my mother calls me on the phone

Outside in Long Beach
the music from a passing car
all tricked the hell out
bumps with a bass that has left several car alarms
sounding in its wake, angry
bad asses beating the air
with fists full of lyrics that I tend to give a nod to
as they gently grind me down to raw nerves and generally
more stringent expressions.

I balance it all, cell phone bills and a moment on the couch
looking at light in the curtains when I get home through the traffic.

What I can balance I do, my tiredness, my burning chest
to go out running
into figuratives, into abstractions,
into the streets of Long Beach with my arms flailing like a bad ass.

I'm sorry mom. I don't think it's gonna work out this time.

With the jets taking off of runways the way they do these days
you might think we have all grown so much closer.
I can't explain the distance between me and every human being
in line at the rite aid. I can't explain how too far home is
for me to travel, just now.

On tuesday morning after the holiday I will wake up
at three thirty again for work
and will not have seen my mother, will not have felt Oregon, will have kept
close to some progressive sense of balance,
too entirely far from my beginnings.