song of bleeding throats

los ángeles is on fire


scorched streets toned
in technicolor & rancid
cempasúchtil ash. someone
lights a cop car in flames


tear gas kisses my cornea tickles
my throat like razor wire rattling
my lungs & someone baptizes
me in cool milk my face drips…


someone punches a cop & i make
a wish—

hands outstretched—
open palms—searching for god or
loose cigarettes

~

i can’t breathe on fairfax & 3rd
i can’t breathe with a fist down my throat
i can’t breathe with my face kissing
pavement—i can’t breathe in sleeper holds
i can’t breathe in tobacco-stained roads
i can’t breathe with a baton licking my spine
i can’t breathe with pepper spray coloring
my iris—i can’t breathe when we’re choking
on words like pig—i can’t breathe when rubber
bullets hemorrhage my prefrontal lobe—i can’t
breathe when i’m too busy coughing up a lung
i can’t breathe when my face is buried in tierra
i can’t breathe cuándo me amarran la lengua—
i can’t breathe, i can’t breathe, i can’t breathe
( )
( )

~

carbon monoxide tints the air green & someone
holds an acab sign. i can smell burnt fingertips
reaching towards lit canisters. i can’t breathe &
it aint the fucking face mask. someone says the dumpsters
in santa monica are a lot nicer than the ones in venice,
the 405 southbound slack & slightly overcast. green
freeway signs scribbled in post semantics—i keep driving
95 on the 405 before i reach inside my epidural hematoma
just to taste the fever of my city persimmon in afterglow

i can’t breathe in los ángeles

my breath arrested my voice cyanotic—