Hey, Hey

We watched one afternoon and smoked a hundred cigarettes—
Andrew’s dad was a retired beat cop from Manhattan
with a nice TV hooked up to a Sony Betamax. He also owned a little schnauzer named
Heidi. This all happened when we were young and didn’t know the world,
the outside, I mean, except through movies and song. The film in question
was Yellow Submarine. Even now you might not know the title

unless you’re over 45, and certainly if you’re over fifty you might re-title
that part of your life from any number of Beatles songs. The question
remains: do you know of all their variants and offshoots? The rough Manhattan
copies, the simulacrum of Monkee-land? Of Davy Jones I briefly speak, cigarette
in one hand, my other on the keypad: there were young beats named
for open windows in hell’s kitchen who frequented Los Angeles, too. The world,

for them, was like a bright blue sun-scorched sky. As for the others, the world
wakes more often to forgetfulness than any other condition, be it in Manhattan
or Los Angeles. The next day the new kid, Mitch, told us his mom smelled cigarettes
and pot smoke on him, although we’d been smoking mostly questionable
chunks of hash and Marlboro 100’s. If you could give us a title
back in the day, you might call us into question

concerning our lack of true beliefs. For example, we all questioned
whether or not god was dead or if the universe spun endlessly in quantum-named
waves and particles. At least we knew some science: one part of the Manhattan
Project had been located out in the desert, on a sagebrush flat, on an end of the world
road twisting out to the hard ruthless peaks and plains that had names and titles
like “The Journey of Death.” At a place called Allsup’s we bought cigarettes

and went on the black road heading north. We couldn’t stop smoking cigarettes
as the dim stars rushed above us and around the 1971 Nova Fastback titled
in my father’s name. We knew for sure that the car wouldn’t make it to Manhattan,
but was good for going back and forth between Albuquerque and the small world
of desert towns some of us came from: Gallup, Mentmore. We all questioned
the light, our return to light, if we’d come back to these places we’d named

in part because the feelings had no names. What can you name
the sensation of your first cigarette, your first deep inhale? Do you know the world
any better after chugging a couple of Coors Banquet Beers? We’ve all questioned
the return to normalcy that follows quite turbulent years: song titles
stick like broken records and the sensation you got from watching Manhattan
isn’t quite like what Mickey smoked with Valleri afterwards, a cigarette

probably dipped in hash oil. A cigarette made and rolled in Manhattan
where the pretty girls are there for the song titles, questioning
the world, what means what, where to locate god’s name.

Caves below the mountaintops and in our lives

Some of us went right up
to the mouth of the cave,
It was a long walk through
the hottest part of the day,
and someone imagined
pools of blue cave water
lit by uranium as the sun
lingered in the west
like a bad penny. This was
where some turned back,
where others hung back
smoking Marlboros, picking
at the nearest rocks for fossils.
I tell you we were there
watching as the climbers
pulled themselves over
the lip, into the darkness.

Of course, a few returned with tales
and some didn't come back
at all. Someone with a lantern
thought she found petroglyphs
at the far junction in the main cave,
someone with a geologist’s hammer
brought back handfuls of staurolite.
Even after it was found out
it was the devil lighting
the far end of the trail, the dirty
plaintive woods and even
the rocks themselves--I am
no longer anxious to cross
and am rightly ashamed
of the time I left you all there
so I could wander the far eastern
meadows below the peak
where ladybugs grew by the thousands
on granite outcrops warmed
by the summer sun.

The Bureaucratic Dangers


One time I told a guy
it was a big deal that
I'd climbed down
from the Rockies
to live in the deep
wooded valleys of the Miami.

I'd driven a red truck, towed
a short u-haul trailer,
lived all over the place,
discovering gringo
America in New York
villages and small
Rustbelt towns where

I was just another dark-haired
foreigner until I spoke,
told them no I didn't
want their jesus
or a way to heaven
that meant reading
another book known

already to me as tinder
for the fires my friends
and I burned to feed the huge
devils on our backs.
Like throwing chingazos at the moon
I come to you expecting
nothing. By hiking the deepest trails
of your heart I am burned
by the light I find there.

Letter to the full moon from Huitzilopochtli

Tonight, I pray thee shine somewhere

brighter than you have before, salt

the sky with your presence. The thick

skin of our backs. The hard

moon rays beating down on wide

fat nipples. That summer I spent

in the forest, along the rocky creeks.

Drank beer all day, some of us

chasing girls, chasing boys. In that

long stretch of ponderosa and

white pine where there were rattlesnakes

wound up like bike tires left to rot.

As sure as the stars in the sky

were beacons of the unknown, for destinations

unnamed, O dear Luna, cover the night with your pale

light, that it may be the last reminder

of those years before the din and racket

of the outside world let us in the rough

door, the skin droor and the smoke roaring.

Motorcycle riding days, 1977-78

'pa mis amigos motociclistas

Not like I want to
go back, when Cotton
Belt locomotives ran
between Tucson and Las Cruces—
it’s not my
favorite time, but
I want to thank you
for keeping
me in mind. I haven’t
ridden a dirt bike
since 1980. And
all that desert east
of Juan Tabo Blvd.
has since been plowed
to make room for houses.

In that short year I owned
a Kawasaki KE 100,
beat it up so bad
that when the bank
came to take it
they had to carry
it out in pieces.
We used to ride
out to the high
desert. We used to
take turns
racing on well-cut
tracks that had been there
since the 60’s.
Then there was danger—
yours or mine,
the resentment bred
in working-class kids
who had to live
among the rich.
So for a while,
when my dad
could afford such treasures,
Rudy and I
rode with you,
smoked with you, learned
how to fight,
how to compete
with riders and bikers,
some meaner than others.

But the other thing is this—
for the first time
I saw the desert
on my own,
was often lost
watching the high
mountains in the near
distance. Your big dream
back then was to ride
all the way
to Santa Fe, my dream
was to keep riding
away from the cruel, paved
roads awaiting us.

Don’t write me
to tell me about
Jesus. My heart
is hardened plutonium
on that subject,
and my religion consists of
faith in my children, fear
of the powerful natural world, all
the women I love.

Life along a Tributary of the Ohio
For F.F.W.


I have been
in the underworld
for years. Jesus
doesn’t know this—
No one can
see me farm
the shade
I love so much
that I’ve taken
the small
ripe fruit I call
manzanas crueles
to plant on the other side,
where the desert
begins and toads
writhe in the knowledge
of mud. One time
I waited for a guide but
like my father
He was covered
in dust and useless.
Now, this has changed.
I live under oak.
I see the stars only
when I wish, through
branches thick as myth.
Why should I stay here?
His eyes mean
nothing to me.

Why We Love Evil

Wallace Stevens hated Robert Frost.
He’d seen that New England poet in the bar
one summer in Key West.
Normally, Frost would sit next
to Stevens in the sun, and they would read
newspapers. When it got too hot,
each gathered his towel, slapped
on sandals, trundling off
to small, thatch-roofed cottages
on the leeward side of the Key.
There’s nothing to say about
the violence Stevens knew: a whipping
through a candle-lit
window, some bruises the next
day at the beach. So when the queen
of the water appeared to Wallace one
afternoon in a dream, with her hands
pretty and shorn of rings, save
a glittering red pearl, he shouted
at night, to his rival: I’ve seen
you mean and I’ve seen you walking
the strand for an answer
the sea might give you
about violence, about love.
Whisper not about its threats,
the way it sweeps endlessly
into all of us like air.

Desert Two-Step

O, some of us
grew up in some pig town, some
hill town where they
used to take coal
where the drunks
could be run-over by trains.
Once a year, the hard
brown river overran
the poor part of town—
the soul of the place
was in the gas
stations lining the main
drag. Few of us went
elsewhere, wherever
that was, because it all
looked the same
from the windows
of the ‘71 Catalina
your father drove.
The madness came
on command back then—
a dry storm in the mal-pais
one day could make
snakes crawl to you at night,
but uncontested, you pasted
the black sky until
you could leave.