Boredom churns broad-in-brain
competing with petty volumes of alcohol
(white Russian, 1, Magic Hat #9, 1)
for dominance of the summer's eve.
Unsure of which would prove the victor,
past-tense, too, filled with unknowing:
thought- and pedaling-process interrupted
by a traitorous bicycle;
a forward-bent-fork;
a fleeing, unbolted forwardwheel.
Fast-pitch forward,
eyes-wide but dead:
quickfall into void.
Then, wide-eyed horror:
awake again
filled with the horrible pain of life again
fueled, amplified tenfold
through the impact of the sidewalk.

Hair explainable, perhaps only attainable,
via jagged electric lines from the sky
yet eyes follow, shimmer greengoldenbrown
with none of storm's lined chaos, no,
but maybe focused-inflicted madness
as
they
settle straight-on, brightened above wide-eyed
smile
-something new, there,
shattered-glass that's mended fast
upturned hopes but sails at half-mast.

She came as does morning
radiant and becoming in introduction
illuminating
flaws, goals, underlying structure
By high noon there was clarity
visions possible only at deep night
stirred into being by her apex.
Dusk, though long of shadow,
held comfort of embrace
of held hands
solidarity of mutual purpose
red-ringed
by veiled anger.

As the night came
she was gone.

Up and over walls and weeds,
ever-towards the tower did we climb
wrapped about with anxiety and anger,
isolated ahead of the herd
alone, we lead,
a mob edging closer
to storm-filled skies.

A bed of rocks, debris of cans,
sky-touch achieved:
we'd been first
to reach the roof.
Lightning storm to the east,
fog to the fore
and soon, somewhere nearby,
a stereo, playing the music of my youth
framing the sound of people laughing,
people drinking
men climbing too high
but mercifully, never falling.

A green gasmask, a black bandanna,
two flashlights and two bodies, pale of skin:
we again set out apart from the mob,
lost ourselves in computer crypts,
lamp graveyards,
uniform-chair depositories,
a ghost-floor filled with superstition and cauldrons.

Varieties of folder,
both manila and hanging,
bound across your back -
you got what you came for.

So did I.

Quick little pinprick
barely breaking the skin
small welter of blood
filling in fingerprints.

Once a past shared
fleeting moments among years
erased in lieu of bigger smiles,
more pleasant portraits.

Just a quick little *****
reminding me, despite a
decade of turning away
that once, I faced the flash too.

Tapping the vein
at the section of upper and lower arm
striking the needle deep,
jagged and rough,
upon notice that Second
isn't a one-way street anymore.
Must have changed while I was gone.

My Malibu,
swerving viciously to avoid the old Grand-Am
finds its way into the right lane
the only lane
fitting like a glove on the wrong hand.

Ahead, 475 dictates my exit.
A detour, the sign says,
with little ostentation,
even more accuracy.
The highway vomits me away,
chewed and confused,
an exit before my usual.

Though the path ahead
veers straight as a needle,
it's two miles downwind.
Two miles behind.
Great symbolism,
I tell myself,
pressing ******* the accelerator.

Furious orange wounds
rimmed in charcoal
betray last night's secret:
died, almost died,
charred in an accidental inferno
due to the lazy application
of a long-standing addiction.

Warm,
paper-burn stink clings
to the heat of an early morning
- July.
The slowly-creeping wet heat
in stark contrast
to the quickflash realization of predawn:
my bed was on fire.

The must never know,
those in the cells opposite -
surely, threats of neglectful destruction
warrant the hasty eviction
of the new tenant.

Thus I,
the wakeful sentinel of 611 Lyon
watching for mattress fire
have overturned the hopefully-cooled burns
and will sleep
to avoid dwelling on thoughts
of bonfires.

Surrounded
circle-fashion
by friends long-past
-maybe overdue-
at a glowing table
nestled deep in a white bar.

Frothing like a cauldron,
bubbles and pockets of the past
our past, I guess
erupting over the table
each bursting
upon encountering the *****
of my lack of attention.

I float grimly along
skating hidden incandescent
watching passively as my cloud is drained
upon understanding
that these people,
these friends of old,
notice, understand, and do not care
about my lack of interest.

You remember how
all the way there and all the way back all that I wanted
was to stop at Castle Danger?
And how, even though we tried so hard to find it
we simply could not?
The map and the compass pointed us
in the way we should have and did go but
they couldn't find it for us, either,
and I, too stubborn and masculine
and you, too feminine and shy,
couldn't be bothered to ask the path
from people that might have known it.
We never did find out way to Castle Danger,
never really found our way back home,
left maybe a little too much up in
those wastes of oxidized stones, frozen skylines,
we as ragged and destroyed as the ****** and ruined
husks that the wolves left behind.
You've found Castle Danger, now, a newer and better
navigator lead and lit your way, but I -
I'm still on I-61, searching, eyes on the road signs,
trying to find Castle Danger.
Maybe I'll send a postcard if I find it.

Behind the window and through the blinds lies a man, who
stands and perches, naught but a silhouette outlined by the
brown, nicotine-stained glow of the sheets-called-curtains.
Anyway, there's a man there, peering into my window as
measures necessary to enable sleep are taken, but he's
not doing anything, I mean - I'm not sure he's even watch-
ing me, but the hour grows late and try as I might, the mind
runs
wild -
drawing demons from crevices and hands of memory
from the bizarre December thunderstorm winds, and
it's always hard but right now becoming impossible
not to draw lines between nonexistent floating points and
shadow the underside of spinning geometrics. I
don't know how people do it, although I imagine
this ******* guy that will not stop looking at me - ab-
solutely, undoubtedly, has some notiong of how to ..
Hey!
Listen!
I shout, but I'm starting to wonder if he's really there at all
or if maybe he's not a pseudo-******* floating dot-point
construct, designed and developed and implemented by
some crazed group of people to -----------------------------no!
that is unlikely, and probably impossible - really,
I believe that I'm better now and see ent8irely that said
lying-yet-standing isn't a man, no, but that he is
an
illusion!
Looking around at the soft yellow glow from the low-
yield/high-power bulbs as it leaps from sad chair to
stained and scarred electronics and into my
cerebral cortex, the lack of and maybe .. I can
see now a palpable, blood-like desperat-
ion for wont of any sort of human contact - it is
wretching, but ever-present - because, currently, that
cannot
be.
And really is there ever anything nearly as damaging
and damning and, I think I'd argue, driving as the desperate
drive that comes from knowing that what you know is impossible to
rationalize? The terrible tragedy is the way that vile
data manifests itself, corrupting and poisoning pure s
streams, but becoming aware of this wasn't half so bad as
realizing that man you just spent hours learning to hate was
never
there.

Cheap Decorations

Falling from above,
splattering on the sidewalk,
bluejay - no longer.

Dogs

Today, my dog died
mostly because I shot him
.. he had it coming

Although
seven days may
pass from now and when our
eyes might meet again, I will not
pass a single moment
without thinking
of you.

A circle of ash cascades down the column of cold air next to the stone-plaster ashtray,

each dead and grey particle entwining and encircling the other, forming and outfalling from double-helix sequences that nobody notices,

providing half-seen distractions for the one standing idly smoking a Camel – a Turkish Royal –, and he’s looking like he’s working something out:

Why bother waiting? He’s paused, waiting until the cigarette burns low, the addiction sated, ceased in action until the decision of the nicotine forces departure, and finally decides to reject life – but to slowly wither here in the frozen snows and devouring winds?

Standing, paused still, wondering at the ashtray now, and as the embers cool to ashes, questions of scarves and stones arise: why choose the half-finished, woolen-scratchy black-and-grey scarf?

For fashion and heat, possibly, although the nature of an unfinished scarf and colors contradictory to fashion sense dictate otherwise, suggesting another motive –

The same, then, as why he carries the wolf-stone from Minnesota, a reminder of failings long-past and futures impossible, and as my mind turns to wonder at such things, the burning sun of the Camel finally dies,

And he steps away from the plaster-stone ashtray, leaving behind wool, stone, and a broken double-helix of ash.

****** again,
Post-hasted doubting and raving,
Confused why I torture myself so –
Truer words never spoken as lies,
The dull, pumpkin-glow of the broken lamp casting ghosts,
Filling my visions with demons I’d thought excised.
****** again,
Alone in its tendrils again,
I travel –
Travel through ideas shattered and plexiglass melting,
Singing and burning as it covers my senses like a myelin sheath,
Conducting protons-only,
But my brain is slow and the receptors dull,
And the raw input manifests only as trails of spirits.
****** again,
The madness thick as bog sludge,
Stinking of scorched sulfur,
It kicks corroded and dead gears into spin,
Generating false ideas and wild delusions
That I know aren’t real but –
Nothing else here is, either, especially not you,
Disembodied you, listener.
****** again,
But not alone this time no,
Her idea ghosting simulacra,
Taunting me with her shortcomings and spitting like venom
Those thousands of details I’d always hated while
Refusing acknowledgment, but
Like a brick golem she’s got a core,
A conduit of last-year’s hopes, and I flee, panicked –
****** again,
The clouds high above the ruined October grass,
Laughing like spaceships, and returning me to boyhood fancy:
I’ll never be an astronaut.

Maiden, maiden, maiden, a depilidate mobious minaret –
Holical, Eris begs an atlatl defection, the
Genuis-from-Mars technique – an erathicus lecanopteris.
Suffretex, past-perfection in pastel gloxinia,
Glowingly acidic and shiftingly glossidic, it’s cosmaltry mariala;
Ungual outmoded, holonym singing Aquilar rapax as demiurge.
Demos and Phobos weep, coruscating terrathos, killing riva.

Swell quickly, optic ophidia, lest the ira florena rise –
Rise, maiden, rise optic ophidia, ignore Irredelphine!
Strut the hematacolpa and pace-willow, but fail flow:
Deciduous telechir beckons, demanding autobogotic-hajra.
****-venom and picea hovea, eche verri naught echo –
Beta-decay and COBOL error, fandango with teeth
And sing praise for Eucladanic soignè solaris

Sprint quick, maiden-solidago gesparisè, to Misra pourum!
Majerns and hapax, death-knell aloud and encelia,
Enfloranè, haste! Enatic haste tichodrome, flee, anise!
Apios, harken: tryst-sans-thermobic sweeping of thresher-thrown,
Little-low else yet achroma, de-jubilance:
Fall fairly, ayah! So to be so, blanking systemic,
A thousand steps for one death.

Peering up from the precipice, a cyclops! – a
Many-fanged and mono-eyed beast,
Flesh a sickly sea-shell and putrid yellow as a
Series of pustules pulse rivulets of green-black blood,
Staining scarred surfaces and shadowing engorged strength.

Reaffirmed grip on haft,
I plunge the sticked-spike a shade-shy of horizontal,
Missing the mark obvious but finding purchase,
Shattering clavicle and spraying sinew in a perverse sort
Of macabre rainbow arc, yet met with instant,
Abject terror: spear now not merely stuck but gripped
By mine beholden nemesis, and he shifts, twists the
Leverage and I, trained in the art of never-surrender-never,
Have not his primitive power to resist and thus fall,
Giving way to laws of momentum – and the world shudders.

Eyes-wide as fist-eclipses-sun, a quick scramble,
Desperate-probing-reflexive grab for the half-arm length stabber,
Unsheathe, roll, aim and ******:
A scoring glance, slicing more pox and pus than
Bone or gristle, but desired effect achieved:
Nemesis rails, howling, orb clenched and pointing skyward,
Arms guarding reflexive at bloodied torso, leaving precious,
Glorious goal unguarded:
A backwards roll, leaning into the earth like Atlas,
I push, spring, and the world gleams in high-contrast
Blood-red and silvered-steel-sword as I’m propelled skyward –
Blade-and-hand acting in concert, a conductor in a symphony
Of prospective gore seeking to punish the cyclopean’s dissonance,
I plunge deep, scoring a bassonic rumble from
His jugular and cacophonic crackings as his cerebral
Column gives way to the superior song.

His shuttered eye now open as he slumps, falling to the
Ground ilke a dead god, it develops a strange sort of calm,
As if he’s hearing his own song of slaying – but that
Sizzling, that pig-eating-slop sound, that wasn’t my song –
That must be his, and awareness dawns as adrenal sets –
Blinded by blood and battle, I’d neglected to heed
The refuse of the beast’s bilious eruptions,
Blown back from the force of my blade, and now, immersed
By the nauseating, liquid-green mass, I am devoured from
Without.

I lay now, eyes alternating skies, and weep that I
Am sapped entirely of strength enough for noble suicide:
I shall die here, propped astern like a failed Atlas, a
Boneless, gibbering mash of grit, guts, and warm, soupy glory,
muted and deafened to the howlsong from above of vultures.

Water white like ghosts falls
into glass. Upended,
sickly-thick liquid encircles –
a new, easy-access-brand elixir
for an old kind of contamination.
Burning more than should,
corroding boils and poxes
as it slides, falls, digs deep –
scoring chasms and lines
while falling – unanticipated –
a novel redress for an ancient affliction.
Internal temperature rising as fast as
awareness falling, composure sedate
but sentient, growing distantly fearful -
even though the snake oil accompanied
guarantee: “Whatever ails you.”
Wonder, I, if said whatever is said oil,
mentally transfixing that fast-falling cure
into a clever-cruel kind of contagion –
thoughts worsen as poison of aporia slips deep,
and hands-to-throat, digits dig deep –
archaic antidote; a brutal purge, and
mangled boils and liquefied pox
Explode
in a burning sea rising, aflame and
charring as experience-dictates-should,
while sickly-thick water-white ghosts escape,
screaming in exile –
face-to-floor, thoughts rod-grounded,
awareness – gone, snake oil - purged,
malady - sustained.

Quarter-tooth angled archingly reverse,
her snaggles enrapture me; hither,
come, my fairest, grant me those perverse
acts – lest I, like you, become withere’d!

This, I cannot, allow to come to pass!
Whether by charms, wit, big brains or huge *****,
Whatever cost you pay, I’ll have that ***!
For my be-warted, I’ll indulge no stops.

You can cry, resist and plead, extolling
Unto me the injustice of m’love,
But it shall avail you all of nothing,
As my sights are on that filthy trove.

Flee, run, wail and never cease in weeping
In a steel cage our love I’m keeping.

O, craftfully carved soapstone and
alabaster visage, what that you knew
of all of the gentle dreams I'd plan'td;
a green garden in which our love might grow.

O, that only I could demonstrate to
you how wondrous together we could be,
spirits entwined and bound as thread on *****,
if only I could charm you to love me.

Such things are correctly known to be dreams -
for circumstances - and great many fears -
Forever, I'm trapped in gardens' green,
stuck to merely casting you longing leers.

Yet ultimately, I'm sure that I would
love you more dreaming than in waking would

Heavy-handed-slit-lidded, I’m casting those bones
- didn’t play my game as close-chested as I should have, though –
And now I’m throwing with higher stakes than I’d known prior,
starting to regret the forced nonchalance of trying to “keep cool.”
Cast and weighted as I could,
but don’t watch: I’m blind to the hustling pit and
eyes-dimmed of hope-glimmer, I’m resigned against
double-sevens and sacred fourteens, anticipating instead
the triple-ones and maybe solo-fours of feigned failure
- they’re the usual roll, anyway, but I’m standing, moving, gone –
I can’t watch this.
Black/whites give rise to new metrics of haste,
the cubes bouncing and dancing on damnation,
and as the headsman’s axe falls, the die settle:

She left as the snows came,
draining with her footfalls the
silhouette of the skyline,
damning the sunrise to the banish of winter.
Unto the tomorrow deserved
was the logic of yesterday,
unmindful of the toll and vaguely-minded
of the benefits-potential,
aware only that mere steps beyond the horizon
lay that made-sacred destinatory-goal:
the other.

It's like we conquered the whole world,
the frontiers remaining only those forged by man
and left the rest of us without homestead
destination and, instead, gave us only home.
Not that the splendor of silicon isn't grand,
not that the charted and developed territories
aren't worth of thanks-on-high,
and not that Mars being dragged within
the grasp of man
was maligned,
yet somehow -
Something seems to be missing,
some survival element of the equation subtract,
some mystery gone vacant.
It's like the only thing
that could ever **** me
is myself.

Weird smell in the bathroom.

I'm pretty sure it's coming
from behind the toilet.

It expands up past tile floors
ignores the grid of labyrinthine plumbing
to drift
around long-past-cast-porcelain
wall-panels asynchronous by decades
ignoring the mirror more murky than coherent
and into my sensory network
as I add to the problem.

Unbidden
the sun boils angrily
through ruptured cloudcover.
The light cast grim, grey and warm
exciting water molecules below
pushing atrophy on steel mechanisms.

Inside, the air hangs low,
clinging to chemically-coded dust
awaiting the back-and-forth
of the broom.

Some base stink
hovers about the building;
origin unknown.

Outside, crows shriek joyously
at the bulging, stinking black bags
so recently tossed
into the treasure heap.

You get used to it.
Telling the same guy
with the same story
with the same problem
the same excuse that you've got nothing to spare,
that what you've got amounts to little and less,
and although this one has a different face,
the guilt feels the same,
and both reactions are the same:
the forced gratitude of charitable attention,
the fake smile but earnest wish for luck,
but you get used to it

I - Held

I held the girl
as she held her dog
who, had she been able,
could have looked
eye-level
at the woman in the white coat
who held a plastic syringe
which held the soft, pink poison.

II - Elevation Level

Even though the woman in the white coat told us
as she left the room
to leave the dead dog on the ground
- the remains, she called it -
we did not.
Placing her instead on the examination table
because
somehow
the cold steel of the unadorned table
seemed more dignified
than the hard, bleached tile
of the floor.

III - Almost as if Alive

Curled around her tale as if asleep.
Only a certain, solid stillness showing
that she rather something more than slumbered -
the now-forever-open, gelatined-eyes
removed all doubt.
I placed my hand, ever so delicately,
overtop the elongated, tapered face
and pushed down
hoping to restore some lost dignity
by closing her eyes -
the way they do in movies.
Almost as if alive,
her eyes, thick with death and slime,
opened.
They never show that in the movies.

She's got that peasant stink stuck to her
radiating failed dreams and passed-over advice
speaking to the untold quantities
of filthy, illegitimate children
birthed through pale and quivering thighs.

Tattered, low denims
faded, high-cut blouse
full head of ratty, unclean hair
propped up in a high-rise hair-spray style
that hasn't been popular in the trailer parks
for more than a decade.

She always worked real hard
yet always put failing-foot forward
and though I asked,
she could never tell me why -
she never, I think, knew herself.

It doesn't matter though
she'll just fall again
fall to her knees before another he again
fall into the welfare lines due to another newborn again
fall back down into what she knows again.

She saves her non-handout-cash
for the spending on endless streams of hash,
bottles of paint for nail and eye-lash
-because she believes, as she's told,
that she's worth it -
even though it's real clear that she's not
and that
it's real clear that she's one for looking-on
and never acting upon and yet,
I cannot help myself
anymore than she can -

I have fallen
completely and pointlessly
in love with her.

Half-glance in a rushed white-lit stairwell
the two of us passed unaware,
or maybe just unprepared between us,
that there might be such proximity.

Half heart-beats inside constricted chest
these two eyes but fail in knowing
or maybe just failed to see
that, for a moment, you were so close to me.

Half-known inside a confused mind
mine two hands did tremble -
or maybe just fell-to-sides unhinged -
as I reconstructed your face atop hers to see.

Half-gone thoughts inside a suspicious soul
my more than two visions failed to agree -
or maybe just failed to concede
that never again might such nearness be.

My eye keeps twitching
the left one,
from my perspective,
whenever my mind turns
to taxing thoughts.
It began a few days ago,
seemingly at random,
and I found the sensation
to be kind of pleasant.
Now,
mostly,
I just hope that people notice my twitching eye
and become unnerved while conversing with me
because I like to affect people.