(after, words).

lights spent.

all naked.

mouth dry.

unseen.

restful sediment.

for good living.

lights are burning, circling round the bay. from space it's all the same, innocuous and small. the parties, the beer stained floors, the slurred, misdirected words, and myself, solitary and slain on a couch. the lights are pretty and circle the bay, from space all the same. one speck. the one reason i don't fully hate myself. blip. the houses, the roads, the dogs, the people, the grass. all the same. i still can't get up. i'm drowned on the inside and weigh too much. all my insides floating, weightless - my solar system. i cannot speak. all my friends, lost or still fooled, stand as one, nothing. still, all the same. people walking moving speaking dying, all the same, from space. one speck. one life, innocuous and small. 

he is lingua franca.

he sits as a statue in a chair, set like cement, with his eyes and mouth poking through, still living. eyes smile ecstatic, endlessly and his mouth rests beneath, mimicking their movements. he sits fearless in the eyes of ghosts and apparitions, with no words just courageously glittering eyes, endlessly. staring through the being of demons, made ashes and memories soon to be forgotten. sitting with a delicate imperiousness, he is a good and feared king. his voice a furiously unrelenting battalion, an effortless roar, the lingua franca. hair wiry, sparse, spanning the width of his head like seven silver arches standing forever. he is old, face sunken and body withered. he is weak and he is strong. stronger everyday and everyday closer.   

twelve smoke clouds.

I could never hear anything.

            It was around two o’clock, and I had squandered much of the day reading and thinking, so, I hopped on a bus. The 13. An accordion bus that at all times of the day was stuffed with people looking for their escape. I hadn’t a car and I liked the bus, it was peaceful in some strange way, the only way i was nowhere and nobody, just in transit. 

all is peaceful when you can’t hear. 

The bus slowly lurched forward as the hustle and bustle of the urban landscape fell quietly sparse, into the burbs and acceptable nakedness. I didn’t know where I was going, I never did, I just went, with childlike intent and amusement, 

                  forward, 

                               forward, 

                                           onward. 

Finally, the city was silenced by the space between, made a distant infallible echo, but still ringing in my ears. The 13 made its last stop and I followed all the sullen faces off the bus. The suburbs were terrible, always the end of my nothingness, and every second lead me to question my being here. All the houses stood on one another, reaching for the sky and the smoke clouds, like all the people living in them, stepping on each other, looking for the sky. I hated them. I despised their unconscious weekends and their petulantly wetted lips. They rode the bus holding bottles and cell phones. I didn’t like alcohol. it was the mother of monsters - hideous, reproachable beings.

 Everyday, the cycle would persist, the 13 slithered through concrete jungle to abject unconsciousness, and I rode it with them. The 13 became real, because everyone has to shut up and die. It was the path to self made fucking greatness, and i could hear all of it. Finally, I could hear all it’s agonizingly wretched noises. I could hear everything.

suffocating in twelve smoke clouds.  

lost and found in death.

I'm at the amusement park, it's raining and the words are slithering off the page. trying to escape somewhere. Sitting and watching all the people strolling by, all lost in life, hair flowing and eyes dancing. I am lost and found in death.  I fear it, and am apologetic in it's eyes, slobbering and begging. the end of every man. The amusement park - the place I can never get lost in - no shadow is too concealing, each corner begs for light. In death, I am lost and found. The coaster dips and dives. these playful death traps and screaming humanity. I am so alive and fear death. God, I fear death and my humanity. The coaster is alive too, laughing at me in the face. Making my insides feel like a can of soup, on a truck-ack, to be sorted, to face death. Unsettled and restless, I am and will be - for a while. A can of soup, a man afraid like the rest, riding a roller coaster. Watching all the people walk by, all lost in life.

the man on the bus.

the man on the bus is curled up in the back corner. we have never met, but i know him well. i've stared into his dark, sullen eyes, like a starless urban sky - blind and vacant. his alcohol breath sways, crashin' into me like waves, putting me to pieces and sweeping me up after breakfast. he has no words. i have no words. we are two strangers riding a crowded city bus together - our wayward glances colliding and the smell of piss permeating, becoming our sacred aroma. human static buzzin' in our ears, all the same, consistent and long as the engine hum. riding on the bus - our makeshift, reluctant communion - taking all the people to their places, our separate nests, our private colonies. the man on the bus is in my eyes, shriveled up in the corner, like the flowers on my kitchen table.