Woke up in a dream under asphalt trees
soaked in the sap of the sweltering city
wearing these old rat rags
               and sneering at the concrete
Greyscale mindset stitched into my sleeve

This town'll ******' **** ya
               and drop a coin on your grave
dig your way up to the daylight
and hang on to your *****

                    Waking up
                    Snapping out.
                   It's not so easy, is it?
                  Waking up and snapping out...

The barge is afloat on the sidewalk streams
Burns in the summer, ******* doused in Spring
the bums puke in corners
               children ***** in the alleys
Sinking hulks. "Abandon ship!" on the galleys

These waves'll ******* **** ya
and pull you down in the deep
this dream ain't worth waking for
        But we can't get to sleep.

It felt like my brain had been in a gyroscope;
my eyes were screaming and getting
****** by lasers, and my body was going
inside out.
I jumped out of bed, and into the bathroom
slamming one hand on the kitchen sink
and holding the door handle with the other,
then purging the food/poison. Four Times.
My head went from a concrete block to a balloon.
Thick chunks of hamburger meat
like a great serpent flowing from my
gut, outward.
I lied down on the floor for a second;
it was the first time I'd vomited since elementary.
Bukowski would have been proud;
I didn't miss the toilet. Of all the things I'm
bad at, and I still purge like a professional.
All the **** I can't do,
yet I didn't miss.

I would rather sit in the closet
behind an armor of blouses
scribbling on a page that will never
know what my eyes look like
when they cry.

I would rather fantasize about
slamming my head onto the desk
before me
while everyone watches


I would rather ***** my feelings
on an internet stranger
who did not ask to be my receptacle

Carpet to the wall
***** colors dancing shapes
Gosh my back is sore.