Queen Dandelion

I am the eggman, I am the ashesman,

I am the erector set skeleton, a ghost

with a thousand snakes in my hair, scaffolding

worlds and walls with the planets in my hands,

the lips of old ladies sitting on porches

with the night slung over their shoulders,

the brittle fingers of tenement bricks scrawling

a lonesome gospel on the back of a Manny Mota

baseball card, left on the sidewalk, lone

like Lucy's 24 hr burrito shack on Hoover,

glowing yellow and green, horrible, calm

destiny in the middle of murmuring intersections

-Oh Baby how's it going, Baby gimme a ride-

I am a one man goof brain tear tired tribe

making peace pipes and long nights

with the gulls that ride shotgun with the waves,

searching like a stone for the street

the music is coming from, spinning an engine

for the wanting, for the way,

for the Astro Coffee Shop crossword puzzle player

who knows so many words,

for the Woolworth's cashier who tells me

which aisle the light bulbs have been moved to,

for the old Armenian men who sit with fish and canes

on the Alexandria bus bench and talk about the world,

the birds, hug and kiss, piss, moan and spit HAH,

Yes I am I am for the hearts that hang

harlequin faces in this city's glittering glitter,

stretching delirious into the far corners of forever

and the day after tomorrow,

for the naked brains blooming on glorious curbs,

unfolding eyes and branches, million-year-old

elephant tusks and roller disco shoe laces,

a naked man in a fifth-floor window singing

singing he just got laid,

a clown-faced pointy-headed guy pissed

off on the bus, mumbling graveyard incantations

to the cockroaches crawling from the seat,

a blond-wigged black lady checking Mademoiselle

and the new Spider Man at Cahuenga's International News,

laughing at them all: "I am beautiful, I am beautiful,"

the green-socked Mexican grandmother walking

back from Zamora's carniceria humming some song

and pulling a little kid along: "Come on, Come on,"

Kim Chee Pupusa Sanamluang Zankou Hollywood

Korea plays 9 ball All Night Vermont,

the transvestite putas, the wigged spandex eye

leaning out of lamp posts, pulling dudes off red light corners:

"Honey I am better than the real thing,"

the loonies walking their cigarettes

at the Edgemont Manor sanitarium floor,

the security guard wrinkling his forehead fingering his badge

moving his knight

to check the nappy-headed kid's king at Tang's Donut

and the buses sit sighing New Hampshire empty

and the sidewalks groan cracked

and the clocks move faceless

telling time from desire's delicious belly:

Days aren't marked by hours but by needs,

and the clouds hover mother over Montebello smokestacks

and the Marlboro man rides huge

alongside the Santa Ana Freeway

herding headlights on their way,

stars flung without course into a blind sky

and the stars scribble their notes along the fingernails

of Slauson's glass-boxed Chevron cashier,

and the stars melt through the beds at the Mark Twain

wino runaway needle roach hotel

frying through the eyes of the just ended bus ride

and the stars lay suicide down

mumbling delicate love letters in sanskrit teeth

at the edge of the Babylon pool: Lupe Velez

silent on the Moroccan-tiled toilet floor

and the stars carve their perfume into the sidewalks,

spitting lizard eyes through the mist,

faces through the waves, eyelashes through the freeway,

spines through the lawns, spleen through the bathrooms,

and I sing get back and get high

on all those angry and not so sure just which

off-ramp the discount swap meet is at:

the lost Kansas woman still wearing my grandmother's beehive,

the Michouacan man running with a bus transfer in his hand,

the slave ship descendant wondering how it's gonna get paid,

who listens when the wind is deaf,

we are all the same under the gun

fending off chilled night demons with suitcases

full of fragile newspapers and stained underwear,

playing cards from sleepless lovers,

lungs and knuckles and knives

from fathers we did not know,

kidneys and ribs that the doctors left spilt

on the porno shop floor,

the very young selling pussy and butthole:

ain't talking 'bout love--these eyes are hurting in their core,

eyes standing still dark doors spilling

storms across the steeples and bank walls,

eyes waiting in line in this tire mind for a fix, for a play,

for a dime, for a dollar,

something to chew on, a bowl of Jesus soup

long line, long long line

and the all night blood comes

black and blue hospital steam rising

slow bodies to the river, rolling straight rhythm bumpin time's

oldest revolution, breaking stones and statues and lips coming

out of the naked lady halls, doing out-of-key duets with the

Yum Yum donut smiley face man,

Oh a Sunflower breaks wild,

grows at the edge of the river San Gabriel,

the night unfolds its arms across a mean-street sparrow

flying a troubled mind past the windows of a blue-walled room

where a mother is holding her baby,

where the baby sucks her nipple,

where the world is small and necessary,

where I is a secret unfolding from the veins in her breast,

to those lips and we know we never forget

making love in the subterranean parking garages,

seed and motor oil twining oceans and disease,

a child is born, a child is born,

but there are no suns to guide,

you are alone,

and the asphalt stretches dripping headlights

into the bloodshot moon,

with the voodoo child swinging birth stones

from the purple jacaranda trees,

and dead men swoon in the wonder-voiced wind,

their toes dancing on the edges of mouths

gaping in nightmares,

moaning in lovers:

Mexican generals walking ghosts down the Pico streets

putting botanica handbills on car windows, inside doors,

and the phantom Gabrielano braves moaning starlights and fire through the brush of the Cahuenga Pass,

the green-sheeted Okie car salesman chanting Pontiac, Buick,

wandering the weeds along the river downtown

and the ten-year-old El Salvador kid curls

down to sleep, like smoke through a door,

like dust to a sill, like ashes to a grave,

like a child to the floor, like a child to the floor

on some half-hidden MacArthur Park step,

death squad coyotes running races in his belly

while the sun coughs cringes writhes and

sinks like a bottomed-out hustler

on the other side of the world,

I am the orphaned streets,

I am the junked car vacant lots,

the gunshots, the umbilical knots,

lonesome like the 2nd street tunnel at 2A.M.,

sad like the Figueroa overpass with sleeping men,

beauty without knowing why, jewels to the horizon,

lit bags of Christmas lights spilt all over

while the wildflowers rosemary lupine weave their miracles

along the hills overlooking the roofs,

and a rose moves awkward

in a parking lot, behind a liquor store

on a street somewhere in my mind

where the ragged palm trees whisper in tall head rows:

soft eggs and red hots, lemon drops and rats feet,

sorrowful fronds seducing the pipes in the wall,

willowing up through the quiet toilets of joy,

bending for the baying ships and seahorse eyes,

a siren through the dry swaying steel of San Pedro diesel,

Holy Ghost sister, Bethlehem drifter,

through a green and crying sea,

dark hands baptizing car seats, a million rooftops,

all the hearts holding knives, the aching love-drunk eyes,

the cold gin hands of another lonely night,

a television spinning deep mother grief

through the savage lipless room,

hidden on the one thousandth street

and death sips the moon's secrets

from the breast of the paradise tree,

I am the breadman, I am the nextman,

in the time of truth and dying, I, the milkman

will be shot at dawn's delivery door,

and the roads, all the roads, croon cold down

to the water, across a queen, a woman, an eyelid of a dream,

whispering strings of green glowing horizontal avenues,

flowing black cracked asphalt, a mouth

parting a delicate sunset sky,

when it's about to be a blue-necked night all over again

and she moves, and she moves a hand,

brushing clouds across the sky,

grinding dark dirted desert love into the language of the waves,

I am the hunted dove,

I am the reckless sparrow,

the tick-tock cat eyes always moving,

the forever grey couple sitting on the bus bench

for hours together every night in front of Fatburger,

the woman swinging her legs, feet don't even touch the ground.

Oh Queen Dandelion

Oh Queen Dandelion swaying wisdom

in the belly of a burnt-out Ford,

spinning a wild wheel through the laughing gargoyles of time,

sewing butterfly wings to my smog woven wind,

dancing bugs bunny jigs along barbed wire fences,

playing hopscotch with the lost dogs

in the car lots of an endless breathless night,

swooning in the big band tropical sunset,

the deadly air of this car crashing world,

a hingeless mouth breathing changeless songs,

whispering veins through my ink,

rain through these cinders,

knives through this smoke,

fire through my mud,

tongues through these wounds,

your reasons blowing kisses

through the ruins.

Fie upon this Contemporary Rot, Gimme Shakespeare