Divisions of the night
Each calculated the same
Staccatoed bursts of sound
At regular intervals
Random quotes stick in my brain
“Where is your favorite place to eat?”
Limp beanbags lobbed at remotes
in futile attempts to change reality.
Fake drama as one
non-sister complains to
another that she will tell
secrets to strangers but not to her family.
But I am no stranger
I follow her life hour after hour
Her fake life in exchange
for mine not lived
except in flickering shadows.
Another weekend wasted watching
lives of the inane and ridiculous
Which is still somehow better than
watching mine

wandering into the sun room
with a small question
I find my boys in repose

the acorn, lies across two beanbags
as though he had just
finished a marathon and collapsed
for want of air all legs and arms
with a fringe of needs to be cut soon hair
affordung his face privacy
he glows with youth and promise

my oak, rests sprawled in the old mamasan
hairy legs akimbo, one deck shoe on, one half off
he has sat on one hand, wedging in between cushions
the other dangles off the chair's rim, long fingers hanging
his shirt has ridden up to show tanned trim stomach
with a surfer's bleached snail trail leading to a darker hairline
his mouth slightly open as he dreams his bulldozer dreams
his hair long and now slightly thinning  curls in the humidity
he has not shaved for days and
his stubble a dusting of silver and gold
his lips are a tad dry, but still so inviting

I turn and leave them in repose
my question forgotten

Hammocked on two beanbags
With a glass of cold beer
And a magazine
Splayed across my lap
The silence in the apartment
Making my ears ring
Too many local metal shows
And shooting guns without
Ears on
So now a phantom
Traces a musical triangle in my ear
Always

Just as well
Silence
True silence
Is supposed to drive people
Crazy
And I don't need
Anymore of that

My girlfriend and her roommates
Will be heading back from
Work soon on the subway cars that
Constantly hold the stale smell of
People

"This is nice"
I say outloud
To no one  
And by acknowledging
The moment so I have
Adulterated it

Existential crisis aside  
This is nice

We talk about a lot of stuff at 1 AM
About cashews, and trident gum,
Melatonin pills, cheap thrills,
The shallow hills of kids like us.

How I biked away from my house, or
how you drove in circles
to meet me at the library

Because the wrong direction, at the time
seemed right. I told you “yeah, it’s on the way”
but you knew something was off

We talked about how you slept
on the beanbags, how you blushed
and became upset when I told you
how very much you meant.

I made you smile
Looking like a fool
Wishing for me

But then again,
I never got the chance,
Out of cowardice, perhaps, when you walked
To your small red car.
So much depends on a small red car.

We hugged and you sheepishly walked away.
Something rested on the edge of my lips;
You seemed like you were so close, and yet so far.

Joker is confined at Arkham State Hospital--he's an amalgamation of: Nicholson, Ledger, Phoenix.
the essence of these portrayals will fluctuate as would a possession.
the following will be written with all three in mind (no specification)--the reader is free to infer which, there is no incorrect imagining in this case of psychosis.
greener to the pasture hair, cropped short & feathered on the right side--shoulder length scraggles, that stream oil from a receding hairline on the left.
**** pillow-talk padded walls, an experimental recording studio--millenia of disassociative voices.
institutional-white disciple wear, beneath a straitjacket that can be tricked open.
he takes to contemplatively stalking the room's perimeter like John Nash's doppelganger outlining university grounds for sanity.
suddenly sawing himself into boxed halves, the pros & cons of junked minds.
then stands at attention as if absorbing the insults of a commanding officer.
he's unmuzzled, but his iconic makeup was polished off as an immaculate castration.
licking his lips like a perverted lizard, hot for his cold bloodbank--a cleaning product salesman's ear-engulfing grin.
a: Try Again mouth swallowing beanbags.
an overdeveloped feature, circled red over & over like a happy accident--boo!
a cosmetic surgeon's: Project X, a scorned *****'s unevenly applied lipstick spread around by a passionately hateful kiss.
now just a presentable choirboy with a hardon for the whole mass.
a choppy quack rolling into a chainsmoker's weepy guffaw, self-heckling giggles of bozo persistence.
a hung jury of tears snorting & spitting out antecedent laughter--reeled in by a forced seriousness that believes its deadliness.
as comfortable with one-way humor as a malfunctioning parachute, that dead silence that breeds bat symbols.
contrary to the funny wastelands of his surveillance footage, a notoriously unprivate life turning cameras on themselves.
three of a kind, says he without saying--each having explosive dance offs, while cutting into unrelated dances.
the lighting in his room is as changing slides, that look for patterns of behavior,
with a misleadingly stark evidential buildup.
a Joker--that Joker needs a smoke, that Joker stares up at the cameras, motioning to guards.
his eyes are dead set askant, with a backtracking deviance slyer than a meat hook without a carcass.
a drowsy pick-me-up, melting with baby's candy, a cocky knower of inner names.
whites like wet dreams of glory-holes.
a feminine ruefulness that signals overkill before the ****, eyes that victimize rehabilitation.
brass that will be unaccountably drawn to them like Poe's: "The Tale-tale Heart."
a gaurd un-maximizes security enough to slide a cigarette into the Joker's mouth, then removes it.
the Joker looks up & disentangles a plot of smoke--then smiles sheepishly at the gaurd.