stick-shift livelihood
but i haven’t got my
instruction permit yet, i just
guess and hope at the colored
lines on
asphalt rolled out
in front of me like a red
carpet no one gives enough of
a **** about
to paint scarlet.

the potholes are big and getting
bigger, and i’m not good at
steering

force-fed florescent
******* with nickel-plated spoons,
we are not made
into stars

it's hot -- really ******* hot
at nighttime, it's hard to sleep
what with my sweat-sticky skin

     but

you're gone for another
thirty seven?  thirty seven
days and nights

               so

i bury my face
in your sweatshirts
(they smell like you)

listen closely my fellow
writers,
writing prose and putting in a
line break
every
so
often
is not poetry.

when i peer into the
deep dark lake.

i wonder at the waves
the shadow-flickers
and the shafts of sunlight which
never seem to pierce very deep...

and urges to dive
to fall and swim
and to know the very unknowable
reaches of the silvery bed,

if i should 
quite suddenly depart, feet
slipped out from under 
center,

then sing me to sleep
and send me out a-drift, across
the lake, quiet glassy
cloudy with the stardust and
the paradise

and if i should arrive at a
distant shore through the
mist;

do we exist as m o r e
than a smattering
of leftover stars
or
are we alone in the

dark