9-5

laughter in the halls on the last days

sound like florescent lights emitted by some atmospheric phenomena
     localized above our heads

an hour between eternity and now to spend ingesting death

the white
roses
left
one by one
by
mourning
fractals
from
even
deathlike
hands
sharp
nails
dry
cuticle
encrusted
keyboard
bones

plastic coffins and plastic signs

around with the numbered dial goes time enchained in brass links
     cutting into thin wrists

no space before the collapse of the thin film of resolve.

'Oh, room rent, what crimes are commited in thy name!'

lock the door behind you
    ignore the keyhole eyes burnt in each

passing flat
remember the cold water dripping out

    faucet into sink
you'll use it to scrub later

bathe clean of the stink
     down the stairs each step louder

closer to ground floor
chipped paint kicked aside frame

     swinging aluminum sunrise puffs of breathe
chilly air grates and reaches into pockets

     up to you to hide the greasy bills
keep you head down hat rim down and arms

ready your weak knees only carry so
far
   
     how long you been staring out
and bus passes jack and gone

good riddance without
     breakfast moves the day faster along

no windows no kid light the bulb
     you can see

     street lamps make orange light
for you to walk home by these hours paid

slide in while those eyes again are
     set to tabled scorn drooling

quick with key and turn of empty knob
latch the door behind you

turn out your pockets
    count the dead men in your hand

one two three four five six seven
     eight

Nightlife of the Living Dead

And home from offices
bordered by the sky,
sated with daylight & time,

home to dinner in plastic containers,
cooked someplace faraway
and heated with radiation,

home to television screens,
lights in the darkness burn bright
before a shower and sleep,

home as the stopping post,
save those little crumbling,
pieces of life for next weekend,

home to see those ghosts
of present and past decay,
appearing in the future aged,

home as night life of your living dead,
hollow eyes and holy heads,
waking up in someone else's tomorrow

only to go back to bed.

I guess there was no camera on that street light

No mail will come today.

                                   Wind rustles the trees

blows through leaning sunflowers.

                                   A mourning dove coos.

Sun rises only to be obscured by clouds.

                                   Air tastes like fallen leaves

and last nights showers.

Remember this one...

Saw you sitting across
from me at McDonalds,
you looked so sad eating your
yogurt parfait alone and staring
with pock-marked face, the lights were
something else, hey?

I heard a couple walking by,
two men, one said, "I was too busy
trying to take it all in," but that
was later in the night, after you
left and I was getting flour
across the Potomac watching
red lights and green lights and yellow lights
and like always

Shout

Eyes over here,
on the inky horizon-
turn your head to the sound of-
to the sound of- crumpling metal
like it was aluminum in his disfigured hands
and the beer gold and cool bending in the sunlight,
drips like rain falling like blankets
onto the crisp golden grass,
grass wet with dew and the night,
noctornal ash borrowed
in the rusted creases of funeral pyre radiators,

BAAAAAAHHHH-AAAUUUUHHH
the train's whistle questions,
BAAAAAAAAAHHH-AAAUUUHHHH
"where?'" "where are we headed? Where have we been?"
"just where?"-
"Where is anything?"...but the tracks and forward-
but the race-

transforms the fumbling dawn into the insides of an oil drum
beaten with a baseball bat,
spattering our brains like an obstruction
before the cow catcher,
where it gets to bellowing,
layered over sounds of hands scrapping together,
searching for warmth and a place to rest
now that history has
run us all off the road,
paved, cracked, and cragged,
the road
that becomes a point in the distance
becomes it and resembles it and forcefully gives to birth to that-
that question the train meant to ask-

pushing it's memory back a ways
along those tracks by the cornfield wasteland
where we can never again find it-

shouting.

Plea

They want what we don't have,

deep within the ground
where the sun dies a brilliant yellow-orange-purple,
blinding eyes
covered by elbows and hands
torn and old,

the dust is the skin
brown and tasteless
burning off in opaque tired rays
like a parched army navigating
dried rivers and mortal wounds;

I have nothing left.

Today we asked

The table is cold,
the food acts like
illuminated coils
in open refrigerators
freezing over the landscape,
peaks and valleys
dwarfed by slow brawling glaciers,
moving away
towards chilled bodies
lying still under peach trees
barren and unrecognizable,
sketching letters across the ground
that you scuff and distort with your boots,
a message of apathy,
like a cashier pulling heavy items
and black bars over
steady red light,
dead empty inside and moved by hidden
impulses electric and man-made,
a question smeared across
unmoving lips,
where does the future end
and the past begin,
today we asked.