I’m on La Brea driving past Toho,
Wilshire only blocks ahead
in a world where two teenage girls
coast lazily in the intersection,
in a place where suddenness suddenly
becomes a tactile virtue,
and I’m watching them,
now two hot wax dolls,
their faces melting into
brown-syrup holes that give up life,
and I’m seeing the giant wasp split the Camaro windshield
and suck at their sweet husks
and suck up flesh drop by drop
’til the body casings crack,
and this fever is the objective cinema,
the external charge that powers our universe
the fever that forces prayer back into me
ESP – ExorSeismic Perception
enabling me to see which
devils need to be run out of town on a rail
and which devils have the yellow power
to hide from us all
’til they make the earth an even worse place to live.

 

copyright,  © 1989, 2008 Chris Desjardins pka Chris D.

composed circa 1975-78; originally published in DOUBLE SNAKE BOURBON, reprinted in A MINUTE TO PRAY, A SECOND TO DIE.    

A MINUTE TO PRAY, A SECOND TO DIE is an epic, career-spanning anthology of Chris D.'s writings, published by New Texture. Buy it here.