The Earthquake Days

In the earthquake days I could not hear you over the din or it might have been

the dinner bell but that’s odd

because I’m usually the one

cooking if not dinner then

a plan to build new fault lines through the dangerous valley.

I can’t give you an answer right now because I’m late for my 
resurrection,

the one where I step into my angel offices and fuck

the sun senseless.

That eclipse last week? Because of me.

You’re welcome.

The postman rattles up with your counter offer and I’m off

to a yoga class avoiding your call yes like the plague

because son you can read

in the dark and I have no

hiding place left.

You know me too well and you know it.

We walk hand in hand down the hill

into the Castro

avoiding the nudist protest not because we are afraid but

because we already know all about this city, its engineered 
foundations,

the earthquake-proofed buildings, the sea walls.

No tempest will catch us unaware

while we claim our share of

the province of penumbral affections.

You have no reason

to trust me but I swear I lie

down in this metal box as it thunders and looks

inside my brain. I am terrified nothing

is wrong because otherwise

how will I rewrite the maps unmoored

a deep sea a moor a cosmonaut

Who needs saving more

than the one who forgot

how the lazy cartographer mislabeled

his birthplace as Loss?

Riding the bus out to the end of the lines and back

I collect trash for art, oil spill, spent forest, the mind

is at work and everything is at stake. I demand

statehood for my states of mind, senators

for my failure, my disappointment, the slander

and my brain unmapped reveals no

explanation for danger the ground untamed.

I make paintings of nothing and

stand before them like mirrors.

I recently became a man but I do

not want to let go of my weakness,

instead want to meet God in heaven and in long psychotropic odes

have Him send me again digging in the dirt to unleash

tantric animal governors to lay down

the orgasmic law twice skewered and miserable

in the old photographs, miserable in my body, huddled

next to my mother, recently permed and aglow so unaware

of what is about to hit her. I am the answer to Bhanu’s question:

“Who is responsible for the suffering of your mother?” and so sick

I considered that sickness

could bring us closer and Shahid and Allen in heaven

slap me silly because they want me to know that

this world is worth its

trembling. At the next table over a mother

tries to reconcile her bickering sons. I have

no brother but the one

I invent has always got my back, he drowns

out the mullahs so my mother can

hear me finally. In a different book Jesus

never suffered, never was flogged or died

went whole into heaven without passion.

Shall I then deny myself passport through the stark places

unsalvageable, imagine it, the Mother

of Sorrows did never grieve in the new season

trees smell of semen and the tectonic plates

make their latest explosive move:

to transubstantiate my claim

by unveiling this city down to its stone.

Everyone I know wants to douse

the hungry flames, flee the endless aftershocks,

unravel every vexing question.

You owe me this witness.

I owe you the fire.