lips are smokey and nicotined
-up for a night in the dishpit.
the moon leases it's image
for a minute an hour before
stating the lease will expire
sometime between 2040
and 2101. if I'm lucky, I'll be
happy in longevity, or happy
in a 50 yr span which is as
fine as the former. either way
there is a sense of leaking
facets on a Sunday night, a
Ritalin-induced euphoria kept
alive on a caffeine spike. the
bus is always late these days,
which means I am often late
these days, late as daylight,
late as life in fact and as early
as fiction to the evening ball
of predicated tech-gurus riding
hybrid Toyota's in Silicon Valley.
high on a drug called birth and
ingesting like an addict 3 to 5
times a day, I stave off the
ultimate crash.

but eventually, the drug will
**** me.

*it always does.

I wish, most of all, to have had a tangibly physical notebook to write all this in. instead I use the 'note' function of my smartphone, smoke a cigarette. busy on forward, it's Pandora.

one of those acid-high coffee overbouts, feeling the brain compress inside the skull. for an hour. for a few.

some man in tattered-all's gets angry when I state I have no quarter. like I'm lying when I say it, and must be lying because my pants aren't worn like his. bus and car alike ghost past, the monastic rise of the local music conservatory pokes at the skyline, straight at the overcast.

I toss "If on a winter's night" by Italo Calvino atop the third step of the church stairs leading to the church doors, the Seventh Day Adventist Church, Where we meet Jesus. I begin to write this poem, huddled atop my cellphone as if I were in silent debate with a lover, only sitting to make a point.

to the left is a McDonald's flying a McDonald's flag. A man with a thoughtless white ball-cap and a thoughtful tattoo walks past with a McDonald's dollar drink in his right hand, pointing his arms in opposite directions to illustrate the dimensions of something he wants. "See?" he says to the woman he walks with, her face scabbed over with acne scars.

my eyes are tunnel-visioned to the screen every time I follow a thought, or the glancing past of a passer-by like the woman with the black scarf, black hair, black sweater, grey pants, black shoes.

the orange 'don't walk' sign pulses 7 times, and then sticks, as if waiting for a high-five.

I reach into my backpack for a cigarette.

flailing in a grave, arabian drums

         arabian drums

'i sing the body electric' / fish-fillet mind is

eclectic, iridescent

finding a jumper cable in a dead-center desert

as the jeep ***** down--

the sound      
            
                            of         eccentric

                  

arabian

                                              
         ­                                 dru*ms

I'm poor
and I'm
anti-dep
ressed a
nd I'm
lookin
g for a
reason
I don't
need to
survive