A baby crawling paws down
Down the stairs into
the study room
the odd computer flashes
the faces of what looks like people
a whiteout face
with black shameful eyes
breaks the scroll of happy faces
happy places and joyous info
as empty as a new USB
it's gaze pierced my soul
forever
It was 1998 then
More than a decade later
whiteout faces everywhere
on every screen
monitors growing out
like tumors on a monster from
The Thing
one grows in my pocket
I pull the tiny screen out
and the face eyeballs me again
one grows in each room
the kitchen has one on the fridge
all the cars have them, too
pixellated faces talking at me
I feel there may be one plugged on my
heart or brain
I can only think on its terms, now
I'm going to need a
date for the movies tonight.

she's not here anymore
so why don't I just
go away

her car is here, her home
is here. Even her cat is here
And her gardens are, too

sailed on and on
It's over, it's been over,
her shadow's parked on those hallways

she's not here anymore
so why don't I just
go away

Gargoyles live on my awning
The one overhanging my bedroom window

Like bats, they'll hang upside down
And stare in at me

All we are; I implore you
Come out
Come out

Isolation is icy
Useless frozen wrenches

All we are
Smartthings with hearts
Opposable thumbs & firethrowers

Isolation is icy
The Pope of Murk & Decay

All we are
Every fiber of DNA and
Every lost phone number on a napkin

All we are
Overgrown starry eyed babi  es
Happy birthday candles

All we are,
The cemeteries of our parents
Drain holes at the oceanfloor

Isolation is icy
Now,
          melt.

I never noticed until now
Detroit is a real town

Thru a puddle, I go
Past the shuttered laundromat
The charcoal stump colonials
Carnivorous ivy
Strangling the
Rustbolt cars lining the
Pothole roads that I never noticed
Until now, Detroit is a real town

At the corner of Rosa Parks Dr.,
A rotting moonlight and gasoline aroma
A damp liquor store and a bus-stop
               sign,
6 ghosts linger around the metal post
Like silvery mothra ,
Clinging at night to an outdoor light
The saviour stop.
For tiffany spirits
With expressionless faces.

Two phantom headlights manifest
Out of the indescribable looming night
And park at the sign

The ghosts faint
Thru the double doors
Of one rickety, dutiful citybus
The tailpipes dripping wil-o'-the-wisp
As it proceeds out of my view
Into dark night shade.









.

Five blankets rumbling winds
and me
Mind humming like a bee
I didn't ask for it
(It didn't ask for me)
Unwinding the coils
at 4a.m.
And I feel
free

tented World of Bubbles and
critters, monkey-wild,
the slant-
off,
the fathoms of a depth,
of Worlds whose histories end
in a fraction of what nature does do.

Amola mola, designator
a bulb of light dangling down to the nauticals,
the bubble armoured polyps.
The lively cesspool of micro-seamounts, where,
once there stood strong
a sea-green zoo,
now vaguely stands a mineral vestige.
Gaia shut off the vent
everyone goes away.

visited by wraiths --
These black lampreys, hooded and veiled,
clustering, cloistering,
the successors who
they and they only
the new deepsea robbers.

now a lighter sinking feeling,
the demigod sinks hitherto like nature does do.
a giant ***** whale dies above
Casting its shadow of hope

and the wraiths appear in the umbra
pushing & shoving for a spot
food arrives with a thud;
a castle of whale bones as their home
they were never so happy.

so crazily, thoughtlessly food-driven
deepsea "things"
swish-swash swish-swash goes the weird fish circus,
and then, crazily so
upon their trophy, the mirror wraiths,
of a bubbled World
feed in frenzy.