blurred through the mumbling atomic cafe
i thought i heard you say
i am become deaf
destroyer of words
but you were breath
become butterfly effect
spiraling within the stereophonic white-noise drone
of a static radio station
tuned to the music of the silent colossal rotation
of the planets, stars, sun and moon
behind the drawn curtain of a vanished polaroid

still these beating hearts to a murmur
slow these breathing lungs to a whisper
and attach the cello strings of your bloodstream
to that glittering confetti cloud of satellites
strobing, circling the sphere of our atmosphere
strung out on geo-synchronicity
the turning tunnel of the tides
the aeon-spanning volcanic swirl of magma
subsonically writhing
beneath the magnetic pull of the ocean floor
and just...listen...

can you hear the flaming  crackle
of the fire burning in our bellies?
if we slit our stomachs open
the flames that spill from our hari-kiri'd entrails
will fill the darkness in the corner of our closet
and burn it to ashes

in a dream
i saw us laughing together many years from now

when the blast-furnace of our blood, sweat, tears and acid dreams gapes wide
we will laugh in it's face
at the absurdities
of death and taxes

and as the years push through
we will laugh
as we go blind in our old age
growing brighter than the glow
from within the dollhouse home we assembled
from sticks n stones

and we will grow gray together
and fill the soles in our shoes
the holes in our soles
with the dirt, rust, ash, concrete and angel dust
of these city streets

and we will laugh like pyromaniacs
as we **** on burial plots
soil our own graves
and erase our fingerprint smudges
from the blueprints
of our jailbreak escape plan

flames will erupt from the holes in our heads
consume us
spread in a tectonic shock-wave
and lick the pale toes of angels and dreaming junkies
hovering on ghost clouds of ***** soot
just above the foot of our bed

the outlines of our bodies will liquify, disintegrate
and reform as the jagged teeth of a cityscape skyline
crowned crookedly upon the head of a crippled pigeon
ascending in a stuttering climb
towards a heaven
that does not exist
for us

shaking ash and bone-dust from twisted feather
our flames will spread further
devour prehistoric forests
**** roots and tree trunks to bare bone
and march in a coronation parade
upon the city gates
behind a revolutionary brigade
of angry red army ants

finally, those flames
will surround a broken boombox
lost behind a landfill-mound
of moth-chewed cardboard moving boxes
containing the soft stains of dream and memory
tagged, painted, and graffitied
in white out, in sharpie
duct tape peeling from perforated speakers
the flashlight-sized battery compartment
an empty coffin

i didn't cry the day you died. i'm sorry. the reality that you had passed away at barely twenty-five didn't really hit me, even at your eulogy and that still haunts me. they say that denial is the first stage of addiction but I assumed that you knew that death was a possible side-effect of your prescription. about two weeks after your wake, it hit me like a train. i was riding the n judah to the end of the line at ocean beach when I passed a throw-up piece that you had painted a few years before in the train tunnel near haight and cole. it was a big letter "a" in lowercase with an exclamation point next to it. i once asked you what it meant. you shrugged and said, "i just like the shape of it," and something clicked. it was then that i realized (that)

the flames of our light, love and laughter
move faster than the speed of life
and those flames pass us by in the blink of an eye
if we're not quick enough to catch 'em
and return the letters like stars
we borrowed, typed, stole, scribbled and scrawled across the pages of the sky
back to the sprawling library of the night
where they belong    
where we belong