all around is buildings appalling in their ugliness
salvage titles on dead lots
well broken-in convenience store floors
i think the cities are alive and they are dying
much like us
mayors like quack doctors prescribing repaved highways when the whole damn organ is shutting down
no amount of in-construction lanes can stop the drugs from flowing
in
slaughtering mothers and daughters alike in chicanerous frenzy
all the killing killing us in turn
our hearts in acute necrosis,
our minds burning out from the lethal annals of absurdity
micron by micron
it's all so tragically, stupidly,
fucked
lurid temptress, and in the corner, the scarlet-yellow lamplight cascaded through the tree leaves...
("me and my three dots...")
the ferris wheel was there and so were joe and juliana
i was there too of course
and my coat was too large, and so were my thoughts of love
of its diffusion into the air
but cupid's quiver held not
one
arrow for me.
how close you were to them
how far you will be
all performance interspersed with the
"hush-hush"
of your usual sour
temperament
your clumsy ramblings failed this time
because you brought up Demeter
like usual
slow motions until it all fades away
and the sleep that does not come
comes
how many times you've walked that road or this
always the orange hue of childhood
always a ghost
always, you.
sometimes in my world there is an
insidious
plasma
that infects the brain stem and all of the muscle tissue and the texture
everything—
call it "love"
call it whatever the hell you want all i know
is that when it really gets you
when it really seeps into your pores and really
fucks you up
verbally and semantically and
whatever
you're done for.
i was young once like that and now i am old
(accept loss forever!)
i really believed the jane and tarzan shit
(accept loss forever!!)
i really cried
hard
not for a while, now
but i always hope it is soon
and i always hope it makes sense
when i am asleep i accept and when i am awake i struggle against
just the disposition of an idiot, usually
speaking my peace in quiet terms and reserved glances
until i have no energy any longer
i love you
but i am so alone at times it
makes a kind of unsmiling and real sense
why is he smiling?
you tell me anything—
"she's fucking another dude behind your back!"
Oh, I believe it!
"your uncle joey got crushed at the factory yesterday"
Oh, I believe it!
"she overdosed and died the other day"
Oh, I believe it!
"it's not your fault sho"
Oh, I believe it!
"i'm a witch!"
Oh, I believe it!
"i had that bitch sniffing shards of finely pulverized glass!"
Oh, I believe it!
"he caught a blood infection, had to have his feet amputated"
Oh, I believe it!
(If not immediately it seeps in when the dope hits,
hospital bathroom)
"jesus christ loves you"
Oh, I believe it!
"a snarling wife on the balustrade is more than a man can stand"
Oh, I believe it!
"...the capybara that taught me how to make methamphetamine and a nuclear bomb..."
Oh, I believe it!
"oh i had your mother, she wasn't that good, she was in the 'dry' goods section"
Oh, I believe it!
"a flightless drowning bird requires wings of water"
Of course I believe you...
"the monkeys choose to be alone with cocaine"
I cannot believe it is too close
to me
tang of lithium still fresh on his breath
smothered by the all-too-saccharine sweetness of the coffee he needs
to put the restless night of bad dreams
to sleep
the cigarette perched on his lips says he will be okay in five.
running through the same beaten tracks of 26 years in his head
(27 is knocking on the door)
the same daydreams and baddreams
the same imagined conversations
the same people
the same hope if you'd done one thing differently
well, no,
too many times down that avenue of thought
i'm still here
not exactly the me i want to be
"oh well and what the hell"
more trudging through the bog of people
all the cardboard, all of their and my own servility
reflected in everything in TV static
and thin veneers of good-will to all men
and women
and women neither
the cigarette between his fingers says he'll be okay in five.
wasting time on immaculate and inopportune unrealities
straddling the balcony pretending the drop is one thousand feet instead of ten
and walking the beach
hoping to chance
to make
to meet
tears more deadly and salty than all the ocean's worth
the cigarette
that he just finished says he will be okay in five.
i wonder that myself sometimes
how i must appear to some people
the shade of a man pulling the shade of a vodka bottle out from the shade of a backpack
at dawn
drinking myself into belligerencies all the deeper
the strangeness of my blip of a shape against the horizons of countless days' beginnings and countless days' ends
sometimes they say
"what is wrong with him!"
and sometimes they say
"there he goes,"
how inescapably garish and stupid i can be
silly, sleepy-always
how my fears will never be
paroled
for the fear that comes with dopamine-antagonist induced apoplexies
these foreordained captivities slaying me like scythes of bile and night
callous marauders riding about on all sides
reflections of myself
tossing me into the oubliette of my death once and for-all
like a dog who shits on the carpet
my nose upon my filth
reminds me of who i am
i like it here
i'm afraid of feeling myself
come back to myself
i like it when things don't make sense
in the way i make sense
of them.
i remember sitting outside of hotel rooms
carpeted ugly floors
waiting for things to return to normal
and normal they never ever became
again
is life therefore not for me?
is this the wrong stage?
not an extra some interloper
for all of my days?
under the pale darkness of a moon
who too never
needed
me?
floodlight beams had turned themselves into fog somehow
on the night of which day i can no longer ascertain
how long had you been awake?
how much longer would you?
(the answers too are lost to time that slipped so fast i could not keep track)
i had thrown some papers out onto the lawn
days, or weeks, ago?
perhaps some of my best work
if i did not dream it
of course when i stumbled
ugly body and painted countenance
and gripped grass-roots
and pulled up
looking for traces
nothing was there
the rain had eaten it, all of it
that's when i realized that words
will never be enough
here is how it will go
so we know between the two of us
what became of what we
once
were
one day, on which nothing in particular happens
i will be
overridden by an acute, insinuatory madness
despite all evidence to the contrary,
despite every honeyed reassurance otherwise,
one day i will simply
believe, and do so truly
that you do not love me any longer
and perhaps never did at-all.
and yes, i will still adore you with all of my heart
that will ruin me too.
where indeed do the ducks go?
rather, where would i, a duck. go?
in the winter slumber frigid,
and all my kin flock to some warmer America
i will go north
until the tickling of white pine and spruce and firs
touch me no longer—
land's end
lavish winds tracing their trajectories against my beaten wings
the sting of a dead white land in my vision
white is the absence of color...
the pallid scalp of a continent soon to be as colorless as the corpse
i must go north
because something in me needed to see
what no-one else wanted to see
the futile vista of a terminating tundra
acquiesced into the icy beckoning of tumbledown icefloats
meandering tenderly upon the undulating breaths of an old, cold sea
i had to go north
because nothing waited for me in life
but death, always, always
and now that my gelid form breathes its last
in time to timeless waves
that dance underneath this speck of glacier
that houses my end
so lovely
and lulls me into my last eyes-closing
at last
you can ask me
what it is like
to have lived.