1.
A thin film of eucalyptus leaves 
and drowning mosquitoes
covers the dull translucent surface
of a circa 1950s chlorine deprived
kidney-shaped swimming pool.
The cement and water bulls-eye 
for a three story, pay-by- the-week motel 
called the Sleep Tight Motor Inn.
A sun warped sign on a chain link fence
warns, "No lifeguard on duty."
The lifeguard is NEVER on duty.
Skateboarding twin brothers 
stand at the pool's locked gate
and complain...
"This is messed up," one says
"they should like drain the fucker."

2.
The motel's stucco walls
are ashen/heat cracked.
Dark brown boards
frame bent window screens
and soap streaked panes of glass.
(some shrouded in aluminum foil)
Outside room 19
the doorknob wears a cardboard collar
that reads, "Do not disturb."
This amuses the motel's Peruvian janitor.
The two men renting 19
have not been seen in weeks 
causing the leaf-blowing handyman 
to develop a few theories.

3.
Floor three
a middle-aged woman's
small, soft white hands
adjust the angle of a telescope.
Positioning the barrel 
through a tiny gap between curtains,
she swivels it downwards
focusing on the Rite-Aid parking lot 
across the street.
Last night she studied the Seven Sisters
This afternoon 
as the telescopic eye in the sky,
the digitized voice of an angry prophet,
she fixes her lens on earth.
Picking up a cell phone
her right index finger taps redial.
Instantly, next to the newspaper racks,
the drugstore pay phone starts to ring.
Hidden, she watches and waits.
Someone will answer-someone always does.

Morning cloud cover shredded.
Long hours of naked, 
Sun-raked sky.
Cosmos acetylene torch
welds the seam between earth and air.
Blue waves of Mojave August
rolling down. 

After hell-hot night of meth-twitch, 
hallucinogenic insomnia,
Freddy is still restless.
Spends most the day
leaving boot prints
In sponge-like asphalt,
bridge across sand, rock and cactus.
36 hours without sleep,
concocting deluded ideas
about last minute reconciliation
but Tina's bus is in L.A. by now...

Back at the pay-by-the-week,
the mirror above the bed
documents her disappearance.
An ashtray filled with half smoked
lipstick stained cigarettes,
empty bottles of rot-gut red,
abandoned detective novels,
(too many for a suitcase)
a broken-necked Spanish guitar.
Objects reflecting 50watt soft white,
distortions in beveled glass.

Late afternoon,
Pentecostal preacher in a red Taurus 
leaves the highway
pulls up next to Freddy.
"Need a ride?"
Head down, 
eyes locked on his own shadow,
Freddy continues walking/no answer.
"Heat like this can kill a man"
the preacher says.
Freddy grins like a rabid dog,
"you really think so?"
 

- Thomas Kellar