Last night
I had a dream
that
a kid pulled a Mossberg
out of his black
Jansport.

Pulled it
out by its ears
and flashed
its shining
black pelt in my direction.

He let loose
two
thumping shots.

No pain,
no nothing.

Just a dull, pushing thump in my chest.

Death will come to me one day, and it will be like magic.

I will exist,
and then stop existing.

I woke up this morning crying,
because in the evaporation of a dream
I came out of it
sweating, shaking, hot,
and
knowing death was close.

***
was so
cold,
silent
and hard
by then.

When I pushed into her,
I could feel
the weight
of repetition.

And by then
the weight
was normal
and safe.

A high, almost silent
ring;

like echoes of steel,

swung through my head
like a pendulum
and when I came
the ringing
stopped
mid-swing.

It shook
my head
with
its
high
gong.

Most of the time,
it is better
to just walk away
through the doors
than to jump off
from the windows.

Remmel's
pocket smelled
like armpit,
and his switchblade
felt good
and heavy
near his thigh.

The air was humid with
passing rain
and asphalt
and he pulled out a Marlboro
and stuck it
to chapped lips.

A flood of water
hammered the gutters.

And the grass he stood on
was an island.

A flash of light rolled around the corner.
Two glimmering beacons
riding up on him.

Rolling slow.

The windows were all blacked out
and sheened in a perfect
reflection of orangeish streetlights.

Remmel put his hands in his jeans,
his white boxers
pin-striped in orange
bars.

He'd come out the house without a shirt, and
his black *******
got hard as lead in the new wind.

He licked his lips.
As the car rolled up,
a murmur of bass
making the windows buzz.

He put his hands on the hood
feeling the buzz go through him
warm and tickling
as he leaned into the car.

He checked up and down the street,
and finally squared on his reflection
in the black glass
seeing nothing but
the shaking
green God of himself
about to create.

John and Eric
had gone to New Orleans
to get drunk,
so when they saw the girl
hanging over the railing
of the balcony
pulling her shirt
up and down
up and down,
they hurled beads at her
aiming for the top of her head
so that they'd
circle the drain of her neck
in a circling, shimmering starlet
down
her shoulders.

"Come down here," John yelled.

The girl pulled down her halter-top
one more time,
exposing two
globes of bouncing flesh.

Thinking he had said,
"Pull them down."

It was so loud and everyone was whistling
and there wasn't just a single color of light;
the aura from the club
was a nebula of parti-colored flashing.

later that night
she did come down.

She bumped in between John and Eric
as they navigated her through the crowd
trying their hardest to keep her
from falling over and puking,
while trying to do the same
for themselves.

She hung to them like they were long singular beams of steel.
When she rolled her head around at them
she remembered that they looked
hard and unknown.
And while holding her
in the crooks of their arms,
they maneuvered the flesh in their jeans
with their free hands,
trying to subdue the worlds
rising out of their pants
like volcanoes.

They got her back to the hotel.

A small room
with a tiny old bed, with flower-print
comforters and
an antique dresser with swirling
sculptured wood at its corners.

John slipped off his black leather jacket
and shook his mop of
curly black hair.

Eric plopped onto the bed,
pulling her with him.

She felt him pull,
she felt the gravity of him;
the warp as she bumped against
the bed.

"You guys should come back next year."

"Maybe," Eric said.

She didn't know if she was here or not.
If she'd been here the whole night
or if she was dreaming.

But she felt something physical
on her body.

Eric sat in the corner--
beside the humming a/c
as it vacuumed out the room--
watching with lifeless eyes.

It moved across her stomach.
Slow and continuous.
It moved down to her
pelvis,
slow and continuous.
It reached inside of her
slow and continuous,
and she felt the vacuum of space.

John and Eric
tag-teamed her.

Eric
taking her mouth
and working it around his *****,
saying
"Come on baby,
****."

John pushing against her
his glowing body
making a slapping noise
as he struggled
with his hands under her stomach
making hard dimples of flesh
on her mid-section
as he tried to hold up
her limp body.

"She's out cold,"
he said.

A benevolent device procured  to
           provoke an enigmatic action relevant
                   to escaping once benighted reality*.

Daddy
woke up
one morning
to mommy puking.

The curly jet-black knots of hair
on his pink-white chest
shivered
under the slicing ceiling fan.

He scratched his *****, and cleared his throat in a metallic ****** of congealed beer and bile,
it sounded like he was cutting something in his mouth with his tongue.

Rolling over,
he fumbled for his golden Rolex
on the night table,
pushing off
mommy's bangles
and bracelets
jingling to the floor
in a golden mess
that seemed wet
with light.

Rolling over,
back again
to his back
he clicked on the Rolex.

He held up his wrist in
the sun,
and,
**** me,
the light
was coming off it so hard
and strong
that he had
to cover his eyes
just to keep from seeing
all that light
and talent.

"You all right in there?"

He asked,
slipping on his boxers,
working his ****
with his golden-wristed hand
into the fabric.

In the bathroom,
mommy heard daddy's wrist click,
she wiped her mouth
on an oversized shirt sleeve,
and held her stomach.

An accumulation
of cells
split
over and over again
floating and shaking
in mommy's ******,
and she didn't know
what beer and bile
could make.

She didn't know how hard it would be
to cut that thing out.

I miss you
girl
with the hair that smells
like sweet beer
and
breath
like iron.

I am anemic
and brutal
without you.

Cold, unfold
with just a second
I taught myself to crawl,

Pure, uncured
with just a minute
I learnt from every war,

Tears, unshared
with just an hour
I forgave, but never forgiven,

Found, unsound
with just a day
I appreciated life like rain.

From the hole
in her acid-wash jeans,
she calls
her ***** a prophet,
from that hole a whole
new world
will be born.

She will push
out
****, ****,
but lastly
she will push out
a new world.

She will push out my fingers,
and my clawing
at her,
she will push out the concealed evil
and the suffocated good.

Slap that ***.
Slap that ***.

Make the evil and good scream,
give birth to a new black
humanity, a breathing wheezing
baby of equal parts good and bad,
king and beggar,
prophet and pessimist,
criminal and revolutionary.


From
her acid-wash jeans
and the hole
that I dug my fingers in
countless times
and made swirls
of mud against her burning
insides and wet flesh,
she will give birth
from a well-rounded hole,
to a well-rounded whole.