It is getting to be a little bit
too much. Things are getting
a bit out of hand. I do not
want to make excuses. Life
is getting the best of me.

I take pleasure in seeing how cities disappear,
how streets, parks, names get deleted, how
my denial washes even the holiest gardens away.
I mock the mountains: Can you see?
What tiny mounds you all are, if I want you to be so.

Since the war began,
nothing tastes the same,
neither my mother’s soup,
nor my granny’s sponge cake,
​but the taste of snow didn’t change at all.

Decay Dan was about to put his arm around Arnie’s shoulder but retracted the motion.  “It’s the decay, boy.  Don’t worry.  It’s not you, it’s the garbage of disease.  She’s scared, that’s all.”

The cardboard sign read “You’ve got the Pot, I’ve got the Pan!” I smiled when I saw it—my dad would have thought it was funny. Taking out one of my earbuds, I stepped closer to the homeless guy who sat on the low wall separating the high school’s lawn from the dirty sidewalk.

but there's a guy I know
who scribbles words on paper
and believes, in his heart,
that it's the best thing ever written,
that there's a great author
eating bourbon chicken on rice

make a solar contribution
make curtains from a hemp parachute
 
one of those people with a lantern
dressing up like a llama

And you, my ear of wood
separate floor and sky
floor from sky
and hear my sin as lack
on the midline

"Captain Finn has his eye on you. Henceforward, your work will be supervised by Rank Two Officer Deft, the promising young woman who recommended your posting. You would do well to follow her example, just as she has followed her mother, a decorated officer from the Great Sucrose War."

The EMTs stopped dead in their tracks and stared at the patient on the inclined gurney, one open-mouthed, the other squinting. We darted to each side of him as the EMTs moved. His blue eyes appeared alert despite the blood in them and the purple ringing them. 

The riot police’s armored vehicles
              prevent
the                      apartheid  suicide of
                                        disobedient
                                transcendentalist
                                               hermits

These may be dark times, but look on the bright side—the effervescent bubbles are beginning to lift our convalescent outlooks and are uniting everyone—even Death Row and Puff Daddy, which has been sponsored by Schweppes’ parent company, Dr. Pepper.