Three Minute Warning

A messenger delivers
A three minute warning
As I lay in bed at 10:30 am
(Resting in preparation for,
not from, our oops, early morning hike).

Breakfast will be ready in 3,
Get your **** in gear or else
It will be cold, I'll be mad,
And you will answer to a
Higher Authority.

No problem cause I already know
All I need is two.

Splash water on my face
Now I'm presentable
enough to the human race,
current company probably won't be happy,
But I ain't telling her, are you?

Shave! You crazed?
It is a three day weekend,
Every day a July Fourth,
Celebrating freedom from the European tyranny,
Of shaving smooth  every day!

Splash water on my head, count with me,
Five brush strokes as you can plainly see
Is a classic case of overcompensating
In my geling n' hair stylin'

Brush my teeth, well,
I hope 2 full minutes of rinsing with  CVS
Green stuff, mouthwash, will have to suffice.

Blast my deodorant both sides,
Long and strong, wearin' now
My bold blue *** husk of musk,
Cause I am a very considerate fellow
Who happens to really have stunk.

Clean T- shirt and shorts,
Yes, clean underwear too,
Leaves me a whole minute to write this scribble.

My flip flop noises coming down the hallway,
Are the butler announcing our joint arrival,
Me and my poem.

Lest you think this is paean to men
Another grand male boast,
Be advised this ditty be writty
By a man who, while no longer gritty,
Just put jelly on his scrambled eggs
And ketchup on his toast!

Mmmmmmm there might be a poem
Lurking in that too...

It's a nightmare of a journey
Through the Rose Hills.
White roses cover death
Along side the 50mph ride.
We'll speed down the boulevard
Turning right, swerving left.
Drink some beer on Broadway,
Smoke some cigarettes at CVS.
Then I'll fill your heart with rose petals
And regret.
You grin and whisper gently
I'll meet you in Whittier at Sunset.

Lets muddle through Greenleaf
Under a cerulean sky.
I got lost in the time held in your eyes.
I stumble back to only trip into your disguise.
Only to drown in your lips and lies.
Dragging our souls to Hellman's and back,
I'll find you on Hadley letting the sun in,
Wilted in Whittier at sunset.

The clock gets me.
It comes to me in the middle of the night
Pulls back the sheets and says, "Hey fucko."
Then it lifts open my sobby wet sand-encrusted lids,
It knows when I'm trying at sleep, pumping quarters
Like I was swallowing yawns, sometimes I try to squint
Harder and take a dream to the next level, whatever
The next level is. It's like Friday night when I wanted to go
Out to do something, whatever something is.
Because I know that if I don't I'll miss that thing that's so
Important that if I were to miss it the clock wouldn't come for me

Again.
And on Tuesday's when I'm knotting a dream around 2 o' clock
In the morning, my web-footed adventure, say, killing your

Boyfriend, say
Fighting the Nazis, say,
Rediscovering that you sent nudie pics to
That rando guy we met in that club that lives
in Prague-
I throw the clock at the ******* wall.

Because who knows, I make the bed wrong
Or maybe I don't cook right, or look right, or
Smile the right way at the right

Time. And you start thinking that I have to die.
The bane of my existence is an imagined feat in your
Walnut-sized brain, slowly numbing us while we're
Supposed to be, say

Listening to the rich, Oxford voice of
David Attenborough.

Instead you're thumbing through that index
of CVS cashiers, just trying to find a scruffy face
To flip your digits to, your homemade justification. It becomes
A feat, an unjust cause of mine to

Get it right, that imaginative and artificial bit you've
Been sewing up Monday twilight.

That's when I go out and jaw your sister, somewhere between
A smirk on your face and a bit of anger at the end of your sentences.

Blue Hill Avenue

It begins with Spanglish-speaking merchants
conducting business inside of bulletproof stalls,
where the faint scent of dried cod follows you
to the flat fix next door, into the auto body,
a hair shop, and to the steps of a church
for first generation Cape Verdean-Americans,
their offspring and that old lady --
someone’s  grandmother --
who wears a black dress on Fridays
and walks home from the Market Basket
the same time that you get off the bus
who wears a shopping bag full of tropical foods
and memories on her head.

And if you stand at its first **** south,
you will notice how the families disappear
in the African American section.
There are fewer stores here, lots of energy boxes
with epitaphs: “Tiffany Moore Died Here”;
a seatless swing set, a playground gone fallow.
You won’t see any church steeples in this section
that feeds on a neon CITGO sign too small
to illuminate the skyline like the mega one in Copley does.

A few blocks away, a ghost of the Jewish past sits
with pointy stars of David nestled inside its
bulbous steeples that simmer on summer Sundays
where Haitian congregants stew inside,
praying and giving to the building fund
in damp envelopes that will go to the omnipotent one
who will someday replace the stars with crosses.

And as you keep walking, past the temple,
you enter Grove Hall’s Mecca, a strip mall
with a drive-thru Dunkin Donuts,

a Stop & Shop, CVS, Bank of America,
and a Rainbows that sells your teenaged aunt
the sequined one-off shirt she needs for a date
and the fishnets she wears to the carnival
that parades through a sliver of the avenue,
the very next section of our beloved Blue Hill.

Across the street, Check Cashers speak English
as good as the number of dollars and cents
they count when they hand you back your cashed check
or the double win you scratched out of a Gold Rush ticket.

Adjacent to them, a Greek-owned sandwich shop
that feeds you steak bombs as long as your forearm or
Festive Fridays: 20 wing dings, a pound of fries,
a Greek salad, and a gracious gulp of fountain cola --
essentially, a heart-attack meal.  

Next, another ghost of the Jewish past,
a church in the former Franklin Park Theater,
where Yiddish entertainers performed vaudeville acts
which nobody living can remember.

Then a building that resembles an African footstool,
one that will allow you to see over the **** of the hill
and down below at a gospel choir trapped in everlasting song
against the wall of the one-hour cleaners and that store
where a turkey-shaped lady with flour dusted hands
stands behind a window, noticing you,
while guarding her beef patties and cocoa bread
with a bulletproof smile.

So here i write. In a parking lot outside CVS in a town in Virginia, I now sit holding a notepad and the cheapest mechanical pencil money can buy, ticking away. Here I write, though I'm not sure I am (I mean I'm unsure about my existence, not my current writing state) (Yes, Descartes, I think therefore I am, but what if I don't feel?)
At this point in a story, you'd start getting hints about my 'tragic past'. Well, in reality, it might sound pretty ******. It'd go like this;

"Polly Perks, born April 17, 1993 once deeply and profoundly felt. She held lust and envy, bounded in happiness and spun out thoughtfulness, wandering with curiosity, released lust, her body was a compendium of emotions (whatever that means). And sometimes she felt them one by one or glutted herself on many feels. Then, as per usual narrative style, came a boy who made her heart beat, her brain swoon and then her insides scream all within a school year. That boy was no good for her because he was, you see, deeply forbidden (translated to exclude melodrama, he was dating her best friend, that *******). Polly carved through that summer with whiskey, daydreams, and a quiet ripping noise coming from her chest as the emotions shanked their way out. Then her dad died. Then she went to college."

You see, after I watched my father's skin turn yellow and his eyes churn milky tears, after i left behind my life with shallow and fleeting throes of excitement for books and tests, after I was finally escaped from this man-child who pulled and pushed me like a yo-yo, i made a pact subconsciously, or maybe hallucinatory, or maybe completely aware-ly, but from that day on I abandoned emotion, and so I have lived for nigh on 279 days (I made that number up, but the gist is its been awhile since me and feelings have hopped into any kind of bed).

Well today, nearly one year later, Polly has had enough with emotionless-ness. Let's get back to narration, shall we?

"One day after work Polly finds herself shaking her head. Not in a manner of saying 'no' or conveying confusion, more like a 'wet dog shaking off the rain' shake. rain is what she wants, and like a fairytale rain is coming. She hears thunder and strikes up, leaves the house and enters rain. Inside, she feels (not emotionally but in a scientific way, as if she's taking inventory of her organs and thoughts and building blocks) movement, like her pulse is bracing to start. She's felt it before this year, while watching shooting stars with a cute, drug infested boy in college, and while witnessing the comedies of friends, and after telling the nightmarish apparition of her yellowed father he died and must leave her dreams alone. She feels she should feel."

So I run. I run and run and run in the rain, and God, I'm feeling like emotions might not ****. But then the rain starts slowing, and I start skimming, and soon I'm on a tree, a fallen fractured tree upon a metal playground (there's probably symbolism in that, so go ahead and rejoice, high school english teachers). I think 'i don't want to be empty' and then I whisper it and soon I find myself standing on this tree, yelling at empty clouds and the bricks and the metal climbing bars i don't, I Don't, I DON'T.
and then... a heart beat. a strong one. I feel it.  I feel the story, I feel colors, I feel inspired and man, I feel like ****. But I'm feeling something.

"Delirious with this re-discovered feeling, Polly decide to challenge the skies. She sees a flag pole with an shiny brass eagle on top sitting as a bright and proud beacon of America, home of the free and the brave and those who eat their feelings or starve them out.She sees the clouds, she hears the thunder, and the eagle speaks. 'So you feel now, Polly? Come put it to the test. Feel reckless. Come and feel my skin, cool metal, during a lightning storm.'

So she does. And she dies. And her feelings die with her. That, or she lives to write her odd, slapdash story in a frenzy in a parking lot outside CVS, to the pitter patter of mad rain.

I board a public bus
A graying bus driver is a woman and then morphs into a man
A normal experience within a dream

My eyes glaze over as I assume a state of aloofness
As I tend to do when surrounded by unfamiliar people
As some sort of defense mechanism
As if the otherworldly look in my eyes
Will thwart the formation of an ill intention forming in the mind of a stranger that occupies the bus with me
Just in case

Two older men are on the bus
I don't validate their existence
When I am aloof
It feels like I am the only person truly alive
Everything gradually grows dimmer
As my inner world roars as loudly as an amphitheater.

The bus drives for hours
I've never been on this bus before and I've never been to the town I am traveling to
I'm going there to check out a church
Even though I'm not a Christian
Hours pass...
I start falling asleep in my dream
The bus has no stops

Finally, the bus reaches the end of its route
I am dropped off in front of a CVS along with the other two male passengers
One scruffy old man leers at me and smiles at me
But I act as if I didn't see him
I have no idea how to get to the church
It's getting dark
All that is around is the CVS, the bus stop, and a road with an onslaught of cars driving in either direction
Why did I make this hours long trip if I didn't even know exactly where I was going?
If only I could cross the wide street to get to the other side where the bus stop for the bus back home is
But I can't
The cars were driving at fast speeds and their was a constant flow of them
So I stood in that nakedness of uncertainty and abounding possibility
Stuck and calculating
As the sun set over this foreign place I ended up in
All because I was seeking some purpose
And yet, it brought me so far away from home,
the comforts and luxuries and certainties of home
Yet, when I awoke, something deep and vital within me knew
That I will never find my purpose within the comfort of my home.

I could tell a thousand stories about a boy.

There are dry crystals of DXM on the desk on which he writes CVs,[1] and as he writes he listens to Lou Reed because of his apparent lack of knowledge of Reed's back catalogue.[2]

He takes Molly on Friday nights, because rappers say its cool, how could Chief Keef be an idol to reasonable people?[3] Spouting buzzwords and memes in public places, hoping to be noticed and applauded for a knowledge of he knows not what.

The Twitter feed reads like toilet paper, with less information
Fooling himself into thinking that he needs that rapid a-disinformation[4]
He wonders why there are still advertisements for MySpace, is it not dead yet?

He uses a trusted torrent search engine to download every episode of TV shows he watches religiously. Is that not an indicator of a profoundly unhappy person?[5]
A liberal thinker in his own right yet still regards the BBC as having unabashed liberal motifs haphazardly forced into all of its programming and news coverage.[6]

Why have hashtags stumbled into the global lexicon, and is this an example of cultural Marxism?[7]
Why is he never noticed?
That sweet jazz serenade that emanates from speakers in his lonely house, is but melancholy drones, might as well be Tim Hecker as opposed to Jack Teagarden.[8] His record collection is vast, the smell of vinyl pungent and nostalgic.[9] Obsolete so they may be, but those indie movies sure make them seem cool.

Oh he watches Truffaut, Fellini, Tarr and Michael Snow, he does it to appear cultured, but to who? Since nobody exists.[10] Antiutopian music videos, depicting *** and violence, he could make crass judgments on society but he knows that he loves that Robin Thicke video and what Kanye West did with New Slaves.[11]

Spending hours at a time, ******* to amateur **** on some seedy site and pictures of girls that he probably shouldn't have seen. [12] And after such laborious efforts he can return to an endless cycle of hitting F5 on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, 4chan, 420chan, VICE, TheYNC, BBC News, Mishka, 2DopeBoyz, World-Star Hip-Hop, Fetlife and Hello Poetry. Amassing information and retaining so little that it hardly seems worthwhile.

Yes he reads, when so many do not. Nabokovian purple prose and the way Bukowski was so ******. He read Poe in elementary because 'goth' was new to him, and now he loves Whitman, Plotinus and St. John of the Cross because Ginsberg mentions them in Howl and Other Poems.[13]

He uses words he doesn't understand like 'catechism', 'ecclesiology' and 'female ******'.
A sprawling mass of words, never ending streams of thoughts, the constant reminder of drudgery in modern times. Wishing he was from some other period, but the idea is ridiculous in and of itself.
He makes crass jokes and thinks they're actually funny.

He's lost. He's empty. He's sad and he's a fraud, its how I knew him best.[14]

First I wrapped the Belkin cover on my 64GB iPad
tight shut with 3M shipping tape
then I glued one helium Happy Birthday teflon balloon
from CVS Pharmacy on each corner with SuperGlue
and took it down to the beach.

Kneeling at the tip of the tide
I beseeched the gods
accept this offering
heal my disbelief
make my body and soul whole. . .
I’ve stopped adding Abilify to my antidepressant
and I’m scared to feel the emptiness again.

I launched my little ship
on the next outgoing surge
as a Red Bull can bobbed beside
and I closed my eyes in supplication.

In a world full of ugly people,
A city made of hideous faces,
A phone call means everything.
It means a voice, free from
Its crooked nose, its wrinkled skin,
And its gapped, stained, crooked teeth.
It means a connection.
With another, with yourself,
And with the ability to disconnect
At the push of a button.
I take out my scratched, chipped cellphone
With its cracked face,
And call Helen.
Her voice swims through the mud
Inside my skull when she answers,
Stirring and churning
Until I'm weak and dizzy.
"How 'bout you just come
On over now, Big Fella?"
And I do.
I turn off the squawking television,
Don a pair of food-stained pants,
Drag a comb through my
Overgrown hair,
And descend the stairs to my
Waiting Oldsmobile.
The turn of the key in the ignition
Only produces a hollow click,
One click two click three click six,
Then a partial start,
But the beast fails to come alive.
I get out to replace
The fried starter fuse,
Then do this dance four more times
Before the old ***** clears her throat
And starts to idle.
It's a short ride,
Pawtucket is small,
And my only companion
On these post-midnight streets
Is the white noise
Issuing from the broken radio.
I pass the house I grew out of,
The crumbling schools
That taught me the value
Of impartial numbness,
The cemetery my father used to visit
To perpetrate the lie
He lives;
The role of a child
And the permanence
Of parents.
I pass abandoned factories
And abandoned hope
And abandoned pets
And abandoned storefronts.
In a world of full of past relics,
In a city full of ghosts,
A crumbling façade means everything.
It means bricks freed from their mortar,
Separated from their history,
Left to be picked up and thrown through plate glass windows.
Buildings are never empty,
Just quiet.
I pass the CVS at Newport and Armistice,
With its twenty four hour pharmacy,  
Dispensing the one a.m. hydrocodone,
The one thirty a.m. dextroamphetamine,
The two a.m. oxycodone,
The two thirty a.m. alprazolam,
The three a.m. dextromethorphan,
The three thirty a.m. methylphenidate,
The four a.m. eszopiclone,
The four thirty a.m. benzodiazeprine,
The five a.m. phenylpropanolamine.
I drive past the clinic in the old senior center
With its six a.m. methadone ready to go
In pre measured cups.
Buildings can be quiet, but not empty.
Helen lives on the third floor of a three story house
Built sometime in the forties,
Forgotten sometime in the eighties.
The two bottom floors are vacant,
The windows are boarded,
The driveway is choked with weeds,
And two lounging cats don’t flinch
When I walk by them
On my way to the door in the rear of the building.
The door is always unlocked,
So I let myself in
And begin the rickety climb to the top.
The higher I go,
The louder Amy Winehouse’s voice gets.
“What kind of fuckery is this?”
Seems an adequate question.
There are ****** handprints on the railings,
The walls,
Drops polka dot the stairs.
I don’t bother knocking,
I never do.
She’s seated in a La-Z-Boy in the kitchen
Facing the door,
In a cloud of cigarette smoke.
In place of exchanged pleasantries
I say I need to use the bathroom
And she nods,
Eyes locked on mine.
I take a look at my sallow image
In the mirror,
With specks of toothpaste and hairspray
Pocking my face like acne.
The toilet bowl is still streaked
With the last man’s ****.
I ****, wash my hands,
And take another look at myself.
Helen is no longer in the chair,
But I know where to find her.
She’s sprawled on the bed,
With a new cigarette in her mouth,
The toys spread out on one side,
The tools on the other.
I tell her I’ll forgive her for stabbing me the other night
If I can get a freebee now.
She shakes her head once,
Exhales a cloud,
“Not gonna happen, Champ,”
And I take what I can get.

You know how when
You put a kettle on a stove,
Maybe for tea
Or something else maybe
You get the kettle
To put on the stove
And you put water in it
From the tap
Or if you're in
The inner city
Then maybe from
A jug
From cvs
Or rite aid
I don't know which is closer
To your kettle
That you're putting the
Water in
To put on the stove
But the tap smells funny
And tastes like minerals
And artificiality
So if you have a bit of money, Maybe an on-tap
Filter or brita
You turn the little
**** on the front
Of the oven
And you hear
The distressed, hurried
Sound of a component
Desperately trying
To do its job
It seems like forever
But it's just a couple
Seconds
The spark catches
The gas
And glorious blue
Energy leaps out
And causes
Instant condensation
On the side of the
Kettle you've filled
With water
And put on the stove
And then
Primordial chemistry
As old as old
Changes ****
Around inside
No time
For a chem lesson
Just listen
And then after a few minutes
A blast of
Piping hot
Shrill
Pure energy
Explodes out of the top
In an earsplitting
Harried call
To you to let you
Know the kettle
You put on the stove
Is now ready
For you.
All that pressure,
From so much activity,
Before you even
Turned the heat on
You walked around
Gathering materials
And moving about
And all the calories
You burn thinking
About it
And then the
Thermal activity
Which is breathtaking
In its simple
But ever so complicated
Perfect order
And predictability
And all of this simply
Amazing process
Culminates
In one constant,
High energy geyser
Of released pressure.
This is equivalent
To the results
Of one thought
About you.
What a life
As a kettle.
Yea.

one time I was thinking about money.
and it was late at night.
I don't remember what I was thinking
oh yea I had just started this new business
get rich quick scheme
pyramid of sorts
and I was planning and plotting
planning and plotting on how I would make hundreds of
thousands of dollars
by the end of the year
I couldn't sleep
it must of been
well past midnight
I had taken in a woman
a homeless woman
we made a whole day out of it
smoked synthetic marijana
she was coming down off of herione
and I couldn't sleep .
I went to CVS
to buy
nyquil
so I could sleep
in my bed
back home
next to this beautiful creature I had brought home.
we prayed that day
and cried
together
I was thinking so hard about that money
I went into the CVS
i had no shoes on ,
snobbishly
I picked my items
and I was thinking so hard
about that money.
the guy .
the guy at the counter runs my card
and it won't go though
the outrage I thought
I was thinking so hard about that money
I musta had like a couple dollars in my bank,
I had spent it all
on that synthetic marijuana.
but I was snoobish
and thinking hard about that money,
and he started to look faint
and I swear my glare didn't change ,
my face remained the same
emotionless
and I was thinking so hard about that money
it was well past midnight
and I was thinking so hard about that money
he started to get white
and my expression remained the same
and I was thinking so hard about that money
and he stumbled from behind the counter
he didn't look so good
it was well past midnight
and I was thinking so hard about that money
and then he got sick
and my expression didn't change
and my card wouldn't go through
and nobody cared.
and I was thinking so hard about that money,
and I wanted to steal those items,
and I was outraged that my card didn't go through
and I didn't help him,
I still can't believe I didn't help him,

He told me i was prettier in person
the night after we kissed in my best-friend's foyer
awkwardly missing the mouth because he was afraid
he would make a mistake
with a mistake
who had acne on her lip
and crooked teeth he'd luckily missed
when he kissed mouth closed
the second time
He told me Jesus Christ I was lovely
the moment I returned home
to cover my legs unfairly scratched by grass and flowers
with CVS brand diaper rash ointment, all over my fingers,
in my eczema cracks,
because I couldn't take the pain on my knees any longer
He told me to please not move
when I laid my head on his shoulder,
my unshaven arm round his waist and unshaven leg touching his own
and I could feel the bridge of my long nose
pushing in to the carotid artery where his heart pulsed faster and faster
as he ran one soft and gentle hand through my hair
and held my eczema cracks in his other, my grandmother hands,
that the other boy had called contagious, and the other girl had called
Alligator Skin
He told me he loved to walk behind me
though i had forgotten to suffer through bra stuffing
and wore baggy pants to prevent my knees against the trees
and my figure resembed a giraffe, knobly and unkept mane and all
He told me nothing
when He leaned in to kiss me a second time
and He put his hands in my mane
and His leg under my CVS knees
and His face in my Alligator hands
and my unstuffed bra near his chest
And His open mouth on my acne covered, crooked toothed mouth

because I am prettier in person