It's cold and the only light is a distant point
in a vast ocean of quiet dark.
I see window panes
made from hand-blown glass.
Flawed and warped to only show
a vague impression of
light, color and shifting shapes.
I can tell though, that it is warm inside.
I cough and spit.
I stagger-dance as an interpretation
of my wine-drunk idea of myself.
I want to shoot morphine
and nod to sleep reading a book
that I think might impress you.
I want you to see me as I see myself:
******* my own ****
with a faulkner novel tucked under my arm.
See how honest I am?
How self-deprecating?
Aren't I clever?
This poem is going off the rails,
so let me tie this **** up best as I can.
I'll try to do better next time.
I promise.

I've grown cataracts.
Sitting here, for those hours.
These years.
The world's blurred since then.
I remember the sky wasn't always so dull.
I know the wind used to stagger the trees.
I wasn't always so ******* bored.
When she smiles up at me,
it makes me sick.
It hurts to remember why.

It should be over by now.
Dusted away.
Burned out.
Killed.

Let someone else watch the dumb game.

You follow the telephone poles,
by their crooked way,
through the small-town rust,
and junk-yard mountains of aluminum soda cans
Past oak trees that grow green despite
the wither about them, and despite the strangling moss that saddens the wood
You follow the telephone poles,
till you come by the railroad track,
like the ones Ayn Rand wrote a thousand pages about,
Though this one is only worth seven, and a tacked-on reference,
and you'll follow it north, north, north
Till the sun sets,
and you can see the growing light,
and step in to me

Tear to me you cold, apathetic thing
You terrible thing, crooked with deformity
You perfect thing, flawless in design

Fold me under your wing and breathe me a song
as notes of dead, whispering leaves
dance in stagger-form about us

Plant me in the rot of autumn
To grow by the rust-glow of a thousand setting suns
To bathe in the dance of rain
To dance to the rain-songs that patter against window panes and hiss from the neon glow of small-town midnights

Carry me free of self-conscious, critical thought
For to shrug off the hands of my family, and to **** my friends
is the only true form of self-expression

To look in the glazed eyes of every passing stranger,
and see myself reflected in them,
and feel nothing

Oh, you nameless, brilliant thing
I name you
And with the form of your sound filling my mouth,
burning my throat,
rotting my teeth, I summon you
From the aching void of my burnt out mind,
and by the only right not granted to me by the American God,
I summon you
Ours is the last rite of pagan history

Please, hear me
Under the miles of white-static that buzzes like flies
about the stink of my dead-meat brain
Please, hear me
Though my voice is but a gurgle of blood between coughing fits
Please, hear me
Please
I don't want to be alone

Alone, but for the angry thrashing of my dreams
Fragments of stories that come between my twitching limbs
and dull, sweat-drenched headaches
Less than fragments
Syllables of words, strewn in the mud,
that I search out and rinse off and piece together
Only to finish and find that the word is nonsense
Guttural gibberish that offends with its meaningless

I speak in the tongues of my own ****** up cult,
to an empty room
My sermon is plagiarized
A distorted version of better work
The voice of god, twisted and made dumb.
An echo of cliche, a copy of copycats, reflections reflected