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Ginnesburg is not dead, I think.

 

A sad sad sad sign of the times:

he is writing email titles

for the smut peddlers

 

Strange lines, soaring lines,

devised to sweet talk their way

past my firewalls:

 

 Sperm anchorer cloaked at night

train swims into the tunnel too small

running leapfrogs sheepdogs

argot orb midnight juggler dance

 

There are lessons in this that I quite like.

Poetry is everywhere

Inescapeable.

In the last place it has any right to be.

 

Like a weed. Or a nun. Or a two year old.

 

I am, however, put off.

By the way it has been finally spelled out,

The mouse has let the cat out of the bag:

 

Sex lies one click beneath our words. 

Under

Bits of scalp

And lumps of flesh

Mar the reflective chrome.

 

The jolly orange-yellow

Of the long body is dented.

And strained purple-brown.

 

This

Is the bus

Which people

Are thrown under.

 

It is, of course,

An abstraction construct metaphor.

 

But nontheless.

The driver,

With his mediocre hygiene habbits…

Grins, and shows his almost white teeth.

 

As someone

Lets you down,

Turns there back,

Or stabs you there…

 

As the wheels approach

You try to not wonder what the sound of your skull being squashed will make.

Instead, your last reflection:

 

It’d be so much easier,

If you’d been simply

Hung out to dry.

Early Morning Alchemy

With a twist of my wrist

I will start that water flowing.

The sink is a magical river.

 

It will come splashing in the carafe

and though my eyes aren’t opened yet

but I know the correct volume by feel.

 

The machine drinks the water all the way up

With a quiet Gurgle gurgle swallow.

it settles in the tank.

 

I Cross the kitchen again,

 it’s extra-long in the early-morning:

I reach the fridge.  Open the top door.

 

There is the blast of cold from the freezer;

grounds are not where they are supposed to be.

I swear to myself in the dark empty morning.

Before uncovering them behind the broccoli.

 

Return to the empty table before the machine.

My silver scoop is a holy object.

Filling the filter is a sacred act.

 

I depress the button.

Red light behind it fills my eyeballs

in the predawn dusk.

 

Listen? Did you hear that.

Grumblings, snorts, almost.

A whisky-swoosh sound,

the first drips, down, down, down.

They are not just water anymore.

 

Maybe this day will be worth it after all.

The mug is a chalice in my hand?

How it did it even get there?

I pour it full before it the coffee done.

Somebody will complain, later

about the drops that burned on the plate below.

 

Just a splash of cream,

then the sugar atop:

The house is so silent it makes a sound like radio station static

the granules penetrate the liquid’s surface tension.

 

I sip it,

almost too-hot, perfect.

and I am transformed.

A Transfiguration

 

A transfiguration 

She felt the happenings deep inside of her;

Not a change but something deeper.

 

She felt lighter in a way that no scale would recognize

A sort-of evaporation.

She was turning away from who she was

into only

everyone’s idea of who she was.

 

If you could only see

the way her eyes would light up with the hope of that completion

You’d feel sad with me.

 

But atleast we would know.

No one else would know.

They would all still see her feel her touch her taste her

and no one had ever heard her, anyway, so what difference would there be?

 

She would go on, fulfilling everyone’s expectations

forever.

Perhaps it is a mercy that there’d be nothing left of herself

to know that she should have had so much more.

 

 

I, this crowd

I, this crowd

Whose legion is not demons

But ghosts

Ghosts made in my mind

They’ve traveled foreward in time.

 

I, this crowd.

I carry the weights

I am a pathchworl thing.

A frankenstien thing.

A summation:

 

I, this crowd.

Who I am

Is not who I was

And who I was

Is foreverwithme

 

I, this crowd

The boysmenchildren-crowd

Whisperwhisperwhisper.

 

I, this crowd

Except it is like this

Whisperwhisper whisper

Quiet-loud, so quiet-loud

Sometimes it drowns out

Screams   Screams     Screams

 

I, this crowd

Except it is like this:

Screams   Screams     Screams  Screams   Screams     Screams

 

 

I this crowd

Not me,

It is not me that screams

(except that it is They are me now.)

They were once everyone else.

But when you speak-yell-beg-scream

Screams  Screams   Screams     Screams

They keep going, echos made alive

 

I, this crowd.

The screams kept going echoes made alive and grew screamers.

 

And I, this crowd

This crowd Screams  Screams   Screams     Screams whisper

I can not hear myself

There is no peace there is know peace

I can not hear myself

 

I, this crowd

Lost and alone and the scream and the whisper (whisper whisper whisper)

I have this dream

That I will walk away

 

I will leave this crowd

To whisper, to scream

Among themselves

A bag full of Crickets

Was the cruelty accidental? 

To those little things it does not matter.

Some minimum wage slave hung it up here

in front of the lizard tanks.

 

The plodding grey thing at least looks happy.

Its tongue moves like it has a life of it’s own…

Waving a menacing hello

through the glass

 

through the clear plastic.

I wonder how long they’ve been locked in this tableau,

A crowd contemplating their fate

A lizard contemplated his supper…

 

It seems to have been a while.

Things are mostly now a stale mate.

The yellow gray creature stands here in the corner

looking both bored and eager.

 

Dozens of little bugs have resigned themselves.

They’ve settled into a gross pile of wings eyes legs shells

except for this one alone, away,

Legs moving legs moving legs moving

 

finding purchase impossibly in the smooth plastic

He runs like he were actually putting space between himself

and his predator.

I want to be that cricket.