Under the Starzzzzz

I want to wake up to find myself
pissing off a helicopter who hovers
above Mt. Rushmore.
I want to fall asleep and
hit the forest floor running desperately
from the Huntress Ghosts of Long-Dead Loves
who try as they might, can't snort enough
antihistamines
or coke
to force my scent from their faces
I want a shitty U2 song blasting from a boombox
that I throw mercilessly against the
concrete knife-hand of a highway divider
surrounded by the burning rubber
twisted metal wreckage of a thousand brake pedals
pressed down just a fraction of a hesitated moment
too late to walk away from
while a mass choir candlelight vigil stands
in a semicircle, seventeen mouths deep
humming the elegiac chorus to
"Season of the Witch" by Donovan.

Fuck Dreams.
I want the waking world to be splashed
and peppered with hot sauce wrung from
the charred skeletons of burnt offerings
in sacrifice to a god too fat on tragedy
to fuck around with appetizers

But too often sunlight finds me taking
cold showers in the torrent of bad blood
gushing from the faucet-head slashed wrists and
throats of all the girls I've dated.
Or speaking about change, not proactively
not with confidence
but with all the hushed, remorseful dynamism
of eulogies for miscarriages
and abortions
to the arrhythmic din of a dozen hundred keyboards
clacking away without the slightest shred of consciousness
most notes in the symphony ghosted with
fluorescent sighs of defeat.

Bravo. Bravo. Author. Encore.
Encore.
White lie time sheets serving maximum sentences
on deathless stands.
Most mornings I'm a witness
heaving forged testimonies onto piles begging for the torch.
Most mornings I need to be swimming in whiskey & cola
just to gasp for air.
And if any of this seems pathetic, Congratulations.
You must not live with your parents.
You must not work a job that hates you.


...
i think this one is about three years old. maybe more. yeah. more. i've tweaked it by a word or two here or there. it's one of approximately five poems i wrote in the almost-two-year period that i last lived in Denver. the notebook i pulled the piece from is mostly large chunks of blank white, and i don't think i'll ever fill it. i leave it empty to remind me that late-2005-to-mid-2007 was not a prolific nor particularly proud time for me. i'm glad to be gone from there, though there are plenty of things about that time-and/or-place that i love. i'm glad i no longer live with my parents (though i do miss them often). and i'm glad i no longer work in a cubicle in an office building that acts like it wants me dead.

-andy