Atomic.

Magnificent

bald pate a crown proudly

worn with mouthfuls

of chestnuts &

an electrodermal audit

already scheduled

for Wednesday after

next.  Pack up

the syllabus & run

directly to the post office.

Your creepshow

is better than my

autobiography but

just as sanguine.

Take a breather

if you must enter

the plains of

spelter the infernal

rain, internal me

a bittersweet

meatman.  One

cannot love

another until

one expels the inner

chili-flavored ramen

noodles bought

for a dollar at the bodega

with the garlic

clove and

the horseshoe hung

for luck beside

the Geiger

counter

which is the only thing

in your life

that seems to be

increasing.

Traveler.

Hey buddy, how about

a reblog?  After

all, I slogged through

your memoirs.  If you’re

reading this, friend, please

comment with your thoughts

on sweetened tea.  Hey

lady, how about recruiting me

to row crew for USC?  I’d probably

rock the boat with my

unnecessary ballast, but such

is the fate of one given

to excessive displays of

martial prowess.  I have leveraged

my dingoes.  I am

effective; I am a team player,

especially when the rest of the team

is dead.  I run the numbers

like bulls, gored on their

large, firm horns.  I am an influencer

insofar as I compel folks

to go home & hug their children.

I believe I would be a fantastic addition

to your marketing stable. I have memes;

the memes are funny & they

use that special font & the two

pica outlining.  I will take to the streets

with my gang

of green ideas.  I am the God of

Fudge.  

Cream of Traffic

It’s everything

you ever

wanted.

Which is to say

nothing.  
If you have a job

you love

you’ll die

& so will the other motherfuckers

trapped under this tarp.

In 1983 burning skeletons

vaporized on the TV

while a man

hid behind his car.

Fuck your car

said a man;

nuclear annihilation

is better than

a job you love.

I love my car

like it was

somebody

else’s car catching fire

in the middle of the Walt

Whitman Bridge.  There is something

to be said for trying something

new.  Some things are better

left burning.  Some

new burns are better

than old wounds. A laser

cauterizes its own

amputation.

Nobody is stuck

in here with me.

I’m sticking

to my story

& also the seat,

which is fine.  Everything

is fine & I shall not

want except

for one more.

Brazen Days, Blighted Nights.

No knock.  Just

shove. No thought.

Just crush the bawling obstacles

raising

fists at your mask.  Brace

for tasks less savory

for tasks less sweet

than the lances of rain that fall

into the potholes

in the drive.

Brass monks shuffle

along the battlements.

We can’t eat

this hawk because

it has already eaten

us.

The Nose, the Petals of Zinc, the Goat at the Door

Armoire casts a shadow tho

there is no light in the room;

in a ward with no doorknobs

like a system of ducts

in the body without organs

or synths; they love me;

they love everyone; they love

the poop that runs

like blood beneath the skin

with which their nieces

cursed them, & the dermis

is also made of poop

as is the entire

mortal foil-

wrapped burrito of the mind

in the microwave of

the known universe.  

Where everyone knows

you’re nameless

like a disease waiting

under Antarctican ice

hoping one day to partially

thaw: still lukewarm

in the middle but

toxic at the edges

due to decades of neglect.

A late bloom

of noxious algae. Take

what you can get

to go.

Denim & Oxblood

Hey man I found a secret thing

    on the cusp

of the woozy spring.  I need your help

to kill myself with righteous aplomb

            or else find

the damsel in this dress

that hangs there like the sky out behind

    the haunted old shithouse on the outskirts

on prom nite with the rain coming down

in black sheets

while the black bluebells peal

with a zeal reserved for martyrs just before

the torch hits kindling. You’re kind of cute,

really, bumming a light from our chaperone

with the Parliament already wet

on your lips.  Warm enough now

to wind our way down toward the abandoned

            tracks,

where someone else has written your name

in the bark of an old elm with a palette knife;

    you’ve bartered your soul

for the money for art school.  Bully

    for you, the soul

is nothing but a cheap trick, something to believe

    that your body is naught

but a gauge of the relative hostility

    of your surroundings.  You are in danger

down by the water

with the plastic bags & the reckoned

poison dart frogs; the angry fauna

wear their rage as Rorschach stains, just so

you wear those in your steel toes & the

Sharpie-scrawled Venom across your back.

    Three norns in their pulchritude

lead you further into the swamp.

    He came away

    like the one before & the one before

came back wrong.  The ground

is sour down there.  Blue eyes,

    they holler.  Firelight, it swelters

& cleansed the map shifting

patternless & paddling without

a rudder.

One

Think of it

as a gift: this slip

& fall laid you up

for months. Think

of the stack of books,

the Netflix you’ve

yet to binge. Watch

the crack in the wall seep

toward the crack

in the floor

forevermore. You’ve been

cast as the victim,

the one lucky enough

to’ve been given

this amber bottle filled

with pills.

One pill makes you

old & the rest make you

older still until

you are too dense

to exist, a singularity

that plummets through

the veil between this world

& the one you imagined

waited at the end

of the tunnel filled

with every gift you wanted

but never got, empty

cardboard boxes

wrapped in festive paper

existing only

to cushion your fall.