Slow Boat Express

Expect anything more than
a poem, a song, a diagram

them dark stars
them them ragged flowers
              spell death in Cantonese

Some other time when I was
learning to crawl up Cahuenga
Blvd where the streetlights
wouldn’t let go
like a voice in the trunk of a
stolen Corvette

but I was pulling deep off the bittersweet smog
expecting nothing
talking to myself

spun around in the deep night

from there to here