London Bridge, Dawn

Flotsam reveals the river's flow
away from here, as rivers always move.
a glove beneath the murk, palm up,
waves goodbye, fingers clawing history.
Then another follows, middle finger
cursing the thousand cranes
stacking stone and steel.
A shuttlecock glides past, shot by the loser.
Cans, cups, a condom, a plank
float beneath this bridge of lost heads.
On the bank, old cobblestones
submit to further smoothing
and dead players stick forever
on lines they could not recall as
Sunday carries Saturday's trash and
drunken joy toward silence

The Fat Boy Rollerskates Home

Along an LA sidestreet, pavement cracked
as if by silent temblors in the night,
the fat boy navigates in evening light.
He's rollerskating home, his backpack packed
so tight he seems a soldier from some war,
a grunt who's left to carry all he owns
back from the front, the fractured ashy bones
of friends who learned what they were fighting for.
His skates catch in the cracks, his face streams sweat,
the dusty eucalyptus rain down seed,
like tiny rocks his progress they impede.
He glances skyward, eyes grown desperate,
and scans the ochre air above the street
where sooty angels hover in the heat