Jazz women clap in unison, black.
All the boys in the club move
way, way over, for your health,
sister.
Some bartenders smoke ****
while polishing glasses, big or
small.
Cartoons play on box t.v.s
while people look at hubs on
smartphones.
Some gruff guy points at you
-- and, yes, it could have been
me --
we have a phone call, I think.
Who uses a payphone, any-
-****-more.

Choir children double for choir
mice.
Helicopter parents hover their
hands above their juniper drinks.
Gesturing at poorly dressed kids
has never been this in fashion.
Be perfect for the camera;
this moment will be captured
by synthetic eye.
Moms and Brads turn to
  look at us laugh.  Which has
always been in poor taste.
They say my poetry is bad
and your music is **** -- but
I guess it's nice that someone
  gave us those views.

Columbia and Harvard
seem like distant planets.
But that's where we'll be,
supposedly.
You with your Guinness,
me with my Tito's.

The old man sits in the dark,
fire by his radio, listening to
John Legend sing about his all,
which I guess is a lot since
he goes on about it for
four or five ******* minutes.
I sit here and think about all the reasons
I hate 13 Reasons Why. I sit here and
smell my candle, to my future.
I think about Miley Cyrus *******
and wonder if she feels pleasure
  like you or me.

I don't know what kind of creature
  is out there.  I don't know
how  to  feel  about  the  world.
My bedroom door may be paranoid
for me,   and I have anxiety over
  knocking that may never come.
Or maybe it will come and I'll
  be ordinarily unprepared for it.
Unprepared for it, as I normally am.

Visions of Japanese women
  dance on the ceiling, like silver
statues in garments of gore.
Or maybe they're not Japanese
and that I am a racist or under-
-educated -- which is most likely
the  same  ****  thing.
  They dance on my ceiling
and I stare, no longer wondering
if I'm rude, if they're real, if
the house I live in is current-
-ly losing value. These type
of things just happen, swear.

My candle is burning bright,
reaching towards the hugging
  blinds; smelling like sea salt
and an ocean I will never touch.

The roads spread throughout
  and past the city, like
the reaching veins of
  my body.

Scabbed trees, **** and
smashed by my
    high-beams,
remind me of the time   I
  sat on the riverbank,  my
cousin receiving oral ***  
  from this gypsy girl.

You don't know the moonlight
  until it's all that touches you.

I don't remember her name
but she posed on motorcycles
and had *** with her uncle.

She was nice
  and the product of
a sad environment.

The thick earth around me,
smothered by nightsong;
it's getting so dark;
the light is escaping.

****** almost killed
  my true love.
****** kills everyone
  around here,
around just about every-
-where. This long dark;
  this nightsong.

She painted her nails
some shade she hoped
reflected her personality,
and she thought it wasn't
  honest that they weren't
chipped yet.

Her parents sat on a couch
that slumped around the
  middle, gathering the mass
of her parents,
  maybe the mass of her world.

And they yelled at this
boxed television; a t.v. so
******* strange you had to
  swear, swear, swear
you were stuck in 1997.

1997, our year of Jordan:
a unisex name that bled
'I am the same and name of
some place I'll never go;
so place I'll never be big as.'

And our Jordan looked
  at her nails; and she
looked at them again, walking
to her campus, thinking,
"It's not honest that these
are not chipped."

But she had dreams, or
something close to what
a dream used to be.
She didn't want to admit
she had the American Dream;
a dream that millions had,
because the odds of compet-
-ition didn't intimidate her;
she was bothered by the thought
  of sharing something with
millions of people she would
pass on by, asking for nothing,
not even the acknowledgement
  that, yes, we are all in this
together, and to **** each other.

You see, this isn't a normal thing,
Jordan Racer-Cameron would
throw-up all over the waves
bouncing towards the ears of
those girls -- you know -- who
sat around the edge of standard
  cafeteria tables; those girls with
perfect nail polish; those guys that
would write **** like this.

"You see, this isn't a normal thing,"
she vomited out, holding her phone,
"It's cracked but I am not. Every one
will think I am damaged -- but I am
so, so, so not ******* damaged.
I am not broken. There is no way
I can be broken. Ah, no; I wanna
live in Los Angeles. I don't want
to be some broken, fake wolf."

When she flopped home,
passing perfect green squares
surrounded by perfect white teeth,
she tripped, kinda fell, and kinda
  caught herself.   Raising her hand,
on her knees, under a coal dust sky,
she rose her hand before the burning fire,
smiling at the blood splitting her finger;
smiling at the middle nail's fragmented being.

She ****** the blood off,
feeling free of the prose,
found her home,  
and greeted her
   potatoes of parents.

Some wolves mate in the glow
of a satellite so slow,
can't see it move -- not to
  the groove.
And music plays,
  from a radio, retro.
Gotta spill some blood
and add a cigarette
to my silhouette.

American Spirit for
my american spirit;
gotta tweet my thoughts
because my friends
don't hear the words I say.
  Ah, no; wanna live in
Los Angeles,
  Ah no; wanna live in
New York City.

Oh, no.
Oh, no.

Some babes in the hay;
laying in a pile, so deep
  cannot find my body;
cannot fall asleep.
  Random rambling to
what my media tells me;
cannot find my mind;
cannot fall for this.

They look like thumbs,
throbbing at me for
  my attention.
Yelling over each other;
yelling when
  I'm not allowed.

Ah, no; wanna live in
Los Angeles.
Ah, no; wanna live in
New York City.
  Wanna be
validated by the wolves.

It's dark and the light leaks out
like the change in my pockets;
like the blood from her nose;
like knowledge from my head.

And I can feel myself being
  swallowed by this systematic
long dark. I cannot remove myself,
  a gut-worm in the lower-mantle
belly. Watching video-cassettes of
  my birthday. I don't know what
happened to my birthday video.
  I don't know what happened to
my parents or what I did to happen
  to them.

The light leaks, again, and I
choke on my celebri-thoughts;
mentally-******* to the
waves I'd give on a book tour
or studio lot. Talking about some
movie that made some money,
somewhere in Santa Fe or L.A.

The news is channeling my president:
a swollen man that is the physical representation
that a lot of American people are parasitic;
lovers in racism, xenophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia,
homophobia; scared of everything except the 'straight-talking'
magnate they put in office. Not playing president; playing God.

I'd hate to get political, though. I'd hate to ramble on
and on about something I don't know enough about to
**** myself over. I can feel myself picking up steam.
I can feel myself getting redundant but embracing the
bruised ego and poor technique. Loving the entrails
spilling out of the splits of my fingertips;
more beautiful than the brains I bashed on the sidewalks
of old Morgantown. Morgantown, a town so kind you
are gently destroyed by its over-crowded masses,
dying to be different or drunk -- I suppose that's not very
different than most places.

But let's get back to these trees that I haven't even talked about.
Let's get back to the kitchen table with the hollowed hard-drive,
with wires and cords flopping to the sides, like a
gutted spaghetti eater with poor stomach acid.
How terrible. I'll never forgive myself for that last line.

I feel so rudderless. So cynical with a touch of cliche.
I keep pushing back that age for success, thinking
that I have the luxury of choosing. My vocabulary is
limited. My intelligence is assumed; probably a void,
where delusions manifest and asian **** rewinds and plays,
  rewinds and plays.

The trees outside my neighbor's house
cover shame like my neighbor's blouse.
And the yard, oh my god, so perfect;
so, so, so suburban you could
stay safe, forever or however long it feels.

Her porch encloses her dying husband,
breathing out of a tank, or with a tank,
as if living with assistance is anything new.
And I think, well, I know she was once
married to a semi-famous musician;
some guy responsible for some important
'new sound' during the fifties'.

As the sun begins to sit, on this Virginia
horizon, I swear I am as lost as my neighbor,
digging around in her yard, trying to fix up
the place before darkness falls. I guess we all
are trying to fix stuff up before darkness falls.

The birds are chirping or screaming -- you decide --
under the coal dust sky, searching for something
but, probably, wandering around and around,
hoping that something makes sense or
presents itself. I don't know how birds work,
but this is where I say something; something
that we can all relate to. Something that really
hits the nail on the head. But life, like poetry
or teenage boys, or bloodied noses, or nonsensical
stares from that girl in 8th grade you regret being afraid of,
is unstable, meandering, even pointless. Oh so, disarmingly
  pointless.