What is a mouthpiece? Asked Miss Dent the teacher
'   Denture!'  immediate answer from smartest  boy Victor.

Sugar man, won't you hurry
Cause I'm tired of these scenes
For a blue coin won't you bring back
All those colors to my dreams


Silver magic ships you carry
Jumpers, coke, sweet Mary Jane


Sugar man met a false friend
On a lonely dusty road
Lost my heart when I found it
It had turned to dead black coal


Silver magic ships you carry
Jumpers, coke, sweet Mary Jane


Sugar man you're the answer
That makes my questions disappear
Sugar man cause I'm weary
Of those double games I hear

Well these cocaine naps have got me waking up drunk.
Broken knuckles and scars I don't remember.
So many days spent in a daze,
Drinking and smoking haze.
A complex distraction for a complex problem.
It's killing me, I know, but maybe that's better than nothing at all.

How can you ask a self destructive mess to not be paranoid.
All the nights I spend hating myself
Analysis to a grand scale, of every miniscule detail.
Every second of the sunset, every plant that grows I turn to dust.
Why can I only ruin this paradise,
Too late to save someone, too fucked up to let someone love me.

This is pain,
Ruining my chances and knowing what I've done.
Hating myself for the actions I do, and the things I don't say.
Blaming myself, constantly.

But let's do another line, and wash it down with spirits,
Drown them in substances and pretend we're okay until it kills us.

Often times, 
We get so many answers of
“I’m too busy" or “Hit me up later"
But no one realizes that I…
I don't want to be the one that reaches out
I don't want to be the one that initiates anything 
I just want you to be there, and tell me 
That life's crap, but you got me. 
That you know I’m down, and 
You're by my side to pick me up. 
That when I wake up, 
You'll be by my side, 
We'll be walking together, 
Laughing and smiling... 
Ha.
Too bad, this is only a dream. 
I’m not lonely, only alone. 
I’m not dead yet, only dying. 
I’m struggling, but barely holding — 
— on.

You see,
I feel like a fool.
Trusting too many people
With words of
Content and satisfaction,
Ambitions and aspirations.
A light in the darkness
A light at the end of the tunnel
A beacon of hope in open oceans
But there is no hope.
Only an illusion.
There is no peace.
Only pieces of what we
Believe is there.
But their belief
Is that we’re
In this together.
But are we really?

You tell me that
It'll all be good.
But I'm not good.
I only say it
Because if I say anything else,
You'll be at a loss for words,
Unable to say anything
And then, it fills the void
With an awkward silence.
And like everyone else,
You'll say that
You're there for me.
But when I reach out,
Only emptiness fills my grasp.
Silence is like my isolation.
It's the reason why
I feel so foolish and —  
— alone.

It's not like
I don't have "friends"
- so to speak - but
It's like there's
Not a person in the world
That's willing to listen.
It's funny, you know?
They say that
Sticks and stones
May break my bones,
But words will
Never hurt me.
Actions are the ones
That we forgive and forget
But words...
Words are the things that
We remember forever.

When someone tells you
That they're
There for you.
Because their word
Is their promise.
And so when you call out,
You wait...
And wait...
And wait.
But then you realize
That, like rules,
Promises end up being broken.
Promises are unreliable.
Words are unreliable.

Don't tell me that
You'll answer when I call,
You'll be there when I need you,
You'll listen when I talk,
Because you won't.
Don't tell me that;
Don't promise me anything.
Because like the rest of the world,
You don't actually give a damn.
But I don't blame you.

I'm not trying to
Victimize myself
Because I'm not a victim
I'm not a survivor.
I'm not who you think I am.
Underneath all  
My strength and pride
My discipline and determination
My fortitude and dedication
I've lied.

It seems like life's
All about performance
You want to be the best?
You have to beat the best.
Even if that person
Is yourself.

A dragon is different from a dragon-fly
but Chinese legend says dragons do fly

II.
           shivery stiff        evening      lamb-abundant
               sewing lamb's thread       spooling into the fabric
       of         the taxicab yellow couch
                      stitched to the deloused cushions w.     erotica
           im uninterested in          just to see how  
          angels        fuck    and at     what   angle angles      do:
        egg boiling       and hardboiled Barker manic-rambling as
                           his numb-gummed diatribe       goes,
          fingers gnash in the disposal he couldn’t hear running
              over the          seventeen upstairs          as the      boiled
                        egg       slips into the      in-sink-er-ator
                  Natto's collie becomes the lamb          metamorphoses  
         when Carol tricks        out      six of the    seventeen  
         tilted fan blades scour her temple when
                              Natto picks her up too high, too fast
        && we are - as if guided by transmuted laser light -
                  upstairs by the
                  smell of burning brillo pads and pseudoephedrine
           and vinegar-and-salt    sea-shipped     smack            where three  
         syringes embed themselves like binary code
      amongst seventeen loud rollers    
      gutter punks gargling on gutter grime that glitters grunty fringe-  
              critters lighting a fire to warm     melting    NOLA newsprint  
              post inside an amber ale pail
                                                            ­          Natto Carol Barker and i
                            running from the
              CO knowing
              OD’s look quite similar but
      seeing them all head-to-toe
                 in a ringaroundtheposies
      we know that much smack would be impossible
                       to buy                           we douse the fire
                fling into the beige Buick odorous with vomit
         from Carol’s first-born liquefied by Carol who swore
                            to get the baby out with the butt end of the chimney          
        sweeper and
                odd drugs from a briefcase carried in vague vogue
          are left in the house w. the collie but left the baby in
                        NOLA with godmother LaLaurie w.
            three bagels in the crimped hands of the seventeen        
    gutterpunks nauseous in their own right     && their fuming
                                             stench
            and in CO translucent soot (a nuclear winter for the lungs)
            and the house stands on stilts three feet above ground;
                    Natto fiddling in the backseat with a dog whistle as the      
        collie waddles willfully from nightmare
                  into the fire pail to keep warm as i tread back in
         following the line of lamb thread stitching us to the yellow    
                          taxicab couch                              body odor melts from the ceiling where the O Gauge Train
           now runs along the baseboard, Natto in flight scaling steps on desoxyn to find seventeen carbon monoxide casualty gutterpunks and Natto’s delirium tremors pull the spool around which we are stitched to by Carol’s lamb as the house aches with the same sexual tension felt in the bladder but aches with cult called culture, Carol cajoling and coming with a fire poker — Barker's gnarled hand  
              snatches it from her and Natto runs from the house
                       blushed  in    a        burgundy           phantasm pale
          the house melts but only              when Natto sees his
               collie in the pit        looking    at Carol      — fan ballads in  
                           blades stared at as we
           rock into blue-roof/room motel for the night (thank fuck for Barker!)
                  and we spend hours unthreading the           velvet lamb-spoiled spool from Barker's gnashed hand and superglue the wounds  
                                              shut
     ­         shyly, sharp lips and open eyes
                   laughing at me in the middle of the night
        we take       turns in the mirror
                                       in the mirror: my eyes bulge from their sockets    
        so i screw them
             in again                   turn to see Natto sobbing like a sawmill through broken furniture over the collie
                        and eating Barker’s banana pudding w. the rubber
                push side of a syringe bandanna squeezing his forearm shut  
               from his bicep
       cuddling in be, the four of us           co-sleeping awake
                            and of choruses lust
the lamb splintering our eyes to the ceiling
         Natto’s new pet
         the lamb       spooled into       our lumbar
     Natto says all humans are just waiting to die
                && that some make lovely     lives out of that     waiting
    Carol     soaks loose leaf paper      in       maxwell coffee        and        
     dries it               writes            six of the seventeen names: dries
     with a     wallmount hair dryer
             w. the gutterpunks suffocating in house and mind
     psychological Halloweenism as she       code switches to
             lively              after           seventeen
          wishes that her baby were here in      olive-curtained brothel
                and Barker bangs his head against
    the a/c unit        jackpot! jackal jack-o-lantern     jarring
       warm incandescent,      i
    w. blueberry vodka      licking seventeen
       gutterpunk wounds     in my head      
              and like bitcoin   we wade in crypto
                                      currency comes to question,
     we all         look at     our bodies thinning       our hair
                                                             thinning
         threadlike        
                          && Natto breaks his && the silence in our skulls  
                            asking,
          "how long before larvae              start to
               dig their way         in the     skullcaps?"
                                                  (se­venteen)