Prayer Shot

2% organic milk, and I've been told by a trusted confidante that things tend to go the way they've already been going, and with a 2% effort, energy moves in the direction you want things to go. And Tarah and Alex are here this afternoon, planning their wedding. It's to be in January, at Silver Rock Resort. Right at the watermark of the ancient inland sea shoreline. I've discovered recently that I live precisely where the beach for the Sea of Cortez once was, northernmost.

So today it's 113 degrees, el desierto, and I thawed a frozen solid half gallon of 2% fat organic milk on the supernovaheated front sidewalk in 15 minutes or less. Last night, I was in L.A., Venice, Silver Lake and Hollywood. Had the privilege and high honor of being invited to read at Beyond Baroque, the "ground zero" of the L.A. poetry scene since the 70's. There are still trippy lit-mags and zines lining the racks, cool things done on typewriter and mimeograph, and featuring L.A. poetry O.G.'s like Bukwoski.

Copies of my odd-horizoned desert lit mag Phantom Seed #1 already there, and crappy copies of the first run of my 2007 chapbook "Dry Waterfall." I switched those for a few that are good, and made a prayer shot with issue #2 of Phantom Seed, profiling that in front of the few issues of #1. Issue #3 soon to be, and the cool Pacific ocean breeze, sluicing across the open back of my risque halter top. The silk and beaded one I bought while shopping with my friend Swamiji in some exotic store, in NYC, I think, when we were on a Bhakti poetry tour a few years ago.

And circling back to L.A., Jet Blue is what I always fly these days to and from the east coast. I was in very erudite reading company, and honored to be invited - a fundraiser for and celebration of Askew literary magazine, a newspaper-folio style which comes out of Venice, CA and edited by poets Phil Taggart and Marsha de la O. My poetry has appeared in a past issue, and I'd like to contribute again. Nothing quite like hearing a spray of 20 incredible poets/readers, all at the top of their game and on point. The lights on the podium+microphone were too-bright, I couldn't see a thing except the page below me, and three tiny plastic bottles of Evian water lining the left, and finally one of the poets, who recited an excellent poem by memory, twisted open one of the bottles, but didn't drink it till he left the stage. Pivot, swish.

I rewrote my poem "Maturity Class," and read that. Made it a little more cutting-edge although I chickened out and cut some of the edge out right before I read. Funny that my poem was straddled in position between sex-sexuality poems right before me and right afterwards. I had a line about the daughter in the poem gagging on her milk, when reading a certain chapter, but switched it to the mother/narrator gagging on green tree (assonance with the word, "maturity,") and I've learned recently that lowfat or skim milk is the favorite drink of sustenance, in lieu of food, for anorectic women and girls.

I can't publish the poem here right now. It's been accepted for the upcoming issue on "gender" in Poemeleon magazine, which requires first-time online publishing rights, and has already been print-published in Pacific Review magazine. How many times can I change that poem around? I like to think I'm getting more punk and rebel and daring, which I've always been, just now it's sprinkling into my poems, or maybe sort of volcanic-erupting - I always wanted to be a singer in a rock band!

Afterwards, I drifted off the freeway, gratefully, onto the gritty streets of Hollywood, Silver Lake, my brother Jerry a cool DJ who lives in a walkup apartment above a much-filmed liquor store. He ferries us through backstreets to Thai Town in his Mercedes S-8, and Mike says he'd just as soon grab something from McDonald's and ride around all night, but I insist on real food, so we ended up at Astroburger a local S.V. hangout spot, and ate greasy patty melts while being stared down by two tables of L.A. cops. The hollywood restaurants were all full with Friday night partiers. No more pretend, no more late night food finding games. We didn't want to wait for something respectable. Process it all today with the milk.

Back to the kids. They may or may not rent my house from me, while I move...? I've agreed to pay for the flowers, for the wedding, and I'm numbing all this wedding overload and the shock of how fast everything is going down with that, out by writing on my blog, in and out of consciousnss, as Tarah says. They're on the couch, I'm at the kitchen table, across the room from them.

Huh? Oh yeah, high end Mexican food for the catering. Uh, yeah, Silver Rock Resort for the reception, where they hold the Bob Hope classic. Umm, what? Wedding dresses, oh yeah, oh yeah, I'm with you. Who's more 23 right now, me or her? I distinctly realize I'm a coward, hiding behind this tiny laptop screen, tapping little letters into words on the fingernail-dented keyboard. What, Tarah? Oh, where do I want to eat? Ruth, you are totally ignoring me? If you don't want to go we are leaving right now. Where do you want to go? Mom!! Okay okay, just a few more words....

I'm getting that feeling of my life heading for a cliff. What am I going to do, by myself, alone in the world, without her? Shoulda gotten married years ago, but that's one of those ass-kicking hindsight things that do absolutely no good right now. This is something I can hardly believe, a tattoo getting bigger and bigger, an empty nest, awful cliche, and mine isn't nestled gracefully in some beautiful elm tree next to a lovely singing creek, but warped by desert summers and embedded in a tangled, mace-fisted colla cactus tree, that mismatched lopsided nest now warped and branded deeper and deeper onto my forehead. So this is the shit that sends moms into full tilt boogie, how long can I keep playing pinball, odd chords of the Who's "Tommy" in my video-eye and I'm in jr. high again. Good. They're on the couch together, giddy in their plans, and sidetracked leafing thru some wedding guidebook stuff.

I've got just a minute here. We're off for spaghetti and iced tea at Mario's. And I'm paying for flowers. It's going to be okay. And more. Who will I work with? Goldfish pretzels sink and swim. As they tell me, assure me, you can prove it by the watermarks on rocks nearby, yes, this whole town was once under the sea.