nasal bone

took a beating

took a break

bled a bit

then popped back into place.

a corny poem from a man with a fractured nose.

salvationists

highways, no way

sagging shadows, fine dust, settling ash, the sun has set, ringing gunshots, tired mouths, roadburn, unfinished construction. always walking, walking back and forth never enough and never in the same direction, they drive, we drive and follow. the skies are always filled, the hills are a rustic yellow just waiting for a match. fires, crowds, hangovers and fireworks burning through the empty streets on those muggy summer nights. coping out, dropping out, tuning in, turning on. wild dogs roam the landfills. graffiti so high you can touch god, so low you can see everything, graffiti on the walls, in homes, a fence, a sign, bricks, buildings, greens and neons saying names that mean nothing to no one and everything to gawking eyes of the law. the police patrol and people parole but nobody stops walking back and forth ever. down at the carniceria were animals hang skinned in the window and women with broad smiles and broad bodies sing hymns in their native tongue. down, way down there, downtown where the men in rags push carts filled with treasure for their eyes to gawk and wonder. they push through the streets over the grime and pave gold. down in the deserts where clouds of burning meth labs fill the sky with terrible black smoke, miasmas ripping open just above the desert towns. down uptown, up over there, down up the mountains where life has stopped communicating with the outside world. they look down at the valley. down west toward the cities beyond freeways that pump their smoke into the valley. we're walking and driving still the crows are flying overhead and the flies are buzzing in our ears and landing on our eyes. no shoes, no shirts an exodus of herds pushing through the swollen cities. walk slow, drive fast run wild across the streets dodging traffic, weaving cars weave silken strands of smog in a beautiful, wondrous quilt that covers the valley. never thinking, never thought, not worrying, don't care, don't need to care, don't stop to think. road blocks, parking blocks, block parties, block upon blocks of urban squalor where garbage spills out of the refuse bins and couches grace the cracked sidewalks. still walking, a fast walk now, the fastest walk with a hurried step. crossing through the barrios listening to the sweet trumpets blow flaming melodies of a sweating mariachi tongue. in the streets walk our black brothers and sisters, our latino souls, our pale whites, our asians friends, our native americans who owned this area long before we ruined it, our arabs who own the shops that keep us alive with the good times. these people are ours and we are theirs. we, them and us are the same crowd. the crowds of savages. the crowds throng and swell to and fro, more people walk, a walking crowd, a living breathing savage of millions are walking. over glass with bare feet, they bare teeth and bare arms. bare arms, no sleeves, shirtless, bold and irreverent. the asphalt bakes under the sun, it smells of rubber, an ocean of black asphalt being spread like the red see. the savages spreading themselves across the valley, running now, not walking, never walking any longer, sprinting and charging blind, screaming at the tops of lungs, their breathe filling the air, they suck in the smog and smoke, steam rises from their sweating brows and soaked heads. the savages storm the threshold they break out of the covered valley, they scathe the mountains beyond the outer points of the freeway. the hollow cities are empty and void behind them. they don't look back, back to sodom back to gomorrah back to san bernardino back to the inland empire. they don't look back they keep their backs to the starless nights. yelling now, pushing on, trampling the fallen, a mob pushing on. they are running. always running, running back and forth never enough and never in the same direction, they run, we run and follow. we're outta here.

the inland empire savages.

carriages

there were two men pushing strollers down e street in the hot of late morning. their rusted carriages were filled with bottles and rags, dirty clothes and other remnants of a former life. they were believers in the church of methamphetamine. hallelujah the first man cried as they stepped in front of traffic. praises and so forth as the second stroked his crusted beards. through a red light the wayfarers kept on with their pilgrimage.

have mercy

always

waiting

complacency

those tell-tale signs of the impending, we feel it in the knuckles and the knees. feel it in the way the spine shudders after a long night of night terrors and thrashing. the listless air hangs around the patterned walls of classrooms and work stations. what's going to happen? they scream from their broken rocking chairs. when is god coming? they cry from the grounds with their broken bibles. who will save us? they lament with their broken teeth. fastidious, they watch the towns burn from the ground up while throwing flint and gasoline over the ambers. thrive. rain dance. toss papers and names into the churning miasmas that lurk above the asphalt. tell-tale signs of the impending nothing. they'll get old and we'll get old and the horizon will be stagnant and unchanged. the inland empire savages haven't changed. 

or maybe the those are the tell tale signs of a twenty-two year old with a two year hangover and writers block. it's hard to fight off stasis when nothing was really accomplished.

i think i'm going to close this blog at twenty three. i've got bored of being an inland empire savage.