morning light breaks
a city wakes
chimney smoke subdues
streetlights turn in
to lights through kitchen windows
front doors that open
car engines ignite
I fall asleep

never thought I could feel like this
never thought I would walk before deserts of sunlight
and feel nothing but cold wind, my heart as ice

never thought it was possible
to break while being put together
to forget while remembering
to be inside my body and outside it
to be alive but not living

a sparrow sits on the gutter
a boy walks into the forest
a ship sits anchored in the harbour

sometimes
it's all too much
most times
it's not enough

I feel sorry for everybody
- You feel a tingling climbing up your neck-
as they walk with veils through
fences laced with fires and faces
lining fields spreading into wide green fields
of nothing. Except wind
and grass and
light.

We are, after all
blades of light.
-You think you've thought of something. -
At night, running towards mirrors and portals,
turning together in the cycles of heroic mortals,
stars, suns, static so bright
this is the educated land.
This is the desert.
We have lost all our water.
The only shade is cacti.

You see you can't look around the corner.
Everywhere you go there are bullets that twist and turn.
Bullets that fill the houses of parliament.
I run and get shot.

Someone left a black leather briefcase
at the bus station sometime earlier this week.
They called in a bomb squad
from over in Springfield
after the thing sat there for hours
emitting an aura of chilled sweat;
it took them just as long to get their
from what I've been hearing.
They blew the thing up.
Right there in the bus station,
they blew that ****** briefcase
to Hell and back after an X-ray
found wires and a circuitry board.
This is not a big city,
it's not a small town either,
but here we have a place
that I arrive at twice daily
getting pseudo-bombed
and I can hardly scrape up
the dollar for bus fare at times.
A warehouse over on Jasper street
caught on fire a few days later;
an inferno in close quarters,
so they knocked the old Bess over
so the flames didn't spread.
There is still a giant pile of rubble
at the site; bricks with masonry companies
imprint on the sides, rusty bars that were either
too heavy, or too stuck for scrapping fiends,
and a hell of a lot of odorous char.  
This is a winter of fire in Decatur,
but the bones still chill.

The starter is going out
in the 91' Cutlass
that sits in my driveway
braving the winds.
I can hear that grinding noise;
the expensive one.
The one that says,
"Your savings is low!"
every time you think
you're going to have
a stable ride to work.
The bus is reliable,
the route is what will drive
a sane man off the edge.
You start to get sick
of seeing the same ****** places,
the same ****** turns,
the same ****** bumps, and
the same ****** passengers.
Plus, the radio makes Monday
just a little more tolerable
when you get the option
of stopping for breakfast.
I like that car.

Friday seems like a back brace right now,
and I've had just enough caffeine
to where I don't think I can stand a nap.
I'm just glad to have my shoes off, and
the reassuring calm of an uncashed check.
I'm starving.

I met my neighbor today.
Well, he's not my neighbor yet,
but he will be when I'm forty-two
and have that burgundy four-door.
He'll have two kids by then,
one from a previous marriage;
loud mouth little *****,
always reminding his step-mother
that his real mom wouldn't stand for
what she wants to call discipline.
I should really remind his dad to return
my rototiller when I see him next.
-
The meteorologist called for sleet
and I still don't see any ****** sleet.
I walked to the fuel station and got a fountain soda;
I counted six stray cats on the way back.
One of them used to belong to a woman
by the name of Jamila who moved back to Atlanta
in July of last summer.
The cat never liked to come to her,
so it stayed behind to chart star patterns.
Sometimes, when no one is out on the street,
the cats meet in alleyways to gossip
about the state of affairs in the soy city.
-
I buried seven heads-up pennies
underneath the yield sign on Union street
last Wednesday, I believe it was.
I'm still waiting on a reply,
but Mr. Cuttlefish isn't known for his punctuality.
No one is around here;
it's bad for your health if everyone knows where
and when you'll be.
They say one of the neighbor kids
found a piece of amber the size of a plum
in a box of Rice Chex from the corner market.
I knew someone would find it eventually.
-
Every umpteenth sidewalk slab has an "X" engraved
in the top, right-hand corner.
It signifies a meeting zone, and if you wait their long enough
I can probably convince one of the
silver men from the condemned apartment building
to let me borrow their aural symphonizer
so I can finally see what it's like
to extract one while it is still alive and roily.
It wont be too long of a wait,
as the men are always brief with conversation
and always seem to blink and breathe
at the exact same time I do.

He buried the arm.
Black dirt, cracked under a blazing sun.
His bones slid stiffly into one another; shovel slipped from sweat.
He’d covered the face already. A pale mask of serenity with burnt black sockets.
Dead leaves blew past his legs. The house shook. Boards rattled against the wind.
A paperboy passed by.
What a stupid waste of flesh.
He waved.
******** stupid.

It sounds ridiculous but only I feel productive when I'm doing nothing.
Sitting back, just relaxing.
Popping blue beans, burning bowls of green.
And just thinking.
Daydreaming about how things could have been.
How things could still be.
But how things will probably be.
Just close your eyes and let music be your guide.

Entire lives constructed and played out
in grand fashion. A world so detailed
I would rather get lost,
And never come back to this travesty of a society,
so raw and primal.
so human.
My world is so beautiful and yet so depressing
because it's what ours could be, but never will become.
Anything to distract me from this.
The 24 year old burnout grinding through school because there aren't many options left.
So where will I'll be in 5 years?
I wont.

Lush draped the walls
Gold freckles cheek to collar
I shook the dust from my lips
And lost hours

I left kisses on dead children
Old as the houses
I grew friends in the field out back
Under dead forests

Guilt
Shattered glass
They’ll cease existing
When I pass

Some hurts feel too often
Like old love

You are inside your
own stomach and i cannot
tell where---where it is

lightning. like ego's.
your smoke curling around flashes.
in the night time, the storm drains
overflowing, settling,
piano, pensive, playing
me before beautiful eyes unfolding
then thunder. closing.
i've dreamt for too long
that there was a life
after waking, that
in the water when
we played, the waves
would carry us, swirling,
see we knew the shore,
the sand, soft rocks turning
but not the seasons,
tumbling, if only underwater
when you are weightless,
when you are invisible
forces, surrounded
if only, but
lighting, flashes
rips, ripples
sadness

rapids running into rivers into rivers into rivers