Like the dogs in Atacama, the baker's shadow

Swelling under the khaki desert

I remember you remembered something I'd forgotten

Pale kings bound to serfdom in the crackling heat

A miniature god made such a wandering landscape of so many seeds

Places, it's all that I can be 

Dipping in the sacred altitude sickness of insomnia 

A plane taking me off this planet 

Where a bare dancing woman sings of comets

Something a child would never conceive 

Again and again the dust comes for me 

We look over at the places we’ve been and dont believe

As we pass by them again and again

As if our heart escapes into a warm memory

There's an inkling of sin 

With every passing, a taking for the reserve in his chin

All that behind a grin

I plug my nose and relieve my ears even if it's bad for me

A gin on the folder waiting for us to land

The jet won't take long; it should be fast 

All that history will pass

If I existed in it 

I offered it to my subconscious 

So I grieve in pensive recollection 

Conversations of a soul that treks and trails a long way behind

When we get to Santiago, I should have my gin

An award for sleeping through the flight

Rested wide over the paradise 

That is true

To only exist in the wading dead sky

That dead night in which a jet may arrive

An insolent light lifts from the parking structure

The harpsichords disguise themselves as helicopters

Propellers like ceiling fans peaking out from the dumpster

Fathering drones or some other

They’ve replaced the birds altogether 

I'm an angel, and I ride a Concord instead of my feathers

And this window here reveals just beyond me every last visitor 

Every man must have those waking hours

I place my hand, and it’s as cold as an anchor

I feel my way over and across the sea floor to find anything stranger

All of you are strangers

A man and a man and a man and a woman

Another man rests under the portico 

Holding his stomach together

Do not approach this place all together

Over and over

We’re all just hungry for dinner

Always some sort of hunger

Starve me if it ends it easier

Oh you're so dear

I am merely a merchant, a stoned visitor 

In my mirror, I manicure these feathers 

And hang picture frames in my hallways

His ribcage holds together a worthless artwork

Piss soaked into his pantlegs 

Feces dried into the concrete 

Human burnt into the sideways 

Without any future of rain coming this way 

I ate my dinner very friendly 

Making love to the idea that my watch can turn in nightly

I can let go so easily

And stroke my feathers in a warm night sky

And no one bats an eye at the man holding a knife

He walks by like an actor 

We trade stories and never cry  

The patio fills some more, and we flatten our ties

The air feels nice, a flirtatious goodbye

And we mosied half drunk back to the big diamond showering over the nightlife

Blazed and displaying the moon evenly on every side

Shimmering like a star of the night

We had no trouble finding our way with sweat and laughter under our eyes

Like moths

We make it home 

And all of our brothers have died 

Notice them from the gallows, hanging all around

Their heads like anvils, longing for the ground

Eyes of a cat, eyes of a crow 

Watching with intent as my feet wiggle 

The night always wins 

The days are just losing their sense

Just like me

At the corner seat, and you are beside me, under the holy convention of three

And I’m counting the times that my feet missed the pedal on the seat 

Every morning I lose another inch of catharsis 

Stroking up on the rosary 

Old and once found in the early minutes where the sun snuggled me 

And I was awake to feel the peace 

All that sun I devoured just escaped into the wind 

On one of those days that I went looking  

As my lungs shrink again

And the company comes back around 

With stars all over their skin

Coming back to me 

The moon a soiled green

So long captured, I can hear their breaths like a sink 

I dont like the look of the rat who isn't begging

A long cigarette hanging 

An actor and a farmer in the same clothes 

Swaying with the silver grass

How something pretty never ends

How something worthy never lives

How the image never grieves 

I can't help but swing

Dissolving with all of my new friends 

Into where the night always wins

I am

Always in the wharf

And am always reaching nearer 

The storks brush against my fingertips, dropping me not more than a drip 

Of that salty lip of ocean 

The earth of minor ulterior calculation swims swimmingly

At the bottom of my cup

A psyop of passive ruminations

A holy room is what I lie with

And a wallpaper from Piedmont is who I am company with

Rooms within rooms 

Pews like a ribcage 

Drinking beside a man who’d ne’er forget my face

Describing me as Western architecture in the hereafter

I misfortune the bartender

My math is without a calculator

I sleep in the same room as the table dancer

And the shadow of a man the night before her

I visit your country and extract the right one thereafter

It’s nothing that a morning can't always remember 

Awake in sweat 

Sheets the same fabric as the sofa

The splitting lights from the railway stops in the corner

I can tell that train is always coming

Humming in between my ears 

The pillow of upside down feathers

The man at the bar says to me 

YOU ARE NOT DONE YET

Like an hourglass, the sweat drips 

And that salt of the ocean soaks into my lip

Not done with what?

I twist and sit

And so I sit for eternity with his breath under my teeth

Done with just about everything I could drink

And every Island I could sink

The company in the corner of my eye blinks

It's red all over the place

And I won't sleep for another week

Run like a car on the borderline

Like a rabbit sticking out his tongue before the gun

He can outrun the sun

But I never run

I’ve never really run

I only slip from one page to another

From one form 

Still wearing the same cloth, I, as the crop, am lopped off from

One into another one

In the shape of a man with a uniform

A sweat bead that beats the stick to the drum

I take the flame and I strip its wax off 

All gone and dried to the glass drapes 

It lives on

I take a word from my counterfeit pocket

And I only hope it hasn’t grown to be something pretty obvious yet

Until I’ve expressed all of the mint out of it

I never run

I only press a foot on the stump

And look from where I’ve come

A trial of unending racket

Wreaking of blood and love

The only makings of perfect ashes

I smell god sniffing around above the sweeping clouds

And i’m never curious as the man who’d stick around

Where the everyman sits with his head in his shades

When the day meets its day

Under a sunset over the mountains displayed

I sit

When I can sit

In a peaceful way

Can you hear them

The helicopters 

Coming from the mountains over in the outer graves

The great Apaches 

Lugging a sweet disorder over the Americas’ grey and handsome face

Handsome as my cancer

Handsome as my age

Do you hear them

Droning a blasé wave 

Always in my way

And I can’t tell always

If it’s from the TV 

Or if they’re coming over the pasture 

My grace dissolves into a reaction of time and space

All the time I waste

I listen as their blades

Somehow always sweep over me

As I face up to the eternal enormity

Swallowed by the sun by day 

And belched out in an array of spangled decay by moon spell

As the crimson sways

I watch with my fingers interlaced

The giant sleeps on his spine

Just as I

And he's slept for a very long time

As long as the digits under my eyes

He dreams of birds and white clouds

And when he sees the summertime

I see his belly rise

Every afternoon

Just as mine

As the propellers pull a new kingdom over the horizon

Pushing the old ones aside

I watch in silence

A wind so loud the ears go quiet

They buzz 

And they buzz

And I do not bat an eye

As their propellers pass me by 

The mother in the strange place it starts

Who broke earth to place our stars

I wonder about the moments in mind

You put your step in the glossy filter

And your wings rise up under the condor

The water rinsed out all of the answers

The river runs like a meteor

I am the concord 

I carry with me all of the futures

And it rises as do my lungs when I twist the ghosts of our fathers

Into damage and unto our brothers

I care only for the pasture under heaven

It does not produce

We do no longer 

I’ll have a child and they will die the same as their father

Under the swaddle of our overprotective mother

Who lends us a religion 

To present our enemies with

I share with our mother a penchant deep within our abdomen 

And she smiles from the welkin

Over the contents she has given

As the price of her simplest creation

And the slow swoon of a man has always been the belly of a cannibal

All from this angle

Living our lives through the eyes of a seagull

I see a rain up in the sky, and it never comes down

Our tears are held in by a sound or a second

Hanging from the mouth, under the last sweating cloud

The folks are all sweethearts on this side of town

And we talk in the company of a crowd

As they pitter about 

Their pretty voices

Swimming around in their throats 

As they choke their favorite words down  

And they’ll never know how we saw them at their best

Their life is just like mine

And I find it best to recall the times a thousand times

And only at the worst of times

They must just think how all these roses are just roses all of the time

And we all have our best guesses

My guess is that we all hate to be on the outside

The taxis' fountain puddles onto the sidewalks

And a scuffle breaks out with a blood-soaked tourist

Under a flimsy light dangling off of the night

The foghorns sound from beyond the emptiness in the sky

Long away from the docks I all plan to buy

The sojourner eats his piece of pie

And the sailors fix their monoliths 

Under the poetry of waves swashing like wine

Moored in the brine

I happened to be on this side 

Where in a town 

The weather isn't so nice

But I enjoy a cheeseburger anyway

On the bench near the baker

The smell of peppermint and stardust

Where the horizon expects me to miss it 

And I always do

Under a new ceiling

Already filled with stars 

Where the bad dreams are only space 

A way far out kind of space where I can't mind my age

Where the kings and queens all fill with rage

As we just grow, and grow, into many fates, all made up of our many days 

In such a haze, I just float along in that awful, glorious space

Tonight, I write to you with my fingers tracing my memory of the lines on your hands

The hands that slip away from mine all too soon

But never for long 

But always often

I write with the sun in my pocket and a shower still on my hair

Of a passionate affair I had with the night we last shared

I twirl my words up in thin spare time

And spoil in the ways of my lonely eyes

Taking care 

To reminisce when I am understudy

As the splits of time work laughingly

In all of the places that together we’ve slept

I’ve never once dreamt

And it's been nearly ten years

Since I heard that dreams are the tired body's waiting work 

A cavity for anxiety that the mind must send its loudest troops out to search

And that's when I learned of a home

And I’ve found a stone to rest my tired soul

Unspooling all those wishes like a madman with the fortune he folds

Tonight I write 

To you 

Of a minor change in my routine

That reminded me of something that you’ve never said to me

Fear will fill your beard

I dont grow one

But I see one in our mirror

And I hear you say it to me when we stare off into the space we share

I watch patiently as your lips flare

Everything we have is unspoken in the way that history is mare

I scribble some over my hardtimes

And you ask me why

Well, I suppose all that I can say 

Is that I write

And so tonight

I write to you 

Of something that I’ll always do

To say 

That I love you

But I fear that I am dying

In the night, I wish for my eyes to be blind

My chest rests on a bow drawn tight

With the heart of a child aimed up at the sky

Grand as the Fourth of July, shimmering summer nights

I have a memory of little old me running a kite down the tarmac

And it replays in my stomach

I fear that I was only ever once half-bright

Amber sun-soaked marbles for eyes

And now they’ve rolled in the back of my skull for the night

A martini glass embraced by a half-decaying flaming katy

The swimming olive in laze

My lampshade is made of a pillowcase

And my mornings and days are all out of sight

The mundane is just mundane, like any other word on any other day

And I want us to get married on a Sunday

With a suit on and the sun behind us

A Sunday would be perfect

In times like these

I think that I see my ribcage under every one of my tees

I grind my teeth as my dream walks among the trees

Along he walks with me

I want you to curve around my bones like pagets

I google every symptom

I was right the first time. I’ve always had it.

I think that I’ve been dying for a very long time

Impressing everyone I must

Resigning with every inch I’ve fluffed

Holding in a thin cough until they’ve talked

And I only think of them always, because I am no better than they are

I would’ve drowned in the Atlantic stars’ reflections if I weren’t so stunned

Off a cliff in Ireland

Where the moon was once under the ocean

Your wings danced beneath my breath

And I listened to the wind whistle through your spurs

When I count to three, I’ll forget that I’m counting

And this must mean that I am sleeping

Because I forget only if I am dreaming

I see creatures with human faces in the family

And they wisp by passively

I see that everywhere I run

You are there with me

My feet go to sleep while I am standing

And it reminds me of the grass on my knees, under that supermassive tarp sheet

In spring

When the grass is always green

I worry always

While singing under the parasol of all these great things

I know that I’m neurotic

But for me, please

If you would close the blinds, seeing as my brain cannot stop it

And I must dream

In times like these

And the jungle says im its heartbeat

With sugar under my teeth, I watch a blade swing over east

Like a low breeze over my trees

And nothing is done on a Saturday eve

Nothing happens over the course of a week

So I sleep, and I dream

And I dont get much of anything

Let alone my feet

I watch from the clouds

On my propeller bike with stardust behind every swipe

I ride the wind like a manatee, and it’s sometimes very nice

My grip is white and full of an arrogant life

The air is crisp with its high price

Out here on the sea, it isn’t cheap

I bled my dreams with an April on Ireland

The people in my pictures are mean, and then again

They’re always happiest to see me

The birds chew their meat lovingly under drooping leaves

And all around me

The gardens turn towards the sun

And the people are all winking behind their guns

So I keep my distance for my unborn son

The world is a hard-earned one

The toothache that goes with a malt shake and silicone

The rain travels through the city to the storm drains

It runs now at much faster speeds

And I catch a reflection of everything every so often

It traces every little space

It can make me almost conscious

Leaving behind it

My face

Clearing by every unwanting ape

They’ll write Shakespeare one of these days

All within the cityscape

And I’ll be the greatest one they never made

Just a reflection of all that I can waste

So on with all their drains

And on with all that rain

I see it on the face

As it swims on and on through and out of my city’s drains

As an olive in the sky tells me where the moon has gone 

Growing, ever-growing like a saucer in an eye 

As backwash fills the pause

As a sigh slips from the nose 

I lost it every mile in which I spilt out the sun under sweet repose

Killing for the petal on a rose

Dreaming of the lines on the roads

And strumming the same old song for Whitney as I did for Teton 

My eyes glow with a warm sweat that fills my throat

I brought the pope to the railroad

And I signal him as he goes

And overdo my top button just so that he knows

In true fashion, I forgot the question before he spoke

The bottomline is a splinter in the mold 

Dreams revealed in Cheerios 

Undone, and the heart will choke on its own

Frost on the pergolas in early mornings

How the days have grown

Sprawled into a long blonde curtain that I hold to the side

I had the longest fall of anyone 

Rights after long nights

Hunger under the breath that fills a white lie

The leaves turned with their pesticides

Turning years over wrinkles

The ocean leaves a fortress 

For a power on the bank

In the form of weak mist sprinkled over Saturday

And the years have all been missed, for the living, all obey

The leaves are still yellow

And where I am now

I believe the branches are partly fixed with metals

The gutters gather sand with a footprint shaped for a man

Wind rushes the nests into strands

And I dont know where these leaves spluttering gold among the rooms 

Behind the window 

Stand

I'm on the underside of the spindle

In my dustings of soliloquy  

Leave me 

Be 

I could be something 

The land of the party

The pity from the thought that we could afford such a plot by the end of time

I drink instant coffee in a clay mug

That carries in its walls the taste of every last night

Hand-washed every month

With Valparaíso sinking deeper into my stomach

A man so wide awake must’ve almost crashed

As my mouth fills with cache

And my lungs fill up black

I watch from the far back

Drawing further into my quiver

For my decently decaying repertoire

With the awful growing awfuler

As the oil is pooled in the picture of the practitioner

The portage cools under the pressure of flimsier pictures

And I miss the memoir

That I never did write when I had the time

We spent a day just fine

When there's a year to have like wine

And in a month, the caterpillar has already dreamed of propellers

Beyond the reach of a thoughtful matter

Dissidents slagging and fraying off into the air

Like a hair carried over seas from your couch to the cab chair

Where you go unnoticed by the popular

I’m only tired of everything

When nothing is worth my fear

So I'm kidnapped by infinite measures

Where my ransom runs through clumps of wires

It's always a small thing that turns out prettier

When the big one is letters and reflectors

The blemish lives in the mirror, and suddenly I dont look so weird

I like that there

That one, that’s simple in demeanor

In the bruting treasures beating like my pulse

You described it as a beach for the lights in our house

A vacation spilling over the mountain like frosting

Not meant for anything but the sinner

And his gluttonous ears

The unfortunate song is played like a cloud descending upon the city

Calm and quiet

Just enough for me

And it strips me naked

Just as perfect as it is

And it pains me to know its existence

Because I know it’s vanished

When the only times I think of it

I'm in the roots of its foliage

Minding my dissection with adroitness

A savage in a lesser man's lineage

I turn my face to your chin

Up to where I'm found

As a small blip in the universe of the eye before your soul

Because I heard that we’re mortal once again

In that thump

A thing I never began to fear yet

Yet again, I hear that we’re mortal

Under the blood warming our skin

A thing I once welcomed as a cold hand to wake me from my long slumber

And now a certainty is under cover

Which I’ll never explore again

I’d much rather explore the freckle above a mole that spins into constellations

Under the hand that you hold

The face you contort to tell me what I’ve always known

That soon we must grow old

A smile is unfurled like a rose

And I'm too caught in myself to see anything but the sun falling all over me

I never react

Because I dont believe I can

I dont believe in me

Not appropriately

I am no man to stand before a light so many miles from my past

With such beauty

Such effortless bondage holding me dearly

I can only wish

That when I die

For all of the eternity that exists thereafter

The stars will reenact that day we came together

Forever, like a mountain lengthens its shadow in the desert

The day you told me that you loved me, before I knew the word

And we’ll lie back behind all earth

With our nice place in the sand, sunburned

Watching

Just as the futures would

As the solar system plays on and on with something absurd hanging from the lip

With our tongues firmly gripped

Knowing that the story is about us

And it always runs

Like a river cutting through stone until a cliff has grown

All the others will watch

Not knowing for what

As the solar expanse unfolds

Hoping in just, that they aren't alone

As the tale stokes

And the years boast

And months bloom into the futures of our kids and their children

And they think with their own superstition

In their own terms

Of their own sophistication

Under their own visions

With a rare condition

And a fleeting concern

About all that's up here

As the world's first rocketeers

And all the space between us that we’ve left to conquer

And then they’ll question it

And forget soon after

But the one thing they’ll remember

It isn't just us out here

In the petricore where the human image lived up to its extravagance

At least the stars move

Like trees on the flume

Catching the same breeze as the leaves do

Continuing a trapeze act, tangoing up the pendulum

And the moment when there are no eyes left to see us in the night

Two candles of twirling light will bounce between the masses

For no other eyes than mine

When all else was abandoned

In the anciest sky where the night will never dawn

We’re as bright as the sun

Just look up
Futures or not

Our lights will ring on

On a day when the sun was out

And there wasn’t but one cloud on the sky

It was cool for a summer day

Dry for early July

And his wings caught fire from the height

Like a symptom caught by a quick remark

And the children saw him from the park

Over the fence like a young star bringing their answer from afar

A mother from the garden saw too

And she dropped her shoes with her mind in two

And the businessmen saw her too

And behind all their austenian glue

A blaze carved the blue

He fell with fervor with all the light he could glean

Dragging the sun on like his lead

And he never did learn to fly

Not neat

But pretty

And for a brief moment, a kairos arrived above my city

Where a phoenix did fly

And he did so perfectly

Like a courtesy

Wildly alive

And carelessly slight

Lost in the lazy strife

Of a wasted life

Happily priced

Where my eyes never lie

And I dream no longer

I do not dream if I'm drunk like the neighbors and children

Someone killed the captain and hides in his clothes

I’ve seen him as a reflection on the talk shows

No one talks like humans anymore; they talk with motions scraping out a grave in repose

Kiss my forehead and send me to the peace I revoked

Your kiss, as pure as salt spat by oceans of old

As it may be

Will not unburden a soul who observed the destruction to be mutual

We all hoped

A mistake we were told in diapers and Sunday clothes

We hoped for so long

Until we slipped into our clothes bought in Rome

And wandered into an ecosystem carefully constructed with our image in mind

Maintained by an immaculate design

They’ll say

And they’ll say it to us with their throats like tadpoles

“Let them decide

With their will and awful lives that we so well provide

Let them die with their hubris close by

In a nice pocket in time that we’ve neatly specified

A printed butterfly only lasts a week or so

Let them die

Just let them die.”

Knowing very well what we’ve contrived

I say

Well…

You’re human after all.

A bluff, before, that I would have never called

These so-called humans control and suppose better than I do

Me and my miniature life

So I might as well make a living out of their genius

In stride to a fortress lakeside

In a home, recyclable and principled, I’ve lived in mine for a month or so

Finally

Somewhere, a place perfect for my aching teeth

A church groans from the purgatory that we escaped

I sleep badly

The sheets are plastic

And my mind can’t quite reach the dreams that the mobile spins

A tragedy

Swaying like a lantern above me

I skip my dreams and wake unwillingly

My teeth grind to a song spun among the airways during the cavalcades

Our great god in the army

We trust it courageously

WE MUST

Let him speak to us thoroughly

Through artillery

Bringing fire to every city

But dont burn everybody

We like our wars how we like our sleep

Quiet and in perpetuity

Described with adjectives like beauty and deep

Kill what’s left of me is what the people say

They haven’t seen the sheet when it’s thrown

End the enormity

We were meant for better things, like simplicity

Tired and well bored

Curious and well-sourced by the independent

The street sings an empty song

With people demonstrating it beautifully

And I watch with my given view lingering in the background

The Mona Lisa fills her smile with backronyms

They hope to find everyone a cage

It’s no longer symbolism

The performance has been arranged

The cue topples the eight in the pocket

And we dont possess the strength to create a thing of faith

Great enough to stop it

A butterfly dreams too, but not for so long as I

I am anxious

And I am resigned

Enraged as I might

It isn’t that I wave

A doe can graze a lifetime without headlights

And I just wish we’d survived

The wars that all those futures hide

No mas

I spin ‘round the blender of the Argus

Trees flutter differently

Fluttering nonetheless

No mas

I want a warning if the water is coming for us

This place looks digested and purely fat

Oh, honey, but it isn't all that bad

You didn't say it was good either.

You didn’t have to say anything

A bird with a shot wing isn’t made enough room on the branch to sing

I’d sing for him

But I'm human

And the parables and fables dont use those funny things

No mas

Words fall cryptically into a cyclone

Busy bees siphon the oxygen and take it home

The waste is taxable

A scrap is still a meal, isn’t it?

Do with it like a charlatan

We’re the scientists of the future

The philosophers with poetry in our gardens

No mas

No more conversations

The vagrants and the excluded lepermen are the only seats left open

Everyone is waiting for something to happen

And my family is waiting for me

To be the someone they presumed me by twenty

Ceilings drip with drainage, and no one has the money to fix it

Leaky pipes in heaven

We fill chalices and wine glasses and make our own oblivion

And I dont always mind it

The gods kill with hands risen from the dirt

And devices of fire brewed by a thousand earths

Sent with regards from the church

No mas, unless the grass looks like it did

Like it did before

In imaginarium with the neighbor girl, sunburnt

Eyes blink

The chain link stands between us

With lawnchairs on either side like spaceships

Entangled in the stars, as a world peels apart right in the center of our yard

And we didn't seem so far that day

No mas, because the past is a moving car with windows

I see behind me, and I see it’s been a road running infinitely

The past doesn’t exist any longer

More a writer of fantasy who lives in my brain like a chimney sweep

Showing me things that will be covered once again by running feet

Time has shown its wisdom in the way in which it bleeds

It spills over me like sweat as I escape bad dreams

Artillery at the borders

Hunger in the city centre, and it crawls like a penitent

No mas, please return to sender

My pretty glimpse of sun curls into my shoulder and listens as I sigh

I think that I'd love for us to be parents to some genius daughters with coffee colored eyes

But I dont want them to tread this order

They’ll take food from somebody

Dining in a home that’s ostesibly gaudy

I fear it’s no longer simple

We can’t just recreate fictions until they’re sweet again

A scrap is still a meal, right?

No mas

I’d like to have a moment before I talk

I learned just enough Spanish so that I could do so

No mas

Until I’ve seen something

Something believable

Anything that my eyes could confidently credit as a miracle

I dont do anything but look

And wait

I dont particularly enjoy the book

But I see it as a place with an end

One that could be happy

No mas

Until a day survives a tragedy

And I dont describe an ill-fitted anomaly

Until our babies walk a mile to the sea with smiles and pajamas from old blanket

Speaking of weird places like Texas

And their bed is in a home rich with potential

No mas

Until the Alps are covered with ocean

And all things are merely coincidental

Bashful and better learned than I

Certain and ply

After a changing of the guards

Hand-offs and briefs and such

I take a cigarette without lunch

My stomach sucks and plucks like an instrtument of service

And the moon takes a space as large as the sun

Curating a room to be damaged and stuffed

With inordinate courses of gluttonous fluff

And in moments like these, I find the actual moment itself

A gentle breeze, because it's the only word so fitting

Bathes the shell in which I bleed, with simplicity and scents of quiet age

Nothing is ever simple

But my chest moves expertly

Nose wrinkles shrewdly

And my eyes appear soft, curious again, like they used to be

Gladdest nights, I’m only here for the promises

Spell cast on a lonesome buoy bouncing youthfully in the striped horizon

To a slow dance on a perfect slant, floating the lake speckled with dock-lamps

I breathe because, every so often, it feels good

The stars look honest

Better than they should

I think they’ve forgotten their place

I think they’ve forgotten that we’re still in the fight

Better them than us

Their pretty lights trickle down from the overtown

With their lawns of clouds and waste clarifying on the way down

And I admire them

Because it’ll end like breakfast

Like a letter suggesting you vacate the premises

And then they’ll turn into colors brought up from the receptor working itself to death

I think that it’s pertinent these times catch up to us as we’re tripping over our awful wit

I reposition before one last glance

One last stitch in my hip

Utter bliss, I fear

With cracked lips spilling salt, I wet them and forget why I came

I’ll be here again

Before I’m out

“Lemon drop, pretty please, with sugar on top.”

Yes, a swift labotomy with a fatigued hand is a must

I’d love a thump on the temple for a detail in the plot

But only if you insist

Once a month

I do

And once a month passed like summer

Another time, it was a long minute

And then a year

And then it didn't

The time just carried itself without a shadow

And I stayed to fill out a little

As if that was the problem

I help people find god

And I help them cure themselves of one

I listen, but I do not talk

Ghosts in the building, some real, and some not

They spit politics with veneers that look like vampire teeth

Boasting of children they’ll never meet

And they always ask about me

How are the seasons?

Did you leave yet?

They dont ask if I'm in school anymore

But they ask where I went

And I tell them everywhere, except all those places I haven't been

Speaking Portuguese with the locals by accident

When I was thinking in English

Drying my feet off in the communal shower head while listening to Danzig

Dining under the universe's expanse, visible from the northernmost harbor

While the white waves reflect each other, tongue in cheek

Like they communicate behind us while we’re looking

I drink water for free from my hands

As I stare into the rocks that shimmer with sweat like an awesome abyss

I’ve seen a lot of people who look just like you

And in their mornings, they dress better

And when they rise, the view is much prettier

And we’d have conversations like these, but with a mind to chew and chew and release

And they ask

They ask me

You just graduated, then, yes?

Sure

If that's what you’d like of me, yes

Can I get you another before I leave?

My hands are smooth and pale

And time is gracious with me, slow and full

And I’ve left before

Many times and many more

And, Sir, I’d like to leave again, while the seat is still warm

Well, not much really

The spirit and fury

Holy and righteous concurrance with a hollow bullet

Natural curiosity, the body is quite a curious thing, isn’t it?

A little bit of this and that

A fine slab to behold, thick with such fat

Pleasantness and leisure on a warm, soaked balcony

Just before the day can crack

The present surroundings of incessant flattering

They like my hair and my feather-brimmed hat

Stealth found deep in the spirit and brain's gully

My elephant steps gently

A mother feeding babes with honey

Oh, and a tiger with major stripes

Like a general sending missiles that look the same as the ones from which we came

With a mind to flee before she was seen

She fell like a sunset

Like a video I’d seen

And a thunderstorm when she collapsed

Oh boy, you would’ve jumped right into my lap

Bill unloaded into his chair

Leaving behind him a veil of dust

With his hands clasped over his hat

Well, Bill, what will you do now?

After such a great kill

Bill grinned like a devil with a mouth made of silt and not tobacco

His mustache twirling into both nostrils

Well, I’ll hang her head above the door for the locals

And tomorrow

I’ll find another for my bungalow

Oil coating on the PFC

A bird that dances, but not to the tune he sings

And I sweat oceans when I think about the overhead

All I say anymore is that we can't afford it

You’re better off dead

That's something the worms must’ve said

I'm sure they get hungriest when we procrastinate

And I loiter anyway

Marching our boots together on treadmills with pictures painted ahead

Flexing modern movement like a gun

With pockets full of dreams that we nurse like whiskey

I exist in the snowglobe that god twists, then hands off to the empyrean

And sometimes it doesn't snow until spring

And when it comes, the lakes don’t freeze

Our symmetry is subjective if I check on it

So I rely on instinct more and more today

The towns persist as sinking rifts

And an earth root is followed by wire threads to an amorphous end

Cables and strings in backyards

Zapping the trees out of conformity

Branches low-hanging over disarrayed elements of the human sort

We breathe toxically because that's the way we bleed

Our greatest imitations have full bellies, and we are a concord in the shape of a fork

Pleased as we choke with our manners

Hopelessly bored

You’ll be dead before you’re heard

Robotics simulate kitchens

Contemporary laughter kills wisdom

And the artichokes eventually grow into humans

With real people emotions

And all that I can think of are the survivors of our daydreams

I make saffron rice with deli meat

And espresso in plastic

Just as it had to be

A crook with perfect chemistry

And a smile filled with teeth of many cavities