Gracias for the surgeon and the steel plate.

Gracias for summer rivers and summer rocks.

Gracias for the kid and for the wife, 2 days walking out.

Gracias for Naomi’s house while the 2 drove out of the Cascades.

Gracias for the little bottle of pills and for I-5 bending behind us.

Gracias for I-5 in her eyes 2 days driving south.

Gracias for the mockingbirds on the roadside.

Gracias for the coughing from the other room.

Gracias for the corny Japanese movies.

Gracias for whoever it was who was there.

Gracias for the Eskimo Pie of the little vagina of the squirrel or coyote and the polished aorta of the internal combustion tree: a mighty toilet paper roll-style flensing of phenomena from our meats and fatty substances and flesh of circumstance so I could sop beer sweat intelligence from North Broadway faces with their fingers and wires clacking and roiling.

You be the judge: in one, his face is too large for the screen, but in spite of massive pixelation, anyone could see who it was.

Telling about war on terror, war on everything. Me staring at his huge nostrils.

A flicker of movement—a human appendage drooped out of one nostril.

Floppy like a pale arm, then its hand waved at me.

Ethan, (I speak to you who are not here, obviously);

you went out with kitchen lights on, rice cooking on the stove.

Sliding glass door to the backyard open, 9 or 10 PM,

how terrible those final hours: no equivalent is possible.

The weeping woman who cannot shield her children or her baby

from the soldiers machinegunning families in the ditch is not like

the fictive combatants coded in computer games on your console.

The thousands who were drugged and thrown out of helicopters

into the sea (their eyes torn out, some soldiers said) are not like

trash bags we tossed out after cleaning your room and your Jeep.

A room ankle deep in socks and clothes, Nerf gun, drumsticks and stuff.

The five hundred women and girls of Juarez and the thousands of women

and girls their bodies (‘showing signs of torture’) scattered across Mexico and

Central America, their terrors aren’t equivalent to the terrors of Fresno’s malls,

minimalls and avenues, suburbs of neat lawns, ranch-style houses, SUVs and

indifference of everybody in the face of loneliness and horror at the absurdity

of the loneliness and terror of daily life, absurdity, loneliness and despair of whole

populations going about daily lives as if it’s all a business and nothing more,

absurdity and terror of everyone going about these lives as if this is a boring job

and nothing more, absurdity of going through days killing time with movies,

PS2, drinking, marijuana, vehicles, school activities and ideas, the terror

of nothing more, horror and loneliness of nothing more. No equivalents

for those final feelings, Ethan; this world goes on. In front of the house

where you lived a little boy bouncing a basketball ignored Dave’s hello.

Empty parking lot surrounding a Black Angus restaurant. People walking by.

Fields of orchards east of town to the Sierra foothills. Jet fighter planes of the

144th Fighter Wing of the California Air National Guard shriek overhead.

Ravaged face of a woman standing at a crosswalks. No equivalence;

now the final hours and their violence is over—Dave and I went into the garage

and took down the heavy bag and untied the rope and coiled it.

Photos classmates posted to Facebook, with dozens or hundreds of tributes and

goodbyes, show what a friend called ‘beauty’; she said you were beautiful.

The images and words, the videos, pulse in electrons through the servers

and screens for a time. The fury and violence of feeling is gone. Pictures and

words in electron fuzz outlast us. This afternoon I was thinking of this, and you, Ethan,

as I rode my bike toward the ridge in the last eastern folds of the Santa Monica

Mountains that are the spine of Griffith Park, and speeding downhill, I didn’t see

the baby rattlesnake till too late, less than ten inches long, a Southern Pacific

rattlesnake they call it, with beautiful brown diamonds; I’m afraid I crushed its tail.

What kind of life for a rattlesnake with rattles crushed by a bicyclist?

We poked at it with a stick till it went up in the dry leaves of the embankment.

On the southern edge of town, beyond the new juvenile court building and its outliers, beyond the broad empty parking lots with a few youths idling in reflective orange vests and caps, across a dusty stretch of dirt road to county pavement and farm shacks with wide vineyards and fallow fields in brilliant sunshine, “Bldg 716″. Our two vehicle caravan negotiates via cell phone and we’re let in the compound through the electric gate. As we approach the doors of the large windowless blockhouse, an assistant approaches us and verifies who we are. The mass of the building thrusts one pillar in front of the entrance, and that pillar exhibits on one side the quadrangular stainless steel doors (each one with a handle like a car door) one might associate with a morgue. But the coroner does not allow viewing of the body on premises, and the assistant punches a code into the keypad of the automatic door to allow us into the lobby. The boy’s body will have to be viewed later a a chapel across town, across the street from a cemetery, for a fee. The assistant tells us someone will bring out the boy’s personal effects and she exits through steel doors which reveal a corridor, then close behind her. Another assistant (a young dark haired woman, seemingly little older than the boy had been) brings out the boy’s camera, laptop, wallet, cell phone, etc., in his black backpack, and tells us she is sorry for our loss. While his mother looks through the boy’s wallet and laptop and backpack on the row of chairs against the wall, and his brother checks the camera, the elderly coroner or assistant becomes curious, leaves his chair and brings his face to the large bullet-proof window and peers at the family. Behind him, a bank of close-circuit TVs show the entrance of the building, the lobby, the compound gate, the fence line, etc. A younger clerk or assistant sits before the bank of TVs. After a moment, we return to our vehicles in the full sun of the compound and drive along the fence line to wait for the electric gate.

I brood through empty hours of wind like peering through yellow panes of an abandoned storefront.

I hike across the rocks above the one raven reckoning a huge moon would rise through thin clouds like striations of memory.

Early morning at Kelso Depot, a man uses a long arm with a mechanical claw to shift a load of steel rails by the tracks, a man sleeps in his camper shell with his boots jutting out, Kelso Depot is closed but I wash in the restroom and walk in sweet airs of pepper trees.

I eat cans poured over rice, looking out across fifty or 100 miles of valley scrub (U.S. 40 twenty miles to the south), ranges folding into distant haze as if indistinctly recalled.

Fade at reading, fall asleep—finally I pay attention to whatever it was.

I needed to move through empty days without shelter, without shade.

I needed to sit in the front seat in the back, sit in the front seat in the back.

Forgot the toothpaste, found an old toothbrush so I can brush my teeth with nothing. Wash, rusty water from a pump.

Barber Peak looms darkly over the campground of several campfires, families, tents, bus-size RVs at one end and outhouses, Barber Peak riddled with millions of holes, cubbies, flues and caves.

Behind Barber Peak, desiccated cowshit everywhere, gray piles of it, horseshit, road apples falling apart, scuffed hoof prints and tracks of shoes, curlicue of coyote shit on the trail, a jeep trail crossing sandy eroded washes, a fire through here a decade or 2 ago removed Joshua trees blooming in hanging clusters of creamy white blossoms, elsewhere.

Out of the night sky, the tireless wind.

—returning to L.A. from the desert:

Los Angeles Times Festival of Books

Blue Guts,

Black Peeple’s Oil,

Eye Zoom Itemz,

Subcutaneous Tacos,

Blistering Products,

Okay Okay Okay,

Flensing & Marketing,

Stiff Caked Music,

Organic Rapid-flex Weenies,

Grover Washington Juice,

The Red Veins,

Mawkish Pop Youth,

Fatty Eye Cream,

Flowers of Rototiller,

Thanks to Our Customers for 15 Years,

Golf Cart World,

Brown Oil Peeple,

Chili Vibe,

British Psychological Services,

Battling Grief? Hire an Attorney,

Marine Corps Forward Logistical Base,

29 Palms Marine Corps Base,

Purple Stains,

Photo Insemination Practice,

Bright Toggle Diddling,

Vinyl and Aluminum Chronologies,

Expect More From Dog Skin,

Buttery Blood Recycling,

Conformity Markers,

Plausible Bone Tidings,

Gas Sausage Massage,

Face Ribbons,

Exploitation Cap,

Pre-Chewed Divisions,

Balzac Dog Skin,

Coma Leftovers,

Daly City Leftovers,

Fissures of Maternity,

Flank Real Estate,

Accident Victim Sound,

Thin Iffy,

Scrubbed Shag Fleece? Hire an Attorney,

Pocky Prognostications,

Sotomayor Filling,

Prose-Stained Intermediate Care,

Busy Senator Suites,

Paint Thinner,

Mossy Wires,

Drubbing Fog,

Mired Action Collusion and Careers,

Pastel Distrust Estates.

once we had racist neighbors not far from here, two brothers—they lived directly across the street from us (we knew they were racists as one had assured me proudly that he had told a “salt and pepper” couple that the house we later rented “had already been rented”)–and when my wife parked in front of their house, the more idiotic one ran out of his front door and screamed abuse at her for parking there; and when i went and knocked on their door shortly thereafter, it was the fatter more duplicitous bastard (who said he was building safety inspector for the city of pasadena) who answered the door, apologizing for his brother, he nonetheless added, “between you and me, my brother has a screw loose, so maybe your wife ought not to park here”—those brothers are like the u.s. and israel

Claires: a big pile of dirty dishes:

Cotton On: I washed the dirty dishes:

CR Jewelers Diamond Outlet: a drinking glass slipped out of my hand:

Disney Store Outlet: I grabbed for it but it shattered:

Fossil (Temporarily closed for Construction): a shard stabbed the center of my right palm:

Gap Outlet: bleeding in the sink, I lifted out pieces of broken glass:

Guess? Accessories: sharp forms and shapes obscured:

Hot Topic: shards of glass hidden in bubbles and suds:

Kenneth Cole Outlet Store: to drain the suds I reached into the drain:

Kids Foot Locker: found more pieces there:

LACOSTE Outlet: one piece sliced open my fingertip:

Lids: paper towels in both hands, I went to type this:

Marc Ecko Cut & Sew Outlet: blood on the porcelain:

NikeFactoryStore: palm fronds torn off by the wind storm:

Old Navy: scattered in the street:

Saks Fifth Avenue OFF 5TH: a possum run over by a car:

Solstice Sunglass Outlet: bloody, shaking, unable to walk, trying to rise:

Spencers: a chihuahua sitting between lanes of traffic:

Sunglass Hut: a palm frond hanging in a tree

Tillys: a palm frond hanging on an electrical wire:

BCBGMAXAZRIA: forgotten lizards, all dried up in bottles placed on the fence line:

Coach Factory Store: dead newborn rabbits in the cage with the rabbit chewing a hole in its own breast:

Icing by Claires: dead rabbit with ants on it:

SGH Sunglass Hut: dog’s body lying a long time against the median:

Tommy Bahama Outlet: dog’s body swelling a long time under the underpass:

Zena Hats: the palm frond wasn’t a dog’s body:

Sanrio: two men lying in the avenue at night:

Spencers: the motorcycle lodged underneath a car:

Cotton On: clusters of bystanders, some with cell phones

The Childrens Place Outlet: a man on his back in the center lane of the freeway:

abercrombie Outlet: blood shining and broken glass at night:

Burlington Coat Factory: large pickup truck stopped at his head:

Carters: who is dead in the Rolodex:

Disney Store Outlet: the names are not dead:

Gap Outlet: the dead numbers:

Gymboree Outlet: which numbers:

H&M: papers that must be thrown away:

Journeys Kidz: things you must discard:

Justice: these must be discarded:

Kids Foot Locker: “shelf-life”: because:

Marshalls: it must move: or desist:

NikeFactoryStore: pig valve attached to heart:

Nordstrom Rack: titanium valve implanted in heart:

Old Navy: the hotel was blown up but Margaret Thatcher wasn’t in it:

OshKosh BGosh: even though she handed over the cash, the robber shot the girl through the neck:

Polo Ralph Lauren: she’s paraplegic at 18:

Rainforest Cafe: I kicked the teen karate kid in his chest:

The Childrens Place: he tried to block with one hand:

Tillys: the blow dislocated his middle finger:

Tommy Hilfiger: which doubled back from the middle joint:

Via Havana: Israeli artillery blew up 106 civilians at a Red Cross station:

Bed Bath & Beyond: in Qana, southern Lebanon, injuring hundreds more:

Burlington Coat Factory: “It doesn’t matter,” the old man sighed:

Gap Outlet: I dreamed it was like before:

Group USA Clothing Company: by that I mean like we had things between us:

JCPenney Outlet Store: not like now:

Marshalls: now there’s very little:

Nordstrom Rack: we let it go:

Off Broadway Shoe Warehouse: then you awaken:

Saks Fifth Avenue OFF 5TH: there’s some relief:

Sam Ash Music: because it’s no longer like that:

The Childrens Place: you’re not stuck there:

Akoo | Social Music Television: but:

Build A Bear Workshop: it’s not like that now:

Dave & Busters: rust-colored blood:

GameWorks: Cesar died yesterday of colon cancer:

Improv Comedy Club & Dinner Theatre: I’ll see his ex-wife at work:

Rainforest Cafe: his two little girls will be there I expect:

AMC 30 Theatres: I stuffed the serrated blades of the fronds till the container was full:

Kamiyama Sushi at Market Broiler: one night through the open window, a moth flew into the inside of the light fixture:

tuttimelon: the next day it was gone:

Bath & Body Works: some things occur like unheard music:

Bed Bath & Beyond: some things are lives going on in other rooms:

Carlton Hair Salon and Day Spa: they move:

Designer Fragrances & Cosmetics Co. Lancome: move:

Estee Lauder Company Store (Inside Saks Fifth Avenue OFF 5TH): “BRAKE SERVICE” letters lit from behind all night:

Fragrance Outlet: dry palm fronds ripped off and flying in a high wind at night:

GNC

MasterCuts

Nail Trix

Perfumania

Planet Beauty

Saks Fifth Avenue OFF 5TH

Vitamin World

Bed Bath & Beyond

Bed Bath & Beyond

Bose

Burlington Coat Factory

Saks Fifth Avenue OFF 5TH

Sleep Number by Select Comfort

Tommy Bahama Outlet

Warehouse Furniture Outlet

CR Jewelers Diamond Outlet

Burlington Coat Factory

Claires

CR Jewelers Diamond Outlet

Daniels Jewelers

Fossil (Temporarily closed for Construction)

Grand Jewelers

Movado

Premier Fine Jewelry Direct

Saks Fifth Avenue OFF 5TH

Shemoni Jewelry

Tic Time Watch Repair

Ultra Diamonds

Zales The Diamond Store Outlet

Coach Factory Store

Kenneth Cole Outlet Store

Saks Fifth Avenue OFF 5TH

COACH Mens Factory

Cotton On

J.Crew Factory

Abercrombie & Fitch Outlet

Aeropostale

American Eagle Outfitters

Anchor Blue

Banana Republic Factory Store

Burlington Coat Factory

Calvin Klein

Converse

Dockers

ecko unltd.

Foreign Exchange

Fossil (Temporarily closed for Construction)

Gap Outlet

GUESS Factory Store

H&M

Hollister Co. Outlet

Hot Topic

Inland Board Shop

J.Crew Factory

Journeys

Kenneth Cole Outlet Store

Levis Outlet Store

Lids

Marc Ecko Cut & Sew Outlet

Marshalls

NikeFactoryStore

Nordstrom Rack

Oakley Vault

Old Navy

PacSun

Polo Ralph Lauren

Quiksilver Factory Store

Rainforest Cafe

Saks Fifth Avenue OFF 5TH

Tillys

Timberland

Tommy Bahama Outlet

Tommy Hilfiger

U.S. Polo Assn.

Wilsons Leather Outlet

Zumiez

J.Crew Factory

LACOSTE Outlet

Calvin Klein

Fossil (Temporarily closed for Construction)

Hugo Boss Factory Store

Journeys

Nautica

NikeFactoryStore

Sean John Factory Store

Tillys

Spencers

Diamond Wireless

AT&T

Bose

Electronics Boutique

Sam Ash Music

SecondSpin.com

Optical / Eyewear

LensCrafters

Oakley Vault

SGH Sunglass Hut

Solstice Sunglass Outlet

Sunglass Hut

Brueggers Bagels

Burger King

Cinnabon

Everything Yogurt & Salad Cafe

GameWorks

Jody Maronis

Kamiyama Sushi at Market Broiler

Kellys Cajun Grill

Kenny Rogers Roasters

La Salsa Fresh Mexican Grill

Panda Express

Sbarro The Italian Eatery

tuttimelon

Wetzels Pretzels

Dave & Busters

Improv Comedy Club & Dinner Theatre

Market Broiler

Rainforest Cafe

C&C Market Research

Foreign Currency Exchange

Ontario Mills Management Office

Ontario Mills Security

Ontario Police Department Mills Station

Cotton On

Aldo + K!DS

Bakers Outlet

BCBGMAXAZRIA

Burlington Coat Factory

Charlotte Russe

Clarks Bostonian

Converse

Famous Footwear Outlet

Finish Line

Foot Locker

J.Crew Factory

Journeys

Journeys Kidz

Kenneth Cole Outlet Store

Kids Foot Locker

Love D

NikeFactoryStore

Nine West

Nordstrom Rack

Off Broadway Shoe Warehouse

Payless ShoeSource

Robert Wayne Footwear

Saks Fifth Avenue OFF 5TH

Shiekh Shoes

Shoe Palace

Shoeteria

SKECHERS

Spaza Shoes

stride rite, keds, sperry Factory Store

The Childrens Place

Tillys

Tommy Bahama Outlet

V Generation

Vans Outlet

Auntie Annes

Auntie Annes

Bananas Ultimate Juice Bar

Cinnabon

Haagen Dazs

Kamiyama Sushi at Market Broiler

Nestle Toll House Cafe

Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory

Starbucks Coffee

Sweet Factory

The Cheesecake Factory Bakery Cafe

Betsey Johnson Outlet

All Flags & Sports

Hat Club

LEGO

Lids

Pro Image

Rainforest Cafe

Security & Spy Outlet

Sleep Number by Select Comfort

Spencers

The Raider Image

Tillys

Via Havana

Fanzz

Finish Line

Foot Locker

Journeys

Kids Foot Locker

NikeFactoryStore

Pro Image

Build A Bear Workshop

Disney Store Outlet

Electronics Boutique

GameWorks

Betsey Johnson Outlet

Foreign Exchange

J.Crew Factory

LACOSTE Outlet

aerie by American Eagle Outfitters

American Eagle Outfitters

Anchor Blue

Ann Taylor Factory Store

BCBGMAXAZRIA

bebe Outlet

Calvin Klein

Charlotte Russe

Closet Signature

dressbarn

Forever 21

Fossil (Temporarily closed for Construction)

Fredericks of Hollywood

Kasper

NikeFactoryStore

Oakley Vault

Old Navy

Papaya

Sirens

Sophia

Tillys

Torrid Plus Sizes

V Generation

Wet Seal

Windsor

aerie by American Eagle Outfitters

Fredericks of Hollywood

Group USA Clothing Company

Leggs Hanes Bali Playtex Factory Outlet

Maidenform

Torrid Plus Sizes

Victorias Secret

yes i agree with marina’s assessment that changes are underway, and have been for some time, that can’t be fixed in the short run.

ronald reagan become president when marina was born, and he represented the politics (and economic policies) that have ruled for the past 30 years; certainly we and others of our generation have resisted these politics and policies for our whole adult lives to try and give you a better world than the shit they are handing you—endless wars, money for killing via unmanned drones but not for schools or kids or art or trains or bridges, fewer civil rights instead of more, fewer chances of a good life instead of more, closures of libraries state parks schools university programs and possibilities for a better more positive life for millions. instead the u.s. has the most people in prison of any country in the world and a steadily declining quality of life.

but we and our friends protested against all these policies year after year and against all the wars that spent all the money that could have gone to make the world better. we organized organizations, traveled to war zones, marched in the streets, wrote editorials and letters to the editor and poems and graffitti, spoke on campuses and elsewhere, made money and posters and gave money to causes and groups, got arrested and got harassed and got burnt out  and we did all these things personally, for you—otherwise the goddamn situation would be even worse, sorry to say.

the right wing movement worked for 3 decades to achieve these crimes, disasters, assassinations and messes: massive corruption of the financial system, economic devastation and stagnation for your generation, a future messed up, corrupted, ruined for many many millions of people. it won’t get better until your whole generation realizes they have to do something about it. it’s worldwide—there’s nowhere to run and hide (rick went to slovenia, and he said the same thing is happening there; and he’s unemployed with 2 young kids to raise).

if it took decades long for them to make this mess, it’ll take a long time for others to fix, so no rush. but something needs to be done, obviously. that’s life—that’s what being part of history means, that history affects your life, and you become part of the history that you make.

that’s why it matters if you live your life to make a difference, (love),

freedom is the recognition of necessity

—engels, anti-duhring

the palm trees of the san gabriel valley must always look stern and stoic and a little sad like foreigners doing their duty far from home

the cardboard box must be set out at the curb, festooned with a bit of colored paper on top

citizens must wave at each other, wash their cars, or drive away

the pleasant elderly woman in the vietnamese restaurant with a face wrinkled by pleasure must answer her cell phone and say,

“how are you? i am here with my friends, we are eating. we are very well, we stayed at your house last night.

you’ll be home tomorrow? yes, i am leaving today…”

the other parties in the vietnamese restaurant must look so endearing—

the woman closes out her phone call, “yes, thank you. i love you too.”

i must look at these people to muse about them and a woman must watch me as i rise to leave

outside the san gabriel mission two small girls must run back and forth at the fountain

the woman must lie on the grass watching them, earplugs in, tapping her ipod

she must yawn

she must have that look on her face

the football team must do a poor job washing my vehicle at their carwash fundraiser

the teens must be fooling around, slacking off and not half of them doing their jobs

the assistant big roly-poly coach must not even pay attention, instead spend his time jibing his young charges,

saying things such as, “I could be at a UCLA spring training game today,” and, “You are a homosexual.

That means you like members of the same sex.” he must say this—

—i had to give them $10—

brilliance of sunshine must pour down like joycean literary figurative snow on all the living and dead

in a half an hour i must drive down valley blvd to attend the memorial for cesar who died a week and a half ago

(colon cancer, he did die as we must)

over all, the sky must pour implacably, brilliance

•  I love Wanda Coleman. But will someone please explain why each of these events are always on a weeknight?

• because night time is the right time
• because a pecan thinks like a walnut might
• because one night is as good as two lost years
• because you can roll it and smoke it in that pipe mister
• because you gotta limber up and reach out to your brothers and sisters
•  because out behind the bus depot they have a dance for people like yourself
• because in a jiggle and a whiff things can change
• because it’s not all peanut butter and asphalt
• because the wieners and dogs at pinks la brea are dreaming and steaming till late
• because some airplanes go overhead and then for a long while that’s all there was
•  because this is not poland 1939 and you can afford to live a little
• because it could approach the key hour, the crucial one, the most important one, that one
• because of the portable hand drill, the mounted cross bar, the steel flanged plaform, and the overlook glasses
• because of the grief, the bobbing joy, the overlooked grief, the still bobbing joy, the streaming desire
• because of the murky swells glistening and shining underneath the dissipating fog

SOMEWHERE IN THERE the streets I know end in vagueness, generalities. Somewhere in there, the streets of the city and the streets of night end in a spicy, smoky smell of girl sweat, like bread fresh from the oven. Somewhere in there, our decades together, decades we’ve known each other. As if those decades still exist; in fact they do not. Phone messages erased from numbers that never existed in this century, messages she wished I would have received, once upon a time. However many times she saved my life, two or three at least, her unspoken fears or disgust with me, must exist somewhere in there, like shadows at night. Shadows on the other side of shrubbery, under the dim glare of a semi-distant streetlamp. Darkness, unknowing, on the far side of walls, the other side of eyes. I walk the night streets and avenues in sleep, in dreams. I drive them, talking to her. Everything that was done, and undone, even if it’s gone now. Years vanished as if they never were, but her smell rises in my memory, volatile as gasoline, the dense female fragrance I kiss at the base of her spine. It rises behind the daylight, like mole rubbed between two fingertips, like a big river coming around a bend in the dark.

the triumph of capitalism is capitulation to any random circumstance result of bad luck when instead so much is learned from crows, crows

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The close up view of earth, twin macro lenses opened up to maximum aperture, these fat earthworms in a ball all crusted with dry dirt

Don’t trust those crows. They’ll do anything for a buck

Hey I learned from  a Japanese woman that crows can talk like parrots!

What do the crows say?

I am like you, obese diabetic working man totally defeated by ordinary days, because I too am beaten down by my days, a consumer of charred sizzly popping meats, I too am a consumer of anything and everything sugary with that glittering mystery, of tissue wrappers with sacred names crumpled on them, of endless fake spiritual epiphanies and spiritual roadbumps of phenomenology

I think you are just like me, sore disgruntled loser medicating himself with endless whining complaints, pushing himself along in his raggedy cares, or the bitter woman standing behind all the rest pouting, folding her arms over the accumulated belly of swallowed humiliations she has heaped on herself for not conforming to her own reflection in shiny machinery of the airport or cigarette machines of waiting rooms on hellish avenues, I shall stick out my lower lip of disapproval of the fucked up existence of this world,

I know you, self-obsessed teenager relentlessly plucking at any ragged tuft of hair or bit of yourself that sticks out to be noticed, I too am endlessly worrying about my own concerns at every moment so that I cannot even hear clearly what all these people are saying to me, everyone is saying something about something (I just can’t tell what their point is, I know that’s how it goes for you, it’s all a buzzing static), over and over

I feel you, young racist white youths who veered at me in the pickup truck and flipped me off yelling something with scrunchy faces, so what if I follow you to the intersection and jump out of my vehicle but cannot chase on foot because you run the red light peeling away in exhaust clouds of burning rubber, I am playing your game— I too glory in wild absurd emotive concussions at the end of nerves

I forgive you picky bastard, for holding yourself separate from everyone, for thinking none of this has anything to do with you, you don’t want their oily skin secretions touching your educated fingertips of your sensibilities and goggly eyeballs, you don’t want none of that sticky shit and hair clippings and ethnic spices to get on your person, to deteriorate the porous calcified foundations of your lifestyle, I know I myself have turned away endlessly from people, just like you

I’m with you little kid, wiggling in your chair, can’t sit still in the restaurant while the rest of the family and your father’s friends are eating Lebanese buffet, you gotta jump down out of your curly headed chair and make origami out of the napkin, jumping with dancy leaps throwing it up in the air, pointy napkin tumbling through the air like the flying star of your delight, you are catching it or half-catching it, half-knocking over your water, making commotions, your father jumps out of his chair after chiding and scolding you repeatedly slaps you hard on the back of the head (it was all I could do kid not to jump out of my own chair at that point, sorry I thought it would go harder for you if I did), he grabs your arm and jerks you back to your chair hard, jerks you into sitting position in your chair and snarls in your face “Sit in the goddamn chair and don’t move!” while his guests look discomfited, and you sit there stunned, your delight isn’t even a memory, instantly it’s a numb pain so you don’t even cry, just sit in shock—I lift my insipid ice water and drink to you kid

You are my kind, you ineffective nerdomatic intellectuals submerged in joys of wordage and verbiage, expostulating or correlating, cross-referencing and coagulating texts and notions, sentiments and works, concepts and price lists, all because that’s the peaceful thing to do while the world is at war—fuck ‘em, they want to kill each other—I’ll go read and write poems

for http://gonzai.com/kiosque/

1. 1.   In a interview you gave to Global Graffiti Magazine, you said: « My writing would be better if I was less busy in my spirit and my mind. If I wasn’t distracted by wars and riots and traffic, with the music turned up full blast, my books would be easier to read and make more sense. ». Do you think that « too many people, too much life » is always dangerous, at some point, for the particular quality of a writer’s work? Can a writer be excellent although he might be eager to live  life at its full, even if he is « careless »?

A writer can be excellent even if confused, or perfectly confused, like Louis Ferdinand Celine, because of it. In order to understand this confused human consciousness better, I have asked two North American novelists, Rick Harsch and Ben Ehrenreich, to help me answer these questions. Rick (author of Billy Verité and Le Bal des inertes in French, and Arjun and the Good Snake and other books in English) and Ben (author of Ether and The Suitors) will answer these questions with me, and it’s up to the reader to decide which of us delivers the best answer.

For example, in answer to your question:

Those Global Graffiti guys got it all wrong. I was talking about fish soup. I spilled half a bowl on my laptop and three of the characters in the novel I’ve been working on turned into stalks of fennel. In some chapters their love interest is a halibut and by the end she’s four cloves of garlic. Talk about careless.

No writer is excellent. The act of writing, by the way, is one of the least dangerous pursuits on the planet. No danger whatsoever is involved. Unfortunately, even a moderate degree of success delivers authors to interviewers, and sometimes we must say the kinds of things I said to Global Graffiti. The truth of it is, sometimes I have nothing to write, so I visit the spirit/obscene war world.

That’s it, just like that.

1. 2.   Behind this, I would like to know if you analyse the distinction between the world and the self, society and the individual, or if  on the contrary through your  writing,  you are  trying to solve the eternal conflict between « the we and the i »?

I never analyse anything; that’s what’s great about fiction–you never have to.

Between the world and the individual, between the self and society are 3 writers—let them answer. One can flee in the most romantic longing, one can drink and dance the fandango, one can take the brunt.

From what I understand that conflict was resolved in a little-known addendum to the gang truce negotiated between rival sets of Crips in L.A.’s Nickerson Gardens projects in 1992, one day before the riots. That was the real reason that Bush Senior sent the Marines to South-Central—it had nothing to do with the whole Rodney King thing, looting, any of that. The politicians never cared about all those diapers and steaks and neighborhoods burning—when did they ever?—but the we/I truce really freaked them out. If it caught on they knew it would put them out of business for good. So they made sure the truce didn’t make the papers, even less than the gang peace had, and the LAPD and the FBI and Interpol and the CIA have been doing their best ever since to guarantee that nobody ever thinks of resolving that one again. As far as I’m concerned, though, that war is over, signed on the dotted line.

3. David Foster Wallace told that « you were in the story what Hunter Thompson was to journalism, a super vitamined punk who could not care less about reality  » Precisely, what is your relationship with informations/news and journalism in general? and with Gonzo journalism in particular?

I’m still mad at Hunter Thompson for what he did to Oscar Zeta Acosta, turning the best Chicano revolutionary novelist of the day into a clownish ether-stoned Samoan named Dr. Gonzo. They were friends, Thompson and Acosta, or at least Thompson said they were and seemed to mean it—Acosta never cared to weigh in—but the vicious old redneck drunk sold out his friend for book sales and a particularly stupid variety of celebrity. After that he descended for decades into a cartoon-worthy vortex of alcoholism and self-hate, from which he emerged years later with a bang and a terrible mess. My sources tell me Acosta still lives, haunting the borderlands, sneaking up on racist vigilantes, tying their shoelaces to their lawn chairs and scaring them awake with his laughter. I saw him once in an almond orchard outside Modesto, eating nuts from the trees, teaching the moths and the hummingbirds how to drop mini-Molotovs on police cruisers and realtors.

Gonzo journalism was Hunter Thompson and only Hunter Thompson.

I am a victim of the news media, I love its fictive narratives, I sit with my coffee and waste hours reading the New York Times, the New Yorker, Los Angeles Review of Books, Facebook articles and rantings, it makes my nose run and my teeth fall out. It gives me gum disease. I love the news and its phony stories, it makes me feel as if I were there. I was never there.

4. In France, there are only a few people involved in the field of highly subjective writing of Gonzo, what about in the US? Who are the survivors (or precursors) of Gonzo?

See above.

I repeat: gonzo journalism was Hunter Thompson and only Hunter Thompson. Perhaps in France there are journalists engaged in Foie d’ blaise journalism or something like that.

The precursors or survivors of Gonzo included E. Hemingway, Jack London, J. Kerouac, George Orwell, L. F. Celine, Isabelle Eberhardt, Hernan Cortez, Bernal Diaz del Castillo, Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, Thor Heyerdahl, Jose Lopez-Feliu, Mark Twain, Herman Melville, Kathy Acker, Osamu Dazai, Juan Goytisolo, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Jean Genet, Henry Miller, Oscar Zeta Acosta and Charles Baudelaire, among others. There are lots of others but their books get lost in corners or under sofas.

1. 5.   In relation to this, in Atomik Aztex, your writing is wonderfully unbridled, the novel presents itself as a real “mixed casserole”, a « pot-au-fou »; do you think you are crazy like that everyday or is it that the writing  allows you to reach a climax of madness that is prohibited in “real life”? In that could you eat the wolf or dance the Bamba slaughtering pigs, for example?

I have eaten things I could have been arrested for, that’s all I will say about that. Otherwise, madness as I seem to think you understand it, is a intrinsic to the post-Ramapithecans.

Do you really think anything is prohibited in “real life”? Slaughter is a local specialty in these parts, has been since at least the 1600s. We built a whole legal system to protect it and a vast international bureaucracy to safeguard its export. I understand it has been immensely popular, even more so than Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, except in a few scattered rebellious parts of the globe where they don’t have internet yet and haven’t learned how to shut up and be cool. Which wolf are you referring to? 

Once I broke my leg in a river 40 miles from my car in the North Cascades by the Canada border; once I walked around Southern Mexico and ate mushrooms floating in lake scum and explored caves with burning pine sticks; I have traveled through war-time Managua hanging off the outside of over-crowded teetering buses and planted trees on volcanoes; I have landed via helicopter to fight great forest fires in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and Wyoming; I punched out factory windows with my bare hands when I was 12 years old till my hands were shredded, bleeding—but I still can’t dance, I can’t dance la Bamba.

6. How do you correct your texts? Your style at least is similar to a freshly painted wall; it IS shinY, it’s new, it’s exciting, but we feel that it is fragile, that all the layers are not yet “toughened “… It is far from the logic of the test or a study of the workings of the detective novel. Do you rework every sentence, every word, despite the impression of “letting go” in writing?

“I” am not even writing this. See answer to question 2, above.

My methods of composition include collage, collaborative experiments like this “interview,” borrowing and plagiarism, sampling and expurgation, so that passages should sound like dialogue overheard, perhaps imperfectly overheard or recorded (with errors), and corresponding to the fitful lacunae of ordinary activities, where we are regularly interrupted by others. Sometimes there is an explosion of

I have never corrected anything in my life, much less my ‘writing’. Sometimes I have made changes, but any changes I have made have likely been for the worse. And I never let go. That would be a tremendous mistake, akin, if you don’t mind my putting it this way, to squeezing out quietly a long suppressed fart.

7. At the end, is logic an asshole for you? What sort of writing bores you? What are you against, if not at war? What are you wrestling with?

Logic is a friend who won’t leave when it is time for me to sleep. I just leave him with his beer on the balcony and go to sleep. I am at war with everything in the world destructive to the human. I am often bored by books that are too logical in their display of battles against things destructive to the human. I wrestle with anything/anyone who wants to wrestle with me. I guess you could say I was a born wrestler.

Logic is like one of those magician’s boxes with a false bottom. It’s not a problem for anyone but the most gullible kids in the audience. I’m basically a man of peace, but I still struggle with potholes, foxtails, standardized testing, kale, the overzealous policing and regulation of urban airspace, insufficiently seasoned broth, the fungus that grows over everything, the mildew that grows on the fungus, the mold that grows on the mildew.

8. You taught at the Jack Kerouac Summer School. There is no school of its kind in France and the principle intrigues us very much… What did you teach exactly, there? Do you have a writing technique – precise – narrative? Was is something completely different? Was is a different matter? 

The only way to discuss my teaching properly would be for you to track down my students and ask them. but I will say that the last thing I do is try to teach them to be anything like me. I may forget sometimes, but I should tell them all to read Moby Dick.

I taught “Writing as Intervention in Place” based on ideas of Gary Snyder and William Carlos Williams, but it’s not like the old days anyway, when Andrei Codrescu had naked girls running in and out of his room, jumping into the swimming pool, when Diane diPrima was in a bad mood because her writing was no fun so she threw all the furniture off the balcony, and everybody was running around with ugly breath, sniggling marijuana giggles. Nowadays they have a sign on the fence that says, “No Nudity Please” and the workshops are full of wan academics. It’s like the Tassajara Zen Center, where on the gate of the swimming pool they have a sign, “No Children Allowed.” The Buddhists can’t allow kids in the pool while the old folks lay about naked alongside the rushing stream, till they turn the color of Weimaraners? Kids can’t squeak and shout while self-absorbed geezers try to massage their epiphanies?

It’s actually quite rigorous. Due to the unorthodox nature of the program, we are not yet able to award degrees, but we encourage our graduates to call themselves “doctor,” “president,” or “pope.” The first year is mainly animal husbandry with electives available in geology, horticulture, and elementary principles of aviation. The last year is all quantum mechanics and knife skills. Due to the violent neoliberal restructuring conducted over the last three decades, an increasing number of our graduates are having a hard time finding employment in their chosen fields of study, so we’re working on a cosmetology minor.

9. Warning, this is a little awkward question, but I have to put it: you talk a lot about Germany, Russia, the Aztecs of America… but not so much about France. Do you read  past or present French authors? If so, who and why? If not, who won’t you you read and why?

What exactly do you mean by “French”?

If you feel awkward you should attend to your breathing, then get into a crouch, spread your legs to shoulder width, bend your knees, and then ask at will. That said, my unkind response would be whether or not you asked, for instance, Juan Carlos Onetti why he didn’t write a novel about France, or including French people. Of course I read and have read numerous French authors and I have to ask you why, though there are so many great French poets and novelists, the best is still Rabelais?

All French practitioners of the prose poem are important to me, as are the Dadaists, the Cubists, the Surrealists, the Detroitists (I am not in love with Oulipo which is the great rage nowadays in the U.S.A.—I will read them but their mathematics is not interesting—it reminds me of static pictures like graphics in graphic novels and comic books), Cendrars, Duras, Celine, Michaux, Delbo, Gertrude Stein, Ernest Mandel, Edmond Jabes, Paul Poissel, Aimé Césaire, Fifa Fafu, Julio Cortazar, Annie Ernaux, and I wish I read more French, but New York oppresses me.

10. To finish with, in Gonzai magazine the slogan is “only the detail counts”: something to say about a detail that you recently noted (today, for example)? What detail did you notice recently which could inspire you a story?

Great and timely question. Just today I was watching the film Miller’s Crossing and a character said, meaning it metaphorically, that another had a wart on his fanny. I realized then that some discomfort I had been feeling but only really noting in the back of my mind was caused by a wart on my fanny. Of course the theme of synchronicity, the real versus the metaphorical, the metaphorical real as metaphorical, the detail as universe, the universe as negligible, the tried and true, the bumpkin and the lawyer, the maid and her skirts, the mother of pearl ear-rings, the sportsmanship crisis, the little predator drone that couldn’t, these and many many other things immediately came to mind, and I have taken time out to answer these question and ask that you look for the product of this topic in one to two years. Thank you.

One detail that I noticed were the faces advancing and retreating into vast space and distance between us all, like they used to do in my nightmares when I was eight years old, the faces would approach intensely and many would would pull back as if on a line, as if being retrieved by some mechanism, in a kind of pulsating rhythm, they would approach with great speed as if in attack (in the Sea of Cortez a female sea lion once approached my face as instantaneously across twelve meters of distance in a couple of seconds, so fast she stuck her nose toward my snorkeling mask to peer directly into my eyes that I of course flinched and jerked back, startling her so that she too flinched, jerked back and swam away) and all the faces are tremulous with outrage and despair, but I can’t communicate with any of them. So I turn to the nearest and ask them how they are today.

Lustrous visual ideology of hand-crafted origin not available in any of this week’s lame-ass stupid fuck-all movies?

Now offering hottest seasonally inflatable Afghani children names, dates and susurrations complete, feet or toes attached, exuding ionized charms of innocence (incense).

Always crashing in the same car, self-commentary actuating brain crease that you just hate?

Today only (jk), free fitting for tree-lined self-pity consolation nodules of yellow fatty globules snicked free of fleshy 50,000 Mexican disappearances.

Injected with anxiety via language medium, saggy conversations result in black projectile vomiting before a green screen?

Sucking pelican daiquiri through Eskimo walrus straw will engorge your product line with lissome Guantanamo jumpsuit orange flare.

Unaccountable malaise stacking swaths of suicidal youths in your demographic sector without recourse to inner clothes racks?

Protect your loved ones with eminent domain ghost flensing of crushed Guatemalan colorful beach wracking.

Portfolio investment beyond your reach at the moment fo’evah, plus eyeball capillaries pissing blood into mind stream?

Cleanwipes of conscience waving Iraqi stumps on a field of amber pale ale. Arab micro-numeral tattoos.

Hi-def inability to feel alcohol numbness through tips of ideation tongues, inordinate clash of transmission guts?

Tiptap your Florsheims across nicotine-checkered linoleums to our showroom today and truly believe you may be Other-wise.

Sighing Italianate blackouts or jump cuts lack the oomph of apartheid smugness solemnly divinely craved inside musky closets?

Spread your youth, fizzing relationship desexing bricolage criss-crossed with palmate patterns of elegant devastation on tourmaline, at last.

I REMEMBER THE PEACE MAKERS TOO: Sixto Tarango, photographer for la raza newspaper and 1978 student body president at csula who died working 2 jobs to put his wife thru pharmacy school (i met his son a year or so ago, last time i’d seen him he was 6 or 7, now he’s older than sixto ever got to be, he never really knew his dad), Reine Moffett, activist for women of all red nations on the nez perce reservation, once a supporter of the wounded knee support committee, always active in every community she lived in from seattle to minneapolis, fought breast cancer fiercely over a decade; Don White, utla activist/teacher and committee in solidarity with the people of el salvador leader in solidarity missions and peace work to stop u.s. support for genocide in central america; they were peace makers and friends of mine; also, Allen Ginsberg, poet and peace maker; Sal Castro, teacher, counselor, organizer, community leader; Miguel Marmol, lifelong salvadoran activist and organizer, survivor of imprisonment, firing squads and massacres, decades of persecution, died of old age; Michael Zinzun, former black panther and founder of the coalition against police abuse, lost an eye in a police beating while defending two citizens he felt were being abused by police, “I’d rather lose an eye fighting against injustice than live as a quiet slave.” i’m proud to have read poetry or stood on stages with them. i also remember south african communist party leader Chris Hani, commander of umkhonto we sizwe (the armed wing of the ANC founded by Nelson Mandela), who i saw speak in l.a. in 1990, who was assassinated by conservative party hit men in his driveway in 1993 pushing SA closer to the brink of both civil war and civil truce.

I slid the check under the inch and a half thick bullet-proof acrylic. I didn’t look directly at the bank teller till she asked me if I was really the father of her best friend in second grade. Yes, that’s right! I said, looking at her finally, and I asked about her younger brother and sister. As it happens, her name slipped my mind for the moment. I told her, “You lightened your hair! It used to be dark.” That’s right, she said. She asked about my daughter, and we caught up a little as she processed my transaction. We took a a while to chat—she still lives on Elm Street. Neither of us mentioned the event that changed their lives and set in motion the events that separated her from my daughter, her mom’s death in an SUV rollover in Texas. She said she wished to get in touch with my daughter and I assured her that I would relay the message. “It’s great to see you,” I said. I didn’t say that her mom had been a wonderful person, full of sweetness and laughter. I didn’t tell her now that she’d lightened her hair, she’d given herself her mom’s color.