I wake up today, cautiously, rotting in the same way in the same place,
horror rumbling knives in my head, evading dread around the gut,
a guy putting on gray shirt and gray pants, doing his best
to do what is demanded by heavy-breathing, plastic monkeys.

Animals lunge and animals carve – puncture and kill and cackle.
Aberrant beasts as mean as all of my favorite, intimate creatures,
run in the same dizzy hole, suppressing all of the pink life and flow.
I am mixed and squashed, hidden and spread through grimy bushes.

Shredded brown houses maneuver to poison my foggy expanse,
pour me on my knees. Staring at an ambulance, dehydrating in the cold:
red, blue, red, blue, yellow, yellow, red, blue, red, blue. Yellow.
I yearn to jump in, to go West forever, clashing with Southern suns,
seeking permanent peace – never to be the same, never to be the same again.