Tangible Cities The city is sun-drenched on even days and swathed in fog on the odd ones. Mondays the citizens eat burritos the size of feet stuffed with spicy beans and rice, dripping tomato salsa and guacamole. At dusk in summer the rollercoasters run sinister. Neon and taffy colored lights spill over the city. The streets were designed in the style of veins, all coming from the heart and barely able to handle the flow of traffic, wind, women in sandles and men wearing backpacks. Breathing out smoke is a pleasure. It stays in the air and forms the clouds. Engines run past us and our sleep is full of electricity. We dream of lightning. Music is loud and flowers open to scent the air. Our muscles grow limber. Butterflies pass through our air, whales through our waters. We dock our boats and build beach fires. We drink coffee and become bumblebees, drumming. No one drives very fast. Stoplights remind us how to breathe. It is a carnival It rains on Tuesday. Easter Sunday (2 churches) We drove off into the desert in a pick-up truck real american kids got stoned on the Indian reservation. a private dirt road wheels stuck in the gravel, under a stretch of rain clouds, water evaporating before it could touch down. The old church, some of them with eyes closed worshipful eyes turned up even to the chipped ceiling and some of them in neon, brand new running shoes, no socks snapping pictures. They worship in a different way. No different than I, this morning kneeling in the church on Valley View Street behind nicely dressed locals with the body of Christ still melting on my tongue only thinking of my own way of taking Communion. Your body, my blood cheating death believing in resurrection for a night or so. Tucson Out here in the desert no water home a short walk away but still out here there is that possibility. and a city has sprung up imagine that among the yellow flowers orange rocks saguaro cacti imagine that. among the closer sky and closer sun thinner air and wind among the thirsty lizards and the dirt roads, the desperate people and the skyline fatigue and clean air constellations which are also closer a little too close to death or God a little too close to angels out here in the desert. I hope I dont see them too soon. Angels with stone wings and cracked tongues Angels with empty canteens beginning to drop the ego under the mojave sun your empty directions led me beyond the speed limit to a daytime sun whose light swallows stars and a 24-hour heat. your    north    south    west    east brought us to this windy cliff, red pebbles flung like dead seeds in the sand. the arroyo below where once there was water. a specific place with no sense of place, directions meaningless. this windy and hollow canyon swallows human voices, and your    north is one of those scraps which are torn away into the scream of the wind. Voiceless, I was unable to warn you of this. Voiceless, I am unable to chant out the words which have followed me for days, like radio waves let go let    go let go your    south is the dried up husk of a bird in the sand. Migration is no option. Mummified, torn from maps, a reminder. If as barren travelers, we were to unravel every connection and toss the tattered remains of what we grope into the preoccupied wind, could we return on the same roads which brought us here? what is it to be lost? let go, let go, let go of the way home. your west    was held by the throats of coastal clouds, couldnt follow us here. west    fell away from me like a curtain over a dusty window. i let it go like what you would call--hours-- shards of language which have nothing to do with the gathering shadows, the only remnants of thirst which drink up the landscape. and your    east has taken to long walks at night, alone. i have seen it wandering blindly, looking only at the moon, stumbling into trash cans and scraping its shins. east    which each morning must know loss, for the glory of the dawn, east    must let go of the sun.
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