the night desires to be revved,
will leave a door unlocked,
a key in the wheel well
or designedly dropped from a visor.
A window will always wink,
to be broken by bits of spark plug
or jimmied down the glass.
This is mine.
Where is the window to break
in your life?
In a backyard off the 94, I demonstrate on the moon
how a dent pulled ignition and a toothbrush for a turned key
easily swoon the inner workings of a Ford.
Push the dent puller in,
turn the triangle, burrow the screw,
and metallic light falls in twirled shavings.
Before I snap the weight I say
nobody gets caught with this,
not because this is a felony,
we speak of prison inevitably,
as likely as sweeps and raids,
as common as falling.
Prison, for us,
taxes and deaths.
Nobody gets caught with this
because I took it from my grandfather’s tools.
. . .
To shoot someone we needed a gun;
Albert said he could get a pistol but we needed a car.
That’s how, at midnight, on a Tuesday,
we strolled down the street with a dent puller
trying to murder a man.
Not wanting to steal a car
from our neighborhood,
we take alleys we shouldn’t,
until cops chase us across
eight lanes of freeway and backyards.
To get away, I ran in a canyon
and a field of cactus.
The needles ripped my clothes,
left spiked fruit behind my knee;
with a knife wet under a garden hose,
I cut away skin and spines.
With arms around my boys’ shoulders
we walk home, but only I see god.
It was the Lord from his La Jollan gates,
the big white man in the sky hollered at me.
In pale distance and omniscient beard,
in sky clouded with open azure:
No murder this night for you,
nor any night for you,
only a hot bath and plate of papas fritas
from a grandmother’s hands
and four hours of needles
shooting from the skin
and holding the faucet like a gun.
2.
Yes, families are supposed to be circuses.
Accept it, and accept that the acrobat’s taffy
of satin will twirl, and the bears in tutus will spin
over the exposes in the warped wood
and cracks in the waxy linoleum,
all the while your grandfather will yell
You no like it, go in the canyon and eat tomatoes.
Avoid his boots from under the Mercury Marquis.
Accept your aunt, the invisible lady, naked in the yard,
mustached and fat, fixing her car’s transmission
by sanding moons on the body at night.
Listen to your cousin make beats
and let his sister teach you the “Dougie”
while their mother juggles meth and late rent fees.
Accept it. There is knife throwing with your uncles.
Children run the streets yelling while you drink soda
from a straw in a sandwich bag, and watch
morning jump through a flaming hoop
to avoid the insult of a whip. Afternoon
stands on her hind legs and opens wide, showing
missing teeth. Accept that night stays in his cage.
Remember all that you see. Memory is a fist to the eye.
3.
Some run away with the circus;
I ran away with the canyon,
where there were no tomatoes.
Nothing suns the canyon floor
or grows along the freeway but trash,
no overgrowth of eucalyptus and elm,
frayed palm trees, or mangled brush
to shade the snagging of teenager’s
bruised lips in braces. No secret trail
leads to foyers and dens furnished
with broken box springs and books
without tables. This beach
of rocks is where furniture
and mattresses swim to die.
Freeway
