During our last move we made
sure to pack:
all the paraphernalia, both
toothbrushes, most of our clothes,
old pictures, broken ashtrays,
tools we didn't know how to use,
the computer, both cats, commitments,
all the shot glasses, a bed,
and your unsolved Rubix cube.
It all fit in the car.

We left behind the couch that
one of the cats ****** on,
the shower curtain liner, every
working Bic lighter, your sanity,
the Monopoly game, two new
pens, one old pen (no ink)
and a bag of marshmallows,
plus one hell of a mess.

During the move we misplaced
our sense of direction, a suitcase
full of only my clothes, logic,
and a globe that doubled as a
lamp.

***** given?
Zero.

We still had both cats.

those **** eyes
those **** lips
cry black lies
slash like whips

whiskey and a cigarette
that's how i forget

those **** eyes
those **** lips
your sweet sighs
and fingertips

I.

The pen
Taps
Against my leadened desk,
All reverberating echoes and
Roaring staccatos:

Something to keep the soldiers
Rooted
In the chalkboard trenches alive-

A cackling reminder of
Freedom.

II.

Peeled away is the blissful world of
Morphine-addled haze
And round edges

The smell of pine trees
And Monday Vendetta.

Up in smoke.
Offered to the gods.
The great big furnace in the sky—

I carry them with me in an ashen urn.

As the days pass
A rhythmic stutter
Lumps
At the bottom of my throat.

It's the imprint that it makes, really.

There is little relation to
the covenants we have sworn
or the gildings of rehashed
sobriety or leftover temple
bricks, baked clay tablets
on which someone records
these scenes, fragments,
scents, and colors.

How can we reap this Zion?

Can it be gathered as wild
sweet strawberries are,
torn away from their source?
Can it be processed electrically?

Can we make money off it?

If so, how many dinars
would you offer?
One?  Two?  Perhaps
a discount for quantity?

We are in the future now.

In the past yesterday
is tomorrow, but some of
us didn't notice.
We subdivided dreams
into half gram
servings so they wouldn't
end.  We
concentrated those into
the smallest possible dose
so we could savor every
morsel, taste every drop
of our life's Kool-Aid.
We lived sugar-free
to enhance the sweet,
and then ignored all of it.
We wrapped our fists around
excitement and squeezed its
juice out dry to ****
adrenaline cravings.

i have read enough Rimbaud
to see the symbolism.

i have read enough Hudgins
to know i, too, used to be sure.

i have read enough Petrosky
to sympathize...
       Look, i'm a bear now, too!

i was wasted enough on land
for Eliot,
as fractured as cummings,
as subversive as Ginsberg,

but in the end i settled for breathing.

**DAS SOFA KING,
VICTORIOUS AT LAST.