Degradation in Reverse.

Maggots weave fine threads of flesh, pores
and millions of tiny strands of hair.

Smoke recedes from lungs back into cigarettes
which are placed in packages and back on convenient store shelves.

Walking backwards, speaking in tongues
leaving behind those inopportune opportunities,
making unclear all mistaken utterances.

Doors of valediction open,
orderly beds become disheveled
morning fades into night,
we sleep, we sleep.

Bleeding slows from open wounds,
congeals,
all lesions cleanly close:

no scars,
no reminders.

Eve-Eve on the Porch.

Panoramic suburbia.

Flecks of plastic snowmen,
reindeer slaves pulling sleighs for that white bearded hawker of cheap plastic toys made in china and other objects of nonfunctional disadvantage.

Those unfortunate inflatable snow globes, inside of which it's always a white christmas even if it's not.
It's not.

Barren blacktop spreads like tar accessorized by the occasional car sitting in wait for someone, its exhaust spitting out billowy smoke whose thickness recedes after only rising a few feet.

Trees of a bulimic thinness slacken and get shoved by relentless bitter winds asking me for a coat or at least a scarf to defend themselves with
but I don't have any extra.

"Sorry," I say and a group of teenagers walk passed, looking at me with knowing eyes, hoping that when they're older they don't stand on porches, apologizing to trees.

They will, though. They will.

Songs Without Music 3

The Guards at the gate
won't back their blockade down
Not for you, not for anyone
at least not from this town.

"Our empress' wish is not to be seen."
They say over and again
an impersonal message on repeat
without the aid of a machine.

Though for you, you know the meaning's not the same
because you've seen the seams of her dress
you can recall their threading
and when they teared.

Priority's now diminished
it will be long until it's regained
a long time before the sovereign one
graces the world with her presence
in praise of a new hallowed name.

Unto the spire
will your eyes assuredly gaze
after you've been denied entrance to the palace
for the 40th in a succession of days.

You'll see the czarina
in front of her royal mirror
her servants threading up her corset
making her meager presence even thinner.

She'll smile down upon you
her radiant white teeth synthesizing with sunlight
perpetuating the illusion of grandeur
as her corset continues to grow tight.

Joy will overcome you
there will no longer be time enough to be sad
because the image of her that will persist through all days
will be of her corset pushing forward breasts
that you didn't know she had.

in the news

babies cry for their mothers but it's always the same counterfeit tears
if you want to witness real anguish just watch the dog who fights to figure out the meaning of its illness
its confusion spreading into overwrought fear.

Songs Without Music 2

The podium stands tall
the center
the symbol
of all the peasants' decisiveness.

Bowing before the Judge,
waiting on conjecture from a holy tongue,
the high rise of wait
to the slow fall to contemplate certain indecision.

"Choices can't count if there's no rational
basis in what they're actually about."

The crowds yammer on and on
but the prostrating cries from withered tired lungs
aren't enough of a Battle Shout
so much as they are a words to a silly little song.

So they lie in wait
the Magistrate's decision,
the outcome they seek,
serves only to decide
their feeble fate.

"That's how the electric chair got invented.

Edison cooked it up to show the dangers of alternating current, and then he sold it to Sing Sing prison, where they're still using it to this day. Lovely, isn't it? If the world weren't such a beautiful place, we might all turn into cynics." - Paul Auster

Paul Simon OR Gallagher?

Songs Without Music 1

Tied to the last inch
of a bus stop sign's post
Though there's no motion or movement
there's so many places to go.

As the transit appears
around a wide corner
With its lights announcing
imperative words and numbers
Anticipation awakens
from its lengthy slumber
What for or why
no one wonders.

Try if you can to concede
Try if you wish to succeed

But there's no hope for the hopeful
and there's no slope that goes upward.
That broken clock that goes backwards
is the lapsed memory of the forgetful.

On a seat in-between
the madly barking and serene.
For a minute there's some calm
lost in the words and the sweat-laden palms

But soon there will be a stop
and then it's off into the wind
that the body can't fend off
its skin.

Try if you can to believe
that there's no reason to concede
to all that you can't control
in all the desolate parking lots your mind patrols.

Gradually there will come an end
to the hope that the hopeful defend:
they'll make slow progress to their homes
to sleep on solemn beds
where they will awake alone.