Dream of the Glistening City in the Distance

There were all of these once unnoticed vericose veins across my stomach and they were bleeding profusely while we exited the house that may or may not have been in Europe so I squeezed out my stomach like a wet gym towel and the sky outside was black with heavy clouds but there was a glistening high-definition purple city off in the distance, bursting through the air, Chicago maybe, and suddenly the pine trees were on fire, and the ground was flooded, and Zoe was gone, no there she was, in a cheap boat docked by the back porch, sleeping.

Where was there to go? I went inside and tried to keep this giant squishy Yoda head in the living room bookshelf from sliding but the thing wouldn’t stay still, and even though I thought the shelf was level this squishy head, which belonged to Mila’s father, wouldn’t sit still. I just shut the glass door and let it be.

Michael Jackson

They all go from geniuses to freaks
emerging from brilliant white closets
to faces painted white
they all go from geniuses to freaks

They pop out of nowhere like stray bubbles
and linger like steel memories around our heads
always there to hold and caress
when we need to feed, to talk about the others
stray bubbles shot from an imaginary flesh cannon

They recklessly dangle their babies from balconies
and dance on limousines at their own child molestation trials
and under the knife they squeeze themselves tight
allowing their souls to recklessly dangle

They die and drop from the stratosphere
to a thud that shakes the earth
and a huge splash of teardrop
as they drop straight from the stratosphere

Fat Jimmy

There’s a guy leaning up against the streetlamp
smoking a blue cigarette and sporting a brown fedora
looking directly at me as if he knew me from somewhere
some annoyed questions projecting ripples from his aging brow
and I could sense his wavering agitation
like he knew me but his memory was failing him

There’s this panic attack I’m having- I say to him
and he just stares at me skeptically smoking that blue square
do you work for Fat Jimmy? he asks in a lazy drawl

Who the hell is Fat Jimmy- I think
watching his fedora unfold into a small spotted hawk
and the street peel away like a candy wrapper
revealing my fizzling brain underneath the whole block
neighborhood town state country earth universe
infinitely asleep
graciously awake

Insides Out

You know
sometimes you live out your nightmares
and the whole thing seems unreal
because it is very, very real
like the time I had a hole in my head
just below and behind my left ear
and with supernatural ability I peered into the hole
at my juicy, fizzling brain
and with a detached finger I massaged the tunnel of bone
that dipped for a foot until it reached that gelatinous thing
and I was so, so fascinated
and so terribly disgusted
and so damned mystified
by the hole

You know
they really can put holes into you
and I’m shirtless looking down at my abdomen
at a little red flower
glistening under the florescent bulbs in my bathroom
and I’m suddenly remembering the dreams
about the bewildering holes
as if I had them last night
and the worst part of me wonders what it would feel like
to gently insert my finger into the stoma
and feel around a bit
but I just don’t seem to have the will
or sense of in-dream security
to do it

For this is very, very real.

Stoma

Using a cosmic mail-order fillet knife
they ran off with my sigmoid colon
and my hard drive

One bitter week
where the sun blasted orange through the blinds
and I couldn’t see the rays even if I asked politely

They took away the moon craters
infesting my only organic dumpster
and used twenty one metal staples to hide the evidence

I tried to tell the story
but the words wouldn’t boot

Every letter I produced for years
gone
the Whooshay snatched his belongings
and sizzled out through the electric doorway

It’s tempting to talk to myself
or converse with the alien poking his meaty head
out of the left side of my abdomen
instead I just cover him with a solid plastic bag
and wait for him to cough up the truth

I ask them
what are you trying to tell me?
and they never answer
except the with the occasional nod of the head
and shuffle of the loafers
out of the room

A Noose of Injection Molded Plastic

He trudged home from work
and stuffed his magic under the couch
where soon a moldy rainbow would emerge
spreading cocaine and kool-aid sprinkles
across the avocado shag carpet

He sat there under the influence of darvocet dreams
lacing together words with boogers and spit
while his children experimented with motion sensors
and his wife re-invented herself in lavender dresses

He watched supermarkets explode in pink flames
vanity dolls and mini plastic pets impaling innocent people
and he pissed cheap coffee into a tin can and sipped it intently
thinking: If I punish myself today
there will be no room for anybody else to hurt me tomorrow

He slapped the top of the television when it flickered
and marveled as the hounds ran off with the rabbit ears
while gently through the digital fuzz a bearded mouth
threatened to kill him and his family in the name of God

He took his money and ripped it with geometric precision
stuffing tiny shreds of green into his ears and nose and mouth
eventually forgetting to breathe before they could get to him
bursting at the seams with cash and sucralose residue

Meta-Loaf

You found salvation deep within a goldenrod oven
they recited prayers at four hundred degrees
they sprinkled savory things over your sick body
and injected you with aloe and sour milk

You baked reverentially with ketchup slathered over your brain

They smiled as your neurons sizzled
your brain stem twitched
and your skin peeled back like onion on a baked sidewalk

You look so delicious in a recession era
when the robots fail and all we have left
is Mother in a red checkered apron
beaming a transcendental white smile
as she carries you to a table made of clouds

The Golden Cough

There’s a bottom, see
we’re spiraling in a digital way
toward the apocalypse

I never believed in a new age
but my heart is warm and clicking, see
Tom Brokaw on the television
in glistening high definition

He’s saying to us:
“Watch out fuckers
PEANUT BUTTER IS COMING FOR YOU”

The plant next door is moldy
with rust swimming up the smokestacks
and rats setting up shop, see
them against silhouettes of robot welders

Mountains of poly-soda bottles
shed red white and blue prisms, see
them blanket the horizon
with caffeinated mystical sparkles

Somebody is yelling RUN! under the purple jello sea
and we fear the marrow-terrorists
who strike from within
and we doubt the validity of our good credit
as our homes go up in blue flames

There’s a line outside of haggard men
slouching and ruffling through the valley
sometimes turning back and taking stock once more
of the monumental decomposing minivan
they once helped build in a rainy century

Doolittle

Here comes the snow
he says leaning forward the snow is
relentless
it even blows the huge Japanese chimes
on the balcony the ones that scare the neighbors
into thinking
someone is stalking them in their dreams

singing where is my mind
wheeeeere is my mind
dressed like a monk
all ochre and maroon and wind horse energy

the snow’s gonna stick this time he says
stick all winter
and metamorphitall into piss colored slush
that sticks to the road your car and your eye
and it won’t go away until April
so until then he says best to hunker down
and let your brain go gush
see it in the ice water it’s swimming

Kali After Lunch

That’s just beautiful
she comments smoke flipping from her mouth
beading up in her greasy brown hair the sun
breaking waves over her cheekbones the dead rabbit
slowing being taken away by a squadron of ants
amazing us both in their mindless efficiency

We’re staring down from the balcony
and she wonders aloud why such a grisly scene captivates
when in our electric souls we fear death and avoid it
at all possible cost

I can’t help but imagine butterflies bumbling upwards
from a kettle of molten iron swinging gently above
the most beautiful quilt conceivable
laced with neon greens and reds on a landscape of blue drizzle
little drips of silver destruction searing holes
and falling into a black infinite mess

And as the ants move along the rabbit becomes something
we can’t identify a mess of bones and fur and blood
she lights another cigarette and sighs
concluding something between her green eyes that
she wishes not to share