wednesday is hump day

my tongue in my mouth creaking leather on leather,

hands on wheel the same and my eyes a dammed

reservoir and dried up, all dried up.

like i've found someplace that is not

on any of the maps and you'd think of

discovery and adventure

but instead only panic like the car won't start

or the call goes to voicemail or the news

is saying bad things again.

ignoring an oasis in the desert. calling it a mirage.

spinning a globe and putting your finger down,

and find out chance wants you in the middle

of the mariana trench. but i only want to go home.

hands on wheel and the engine won't turn over.

street life

i've left the old stars behind
to go on a misadventure.
they burned out a long time ago
anyways. traveling like a sloth
via powerlines. the new stars
are closer here, there's another
every twenty yards.
i'm the part of a tree
that never shows its face.
the teeth that a smile never exposes.
a public access channel, and you'll never
see the irony. i was trying
to test my endurance. i meant to come back.
i'm just so tired.
a dream you keep waking up from.
a dislocation.
when the power goes out and i fall.
now we're even.

end transmission

you were an exit i never took, an exit
i missed. your name on every road sign.
you with anchors instead of eyes,
sunken and sinking.
me chained up and down.
with the clouds burning up and the storm
gone and not enough rain to put out this fire.
my plane's being grounded, and i'm being ground up
and pressed for fuel. an engine with no pilot,
a storm with no thunder.
this call is the last i can make
before the plane takes off.
the ship is pulling up its anchor,
i'm digging up my roots.
my eyes are burning down,
the wheels are turning and the gear's
set to drive. an automatic transmission.
to be sent when i'm gone.
every sign has led up to this, every road
converged into this point like an asterisk.*
you the sky pinning me down,
trapping me like a star in a liquid suspension.
the sky black and burnt like it's been on the stove too long.
the sun humiliated, hiding its face in the planet's lap.
there's too much gravity in this situation;
the plane's going down.

*the last thing i'll ever do for you is die.

i'm a collage of the milk carton missing,
a strip of tire in the middle of the lane,
a moth that can't understand that a streetlight
isn't the sun. drowning in an inch of water.
that's all it's ever gonna take.
the world rolling like your eyes.
you never want to hear about it.
i've got a broken odometer.
i've gone too far.
i don't know what that is in your mouth
but it looks menacing.
this car's light have been on for awhile.
it's almost like there's someone in there.

heat lightning

between the lines of your letter there is the dark of an overpass,

there is a crowd flinching and covering its ears against a baby's cries,

and an eternal catholic guilt. i read and feel the rapture has come

and i was not chosen. i am the bottle after the wine's been drunk,

the castle after the royalty's been beheaded, a tandem bicycle

with no riders at all. this letter has been written before;

i am not the only person who has felt the world end in the mail,

but it feels like it.

when the world really ends they'll be laughing at me and dying.

red touches yellow

instead of organs i have snakes

in a sheep shank, not

a stomach, a liver, a gall bladder,

although i once had intestines, now

a length of garden hose.

a harpsichord full of termites for a soul,

dry rusty music like the wind

wrestling the high grass.

they fight like it's a game;

i don't play to win, i play to kill.

disguised as a bottle in a game

at a carnival where they play fair.

someone always stands me up again.

i don't want to play anymore;

i'd rather stay down.

i was just an empty frame before i met you, if you can picture that.