what's made of gold, is made of crystal—
sold for steel in the streets of Bristol.
pulled the trigger before you cocked the pistol.
what's made of gold, is made of crystal—

We were sitting on your bathroom floor when you told me there was nothing worse than seeing people in the shadows—
you caught yourself because we both knew
that wasn't true.
we looked at our hands and thought of the times
we saw shadows in the people.

to sleep i may, but not the dark vessel
of mine eyes, over stormy seas of placenta and albatross
tossed from the palm of  a rough hewn, Five-Headed Crane
raking five beaks across a canvass of my wounded fires -
and my brazen black honey, trembling on the lip
of mis-fortunate birth...,
in the cataract of
a fine hat
on a fat
rebel.

my public spaces engineered
to come from the inside

the wastelands are beautiful

as you gawk
at the red
sun

a bead of red plasma,
flowing from an
open vein

in a mind shaft.

with a bad back
and no front.

but a lasting gasp....

You yelled for me to
get the **** up off the floor
and smell something other than white powder roses.
I looked up and you had an 80-Watt halo—

*"All I wanted was to breath you in"

slowly breathing,
slowly fading—
into something that
never even really
existed
in the first place

I chew my way through nickles I earn from angry tourists ambivalently tossing percentages into a jar. I've learned that some of the toughest people come from the proletariat. I fear the people that have worked at McDonalds for 20 years. I kneel before the Knights of Mediocrity.

I check my mail and I come back with a fist full of loonies and quarters. Payday. My great big nose reflects back in the copper before I put the coins into my mouth-recepticle. It is barely bearable. It tastes like blood, but is it from the metal or is it the coin cutting my gums? With the sheer yield of my fields was I able to get it down. I wash it down with some OJ.

Of the queerest men and women I have met, most of them were from the same world as I came from (and to which I will inevitably return). The world of the workforce. I am merely ailed by itchy feet and a severe fear of placidity. I work hard. But only if my work is paid in mileage. If every penny spent is a road to anywhere but here.  

A former colleague of mine developed prominent ****** ticks from working as a cashier at a market. The world falls harder on the content, because their yields shield most of the fall. People die both in front of  desks and between steel beams.

Two men sit in silence, playing chess. Suddenly, an argument arises and both parties toss theories of chivalry between one another before one of the men yell,
     "I don't think it's quite that black and white!"