Diaphanous, like glass dons frost,
the view to lavender distance is lost.

She is a dentist in Atlanta
She comes home at half past nine.
The only thing I want to do
Is speak to her just one more time.

A young veterinary,
just shy of a degree,
was put in charge of caring
for the circus menagerie.
Although he kept on trying
near-continuously,
the animals were dying
almost incessantly.

Brilliant, brilliant, Synecdoche,
Child of Sorrow you hide me.
I’m here, beneath,
Name, Employment, Relationship,
Wealth, Assets, Social Alphabet,
Because it’s better than seeing bare
A spirit flayed with heirloom silverware.
Inheritance lopped off from a branch
Of a tree I hate wholeheartedly
I’d rather shrivel in the grass,
Far from kinship’s rootedness.
If I were alone and completely so
Less of a case would be
For all this arid metonymy.
I am flowing with blood and water
And are not surmised by a part of the whole
Nor by the whole for a part.
Call me child of sorrow.
Not me, not me, Synecdoche.

I wake up on a golden beach, relaxed.
In the surging neon plenty of a reveling metropolis
that can’t wait to leave yesterday behind,
I cheerfully embrace the warmth radiating from my chest.

And I dance
with the ghosts of Chiba, Chiba.

Sipping in the Chiba sun.
Hacienda, cheaper ***
than anywhere, I don't care.
I'm sleeping with my boss's wife
and leave her on a beach at night.
Disheveled, drunk, and sickly high.
Delve deep into bohemian life.

Chinese cigarettes, imported;
Rice cakes, ginger tea, and pork chops;
*** fights in deserted courtyards;
Betting thousands, deal out more cards;
Go all in and ditch the loan sharks.

My cat with laryngitis and only one eye
keeps watch as OD-Girls doze off and die,
Choking on puke and the air of a city
that runs low on love and the last fumes of pity.
Odds stacked against me for as far as I can see.

Hookers greet me, pimps compete with me;
My number one is fifteen and smells sweetly;
I make 'em pay dearly;
I move house yearly;
I come home to 8-ball freakouts weekly;
Adrenalin shots in ghostly veins run freely.
Running lonely in bodies so completely
riddled with pain that is too much to take
and too little to ****.
I'll decide when I've had my fill.

I wake up on a purple beach, paralyzed.
In the burning neon excess of a frenzied metropolis
that can’t wait to burn through its own circuits,
I hopelessly fight back the acidic swell in my throat.

And I dance
with the ghosts of Chiba, Chiba.