American barcodes
All sit with a grin.

American barcodes
Can’t you see my skin?

American barcodes
I’m wearing my mask.

American barcodes
The police don’t ask.

if i show you
will you understand?

how i've outlined these arms
vein after vein
where sunlight runs
i see only
lines to trace

i got a barcode on my wrists

scan me for the price
of beauty

i am as expensive
as what people think of me.

do you know what it feels like
to attach your worth
to weighing scales
and waists that never
slim down?

is this why they call them
shoulder blades
to cut through
your skin
to be called
"pretty"

thigh gaps that map
the distance between your legs
to make you
matter so much
you can't stand on your own
feet.

when you walk the shoes
we wear
will you know?

the path to be
called beautiful
is full of
self-hate

and we pay for that bill.

Childhood stress is not living in a two-story home
when your best friend does,
even though your mothers are the same. All day long we talk
about weeds and leaving our husbands for each other.

Then, you go on to ask
why should anyone wear clothes if they just leave scarlet
dents on our skin, then you will answer,
someone’s branded us with barcodes like cows.

I once cut my ******, the right I think, while shaving my legs -
cried for weeks afterward wondering
if I would be able to breastfeed twenty years from now,
thought if I could not, I would be less of a woman.
This was before I met my girlfriend who has a ***** and is
just as much as a woman as I am,
this was before I learned that womanhood is a fine powder in
your soul, like *******, but not only white, brown too
and black and mine is pink, and womanhood is
every color of the rainbow and gender is fluid fluid fluid.

Childhood was ignorance of ignorance,
adolescence taught you everything you needed to know on
hating the unique,
but in adulthood, that can change, we can know better.

how often do I have to return to the comparison
of dogs, when my patience and
social formality is tested...
         and without these piquant passions
I'd... well I wouldn't even try to
become an oriental monk or a
Bangladeshi yogi (if that's what you're
asking)...
            guess it will never be in my heart
to turn my blood blue
and pretend to blush like Vishnu...
then again: maybe there are no monarchs
seated on the stools of cashiers,
at a supermarket?!
       perhaps older women should be
taught not to serve your men buying
alcohol, thinking that they are en route
to the men in their life...
     whatever the story,
          but for god's sake,
   just because I've taken my headphones
off and slipped them into the neck
of my t-shirt doesn't mean I'm: suddenly deaf...
ah faaaa'ck the woman's comments
ruined my afternoon moon which
subsequently ruined this classic pasta
bake I was making...
            because that sort of commentary
from a supermarket cashier isn't on...
PEOPLE DO NOT HAVE BORING JOBS...
THEY HAVE EASY JOBS
    WHICH MAKES THEM BORING...
and I'd love to see a bunch of these
supermarket staff spend one summer
covering the roof of the Scottish Widows
HQ near St. Paul's:
   WORK ON A CONSTRUCTION IS...
    ARBEIT!
            you don't have a chance to
scratch your backside let alone
think about flamingo coloured clouds
to, "pass the time"...
          can't exactly expect a job,
devoid of physical exertion,
and somehow wish for an intelectually
budding focus point to counter...
  people have "boring" jobs because
they don't have as much physical investment
in it... and not every job, made easy,
is guaranteed intellectual prosperity...
albeit there are some "easy" jibs
that nonetheless require a sense of
the other, id est: responsibility -
exemplum gratis: a crane operative...
      roofing is a menial task,
albeit with the meniality of the labour
eased by a physical investment...
all these, menial / "boring" jobs?
   exactly, where once it would be equated
to toiling in the field...
          no intelectual expansion,
added to the missing loss of physical strain...
hey presto, you have kings and queens,
literal ******* monarchs on supermarket
cashier stools!
      MANTRA:
    remember to have the cool of
an alsatian, rather than the bark of
  dachshund (repeat that x3)...
WHY?!
    loose tomatoes, on the vine...
even at the self-checkout the checkout
machines have, a ******* weighing
mashine for the cashier,  
    by her generous graces: to ******* use!
if this sort of cashier is so
******* expendable, why the hell have
supermarket cashiers in the first place?!
people have a knack,
at making them expendable...
    this poem would not have come to life
if the supermarket installed self-checkouts...
because?
******* dinosaur...
    I can understand going to the butcher stall
or the fishmonger stall and receiving
a barcode sticker...
    fresh fruit and veg. in a supermarket?
    does it ******* look like I'm
at Spitalfields?!
    sorry, Poles can't own shops, can't work
in shops, will always return to
shopping during the Marshal Law days
paranoid about the Soviet invasion...
fresh tomatoes, every self-checkout
machine has the option of weighing
loose veg...
    yet there she is, a twitching
a.i. in waiting recyclable with a question
(prior to the suggestion of my deafness...
no, the sound of cars doesn't fill
me with a techno romance, music thank you,
can't summon a ******* sparrow
even if I waned to):
WHY AREN'T THESE TOMATOES WEIGHED?
mantra: remember to have the patience
of an alsatian...
     oh, sorry, could you just put
them to the side?
   the barcode road ended...
     SELF-CHECKOUT MACHINES
HAVE A LIBRA FUNCTION!
YOU CAN DO MORE THAN JUST SCAN
BARCODES! YOU ARE SUPPOSED
TO WEIH LOOSE VEG!
   THE SUPERMARKET HAS HAD A FRESH
DELIVERY! SEASONAL PRODUCE WILL
NOT BE PACKED IN SOME *******
JUST OUTSIDE OF MADRID AND SHIPPED
WHEN LOCAL PRODUCE HAS JUST BEEN
BROUGHT IN, AND IS SOLD LOOSE,
BECAUSE IT HAS BEEN BAUGHT IN BULK,
THE SUPERMARKET HASN'T PAID FOR
BARCODE PACKAGING...
expendeble human being...
     and god, I sometimes wish I could
bark like a duchshund whenever
a mosquito-bite's moment of irritation
      came like that on every
occasion...
          little dogs bark...
I haven't the energy most of the time...
so I have the mantra:
save the barking and go straight
for the bite...
        hence the alsatian...
             currently there's a "debate"
about: disabled people protesting for
almost 20 days about receiving
     an increased living allowance...
and I'm like: you sure a ****** would
have insulted my hearing
     and did a job worse than I would
have done using a self check-out?
        all ******* smiles if they were
given this "menial" task...
   heads full of hot air, smiles all round,
and... on the odd occassion,
a deviation from scanning barcodes...
but I sometimes wish
   I could bark like a little dog
on these mosquito-bite type of scenarios,
as trivial as they are...
   in a supermarket...
    but I can't exactly lunge into
gnarling and biting...
            guess I have to pretend to
be the ever loving, patience of an angel
labrador... type of...
              dog, walking an invisible
blindman...
     hell, the ***** I bought on this
trivial escapade makes the past day
a glitch... and the night:
    open to an endless stream of interpretation...
she was right though,
   I am not the sort of story
behind alcohol that she probably
knows and has moved past
self-pity...
                    all out war of tongue...
well, sure...
    AVE! MENS FACTUS EST ****...
hell, Latin grammar is like
a semitic text,
          right to left...
            doesn't matter if the text
is ancient and was also, once upon
written left to right...
   the grammar might as well be
semitic...
               good that I didn't bark...
           ah...
but to have ended the day and escaped
into the night, with this deadweight
making me bloated?
     the fact that people
can't keep social manners in comment
sections of articles...
           and don't have the capacity
to bash about a pixel blank?
        it's as if these people are so docile
and oblivious to situations
where they could have barked
    but didn't...
    but also: didn't even have
a conflicting argument to not bite...
hence... ha ha...
   the comment sections, those of us
aged 30+... are familiar with.

con-spir-a-cy
Noun: a secret plan by a group
to do something unlawful and harmful.
Verb: the action of plotting or conspiring.

Conspiracy theorists,
are actually theorists of conspiracy,
while those in charge conspire.
While it’s easy to shrug off
and dismiss as “crazy,”
if you do the research
and dig down the rabbit hole,
you might start to question things
as well.

Take neither the red or blue pill,
as the pharmaceutical companies
will profit more from slow treatment,
or placebo effect, than they ever would from curing you once.
But open your eyes, and squint
to see, truly see, the world around you.

Why budget more into a military
than a healthcare or education system,
if you don’t intend to profit from it?
Industrial Military War Complex
is a real term and it’s definition
is dollar signs and blood.
The government is no longer politicians, but investors.

Sure some of us get a bad rap,
and we’re grouped in with the
eccentric or uneducated,
or just flat out theatrical.
But we’re the believers.
The ones who know that a society
is not just a structure, it’s a well
oiled, well designed machine
to keep the bottom on the bottom
and the top on the top.

I can’t say for sure that the Queen is a lizard,
and I’m pretty certain the world is
not flat,
but can any of us truly know?
Besides the Queen and those lucky few who travel to space...
how do you know for sure?
Even astronauts can be put into
a stasis, placed inside a simulation
and not know of it.
They would think they’re floating
in a satellite above our planet,
up until someone broke the
airlock, and they weren’t killed.

You see what I did there?
I took it too far.
And that’s what gets us the reputation of being crazy.
Would it be too crazy to believe,
those who take it a touch too far
are government plants to provide
an illusion of insanity
and discredit us completely?
You’ve heard of crisis actors,
but are their theorist actors?

Just know that the American government and CIA did once
(that we know of)
mull over the possibility of a False Flag Operation,
but on paperwork they rejected it.
The fact that the idea of attacking your own citizens to justify invasions of other countries
and create warfare was even on the table,
are the things that keep me on edge.
And should keep you on edge too.

I could go on forever about the
inconsistencies in testimonials,
footage, and Warren Commission Reports.
About common sense and intuition,
cold hard facts and brutal realities.
But, it’s not my job to pop balloons of blissful ignorance,
and those who don’t wish to see
the truth will forever stare at a counterfeit world telling themselves
it’s the real deal.

Anarchy would never work,
and communism could never be fair.
But democracy is made up of
well known names and popular
faces, of occasionally publicly approved personalities,
who are in turn overcome with
greed and then bought out and controlled by corporations and the big banks we entrust our salaries to.
They have our money, but not our
best interest at heart.
It’s like paying for a therapist
who will disregard everything you say, and then tell you to get back in line.

If someone aspires to have a position where they mediate and alter a group of people’s structure,
don’t you think they might have a power issue?
That if money makes the world go ‘round,
we’re all just numbers and barcodes?
And that maybe, it’s just safer for
those who make the world turn
to tell us what we want to hear
while showing us images of how
much worse it could be?

your heart pumps kerosene
to your matchstick veins,
& maybe i imagined things,
but i remember your eyes as ember rings
& i can't wipe my memory clean
of the dingy debris--
the delicacies of your legs & knees--
this fire's not extinguishing!!
those ashes you disguise as eyelids
won't keep me from the iris
i know i'll find inside them

& i'll skim past your skin grafts
to your smoke-smothered stomach
then plummet to your flame-engraved pancreas
((scarred from swallowed promises)).
these propane x-rays
can't scan the barcodes
on the charcoals
that the holes in your heart hold

summer          light
   drinkable
through
               yellow straws
parched grass
gasping
     for         cups
of   yummy
       liquid
boys with limp
                        fringes
awkward  
stubble
     like barcodes
girls   lap   it   up
   thirsty             dogs
   in mulberry
skirts
   cusp of            eighteen
             walking
with dragonfly wings
         sunset colours come
   ooze through
gauze
darkness on     lips
   presents a          kiss

her lips are red;
but overflowing,
barcodes on her wrists;
to scan self worth,
her hair is no longer long
nor smooth,
these purples and blues on her back;
has been a map of memories,
those crimson red nails
suits her the most,
that smile on her red lips,
oh so beautiful,
oh a beautiful wreck.

You could pay to know the truth
Or just read between the lines
People speak in coded words
And their meaning
Isn't always in black and white

We are taught that we inhibit a sphere
Earth is a triangle, that is a point I would like to clear
Triple 6s attached with zeros govern the prism's corners
Infiltrating the angles we base our views on, they program us
Masters to butlers, the barcodes on our foreheads put a price on us
Never the less, Try an angle

I bet they'll confess, we are equal
Amongst other 'triangle' stories, I'd like to tell my own
Of a man's soul with a triangle embedded,chiseled like statue stone
I see that soul within us all
Culminating to reach apex by parallel lines that can let you slip and fall
And with every fall the try angle's base stretches and widens

I remember looking at a perspective drawing titled 'Life is a journey'
Shaped like a triangle was the everyday boulevard traveled by many
At the start of life, objects were big, bright and colourful
Far into life, objects become small, dull but meaningful
Never the less, a triangle has 3 sides to it
Listen! My stanzas confess and guarantee to it.

We're all mad here.

Surviving dead
Blood thirsty creatures
Silvers and golds
Notes and cards.
Screeching screams in the night
Wolves silenced by the frowning moon
Yelling children
Drunken fathers
Thieves of innocence
Food that cannot be eaten
Metal to metal
Guns n' gangs
Hunger
Poverty
******
Rage.
Creeping
Stalking
Taking
killing
Creatures locked in prison cells
Creatures lurk, disguised in disguise
Turf wars
Wolf in wolf's fur that fails to fit
Fits
Slits
Titbits
Pistol whips and
Quick tips
Trenchtowns
Slums
Poor millionaire
Plural.
Misoverstandings;
Understandings, we'll call them.
Look down
Sit down
Shut down
Lay down
Sign out.
Credit checks and barcodes
Exploitation
Infusion
Confusion
Institutions
Misuse
Abus­e
Abstruse
Man's soul misplaced
And
His eyes
His hands
His heart
His love
His peace
His life
Alike.

The preschoolers
Are perfectly
Lined up
All of them
Staring at me
Fear widening their eyes.

I'm just the
Ticket girl
Passing on their
Papers
Before they step through
The gate.

And I've been there
Too
Scared and
Alone
Reduced to a name and
Barcode
Rushed along by
Those taller than me.

The only difference
Between you and me
Is that I'm too
Old to cry.

But I can
Guarantee that in
Fourteen years
You will be
Just like me and
Your tiny
Hands will have
Painted nails and a
Clipboard
Clicking your pen
Counting the
Blonde heads
At your feet.

You'll be
A different barcode
And you'll be the
Ticket girl instead of me.

And when you get home
And your stud earrings
Have been removed
Will you still be
Nothing more than a
Slip of paper
The water vapor that clings
To the windows?

The same
Ticket girl
Hesitating
At the gate?

You and I
We're both the same
Thinking today
Might change everything
We must be somewhere
Now
And we've
Stalled
Hit a cleanly painted
White wall
And hidden ourselves
From stepping out.

From barcodes we come
To barcodes we return
Whether or not
We're tall
Enough to be the
Ticket girl.

123456789 10
111213141516171819 20
212223242526272829 30
313233343536373839 40
414243444546474849 50
515253545566675859 60
616263646566676869 70  
717273747576777879 80
818283848586878889 90
919293949596979899 100           End.
Computer accuracy is suicide.

Crash to stop in time, make any sense of it?
There's no one to blame

Lie, rot, consume ashes of burned thought.

123456789 10

Talking about it makes it worse.

Serious study ... ... ...

Action noise figures.
Equal to a fasting

Serious consideration ... ... ...

Excessive knowledge
Excessive explanation
Excessive detail
Excessive Interpretation
Excessive study
Excessive Excesses
fatal.

Sharpen you bury yourself
ink pen
institution of barcodes
all is null
excessive null
in school
fatal.

i made several etchings in my sketching pad
some wretched reachings at the love we had
with pencils & stencils i outlined our path
but my designs were confined to crimes of the past
filled with charcoal barcodes all sparkling black
the receipts that we keep to compete & compare
arguments we begin just to mend & repair
i yell & yell trying to tell if you're there
but the transactions happened & it's been a year
i'm fading away but i wont disappear
i'm still here

I found you sleeping with price tags
             like tea bags
little men inside the barcodes

Dragging you to the forest
I plant you by your shoes
Digging your heel into the Earth
  to feel its heartbeat

I told you this story once before
       The little men are trying to build a cage around you
But I won't let you be
no Gulliver's Travels
I send them scurrying like ants
to Noah's Ark
They set sail for Wall Street

Only one sprout comes from
          your veins
And waterfalls have hope for you yet

~
"Why is there only one chair in this room?"

"This once was an island." She replied.

"You favor this place then, I take it?"

"How can I not," said she. "The dawn here is quiet."

"Not on this floor, you are much mistaken! The stairs are like an avalanche."

Looking down at herself, she quickly changed the subject. "There are barcodes on each breast now."

"I see. Were you nervous?"

"Only when focusing on the morning break," She confessed. "Otherwise I was much like you--killing what keeps us alive."

"Is that so bad?"

"I wonder. Sometimes I still feel the bruises." She stated. "But I am told this is normal."

"What else did they tell you?"

"To quit worrying about not being built to scale," she stated in displeasure.

"...and?"

"For me to prepare to fall again for the apocalyptic things written in the sky," She admitted with a wicked smile.

"What's so funny?"

"I recognized your handwriting long ago," She uttered into the centrifuge.
~

I’m sitting on a fume couch with ashtray
legs, counting the khaki strands
in the beaded curtain that dices
the hallway up into barcodes. The table
by the fridge is a cable spool lead-
painted to match the molding. Around
it is a mesh-back lawn chair, a SoCal
fold-out from a SoHo dumpster,
a spill-trayless booster seat,
and a bottle cap barstool. Everyone’s
wearing second-hand sport coats
with seam stitches as loose as telephone
wires tacked up with undersized lapel
pins.

**** Capitalism. **** Disco.
Bathe Avant-Garde. Eat Paint.
Bleed *******. Smoke Local.
Espresso, Or Genocide.
Dresden Was A Lie.
Shrink-Wrap It All.

Everyone is clustered around the cinder-
block stand record player, grooving
to the pops, looking like a rag-tag tide
change beneath the broken-oar ceiling
fan. Everyone’s wearing ironic scarves
tight like corporate ties to keep their throats
from popping ten-cent parasols, loose tobacco,
and *******. Amid their rubber flower talk,
I can pick out San Pelicano, someone critiquing
Keats’ “Politics,” and a rant regarding some
guy downtown’s stab at post-contemporary
Pointillism in some gallery I’ve never heard of.

They’re flipping between topics like a Moleskine notebook
while I skim through a copy of the Onion,
teasing the edges with a lighter I found on the floor.

Beep. 
Beep.
Beep.

When you ask me
How are you today?
Across the steady flowing river of barcodes
You want nothing from me
My robotic response:
“good”

I'm compelled to tell you that I am angry
I missed the bus this morning
I am grocery shopping
Which is not fun
And you are out of my favorite brand of deodorant

You do not look at me
You do not care
I do not care
I am swimming upstream
In and around milk cartons
And sticks of margarine

Beep. 
Beep.

October 12th, 1998: This is not an apology.

♐ ♐ ♐

Most days I feel like I’m underwater. It’s like a dream where I’m never dead, just not living. Because the living cannot feel this dead. I whither away into isolation singing sweet melodies of love and peace and hope and **** and loneliness. Most days I just smile.

I am a fake. I am a liar.

I am an incongruent youth; unable to be constrained by the freedom laces of society. Tie me down and watch me run, trickle, run like an avalanche down the face of conservatism. A cheap hotel ******: musk and sweat and suits and scandals. On-the-course-to AIDS infection loose ends who walks the streets in pristine filth. The incongruent youth, or what we in America call sick **** and shameful liars.

I am confused. Standing here on the edge between glamour and reality I scream into the nothingness, the watery void, a stark reality composed of my dark humor and evanescent solitaire: How can thunder roar so loud? Why am I part of this ambient isolation? How can you do this to me; to us? The beautiful few and we are beautiful, trust me, we are in the clouds searching for each other, beguiling and anonymous as we may be waltzing merrily through nighttime New York parks searching for rarities. For others. For God. And into the emptiness I whisper: Why is this park so big? And the trees so thick?

I am waiting for "someday." But this someday, this could be, this will be, would be, won't be for awhile. And this moment, this here, this now just passed. So let's look ahead and hope it gets better, because our lives are 1942 cattle cars riding away from the nows that just passed. Moments of incongruence on a grand scale. One night stands with our own hands and imaginations. Moments we thought we knew.

I am an inconvenience on the path to wholesale liberties. To children wrapped in barren barcodes that read “no real identity” when the red dash of judgement steamrolls their sides. God forbid the glamour mix with reality. Because when you are a somebody, you can never be a nobody. And nobody wants the incongruent youth to keep thinking. Because to think is to love. And nobody wants us to love.

This is an apology. I am sorry if I’m not what you meant for me to be. Terribly sorry if I love the wrong music or words or styles or *** is all I can think about. Sorry, but I can only love the beautiful few. I can only smile knowing I am a real somebody in all this hate.

Knowing I am a fake. I am a liar.

I am a human being. Hardly. I’m nothing but an incongruent youth.

“But maybe your real job is shopping…”

Sleepwalk through stock footage.  Life as
documentary.  Soundtrack of horror movie score:
ambient electronica, bubblegum nostalgia and
**** love songs.  Everything becomes
visual metaphor: blackbirds, barcodes and
birthday candles; Big Pharma pick & mix;
lipstick ritual; pigeon superstition; fraying flags
of fading empires; migratory patterns of
shopping trolleys; special offers; fantastic prizes.
Worker bees are vanishing - they all want to
be queens - and our hives overflow
with honey, but are empty and dead.  We got
infected with aspiration, with individualism.  
Generically unique career consumers: remember
when you were more than your credit rating,
more than your demographic, more than your
market-driven self-diagnosis?

I assess people from across the room
Like scanning barcodes to make sure
That I know what I'm getting myself into
Because I think I know what's good for me.
But sometimes
What I see is not what I get and I
Drown.
Nothing's what it seems
And I don't know what's happening
Like I'm dreaming
Because I won't see it coming
"I cut myself so I can feel something I know is not a lie."
It's how I know I haven't changed.

Sometimes I try to live my life,
Like "just passing by" and "only stopping in"
And underneath the surface
I just want to stay
So I fall through like the enemy
Peaking through skylights in black ski masks
It was never meant to be this way.
And how long has it been?
I can spit back the venom all I want
But it still stings
And I can't let them know
And I can't let it show
And they won't let me stay
So I guess I'll just go.

I check the sky before I leave my house
To check for any passing clouds
And it's always raining.
So I stand in a room
Four walls and one window
I tug back the blinds to let the light shine in
And I pull the window open
Air drifting through the gap
To see if I can breathe.
So empty.
There's still a chance that I'll make it outside today
But it just doesn't feel right.
When winter comes crashing through the front door,
I leave
Standing on the frozen creek
Hoping to fall through and hoping to make it out
All at the same time.
I can't win.

And one morning when the sky turned pink,
My eyes were red.
Red eyeliner to match my bloodshot eyes.
As the sun was rising, orange in the sky,
I was hit with cerulean waves
Drowning in shades and hues of blues
Like all the things I should have done.
The cavalry comes to invade the town
And there is no place I can hide
They raided houses all morning
And I'm angry with myself
Because I am awake.
"If we don't take medication,
we won't sleep for decades."

I didn't see you leaning in the doorway
Propped up on mahogany
Telling me hello.
In fact, the house was
Empty.
And I've been waiting for this day for years
So I turned back the way I came
Writing stories in italics to get my point across
Listening to the crickets from the night before.
I was swept away.
And I forgot where you lived
Until I stumbled upon your home,
Where you were leaning in the doorway
Propped up on mahogany
Telling me sorry
And all I did was
Walk away.

And now I have a bad habit of inhaling
Nothing.
Living solely on
Nothing.
Dreaming nights away with
Nothing
In my head but the Emptiness
And the weight of
Nothing
Sitting in my chest for days and days
Like blackbirds on telephone wires
Carrying
Nothing
But bad new
Words and phrases that mean
Nothing
To anybody anymore
And it's absolutely horrible when you think about
What it all used to mean
And how the meaning was stripped away
Piece by tiny piece
Until it hurt
Until it felt like a knife in my heart
The things that became Significant
Became harmful when they left
Became toxic when I couldn't see them anymore
And became horrible when everything was over.
The worst part was realizing that
Everything
Means
Nothing
Now.
Like towers that have fallen to dust
Right before my very eyes.

Taste the sound of the birds in the morning
Right in the sun,
A path made from beams,
A morning that should be mine
But I spent it inside
Because I couldn't bare to get out of bed that day.
"I'm not suicidal, I just can't get out of bed."
And would I trade my soul for Enthusiasm?
Would you trade your soul to know what I know?
So we walk along like this means anything
Fitting silence better and better each day.
This is wrong.
If living life is just a dream,
When do we wake up?
Questions that claw at my psyche before I can even down my Morning Cup
This *****.
My two cents on life, as a friend once said.
Is this temporary?
They say it doesn't hurt
And to not ask for help
"I can't be honest with even myself.
Did you ever wish you were somebody else?"
They label us with accomplishments
And rank us so high
That living up to the Standards isn't at the top of my list.
So I leave.

Listening for bad dreams
Like trains on the tracks.
The "ding ding"
The hum
Of the arms coming down to keep us
From hurting ourselves
While we attempt to cross
But I've always been bad at
Listening
And you've always been bad at staying still.
So we walk on the tracks,
The metal beneath our feet
Hot enough to melt our soles
But we can't care
Because we're Moving
And we don't care about the direction
Because why would we?
So we walk and we walk
Listening to the whistles in the distance
Until they're not whistles
And they're not in the distance
It's more like a howl
That greets us when we look up
Growing closer and closer
Until--

--I'm living in a house where four in the morning haunts us,
Staring down the ink on my fingers like they mean something
But it means nothing
And I've got to get out of this town.
So we fantasize of leaving this place.
Just get in your car and go
Because why not?
But we aren't even close
And I don't want to be trapped
And you don't want to stay here.
"Are we wasting time or is it wasting us?"
Two clocks ticking out of sync
That's what Emptiness feels like
So we fill it with silly things.
Chipped nail polish.
T-shirts
Leggings with boots
Albums that nobody has heard of
Places to be
Places we've been
Places to avoid
Books with sad endings
With dried flowers between the pages.
I disconnect
Like this is the end
Because it could be the end
But we can never agree.

I look up and see
That the paint on the wall is chipped in places
Like it is giving up
So I give up.
I wake up and leave my house
And everything about me says
"I give up on life."
And the thing is that
Nobody else cares one bit
And I am convinced
That they've all
Secretly
Given up on life as well.
We're all just kids in a line at Sunday school.
Looking proper until we think they aren't looking
Safety pins can hold our dresses in place,
But they can't hold our hearts together
And it's horrible
That we're all on the verge of
Breaking
And we're all on the verge of
Dying anyway.

Sitting on the concrete with a friend
A bottle of water in hand
And we talk
Like it will mean something in ten years.
Will it mean anything in ten years?
Will it mean anything tomorrow?
Because I'll watch everyone change
But I'll still feel the same
Empty.
So full of
Nothing.
Keeping track of
Nothing
In particular
Whilst crashing through the colors,
Lining my eyes,
Running from the feelings
And wishing,
Hoping,
Dying to wake up from this dream
Like it will take  me somewhere
But I know very well that I am not going
Anywhere
But
Nowhere
Fast
With stupid thoughts in my head
Of the end.
It's just "people leave"
And "Blood is thick"
But it's watered down sometimes
And I can't take this anymore.
I want to wake up.
I want to wake up.
I want to wake up.

In this land, in this world,
In this time, in this place
Behind these glasses
Beyond these fingers
Lurks forever now
The subconscious beast.
In this fortress, in this tent,
In this steel scaler of skies
There is no safety.
There is only sadness and
Sadism and ***.
In this realm, in this womb,
there is only death,
But no so strong a brew
As in that old place of blue.
There is plenty of time to
Linger between the notes
And the ceiling tiles
Where they store bodies.
In this book, in this song,
choral choirs sing past pages
and pages of long legs and
headline barcodes and
hairline calendars.
There is no peace here,
No last dedication to mark
The passing of Father Time
or Mother Season.
There is no monument to
White and black;
All sins are marked in
Black and blue,
Like Earth, the brighter side
of a black eye or a
Black hole.
In this landscape, in this plays cape
There is no escape.

I came to Barnes Noble
to feel like a writer,
believing that my proximity to books
would anoint me
kinda in the way
hugging a good-smelling friend
makes you a part of them
if only for a while.
I'll take that...
smelling like a great wordsmith
If just for the time
I rub against them.

                                 So I sit in the museum of
                                 colorful covers
                                 and barcodes
                                 channeling Billy Collins
                                 or Susan Wheeler
                                 (maybe Dr. Suess)
                                 glowing with empowerment,
                                 while my ostentatious
                                 and somewhat snooty tablet
                                 stands arrogantly atop
                                 this cafe table
                                 in parallel unity
                                 with the Caramel Macchiato,
                                 because poets know
                                 Starbucks is Popeye's spinach
                                 for authors.

                                                                                   Then clumsy fingers
                                                                                   pound out
                                                                                   keyboard percussion
                                                                                   swelling into
                                                                                   a privilege of honor
                                                                                   that God would
                                                                                   love us enough
                                                                                   to give us words,

                                                                                   and people,

                                                                                   who will sustain us
                                                                                   in their admiration,
                                                                                   right or wrong.
Where the meager difference between
walking among giants or peasants
will only be known
after we are long gone.
                                              We write
                                                     not so that we are known
                                                            in this moment,
                                                                   but that we will be
                                                                          criticized by the future.

I pray I am hated more than you all
a thousand years from now.

You scan my eyes as if barcodes tell lies
and you measure the blood in my veins,
you put glass in my shoes, cut me you lose,
slam the fuse in this plug and let go.

Life in a bag
name on a tag.

Lives that we choose, you
cut me and code me
put on overload me and scan my eyes for
the truth tells more lies.

Over the rush of the ridges we push with the boats in the background on fire and on the bridge of known sighs where everyone tries to be cool,
the fool hits the trip
wires melt and we skip across the
cobblestones leading to Rome.

Back there in Becton there are more lives
that are wrecked on the
wheel of misfortune.

I gamble it all on red.

The market's crashed.
I've gone bankrupt,
no matter what I have to scan.

I decided my worth a long time ago.
Let the barcodes reflect that.