I emptied myself in a pool of slippery
mashed potatoes, fried chicken, and
dank lemonade to cleanse the rain-washed
dreams of your existence from my deadened
soul.  I watched the last words from
my drained eyes diminish under dimly lit
gutters, low ceilings, all overcrowded
and scorched, crusted cheekbones, cracked lips,
cramped muscles locked inside a maze of alleyways,
underground hips and ankles divided, lost in a sea
of swelling contractions.  I thought I could paint
over the crimson landscape and feel the pain slowly
expand and close into hollow holes, but my heart
is crying drunken derivatives, metallic blue,
splashing along the floor, dark and leaking,
chilled and dying, a smeared depiction
of crumbling continents crawling
in collapsed rhythms, the way stripped trees
compressed between falling leaves is more
cold with little speech, gray and shifting,
a smaller silence sinking, shuddering,
a homeless heart creeping in stained
shadows, becoming brick and board,
unreadable, an abandoned scrap of
plywood buried in a blanket of
compounded fractions, ******,
jammed, slammed, a crammed
double negative closed for the last
time.