Election

The world is falling at my feet

Funny how the pieces look like skin,
leprous from a dying man; the disease
of boils that is the human condition.

The rain is like acid on my face

spit from the bile ducts of angry men,
thrown into the pit, dumb and blind,
and told to stand and make decisions.

No good can come of this

abandoning our better instincts for a bandage
called guile, adult babies sucking pacifiers
filled with opiates, attempting to deny impotence.

Lunatics are falling at my feet

screaming incoherent; oracles quick copy
all their meaningless utterances, selling
them to postulates as dogma truth.

The populace simpers and slobbers at their feet

grateful for the release, the numbing sensation
as the drugs take over, the stasis calm that comes
from the panacea of no longer having to think.

Dying Alive

Life was hanging jagged
on the last limb, waiting
for the Fall, wanting to flutter
away before the coming cold of Winter.

We stared at all the signs,
billboards counting down
Doomsday minutes, our eyes
forever surrendering to "Buy more Coke".

And we mainlined corn syrup,
hoping for a new recipe, our
final betrayal seeming simply Classic.

My lips moved as you passed the bottle,
mouthing platitudes in the drunken dawn,
anything to make the coming daylight bright,
a reason for waking to another day.

You wheezed a phlegm plagued cough,
a sign of tubercular rumblings, deep in
your throat to bring words out breathing:

"I think I'm dying".

I glanced at our surroundings;
the needles of sun highlighting
the ruin of our days, smoke
cascading, frozen in the chilling room.
I grabbed your empty head, proof against meaning,

"Honey, we all die sometime".

Goodbye

Swimming amniotic, already
learning impermanence,
digits splayed in defiant wave,
precursor of goodbye.

They come and go, a human
classroom where everything
is taught by fist to chin;
we mouth the words in painful
recitation, stumbling on goodbye.

And when we fail the yearly tests,
consigned to corners wearing the dunce's
cap, the cuckold's horns and wattles,
traces of fingers on our arms and faces,
we suffer the sing song litany of goodbye.

Sneak through alleyways, along bright corridors
where people pray to sun, denying the dark
passages where losers run to say goodbye.

Warehouses of thrown away humanity,
shuffling, hands outstretched in mournful
calamity, trapped detention, shamble
gaited zombies searching for goodbye.

And I am the arrogant student, philosopher
of the dark arts, pins and needles and tiny dolls,
extracting vengeance for the word goodbye.