i got up this morning throbbing with reality

in my head, my acts. walking back from the mechanic,

i realized i might stop: and quiet, and accept the city as it was, as not mere show but as a work twixt air and ground wrought from time in matter

but i could not so hold people, a young man smoking gainst a wall, perfect an image, looked back and i could not stand the gentle gaze

and i got home to sleep again but read instead some news, and wept

to be so open to reality then read jeffrey epstein's emails

it was too much to hold. i know not how you or any who climbed from out the cliff men push women over can shoulder still a hope for human beauty

i stared vacant at the side wall of our front garden

realizing it marked this place a gated community in its day, a cloister
midst threats who might walk from all directions
a castle, this apartment building, a palace as its name
always a border fort for capitalism, a barracks’ claim to land

i came in teary and found myself thumbing
how the beauty of my hometown comes in ruin

mendo gothic

there is a mournfulness to Mendocino

morning fog bluing a golden grassy hill
as it crashes on the boards of an old barn

ten thousands are the ghosts here
but they do not speak to me

and the trees that root this soil
turn from me when they hear its blood
and present only their thingly natures

our beauty lies in our ruin: dead grass
and cliff-anchored chain, this live oak marks
a grasping chokéd clearing
that one now dead once made to ranch
the blood of those killed for them

i sleep no more in my childhood room
but last i did felt watched
by one well come amid the trees
but he did not speak to me

now to bed again (and in that sleep what dreams?)

imagine my sitting self knocked over by the blown heart

like some drunk piling, tumbled icon

at last to carelessness

and soon enough to joy