Someday Thinking of Moving On

Four months ago, sometime last fall, I began
drinking with the complete intention of drinking.
Binge drinking holding the complete intention
of being a waiter. What better way to wait
than to drink? I don’t recommend waiting drunk,
but drinking after, pass the time ‘til someday something better.

Echo Park was where I grew up

And where Tom Waits sat drooling bourbon drunk
And cocaine heavy in the 70s
And where in the 90s chinks stood atop grocery markets with AK-47s
And blacks ran down streets in a glorious show of the power of mayhem
And it was like watching hundreds of fingers coming together as a fist
Pulling men from trucks

I was born
to live a single day
lived it as long as I could
My childhood was my first hour
and I cried it into a second
hour when I wrecked all that I touched
In the third hour

A space, a square –
you rearrange my skin with one hand,
complicating the gesture while simplifying my frame.
A space, a square where time has been cancelled,
stripped of its original function.
The interim?

I am covered in earth,
pacing the Lake Isabella shoreline
in a bell-shaped curve, an empty trajectory.
There’s a group of us and the consensus is that
they taste disgusting and when the nausea hits
you know they’re working, but
I think they taste like chocolate and chalk
and I’m not feeling nausea as much as machismo.