we twist and twist and twist
like dishrags over an empty sink
where do all the drops of us go
where do they go
where do we go
eighteen
and i feel like i’m running dry

Every stranger on the street
has sunk deep into the night at least once,
or twice, and I'd wager
that at times their thoughts have unfurled
into black dishrags soaking up
the insignificant amounts
of vivacity-
pouring pride into the sewer,
praying desperately to recover.

Eventually, time pries a crack
into the soul, and peels back
the skin of morality until the lines
no longer meet and the mind
reels- searching for the baseline
of sanity- save me, someone
save me.

Your subjectless Objects of capital, the agency bereft GDP drones, O! America,
They are spilled on the pavement, an upturned ice cream cone of discontent
puddled and lackadaisical, they fester beside the hydrant.
Your news agencies and malls, the damp dishrags of industry,
snagged on the nail of defenselessness and exploitation, only infect the wound.
Each mess of a person, walks through the sugary malaise of your suffering
dragging it on to the next in communal forbearing; its contagion, its disease
is so many cysts on the mind of those syrupy vacuoles for capital; the private,
malignant caverns of dewy-eyed trust in humanity, insipidly drawing the rancor to a boil,
without understanding a thing.
You pride yourself on much, without eyes for the condition of your people,
O! America.
People, shackled in your jails, are so many ideas bubbling as to the cruelty of your nature
punctured by the ignorance outside.
Draped in your obnoxious flag, the cites are as malicious as the countryside, toward life, toward knowledge.
You prop-up the price of their crops, the know-not-whys, who plunder the earth to prolong population growth and consciousness-decline.
America, you eradicate discontent with cattle cars, filled with questioning life forms, gasing our minds and burning our bodies with your arrogance.
Like a popcorn bag steaming in the microwave; you have been left alone too long, and have developed a flame-- an inextinguishable flame of reason.
You have been disavowed too LITTLE.
You must not be allowed to expand any further, lest the impoverished bag of flesh which is mankind will burst.
But still you stagnate, until your violence curdles with drones and bombs patrolling our synapses.
Our brains digest your violence against us and **** it out with an abused dialect of greed and hate.
Then you ask us only that we eat from your refuse heap of burnt kernels from the “truth” of market economy.
You taste like cancer. You rot the mouth of competent men, and satiate the anxieties of those who would turn against you-- with a refreshing ice cream cone of absentmindedness
dropped on the ground and melting.
But the stains you made will always taint the sidewalk of man.

do I really care about you?

authentically

no, but I would still kiss away a perpetual need
of some kind of

more
I would kiss away the perpetual need of more of my kisses, even
until they became ripe in your circulation

without your tact

like the first time an apple becomes an apple
without knowing it’s an apple

ripe

raw, sweet

without tact

without my tact
would I really care about you?

I’ve been on the floor bathing in dishrags and dust particles
I feel filthy
troublesome and unwanted

I’ve lost faith in succeeding
all I’ve got is gritty tact, sticking to its guns

do I really care about myself?
no,

but still, I would kiss away someone else’s pain to have a purpose
and I would love them in a moment  

even if I wasn’t loved in return

onion saddens, lame
intricate dishrags rambling
cowgirls glimmering

Used to punch
metal freezers,
shred my bare knuckles
on a black bag
when I didn’t feel like
wrapping my hands with
***** dishrags.

But I put those fists down,
lost the pit fire,
let those flames expire
cause I was so tired
of how that rage burned.

Simmering passed
a soft-boiled brain,
used to workout
just to dull the pain,
now I workout at night
just to feel a little more alive.

Dreams won’t let me
go to sleep gently,
or rest peacefully
but it is the waking hours
that are more disturbing.

Always been a fighter
even when
I wasn’t even
scrapping with
other slack jawed idiots.

Sometimes it is just
my own mind
that I am battling,
as my demons come
ready to swallow me.

Silence and stillness awoken
And dishrags fall from sky's brink
Slapping mud splattering broken
New Jersey now kitchen sink

Flash from neighbor's window
Shot off mirror into my eyes
Big Mama begins without intro
Surrounds me gravy and fries

I'm rowing rivers in plastic cup
Other cars are bobbing downstream
What has Mother Nature just dished up?
Churning seafoam into whipped cream

Onion sadness drops
crocodile tears on dishrags:
emancipation!