Stepping Down

Turquoise travelogue of debris strewn beach netherworlds
lotus blossoms rotting on the bottom of a motel swimming pool

drifted a while there
like it would
make some kind of
sense if you had
the ticket stub                  (the transition leaves a crease where
                                               your mind used to be & the lit-up grid of
                                                every city you ever stumbled thru is left to
                                                burn like a wildfire in a kelp grove

              The Pleasures & Pains of Opium
The lost city of the Incas
                              the ripple of steel clouds
              Mexico City Blues

so much for the drunken boomerang
& the tide book with missing pages

nerve dance narcotica minus the iron halo

                                                    one breath deeper than the last

as I could take you there & walk away as I have so many times before inside the protocol that cuts like a wing into the damp night air