Queen Dandelion
by Steve Abee
I am the eggman, I am the ashesman,
I am the erector set skeleton, a ghost
with a thousand snakes in my hair, scaffolding
worlds and walls with the planets in my hands,
the lips of old ladies sitting on porches
with the night slung over their shoulders,
the brittle fingers of tenement bricks scrawling
a lonesome gospel on the back of a Manny Mota
baseball card, left on the sidewalk, lone
like Lucy's 24 hr burrito shack on Hoover,
glowing yellow and green, horrible, calm
destiny in the middle of murmuring intersections
-Oh Baby how's it going, Baby gimme a ride-
I am a one man goof brain tear tired tribe
making peace pipes and long nights
with the gulls that ride shotgun with the waves,
searching like a stone for the street
the music is coming from, spinning an engine
for the wanting, for the way,
for the Astro Coffee Shop crossword puzzle player
who knows so many words,
for the Woolworth's cashier who tells me
which aisle the light bulbs have been moved to,
for the old Armenian men who sit with fish and canes
on the Alexandria bus bench and talk about the world,
the birds, hug and kiss, piss, moan and spit HAH,
Yes I am I am for the hearts that hang
harlequin faces in this city's glittering glitter,
stretching delirious into the far corners of forever
and the day after tomorrow,
for the naked brains blooming on glorious curbs,
unfolding eyes and branches, million-year-old
elephant tusks and roller disco shoe laces,
a naked man in a fifth-floor window singing
singing he just got laid,
a clown-faced pointy-headed guy pissed
off on the bus, mumbling graveyard incantations
to the cockroaches crawling from the seat,
a blond-wigged black lady checking Mademoiselle
and the new Spider Man at Cahuenga's International News,
laughing at them all: "I am beautiful, I am beautiful,"
the green-socked Mexican grandmother walking
back from Zamora's carniceria humming some song
and pulling a little kid along: "Come on, Come on,"
Kim Chee Pupusa Sanamluang Zankou Hollywood
Korea plays 9 ball All Night Vermont,
the transvestite putas, the wigged spandex eye
leaning out of lamp posts, pulling dudes off red light corners:
"Honey I am better than the real thing,"
the loonies walking their cigarettes
at the Edgemont Manor sanitarium floor,
the security guard wrinkling his forehead fingering his badge
moving his knight
to check the nappy-headed kid's king at Tang's Donut
and the buses sit sighing New Hampshire empty
and the sidewalks groan cracked
and the clocks move faceless
telling time from desire's delicious belly:
Days aren't marked by hours but by needs,
and the clouds hover mother over Montebello smokestacks
and the Marlboro man rides huge
alongside the Santa Ana Freeway
herding headlights on their way,
stars flung without course into a blind sky
and the stars scribble their notes along the fingernails
of Slauson's glass-boxed Chevron cashier,
and the stars melt through the beds at the Mark Twain
wino runaway needle roach hotel
frying through the eyes of the just ended bus ride
and the stars lay suicide down
mumbling delicate love letters in sanskrit teeth
at the edge of the Babylon pool: Lupe Velez
silent on the Moroccan-tiled toilet floor
and the stars carve their perfume into the sidewalks,
spitting lizard eyes through the mist,
faces through the waves, eyelashes through the freeway,
spines through the lawns, spleen through the bathrooms,
and I sing get back and get high
on all those angry and not so sure just which
off-ramp the discount swap meet is at:
the lost Kansas woman still wearing my grandmother's beehive,
the Michouacan man running with a bus transfer in his hand,
the slave ship descendant wondering how it's gonna get paid,
who listens when the wind is deaf,
we are all the same under the gun
fending off chilled night demons with suitcases
full of fragile newspapers and stained underwear,
playing cards from sleepless lovers,
lungs and knuckles and knives
from fathers we did not know,
kidneys and ribs that the doctors left spilt
on the porno shop floor,
the very young selling pussy and butthole:
ain't talking 'bout love--these eyes are hurting in their core,
eyes standing still dark doors spilling
storms across the steeples and bank walls,
eyes waiting in line in this tire mind for a fix, for a play,
for a dime, for a dollar,
something to chew on, a bowl of Jesus soup
long line, long long line
and the all night blood comes
black and blue hospital steam rising
slow bodies to the river, rolling straight rhythm bumpin time's
oldest revolution, breaking stones and statues and lips coming
out of the naked lady halls, doing out-of-key duets with the
Yum Yum donut smiley face man,
Oh a Sunflower breaks wild,
grows at the edge of the river San Gabriel,
the night unfolds its arms across a mean-street sparrow
flying a troubled mind past the windows of a blue-walled room
where a mother is holding her baby,
where the baby sucks her nipple,
where the world is small and necessary,
where I is a secret unfolding from the veins in her breast,
to those lips and we know we never forget
making love in the subterranean parking garages,
seed and motor oil twining oceans and disease,
a child is born, a child is born,
but there are no suns to guide,
you are alone,
and the asphalt stretches dripping headlights
into the bloodshot moon,
with the voodoo child swinging birth stones
from the purple jacaranda trees,
and dead men swoon in the wonder-voiced wind,
their toes dancing on the edges of mouths
gaping in nightmares,
moaning in lovers:
Mexican generals walking ghosts down the Pico streets
putting botanica handbills on car windows, inside doors,
and the phantom Gabrielano braves moaning starlights and fire through the brush
of the Cahuenga Pass,
the green-sheeted Okie car salesman chanting Pontiac, Buick,
wandering the weeds along the river downtown
and the ten-year-old El Salvador kid curls
down to sleep, like smoke through a door,
like dust to a sill, like ashes to a grave,
like a child to the floor, like a child to the floor
on some half-hidden MacArthur Park step,
death squad coyotes running races in his belly
while the sun coughs cringes writhes and
sinks like a bottomed-out hustler
on the other side of the world,
I am the orphaned streets,
I am the junked car vacant lots,
the gunshots, the umbilical knots,
lonesome like the 2nd street tunnel at 2A.M.,
sad like the Figueroa overpass with sleeping men,
beauty without knowing why, jewels to the horizon,
lit bags of Christmas lights spilt all over
while the wildflowers rosemary lupine weave their miracles
along the hills overlooking the roofs,
and a rose moves awkward
in a parking lot, behind a liquor store
on a street somewhere in my mind
where the ragged palm trees whisper in tall head rows:
soft eggs and red hots, lemon drops and rats feet,
sorrowful fronds seducing the pipes in the wall,
willowing up through the quiet toilets of joy,
bending for the baying ships and seahorse eyes,
a siren through the dry swaying steel of San Pedro diesel,
Holy Ghost sister, Bethlehem drifter,
through a green and crying sea,
dark hands baptizing car seats, a million rooftops,
all the hearts holding knives, the aching love-drunk eyes,
the cold gin hands of another lonely night,
a television spinning deep mother grief
through the savage lipless room,
hidden on the one thousandth street
and death sips the moon's secrets
from the breast of the paradise tree,
I am the breadman, I am the nextman,
in the time of truth and dying, I, the milkman
will be shot at dawn's delivery door,
and the roads, all the roads, croon cold down
to the water, across a queen, a woman, an eyelid of a dream,
whispering strings of green glowing horizontal avenues,
flowing black cracked asphalt, a mouth
parting a delicate sunset sky,
when it's about to be a blue-necked night all over again
and she moves, and she moves a hand,
brushing clouds across the sky,
grinding dark dirted desert love into the language of the waves,
I am the hunted dove,
I am the reckless sparrow,
the tick-tock cat eyes always moving,
the forever grey couple sitting on the bus bench
for hours together every night in front of Fatburger,
the woman swinging her legs, feet don't even touch the ground.
Oh Queen Dandelion
Oh Queen Dandelion
Oh Queen Dandelion swaying wisdom
in the belly of a burnt-out Ford,
spinning a wild wheel through the laughing gargoyles of time,
sewing butterfly wings to my smog woven wind,
dancing bugs bunny jigs along barbed wire fences,
playing hopscotch with the lost dogs
in the car lots of an endless breathless night,
swooning in the big band tropical sunset,
the deadly air of this car crashing world,
a hingeless mouth breathing changeless songs,
whispering veins through my ink,
rain through these cinders,
knives through this smoke,
fire through my mud,
tongues through these wounds,
your reasons blowing kisses
through the ruins.
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