This Apocalypse Summer
has really got me down,
but then I'm up running
through what is left of town.
I never got to swim the backstroke
before Brunswick Basin bled
Lake Olympia from amidst her oak,
before Deer Creek went dead.

The streets'll burn, the bodies break
and the blood washed away by beer.
The streets burned, bodies broke
and we're still here.

Shadow people wander the sidewalk,
been here since the bombs dropped.
Never got no noisy television,
just watch the streets and shadows in them.
I'm pushing up just like daisies
and pulling them up for fun.
Convinced that I'm going crazy
from the trips that I get on.

Jane says she cannot get it:
"something hidden...back when children."
You're always looking for the road
where we used to drink too drunk,
where you look to have again
what we had so long ago.

Do you feel it coming?
on Earth His will be done.
Collapse a long time coming—
still nothing new under the sun.
Summer is for the living.
That's a bubble-bursted, sun-dried reason.
It's the end or I am fibbing,
still live up the rest of the season.

First came the flood then spilled blood.
Had anyone caught on of that to come
you know we'd never have let it begun.
But it had:
got you, your mother, and dad.
Surely there was nothing we could do
but hunker down, get a job, and rue
the day they brought us into
the Old World and buried the New.

I hear tell that downriver
the water gets warmer;
I hear tell that valley below us's
a hotter n' hell, body-ridden bowl of dust.
—
I hear tell that upriver
the trout they run thicker,
the water cooler, air smoother, and **** sticks thinner.
I wanna flee up that river
but I'm not that good a swimmer.

How do we know?
We think we're smart,
in fact we're geniuses.
But we're still sitting
and can't stop talking about...

This Apocalypse Summer
has really got me down,
but then I'm up running
through what is left of town.

There isn't a girl in the world
without an incurable,
everything but unlovable,
psychotic or neurotic,
unique, personality trait.
I prithee, Lord, my soul to take.

Maybe I shouldn't mention it here:
But supposedly you have red hair.
I dunno though, a rumor maybe only.
I do know the thought makes me crazy,
and there's other colors there.
I know a strong urge to find you out slowly,
to see you undone in some solid morning.

I bet you see as little me as I hear you talking,
but I guess you can't know an intention,
any well-rounded notion goes flat.
in the absence of presence
Have to brave it with hardon and hardhat
'cause what brings things together's tension.

In the wain of the week,
we both get to drink.
Then dreamless sleep?
Or so I would like,
to pass heedlessly the night.
Or as I now imagine yours,
Scandinavian shores,
I don't know which I like more.

With the little rain
wash your sins away
before this weekend,
before you miss the chance.
But still, next week
it won't even stop:
what the cash bought,
'llget us flocking
past the parking lot
down the trail to our
Octopus' Garden 'neath the waves.

Maybe my nails won't grow back
and I'll be talkative instead.
Stop my choking on pocket lint,
bury the bone, unbusy my head.

Everything I do in this Modern World
supports some institution, thus condition.
Looking for passion or just something,
hafta look for what little I believe in—
not this but next weekend.

"There's a stranger in your life,"
a fortune reading tells, then
feeling my legs are useless,
can't kick my way to the surface,
can' kick one habit for a moment,
a car could carry me around then.

It's a five day weekend, no end, yes.
Best birthday bash, hands down, no contest.
Newly arrived old faces join, going to the show;
some more to come soon, some to soon go.
Tonight we revel in our brother's song,
we'll keep the day young and night long.
Tomorrow, we hope to sleep forever in a day,
catch our breaths and try to eat back our strength.
Then, Thursday.

Prompt: "Write about your best and worst meal."
Title: "Cathartic, Culinary"
Alt. Title: "Purgative, Palatable"

Worst
Once I was taken to a room of my own invention,
led by the faceless, fearless constructs of my mind.
Waiters served the table my thoughts and
words and past actions and then I was forced,
or rather, compelled by hunger up on my product--
talking seventeen years of chow!--I talk.

I was sick within minutes, the self, food dribblin'
my mouth, managing to empty my bust cheeks
by a slow slurp every few chews. That was horrible.
But by the end of a month, I was full, fed, and finished.
I attribute much of my success hence from this act.
Stomaching one's self, as it happens,
is the hardest part of the human condition.

Best
Once I ate the supplies of a marooned  island-castaway
just to speed the process, and once I licked the tears off
the face of a bereaved poet only to spit it in her face.
I think I will tell you another culinary anecdote though,
one which will expand upon my worst, the first.

Like picking at scabs, the nose, too, yields results.
I gave myself a nosebleed. And what did I do?
Ha ha, I raised my head to the ceiling, the roof,
the skies, to God and his cruel intentions.
Ha, I laughed, ha, I did. I thanked him for it;
and head up-turned I let course, I drank.

*******, buddy, *******...
Thinking long, entrailed thoughts
on outside, outside the party persona;
But give the witch just a moment to disembowelment.
Letting it wash over you. Letting it pass.
And the stereo of the laughing with the still of dark, of night--
whichever has me more at more mercy.

And I join the fire-fed party light,
and give myself to historicization.
Will the definitive verse make it clear,
the enunciation articulating the moment?
the many disembowelments,
too many to care

Reading a friend's poetry
and learning about myself--
learning new articulations.
Switching to menthols
for as long as this cold lasts.
Realizing my body wants nicotine
but my mouth wants smoke,
that very often one, not the other,
will be satisfied--that is what's in conflict.

I am trying to be a child,
and I could go philosophically about that
or regressively--
Sort of, it is not the bottle itself I sip
which makes me the rosy ribald randy carouser
but what I put back into the bottle then the trashbin
which displaces the liquid up to my lips.

But regardless of my intents and drinking habits,
I'll still be splashing in the water,
running along the edge of the pool
building a current, a whirlpool
compelling my friends into water,
tackling and dunking and pull them underneath,
and gasping together for breath,
swept along and swelling
hoping to summon a Maelstrom
to engulf me and all.

So, let me come here, buddy,
you know you're the best,
live n' die by you!
I need to tell you before
I anything else before
I ******* explode
(a moon-strewn comet-collision).

I love her. I've loved her cruelly or generously,
dispassionate or desperate,
I would ******* offer my soul still
in place of hers in some ******* hell.
I miss the focus she gave me,
the nights of swirling, slippery purpose.
I love how she couldn't stand me anymore,

that she was so consumed by herself
as to break my heart.
I wish I'd cried in her arms and said,
"Don't leave me, darling"
instead of just crying in her arms.
They say if you step on only cracks
you can break a curse.
Do they, Jay? do they, really, eh?

I've made my peace, I think,
with Pride, Pain, and Providence
and what I wouldn't do
for dark-haired smart who
skylight ignites chooses to--
the usual beauty she unearths.

All very scary but
I feel so strong
Maybe couldn't reason
but squirm my way
out of anything.
So strong I could give you a gift,
not old something-hand jackets or coupons
but the gift of my pride for you to prize.

Men do not live on bread and pride alone.
I want she & I to show each
other the world, share life,
and I love her, too.
Come join me on a mountain.

And, now, can you guess who called?