Jesus of the El Cortez
God amongst the crackwhores
and pimps
It’s a new morning
Dawn long forgotten
Whispered quietly on the golden tongue
in the arms of a lover

Endangered suns peek over concrete
To see their reflection in the mirrored windows of
Industrialism
and illuminate the city in its artificial delight

Sweep away the emancipated bodies like dust
or drugs under a mattress
(he lit a cigarette and coughed his sermon)
and the homeless scatter like cockroaches
It smells like Death
and Denny’s greasy bacon

What will today be?
Today will be Tuesday
Tuesday at the Applefarm
rotten and inside out
Tourism and waterfront hotels
What a treasure, we’ve never been there

Sunny nothingness, only a bag of chilies
and a half-eaten blueberry bagel
Then he told her, “That’s a nice color of lipstick.”
No painting today, just thoughts
About the 60’s and how she missed out
no penetration, no pretending
today, nothing

This is almost a wasteland
if it weren’t for the palm trees, daisies
and ska

Who needs time?
Let’s live dangerously and walk the streets at night
alone
Pretend we’re not afraid
they smell fear down here
ingested like cheap wine
We still mourn what’s lost and gone
Forgetting to appreciate what we still have

He finds his next victim
and puts her in a pretty dress
Maybe this time, she’ll come back
While highschool girls sleep soundly
A spinning underworld surfaces
through the cracks in between bad insulation,
and a space heater
She knows they look at her
Just doesn’t understand why, but








It stops when it rains

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