In Vista, there's an insurance salesman who won't write policies
_______against acts of God for religious reasons.
But if a river washes away the home built on a flood plain
that is not an act of God.
If a California quake shakes your house to basin silt
that is not an act of God.
If tukwut hunts you in the Cuyamaca Mountains,
that is not an act of God,
_______though God no doubt comes through cracks in weather stripping.
His acts are sleep promises made, never touched
_______like fingertips tracing the hawk's helix.
I will not drive through L.A. during daylight
_______when freeways chew chunks of people's lives.
I love to fly through the town at night,
_______the window rolled down, the scent of exhaust faint,
_______and follow a handful of taillights like demon stars.
At the 5/101 change, just before hurling through the slot beneath Alameda Street,
_______I look at the lights, thousands of them against the dark.
Every morning downtowners get up as if they have a chance,
_______but even if we all drove to the suburbs,
our back seats full of unmarked bills,
we could only buy another lot to attach to the fray we build.
Housing starts don't clear classrooms of warehoused children who
_______boost the economy by watching the god box before shopping the mall.
Meanwhile, boys at the Tropicana work out knots built into biceps
_______while "girls, girls, girls" get even. The cruelest give birth.
California is a landfill for everything that rolls west:
_______the gray water of Mission Bay when gravity enforces the law,
the sand slipping off beaches, and the security gate's click;
in California, these are the acts of gods.
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