The words we employ

the words we turn to use

promise only a future

fraught with lies

roped in disappointments

can we know by touch alone?

by the feelings that leak out sideways

this jam crusted

with resentment and regret

mortar made of songs

we never sing out loud

but rather hum nervously

with our knees and our fingers?

contemplate this rising

like the damp heat of exhalations

these illuminated promises we weave

pulling words out of our hair in sleep

our fingers wander

dreaming a keyboard

filled with other peoples’ stories

other peoples’ laughter

like street light

glancing off your windshield

like unclaimed tears

I fill you to overflowing

to the point at which

capacity gives out like a memory

reworked and patched

mended with quick stitches

and sewn-in forgetfulness

I could say I don’t remember

I could blame Jack Spicer’s birds, sure

but there’s a really simple way of distilling moments

let them drop rhythmically like forgotten intimacies

drop down their wind-saddened words

to stand awkwardly together

just across from us

like old buildings

pulled halfway down

A third burlesque birth

cycles compressing rather

than breaking down

the gray that comes

both from age

& slow destruction

crept onto

your meager plate

a palette bereft of

careless expectation

of the finer things

the caviar of

smearing hip hop

tinny as tinsel

all out of season

the shimmer

a mere smear of

wind bent conversation

“You’re the shrink wrap on my string cheese,“

he said from his knees, to no one in particular,

incorporating slanguage under the horns, but

over the bass, knowing what disco turned into.

You’re like Chinese food

for my ****

dropped off in a

slightly soggy box

hidden wrapped

in brown paper

like you’re ashamed

***** secret fortune cookie

cracking up at the bottom

slurping you already

I pay the man

What if all we got was a looping tidal wave sound
A polar sunburn and some wind some rusted out
cans of Burma-Shave™
washed up on a plastic island of castaways
crush crush crush the waters say all around us

salted and dried as weeks old cod we lay prone
waiting for something to change enough to reveal
visible evocations toward our unknown end

at one time we all sat alone with blank paper
a typewriter a quiet settling of the air around us
all around our one desk lamp our flashing thoughts
changes that pushed us closer to one another
uncomfortably tighter
a state of blind containment we called it

our holding pen comprised of someone's shrunken head
vessel of complacent restraint
it came with no brain
only lights out of our control
they yelled "LIGHTS OUT!" and just like magic
we fell asleep right where we laid

adrift we still float with no chance of credible response
the only organic matter our own bodies
in Tyvek™ in plastic or polyester
latex weather-worn and lost its gleaming
bottles that don't scuff like glass

the next day we awake and another dolphin has
run amok gone to a distant place leaving
a tangled lump of chewed carcass
under the lip of plastic six-pack brambles
the sharp edges of filigreed netting
that make up our beaches

holding the layers of rotting animals
which fuel the constant bumping
the nosing the prodding
of anything carnivorous in the sea around us
anything wanting more than its fair share of meats
anything willing to come tangle with our undercarriage

in the cold darkness of singular contemplation
no shade ever other than perhaps a shredded tarp
whipping the back of the un-seeable wind
tapping our legs with its rusted grommets
compelling us to think of a speed we no longer know

how much longer can we continue to have hope
continue to have a lust to linger ever longer
through the terror the exhaustion the exposure
through the horrors of survival
at a range closer than any would like to imagine

don't fall down a hole of your own making
the sea birds laugh down upon us
don't pray for dark water or weather
when you can't look away
can't swim beyond this unmapped mass
this destination

the ocean tries to act like it doesn't give a ****
but we lay prone we listen to her groaning
beneath us a depth of worlds we can't be in
beneath us like around us the conditions are unstable
we wander without intention without compass
without hoping we continue our mission