there are several ways to say, 'what in the hell are you doing?'

the first starts with: 'what in the hell am i doing?'

someone coughs in the backdrop. there is a hollowness to the room.
the cough bounces wall to wall, playing auditory pong.

you turn around, rather startled, and see an old man keeled tightly over his knees,
fast asleep and yet choking on his compressed diaphragm.

he snores, habit fizzling over loose lips and dripping thru his warm saliva 'til it becomes a taoist creek on the bed of the auditorium floor. he coughs, chokes, and it repeats throughout the room like a phantom.

you trudge slowly toward him. he lets out one long, conservative choke and jerks backward, a spinal catapult and to the ground. THUMP

there are several ways to say, 'what in the hell are you doing?'

the first starts with: 'what in the hell am i doing?'

someone coughs in the backdrop. there is a hollowness to the room.
the cough bounces wall to wall, playing auditory pong.

I

Testing that nuclear feeling pulsating through my ventricles, a pain sour at top of my genitals in the area above the ***** dr's call the pelvis
it hurts for no such reasons; mysterious numbness to the pain as it aches and yet it is only a suppressed fear of cancer, the dr checked my prostate jamming finger in ******* n twisting like a diamond fairy-- perhaps nicer not jammed in my ******, but this is 'the nature of the examination'

nature, nurture, I am suffocating myself in her addicted presence, regardless of how much I may love her she was cuddled next to me last night before slipping into a gasp-snore sleep and the ****** intrusive evil thought came to me-- wat if i took this lighter and singed her hair or her skin and fer sakes I scared myself, the same way I scare myself after watching documentaries on serial killers and wondering, so wondering, 'that could be me- the killer- torchering stray cats with infected syringe, binding its legs with an unwound coat-hanger and tossing it off a bridge-- and then years later I pick-up a hitch-hiker and ******* him against his will, slit his throat to keep him bound in the loss-progress of forgotten history'

this 10 mg escitalopram oxalate / i cannot tell if it is working / but my head is a pill and the dr agreed to prescribe me .5 mg xanax n maybe this is why i feel close to losing the mind in burn-ache-scare-myself-away /

II

I got a blood-test the other day, my way of praying to science to ask its all benevolence if I, perhaps, have ***, AIDS, chlamydia, godknowswat

immediately afterwards, I went home and read 3 articles on the Russian intervention in the Crimea as if it were my insanity civic doody

cracked-open my budget and calculated my debt to be somewhere in the $2,400 range n felt trapt and angry and unreal as if high-school is when time stopped and ever since I waste my life / spending it on money / money it on spending ******* /

i go to work, feel dead or mad already, as if 20 yrs is too late for me and it'll be one hell of a trip when I realize I've made it to 21, let alone 30

let alone 30

let alone *30

III

last night i begged her for ***, a remorseless evil pulsing thru my veins and no compassion save for some manipulative control of a dark-force--

she was sleeping, sleepy, woke up, i deliberately watched **** with the volume high to keep her up and guilty

she called me *pathetic and it only hurt becuz I believed her and knew it

it spunnn outta control and into other vortextual matters of an unexpressed zeitgeist diatribe and she went as insane as me, threw my coconut oil at the wall in my bedroom when i insisted i sleep on the couch muttering to herself i feel like dying like killing myself like ending, if u *******, how can u ******* when u know i feel like this it makes no sense and it hurts and i call her one great-big-guilt-trip-lookin-pretty she insists on a slam-slouch next to the door and says i wanna listen to you ******* and i will i don't care we are both now in the grip of an evil cabin fever trapped in each others soulz and i become eviler as she becomes eviler, we look like madmen women to one another going tangent after tangent and in some sick sense realizing how petty and empty we must be to feel so petty and empty and expressive of a dark chill within us each a hot ember of hopeless cold firing the spot-team responsible for motivation and direction due to budget cuts of the soul

and by god i hate myself, and by god at times i hate her the same and the world but only as reflection to that dark chill within us

an empty chatterbox

IV

i wake up, write this poem, refuse to pop a xanax pill today and feel a gritty dirt rubbing thru my hert hertz heart

better, it's better, i love her

and yet there is that dark chill within us

an empty chatterbox

opening up an eclectic ruddy random selection of books to the sound of classical concerto dimmed to 'whelming' (neither under nor overwhelming), is like entering point after point to perspective to new brain after old brain after subject to object to alluvit, the few, the many-- 'on July 21st, 1936, Lockheed test pilot Elmer C. McLeod, with Amelia as copilot, took the new Electra up for its first official flight..' 'This is the picture of the Djinn making the beginnings of the Magic that brought the Humph to the Camel..' 'A block away from the museum doors, the guards still follow us, until a new group of guards from the next building has us under surveillance..' 'More and more, I suspect that Buddhists and shamans are correct..' 'I liked Bloodworth and in the spring we were going to play outfield together on that Lowell team, he whose name for years had mystified me when I saw it in Lowell High and Lowell Twi League boxscores-' 'if the world at large found it impossible to believe the truth of the Holocaust, even when provided with incontrovertible proof, Berliners presented with piecemeal evidence, rumour and hearsay were bound to dismiss such talk as enemy propaganda, or perverted fantasy. As Ursula Von Kardoff recalled after the war: 'we were realistic and pessimistic. But Auschwitz?'-  '"Twenty-five centavos."
"Twenty-five centavos," repeated the Syrian in a firm voice with almost no accent.'--

Glittery mentions along a
lonely red-carpet through
the theatre of mind I hold
so close and dear, greasing
with WD40 to keep my quick
wit intact so I can fight fire
with flame-- an Afro-headed
white-boy with molten lava
for scalp and still frame flame
for hair walks past in all black
leather; fire-proof to avoid his
inner spark so it stays in the fire
-pit of his head where he has set
up camp for the rest of his mortal
life. There is something about the
distinctly mid-point glare of a
human on his way to an odyssey
that gives away the fact he is
between-scenes in the film
-shoot of life, and you can
expect to see his final cut
screen as a Facebook
exclusive starting tonight
at 9 and repeating every
25 minutes for the next
60 years.