Winter has steadily come,
And I'm not sure I can convey
How readily glum
The frost singed air
Feels as it sticks in my throat.
I might as well,
I might as well.
A pig pulled a
U-turn to warn me
Of the ghetto youths
Roaming the neighborhood,
He said to put my phone away
And be on guard,
This area is dangerous, you know,
How long have you lived here,
How long have you been alive?
My knuckles are stiff
And my toes need stretching,
And my mind keeps retching
From the smell
Of rotting leaves
Mixed with deferred dreams.
In this section of town
Named for Hughes,
I perceive the blues
He was wont
To sing,
I breathe the fluid
Inherent in the slums,
And think on why
The oil shines in
The gutter,
Why it's working in our blood,
But it's not the same as love
Why vagrants mutter
And Hope dissolves
Once the glitter of
The campaign wears off,
Left to sparkle in the dirt
With the cast-off gloves
And chunks of weave.
Oppression in the guise
Of freedom stresses
My beliefs,
And it's all I can do
To take solace in the relief
Of taking my seat on the
Bus I've been waiting for
That will drive me
Towards a different lie
And a less realistic
Metaphor;
Cleveland Park
And its expensive stores.

Repeating with
The frequency
Of apologies,
"I'm not here,
This isn't happening,"
While my head
Spins, and my
Innards lurch
Like carnival
Ride children,
"I'm not here,
This isn't happening,"
The chaos,
The orderly
Passage of red
Faced spectators
Drifting through space,
Their classic attempts
To embrace and
Disengage,
Grinning at what
Can't be erased,
"I'm not here,
This isn't happening,"
Like the sound of
Hopes cast into
The depths of hell,
Glinting tokens
You can't see
Seconds after you
Drop them in,
I'm the air,
I'm the disillusionment
That lets you know
When to be scared,
The anvil in
Your gut telling you
To stop,
I am the sweat
That drips
Like morphine
Into post-mortem
Pathways through
A needle
That needs sharpening,
"I'm not here,
This isn't happening,"
This is just a test,
As they say,
It'll all be ok
Once some obese
***** wails,
The levees are stressed
And the horsemen
Idle and wait for the fail,
For the flood
Of repentance,
Of common
Indecency,
For the blood
From Ahab's whale
To initiate
The shackling
Of the sorrowfully
Undeclared,
"I'm not here,
This isn't happening."

We sat,
******* the shreds
Of chicken
From our teeth,
In a cloud of smoke
From tempers flared
That burned to the quick.
The record spun,
The needle stuck
In the endless
Circle groove
At the disc's
Center, but
Neither of us
Moved.
We didn't change
The record,
We didn't
Shut the
Player off.
We sat,
And watched our
Fingers and toes
Evaporate.
We looked on
As the
Room dissolved,
We made no pleas,
Or any noise at all
As our world
Was erased.
In the eggshell light
Of our rebirth
The seasons passed,
With no attention
Paid, like
Sudanese children,
Left to collect sunlight
In the pores of their flesh,
Are ignored
By their God.
The air was a sea
Of vibrations,
Writhing and alive
In the periphery
Of our perceptions.
Do you remember
How it felt to
Be reconstructed?
Cell by cell
We came together,
Our blood vessels
And lymphatic tunnels
Wove through
Tendrils of bone
And wisps of
***** tissue,
Our nerves snaked
Their way through
The jungle of our
New-found existence,
A supercomputer
Materialized within
Each of us,
And they began
Discovering themselves
And each other.
We had arrived prematurely,
And our flames
Were snuffed out
In the claustrophobic
Incubators.
Here we now sit,
White noise
Filling the void,
Waiting for
Something we'll
Never see
Come to be,
But can't avoid.

The dirt yawned
And swallowed the weather
While we sat patiently
Waiting for dawn.
The clouds were a landslide
That dragged us both down
Like synthetic feathers
In a hurricane.
We did not find OZ,
There was no other dimension,
Just cold, abusive soil,
And four billion years
Of built up tension
That unleashed upon us
A prehistoric frustration
With the lack of chaos,
And the predetermination
That replaced it.
We clutched at roots,
And ripped off our fingernails
Scratching at sandstone,
We lost our skin,
And inhaled the souls
Of a trillion decomposed
organisms.
Our bodies split
Like light through
A million prisms,
But our spirits
Kept up their plummets.
Into a chasm we fell,
Like grains of sand into
An expanding universe,
So inconceivably small,
So irreversibly without control,
So peacefully.
Our energies squirmed
In imperfect circles
Around each other
As the fall
Turned stationary
By perspective.
Other pairs joined us,
Attracted to our spin,
Until we formed
A new world,
To god's chagrin.

The last drops have been swallowed,
And the last vestiges
Of post-wage labor
Libationary sorrow
Swagger slowly off
Into the night
Across cracked pavement
Like slugs after rain.
I pick up the chemtrail
Left by my father
And follow it to
A makeshift master suite
Wedged between a
Rundown groundskeeper
Shed and the unkempt
Wilderness beside the
Desolate bike path
In rural Seekonk.
The rest of this comatose
Town in this overdosed
Commonwealth
Are separated
By enough trees
And undergrowth
And small
Night creatures
Calling to each other
In the dark
That they can't hear
The nightly
Rattle of .38
Rounds my father
Sends flying into the trees.
The pistol was my
Grandfather's,
Brought over from France
In 1947.
My father cries
As he pulls the trigger
Over and over
Sporatically,
Like a Sung Tong,
His eyes wild,
Darting side to side
In milky blue trails
Back and forth
And up and down
Across the dark
Chasms of his
Eye sockets.
When the chambers
Of his firearm
Run dry he fills them
From the box
He took from my basement,
In his old house,
Where he stockpiled
Ammunition for
Twenty two years.
I've learned to stand east
Of my father when
I make the visits
Expected of children
When their parents
Are old and trapped
In the recesses of
Their insanity
Or nursing home
Or empty nest,
Because he always
Aims west.
I wait for tonight's
Box to be empty,
Then slowly walk
To where my father
Is huddled,
Clutching the pistol
Like a teddy bear.
He is breathing heavy,
And has **** himself.
He hears me coming,
Turns, and smiles
Upon recognition.
"I got em good mikey,
Got good, not taking
My land from ME
Mickey, never going
Blow south,
See it?"
I pull the pistol I've
Brought from my waistband,
The one my father,
Gregory Bishop,
Gave me on my
Eighteenth birthday.
The weight in my hand
Is deafening,
The illegal ivory
Is seamless
And cold against
My palm.
I raise my arm,
Aim,
And pull the trigger.

If only my dreams
About dreaming
Could instruct
My seemingly green
Concept
Of luck
I could
Interrupt
My seemingly just
Cycle of lust
Say
-Giddy-up,
Buttercup
You want to
Get *****?
-**** Mike,
It's only
5:30.
That's ok,
Just tryin to
Be flirty,
To make ok
The fact that
You'll hurt me,
To make passe
The fact that
My birdy
Flew away
And tried to
Lure me
To fly beside her
But that's behind me
Besides,
She tried
To cure me
But my wings
Were paper,
They broke
Prematurely
So I fell
Like disorderly
Swells
Of frequencies
I yelled pink noise
I could barely
See,
Passing for
Currency
Passing in
Front of me
Passing for
Apathy;
Apathetic empathy
Or sympathetic
Tragedy
For such pathetic
Entities
Who knows?
Who wants to be
One who knows,
To know
Eventually
We all fall,
Plummet
Suddenly
Into
Black holes
Of imperfect
Symmetry,
We will enter
Simultaneously
So I'll see you
Instantly
On the other
End of this
Wormhole's
Energy,
Baby b,
So until then
Plant a
Tree all
Gold and
Green
And name
It 3
Then climb
That ****
And look
For me,
I'll be
Lying
Right where
You *******
Left
Me
Singing
For clarity,
With
Only
Echoes
Returning
Eternally.

I used to stand for something enlightening that I might feel,
now I stand in fields waiting for lightning to peel
back my skin and make me real, or at least semi-real
or semi-charmed, but not that kind of life
in the song, you better believe that we'll
laugh about the new ordeal
and blast away the golden seal
that keeps us locked behind its waxy confinement
as we're sold into white rooms by consignment-
minded chemtrails in human shells,
thrown into wells to circumvent
the audacity of our red blood cells
to deny us their consent
to believe the hell
inside our eyes
or let us vent
some anger
with acidic
goodbyes.