Notes From The Overground

To the guy with the haircut where it’s short & spiked on top with buzzcut sides:
You remind me of the guy on Craiglist pictured selling his ’69 Camaro with flames down the side.
You remind me of the guy in the club who offers to buy a foxy lady a Kamikaze but splits it in half.
You remind me of the guy who buys short sleeve, checkered shirts from Wal-Mart but says they’re from Structure.
You remind me of the guy in front of me at Ralphs who hits on the 16-year old cashier with braces because of her butt.
You remind me of the guy on Facebook whose pix are all of him on dirt bikes.
You remind me of the guy at the Lakers game who says, “I bleed purple & yellow!” then throws his beer into the air.
You remind me of my college roommate who fucking loves Poison but can’t name a single song, just pound his fist.
You remind me of the guy who goes on Segway city tours.
You remind me of the guy who plays the villain in every 80’s movie.
You remind me of the guy who buys a bottle of Grey Goose at the club & then charges his buddies per drink.
You remind me of the guy in the mall who gets an adult ticket for himself & a senior ticket for his date.
You remind me of the guy who has to buy a Slurpie every time he drives past a 7-Eleven.
You remind me of the guy who swears he trained his kid brother The Quarterback & taught him everything he knows.
You remind me of that asshole who says, “If I were only 30 years younger” & pinches the waitresses’ bottom.
You remind me of the guy whose stainless steel, massive BBQ is a throne which the meat is lucky enough to cook on.
You remind me of the guy who buys silver & gold coins & buries them like bones in the yard.
You remind me of the guy who says “bro”, “buddy” & “chief!”
You remind me of the guy who rollerblades in Venice dressed in nothing but a very lazy speedo.
You remind me of the guy who belly-floats in the neighbor’s blow up pool when they’re in Palm Springs.
You remind me of the guy sitting at the bar near me in Pink Taco,
Amused at the easy double-entendre,
Confused by the everyday nonchalance of sex & liquor dripping all over Vegas,
Like it’s something to call into a talk show about.
© Adam Bresson

I say we, displaced by my own motives.
Blood, the most powerful scent.
Sitting in an antique shop, Landrum, South Carolina
drinking coffee, writing in Dave’s Argentinean notebook,
Adam’s poem, remembering the drive into
the basin an hour early, mausoleum up on the hill.
I say we because evidence is not confined to
celluloid, the balcony we came from,
whispered vows. For me unrecoverable
after the screening, choice pushing me out
Colorado’s door. Open spaces. Open once
dotted with elk n’ snow, then cool flow of commerce,
palms angling in sublime weather. I say we
because energy needs no cylinder,
manual on the wall for workers to study–
As freeways ripen, in all directions, under purple night…
In this sense, Los Angeles, more than New York,
stays up. What Hemingway meant:
“If you are lucky enough to have lived in LA…
it never leaves you…” I say we: ajar, runaway, to catch
the pure and ghastly rising, exposure, energy of the
unbound, boundless women, non-ironic in the streets
gauging heirloom tomatoes. Sunday, and
we are all out bothered by a lack of hotrods
on jacks, relieved. Surfing on buses, taco truck,
specter of Bukowski rampant after 5pm.
A certain music that is tough to render
here. The plate on my car… expired but still
California, the cursive red mud
I leave to harden, warping the minds
of a few, set-in-their-ways alumni.
I say we because faults reveal real cities,
squeezing the last atom of water for
the orange grove. Forced us to speak
up in a crowd when we didn’t elsewhere.
Don’t talk to me about Los Angeles.
You, in the insular townships, smug as a spoiled child.
Return to the refuge of the self-help book
you let drop between pillows, culture you assume,
then unequivocally dismiss. Angels are a naked shoreline:
cards, bucket, sheen…left out on a blanket,
because sunset only drives us on into the next day–
The only stricture we impose is not having any.
Angels hurl themselves at distance.
Angels wear stains and glow in the dark.
© Eric Steineger

Precious little paperclip you
Bent into triangle flick & then leap
Metal done on the cheap
Thin tin leaving nothing inside
Using a finger hammer I bent it at the joint
A fearsome molder of trashcan shapes
Wastebin sculpture garden fiending for
Suffragette purpose or other decades long struggle
Join the chain gang of semiotic trance
Be the breadcrumbs to the loops & hooks
© Adam Bresson

Summer in Vegas feels like a burn-off
A sucker’s bet bake-off
A fucker’s fake take-off
It is the sleeper’s disease angle
And the heretic’s new-fangled stakeout
I ate three pounds of meat tonight
I am magnificent
I am deficient in the stag stay around sent along
Temporary hold
You stayed bold?
You stayed vital?
And I remembered the night I cradled
Before you ducked out
© Adam Bresson

The dirty secret of every dollar is a fake ID & bottle of gin
Of unforgiving faithless din
A rigged game & tipped scale
A grade as pass & pass to fail
The emblem like a battle cry
The logo like a way to die
I was of gamble reticent
Of vagrant craft for amplify
You were the song I trail to die
The denigrate of rail to fly
Supposed to wait for you to guess
You waited long for all the rest
There was the miles & black asphalt trust
To ashes are dust & trust to us
You gave the tampered vice the team
And seems to be the amortize
A quarter, a dollar
Those same day eyes &
Silhouette of Sahara/Craig
I dragged, I begged for you to rise
Shortcuts, seamless, amplify
© Adam Bresson