TRAIN STATION, 1 AM

Oh, the scabrous humanity,
the hunt and peck, hungry
for an afterbirth. Faces
mutter to themselves,
study religious pamphlets,
Us and People magazines,
schedules and missed connections.

Between the thrumming
of trains coming and going,
a lone cricket chirps
amidst the trellised iron work.

JUNK

This world is so full of junk
our veins can’t open enough
to absorb it

Waiting at the station
a freight train pulls through
bells laboriously clanging
open-ended bed after bed
filled with grey, shaled
rubbish, from some other dream
hollowed out, made weightless
trundling the past past

As we look on
glaze-eyed, late night
waiting for our next connection

DIAGRAM

Thirst follows no tunnels, no maps. Thirst is a harrowed arithmetic, stuttered and freeze-framed.
Thirst is the snake swallowing itself
and we are the pilgrims shedding
a burnt offering, a chastened ember
to glow upon the bed of the tongue
and make stronger.

Thirst is the last word
gone up in flame, easy kindling.
Thirst is a release when nothing is left. Thirst is the dotted line
when you have no name to give.

MOON

You offer a stream
through towering, misted
elm trees, a shaft
for me to lay my last dance in

All I can ask as I stumble
toward your bone-white light
is forgiveness

SELF-RELIANT PUNCH LINE

no you in fact are
the one where the monkey dreams
he is a monkey

GOD’S AN INSECT

those starved and bug
eyed ferocious with neglect
who are we to make

OLD SELL

A mosaic of shattered interfaces!
A being of pure appetite seeking its'
sutured center! A time we said
we were wasting; broken down
to seismic plates and the approximation
of a smile…a billboard, redundant,
leaving off the details of that last mile…