by having been alive and having breathed and having tasted the air that existed in that place at that time
all of it enters your mind in the present tense
planting seeds of collective unconscious through your brain
gets digested by you and released through you at every moment then converts back into the objective otherness of the place you are in
trailing and lilting as the wind pushes it through open windows, exhaust pipes, water mains, and other people's minds all the while becoming the past
becoming changes underwent
but never quite dying as ideas
as agents of change,
it's amazing
how these feelings
so thoroughly differ
depending on the place of your standing
how a city like los angeles
invokes passivity
intentionally rejects the idea of the collective
but imposes other ideas such as 
sprawl, openness, deception, self delusion, manifest destiny and loneliness,
it's amazing
that being where you are when you are there
can inform who you are and what you will become,
it's amazing that everyone breathing the air around you
might also be breathing in vibrations, fractions of enormous ideas that are siphoned through the aether 
through electromagnetic waves
removed only by the diversity of the reactions that these vibrating ideas instill in any given human being
it's amazing that i could have lived in china
or saskatchewan or manitoba or bermuda or kuala lumpur 
and the living breathing places would have coated my insides with experiences exponentially different in their foundations, their histories and their given collective repercussions
it's amazing that i have not lived in those places
that i have followed the course that i have followed
and have been changed by the places that i have lived in and changed by living there
it's amazing that the specificity of the trajectory i have followed is as individualistic, random, chaotic, haphazard, delirious, abstract, scientific, extraordinary, torturous, beautiful
and amazing as it has been and will always be
as long as i keep living in places
that keep changing
with people in them
that keep changing
and evolving
constantly. 

Old New York

Driving in,
The ancient
Rubric,
Downtrodden,
Broken hearted
Dreams
The jaundiced,
Tortured,
Heavy-lipped
Return,
Daily,
Monotonous –
We’ve been
Doing this
For ages
It seems,
We’ve been
Lifting our skulls
Towards the pointed
Building tops
And feeling our bones
Drop to our feet
In cursed self defeat
Growing inward,
Lilting,
All the while quiet,
As we assume
The quilted,
Nested
Respite
Necessary
For survival
And
Written in our blood
Like the historic method
Like the diligent desecration
Of precious, fragile
Choice,
Choking,
the smoke-filled
Back rooms,
Barring the back draft
And
Guarding the safe house
Like an asylum
Built for the sane
Built for the wise
And the holy
While the traffic
Whizzes by
At lightning speed
And the pavement is hot black,
The sky,
Grey and cold,
The old, old
Skyline whispers,
Vespers
For the lusted night,
As millions
Find their cubbies
And count their
Prayers
Their hearts beating
Slowly,
All the while quiet.