Scanning the department store,
prized possessions dot my eyes.
They are potentially bought,
potentially stolen,
potentially consumed by raging fire.
Dead mushrooms grow beneath
the tiled, dusty floor
above a cooling mantle
beneath the swallowing soil.
Brick upon brick upon the earth
swaying in an invisible breeze
that’s stronger than a cyclone
that blows into every crevice.
The stones made of asphalt bones
lie underneath tires.
Shovels scrape across the sidewalk
and workers sweat under the clouds.
The sun is nevertheless hot,
the sky is colored pencil blue,
the clouds writhe in the air
like dancers in a windy void.
Broken trash cans within trash cans
fill a landfill nearby
that glistens with rot
and tapestries of aluminum.
Cars poison the air with cigarette ghosts
and oil flows through the rusty veins
of behemoth trucks.
The forests choke,
the horizon fades into a skeleton sky.
Garish garb clothes the residents
of an insane asylum tree.
Languages tie up the scenery
with ropes that are nouns
and verbs that command.
Large printed words on billboards
grow from piles of bones
that dot the verdant graveyard
that squirms under the sun.
Trinkets for sale please few
but are lapped up by skeletal figures,
hungry ghosts with consumer straws.
Plastic wrap wrapped in plastic wrap
discarded in receptacles for receptacles
in a toilet made of bone.
Children laugh beneath a gallows
on a graffiti covered tree.
Phones are touched,
cameras flash,
the scenery changes into a binary sea
that flows into silicon houses.
The sidewalks crack,
dandelions struggle to push through
as dizzy, weak bees
wait for the flower to arrive.
The newspapers are few,
the websites are many,
no one remembers,
everyone forgets.
Morning glories snake through a trellis,
that casts shadows on a house’s siding
the birds are fewer but singing,
the cars rumble,
the trucks pound the pavement.
Worms squirm beneath litter.
Meat and vegetables rot in dumpsters
that rust in the scorching sun.
Words adorn a poet’s brain,
and in ugly wounds fester verses
that the world wrings out
from his neurons.
Beers flow through the veins
of spectators at arenas,
liquor drowns the sorrows
of lost men in the shadows.
Cocaine finds its way
across bullet strewn borders
and into the egos
of muscular men in suits.
Like a serpent,
corruption snakes
through veins.
Reaching receptors,
it sings fight songs
and in others,
siren song lullabies.
Needles jut out of brains
that are punctured like
pin-cushions
with holes woven
into lobes.
Sex occurs,
and love occasionally
accompanies it,
faces giggling
and hands roaming
beneath sheets.
Televisions echo
through cannabis haze,
combining into the background
of memories.
Animals locked in cages
claw at the bars that hold them
making a racket
for the neighbors to hear.
Smartphones snap pictures,
pornography fused with memory
that flies in the face
of strangulation suns.
Streets paved with bone
convulse with cheap pleasure,
midriffs exposed
and cigarettes smoked.
Meanwhile, the graveyard glistens
with acidic morning dew
that fog covers
like a town-sized ghost.
The remaining caresses
of the night
tenuously fondle
the marble stone.
Dead orgasms
rest in the ground
with still bodies
and mouths agape.
Zombified memories sulk in brains,
ready to emerge unheeded
in the lanes of traffic
the aisles of stores
and the vaults and data centers
of post-mortem banks.
Where is the skull
that emerges from the skin?
Where is the brain
that shrinks into dust?
Ghosts (perhaps unreal)
filter through minds
barking hope through megaphones
into teenagers and housewives.
Murder mysteries collect dust
on the shelves of former readers,
eBooks broadcast a stream
of black and white hieroglyphics
that imprint themselves
on gullible minds,
wedge themselves between tarot cards
lodged in wiry neurons.
Meanwhile, wires snake
through walls, floorboards,
computers, tablets, and toasters
forming a network of electricity
that conquers the gloom of the night.
The asylums are overloaded,
and trees grow in their courtyards
with defecating squirrels and birds
that soil lovers under trees.
Apples rot, worms flourish,
the sky is yellow and green,
and the trees turn to paper
longer than they should.
Streetlights cast an orange glow
on the children who attempt to play
under a rotting moon
with soccer balls that disintegrate.
The children grow,
the giants shrink,
the skies turn rainbow colors
inbetween the sun and moon.
Windows turn to shards,
mailboxes explode
under the thrall of baseball bats
held by smiling brats.
Anime ghosts flutter
through teenage imaginations
with video game controllers
steering them through lobes.
Vapor, vapor, will not save her,
neither will the aging flesh.
Anger, anger, is her savior
as she torments with a will afresh.
Labyrinths of servers
pound at a cracking ground
that falls to pieces under the stars
and liberates the sun.
No one can take this day from her,
pink-haired smiling in the breeze
brandishing a smartphone
that detonates many things.
The feminine sun,
the masculine moon
filtering across copper
and nesting in silicon.
Photons emerge
from a luminous void
with violence and pornography,
superhuman tragedy.
Androgynous suffering
speaks from ghostly mouths
torn open with a scream
that shatters monitors and dreams.
Rubbery octopus dreams abound,
arms are like tentacles,
inky teeth bite into words
written with mechanical pen.
The water is murky,
the eyes are deep
diluted with champagne dreams
and writhing with toxic perfume.
A dance under the sea,
legs move over fish,
schools of minnows swim under arms
but the sharks wait with bared teeth.
Somewhere UFOs fly through dreams,
aliens with beady eyes smile,
organs that suck in
the light of the universe.
An experiment,
to the detriment
of the sanity of a human
who tries not to bleed in terror.
Rolling across galaxies
and waking up
on a field of wilted,
tantalizing, mesmerizing flowers.
The flowing locks of winged faeries
poke at dreaming children
and the resistance of the air
clouds the judgments of teenagers.
Meals are cooked,
food is processed,
drinks are drunk
and glasses clink.
Country club reprobates
scheme against the dreams
of dreamers tied
to the trees of a lost forest.
Guns are taken up
to the delight of the bloodthirsty
as bullets threaten
the aisles of supermarkets.
Nightmarish fatigues,
terrible beards
eyes that somehow seem
both icy and stupid.
Meat aisles packed
with cold meat
festering in
florescent light
A bullet hits the meat
already dead and gone
Bullets penetrate
an already dead animal.
Nature is despised
by souls that jump
out of their bodies
into the dirt
Electric souls of computers
stomp through the websites
out of monitors
into meat bodies.
One body’s made of meat,
but another’s made of lentils.
The eyes tremble,
the eyelids twitch shut.
Staring wide-eyed
at a moneyless void,
one person basks his heart
in the joys of self-abuse.
Masked and cunning,
maskless and smiling
as his teeth rot
from Facebook memes.
They instruct him not to brush
his pearly, yellowing whites,
and verily they rot
verily they rot in his gums.
Reality cries
tears stain her face,
as men after men
deny her advances.
She writhes in anger,
sadness, and wrath
Ice froze her heart
which only rage can melt.
Colder than the arctic,
which melts under the wrath
of reality’s sun
and drowns the Earth in blood.
First men brandish sticks,
then they brandish stones.
Then they brandish guns,
then they brandish bombs.
The sky is full of airplanes
deafening the Earth’s inhabitants,
blowing the houses to pieces
scattering wood and brick.
The sun doesn’t care anymore,
the moon only pretended to care
when her soft caresses
enchanted the men of Earth.
But men blame,
everyone is blamed.
No one is without a finger
pointed at their face.
Everyone is indignant,
the ocean is indignant.
The dams of rivers are indignant,
the men with red buttons too.
Blame, blame, blame
the inhabitants of the game.
The clouds shift mightily,
the Earth cracks under a hammer.
“Insane,” say the men
whom the Earth has judged insane.
They laugh in asylums,
between bouts of fear and tears.
Suddenly a few listen,
listen with widening eyes.
Ropes dart from cell phones
and strangle their viewers.
Underneath a darknet
guns exchange hands,
meetings are held,
to save the shores of Earth.
The game becomes life:
a horrible game,
a psychopathic game
of anti-human necessity.
Order comes from chaos?
There never was order,
never was chaos
only complexity.
Complexity:
too stupid to understand,
the Earth vacillates
between the two constantly
Philosophers laugh,
artists cry
and then they break
and laugh as well.
Chicken carcasses
spring to life with knives
and the bones of cows
are used to bludgeon men.
The skies cry blood
briefly, but profusely
the graveyard turns from a yard
into a gargantuan bloodied mountain.
Where are smokestacks now?
Carbon dioxide begins to lessen
and gives the atmosphere hope:
a hope born of desperate violence.
Headless heads of states,
headless heads of haters
of headless heads of states,
headless humanity, smirking nature.
Guillotines guillotine,
then guillotine the guillotiners.
The mad laugh, the crazy laugh,
as they are ignored,
above the pairs of opposites
that are violently thrown at each other.
Men called each others’ gods the Devil
as they did Devilish things.
The skies roar with laughter,
the moon pours its blood
to nourish a fallen Earth
hungry for the iron inside.
Tapestries are sewn
that depict the deeds
and rot on castle walls
with no kings.
Only lunatics roam
the halls of the moss-covered,
spider-crawled walls
that cobwebs adorn.
People bathe in streams
that wash away the blood
that is eaten by the few
fish that remain.