Pizza Pies
When your whole
life is set on fire,
10-year plan tossed
around like an off-
brand soda can,
it’s nice to break your
diet and pick up
a pizza pie, with
blue cheese and the
honey drizzle,
drink a local IPA,
listen to a little
John Prine, How
Lucky, watch
some UFO videos,
try to find your
homebase in the
breath like that
guy explained on
Daily Calm, and
picture the ridge-
line of a California
desert mountain;
it’s funny, first
time I saw them,
I thought, how
strange, a valley
of palm trees,
surrounded by
these giant
and ugly
piles of
rocks.
One Week
You get one week
on Instagram per
tragedy, before
people go back
to posting their
shit.
You get one week
on Instagram per
tragedy—fat with
trauma spam and
virtue suckling—
then one day’s
finale of grief.
You get one week
on Instagram per
tragedy—then
they get their
week, and their
week—then we
all get a
lifetime
of sifting
through
ash.
The Thru-hiker
The first time I
felt compelled
to film some
thing after our
neighborhood
burned down—
and we were
left with a house
we thought was
our new home
that now stood
alone, in a de
pressed wasteland—
was CJ and our
dog Pangur, in
La Quinta, on a
concrete path
by the mountains.
CJ wore a purple
shirt, the sky
was pink, our
dog was black
with white socks,
on either side of
us were green trees,
a practiced calm,
the lingering
accent of oblivion.
Adrenaline
If you ever find
yourself in a
natural disaster
I suggest you
hang on for
as long as you
can to the
dangerous parts,
the adrenaline,
the near glimpses
of death, the race
away from the
place you love
that’s now gone,
that’s now com
pletely itself, the
fuck, we made
it, we’re here,
OK, The half-
baked sleep. The
mourning and the
bleary-eyed suction
of the cellphone
screen, awaiting
the next sound
bite of catastrophe
which gives you
permission to
have a drink.
Relatively speak
ing that’s the fun
part, that’s the
good stuff, every
thing after that—
when the ride
slows down, and
the well must
dry up, lest
you really
want to fuck it—
that’s the stuff
you want to
worry about,
it’ll get ya,
when the
world spins
on and you’re
left
with
the
ruined
pieces.
Isle of the Dead
It was suddenly
between plateaus,
stone Columbarium with
sheer white walls enshrining the swayed cypress trees.
Black. I saw it once before in Arizona,
and years earlier, in Iceland: From a cliff-side
I spotted the queer island, staring
back at me. Now here in Pipes Canyon, as we wallowed, expats from LA.
It was golden hour in the high desert
when the Isle appeared.
It travels and plants itself before you
not an omen, not foreboding,
just a statement
of
fact.