High above dear Maple Street
There looms a cold iron curtain of fear
That dares to drop and let all the monsters
Unleash their dreaded promise of chaos
As in Europe despots gift a new World War
Trembling parlors hug the radio

Hallows Eve: the radio
Begins to sing throughout dear Maple Street
The Seventh Trumpet declares all out war
And that heavy iron curtain of fear
Eclipses the sun and invites chaos
In vacant hearts of men into monsters

Halloween Night: the monsters
Now dance to the tune of the radio
Raiding the stores, jumping bridges, chaos
Entombing the stretch of this blood strewn street
Parlors gorging on endless waves of fear
Riding hysteria, imminent war

O great catalyst of war
Twisting the minds of men into monsters
Diving your hands in that great pit of fear
Now throbbing with screams from the radio
No fences nor faces can save Maple Street
Now plunged in the throes of sweet sultry Chaos

And we call it Chaos
This boiling of minds all stewing with war
Once masked with humanity on this street
Now reveals good neighbors make great monsters
Skies of martians (n)or men, the radio
Hissing, twists the knobs and tunes in to fear

And when that curtain of fear
Draws, and shadeless light casts on the chaos
And the broadcast fades on the radio
And mere fiction rescinds the throne of war
What will we make of all of these monsters
Scattered about in a daze through the street

Where there are minds of fear and war,
Chaos reigns and calls to the sleeping monsters;
Tune in to Welles’s radio on Sterling’s street.

I don’t have stories to tell anymore.
Maybe because I talk with myself less and talk to you more.
I walk to the car, to work, back to the car, into the house,
always an invisible string, a compass, a radar, looking for you.
There used to be stories, a string tied to a fantasy, a compass pointing into a future
I do not know if I should dream of or want.

There’s this undying want
That is hard to ignore anymore.
When I think about the future
All I think is “more,”
And I don’t know if more means me and you
And two kids and that white and wood paneled ocean house.

Take, for example, my own childhood house.
That was a place that filled me with heavy want.
Though we had everything we needed, I suppose, most children like me and you
Don’t follow our parents’ footsteps anymore
And we don’t see keeping up with the Joneses as anything more
Than a long-dead, rotted-out American Dream kind of future.

Where is the future
In a two-car-garage white house?
I know it’s not about the house, it’s more
About the people in it and being comfortable and I want to want
That future and see value in it, and oh the laughs we’d have around the kitchen table. But anymore
I can’t lie, I want to run and run and run away from me and from you.

I’ll use the cliché: it’s not you,
It’s me and my obsession with the future.
I don’t think I am ever awake in the present anymore.
I’m always up ahead and there are two simulations I play with. That one with the house
And the one where I run and I run, alone, wherever I want
And honestly, honestly, I don’t know which one I want more.

But couldn’t they have guessed? The more
I fear losing everything which is you
The more I want
To play by my rules and **** the future.
So in another imagining, they find me in the bathroom of this house.
My heart isn’t beating anymore.

I imagine there’s something more in the future
Other than you or running or a white-wood house,
But I don’t have stories to tell anymore. I don’t want to look there anymore.

Beyond these walls wounded around me, I am free
The walls no longer encase my sickening body
I am able to smell the ever growing flowers,
Accompanied by the vervain bush, and freshly cut grass.
The sweetness lingers undermy nose,
But not long does it come back to the sterile hospital.
It is where I am safe, the hospital,
But I’ll never be if I stay, that is free.
Every hour the nurses come a check my mouth, throat, and nose
Making sure no more disease has entered my body
Maybe mother will let me touch again the grass,
She says I may be allergic to the flowers.
Last time I got very sick being around the flowers,
Something about the pollen, sent me right back to the hospital.
Somedays I sit on the harsh bed, but I rather lie in the grass,
O’ Doctors please just let me be free.
I know there’s something wrong with my body,
Something, I presume, with my nose.
There’s more, but mainly I can’t smell, at least with my nose.
I smell everything, even the flowers,
To smell I use my eyes, hands, ears, words; my body.
I always try furtively to escape the hospital,
But the guards, nurses, and doctors steal my free.
My free is the glowering sun on my body, and my skin on the grass.
I lie in the grass,
The pollen sinks in my nose,
While they countermand my free.
My gentle hands wisping across my mother’s favorite flowers.
As so, she comes out and rushing me back into the hospital,
In her arms, in my sound body.
My doctors examine my body,
Picking off my shirt, the specks of grass.
They let me leave, for good, the hospital.
I can now smell the wonders on the world, with my nose,
My favorite smell is the daisies, my mother’s favorite flowers.
They gave me back my free.
A fixed nose,
The smell of even grass, and sprouting flowers,
I am finally free.

It’s always after a film when you say,
“Did you like it?” I think for a little while.
I think of the film as a whole, in chopped parts, and time
spent watching it that’s become time no longer.
It’s swimming now in a stream of phantom haze; less of a memory,
and more of the carbon imprint of an experience over.

We argue a lot if we liked it. I think I did, but over
the course of plenty moments, my mind goes restless: What if to say
I liked it somehow violates its completeness? I don’t trust memory
can tell me everything. A moment stretches, it happens a while;
then it's finished. Once immense now vapor; the thing no longer
the exact thing. And to access that again, to recall the past, plays with time.

After the film, you and I have a nice time.
I’d ask for this thousands of times over.
Running through street lights, shadows are cast: mine’s always longer.
You catch up, you giggle, there’s nothing to say.
We stay kinetic for a while.
The spools, the underpinnings, the machinations move, and create a memory.

The film was about a town that one day stopped speaking. One memory
of it astounds me most: The more time
passed, the clearer it became. It took a while,
but we finally knew why. But the credits rolled and it was over.
The audience vacated the room and it belonged to us. We didn’t say
anything. A respite emerged, and it grew longer.

You look at the shadow again, longer
than yours. I wish it was easy for me to access my memory,
and to access yours, too. I wish I could say,
“Did you like it?” and see you go back through time,
back before present turned into past, before it became over,
back when the vapor was the immense, and the blip the while.

While
longer,
still over.
Memory and
time.
“I liked it,” I say.

It took a while, but we have the memory.
We can access it longer than the merits of time.
And when it’s over, I’ll forever say.

Mother warned me not to be too absorbed
In the mirror. I need to instead pay attention
To the world around me. “To form an identity,
One needs not to worry about perfection.”
She said. But, mother, you are apathetic
If I am anything but. I calm my impulses.

I buy and obsess over material possessions by impulse.
Catch me with a teen magazine, completely absorbed
As I block out the real world with an apathetic
Attitude. As I sit and read, I pay attention
To the celebrities who demonstrate perfection.
I will copy their traits to form my identity.

Lost in this dreary world, searching for identity,
I collect people’s personalities, stealing them on impulse.
Searching for happiness coincides with the pursuit of perfection.
I laugh at those who say I am self absorbed,
That say I am only looking for attention,
When it comes to criticism, I am apathetic.

I don’t care that I come off as apathetic.
It just happens to be part of my identity.
I don’t do it for attention.
Or maybe I do? I’m too impulsive.
I’m only this way because I’m self absorbed.
Obsessed with the idea of perfection.

I look at myself and all I see is perfection.
Others may see me with nothing but apathetic
Stares, but they are simply too absorbed
With their own problems of their identities.
Not my fault that they don’t feel the impulse
To love me. I don’t need their petty attention.

That was a lie, I live for attention.
Can’t everyone see I am the human embodiment of perfection?
Without their validation, I may act on my impulses.
And then when they ask why I did it, I will be too apathetic
To care. Dangerous and beautiful is my identity.
It isn’t so bad to be self absorbed.

I am absorbed in myself, desperate for attention
My identity relies solely on the thought of perfection
I am only apathetic because I care too much about myself. Here they come again, the impulses