from The California Poem




			         In my topophiliac state
			I am receiving & transmitting
			international influence now —
				forget my sclerophyllic 
			this or that —
			            bzz bzz tap tap 



This place exists in how it compares to Kentucky,
Khartoum — that's its outside state
In the inside state, I was walking
up the mountain, on my way to Seven Falls
	when a naked man in a motorcycle helmet
	came running toward me

	Hey, girl!


	
	(Girl running on beach)
	(Girl worrying about fat legs)
	


Readers, predestined victims, now listen
	to all there is to say about anything, including
local anatomy,
	autonomy of all opossums, opossum anomie

	o, o, o opossum
	oh, reader

let this be to you
like sweet pao on Sunday
when the caracals come down from the mountain
& lick our ears
& the caged Orang Utan busts free
like a golden-assed goddess ex machina
waiting for the tender life of
fur-lined avenues of trees
and I will
speak to thee succinctly
of March 4, 2003's dream:

"STRUM
	     STRUM"

	I was a singer / harper, a poet
	     to entertain the whores

	I was 10 years old & a cunning
	     little thief: I planned to
	     rob the duchess / madame
	     the house and all its customers
	     in our seaside town by the sea

	There were women with pearls & chantilly
	     ruffles, men in fedoras

			In a plot to
	go on the open
	road, I took the J-train downtown, steaming up the windows by french-
	kissing strangers

	I met my girlfriend on a hillside
	She was an assistant to the duchess in this new boomtown
	We made out on the dandelion hill; we entered the castle, I planned
	to steal a few things
	
	Here comes the duchess, a 
	raven-haired middle-aged cruel beauty
	with new tennis shoes.  I hide in her room, a room of latches
	
	& stairwells & thick layers
	of shining, cream-colored paint,
	chiffon, organza, necklaces, no books of poetry
	I hold as still as possible
	but she comes into her closet-suites
	& finds me standing there.  She is surly
	as a mad possum for 
	2 seconds (I count them) then shows me
	her new shoes — black side lace-up leather fancy
	"tennis shoes" — & 3 brown 
	puppies on a leash at her 
	feet, which I pet; & my girlfriend
	is whispering, "Did you see that, did you
	see how she took to you?" in my 
	ear, "I've never seen her take
	to anyone like that."  I 
	say I know, It's the power of
	the poet /
	the harper / the singer who
	casts some magic over
	her ears & eyes


“STRUM
	     STRUM”


*


















 
			The Talking Body of California




Don't move s/he said, Your mood is resting
ever so on my sunlight & my sunset
is resting ever so delicately on that flattened
candelabra the SEA1



*


















			"Un-Natural Bird-Egg Eating Thief,

                                                                   Alien Invader of California"




No opossum is opposed to one p,
because they have opposable thumbs nor
to being the only marsupial marquisa on the continent,
philandering opossum of unfraudulent 
thighs &
hanging from trees, toes
visibly seen.  Visibly seen?  What tautology, white
beast, you little
Algonquin, glowing in the
gutter in my dream

By my autumnal trees of opuscule all
pouches have been stopped and searched in the pitch-
black night amidst minor works of nature

Cops stuff meaty hands not delicate pawishnesses that leave tracks like the writing of eyelashes
but beefy & crammed into pockets searching for cocaine

Just so, La Migra stops opossums at borders with
  billy clubs, & sends them back
    whence they came	  whence they came (c. 1906)2 
        from South or East, stoned marsupials
	    sipping on the golden soups of CA
	        marble-eyed in the night & hanging, where 
      		    do you lay your head, opossumness, 
		        where do you play
		    on your optophones, converting light into sound & so 
		        enabling the blind:
			    read this by ear



*










1 Significant Ecological Area (SEA)
2 "Mr. J. R. Kocher, a jeweler who lived at Tenth and San Antonio streets, 
San Jose, imported, about 1910, seven opossums from Jackson County, Tennesee. At
least five of the animals in this lot were known to have escaped from cages in San Jose. 
Other captive animals in this vicinity were thought to have escaped about the same 
time."