gross thoughts

I sit here — a blank drawn, nothing quite

simply simply

pull the lids shut, blanketing

this individual driver like buckles like brushes

bruises and bundles of bundles of

laying here in this bed, wondering whether or not my conscious is impaired, insane, devoid of control. Where am I in a mass of people groping for a this and that and

the hair of someone's young

a gentle memory, when

everything else falls apart, an array of faces — all sterile.

Something like two hours later, it was nothing

but the same as the night past, a scandal,

a scheme, a heavily structured road to an end,

coming and going no longer a notion of life

they replaced his show

kayak… backpack… deal… great… hey woody

jack — network;

what if —— was a stripper?

Laughter seeping in from the hallway —— delightful meditation

untitled

Have become sand and before they the earth the grains of selves all before mine bury in astral confusion. Dust — other words piles under light rays lays soft and stacks heavy in bone. All met and always home.

a place

been

in these concrete bunkers,

living, yet trapped in a solid brick shell

living amongst a hundred or so

others

all tightly packed in this tower of compartments,

zones of solitude, connected by

hundreds of the same skinny white door.

only sitting here, in the

south

east

corner

where the sun is intercepted by the very lengths of stone which elevate us from the desolate streets, and my woodrose and my bonsai sit solemnly, everyday, waiting patiently for their meals,

only sitting here, where I fill the jar of earth with poisoned water, my woodrose crawling around, devoid of the strength necessary to stand tall and sway in the gentle breeze sweeping in through the cracked windows,

only sitting here, where I fade away into the confined abyss of this screen, this totalitarian microcosm which reels me in like heroin of no immediate repercussions, the effects of nearly two decades of radiating death absent until the daunting, mysterious, and elusive future.

Only sitting here do I realize that I'm stuck inside of a cell.

a cell of:

plywood and concrete and buckling hardwood

with presence of particle board and plastics

but the tendencies sleeping in empty whiskey bottles and forty ounce

totems

collected

dust

memories

dreams

2012 Collected Poems

Factory Years