RAT TRAPS FOR SWEET MEATS

waked by mother jones
entombed on a sign post
faced to national guard posts
back against the combined might
of the Pentecostal awakening
broken by the sea of automated engines
selling their gooey insides to
the lowest bidder
balanced on one iron leg she stands
CHAMPION OF LABOR
a block away the US army
barricades itself inside
protecting the most important
AMERICAN ASSET
its PRECIOUS WALLS
its PRECIOUS SOUL
she is unaware of the years slowly eroded
or the yellow grass beneath her
the doldrums of Mays forgotten
half lit on radiator screens
brushed over by calloused finger
she was once MOTHER of ALL
the sad chain gang of FLESH MACHINES
bred in factories
worked in conveyor belt fields
dreaming fabulous MECHANICAL dreams.

Film.

If you close your eyes
     the sound of a microfilm reel
     being rewound was the sound
     that began like a dream
the cancer that followed me
     was that sound and it floated
     alongside me as a physical perspective
     from which I watched outside
watching a someone that wasn't me
     that had been designated as me
     the cancer following him around
     tho I could only imagine what it looked like
I could not see it or I was inside it
     or it was just out of reach needing someone
     to speed up the reel
the film beginning to click and snap
     as if it was splitting in two
     the wheels ignored kept spinning
     waiting for me to die but I didn't
I just looked up at me seeing through me
     the perspective of me seeing through the body
     I closed my eyes his eyes it had eyes
     and he sighed

a tree was born to grow old & strong,
to become the beginning of a tragedy
that ends as stacks of colorless paper,
staked through the heart and pinned to cubical walls,
office numbers printed on its multitude of lifeless faces

the steady swell of standard operating procedures
                                                                              crash
                                                                       
                                                                             like orderly waves
                                                                                  on the staff infested
                                                                      shore

Watercooler injections

Eating an orange in my cell I wonder--
                                                              when i die,
where will all the mesmerizing conversations
about institutionalized hierarchies go
?

Post-It Note Necrophilia I

scrolling bulge of the static frame
             surveillance scripture obtained
unoccupied screens
        image fidgets at intervals
13 1/2 seconds
     information mounted on the overlay
time     date
    camera identification
location
          name
reality distorted     sorted     recorded
              re-ordered
     frame      X      frame

Windows and Walls

each barrier must in its own way support the facade,
the tiniest of cracks, openings, must be filled,
there is no room for mistake, serious business,
if a bit of what's outside gets in, containment will be breached,
once again, serious business, what's at stake,
that's for me to say, not to think about,
just know that we have your best interests at heart,
and if productivity can be increased? a bonus,
you are part of something real and that must be protected,
when you believe in people first the love really comes through
in the product.

Alarms

thunder that shakes city street
is the risen crane's body
rain to keep the drills wet
burrowed under sewer grates

     'cross town with uber fare
     a pleasurable hell

you who would seek escape
I
grant
you

Three (3)
days Leave

Now! Go!

     find your "peace"

how many days have you paid?

what was the cost?

answer is silence
     silence is midnight when the subway is quiet
when the meter has rung

the morning cracks with the weight of alarm
     work begins when you breathe.

We have what we came for

waiting
waiting
waiting to pull the metal coffin
to its place
     and when
            when it returns
stacked atop with bodies
waiting 
waiting
waiting to push it back
to forget
where it has been
     only
     only where it left its remains
waiting 
waiting
waiting to retrieve
     more markings
     more corpses
     more legs
     more trees
a shriek on rolling wheel
     again it goes forth
     again there it is
     again
waiting
waiting
waiting always waiting
             countless eyes
                             hands
                             hearts
                             burial mounds
regurgitated
replayed
rewound
               waiting.

Dust

This
          here.
     This dust

Settles one atom at a time
     slowly to
          bury
what little past     remains
the
     sediment of
                         memory
left little
        by
       little
at the bottom end
                             of
                             thought.

Where were you when you remembered
      all
           those     little
                                 failures
suffering a multitude of fossilized
                                          layers
                                          below
those funny dying things
     shriveled up
            that made me     love
                                       the
                                       way
                                       I
                                       was
and you smile
at the
desert
           that has become     you
and you
       and
       I
and dust
              above     &     underneath

Compound

Against the walls
                             outside
     heat from those million miles
          falls flat on lifeless     concrete
shaped by the machine hand
                                              of man
     tucked within its belly
fed on artificial
     radioactive
          weaponized     light
the constricting
                          snake
             conscripted
by 3D blue print masks
     masquerading prisons
dropped on endless     maps
                    endless     hours
                     endless     pages

LIO (your Life insurance officer is working hard for you)

Each joke strike a flat note budget references only get you so far
pop-culture references a little more so help the hours drone by

'I won't give you the satisfaction, fiend!'

sitting arms locked, face scowled

'I will not be complicit in your PowerPoint game!'

the only truth is a beneficial silence insured
I won't raise my hand I won't die in 10 20 30 40 years

you'll
never
be
rid
of
my mute existence

you'll never win

I won't be taken alive.

truly

curiously you say,
   
      'Oh'
you say craning your neck,
   
     'what're you reading?'
you become silent when I answer,

     '...'
you turn your head away toward the window,

     'Oh'
I have maybe said something wrong? Too much?

What had you been hoping to hear?

what
          image had you
painted of me
          that I've dispelled

How have a failed you?
         
         I'm sorry.

Co-Worker

At a distance
hey
      I am          that
bloated deathless soul
hey
      look here          at me
no living thing will touch me
look here          hey

--I eliminate them first
scratched them off the board
slotted them in categorical purgatory
this is the corner
where I'm left
                       where you leave me
where I'm alone

if I am like you i am
                           like          nothing
                                           like me
we have that mush to say
no words
a void of word

we have gone on in different directions
                                               from the start
passing
                      going
                                         in neither another' s
direction

it's better this way

anyway

Internment

in these distended
           lifeless letters
focused up on the slides
I banged against my forehead
           my useless fist
for this is how my life,
           for this,
for this,
this is how my life
           my life,
for this,
is lost
and nothing is gained
           in percentages & numbers
each year you'll progress
to middle age
and how bout death?
           would you like to spend 40 years
           exchange 40 years
for the chance to leave six numerical figures
and a wasted life behind?

my last days on the working earth

just this morning moving along a well worn track
greased once in 4 year autopilot coffee stain
a single lane two-way same view but from differing floor bridge
I saw my body being shuffled along

1000 other days 4000 other hours 200 other weeks

what and all has been wasted on fast-forward on constant repeat
now that I've been sitting passenger seat waiting for the end of the line
grown old and loose into myself grown broken and lined and hollow
strange packed with age and blood and guts and clogged words?

1000 days bent in chair 4000 litebulb monitor hours 200 weeks immobile

white marble staircases
large open glass roofed lobbies
reception desks
reception invitations
self celebrations
emails read
unread
forwarded
responses
days
hours
weeks
moments
stasis
glacial
entropic
ice

my last days on the working earth.

it was ever real

around

the world moved

around the room

with windows     closed

discarded strawberry greens

a light left on without reason

slumping bodies

stationary in plastic bins

pens bleed out

around

the sun moved past

around the moon

yet to pass

the roads spun     in place

beneath parallel sheets

concrete and steel moue

around

the essential

around the missing piece

and a mistaken belief

even as I dry

rains over money rains alike
rains over cold gray buildings
even as the day even as time

i crossed the street into the gray current
there was a group with yellow flyers
passing them down the gray line

rains over aluminum barriers
rains over thin gray stone
even as the footsteps even as the umbrella cries

i shuffled between the bodies into the gray light
under the open stretched glass doors
sifting through metal detecting ports

rains over 13 storeys rains on the floor
rains over cold gray eyes
even as the poor even as the poor

i sat for three hours i sit for many more
there once the clock hits four
passing through the same corridors came before

rains over me rains alighted
rains over my gray shirt
even as I walk even as I dry

even as I walk

even as I dry

might be long gone

around the spiral stair     it gets brighter as you go
toward the bottom floor

all laid out with white tile
following the pattern maintained on the floors above

                                     in a long switchback square
at the end          a line of black soled feet high and low
snaked about five chair columns in 6 rows

originating from the white desk beyond the white flat screen tv
behind

drip coffee lined          a million million dollars a head
where all the poor poor children go

and free coffee down down on down the line
on the plantation row a thousand miles away     and here

one steaming fee free double espresso.

people walking across the street and the white bus that passed them

the bus was so much faster than you, you know?
tho it carried what, 30, 40 times your weight, maybe?
that many more minds, too, and yet, like you, it obeyed
that little green or little red light, think about that, it had
onboard airconditioning too, so it was in no hurry to get out
of the heat, and it was a bus even, so it probably couldn't,
anyway, it was most likely enroute to some layered
parking estate and there you were for a second walking
beside it going that same way only slower so much slower
thinking how to get out of the heat without sweating too much
going with the flow of the other feet, carrying your own weight.