I
With the world spread around her,
Lying flat on the table,
Like a joint ready to be rolled,
She counted and recalculated the latitude of every destination,
And saw her hands
(so white, so clean)
Stretch and reach for all twelve corners of the map,
Saw them reach out and touch all ends of the earth.
Then, when she held every last morsel,
She took a match and watched the world burn.
Fruitless.
II
He laughed.
He dotted his I's with tears.
He rolled his nice and tight,
Kept it snug and safe,
Like a secret in a bottle.
He hung his head.
He sang of a world
Soft and gentle-
Where his fingers spoke for him
And told stories of joy and sadness,
And traveled like dust scattering in the air
Where happiness is round and white.
He closed his eyes
And focused
on the pounding
and the wishing
and the pulsating
And never came back.
III
"Please, Dear, place your hands on the ground,
Don't worry, I always miss.
I'll trace you with this pin,
And you, too, can be pretty.
Just
Like
Me."
"Let's juggle
Let's play with fire
Let's walk where the sidewalk turns to dust
It will be great fun
And our souls will thank us"
Let's be a generation of *******.
IV
We are all sitting and waiting.
--waiting for something inexplicable waiting for a miracle waiting for the world to implode waiting for our names to be remembered waiting to be that one person--
Waiting for immortality.
But we're tired.
But we're impatient.
And cigarettes **** you only so slowly.
And we aren't as committed as he was.
Let's juggle
Let's play with fire.
Let's walk where the sidewalk turns to dust.
V
I was eaten by the dust
Falling in the stagnant air
Drifting
With
The
Wind
Scattered along the horizon like a dark and pitiful sunrise.
Ashes Ashes we all fall down.