Letter from a New City to an Old Friend     [SEAside          Gra-

                        –i.m. Ronny Burhop 1987-2010                                                                      ffiti]

[adjust             Even the white noise here is different—

       trACKing] there’s no boulevard, no blue and breathing

ocean. The streets—more quiet now, winding

through rain, hidden parks and open markets—

[chriiiiiiiing]

are cobbled, and twist off into alleys

less sinister than ours. There’s history [REprise]

in the street names, true—but the mystery,

the footsteps’ muffled click, the concrete sea

bRZeE

rolling below my window is tame,

bloodless…

[BRiX ‘98]

We fell off the world for years in LA. [SoDen

I can only remember the haze now,             eAcH       corP.

how our vista was never really clear                                       oWn

of smog, or planes, or neon bellied clouds.                                           a sOul?]

I split. Left you standing with a pocket

[My grambag                full of lock-

                           of                  less keys, a few bucks, two lighters and I

tRixY                         drove the forty miles back home. Years later,

rEds]                                        I’m hoping, perhaps we can just look back,                                         tuchhhh—                                                                                —MIDAZ

recall it before the cards were flipped—

our own Cassidy and Sundance era?    (EPIX

x

I turned my back on California,                             X)

on those two-for-one, from out the Honda

[Malverde]       hustlers, sunburned illegals, los santos…

And I have thought about nothing else, since.

I heard about your dazzling surrender.

[oUr buRnT-    Guess I should ask ‘from whose bourn’ and all that,

but I can’t fucking see how it matters.

oUt      SCAPE]                                                           Anyways, it’s probably December

right now in your coastal town, every crow                 * JauREZ—

crowding the power lines, jostling. Each one                                       Bosnia

vacant, thinking only of its single                    del SUR*

green walnut, the distance to the pavement.                

‘grAFT’                                                             -NoV16, 2009-