Maui Sunset or reality is whatever you believe
The online celebrity and I meet
in the lobby of the Ritz Carlton
Her dad rents a room there
She says I have nice skin I don’t have nice skin
She says she doesn’t want to be successful she wants to burn
Her rental car trunk is filled with broken corona bottles
She pees behind a trashcan in the parking lot
of the resort
lined by palms
I stand guard
counting down the minutes
before a tourist family walks by and stares
at the stream running down the hot pavement
A little girl with a pink noodle
Mom has let herself go I’ve let myself go too
My mom asks in text
what does it mean when your new friend says,
“She wants to burn”
You know that Neil Young song,
Hey hey, my my
out of the blue and into the black
They give you this but you pay for that
It’s better to burn out then to fade away
My mom used to stalk Neil Young
at this bar
in Half Moon Bay he was said to frequent
She looked for him but never saw him
*
My Instagram friend is better in real life
I can see the brown liner
drawn around her lips
undetectable in photos
She tells me about Miracle Berry parties
(Pills that turn sour foods sweet)
and how she got sick from a basement full of caged animals
She shows me her texts with an autistic vampire
He refers to her only as
Mistress of the Dark
The warm island weather makes her horny
My friend Elliott is single I tell her
He’s so small I’d crush him if I sat on him
A woman at the resort yells at us
for stealing chairs and reclining in the ocean
I read your poem Destruction
“I can’t wait to burn into the ether forever”
You read my poem I’m Wet II
You show me pics of your 14-year-old
slinkster skater boys
you pretend to have sex with
with Jello colored glasses and breath of stolen liquor
I used Mario as a lure to get you here with me but don’t feel guilty
We eat shrooms with a bellboy
our faces melt off in his shattered bathroom mirror
like an amateur chemical peel in the 90s
Freddy Krueger recovers in Maui
Typical trip shit she says
to be an artist
performing on the Internet
In Memory of Myself she says
*
All turtles are becoming extinct
sleeping dinosaurs the last ties to the ancient
No one goes unshaven,
waxed to strut the sandy shores
and snap pics of the last ties to the ancient asleep on the beach
What is there to do when you’re on a detox
work out at Equinox on an island
Should we go to
amateur hour at Saigon Karaoke Lounge
neon lit and faded
is the new trip to Mecca
Devoted children of the sugarcane
You sureeeee this has alcohol
she asks the resort bartender
long nails and black boots in the sand
Yes, it’s expertly blended with fruit and ice
so you can’t detect the taste of alcohol
My dad told me he’s the reincarnation of the first Roman Emperor
He abused his power that’s why this lifetime
he isn’t rewarded as an artist
the way he wants to be
*
Did you know some people still believe the world is flat?
Flat earther’s and Morgellon’s disease
You think DNA strands are coming out the tips of your fingers
Joni Mitchell has it, poor Joni
picking at invisible bugs crawling on her skin
If I could drink a case of you
I want to burn a car with you
and everything I’ve lived for until now
Beer coffee monogamous sex
climbing the corporate ladder proud parents
Burn a car like the poet Kevin Killian
in his poem “The Willow Tree”
He makes love to his second cousin, covers his breasts with moss
in touch with
the primordial order of the world
a faint glimmer in the leatherback sea turtles
One opens a weary eye
to see a white boy smeared in sunscreen
taking a photo to post online
I’m dreaming of a time that never even existed
Drop me off at the nail salon
vacation nails for burning
Does burning have a sound
*
They’re shooting normative daggers
Everyone is depressed and jaded
reading signals in the dark
Are we a part of the solution or the problem
I ask as we watch
the bikini blonde on the black rock
ceremoniously dive
into the dark waters
The reclining nude is ill
lit on the beach
wearing a bathing suit
covered in illustrated vegetation
Does she remember the ferns
the sound of burning