after the armistice, our cost of living got curb-stomped. penny for your burgeoning madness, deifying junkiedom. the sewers are a-hum with hitmen, but don’t take my word for it—just listen.
Every time you did it, you thought, this time
It will work, you’d step over the boundary that separated
You from the people you wanted to be with. No more
Would you be stranded with the same people you’d been
Fleeing since you made your first decision, a haircut
You (didn’t) know would confirm what everyone else
The international collective remains insufficiently organized
resulting in violence and threats of violence that interrupt
commerce, procreation (love) and the pursuit of happiness (Cameron Diaz)
at least for certain populations, sometimes.
In first light, your wig and Zofran
on the bed stand, saucer of yellow almonds,
cup of tea, on the floor,
I tilt your chin, open your airway,
perform rescue breaths.
Paint barely dry, containing the detritus of fire
Emerging exits slipping out of bounds
Resurrecting your inner idiot, flying at large
An argument never won with a belligerent toss.
in thin dime situations,
it is best to remain calm
a found flannel ensures warmth
you are a smaller version of yourself
Down by the railroad tracks
a mysterious street
hammers before breakfast
where water heats itself
skin aching to be clean
Those whose bodies have vanished
in the black hole of disappearing meat.
Those who must ignore their hungry child
because the answer is always, “No.”
Spooky kine stuff
dat Einstein nevah agree wit
is eerily going on out deah
or in heah
I remember you,
free of walls and doors,
locked gates and security guards,
wardens and cell mates,
a "room for visitors",
Let her house be a bushel of things
growing, fingers reaching, crying
their way from out of the soil
laughing makes way to sky
digging down seven years
to my triple bypass
the bloody remnants
of that trip under lights
In time I might forget myself
In course of vivid currents.
My bastard inclination
To wrestle with the ocean.
Summer with a scent of peppermint
Is a cliché
Shedded cherry tears cover the remains of asphalt
under the multitude of lonely feet
or drops of blood, or hair, or parachutes,
or acidheads experimenting with flight
(misled believers in their superpowers),
or jacket, hat, and backpack of a child
returning home an hour late from school.
where the pins weren't
sharper than the air
stopped by pin pricks
hidden in the remote control