tiny diamonds in fire
you could never grab them,
though
and hang them ’round your neck
no
they disappear too quickly
to keep and show your friends.

“the violently shaking house”
“the undoer”
“corn syrup baby”
“i wish i could eat different food”

when i read through, i remember
the police laughing
“this house doesn’t shake so bad”
they said
he must’ve not had the spirit for it

everyone thought

when i read through, i remember
how he kept repeating
“i wish i could write different stuff”
“everybody wants to read different stuff
but this is all i feel”

and i wonder what happened
to the corn syrup baby
growing in a stagnant puddle in his shower
i wonder what came from that cesspool
if it killed him or if he killed it
if so he didn’t say so
in his journals.

i am getting better sleep than you
and i will tell you why
because man has split the atom
but you can’t wake up on time.

a gazelle in a shopping mall
eventually, ragged from stress
finds a common state where
the mad feels ordinary
before it’s eyes glaze over
and it gets washed away in a river
of people.

what parts of him left strewn
accross the ground
looked like spares
and that put together
they felt unique and
part of a whole and
where significance was
placed there was no
longer
you could see
naught but
extra

but spare

skin,
arms,
period.

there was a chill in the air
sweeping in from the cities
where all of the breathing
organs felt best
and prime
but could’ve had just numbers
and definitions attatched like one
and two or lung or liver
but they had names
and had for moments the light
of interest shined upon them
and they all swelled and
burst and felt significant
and unique

for they had not yet felt
the chill come sweeping in
from the cities,
and the worms crawl around
them and the totality
of being a spare
or an extra
or skin
period.

a man’s heart is such a worthless thing
that the gutters would give them back
so lowly i feel to your porcelain skin
so lowly that my heart swims with the rest

pity goes, however
to those still encased
in grinning ribcages
gaps from bone to bone
all naive and waiting to
tumble down and go for that
long, cold swim

a man’s heart is such a worthless thing
it has no corporate support
and the porcelain displays reflect
light onto the gutters in the daytime

in your locked bedroom closet
where scientists can’t study
old cans of coca-cola
high fructose corn syrup
giving life to what undoes you

when you’re not quite finished
but ready to give up
crack the door, another can
more soldiers for the civil war
the looming corn syrup rebellion

when they found your body
green organic mass about
closet door cracked slightly
scientists baffled over your lifelessness
and your terrible smelling closet

and i could say what ate you
what the scientists don’t know
what the neighborhood watch don’t know
what sugary greenness was growing
if words could move you now.

He was teaching you to walk
and you got up to run
away you went
looking and walking anew
seeing with untrained eyes
touching with shallow
translucent
skin

then you tried to speak to me
and though i understood your sounds
and their order
i felt the shortness of breath
behind every syllable
and i realized
that you can’t even breathe right

and here you are trying to talk to me.

at times my mind feels akin to driftwood
and good words like the tide
washing up the sand to touch me
alas, again, not today.

the world-famous guitar extrordinaire
played some hendrix upon a mexican
stratocaster
oh lord
he was so good
i could barely tell
i thought those songs were his

and neither of us wanted to tell
the secrets that were so painfully
clear

that he was high on crack cocaine
and that we both felt like the
weather outside

and he’d never been world-famous
either

and i wanted to just go away

we wished otherwise
like the people driving down cork street
and all the people in the hardings
and at the day-cares
and everywhere

somewhere in each tune he changed it a bit
original, i thought
unrecorded, too

he played on, and on
la la la
and it rained outside.

you’d not want a black soul like mine
which would suck the color from the
dandelion fields who breath only for sun.
and on the days when children’s laughter
sounds like a trainwreck approaching.

you’d sit and say “let there be nothing
but which i approve” and dig yourself
a hole somewhere out in the woods.
and in there it would be warm
even during the coldest hours
emanating enough heat for just you.

i won’t tell you how to use your legs
i will let you lie, and sip my drink
for i’m a man who can describe himself
and my morality borders so closely the line
of acceptability that i’m interesting
and someone who can walk will come and sit
next to me and sip delicately on their drink
in tandem and we’ll sit far above the floor.

i will discuss with them.
and my compatriots.
dying.