You don't know me.
I don't know you.

You pass by me,
Every day,
On the crowded streets.
You say hello; I say goodbye.

You serve me food,
Ring up my beer,
Tax my cigarettes.

I give you money,
And your life goes on.

We see each other often.
But you don't know me...

i govern an idling heart                                                            ­    
doomingly glazey
won't lift a care                    but won't swat no fly either
maintains functional        with the safety hitched on
observes the public goings and fro-ings            
                           without discrimination
but offers no service                          
             no aid            
and no addition

docile         and folded         and dormant of view
in a world-scape kniving to be brighter                                                   
                                           more memorable and avidly self dominant
                             i am a skiving witness

the older i get the more this approach                  
                                           is not an easy one
i observe a neighbour bully about his kids                 
using jest rewards between shouting them to heel
and cuffing them violent
i observe a lady place her friend                                  
                                      with a simple remark
('i like your choker.. it's like something i wore as a child
it's nice to remember that')
i observe war retread on the screen                                      
i observe a couple secretly kiss and brush fingers.          

human spoil seen now ;         
        it draws pity, pain and longing
i am not devoid                        
                                  ­     despite much practice          
  some involvement on my part
                                             may be due

...
Dear Mr. P - [stop] -
...
I was your knife in the water, a credit card kept exclusively for killing - [stop] -
I was a gingersnap on your sugar train, a flower-filled glory box to swallow your whole wide world - [stop] -
I was night, night of the electric insects, praying mantis and ladybug — nervous animals, lotus eaters, enjoying a ceremonial after meal
- [stop] -
I was slivers of pseudoscience poisoned by man-made seasons — a new and beautiful and interesting disease - [stop] -
You and me, we are now the same — snapshots in sheared time, before the closedown of our impossibly ****** impulses - [stop] -
...
Best wishes, V
···

Nothing to see here,
turn the volume down.

Commercials are a gravel pit,
these channels, toy guns

--they shoot muddy water
in your eye.

I'd rather a quiet night
cleaning the ducts
of my conscience.

The night is hopelessly
concerned for the ozone.

My fluffless pillows are clouds
in a pay-per-view sky,

Too wound up in its
binge watching of *** in Egypt
to care about the sun's wrath.

Look! My hot next door neighbor
is exercising in the **** again,
with the curtains wide open.

I'll watch her instead...

It was just a momentary blip
when I saw you for who you are

A lapse in my better judgement
to have listened to you
and heard the words you said
instead of editing it all in my head

So we look like a movie

So we look like we’re in love

~
Elegies
entering the lists,
in absentia,
the prayer of blood
broken at its spine.

Ah, how minding days
trampoline and joust,
like those days beyond recall
thrown into the fire.

The persistence of memory
is a series of F-stops,
the fountain of youth
a spring of well-being
and then forever nothingness.

We've reached the prophetic day,
I feel the coming wrath
in the whites of their eyes:

I dream of wires
and sleep by godless windows,
the sound of untamed rivers
chanting passions misplaced
and of the absence of belief

—the true ***** of man.

Take one last look
at the structure of morality
before it closes down.

One last look...
~