The Elephants

Wildfire I

Well north of Toon Town and Judge Doom, our Benny
the Cab sips its highball of gasoline. Ray Lee Oyler
stroked himself while he watched the mountain burn.
If the sky can be
it is white with heat.
I go in for chips. Four teens blare third-wave ska. They are blonde and darkened
from riding dune buggies murdered O’Hara
into the postcard darkness and the music
somehow ignites the fear in me. The teens want
also to find whatever is past the fear, which is dense
fumes over lapping, licking
creeks between parked cars in Marina del Rey.
My letter to them is stamped with wax and gives +2 charisma.
Juiced-up Thumper flees the blaze, running from his wife toward who can know?
I came also from the seed, face stained
with dirt, deep bags under my eyes, in night terrors my mother
became a witch commanded me to herd sheep faster, faster
into castle; out of field.
Middle finger to the tourists
from the tallest jump at the tracks, but I also always say I’m never that.
I jump off the shed.
One of the boys behind the counter fucks with me, or I think he does.
Two laugh. The one running the register laughs—apologizes.
The teens will jump in at the dam
where a kid died doing the same seven years ago.
The fire is everywhere;
makes me sneeze. Chitchat
about the weather are the most profound conversations.
Our backyard sycamore three-pronged like a devil’s scepter. In its shadow,
my father soaks a leaf pile in kerosene,
lights the Mini-Wheat’s box top.
He too as in life just wants
to see what will happen.
I long and attempt to sing sweetly.
Do vacations eventually become another long commute?
Elves loom
in the branches; kiss
under infesting mistletoe. Rain
barely covers the dust. Snow gently
on yucca where a girl
from my high school hung herself
with her dog’s leash
after keying the boyfriend’s car, but of course
was born with canyons of fear. Elves yell; corral
children into the sunscreen line. They try to forget what they saw.
Ray Lee Oyler rubber bands matchsticks together; soaks a rag
in paraffin. Embers blacken and crawl. No whip of seething fire is the same!
I sit by the glass door
looking out at acres of butterhead
lettuce. Moats rise into infernal sunlight
while “teen death” repeats inside me.
How the bad thing resolves itself as if automated: shopping
cart shoved off the cliff into punishing rocks, water-logged planks
kicked in half in creek beds. One
will discreetly locate the smoothest stone.
My father and I with our own little bomb—clouds aflame, towers of meals
collapse, miles of cow
collapse, and the universe dips
towards its suns.

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Wildfire V

From his computer throne, the boy king sits, neck
thick and unreal
white glow in his insomniac cheeks, editors’
slouch hellbent perpetually into the screen’s
frame to show the other boys his latest
from the Internet of Horrors. He teaches
us to mimic college-age men
who put their own bucolic self-
incursions on display for paychecks from Music
Television and test how mortal
we really are, which seeds a small town regime
of youthful geology in subalpine zones.
Match lit, the fire leaps from treetops leaves leaves cooked, shrub ash, and new soil.
We film our boy jester skipping, zip-off pants pulled
above his flanks as he screams, “look
at my thighs Dad!” at the couple attempting a smooth
transition from groceries to Blockbuster Video—their reaction we’ll deem
not actualized enough, merely a dull homage to reluctance and forgettable
expressions of disgust the boy vision
is still too fuzzy to appreciate, so it lands on the cutting room carpet dense
with Dr. Pepper stains and cat hair we’ll wake up inhaling and sick. In rain shadow, world wrestling moves: people’s elbows and suplexes
on the pole vault mats where mist collects and freezes, hands
cupped to mouth for sudden exhalation’s imitation crowd.
We tell Holocene fire histories by electric
heater light while the Goofy movie auto-rewinds
until it’s boring funny again. Gorsh, we film the boy jester
skateboard down plywood laid over the hill out
back; ends in a kicker ramp, gulley, and eucalyptus
infestation. Bodies like Gumby’s,
we want
to see how the next might fall.
Already obsessed with trash, we are maybe a disease in the black oak or SODS or Sudden
Oak Death Syndrome. Cheap pine fence cutting into his chin, the boy
king asks the neighbor if he and the others can use their trampoline
and before you know it everyone in town
wants to kick the tiny mafioso’s ass. After crown fires, sargent
cypresses release tiny wingless seeds as the stands
grow serpentine and coastward. Salvaged
off a solstice parade float, one boy ties a bungee
cord from the bike seat’s down shaft to the Walmart
scooter to pull the boy shrieking toward decorative rocks:
a foehn wind from the basin’s high pressure cell.
Thomas with a fat camera on his shoulder
narrates the affair, so they can watch over and over
the time we bolted an armchair to two skateboards and shoved one off the jump—tailbone smashing down, neck whiplashed, screaming, “my ass, my ass”
until he’s in the hospital and banned from the garage, nonetheless
edited into the final cut: a mosaic of sage scrub and yellow
pine, just outside the suburbs
that surround no city as we run
laughing back up the hill.

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Wildfire VI

During Steve’s set, my lawn
chair frays in general
admission we’re encouraged to sit
in the burnt skin ocean. 10,000
beads of sweat collect in tiny
orbs before delivering sodium
flavor to human lips. I feed also
on the sun until I’m fat; can’t fit
in the Santa costume or bathtub,
but cast morph
on yes all men, turn them
to horses
because I’m the gray
wizard and words are magic.
My spell’s only level 2, so I
change only their heads—
still they neigh so loud the sound
engineer has to crank the dials
just so the ukulele
virtuoso can her herself.
One Hawaiian shirt features a whole
menagerie of men arriving—
also clad in less intricate
floral greeted by only grins.
My own coconut buttons pop
off at the belly region while
the host arrives in pink wig and tie-
dye suit to tell us there is no
justice and to grab ourselves
a snow cone on the way
out where it is encouraged
one man dances and seeks
different futures with each wild
whip of his fingers, each
an alternate destruction or blossoming
utopia while his arms are mo’
slow-mo mo’ money mo’ issues
more nod smile from down
under his wide straw hat, he too
clad neck to biscuit in rainbows
as he becomes more
beautiful and therefore horse-like.
30 miles off the wildfire triples
in size, so we have to hire
a drummer who can’t stop sneezing
from all this crop dust.
Little kids war-on
with squirt guns. One
catches a super-soaker butt
to the lip right
before another takes it too far and just
after it stops being funny.
Sundowner winds keep the blaze
just under 10% contained.
Dumpster divers almost escape
society, or at least the increasingly
rule-ridden squat to slip
down the bur and poison
oak-ridden hillside into the festival’s
back end in horizon light
they fade also to the tune of neurosis-
inducing vapor. I send
the horsemen to Mars
(because words are the laser)
to gallop my dome world
pastures and snort nostrils
at the apple generator.
Chemtrail rant in pine shade,
but PCBs really do kill kids
I look to outer space
and pray for Y2K.
The saucer flattens rye
grass as the blue cube is
lowered alight in the lips
of field mice and deer.
They arrive exactly slime
green with watermelon seed eyes
just like we want; faint
smell of manure, hoof
beat ricochets
off the bright moon another drum
circle forms to antagonize
the first. A volunteer
hoses down the dust
over the mountain line, smoke
the color of salmon up and gone.

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Beach Fire

I list the boys Percival
killed or will—my clone
winces from the rocks.
I follow his tracks—oceans
pool in each impression
before me.

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Wildfire VII

Dumbo lowers to the pool
edge to snort up a snoutful
of the highly-chlorinated stuff—
ears in hover.
Such is science.
Men with stockings pulled
over their faces
to loot or simply be
finally unknowable as mannequins
swim in the clear gray-
scale water while a quartet
plays in the lifeguard box
something bouncy filled with strings.
Another drops from the trapeze
with soundless Olympian
splash. The marquee
appears to scroll but is just bulbs
flashing orange then off
because my brain is fattened
from Vegas buffets, I stare longly longingly,
or is it actually profound?
I am 7.
My brother and I swim up to the bar
before we’re quickly banned, so
we run in shorts wet past the opal
pyramid’s guards to look
down from the balconies cream-
colored light onto double decker arcades, Red
Lobsters, Chili’s, jewelry stores,
and multi-clanged slot cathedrals
jiggered for neon
in gallery floor TVs.
Before movement there was movement, the urfish.
The Treasure Island ship sinks on the hour
in its own tiny sea.
Actors in rags fall to cannon blast, cry out.
Spinning and non-universal,
through fogged shower glass
we fuse with mirages as if beaming
from a projector blasted
over the dark orb.
My brother with his camcorder
zooms in-out
on our own hotel’s plasma.
Teletubbies flashes
because the camera doesn’t autocorrect 30
frames per second like the eye.
I look for us
in home videos strangers
posted to the web of Disneyland.
Quick cuts and hopeful soundtracks—
everyone in rain
jackets despite relentless heat.
Huge backpacks, purple
castle, and Anaheim sky occluded
by firework smoke.
Victory. Beef jerky. Snack break.
Rides toil on shrieking rails,
pistons, beliefs, and holograms. Plaster
cracks off the matterhorn cave
ceiling, falls on the outmoded yeti’s
plastic ice.
A sax player solos for no change,
bougainvillea lulled to beige.
The tree order is borrowed
from coffee table
books on long English gardens
perimeter the pond
crowded with coi. Donald Duck
takes off his massive head,
chucks an orange at the monorail.
Lost in the temporary
Toy Story exhibit, I scream for anything
but huge foam army men,
feet cemented to flat
bases. I shove at the crowd
as a stage technician falls
60 feet from the catwalk.
Winnie the Pooh strikes a little girl.
Like a mouse I pray
to the rodent god
far from crayfish and frogs.
Raccoons in the park’s storm
drains eat mostly rats, live
on where other carnivores surely cannot
past Buzz Light year’s fear-
less gaze to the astro
orbiter meet up where stranger
children float into the Small
World filled with glee.

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Wildfire VIII

Roughshod, slapdash, and Bait n’ Tackle are the sounds of wet
feet on hot stone, red to match the boulders that differentiate
an otherwise bowlike horizon; kid makes a candy run
to the liquor store past nuclear physicists
in lawn chairs discussing dust
devils kicked up by zip-
tied Nevada test site protestors because Satan
is not necessarily mooning you from your sunscreen
bottle or running the disc and stick, but an old
scientist with a sick horse and two canaries.
Like a retired Johnny Appleseed, he rides the mower over
endless rolling green, plugs into the grey
cloud following him, sees Keanu Reeves sallow and wild-eyed
demanding endless gun racks in the bleached construct and totally
into murdering people until they’ve woken up.
He who hath understanding will reckon the number of the beast
for it is a human number. Even if that channel is pure snow on his ancient
TV, he’ll surf well past 660 for an honest
shape might form from waves.
Backed up with countless ginseng-fueled nights of sidereal
engineering research, he debates the cosmonauts
whether to end the planet buzzing with militarized bugs
and show just how mutual self-destruction can be.
Red brome and cheat grass capture nitrogen from desert fires. I side
with the ocean-world, whose own fabulist constructions
demonstrate a vast if unintelligible math.
Gunning to interpret the endless halls of neon
glyphs, he looks to see he’s in a theater—
the walls painted like a Spanish mission, where one
cannot tell whether the trellises of long-blooming thornless climbing roses are painted on or not, but maybe
humans would make good batteries and we should enter
the closest sphere of relative pleasure? Cattails burn
near Mono Lake—: stand of quaking aspen. In computer
limbo, one embraces the bloodsport, another finds
their memory in a server box beached like a whale—navigator song
still dimly emits. Enraptured seeds carry invasive
plants to the islands. The four star-rated meadow learns, the most
destructive fires are the product of autumn.
Flattening the sorrel and yarrow, the helicopter pilot
slows his blades and loves life according to his shirt.
Common, common dominator, common dominator on wings of of.
The field darkens as he sets up camp, and the college students
arrive, tripping over their own laughter, looking for something to burn.

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