Isn't that God
I see in you? The sycamores
on my street? The sweetness
in the angel food cake I eat
every single day in my com-
pulsive God-like way? The
explanations in books that try
to teach us something we might
not know? The slowness I some-
times mistake for profundity?
The sea that is the mother of
us all? The dying I recall from
childhood that stood my world
on scarred terrain I couldn't
wait to vacate?





And if I begin this
like all the others—
only now it's a
"guest house" I'm in—
around the corner,
more or less, from Zen
Zoo, where I just walked
from, and to, no one
else on these Brentwood
Boulevards on foot, save
for the joggers and power
walkers on San Vincente,
sucking the fumes from
Beamers and Mustangs
and a Bentley convertible
so pristine in its top down
currentness, nowness, just-
purchased-proudness, it
tempts me to smell its
sweet tasteful leather, to
caress its blue sheen, to
kiss its evocation of the
timelessness of true style—

And if I run into an old
friend getting into his
older, much cheaper,
generic sedan, this
man who once was
the lead singer and
writer and guitar player
in a "new wave" punk
band with a hit and
a following that filled
mid-size venues, not
stadiums but auditoriums
big enough for thousands,
or for all I know small
stadiums, who moved
into the house I rented
on 10th Street in Santa
Monica after he left
his first wife and camped
in a cheap Venice Beach
motel and I invited him
to stay in what had
been my daughter's room
where others had stayed
before him, and that
first night I played a few
tunes on the upright
piano I rented and he
played a few on his acoustic
guitar and then together
we jammed on an improvised
version of "Our Father'
in homage to ours, we'd
been discussing, letting each
other in on where we begin
and now here he is
fifteen years later,
with another failed family
in terms of the images
we had in our childhoods
and he says he's
on his way to play a gig
in a bar somewhere and
I hear the sound of the
angels who sing in my tired
old heart that has failed
this attempt to recreate the
mating rituals of our fathers
as I walk back here whistling
like no one seems to anymore—

And if I feel blessed none-
the less by this visit to
places my heart opened up
to, and people that opening
spoke to, when theirs had
been closed for too long—

And if they express the love
this reminder of times that
hurt, yet were transcended,
and my sudden reappearance
ignites—their delight in
having survived that blight
in their souls, and they want
me to know, as if I didn't—
and I didn't for awhile now—

And if I continue to struggle
with the demons unleashed in
my life—and fight for my wife
and boy and myself to remain
a family no matter what,
or in what form, beyond the
norm I never knew or wanted to—

And if. . .