RED CLOUD
Objets d’art these Priuses
creeping ironically through rush hour,
a time to be alone with a thousand others
and my their our thoughts.
The radio begins to sizzle,
the last words I can make out are:
fistfight in the abyss.
The next story was going to be about
the awesome indifference of the dead-eyed
boy wonder before Congress.
The goal of his hot VR
is to kill dogs.
Please help me
reads the bumper sticker
on the pile of jelly melting in front of me
but I am trying to climb out
of a pinball machine that
keeps collapsing in on itself.
A red cloud hovers over the bridge
we always approach and never cross.
VOID LIFE (I)
I’m wearing my black leather jacket
and reading Void Magazine.
An ATM at the edge of a void
leads to an infinite line of ATMs
stretching through space-time.
A rose planted on the edge of a void
drifts into it one petal at a time, forever.
Beauty becomes a long red drip.
Vaping at the edge of a void
feels like being attacked by drones
made of nothing,
loosed by no one.
VOID LIFE (II)
All of us hands in pockets awkwardly hanging around the void
Occasionally spitting into the void for something to do
To fill all the no-moments
Affecting void-ish nonchalance
But really we are filled with ideas secrets wishes memories glittering like quartz
And every so often happiness like a massive trap door flopping open
Its booming echo dropping through all that emptiness
Is killing me
ZERO WOLVES
The melted forest
is full of light
and shopping lists
tired kids droop
over sticky carts
and roam through
a labyrinth of plastic
waiting to go home
through a fog
of fried meat
to where grown-ups smoke
their murmurs shimmer
and rise like heat
from the last black tree
when they go to bed
they finally dream
of lightning
fast internet
THE END
100 Hamlets line up to get stabbed.
100 Titus Andronicuses line up to get shot
so Rome or whatever
can stay strong.
Is there special providence in the fall
of a plate of spaghetti?
The deep pile of the world
holds its stains, its saints
out back getting stoned.
1,000,000 pietas dot the landscape.