my moral compass is in the shop,
come back in a couple of weeks,
he said.
it’s been almost 30 years.
i no longer live in that town,
the doorways are foreign to me now.
the language you spoke
is forgotten and lost, only
archeologists dig your bones.
Jesus lived next door to me,
a 5-story walk-up on a
Hollywood movie street set,
he found god and sobriety
and moved to Orange County,
watches Dancing with the Stars,
on an 85-inch TV.
most days i drift through
paradigms of peculiar perspectives,
spend Saturday afternoons
naked around a pool
at a Palm Springs resort.
if i squint when i look in a mirror
i can still hear jazz music
filling a smokey room, down
off Figueroa, past the old
Mexican bakery and boarded up
Bank of America.