They stain themselves with rosaries, / Rucas and Monte Carlos, skeletons / In fedoras and furs.  The whole room / Reeks of California's finest, at least / Ten blunts spinning hand to hand. / And Santa Maria is there too—praying, / Head bowed, on the shoulder blade / Of an overweight drop-out, brawler / Who calls himself Tiny.

When they say “swarm” / What they mean is us. / What they mean is black / Mass of wings, a single fist / Flying, indecipherable / Chants.  What they mean / Is body.  What they miss is / Brain born of lifetimes, / Mind made of centuries / And sacked catacombs, / The sweet they breed us for. 

Say timbales, say conga, / Say sinew and stilettos, / Say thunderclouds conjured / From a man's hard hands,

They remember women. Shoes, suits, & cars. All of it / more or less the same. How to use the tongue / until it empties mercy. Becomes a club, nightstick, stickpin / in a ghost serge suit, a velvet dick. Their sons who got mixed up / in this or that mess. Daughters gone & bruised by their father’s mirrors.

I turn through the hip-thrust music of falling blossoms. / Flank of mud & spit. We used to visit a river where dogs drank / bone & mounted shadows that were not dog.