Chop down the city lights of Paranoia.
Cathartic beads of sweat roll
off the horrors of your back
under the saggy breast lamps
in the pitched dreams where the nightmare kids
come to watch you sleep.
Somersaulting walls made of human tissue,
the love of your life overseas, and everything you say
comes out as water torture on hollow centers of hope.
poetry is dead.
Liars smoke ten packs a day,
social criminals stroll in marathons of perdition
across the rot of post-modern vices,
their feet stomp closer to watching faces under the bed.
'This is a story. A dream!'
Everyone sees the fire under the bed.
Watch-fires earthbound by every word
before it is said,
gagged in envy--brought to glow by spineless atoms.
Every sexless sun has a beard, a saved flirtation that singes
the vacuum of today's soul,
a dead dream because you didn't pull it from the brink.
No one has a name in poetry. A task. A point. An exit.
One bed-room apartments locked with pearls
visible only to soloist dogs.
No sorry for vagueness or shut-mouth or bleeding upwards. The meter is running....
to the pharmacy
because it could be pregnant with all the possibilities.
And the whole amphitheater wants to hear one line, the life changer you brought
--here it is: Forget your name.