boots, unstable newcomers teased and harassed by the skins of big burly bros in backwards baseball caps, yelling “No!” to anything and everything that spoke softly, “yes.” Saw blurry glasses shoved up, initiated by the sudden quip of a parent’s affection between whack-off soap carvings and a single initialed P.S. at the bottom of frayed manuscript piles. Documents and taxes burned beneath hind-sighted border control. Gambling and loving like mad the gamblers and lovers who went mad: losing hair, eyeballs, chips and hearts on sturdy countertops under dim lights in la vida loca, Nevada. Vodka sipped dry in metropolis desert, though once must have been water. Condensed barley and mirthful carnivores descending Jesus’ glossy robe peck at worthless coins, now sandwiched between thumb and pointer: employment nowhere for shadowy counterfeits who lost themselves in the cold broken winters of regret and mischievous plot loss. Antique cars strum by like emptied drums and nearby tongues dance alone and unheard like vampire bats that never get to Heaven. Traveled straight past sirens towards pointer’s grinning words, “SEE YOU LATER!” even as seductive flashes go unnoticed as if the entire world was made a eunuch! Quickly, carelessly, dirty beef all rolled into one giant hamburger for all of America to the accompaniment of palm pilot choirs, blue and black raspberries shining off the sun’s own holy light in thirsty, nectar-greedy hands. Bakery employees chain divine sourdough in San Francisco to beaten orthodontists’ tools in one fine finish. I saw Titans fill their veins with experience and
get expelled from their own green and blue Edens. Splintered brainsickness vowed to emit coherent light but substituted it for alcohol and fabricated citrus. Gave “touched-by-God” sugar and malted cinnamon to all the clamoring urchins of America. Demolition narcotics and tobacco sold by the handful on every dripping street corner from the burning and punctured mouths of junkies to the snatching clutches of urban poltergeists. I saw friends tripping to Toronto from Buffalo, NY on glacial waterfalls where little girls in purple bikinis tread murky water above playmates’ slithering indexes: copy-pasting the light of dawn to computer screens in never-daytime northeast, while Dublin relaxes and historic Germantown grows even farther from itself. Saw the City of Sweet Something-Extras left wet in the sand and forgotten by nation secretly celebrating its jazz without them. Withered Russia cries incessantly as Trotsky—who sailed out to placid waters only to be swallowed headfirst by Moscow’s own intoxicated melodramas—is still lost from its own bulbous architectural delights. Watched aged artisans catch flights to the East Indies in search of missing inspiration that the police were never able to find, and wives snicker at husbands replacing laz-e-boy chairs while a rare iconoclastic moment incites secret love affairs! Miniscule parties dot the landscape serving only to inflate the ids of pitiful Mediterranean wannabes who, like zebras, watched each other bare it all for a quick glimpse of fame’s gnashing jaw. Saw Michelangelo’s David played for a poor sucker in modern streets, bright Polynesian carvings Spring 2009
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