The committee is ecstatic with your progress
but it must reaffirm: no good deed goes
unpunished. No righting goes unwronged.
There is peace to be had, but
in the committee’s eyes, it will not be yours.

Process your paperwork, please. Double-check
that you’ve used the proper letter-head.
We simply can not stand any botched numbers.
Else, the committee may move to have you
committed, at which point you’ll be
fully-qualified to sit.

The lids are heavy
caps and grates and tops and eye
and I can’t seem to compensate
i think. I can’t remember.
opened, closed, hard to lift and
shit I can’t get
shut-eye with this
racket. What’s that happening
beyond the tilted shades?
they’re hard to lift. and even if
I tried to twist I just
can’t seem to compensate
or lift up all these sewer grates
So at the least, I guess
there’ll be no hiding

Shorelines and skylines and
star-lines (the ship kind)
and nothing ever seems to cross
or come together, grand and
expansive as it/they is/are,
no touch or tender caress between them.

Infinities, it seems.
Never clashing, only extending
everywhere and nowhere, like
all infinities must.
And here we are as specks.
And here we are as passers-by.
And we’ll have none of it.
And baby, we’ll have it all.

Don’t you hate that feeling
as a blister is building
just below the protective layers
of leather and cotton and
you know the damn thing is going
to pop tomorrow, or maybe
the next day, but the point is
it’s going to fucking pop.

The juice will be everywhere
but more than that, the skin
beneath the skin is exposed,
when things like this happen,
and everything stings that much more.

Well, I can feel a blister rising
and while there may not be -much-
that I can do, at the very least
I’ll have to ask you to leave.

And the brains are left to rot
up on the table, and under the windows,
and honey I think you
left some on the bed

There’s a mess in the dresser
from the paint you spilled
so I think you ruined everything

I’ll scrape the brains tomorrow
and scrub the hardwoods
and maybe clean the sheets
but the paint’s not coming off.
No, I think you ruined everything.

There was man I never knew,
spoke to me when last we met
he had a nearly empty bottle
and a grin I won’t forget.
He tossed a newspaper aside
and lit another cigarette
before he told me to sit down
so he could try and learn me yet.

He said,

I think, therefore I drink
until I can’t think anymore
and I stack cans on the table
’till I end up on the floor.
Well all this time we spend together,
I can’t fathom what it’s for
so get all your shit together,
once you’re out I’ll lock the door

when I said I hadn’t known him
he replied that I was dumb.
He knew exactly where I’d been
and knew where I was coming from.
Then he made a sidelong motion
toward the doorway with his thumb
and swore, he’d never talk to me again
and neither, to his son

so I digressed and I departed
heading south, as was my plan,
wondering what I had just witnessed,
if I’d understood that man.
did he need those empty bottles?
why’d he keep all of those cans?
was he stacking them in towers
just like castles made of sand?

All the details swirled about me
but soon enough I did not fret,
for all the strange things that I’d heard
had dripped away like summer’s sweat
and as I traveled ever southward
that man was nothing, you can bet,
but a name I can’t remember
and a grin I won’t forget

a clicking sound in the distance gets louder
and louder and louder and all it is is clicking
but it does not seem to approach, only amplify,
so do we worry?

It is not, so far, tank tracks or mercenaries.
Not so far a civil, world, or cold sort of war.
However do we prepare?

Do we load the guns and arm the children?
Do we teach the women to fend for themselves?
How sharp are our teeth, really?
How long our claws?

And the clicking is louder, over treetop
and rooftop and blacktop and everything
but louder, never closer. Do we worry?

I have two locks on my front door, and
three on the back. I have two locks
and a door between it and I.
I have not a fear in the world.

But God and Everything, I worry.

And the earth has no idea where it will sleep you,
you must find that place yourself.
Perhaps you will be lucky to dig a hole
beneath a great apple tree, and there
you can sup and rest and live your life exactly.

Perhaps there are no trees left, or
no trees worth digging under. Perhaps the
apples are hard-fought and bruised in the end
beside, so that oranges would be the better bet.
Where does one sleep when the Earth
does not know where to sleep them?

We spoke twice today.
I feel you didn’t listen.
I didn’t have much to say
so I guess you didn’t miss much
but I missed you,
every day this year.
A shame, a god damn shame
but I hope to never drop a tear
at least not in your name again,
but hope is only that
and sometimes that’s just not enough
and it’s a shame, a god damn shame
but here I am and acting tough
at least, I am
until the moment passes.

The cool fresh air and things roll easily
down every and any city street, except
for the ones near the reclamation center,
then the smell of fried chicken is
all you can really taste as you’re
driving.

There is a constant push for more air
escaping the stench, avoiding the
creeping choking terror that haunts
the East Side.

There is some respite, though,
with that cooking chicken. And
some days you can
even smell the fish.

Old records and the
sweet fresh air outside
the danker atmospheres
found elsewhere.
And late we consume
too late we consume
teeth ripping in to the
fleshy parts of you
and I and
you mostly.

These places are few and far between
and between what? and oh so few and
I can never find the roads to follow,
and the darts I’ve thrown at my map
always bounce off, or stick in to walls
and now where do you go when even
the most basic system seems to fail you?

But I am not discouraged.

I will draw a line with a big fat black
permanent marker, from the dot that
says ‘you are here’ to the dart that
says nothing, but sticks about six inches
from the edge of my map. I will cross-
reference, and from there, I’ll book my flight
to whatever part of China I’m bound for.

At least I hope it’s China,
and not the South China Sea.

Cue cool breeze cutting
through the damp clothes and
knocking hats to flying
and men to running after
hats
and cue the lightening
just before the thunder in
the distance, and yet
always moving closer
to the running and the
flying and the cueing
and the cussing and then
scene

rain comes slowly
regardless of it’s speed.
It always sweeps so
deliberately, so
absolutely over
any piece of land
that it so chooses.

But it is the rain.
It will dampen and
drench and muddy
and make difficult to drive
but it is the rain
and only fools
can drown in it.

There is a monster in my bedroom
locked there every morning until
every evening when I let him free.

He is all the things I did not do
and every ‘I forgot’ and ‘maybe tomorrow’
and ‘I’ll find time this Saturday’
and he is a monster.

Thank goodness I have made
to lock him up each day, or
surely he’d have killed me.
He’d kill us all, I’m sure.

But he has not breached
my sturdy bedroom lock,
nor has he made to open
one of the many windows
(and just as well, for
ground-floor is not so
great a leap).

He is a monster, and he is
locked in my bedroom every
morning until every evening
when I let him free.

Rasputin stares at the cold cold ground
and Rasputin walks around
with a sword in his walkingstick
and a bottle-opener in his bible
Rasputin walks around on the ground

Rasputin cast a spell on his stereo
and Rasputin never lets a record spin
but he listens patiently
for the music he would like to see
Rasputin walks around on the ground

The mood gets heavier
just as the curtains close
on the window to the world,
blocking and blurring the
big back yard of ours
by vision only.

The rodents sleep deep
and underground, while
the dogs and deer and things
roam and wander overland,
looking up now and then
at the great birds flying.

But the mood is the important thing,
and I can hardly lift it
when those curtains are shut.
no, I can hardly make
anything better
inside.

It all worked out so perfectly
with the storm lifting
the fever breaking
the cough enduring
the drizzle coming now-and-then
with just enough body aches
and mud-puddles to know
that what had happened
had happened, and
we can’t change the past
but we can better the future.
Except when it comes to
bad weather and
flu viruses.

I crack my bones
but do not grind them
as I have no need for bread;
my sustenance is
the particulate
that flutters through the air,
from all the grinding bones
scattered about.

No, I do not grind my bones.
But Surely, you can hear them crack

I don’t have to hear the footsteps
to see the footprints
planted so firmly in the
thick orange sand.

Odds are I will not hear them
anyway, what with
the winds always blowing
and the constant breath
of my lungs moving
trying to keep up
with the beating
of the sun.

The footprints, though,
the give you right away.