I saw limes twisted and sucked dry, void of juice
lying loose, tying the noose, the end of the drip
all roly poly on the happening quartz counter
like a space wanderer in a cradle
bedding down for the log night
dreaming broken glass kaleidoscopic tight
to the missions of a windmill baby lost in my arms
I heard the howl of my own soul
begging for a clinical reprieve
from all the jury-rigged junk.

I took a stroll on the midnight drive skyline high  
a view from Plaza 8 bricked-up town
and the mesa where I talked to the cows crossing my
path and the aluminum clowns were all the rage
And I crashed out underneath the sky, beneath the eye of
the butter melt sun.
I didn’t care if the tarantulas
or the scorpions
came home for dinner
to devour me
as I wailed in my state
for the water of my life
the wind of my life
the distance that has devoured all our pasts
the soul crimes committed, remitted
that will leave us forever stranded on the wings
of a bleached thread struggling for life
underneath my morning glory sky of astronaut zest.

The gory story of all that is consumed through a
backward tick, brass pendulum chime of my heart
swinging ever deeper like Poe through my bones
Perhaps I should have stayed
in that beautiful torturous L.A.
blasting my ride down DelAmo Blvd at 80 mph plus
the wind ruffling my feathers for the night
taking a right at the carnival mall all bright
blasting my rod up Lakewood Blvd swizzle stick land
in search of another streetlight, another fight, another tip of the hat
to the deli guru at Alpha Beta and the spinning meat slicer
does he remember he has broken feet
the causeway of the midnight beat
before I shoved my hand like Superman
through the ceramic stall of some Ceylon grotto
that place of the double vision hall, the green mist
The jungle land harbors trickle down my wrist
blood balloons full of question marks and Listerine rain
and the boom of a heavy dungeon door like black magic
and the mage of L.A. wonders — Is this what it has come to?

Blackness in the sun, teary-eyed stumbles in the great
desert void with no warm chandelier bed to hear my pleas for
rest of the on-holiday dreaming kind
This all just a ramble, a bramble of ghosts
a filtering of a fractured fractal in the dead of night
walks across barren fields decapitated with wine
and the songs of a cuckoo clicking across the wires
uttering unbelievable tales of ocean liner fever
on a sea of burnt sienna glass and the wounds of town.

Hush. Can you hear the whisper of the Pecos
the vein pumping the blood mud of our sins through another
hole in the desert plane, underneath the machines hiss
And I’m off the mark this nochy (night)
my arrow is like melting rubber remnants of old dolls in cardboard attic boxes
the barrel of my stun gun like a spent erection flapping in the
harrowing winds of copulation nation
The other planet smiled so sweetly today,
like it was so glad to see me
I don’t even know where it is
but it had a salacious memory
like a Hollywood Blvd lime from another time.

By

Aaron Echoes August