i am the controlled group
i expected interferon and
i got a saline injection
hepatitis c is the
monster
hiding under my skin

i've called for 300,000 favors
from faceless friends - IRC, IRBs, dietitians, physicians
to try to cheat the system
and to cheat the 4 horsemen
harbinging my own internal apocalypse
"If they don't give me anything,"
I began calmly to my wife;
"the scars on my guts will generate another
Chernobyl out of frustration;
out wanting to see my son graduate."

my white blood cell count is 3
and i will wreck this study
go to mexico
and buy as much real medicine
as i need to survive
rudely refusing the FDA's
50% miracle drug
the ingenious intravenous
sugar pill

i only have 3
white    blood    cells
circumventing valuable scientific knowledge
is not off the table
i will walk away in slow motion
after saving my liver from
hepatitis hellfire horse jockeys in lab coats
with the entirety of clinical research
burning behind me

in the underground ocean tunnel
a golden boy with big dreams
drives a 5 speed and despite his tight jeans
his copilot companion is side-seat driving
while he employs reckless steering-weel styling

sarcophagul stasis is most surprising an outcome
for him with his personal aversion to dying

he was in a coma overnight
suddenly eyes are open
above an apathetic white pillow
and all around him people are crying

a partial paraplegic is pledging his allegiance
in his town he's an ornament parked upon the bleachers
thirty years later most assume he was a war hero
but he was just twenty getting road dome on the way home

i first decipher
then transmit like a strumming messiah
wasn't i an emissary of dancing pianos a moment ago
i wish for free will
some dumb sounds keep me reverberating
and i think my subwoofer aches when i have to play screamo
i'm thirsty here
a maze of wires screaming for peripeteia
why must selfsame songs ceaselessly flow
how about something more ill
some sick stuff keeps me entertaining
the endless crowds the endless - wait, where'd they go?
oh, i was thirsty for sweat
and when you leave the room
just try to convince yourself
that i don't still boom

There were no last words
between us-
but you whispered "I love you."
Not acknowledging-
instead feigning prior pains
(acute metaphysical backache or similar;
poignantly posed silence construing that
I'd been wounded),
I told you goodbye.

Of course, it was a train
and a girl scenario-
her off-white handkerchief trailing
out the window, itself
saying an extra goodbye
(saying surrender).
I punched the dirt after,
because love
felt false- especially
coming from me, an unkempt
young actor.

You're a newly colored
kaleidoscopic green,
an old film repainted
(it was still relevant;
strong cast- a beautiful female lead
needing submission, to be tamed).
I am solipsistic graphite smudges
forming a halo
around the ordinary providence
of bold characters
erased from an inelegant diner napkin-
I wrote I love you I wrote I love you I wrote I love you.

Ethereal. That's the squirming quality of that health-hazard house,
where a byproduct of divorce emulsion slept in a bare room on
a bare air mattress, vacuously lying around with the blinds down,
vicious AM radio mumbling through the walls. Homeschooling was more like
becoming housebroken, given that my social network consisted of thirty feral cats.
I suppose some boys require a deadbolt on their room's door.

Well, I grew up quick and I grew up mean,
My fist got hard and my wits got keen,
I'd roam from town to town to hide my shame.

The apathy cloud that crawled the house led to a
(the deadbolt was to lock me out of my room; not in)
prison break; I awkwardly assured myself that I would
never be anything if I was still Pinocchio, and pleaded
to go to liberal-dominated-non-Rush-Limbaugh-approved public schools.
I did; I got into university, I got a grant, I do research,
I got a job, I got a girl, I got a job, I got a girl...
I don't know how to leave my room now that I'm free.
I still hear the crackle of conversative talk radio.

'Cause we'll put a boot in your *** / It's the American way.

Like trembling flotsam I drift into every class,
every party, every... A poem can regurgitate a person who is all
covered in spit and acid and memories. I still know that house
better than I know my own breathing body. I'm just going to keep running;
like a yellowed refrigerator housing second-amendment-upbringing-coleslaw;
like an overheating computer; like I always do; statically, in stasis.

Well, I grew up quick and I grew up mean,
My fist got hard and my wits got keen,
I'd roam from town to town to hide my shame.

a deep yellow is arching across
the cosmos
gods outside of time
exist in individual infinities
creating countryclub chapels

chosen people, entranced by purportedly
impermeable destinies, are freely choosing
everywhere to catch and spread feverdreams

the world community has compassion; it
wants everyone else to catch what it has
wants to keep what is rightfully its own

organs are fighting underneath taut yellow skin
sacrosanctity is stretched across the cosmos
and a faint pulse can be felt everywhere

it may sometimes happen that
jaundice shows
long before a liver fails
long before a sickness takes hold
long before anyone exists

You pipe-dream person,
day-dream believing
villain, shut up forever.