many vacant, metal picnic
tables laughed at my loneliness,

tortured my Ill-founded sense
of being, while people, all dressed
in black, walked around the park
edges as if in Olympic parades,

I brushed my sandwich against
the rusty metal of my picnic

table, took a bite from that
edge of the sandwich, not

purposefully, and waited
to die without struggle.

“Too fucked up to care anymore.”

finding tedium of scales
coming back to art
speaking death but unification

being told I’m worthless and buried
in sleep
knowing instead, I’m diseased
Broken
Shattered
Irreparable
maybe wishing
Not asleep

coming back to music
why don’t you choose happy music
why not music that pampers
my soul has too many bandages

looking inward builds more disease
but outward tinkles with no substance

choosing targets
obligated to fabricate smiles
fake they all are
False

why do we forgive the pretensions
we drive through repetitive forests
powerful boats full of empty bowls
antiques stained with dried oatmeal
chips of personality

Torn
by two poles
life having constructed the magnificent gift
perpetual pain is unendurable when awake
my mind lies to me
I can’t force it to wipe away
all of the evil
all of the dirty germs

.

lashes where there is no possibility
of survival barring some god
which flowered sympathy for the
tragic follies of men so deleterious to
themselves as I, and that maroon

truck which should have flown through
unforgiving skies, which would have
fallen so far, it would have bled its
own gallons of life as that same

merciful god, merciful if it had allowed
us to die instantly, would have used
our own gallons of blood for lessons
for people who were meant to be

frightened by the terrific powers of
those named follies, this increasingly
swamped unconsciousness which
seems to alleviate years of agony, of
empty purposelessness, but only

prolongs the blankets of pain,
as the stadium grows larger and
larger, our wiring blurs in tornadic
waves, sounds fuller than a stadium
should allow, having dreamt of the

massiveness of the musicians we
longed to see cranked my drive to
a state beyond intoxication into an

evil blob of emotionally stormy
empty, evil for it was to murder
us but for that sympathetic god,

and when this flash comes back,

I long to know that god for one
moment or more and thank it

for that night,

ask it how it chose
such worthless, mostly
in my case,

candidates for rescue, but the truth

seems to be I’ve been saved
from the nothing of the end
millions of times, despite
thousands of desires for the end

from a defeated spirit, it seems
this impossible prevention of the
end was either done to save only
my son and my friend, or more

frighteningly, done to prove to me
that something loves me despite
my follies, that something needed
to show me my powerless receipt
of a gift too large to imagine.

.

wrappers crawling along human legs

loose change not falling

wheelchairs wider than doorways

big men cheer while fixing noise systems
lights, maybe, lights reflecting mean walkers

peaceful phone call undone, lost despairs.

.

I need shiny
perspective in the frames of a
regular day. Without,
I am a defeated rabbit,

ready to hang
from that sturdy oak tree. (I pause
knowing that all oak trees seem
sturdy, so no need for adjectives, but
sturdy helps me feel more comfortable
about hanging. Successfully.)

But with this fresh view
from my favorite artist, I understand there
must be beauty in all tiny fragments that

speed through foggy crosswinds in the
chaotic frenzy of working
to do things right in every
moment, all moments, and with these

clear views, realization of the sickly,
petty, empty, frightening day strikes me as an
ice pick deep in my skull. Life,
bedazzling in its beauty,

leaves me
on splintered picnic benches,
being stabbed and
shot by the

modernity of gray roadside weeds,
weeds that laugh viciously in cackling
snaps with broken xylophones, splitting
cottonwoods, and through heavy tears

which come from dry horse troughs,
I cannot see anything
but my invisible
contributions to a society

that wants to laugh
with the weeds, see me hang and laugh,
but further,
it is with cowardice that I ask

with all clarity of my empty soul,
I plead
with you to bury me in a brick cell,
turn up the flames, if you will, and feed
me bread, but please don’t laugh
while I die. And medicine might help.

.

with black electrical wires do,
but today, I am running down, exhil-

erated or running up with climactic
buzzes showering my body, good

parts of the body, chilling, shivering
parts of the body meant for engage-

ment, or am I in at the bottom where
we load on and roll off, where we
drown in silky, muddy waters, devil-

ishly eating us, for they are left
over from yesterday’s distress,

never done ruining, but today, breast
stroke, grabbing the wood seat with in-

cisors, twisting desperately, and I pop
up, see the monsters left, see the wa-

ter dry vehemently, and I dive, head-
first, you catching me, loving me, driv-

ing me into your lush folds, warmth at
last, and today is full. Full blast, down

and up, hard and fast, sweet and juicy,
all is big beautiful life for these minutes.

I told you; quaint.

.

I know about rounding up
courage; not bragging, but
I stick sharp fingers in plaster of
dissonant accidents, disliked
by all who know. I search for
purposeful dissonance, stomp
feet in defiance, move my head,
make my eyes wide and terrified,
petrified to be moving still, wanting
not to survive, screaming, WHAT
IS WRONG WITH ME? Knowing
chance is all gone, shaking my
head at the madness, my own with
all the others, as my hands freeze
in the plaster, choking life out of
me, not fast enough; oh, why
do I live to tell you this shit?

.

They throw it back,
they give me shit,

my brain leaks,
I’ll never be cured.
My brain hurts,
just like my mother’s did,

she threw the black pans,
hailed our personal failures,
told us we’d never be good,
but I’ll never be her,
I’ll never ruin your psyche

My brain hurts,
just like my mother’s did,
my brain leaks,
I’ll never be cured.

The world hates,
It foams in my head,
with no smile,
I know I’m no good,

just like my mother said,
just like my mother said.

My brain hurts,
I’m scared of you all,
‘fraid I might crash,
you’ll see my soul crushed,

for my brain’s dead,
excepting total despair,
yeah, my brain hurts,
just like my mother’s did.

.

everything, leave it right here
on this screen, say it all, and then

never come back, sit on my porch,
strumming a broken guitar,

blowing on a wilted clarinet,
smoking a cheap pipe, never

coming back to your world,
telling you about all there is

on this screen, maybe fill the
screen, but tell you everything

and never come back, walk into
the front of a cement truck doing

seventy, never coming back,
fulfilled that all has been told,

knowing there is nothing left
inside me so I can go meet

that Mac, go away quickly
without a peep of noise, being

empty, never to come back.
Take away the severity

of despair, fill my tank
with the end, shut me down

forever. Let me rest, let
me loose from this agony.

.

so I hate myself
for that.
I hate the child in
me who will never grow
up, never be cured.

I’ll tell you I don’t get angry.
I get sad, I get depressed,
I get relieved when
lucky, but I lie and say
I don’t get angry

because I don’t want to be
a little child nor a scary
monster, so when
I get angry, I hate
myself and remember

that I was poorly designed
for this world.

.