Asterism
There were two hands
found a sweet thing waiting in a cage, led to accommodate a sequence of lonely mistakes
Drawn out along a ragged sigh, I’ll fill a little box of my own with fragments of my panic and bone to bury in the sick winter pale
Without drive, without purpose, and without fear, we drift or stumble into a dull apocalypse
Without presence, without the promise of fat cherry rays
Maybe on another day
Drawn out along a ragged sigh, I’ll fill a little box of my own with fragments of my panic and bone to bury in the sick winter pale
…or better off unripened and free, trying not to get sick in the backseat in the strobe light shadows of naked trees for a few more half-hearted miles?

Anticipated, Unprepared
Hello, reactor. How does your spine crack? Who can outrun the fragments of your weakened back?
In glittering grey, someone somewhere knew to look away.
Breathe in coarse stacatto and taste my metal. Just leave the lamp on. Breathe this endless sunshine and turn to lead. This message is empty.
Hello, reactor. I’ve hollowed out tomorrow for you. Your messianic brain will pull me from the ground. No lovers left to worry about. Just our skins in single-file burning piles behind your light.
This message is empty.

Intersection
In another town, under a dead fluorescent hum, we sat side-by-side, waiting for aliens, or waiting for anything: a reflection, a shadow, looking up and drawn in endless steel.
Stare as you rise and as you sleep.
Freedom is a chemical spill.
My heart-swollen daze stretched from Sunday to someday while cockroaches waited to chew at the years.
Goddamn disease pulled hands and knees to the dry snow.
So I’ll live in space and turn my face to the still sky, but I can still see the anemic rain from up here. But I’m not sure I’m up here and I don’t think that I’m alive.

Optimistic
You’re safer in vinyl on a million little squares of overfed sod. Everyone knows you’re too small to matter outside your car.
So maybe we’ll stand around and wait for the dawn to arrive and paint our shapes on the wall. Maybe, if we could be bothered to get up. But we’re safer in vinyl.
Don’t worry; we’ll get what we’ve earned and burn across the earth.
Stop crying; learn to love the ride. Spread yourself across the sky.
Kids will find a calf in a ditch. Its skin will be tight, lips peeled back, little teeth revealed. They will drive a little stick into a maggoty eye socket and say,
“I can feel its brain.”
and say,
“I can change its mind.”
Don’t worry; we’ll get what we’ve earned and burn across the earth.
Stop crying; learn to love the ride. Spread yourself across the sky.
Calm down, fucker. Don’t you get the joke? We pulled the trigger while we choked with sweaty hands groping idiot hearts while someone starved on our TV.
Kings and Queens of Infinite Vinyl: pray for the thrill of a bigger cake–an endless monument to saliva and shit.

Disconnective Tissue
part 1 (Sylvite)
Thought I’d die with you in the rain. It caught me by no surprise (the impulse to hold your heart). Did I make you suffer?
The summer god hides in the sunspots to ride out your pain.
The space I made you takes on the shape of a drain where I let you suffer.
As the clock wears down, your veins are painted pink to leave the flies, to drift over meadows in a simple sting.
Then the pressure ends. You’re forced to learn to fly. I’ve been there before. The sequel never ends.
It’s what’s inside that  matters the most and there’s less inside each day. I’ve got nothing to slow down the countdown.
When you made the last hole in the screen door, you teased an escape. Then you came back starving and wet and weak and desperate and finished.
As the clock wears down, veins are painted pink to leave the flies and drift over meadows beyond a little sting.
Then the pressure ends. You’re forced to learn to fly.
I’ve been here before in spaceships with a friend.
part 2 (Plasma, volatile)
Take off your helmet. Your landing gear was only meant to fail.
Shake off those last sticky drops of gravity.
Does the absence of sunset keep you warm out on those gravity waves?

Milk and Honey
Sacred whore, I’ll decide what insecurities hide behind magazine layers of cake.
The reek of your womb puts him back in the ground where they all lost their heads to make you so free.
I can sell you solutions and I will sell you solutions.
Now that you’ve tried to doll up your eyes, you’ve taken the shape of meat for dull teeth.
They’re aching to bite and maybe they will if you don’t pinch the heads off the orchids and take on their blame.
I can sell you solutions and I will sell you solutions.

Motherland (by Natalie Merchant)
Where in hell can you go far from the things that you know?
Far from the sprawl of concrete that keeps crawling its way about a thousand miles a day
Take one last look behind. Commit this to memory and mind.
Don’t miss this wasteland, this terrible place when you leave.
Keep your heart off your sleeve.
Motherland, cradle me. Close my eyes. Lullaby me to sleep.
Keep me safe. Lie with me. Stay beside me. Don’t go.
Oh, my five-and-dime queen, tell me what have you seen?
The lust and the avarice, the bottomless, cavernous greed–is that what you see?
It’s your happiness I want most of all, and for that I’d do anything at all.
If you want the best of it or the most of all, if there’s anything I can do at all?
Now come on, shotgun bride, what makes me envy your life?
Faceless, nameless, innocent, blameless, and free–what’s that like to be?

Rattle
Start at a panicked birth that gave no sign…
just to survive beside a panicked life,
tied up tight in all the bloodless knuckles I grew.
Now you can hold on to the blame and victimize the sweet thing’s crooked eyes
locked in the ether between idealism and instinct.
So nude in your power that infantilized my skin,
wish I could say all my cruelties were innocent.
An idiot fist drew explosions in blue.
So I can hold on to the blame and victimize the sweet thing’s crooked eyes
locked in the ether between idealism and instinct.
pick charred skin lick raw clean
…and what is clean?
What is clean enough to preserve the seeds of hope and love?
And where will you go?

System
What do you see from down there? A wasteland, wind-blown and shrieking?
The green glass glitters in shards and maggots are searching for remnants of friends like you, but you’re not quite so aimless.
You know what you need.
What do you hear? What’s up there? The hydra, to push you around?
Because, goddamn, where do you get the nerve to move purposeful little steps so no one falls asleep unfed?
You know what you need.
Little lady with the quick eyes,
Little lady with the draining stomach,
Little lady with the sharp ears,
Can you taste what’s coming from your red mouth?
Makes her way to the edge,
makes her way to the concrete, straining.
Makes her way to the center of the table,
front row for the naked heads waiting.
Need to feed the next one.