A Geology

What we love, can't see.

If Italy looks like a boot to most people, California
looks like the skin of a person about to sit
down, a geology.

Consider the Coast Range. We can achieve
the same results by pushing a pile of wet
papers from the left and finally
they were just in love with each other.

Consider the faultline; with only two sides of it,
how come you never thought of one of them.

A place we love, can't see. A condition
so used to becoming...

(Those who have straddled reference know a map
will stand for wholeness.)

When you were trying to quit the drug and broke
in half you said...

And you had to trust it (that is, needing it)

Landforms enable us to scare. Where
Berkeley is, once a shallow sea with
landforms to the west, called Cascadia.
No kidding. I read this.

A geology breaks in half to grow. A person whose drug like
a locust jumps across someone's foot, singing-
we disagree with D, who hates similes.

The Transverse Ranges holding Los Angeles spit out
a desert on their hazard side, a power
transformed from a period of thrall into
an ordinary period of lying here.

There are six major faults, there are skipped
verbs, there are more little
thoughts in California. The piece of coast
slides on the arrow; down is
reverse. Subduction means the coast

goes underneath the continent, which is
rather light. It was my friend. I needed it.
The break in the rock shows forward; the flash
hurts. Granite is composed of quartz, hornblende
and other former fire. When a drug

is trying to quit it has to stretch. Narrow comes
from the same place as glamor.

A scarp hangs over the edge as it goes from
Monterey to Santa Barbara. When we
were trying to quit it had to shout.
(The rest of our party had gone up ahead.)
Exaggeration has no effect upon silence.

It took my breath, I gave it willingly, I told
it to, and the breath listened--

Consider the place of I-80 towards outcroPpings.
When you've gotten to Auburn, a whole
dog-shaped ground has broken through,

the rock struggling with features, its bachelor joy, caused
by the power that has kissed you.

What happened, happened a lot. Not to glamorize
what can't be helped. A bunch of fiery
islands floated over and sutured themselves to us

a hundred million years ago. I liked

to hold one. Just, really, light it. Put my
mouth on it.

Ir's appropriate to discuss features when we speak of California,

daylight's treatment of a sudden

movement in rock. It pretended not to mind. You
passed him on the path. Miocene lava
smiled as it ordered the darker

color to sit down.

When he was trying to quit he based his reasoning
on the way mountains slip. Californias
glaciers never reach the sea. The drug

was trapped in you, and fit. The Klamath mountains love
the veins of excellent stress, see figure 12.
Berween the time two mountains slip, nothing
Between two points of resolution, nothing.
less. A little more
almost and the slip happened; it happened
a lot just 30 million years ago.

I saw berween the fames four types of instruments
with one they touched my mouth,
with another you touched
her feet. Rocks of the oldest

time are barely represented. This is the voice
from the cave, Oleiria. He was coming
to fuck me but my face had been removed.

The fault went under artichokes in 1982. She talked
to the permanent fire about it;

what pushes up from under isn't
named. Or is that "\What makes you do this
to yourself. -What makes you-A language
caught up under, like a continent.
She was inhaling though they told her not to.

In the Gabilan Range, small volcanoes erupted
softly, then this throw-rug-over-the-carpet
in-a-bowling-alley type of effect. A california

is composed of moving toward, away, or past; a
skin is not separate; a poem is

composed of all readings of it. Elements
redeem themselves plenty, alchemists say so.
I gave my breath quite casily, then. Sorry it's

ashes, sorry it's smoke all the way down. Gravity
has to practice. The disciple of angles
smashed planet after planet, rubbing the cave
of chalk onto his cue, and put them
into corners like Aquinas's five
proofs for the existence of God. Nice
touch on that boy, nice touch on those
who sleep till noon, who sleep the sleep
of the uninsured till noon and wake with maps
of Sacramento on their hands.

What made the Sierra lift from the right. Telluric Poptart.
Geologists refer to the range as
trapdoorlike. It made him cry, he gave it
willingly, the bartender brought him

free drinks and sent him out into the pale
wrong proud civilian night

A geology can't fix itself. Nor can description.
Horses run upside down in
the undermath. A power has twinned itself
in that place. We follow it until we are
its favorite, then we live. Does the drug
recover? The Pacific Plate

began this recent movement 20 million years ago. Fresno
was underwater; the small creatures
barely noticed.

She smelled it till it stopped looking pretty; let's call a spoon
a spoon. We dig right down into ourselves
for the rocks of the middle kingdom. Gold

folded into the Motherlode often rwinned
with quartz. They seemed to like each other.
Addicts stay on the porch together, lighting them,

and elsewhere, lighthouse cliffs recall the tremors
that brought them there. I whered
the wheel and the continent moved over

but I still wanted it.

Los Angeles cheap bedding. Youd allow her
to go first and then youd go, pull the youngest
blanket over her-bang. If that's
how you like it, fine. Like warm sandstone.

Were living at the dawn of creation as far as
California is concerned. The skin
goes first. Most beaches are losing sand,
it drifts south to Mexico. He sold it, she mixed it, we

bought the pfft in 198x, trying to endure
the glassfront curve in the unaccountable
ghostmans pleasure. Get down

off that ladder, you. Ceiling stars. Little fiery

islands were light as they ordered Nevada
to move over. The white thing took
her breath, she let it slide, it recognized
what to do. After it started, no
change; seeing you was methodone
for seeing you.

The number of faults in middle California
is staggering-that is, we stagger
over them till it's
difficult to follow our own. Each tremor
is the nephew of a laugh-
sandstone, shale, chert from the Triassic
near 1-Forgetville. He lined
them up, they made white sense,

stretchmarks on her body like
public transportation, very coastal,
very Sierra traintracks that click-click
down the sides of thighs, stretchmarks
where the soul has grown too quickly
from inside--

But in a way, not really. A geology

has its appetites. New islands are forming
to get the gist of it. Much of the coast
moved on its own to get free. Sometimes
hed just pass it to you, the prince of stains
the universe cried through him. The sea

was glassing itself over Half Moon Bay. Should have
dropped again suddenly, in the service
of some burnt out Eden.

Ir's appropriate to discuss what cant be
helped. Phyllites, schists, cherts
marbles. An angel in the annunciation,
little subzero Mary kneeling
before you in the bathroom while you were
burning your skin off

You went east and you went south. They
took out their little fear schedules. The Pacific
Plate on the left moving north while
the right stands still if you
look down on it. There's no way

to say progress had been made. I never did

not think about lighting them, not one day,
as if a requiem could help how chords
fell out the bottom; Cascadia breathed; I tried
program, H tried program after program,
P tried specific harvests
of bubbles. 12 step ashes. Extra metal

on the stove. The rest of our party
had gone on ahead. Don't name it. The lithosphere
likes to float on the aesthenosphere, the soft
mobile voice of the unseen. I slide

below you sweet and high. It wants

to hear you. It wants to touch you. It wants

Phyllites, schists, cherts, marbles. Press #
when you are finished. No one knows why
the arc of minor islands sewed themselves
to us in that way. When I put it

to my mouth I Had no ability to stop it.
The sea ate the colors a hundred million years ago.

A geology is not a strategy. When an addict tries to leave
the desire to make himself over shifts from
what it felt like to have been a subject

LA. will dwell beside San Francisco eventually.

Tempting to pun on the word fault. All right,
say plot. All right, happens. The tendency
to fault relieves the strain. New islands
were forming to get the gist of it. We wanted
the extraordinary stranger in our veins.
to be happy and it wants to die.

Whether it's better not to have been held by sometching
The oldest limestone, prevalent berween Big Sur
and Calaveras, is not "better than, " say,
any other kind. The suffering wasn't luckier,
it wasn't a question of asking.

In the instead hour, the minutes of not recovering
from the difference of what we loved;
sameness is also true: stone like a spider

sucking the carapace the same color as itself.

In the expiation of nature, we are required to
experience the dramatic narrative of matter.

The rocks under California are reigning in their little world.

This was set down in strata so you could know
what it felt like to have been earth.