"What have you been up to?" "Just working."

I become a stretch of road
I am six miles
I look futureward,
down my asphalt,
my traffic obscured by glints of sun

With my feet
I blot out patches of the pavement
back and forth, in paces,
until I walk
in the Alley of Shadow
upside down on the walls
same as the ceiling and floor

the day is weeping

If I close my eyes, and tilt my head back, and mouth the words, to a, dirge
I can pretend we are around a table in an afternoon, only if.
I can feel, only if, the sun, and I am breathing deep, and I am singing.

The day is weeping.

The arguments are less convincing. The sun drags behind it not a million colors-

all the colors. I feel, only if, in black and white, advice steeped in depression
era fancies. If I close my eyes, and tilt back my head--

The day is dead.

Such busyness is lead. It’s finished, waking up, walking out the door. It’s
finished. Reasons to believe that I could be wanted, for labor, for, labor,
to learn. If I’m not wanted, let me know.

The easier to let me go.

-- Figures

Let me pant a half breath’s worth of explanation.

Look,

I almost died.

Well I almost decided to almost die, look--

I was called for an audience with

the Dean of Students.

It was not even a semester in.

I wore black slacks

and an ironed, green, button-up shirt.

I wore heals.

I walked slowly.

I walked step step in

step step step out

step step in

step step step out--

Look,

let me just say

the second time

there were between 12 and 18 lacerations to the face

my

face

and both times

it was near finals. Look,

I tried, okay?

I worked hard.

I earned my admittance.

Let me explain,

there was a man

with wispy black hair

face down in a mound of foam that ran from his open mouth.

I had every ambition.
I stayed late, I woke early.

I cared, I tried,
I sought help
 
not once,
not three times.

I came back every week.
I came back every week.

I read, I educated myself,
I reached out, I attempted to educate others.

Look,

I believed in myself.
I did. I once did.

Hadn’t I earned this?

I believed in a meager but livable dream for myself.
Until, there was this man, see, he was

sitting outside the cafe with a discharge packet and these birds
and he kept turning his orange bottles in his hands--

I recognized the hatred and defeat on his face--

I nearly cried as he pitched full pints of water at the birds
and went back inside to refill the glass.

When my confidence evaporated under repeated lashings from the sun,

I looked to you,

and you let me down,
not because you wanted to,

because you were face down in a mound of foam that ran from your open mouth.

victitious

creamy peach

blotches

grumble and snort

beside me rolling over

rolling down

as of a canvas, in blotches

oil paints and it bleeds through the sheets

seeping down and soiling the mattress to the coils

like these

sand tan musics Sonoran

blank faced, mute mouthed

Syd Barrett style stare in flashes

striking in bolts at every vectors I am

in knowing and in knowing laughs

soaking through my whole and staining my body to the bones

as though

off white

irises

dilate at any other prospect but a lie

like lilacs laid pallid 

as of a drug induced sacrifice of surplus, anyway, goats

who are warm milk-machines

perforated for pleasures

who are

grazing

on auburn peaked mounds

swelling with the rain, swollen from the rain

that streaks across canvases such as these

pooling up in lakes of amber melted candle wax

stinking with the burn of a flesh offering

dripping hot

down the legs

of the bedframe

pooling up in the moat I made

around the bed as a mess on the floor

G.enerationalized A.pathy D.isorder

Having learned nothing I now sit alongside my status as a well-educated, highly-valued resource for many of the few giant-huge corporations that now control every facet of the living that produced my highly desirable status.

I clutch a plain mug of the coffee I have come to love over many nights holed up in darkish cafes further and further down the road from the expensive community I was made aware I was fortunate to have financed my way into.

When it comes to feeding myself I can zap a bowl of easy mac but I don't know how to plant tomatoes and when it comes to my own happiness I could write an analysis of ways I am likely to feel in a variety of situations and compare myself to other subjects real or hypothetical but I could not make a poem about what I am feeling now.

same same

same same

waves, the like,

like, and like,

same same

attachment to,

and to, and,

same same photographic present

memory like water, and like wind

seasons, sunsets, serpent skins

Brothers

Elder brother’s lullaby is keeping me awake.

When he stops singing,

younger brother’s weeping bleeds through the wall our bedrooms share.

It’s a nightmare

wrought in time, lost,

wasted in day-dreaming.

Terror never felt so pleasing.

A moment’s conquest comes at the long term cost.

Dear God, let me never dream, for younger brother’s sake.