Have I told you about when I spent $30,000 in a matter of weeks—how I ended up smoking 40
cigarettes a day—how I stopped drinking water and started working out vigorously twice a
day—how I balanced my diet with green smoothies and burnt tortillas—how I drank a bottle of
wine at work every day until I ended up with 3 ruptured polyps in my small intestine—have I told
you how I fucked random men in the name of Satan—have I told you how careless I was with every
part of my body in the name of God—have I told you why I did all this—have you seen me
now—have you kissed me now—have you been over my house—have we made out—have I told
you I love you—did you believe me—have I made you something to eat—have I tucked you in—did
you know that pain is the sister of love and hate is the brother of pain—have we met—are you
sure—do you love me—amen

***

What I want is graceful age—a moon face, cratered, blindness burning / cataracts / a cigar in my
hand / fireworks in my mouth / full lips rouged at 89 / cracked skin / poetry oozing from my knees
/ bibles I can chew — wrinkled everything / hungry hands running their trembling fingers through
my silvery hair— a cane and a parrot on my shoulder / one for every shade of green —

***

The world is ending, isn’t it? The whole thing has given up. People dying in mass quantities —large
numbers, gone. Weather. Internal. External. Corrupt. I can’t look out my car window without
someone begging for money, for food, for comfort. Outside my apartment, an encampment of men
and women. Children. Dogs. Starving. In my warm existence—the guilt of wanting what I want
overwhelms—/ a desire felt for what? For whom? Love. That’s all I want. That’s all we want. These
people. These dogs. Nature. Nurture. Womb. Sacrifice. A bloodletting of sorts. It’s all useless. My
altar. My prayers. My spells. I stand and smoke on my lunch break. Watching people come in and out
of a mall full of things we don’t need but want. They look at their feet. The sky weeps. We’re all just
trying to make time go faster than yesterday. The world is ending and so are we.

***

money is warm everything, cold drinks—harder softer nights// swollen days—money energizes and
disrupts the tension between being fed and starving// my 8:30-5 provides me things// gets me
from point A to point B //allows the city to show me all the things I want and ignore the things I
need / money is greed/ bad appliances/ looks exchanged between a coffee and a pastry// cold
cigarettes in dim lit streets// trains and poverty / small sentences between huge intentions// I’m
gold you’re brass / if only because money doesn’t rust if it’s inside a plastic card/ whatever/I can’t
see where I’m going, money isn’t direction or a lover, or a woman with big lips / it isn’t a man with a
syllabus or a partial eclipse// it is imaginary, lucrative, secretive/ a womanizing power of “how many
times can I get away with this…”// let it go, open-palmed watch it regurgitate and grow

***

She’d probably flake on coming to her own funeral, because crowds were never something she
genuinely enjoyed—I say this with a smile, because once she got to wherever she was going, she
always enjoyed herself. Her laughter said as much. She was selfish and selfless. A paradox. A
hypocrite. Her secrets were shared with the few who reminded her of herself. A lover of pain and
love, she suffered both and enjoyed it. Her home was an extension of her need to go back into the
womb. Her moods were moons in constant flux, as many of you experienced. She never held back
an opinion, except as she aged, they became a little more discreet, a bit sweeter and less
unsharpened. She carried her ghosts well, allowing them to drift alongside her. She valued integrity
and disliked neediness. She was a mother to those that needed one, and a father to whoever needed
that. Mostly, she was a healer and a confidante. Someone you can bombard with bombs. Your
shrapnel never scared her. Her sanctuary was the desert, and if she ever took you there, she adored
you. If she ever showed you all her tattoos, she trusted you to see her body, not so much as
something to desire, but as a canvas of her past. She loved her parents like one loves things that
don’t belong to them. She loved her husband like one loves a flower or a mantra. With gusto and
contradiction. She never held on too tight, suffocation turned her off in that regard. She displayed a
sense of loyalty like a well-trained dog that sometimes bites. She was always on a quest of self-
discovery and enjoyed losing her mind now and then. Her poetry was how she made sense of all the
trivial things that felt colossal. Her tarot practice was also there as a tool to dig deeper and deeper.
She wanted to get lost and never return. She finally got her wish. She’s probably laughing at all of us
being so sad. “Stop the dumb shit,” she’d say. But how can we, when she’s out of reach.