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.

I'm out of the metro walking to work

Am I supposed to
write
        about
the fluorescent lights?

I guess when
there's nothing else but
the almost inaudible
radio humming Billy
Joel and the condensation
on my coffee cup,

I'm all but forced to--

what happened to me
walking to work was nothing
worse than nowhere feeling
like the lights should
just all go green
so streets would be impossibly
cluttered with the sick stench
of burning car engines and
burning flesh,

I mean to say
                     there
would be hellish crash
bang Daedalean accidents dragging, and
rolling cartoon wheels cutting into my sidewalk
visions of mangled peace--

not the inevitable
lifeless lights
of heaven's 4th floor above,
broken by the shriek
of copy machines and
water cooler christs,
playing the same humming
soundtrack incessantly

The Drive Home

small gray clouds buttressed
billowy pure white clusters in
the sky repeating themselves
again and over and forever in the crisp blue
of so much blueness that
I questioned its reality in
the autumn like sun of the highway,
each cloud was like an x-ray Russian
doll puffed and shrinking like
the ouroboros never-ending until
the final speck of madness atomized
into the abyss,
                   *
                         I thought of your
body, heavenly in my arms, tanned skin,
soft and moist on my lips,
                   *
                                           the road
poured out at the off ramp before I
lost the clouds and the thought,
rushing for traffic lights to sit
and breathe and focus on the colors,
clear and unbiased,
                    *
I've led a happy life with you
but I've not led a happy life.

Trapped in the night

I tasted the sunlight
\through the blinds\
through the vibrations in
the air, aura, Buddha, Bodhisattva
radiating from conversations, night,
morning, greens and blues
and lightning flesh, and when Joe
told me a healer would have
helped our merry band, I listened
to it emanating from his eyes
as colored streaks of gold and
blood shot wonder, I smelled the air
gently brush my flesh, screaming,
watched the visions with my eyes closed in
the night that lasted forever and I couldn't sleep

Which is Me

Toss my lantern
into autumn winds--
the setting sun

out on your
porch is a no man's land
I never tread

tho I'd like to often
there just doesn't seem
to be any opportunity--

the blinking buildings
shake the sun off anyway
if that's consolation

in my silent longing
I'm a fool, like I'm
always a fool, being foolish

and laughing when I shouldn't
when no one else is
or gets why-- the yellow

tint of the sun is
so effortlessly funny sometimes
and sums up all that shit

for earth's one brightest fool
which is me.

To you

We've all sadly found ourselves
old, and in doing so
have lost our beauty--

I'm a casualty for
believing in time too, tho
I was made to
at early ages so that
I wouldn't follow the setting
sun home but the dying street lamps
and the ticking wall clocks,
so that I'd stand in line silently
so that I'd wrinkle and starve
and shrink and die leaving only
lies for the future--

I realized we were all finished
today in the mirror while I
brushed my rotting teeth.

Quick Haiku while working

Ah, I am lost--
on a street
between street signs

          the sky was gray

          it was too early
          to remember it

my cats watch me
go--
indifferently

          I can't write
          any better at work--
          this is shit

Click of lock--
Quick! shut your
windows tight

          bowl of paper clips
          sharpened pencils-- ignore
          fluorescent lights bleating

Night time Prayer

I lifted the curtain,
it's still up defying gravity
defying my hand
making sure I can't write it
computer on my lap
bubbling away whatever
sperm I had left
leaving cancer in the dark
the only light fading
out highway outside
rumbling silent in the nothing
of everything that's happening
beyond my understanding

I could shut the light
I could sleep alright
I could stare into the heaving
mass of bulbs
my eyes yearning for
whatever answers there're left to
find this side of the
Potomac