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My graveyard head
wants to know
why Bob Dylan's dead
and nobody sings anymore
the nation squirms reeling
superficial squealing
wearing blood spattered suits
in subcontracted cold
Patriot asshole
with a yellow tooth grin
sells your mother downstream
with her red-pillow dream
and all the world's poets
are suddenly mimes
seems they all only speak
when spoken to
the second the halogen lighting hits my eyes
and I hear the hiss of those sliding doors
my balls retract
and I feel like a vampire
thirty seconds after taking a shit in god's foyer
That's somebody's grandmother there
in a red-monkey vest
chirping and maniacally grinning
like a Disney-ride automaton.
Somebody's grandfather
offering me reconstituted chicken on toothpick
Women and men five times my weight
like oversized weeble-wobbles
no legs, just bobbing momentum
the kinesthetic awareness of tapioca
eyes glazed with bargain lust
heads full of checklists, stress, and not much else
bobbing, roaming, aisle to aisle
I'm here meanwhile to express my deepest emotional gratitude
to the people I love
to the people I've stumbled through existence with
to the people who've aided, guided, and nurtured me
by purchasing limited edition dishware
I clutch a list that tells me
what existential holes need filling
My uncle will be so pleased
my love this year takes the form of non-stick muffin pans
There's a little fat boy here
with a candy-cane in his mouth and a 72 oz. soda in his fist
his mother yells at him for fidgeting
Acapella, night
the nurse familiar
someone has brought flowers
the bedsheets are clean
Fermata, no recollection
20 years, or so I'm told
a long and dreamless night
you are my first visitor
her, con grazia
the only answer
the only constant in this darkness
a minor key, Grazioso
the only answer, refrain
the nurse familiar
Sforzando, she plays music
it is unfamiliar to me, she cries
a crescendo in g-minor
poco a poco, 20 years, night
always a minor key
a dreamless, unfamiliar march
a Requiem, refrain
someone has brought flowers
the bedsheets are clean
my love, Rubato, she cries
dreamless, sonatina
you are my first visitor
the nurse familiar, pianissimo
someone has brought flowers
The night the stars died
we cried like lost children
the irreversible end
godless, faith and faithless
In the dark hour, brothers turn
some, the pack animals, don't cry
they unhinge
spread dark, oily wings
put heartbeats to rest as fur flies
A Bette Midler instrumental plays oblivious
blood pools rusty brown
under harsh halogen light
all for a pack of menthol cigarettes
I sit on a hill
the fires run echo red
the valley inside out and screaming
Pedro says we can't stay here
no place in this new world
for number lizards and middle management
Pedro says poets still have a place
if not a purpose
on the dance floor
an idiot claps
some Fallujah child dies
he'll never know
he's got the moves
alligator shoes
somewhere Karl Rove
paints jesus as a pedophile
Kicked off the island
she cries about that
but eyes stay dry as desert bones
when vioxx hearts explode next door
His ride gets pimped, LCD screens
hugs and kisses all around
outside Johannesburg
a boy dies face down in dog shit
Another fat man smart wife sitcom
Wednesday night laugh track
a woman dies in Tianjin
for asking why