Blanket city run along soaked in rain. Idiot Boy wastes his time visiting a passing crush at the other end of town. Slips between two houses and a metal sheet, communal refrigerator in the middle of the road filed with half-empty soy bottles.

Dead bell stop, mocking red blink of the operator. Father arrives, a mess of wiry muscles and hair.

“Hey. Is Coffin Cat here?”

“Who?” Father squints at Idiot Boy’s cap. Idiot Boy avoids eye contact.

“Um.”

Recessed in the blackness behind Father, a Figure says, “You looking for Coffin Cat?”

Idiot Boy nods.

The Recessed Figure turns. “I’ll go get her.”

Father returns to his parched body on the couch, content.

Indistinguishable forms move back and forth in the kitchen to the right. They stop their pacing and glance at Idiot Boy as he passes. Idiot Boy avoids eye contact and slips into the left-bound arterial vessel.

“So this is the heart chamber I’ve been living in,” Coffin Cat says as Idiot Boy enters her room. There is music gear. “It’s pretty comfy.”

“Oh, sick mic,” Idiot Boy says, pointing at the mic behind Coffin Cat’s head.

“I feel like a ghost,” Coffin Cat replies, falling on her bed.

Idiot Boy settles next to her. Animal distance. Intensely aware of his rain-soaked right shoe. “Same.”

Nothing comes out right, intersubjectivity a false God to mediate the impossible kernel of being, nobody can find nor express. Idiot Boy searches for connection. He glances around the heart chamber, at the music gear, but nothing grips. Four pears sit on a table by the window, their skins garish green in the harsh grey light.

Coffin Cat moves from the bed to the floor. She opens a virtual aquarium on her computer; fish eat pellets dropped from the sky to **** out coins to buy more fish to **** out coins to buy more fish. Capitalist investment and accumulation. Every few minutes a rocket-spewing robot teleports into the aquarium to attack the fish. Ruthless competition in the global marketplace.

“No! Why would you swim there, you ******* fish?” Coffin Cat yells as one if her fish is eaten by the nomadic war machine. “So dumb. ****. Why did it eat my fish?”

A knock at the door. The Recessed Figure from earlier enters the room. “Hey, mind if I join?” Their arms dangle like fine threads of hair.

“I like your music gear,” Idiot Boy says, pointing at nothing in particular.

“Idiot Boy also makes music,” Coffin Cat adds from the floor.

The Recessed Figure does not respond. They are enthralled by their phone, streak of dead pixels along a digital chessboard, minute reflection of their own gaunt face in the glass. After an extended period, they decide to move none of their pieces. A gaping coffee grinder rises out of the rubble at their feet. They begin filling it with tobacco from broken cigarettes.

“I’m surprised you’re still playing this,” Idiot Boy says to Coffin Cat. “I swear this is one of those games designed to ruin your life. Get addicted, stop going to work, become a hikik weaboo.”

“Already there, man,” Coffin Cat laughs. “Nah, this is my new job. I’m going to be a professional gamer.”

“Stream only PopCap games.”

Another knock at the door. Tired squander in an endless pacing of flesh. Strawman enters and nods at the Recessed Figure. “Hey bro.”

“Good to see you, man.” The Recessed Figure plugs the coffee grinder into the wall. “You got any ciggys?”

Idiot Boy points under the table and says “Ahh” with his mouth.

The Recessed Figure empties it into the coffee grinder. The device whirs into motion, creating a centrifugal blur, a mechanical and headless hypnotic repeat.

Idiot Boy and Coffin Cat look for horror movies to watch. The Recessed Figure empties the contents of the coffee grinder onto a metal tray. Strawman repacks it into a ****. White smoke fills the empty column, moves in slow motion like an oceanic rip a mile off coast, surface seething with quiet, impenetrable violence.

Idiot Boy refuses the first round. It’s never done him any good. Face turned to smoke and the wretched weight of a tongue that refuses to speak. Headless carry-on as time ticks through the clock face.

The door bursts open. Everybody turns as Manic Refusal or the Loud Person saunters in.

“I can’t believe it. I can’t ******* believe it. They’re selling me off!” the Loud Person says in exasperation. “First time back in New Zealand in five years and they do this to me!”

“What? What’s happened?” Strawman asks.

“Some rich ****** in Australia has bought me as his wife. I knew it, I knew if I came back, my parents wouldn’t let me leave again. Whole ******* thing arranged!” the Loud Person laughs bitterly, before hitting the ****.

“Oomph, that’s rough,” Coffin Cat quips from the side.

“No, you don’t even understand. This is the first time back, the first time back in five years, and I’m being sold to off some rich ****** who owns all the banks in Australia.”

“But like, who is this guy?” Strawman asks, pointing.

“And he’s been reading all my profiles. He has access to all my information. I don’t even have control over my Facebook profile. Grand Larson’s logged in as me, posting for me,” the Loud Person continues. “I met him once in Australia, clubbing, and now he’s tracked and bought me.”

“That’s creepy as ****,” Idiot Boy says.

“So he’s not a complete stranger?” Strawman asks.

“I can’t believe it. I can’t ******* believe it. First time back in five years and I’m being sold off!”

Idiot Boy decides one hit from the **** wouldn’t be so bad. He packs the cone with chop, lights and inhales. Smoke rushes through the glass channel, a swirl of white ether, more than he’d expected. He quickly passes the **** to Coffin Cat, before collapsing onto the bed, eyes closed. A suffocating sensation fills his body. He sinks into the chasm of himself, further and further into an impossible, infinite depth.

“Still working at . . . ?”

“Yeah, yeah. Management. Hospital. You?”

“Like, property. Motions.”

“Subcontracting? Intonements?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Mmm.”

Idiot Boy doesn’t know what’s going on. He feels sick and tries to get Coffin Cat’s attention, but cannot move his body.

“Come on. Sell me drugs, Strawman.”

“Nah. I don’t deal drugs. I don’t deal drugs.”

A strange silence stretches like an artificial dusk, a liminal duration, the hollow click of a tape set back into place in reverse. The Recessed Figure coughs and the Loud Person whirs back into motion.

“I can’t believe it. I can’t ******* believe it. They’re selling me off! First time back in New Zealand in five years and they do this to me!”

The Recessed Figure makes a noncommittal noise.

“I knew it, I knew if I came back, my parents wouldn’t let me leave again. Whole ******* thing arranged!”

Coffin Cat laughs quietly.

“No, you don’t even understand. This is the first time back, the first time back in five years, and I’m being sold off to some rich ****** who owns all the banks in Australia.”

“How about this fella? He doing okay?” Strawman asks, pointing. Everyone turns to Idiot Boy and laughs affectionately.

“Still working at . . . ?”

“Yeah, yeah. Management. Hospital. You?”

“Like, property. Motions.”

“Subcontracting? Intonements?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Mmm.”

“Sell me drugs, Strawman.”

“Nah. I don’t deal drugs. I don’t deal drugs.”

Idiot Boy slowly opens his eyes and stares out the window. The same grey light as before. He moves his arm further towards Coffin Cat, but is still too weak to get her attention. The same strange silence stretches. The Recessed Figure coughs and the Loud Person whirs back into motion.

“I can’t believe it. I can’t ******* believe it. . . .”

As the conversation repeats over and again, Idiot Boy begins to think he has become psychotic, or perhaps entered into a psychotic space. He thinks of computer algorithms, input-output, loops without variables, endless regurgitations of the same result. Human machines trapped in their own stupid loop. Drug-****** neuronal networks incapable of making new connections, forever traversing old ones. Short-term memory loss, every repeat a new conversation of what has already been. The same grey light painted upon four pears by the window.

He’s not sure if Coffin Cat’s laugh is getting weaker with each repeat.

Signal-response. The exterior world oversaturated with variables: roadways, rivers, forests, wildlife — an ever changing scene to respond to — the illusion of depth. Automatic response mechanisms reorient to new stimuli. The soul rises like surfactant, objectified fractal diffusion. A becoming without end.

But within the border of this interior world, the light stays grey. No input, no change; the same dead repeat, over and over, until sundown triggers a hunger response. Lined all along the street, a black box ceremony of repeating machines, trapped in their idiot cults, walls of clay and blood.

Idiot Boy finally gets Coffin Cat’s attention. She helps him through the house’s arteries to reach rain and wet stone, overcast skies. As he shakes in shock, Coffin Cat mumbles, “It’s cold.”

Idiot Boy sits silent on the ride home. Travels through himself. Tunnel through the body or Mariana Trench. Loses his footing before a traumatic void. Leaves the car and pukes.

These "poems" I write are only meant for me
I keep them away from prying eyes,
Where no one can see.

Because why should one receive "likes"
For the metaphors constructed by their minds
In an losing battle to get a grip on reality?

These collections of words
These regurgitations of the imagination
Hardly even belong to me.

If I am not my mind,
Then who am I?
Or is that question irrelevant?

Words in themselves do not belong to anyone
But the order in which one happens to put them together
Is somehow different?

My attempts to understand anything are futile.
So for now, I will say
That these "poems" I write are only meant for me
That I will I keep them away from prying eyes,
For no one to see.

I refuse to be judged,
Valued,
By something as absurd as these peculiar markings,
Lost in this peculiar system.

I refuse to care about whether people like what I have to say. Yet for some reason, I do it anyway.

Hello Old Friend,

I just wanted you to hear me.
I think you heard every word, but I see you now fear me.
I used to get nostalgic remembering our talks under starlight
When we idly spoke of dreams, and other things, and the world felt peaceful at night.

But today I spoke of blood and smoke, and of human violence,
and watched the widening whites of your eyes within this smothering silence.
I apologize for pretending we could carry on as before.
You say you don't condemn me; they shouldn't send me off to war.

I wanted a friend's reconnection, not hollow pity.
I now recognize you can't sympathize with the dying of a moral identity.
In grief, not guilt, I sought my friend.  This was not a confession.
No vain imagining of a simple moral or life lesson.
Don't wanna' hear soulless, canned regurgitations
Of your textbooks' and professors' second-hand explanations!

You avoid my eyes, staring intensely at the floor.
We both can list my sins, but why is it only I can list yours?
Solipsism and narcissism.
You live a predatory lifestyle, ***** you're bored and wanting more.

That's it, then.  Goodbye, Old Friend.
I feel worse having spoken, and I won't speak to you of this again.

I have no appetite
for pronouncements, platitudes
declarations, meditations and revelations
no patience for wisdom
and cogitations and much worse
regurgitations
no stomach for moanings and
groanings
musings, and working out meanings
much less about how your groin is today
I'd just like to
(like Renoir,  if I may,
just focus and work)
not to be anything,  no attempt
to be
just what is natural and easy
play and laugh
and when it's time
just *yawn and sleep

A Full dose of chemotherapy symptoms:
Hair loss, loss of appetite, and pale completion

Antibiotics, Steroids,
And intravenous fluids
I may get sick in addition to this

Cancer.

The doctor I ask
What interests you in this specialty?
“The research of a cell that believes
In the fictional concept of immortality”

Yet my mortality is in question here:

And yet here, I sleep, rest and lay down
Almost stationary to this ever moving world
That supposedly when I stop
I can then move again to rise or fall
An almost witty comparative analysis
If I even dared to displace myself
From this bed

So I continue this rigor of treatment
Despite the horrid regurgitations that follow
And I grow continually weaker when supposedly

A cell divided is a sign of being alive

Where is this immortality this doctor speaks of?

Because I am afraid
For I do not understand

Life breathing life everlasting,

A soporific effect

Matters we do not understand
Are eternally received by preserving
Ourselves in words

i want to cut the men out from underneath my skin
my body bucks and shakes
another place
pulls at the cords embedded in me

i am not of here
your language is not my language
and the way you move your hands is strange to me
your people peer at me
and their eyes show me to be transparent

my form careens and wavers in alternation
i cannot record or observe myself
the air here shrouds me in plagues and sensitivities
my body is a battleground

i dreamed that i vomited out of my nose
and the space behind my right eyebrow collapsed
if i am only a shell for regurgitations of my surroundings
where does my image exist in full detail?
where did i hear this?
who do i hear now?

Watch what the pedant swine does- whose gargling
fills the Scabbards. Those near men who nestle in
with peers and well heeled cogs, Laced and misshapen
by all the verdant narcotics of the Time. For all to see
they'll Stand and declaim clotted regurgitations of
promises already Framed.

Their attire in constant lave, and limbs Strung up by
the unnatural- Their throats lined thickly to the teeth,
of figments and cruor, and the fiction they spiel forever
a plush Decor.

For, you see, all but few buy what they Sell- counterfeit
talk stocked pretentiously upon shelves. And all speedily
Corked fit in viewing eyes, plugged into those who've not
the time to Reason why? Bought in bulk- a Politician plying
his delicately chosen words.

Diaphragm expanded
like the cigarette burns on the empty wood floor
from when I left the mattress there and didnt care anymore,
started laying down beside the beaten, weathered boards;
these decades in the grains of timber grew towards-
I lie inert, my bones the weeping willow's withered roots now stretched forward
to sunlight creeping in the windows through daybreak's drunken disorder.
Dehydrated, tormented, and long tortured;
regurgitations reemerged, restless, pushed shoreward-
dysphoric dreams; no rest beneath intoxicated border.

Those waving the banner of Democracy
Are those most duped
By the true shot callers
Whining about their trivial matters
Their minor inconveniences
Swallowing the lastest distractions
Shoved down their throats
By the powers that be
Regurgitations of that same old shtick
They were told to say
Like. . "Fighting for our freedom"
Or. . " If you don't vote you can't complain"
A ballot pull for an elected leader
Is as effective as thoughts and prayers
for some senseless tragedy
They wouldn't otherwise
lift a finger
to do anything about.
Both are just
Self-serving gratitudes
To stroke your delusions
One big circus circle ****
I have no interest in participating
I don't pick the clowns
I don't buy their stories
But I can still watch them dance
As the empire crumbles.

i should start off by saying that this is for you, and only you.
i write lots a pretty words and say lots of pretty things- most are regurgitations of
previous poems, thoughtless thoughts of those around me, and romanticized philosophy.

that’s not what i’m going for here.

i. i ******* love that you’re a reader. the way your eyes glow gold despite the deceptively dark brown makes me wet- when you talk about words that is. the letters leave your tongue and i taste them on mine, spicy-sweet.

i’ve always liked the adrenaline of the risky burning sensation, and still, i can’t seem to shake my sweet tooth.

so this seems like the perfect arrangement.

ii. you split my skull
and read the coffee-stained pages
better than i ever could.

iii. i don’t know how it should make me feel.
i worry about things like that though,
you know this (and i hate that you do).

i feel the pages falling from my weathered binding, from too many reads.
too many ***** fingers skimming metaphors about porcelain for skin and cracks for scars,
similes about a heart like my favorite charred marshmallows,
and onomatopoeia to resonate high frequency cries for meaning/help/love.

you hear me, though.

you don’t skim or race to ******.
you caress every soft curve, letting your fingertips trace the letters. you rewrite them into existence, as if to say, “They are here!”

and in the margins you give them new tenderness-
new
forgiveness.

iv.
you tell me to stop saying sorry
but, there’s this need for redemption
i can’t shake.

you see, i’ve never walked straight enough
or smiled bright enough
or been good enough-
to keep anything in my life.
and i know that that’s what life is about.

but something in my soul screams
to be that hiding place, for someone.
where they can write all their secrets and cliche notions, store the memories they can’t bear to lose or look at, and keep them safe.

when i’d sleep, i’d visit the museum of that hiding place.
and spend hours
looking at the polished artifacts-
and the dusty ones too.
i’d study them

so that when i’d wake up,
i could take that someone on a tour.

this time, not alone.
think of the things we’d learn.

v.

we’d revisit their history, i’d explain the relevance of each

for you,
we’d see

the skeletons of loves and lives lost, the wax figures not accurate enough to bring them back.

the coping mechanism prototypes recalled for their danger to society and the casket you tried to bury yourself in when they hurt too much.

the ancient scrolls of your past lives, written in a language i’d spend my life learning if i could speak it fluently with you.

the broken ceramic plates from the steak & shake we worked at- i was horribly clumsy, accidentally throwing things at you when you looked the other way. i never wanted to hurt you, and somehow, we always manage to laugh.

vi.
speaking of which
the way you laugh

like you don’t deserve to, but **** it you’re gonna do it anyway.

first of all, you do deserve to.

second, it’s the brightest light i’ve seen in my life. we’ve both spent too many days alone at sea, thunderclouds purpling the heavens and drowning our breath. but, somehow, you make this lighthouse laugh- and your smile splits through the storm.
i’d follow it home

and third, i’m sorry
i’m not close enough to tickle it out of you.
quite literally- i’d spend days and nights doing so, given the chance.
less literally-
i’m sorry
i’m too far and too late
to make up for the tickle days
i wasted.

vii.

i don’t know what this means
to you/for us

i don’t know lots of things. i don’t know why it drives me crazy. and
i don’t know why you do either.

viii.

i just know
i wanted to tell you.

(then and now)

At cold comfort lodge
we are careful about waste
never giving what is important away
so we carefully gather scrapes and titbits
cleverly package and dress them presentably
and when necessary feed them to the ravenous dogs
watching them gobble these up is quite an eye-opener
like knowledge is power
scrapes and titbits can be nouveau cuisine to hungry dogs
they have merrily dined on these for years
hey its keeps them fed and occupied
they are dogs for heaven sake
what do they know
they scrape barrels
and eat their regurgitations
its their nature

Oracle from Dumbarton
naysayers from the isle of Skye
where aimless clouds drift aimlessly
vapid fluffier in dense white foggy haze
forecasters eating regurgitations from the Isle of dogs
the blind leading the blind at the Union of Optical Illusions
for if wishes were horses all lepers will ride black Arabian stallions
haha  haha haha

Its all words put into mouths
its all deeds orchestrated with malice
how can I take what isn't a true reflection personal
or wounding in any way as its not perspectival or real
so go sell your quotes and regurgitations to the slow boat to China
and collect your payments in peanuts