for fifty
dollars
you
park
your car
inside
one
of these garages.
I drive and drive and drive, knowing
that I will not have a place
outside those garages.
I spent fifty
dollars
on a purple v-neck, orange crew cut
striped shirt and ten socks;
it was my birthday money.
I’m going to go inside
restart the laundry
so it will be warm.
My apartment complex has speed
bumps before each module
to slow the traffic
and as I go over one, looking
at a darkened figure standing
in the garage, taking
a plastic bag from their trunk—face obscured by darkness--
I realize what a crude portrait
humanity is.
Trapped on this prison
planet—what was our crime?
In that moment, bobbing head
I thought of love
and how unobtainable its object is;
then I realized
only people who pursue love
are capable of murderous rampage killings.
I thought about how safe my anonymous
neighbor
was
and how lucky someone would be
to know what saints walk among them.
I forget that my bright shirts were bought
to attract someone so
I could attempt to love.

It feels better to be falsely imprisoned
--to be a saint--
than to know ****** and love
are parked inside of you.
The dark figure takes out
whatever's stopping you.

However long ago the bluster shadows roll anew beyond my pale eyelids and out mornings aloud shouts ‘awaken’ the post—scribbled and crossed with meaning

There are words there are words there are words there…

But some remain obscured by others, however long ago the bluster shadows roll anew each bundled ***
of news we read one word: war.

There are words there are words there are words there…

War. Word. Word. Word, other word.

And we held hands in December of 2011, then said goodbye on the morning of January 2nd 2012, when the bluster shadows rolled anew beyond my pale eyelids the words there:

Love. Word. Word. Word, other word.

I blinked. Was on vacation with you, at your parents’ home. However long ago the bluster shadows roll anew, beyond my pale eyelids, and upstairs, outside, and gone was I. When there were words there, I blinked.

Word. Word. Word. Word, other word.

Nothing mattered anymore—not love, or war.

I’ll never try to read the future in the news again.

As few more days the bluster shadows of mind are rolled out on a bleak December of frigid interaction—another fifty years of human life—before I see you again in empty nothingness beneath my pale eyelids, without thought looming like a bomb plane, or chemical attack,

scribbled and crossed with meaning, shouts ‘Awaken’ the words of the past—

Laura. Laura. Laura. Laura. Laura, Laura.

There were --, there were --, there were --, there were -- there

A few titles
A few songs
A few artists
Combine
for compound fractures
of my consciousness

For, lo, the ulcer just by nourishing
     Grows to more life with deep inveteracy,
     And day by day the fury swells aflame,
     And the woe waxes heavier day by day—
     Unless thou dost destroy even by new blows
     The former wounds of love, and curest them
     While yet they're fresh, by wandering freely round
     After the freely-wandering Venus, or
     Canst lead elsewhere the tumults of thy mind.

Yes, a swollen skin
fragmented bone
I walk
and flee her capture.

I’m sick.
I have a fever and flu-like symptoms.
I am alone, and have been for hours,
lying on my bed
with a lavender candle pulsating
to the sound of classical music,
dancing on the darkness of my
ceiling.

I am not aroused
but, playfully,
I slide my palm
over the underside
of my hairy
behind
and begin
to gently stimulate
each hair
with near-static
force.

I occasionally push
my fingertips
into the crevice—
my crevice—
my end.

How good this feels
to be sick
and allow oneself to
feel
the emptiness too
dark
and bold
and powerful
to be contained within us.

The comforting,
soft touch
we can give ourselves
is like a loved one
holding our hand;
it almost tickles, and this sensation
although distinct
reminds me
of the pretend animals
my grandma would parade
across my back.

Beyond our view
the guillotine,
existence,
slowly begins to descend
as we lie,
holding hands with ourself
on top of the covers,
sweat pants around the ankles,
grabbing our own ***
as the steady rain
trickles from the roof
of tenement housing
and beats
on the aluminum gutter
for hours
until it’s over.

The night has fallen
like a punishment
for finding no one
and it occludes my sight;
I shiver, and cannot *******.

Existence is too dark
to allow dancing candlelight
or baroque masters
to tickle its space.


It is filled with falling heads
and clutching grasps.

I’m sorry your football team lost, state.
Maybe you should invest
more time and
focus
on the things within your borders
that make any difference at all.
Like the thoughts of a young man
sitting at his table
watching ******* all day
                                            waiting
for a woman
who knows what it feels like;
He worries so much
                                                    For
a country
that spends more energy getting
drunk
and eating bleacher food
than wondering
if there’s any reason to be
Anything
Anything
Anything
                                   ANYTHING
at all.

--You are like that man
                                   wearing red,
shouting at your tv
and cursing;              only
you are without an
idea.

And you'll be that way on Monday
and Tuesday.
You'll have a thought
of where to eat on Wednesday
or decide to have a baby on Thursday
and forget on Friday
while you're dancing.

But you won't ever ask why;
not even on Sunday, when you're
sitting in church
and thinking about Kansas City
Chiefs' scores
or whatever worthless *******
you people think about.

I'm *******.

I’m lying in the fetal position
at the bottom of a muddy trench dug during World War One
or
I’m queuing outside a gas chamber
skin exposed to Winter air by burlap
during World War Two

In one of these fantasies- - and that’s what they are- -
a man looks over his shoulder and asks
whether I deserve
to be alive.
“I don’t think so,” I mutter.
Then another man stands over my emaciated frame
and quanders “Have you had time
to
zink about your
life?”

I raise a muddy foot
or
adjust my weight to face
my conversation partner:
“What do you want me to say?”

I want you to say everything
(pointing to a field of shell-craters)
before you go out there
or
I want you to have a chance
(pointing to my head)
before you go in there.

Then, the vapor comes
or
it starts raining.

I no longer mind
the laughter of people,
leaves falling,
sun rising—
all is destitution,
squalor,
our dirt-clod--
Earth.

Moons snicker, too
at our moon, which,
sneering at me
becomes dizzy
from its hypocrite
cycle.

Pulling tides,
the way it has
a quarter-century,
my life.

I want you
to die;
I want you all
to die before I do.
Moons, stare on.

I want to steal an abandoned air-
liner for you.

As far as possible,
I will climb toward
your towering grimaces
crashing, directly,
into the ground
without wonderment
or acknowledgment
on this Earth.

Trending topics
of the day
could not take stock of my
demise.
Shallow conversations
sit on barstools
put off
for eternity.
They showed me love
by suggesting
“change”.
I show them
love
is coming back
to earth
and lying with their putrid
bodies
against my will.