HEAT MOVES
i mean doesn’t life move from east to west? when i moved from the west back to the east i was going back towards the sun, not moving with it. coming down from alaska in a thin metal plane i could see the terminator between perpetual daylight and the normal world, the world without a gentle sunset at two AM, when i would press my nose against my bedroom window and the mountains were white and the tides moved in and out and when i slept and woke it was all the same young and cruel and bright
when i moved from east to west everything looked older. the house we moved into was breaking, was old wood, irish tenement from the 1860s, the overturned pavement, the stares i got walking down the street where are you going where are you coming from, the government buildings in stone and brick and even the brutalist concrete was old
yellow light
stain above bed
bombed out car
black mouth
and i bet i bet i bet if i moved across the ocean it would get older and older the firestorm cores of postwar europe the deep light stretching out to the plains the chemical soviet seas and it wraps the whole world round until you come back to some mountain beach where everything is new again and you go back and back and back and my apartment here is hot and smells and has flies and is crowded and so i put on some ratty shoes and wiped away sweat onto my dirty sheets and went walking
i listened to bruce springsteen. old springsteen is really good, i mean his first three albums, when my dad first listened to him and as one new jersey boy to another tried to be him with his torn jeans and torn shirts and curly hair. his first three albums were Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ, The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle, and Born to Run. in 1975 he played at the Hammersmith Odeon theatre in london and the show was recorded live and though i listen to a lot of music pretty removed from bruce springsteen that album is still one of my favorites. when i went walking i listened to this song called The E Street Shuffle which is usually kind of fast and bland but on this album is slow and soulful and the guitar wants love and springsteen is falling over himself almost drunk telling you about these kids from maybe alphabet city in new york hanging out and being cool and i listen to it i listen i listen i listen the light is low over the mountains it is true evening i am this little kid with too much hair smelly and sweaty my fingers are sticky from the soda i drank my skin feels burnt away with dirt and cigarette smoke and the cars are slow, they pay no attention, the dumpsters are empty, the houses are empty, the girls wear loose dresses, the boys wear wifebeaters and sweat and there is a hammock strung across the trees with a single hand sticking out
north you get to wyoming there are mountains carved out by wind and a prairie too big for anything but the stellar
south and there are nuclear deserts that are still fertile maybe even because of the things buried deep beneath them dead goats old bark and me on 9th going up and down and i think i only really like springsteen because my dad listened to him and i am in part my dad and cold gray east coast city blood needs something that can’t be found anywhere else
i look down and see a stone that looks like a severed finger
i look west and the mountains are lit the sky is gold the clouds are red except for their hearts which are still like the asphalt
people are mostly naked this time of year
i am too dirty for the bugs to eat
i go walking, i go walking, okay? take 9th straight and north through the business money thrumming heart of the city. what will i do tonight? do laundry get drunk sleep stay up eat eat eat and up north up 9th there is a park i discovered one summer and so i follow myself, the houses that come up low, the hill, brick, white caked paint, weeds growing in the cracks of the pavement, a family i dodge around, am dodged in turn, hair in eyes dry cracking the alleys man the fucking alleys always get me in this town. they are all so beautiful. they could be covered in christmas lights and not be any more beautiful. sometimes i think nobody even lives in the houses the alleys lead to, they just sleep in their cars, sleep beneath the low trees, all because they love it so much, because if you crane your neck you can look up to where the mountains rise out of the earth, and looking at something like that is good for you
i go walking. the sky is getting darker now, though above the mountains there is still the gold, there are blue lights strung above a porch, there is a basement window that is red and glowing, falsecolor, infrared, radio. i put on war paint. i touch north boulder park and the grass is wet and i let it eat my toes and feet. there are bats. they see a world that is etched. i am a line of sound to them. i am silent. north boulder park is wide and the grass is living or dead and the baseball diamond is small and quiet and far off people are having a barbecue
i don’t dare sit down
something is yelled from a car something yells back
i’ve forgotten how to talk
clouds are engines i think. no, they’re warships, they move from the mountains out into the prairie firing broadsides the whole way spitting out the feedback loops of their own children to follow or fall, eaten up. they are jags of metal and light. they fight and mate with one another. i watch the light from the barbecue i watch the ridge line of the mountains the twisted metal of power lines. the edge of the mountains is the edge of the ocean. the clouds go back and back, against the sun, to wrap the whole world round. i will do my laundry and drink. my face has been burned off. go back and back and back and there will be ancient concrete, there will be oh man oh man oh man
bed where i was born
goes like this
stars
streetlight
tree
mountain
which is curve of earth coming up and up
me alone
too much hair
dirty fingernails
tree streetlight
edge of world