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Lounge Wear

Exposed by

Loungers present their hips for suicide.

Typical Americana, lawn furniture

Censors flesh in stripes

And organizes a sunburn

To trail where restrictions flourish.

Different architecture disguises

Front of the house aspirations.

Lawn gnomes posed in angry side-eye.

Doormats covered with generic clever comments.

Live.

Laugh.

And love. Belongs above the oven,

For Hell must be quite the BBQ.

At the bus stop, weeds align the sidewalk cracks

And transfer their seeds to laborers

Solidifying the plant’s doom,

By walking on

And getting to

Where they’re going.

The

Sun

Sets and projects

Its purple prison walls

And promises to be humanity’s prisoner

Until boredom becomes the norm.

Shadow breaks as the bus drives away

Everyone is left to stare at their phones

As if they had nowhere else to look.

Trash Bags forgotten at the Bus Stop

The Bereaved were outfitted

In their standard black costumes and stood before the soldiers

Who bordered the Officer’s casket in Red, White & Blue.

A hot mic captured the priest, presiding over the funeral,

Take a drink from his water bottle and announce, “BLECH!

That tastes like it came from the tap.”

The soldiers ignored the priest.

They appeared to ignore everyone

Except their orders.

Rifle tips balanced along their clavicles and the priest

Mentioned,

“Your gestures remind me of the Signs of the Cross.”

He cracked his knuckles.

“I don’t think that’s an accident.”

As a nation,

we struggle with domestic politics.

As an Empire,

it’s much easier

to impose your will

under the guise of liberty.

2 ½.

I was walking downtown when a gnat flew into my eye.

I blinked and killed it.

Re-dux: Savior Complex

Ajax compensated for his loneliness by posturing his lips to Ohm in silence.

Boredom enticed him to lapp his tongue and taste the bourbon smell

emitting from his voice.

Ohm. He began, simplified his thoughts and transcribed them to a social media post.

Establishing Ajax’s intoxication.

Roll on Snare. Illuminate the laughter sign.

Life becomes to anticipate chaos.

Saving face to form comb-overs

Stealing a Cheshire grin to reflect missing follicles

In shop windows.

Life weaponizes becoming.

Hallucinations elicit memories

And place familiar faces atop homeless

Quadrpeds.

Ajax stands in line at the bank, watches the female teller

Activate her customer service training.

Which emphasized pity disguised as tolerance

To placate lonely white males,

Confusing remuneration for affection.

Taking Last Names,

Replacing them with a savior complex.

Peasants belong to the same life

As royalty

And mutts

And Audrey Hephburn

And suicide by Ajax.

blood as life

intrigues the loud-mouth. blink before the scope

eyeing reel to reel

cellular silence.

Mama bird utilizes his crown

for her nest. Perches an egg

Against the King’s thorn.

Winds filter through railings

Styled to praise

Art-deco fixtures.

Waves as moments

In time. In our time.

A willingness to explore

Takes the Robin’s egg

To the sidewalk below.

Baby blue to cataracts gray.

Justice would’ve found the shell useless

After human touch anyway.

Such anti-Faustian routines

Demonstrate why Protoplasm

Cracked under its own assurance.

To explain how life fails

In describing itself.

Edges for Disco Dancing

I found a mirror, proceeded to hold it like a plot device

And marched the hallway to reflect characters.

The innocent acknowledged their bodies

With glances they placed on teachers too.

A charlatan crossed their presence

Beyond the mirror’s glass,

By pausing below the light shade

Dirty with dead insects and dust,

Casting their shadow

To the golden frame.

I dipped the front end

Underneath the peak of my door jamb

And hung the mirror

Above an end table

Where I keep loose change.

Pounds

And

Pounds

And

Pounds

Mingle with uneven spaces

Like constellations discovering pockets

To hide their truth,

Or all of Michigan’s bridges empty

Except for concrete and what else

I refuse to know.

simple enough.

He lifted his elbow off the car window jamb,

Symmetrical creases trailed his forearm in testament to self-flagellation.

Worshipping open air

For lungs

And empire opportunities

For insects.

She barricaded her chest with an argyle sweater vest.

Lint and dandruff appeared visible in the navy blue squares,

But failed in recognition atop the yellow squares.

The disappearance reminded her of driving on county roads

From the city to farmland,

Where the stars seem to appear out of nowhere.

He opens her window.

Air rushes into the cluttered space and steals a white string

From off her left shoulder. It circulates inside a cyclone

Before her eyes

And scoots out the window,

Taken by the wind.

Immediate threats congregate in dirt piles, organized to make room

For parking lots. Halting entry to Nature’s back-door slumber party.

Disregard innuendos. These are to be retired and buried where vet

Clinics hide the corpses of Family Pets and roadkill.

Around Town and the Moon Too

Don’t trust poetic types who falsify pulse as weakness.

Why situate dance with heartbeats?

Investigate when the cracked sidewalk hosts a pulse on its ledge.

Toenails singing like tap-plates and the pain is there to remind them of death.

Skip that balance to an ordinary sandwich shop

Where extraordinary descriptions of soul splendor are standard for wage earners on lunch break.

Think:

A whale bragging about swimming to an ant drowning in toilet water.

Consciousness functions without purpose during slumber.

I often dream like a web-app streaming only commercials.

Lunch hour ends and everyone is almost home,

But it’s the work hour where a minute feels like an eternity

And wage earners stare past the forest of foreheads to the automatic double doors that refuse to open for an elderly woman pushing a cart full of groceries weighing more than her and they signal to her telepathically,

“We’re all voiceless, helpless and trapped under bright lights.”

late stage capitalism’s midwestern farm

cell tower stranded in the grass plains

stands erect

before a pink sunset as chemtrails style capital I

Up high

In the sky

cows alert the farm about strangers

by announcing the only word in their lexicon

warning of

the

amish

careening with traffic

in their horse and carriage

who ignore the fantasies

late stage capitalism

gifted to contemporary oath keepers

but there’s no place

amazon won’t deliver to

including dirt roads

taking on mud qualities

during dirty spring

leading to americans

living behind signs

reading

no trespassing

seclusion breeds contempt

for oneself

and

their lonely offspring

created the internet

it’s simple out there

because it has to be

Regurgitated Splendor

Floor dressed in red paint chips; the same color

Scores toe prints lounging on passage to further their destiny.

Water bottle is empty.

Stepped on and it erupted a sound, unique to plastic crinkling.

Reality bargains with images instilled along airwaves,

Deteriorating molecules to petals breaking

Off the stems.

Rain-drops.

Confetti.

Hubris displaced the stars, and consequently created life from their remnants.

Sleeping galaxies purported their dreams to fill up blank consciousness, streamlined

Into living rooms.

We march over waking life

And watch

Chimeras pose

As excuses

For empire.

A Term for the Second Coming

Centuries turn and a feline

Will hide behind the couch before they die.

A fly borrows spaces habituated by glaring screens

To upset normal procedures

Turning over

Like insect eyes. His face

And her smile

Sought common ground

To tread the turn over

Greeting them

Like traffic noise. Together they entered the hallway

Pointed to a shoe print dominating the door’s center,

A place where nothing belongs

But grain

And imagination

And accidents. Pills won’t matter

If spaces are empty.

If interruptions represent

Conquered patterns.

These miracles are for demons

And purgatory rejects their prayers.

Leading Backwards

Alienation negates the spy, observing at a distance, scope transfixed at center. A denial to focus on the ramblings relating space to tongue, off the center, specks take form and shapes related to memories begin again.

Witness

A figurehead holding clay features before her face, shape of a nose before her nose, allay the same sequence to her other facial compartments, holding pose in dry clay, disguises the actual frown, brow furrow and tight-lipped-censure, taking form underneath.

Interacting with the clay would bring meaning to what?

What is the meaning video conferences exhume, in relation to reality?

What is a blink?

What does the abandoned bird’s nest signify about coming home?

Witness.

A tour guide wielding a machete, uses the blade to clear dense brush, obscuring the trail from their full vantage as they lead a tour group through the forest.

What was the trail before the blade?