with legs

we're just paths.
that's all we are,

and we're also
like headless ants
running around on busy streets.
sometimes,
usually always,
we run into other headless
ants
in our tiny section of the street.

sometimes we like them.
sometimes we tolerate them
and other times we detest
the presence of some of these
other headless ants.

then

after a while
or
after a long while
or even just for a minute
we run along being paths
and headless ants,
and we repeat
and continue.

happy drunk thoughts

it doesn't matter.

we've already drank enough
gasoline
and the remaining crumbs
of
our own heart's
to
last us a lifetime.

it doesn't matter anymore,

not this.
not the leaded thoughts
we carry,
nor
the smoke blown in our faces
that we wear
better than any cheap
checkout aisle makeup.

no.
we just need to accept,
that we are nothing more
than bathing peasants, stuck
underneath
a moon,
that provides
just enough light
to see.

early sunday morning. the loop.

the skyscrapers
don't talk
at 4 in the morning.

you can hear
the snow
and ice
crackle
and crunch
and echo off
the the steel and mortor
of the buildings.

the elevated tracks
just sit there,
like ancient monuments
that people have forgotten,
at least for the next few hours.

and it's snowing,
the streetlights
expose each
and every single snowflake
like a thief.

i walk underground
to meet the blueline.

chicago to nashville

it doesn't matter.

soon enough,
someone will be planting red
and yellow flowers
on our graves, that,
or our remains
will be plucked clean
by vultures.
in some desert.

let's go.
chicago to nashville
is only 8 hours
and
13 minutes away.
let's go,
preferably, quicker
than bowling balls falling
from a shallow sky.

it'll only be
for a few days,
but goddamnit,
let's get there before
there are roadblocks
and other processions.

we are just manual

none of us
are
ever that lucky.

we're born, and
then we drink all the time,
as we're smoking cartons of cigarettes.

then we die.

then we're reborn christians,
or corporate yes men.
still,
trying just to collect a speck
of sense
as to why
we are here.

and always,
something goes wrong.

that girl leaves you.
your kid outshines you
in
the fuckup department.

it never ends.

then you die
again.

and if your lucky,
when you wake up,
for the 50th time,
you'll just be,

knowing damn well, that
besides yourself,
there was never any control
you possessed
to begin with.

niece

i craddle
my niece,
less than one
month old.

she is sleeping.

i study
her face,
imagining
there's some great big
secret
revealed on her skin.

there isn't,
as far
as i can tell.

grandma
and mother
are toiling around
the kitchen table,
making some crafts.

those fingers,
my god,
they aren't even human,
but they are.
just the size of slivers.

she adjusts herself
in my arms,
and i'm left speechless.
i just don't know what to say
to this 10 pound pile
of
newly formed flesh.

i don't want her to grow.
i don't want her to get swallowed
by
the world's shit one day.
i don't want her to hurt
a boy, or
another tiny girl,
with words
and actions
that would make one forget
that this girl,
sleeping in my arms,
was once
a baby.

she opens those quarter size
eyes,
stares at me,
and begins crying.

her mom rescues her.
she just wants to be fed.

speechless

you can pretend until
a million different adjectives
mold
the proper sentences
in your brain,
comprising
that one thought
that is a lightning bolt crashing
through
your veins.

for you
any semblence
of
articulation has been lost
like some ancient language.

and
it's at times like these,
when your alone,
in your little apartment,
after a date
or a family gathering,
or even when your just drinking
within
a cirlcle of friends,
you can feel
that this world
is made
for other people,
but never you.

you might even wear this,

but it is always so goddamn hard
to explain this.

nothing new

the problem is,
along the way,
as your inventing
god, or
some type of
fix,

you'll go chasing
a piece of zirconium
in a hand,
whose master
has lost
any semblence
of a new thought.

and
the problem is,
is that we have dug
everywhere,
in pits of shit,
with our bare hands,
scrounging
for nothing
but another piece
of shit.

and our hands
are tired.

and we imagine
we're lucky.

and what we pull
up
is always
the same.

the inventions
are nothing
but
ninety year old people,
carrying the same wrinkles.

and you think
that you said something
new?

stocks and holes

the brain. sometimes
it thinks
too much,
causing
for interuptions
during the day,
that's like a blunt
magnetic forcefield
pulling your thoughts
up,
over the brain's crust,
until they bubble.

there is nowhere for them
to go.

that's why they invented
yoga, and
heroin, and
horrible movies,
about horrible people,
in horrible cities.

you sit there
with a skinny thought.

you sit there
feeding that thought
like it's some starving baby.

you feed it
until
it outweighs
the weight
of your brain.

maybe there's some cheap candle
you light,
or maybe
there's some dollarstore prayer
that somebody taught
you,
anything
that takes on the shape
of a pill.

but it's there,
always waiting for you
like your just some
puppy,
waiting
for some charles manson to appear.

and it's then,
at that moment,
that you forget everything
on
some list
thay you always swore
you'd remember.