October

Jack's October
nearly gone, Wolfe's
revelation, turning leaves,
World Series, dreams--
the Shenandoah brawling
in corner of Virginia's mind,
little boy silent, lonesome(?)
on hilltop gaping into the void,
everyone goes home in
October--or walks away
into golden sunset,
the last sunset before winter--
gray and cold and gone--
gone--like the glint of the autumnal
eye, like it blazes its wink
all over that blue mountain backbone
that we kicked last year all the
way up from
its beginning to its end--
to the high watermark and finally--
I can't even say it--brown and orange
October--what it means--

I woke up just to tell you

Walking through those
photos last night, each image
a different room
alternating consciousness,
altering consciousness,
both indoor and out,
then tagging the faces,
faceless features, images, actions,
reactions I've seen,
blue skies and 10 foot ceilings,
unknown bathrooms, oceans, rain,
unrecognizable gathering humanity,
laughing talking around
bonfires and street corners,
I breached the two dimensional/third
dimensional internet/photo gap, the social media
society string-suffocation theory
warping through the turnstile
machinery at slow motion speeds
I noticed all the walls set to knock down
all the names and faces linked into
the superconductor running the engine
I walked through those photos last night
tagged the locations faded
fated to my sleeping memory.

Grips

You seem to be falling out,
like fading away, playing
fool/goof/phantom/drunken joke
to grown up little boys and girls
across sad broken south Philly homes
that chug and churn like the machines
of the past regurgitating old
memories onto old faces and wrinkles
of the mourning night too
close to sunrise to remember--
too locked in twisted horns
with dead things, meaningless things
that need to be let go-- a drowning
universal truth slugging its way
at your temple-- a a a--
just to let you down and you brood about
these things that can't change
next to open window and open veins,
when you're supposed to be the one
that lives and blazes and burns--

Incoherently I'm incoherent
137 miles in hell and away
like fading rivers pulled under heavy roads
of gray dawns--I'm connecting these thoughts
drying out--

You seem to be losing your grip
on where your reality resides--

Saturday Night

I walked horizontally on the street's
walls with V by my side, it was
a treadmill rotary phone
Rolodex turning around us,
the same homes same cracked
pavement over again same hoarse voices,
until the park and something new
because the ground
was sinking further beneath my
stumbling feet, keeping up with the
speed--

It's a return to the biblical age
and the party has spilled out to the street

Which street?
Don't ask me, I couldn't find the river

and
Tommy yells at me from across street
in matching (my) shirt and white
construction worker hat
but
I wander over and sit down beside the
gorilla on the sidewalk propped
up against building on corner
watching (seemingly) tumbling toward him
SUV,

It's Joe
sweating and tired and sweating mad

V heading back inside painted white door
upstairs to talk to the girls
tho there's girls out here
and in 51% of everywhere
glowering and scowling
at sad men with sad pockets and nothing
to give of but themselves
which is what V has got,
all of his great and beautiful self
but that isn't enough for this world
NO!

I can't take that and I never will--

So Edd comes rushing downstairs
throws a full pitcher at some stumbling
asshole punched him in the face
and theres a scene like any scene
with beer and working class
that you could have seen every wild
night in every city America when we were allowed
to live but now it's so alien and strange
and it's broken up, Edd turns back rolling
which is where and when we decide to split and head
on back up that same street,
my heart street and only street, to V's car
where we pile in and slowly lift off
leaving fresh screams and sad dripping memories
like somehow we always do--

Mornings on 19th

Rain on gray street
and gray marbled sky--slow moving
clouds just finished overnight--
with brass band playing somewhere
out of sight, the only other smells
are starbucks and subway and you
can get that anywhere in america
and probably the world on every
city street corner that isn't ignored
or shoved headlong into some ghetto reality
that doesn't exist here, we're living
a choas dream of all the wild stagnant
dreams you've ever heard of in squat
skyscrapers that taper off into block
house hell with the only visible resistance
a pile of wet blankets soaking in
a park that no one else bothers with
until lunchtime fantasies--I get it, no kidding--
and when to cross the
street I'll never tell ya, just watch the signs
that get us there in one piece--

Unfinished

Aw Christ,
cast me off onto some road
along blue skies and
plains without fences
and it's just green flat
golden free land as far as
my eyes can see, which I pray is
too far to follow--great beautiful
America that I've been chasing
after for God knows how long
and which I fear I'll never
find or catch or run fast enough
to escape what's coming for me--
a concrete existence and bottom
of my soul unhappiness forever--
I see it before me and it stings my eyes,
the future, is it out there?--or here?--
and it's like I have no choice.

Summer is Gone

Moan of windshield wiper
horror, falling rain, gray roads
of I-95 sad trip back-
to-back, haven't rested in
years of immeasurable 137 miles
of road life between bridges and
missing most things on
tumbling wheels of 3 hour time,
never catching up,

I am a forgotten ghost
forging nothingness

I've become meaningless

I wish to drop everything
I've written into the great lake of fire

Bus pulls up in Baltimore
too dark to see, I don't get off
there's an hour to go on this
empty coffin, the rain is
slowing down.

Hold that door!

She closes the elevator
to say sorry, juggle your drink
in formal wear work party
shuffle, sorry sorry
red faced surprised lips
con job,

you wanted to get to your
floor 5 seconds quicker
I get it,

It's the end of the world
dig, it's the end of the world
so don't frequent the elevators
God hits those first,
the cable veins
and blood cells
souless grinding 13 floors
with those colors underneath

but what do they mean?
R O G B
figures out,
it's Gold and subscriptions and payment
increases,

backs of broken
labor shnelling yelling
why don't'cha just drop
the dirt in here! it's six
foot and deeper,
it's the elevator shaft
devils work and lunch
time is no time
is half time is half hour time
is the clicking lock and
the fumbled coffee
is the rush to get wherever whenever
for no reason other than nothing else exists.

Fluoride for the road

I'll drink from the water
fountain fluoride dispensers
and corrode my
pineal gland because my
dreams are already dead

best not to think too much
or you'll think

of a way out
or of someplace you should be
rather be
supposed to be

I'll shower in it
so it rots everything else
preserving only itself--

I hope it kills my vision
and I have nothing but black
empty nothingness to sleep in

I can't live if there's anything left
to wish for

End the World

She's got a ringtone whistle
eating day-glo cake on the sidewalk
mistletoe street, the cats are all
backed up in the alley counting fish bone
soup tickets, skin stickin' to their little ribs,

nearby the greyhound bus is flying
pink flags for the pirates on I-95
who won't pull the colors over because
everyone on the bailout sheet is sure
they've got bigger rigs to fry,

catch that bum Bodhisattva crossin' the highway
facing on coming traffic both ways,
with the checkered bag and picnic memories
canned beans and anachronisms,
no money and homeless outside or within
city limits peppered limits limits of the void
ball machine chaotic glitter thunderstorm swelling,

a dimensional rift has opened out
toward Pennsylvania and 17th
on a grey old day like other old gray days
before, behold the godhead apocalypse in the
guise of falling lambs delicately painted by
fluorescent crayon wax descending,
listen up it's the nothingness abyss that'll suck us all in,
not the hooded pantry snakes and dreaded jungle gyms,

these are just the signs I've imagined from
my windowed seat.

untitled

This will remain untitled
for you--a recording
of absurd references to
nothing-- lost in the hands of the
blazing caterers of the
stars who carry universal name plates of
hot roast beef torment to all scattered
distances, who exist only so
that we can never

know--

where we're going

or--

where we're ending.

Please More Glue

outside
the world is hacking
at itself pulling at
whatever strings keep
the cars running alright
on the tracked roads on
tracked lives under that
crisp American sky
that might not be blue gad dammit
but it's beautiful I can
guarantee you that and
gleaming unlike the iphone
mirrors that warp it
and distort it with each new app
crossing the t's that trap us
within the nothingness of
3rd dimensional thought
because it's how we see everything
now through the reflection of screen
that isn't covered by sliding
fingers and downcast eyes,
remember what the clouds looked
like children, or dreams?
they're each just as fleeting
they're each being lost.

This is not what I want from life

The halls
are all piss yellow
walls and lights spotted
every now and then
at regular intervals by
bathrooms
closed down
8x11 black ink signs
meant to bar my way
while I'm
ducking the goblins
who refuse to smile
hi at the lowly ones
of the green badges
who can't pull the salary
of a human being--I wonder
at my desk what my soul thinks
each day as it waits outside
the gates dying
slowly dying soundlessly dying
ignored nobody listening--I blow a kiss
at the mirrored building glass that
lines the sidewalks at the end of the
day when my dreams
leave me for someone else

Dreaming of Newark

Looking for his cookies on
roads, abandoned lots of weed and
cracked concrete in Newark, NJ
as we carried ourselves to
some class no one knew
Svyatoslav crouched and hunched
running behind our group
appearing from nowhere,
everywhere, leaping down hills
disappearing into alleyways
like a phantom from the painting,
he offered me his finding, crumbled
chocolate baked and lost,
Vitaly pushed them onto everyone
else, "Take a cookie! C'mon!"
no one took a bite,

In the house now we'd made it
small two rooms and not the
kind of place for a school,
tho everyone we knew was there,

"You got Heckenberg?"

"Yeah," we told them,
Whit was there too,

We worried he'd be confused
living in two houses at once,
traveling to Jersey for class,
I hugged him against my knee

Joe and Svyatoslav watched silently
munching away on the cookies,

Again Whit was so small.

A Weight on my Chest

Now that I think about
it the path through the wood
reminded me of Gettysburg
Little Round Top just darker
like I couldn't lift my chin up enough
to catch the light streaming
through the trees that cold
autumn day, I had Whit in my
arms, he was small tho, really
God damn unusually small
and there was another Whit being
born or covered in bloody gooey placenta
on some TV brain beyond my comprehension,
and Alton Brown was there swinging,
smashing and being an all around
hero saving the girls from roving bands
set on evil deeds which isn't so far off
from the truth, I guess--he would wander uncharted
alien forests heroically super
heroic without fanfare--and Whit glanced up at me
over the commotion of my eyes
waking and mewed softly for the
morning.