Cracks in cover let
Sun in hits like
Bullets

Unwrapped window
Gives solar epiphany
To cocooned child

Flee fluorescent,
Flee faux verve
Doorframe: portal
Extra-terrestrial
World through eaves
Like bug zappers
See-through walls
Most envious glass
****** passage

Cold shoulder, concrete, masonry
Phosphenes gleaming, staggering
Hotfoot, addled eyes
Inverted wavelengths
Gravel clinging, unwise
Scrutinized steps to grass
Great big sigh
Saluting sky
With micro pupils
Torrid shell
Swollen locks
Rejoice

Westside: Central Avenue
Pack up, load up
Truckpower to State Street
Beer, veggie dogs
Corn-on-cob
Bag-of-fruit
Checkout scandal

Three-in-the-front
State to thirty-three
Thirty-three to thirteen
Chauncey, Jacksonville,
Trimble, Glouster,
Bonnie’s Home Cooking
Opposite British Petroleum
Exhausted loan office
Opposite Coal Miner Emeritus

Burr Oak: closed
Margin parking
Bathroom clothes
Tasteful vest
Bathroom tissue to brim
Feet welcome
Pass up close up camp spots
I feel a pull to the valley
Clearing: stop, rest
Crack, chug, more wood
Fire, crack, chug, more wood
Chat, crack, chug

Copper detuned chime
Of that ephemeral vibrato
Drone of nine-volt synth
Into kaput tape deck
& we sing & chant & cackle

Campfire chatter:
Bitter pill
Naïve philosophy
Crack, chug
Empathy
More wood

“So when I was seventeen still going to church there were these events they were called “lock-ins” we stayed the night at the church they took our cells our watches took down every clock & covered the windows so we wouldn’t be aware of anything only God & so there would be lectures & guest speakers & bible readings and discussions & also these ******* bizarre activities like they would turn off all the lights light a **** ton of candles & they would blindfold us and give us a little piece of paper and a little pencil and they’d tell us in a omniscient little voice to write down one sin we’ve committed on the little piece of paper fold it & nail it (still blindfolded) to this huge wooden cross with this little hammer & I guarantee every one of us wrote down *******.  

Now that I think of it the whole thing was about ******* every speaker had some story of how they used to ******* all the time and how they were released of the devils hold and that ******* is a sin and will send you to hell and all of us kids were boys and every single adult was a woman they all looked at us like they read our paper like we were sinners like we would always be sinners just slimy ******* who would always ******* (like we would ever understand what it felt to be a woman or what a woman felt like) & their eyes were gleaming with such shallow sympathy that you knew they were true god fearing Christians”

(All at once)
Stab, chug, crack, chug
Stab, chug, crack, chug
Stab, chug, crack, chug

Bliss

We felt as if we’d been born in the desert
Passing shoelace factory prostitutes
Veering memories of Crab Nebula up-skirts
& Slowly obtained convoluted attitudes

“(In our sleep) We let the lizards lick our teeth”:
The grackle chatter from Four Hand Weaver
Met the ears of Guest, who’d arrived in Portsmeth
Riding on deep banjo drones from within the ether

What else can words be but propellants?
They are TLC to mad minds of the 90’s
Coaxing the Guest out of hell with mad chants
& we, the kids, following blindly

“He tried to get me to turn off the electricity
Chanting Southeast Asian Countries with Four Hands
Somehow part of an insane Sun/Moon allegory”
Cries Morgie Saturday morning &

We saw a vision: the Guest up in a crescent
Cast down from the sky and into the sea
Cascading over into a flooding depressant
& cut open the fat man who whispered of banshees

As his steaming intestines float down by the riverside
The boys were passing jolly jokes & joints
“They’ll never figure out how to catch a bride
When they’ve forgotten how to find the celestial point!”

Screeched the Guest with his candle strap
Attached to his banjofrigerator filled with Game Fuel
“It’s in my veins, it’s in my blood like a death cap!”
No longer just a Kentucky Gentleman covered in drool

All in all, a teacher, a preacher, a joke
A gravel eater, unlike the lizards underground
“I don’t eat dirt!  That’s a lie I’d never invoke
Lizards eat dirt & I ain’t like that crowd!”

Men are lizards & lizards are men
“& I ain’t a lizard no way, no how!
That’s the truest fact there ever has been
Aside from something being seriously wrong with me"

It couldn’t have been a more uninviting day
When you spewed out south.
Not a chance in hell you’d stay
Didn’t matter how dreary. With moss mouth
You emigrated from education to eternal dilation
Burning each bridge as you crossed it.
You put yourself on spiritual probation
So henceforth until the roads don’t split
You’re going to walk until you can't feel her anymore.
Got a name change, got to get strange,
With every step she’s that much more folklore.
You get clean dreams & exchange
Your cheap stake in the “real world”
To become both simple & wild.

I am in a canyon
It’s grand & I am
What I am
Guilty by
Disassociation:
I can’t tell the
Leaves in the
Trees from the
Faces in the
Concrete

My mind is a
House of mirrors
My faith is a
House of cards
& god the
Dyslexic mixologist

I am arresting my
Happiness for
Enduring life just to
Spite me
Little do I know:

Only I want to hide myself

Mush brained
In the backseat
Fisheye vision
& car crash dreams
Little boxes fly by
Little boxes all the same

Q:
When do I get a
Little box &
Carport &
White fence &
Rolling pin &
Next to kin &
Worship pavement like
Them?

A:
I am already anchored to asphalt so
I’d rather sit here
Watching my thoughts
Trickle through
The membrane &
Stain my perceived
Self-worth

Super Moon!
Oh, Super Moon!
Why have you forsaken my paralysis?
Why have you come from beneath Cloud Mountain only to breach my inhibition?
So that I may melt into the grass?
So that I may be the leach of this girl?
So that I may repair the ill tidings I shat out a fortnight ago?

People say a full moon makes us
Crazy.  Because seventy percent of
Our brain is composed of water we
Convulse into a Jack the Ripper of
Sorts.  I’ll tell you I’d rather be a
William McCarty Jr., sly as a cat I
Could escape this prison without a
Word to anyone.  Then you can make
Your bones into Tally Sticks so that
You might keep track of the days
Until I’ve slain my last.

It's cranberry sauce
That’s it, I’ve done it
My brain is mush
Heartbeat through a megaphone
I’m pulling on my pant legs
Tightening my veins around my bones
& I think the thermometer in my brain needs reprogrammed

I. Now I’m a cozy embryo
With cotton in my marrow
Last of my breed so the bad men can’t see me
I’m sitting here in my own bullet train
Flying through metro lights at night
With coruscating sodium vapor
Vibrating in my peripheries
My appendages do not exist

II. We are the carbon monoxide leak
We are the cold coaxing hypothermia
Still trying to define the agony of existence
& Beauty of meaning through definition

III. “If you don’t get old, you die”
Shut up & pay your taxes old man
I can stay young for as long as I want
I am healthy
I am eternal
I’ve got all the cotton in the world

IV. I wonder if all sentient life deals
With the same paranoia as humans do
It’s the reason we never shut up
& hold love for vague idols

V. I like smiles
& I like sadness

VI. What does loneliness see when it chases its
Shadow?
You’ve got a mouse in your hand that cannot know that you are
Sentient.
You are a wooden giant from outer space that burned upon
Entry.
Where does apathy sleep when it has had too much to
Eat?
Why can’t you see your house from three million miles
Away?
If you need help breathing then you deserve to die in
Appalachia.
If I lie here long enough under enough blankets, then
I'm not real
Is it possible to save up enough money to avoid humans
Altogether?

Just like that, the spiral ceases
We were packed
Like sardines
Wrapped in butcher paper
Blind night vision
Then deer in headlights
Kissing the pavement
Mutually requited
Uninterest