13 Hours in the Desert

13 HOURS IN THE DESERT

1. The brushfire of dawn; shadow tongues darting west,
2. Dewlobes on a prick. Two lusty eyes. A contest of tongues. Exposed for slake of thirst.
3. Hundreds of miles around, as barren as LA is lush. But LA is desert, too.
4. As evidenced by buzzards and coyotes.
5. The story of Los Angeles is a story of reclamation and diversion, of suffocation and glut, of water and where it flows and to who.
6. Lessons of the waste:
   -eyelids chase the rain
   -how fast can you wait?
   -conserve what little until
7. you have to risk it all.
8. Anxiety evaporates
   Fragility instigates
   Shelter suffocates
   Folly liberates
9. As property rates explode in Venice Beach, forces are diverted from protect and serve to falsify and raze. The homeless are harassed on some manufactured offense, and what little they possess is confiscated and sent downtown. You’re welcome to swing by and pick your stuff up anytime. So after a half day migration to central, x hours flowing through the system, and now too exhausted and demoralized to make the journey home, what’s left but pitch a spot on 5th street? Into the coral, precisely where they
10. Yo-yo tongued coyotes circle the victim with frantic arrhythmic wailing, sending him left then right then back again until
11. Darkness thaws the stony flesh,
    Sunset sparks eyelight wicks
12. a carousel of stars
    plays out the day’s dream
13. of shadows flowing east.