Young Liars (not featuring TV on the Radio)

 

If silence were golden

You’d be chipping your tooth on fool’s gold

then spitting your fillings into the collection plate again.

Caught doing it for the fourth time

this fiscal quarter.

A real blunder, this one.

The improprieties pile up on one another-leaning precarious, struggling to see over the edge, locked in a mothball-ridden closet.

Molding with the passage of time-

Still vintage.

If vintage were the wheels, catching fire from heated, seized calipers, the entire contraption falling off and rolling into the glamorous lake, the pride of our little slice of heaven.

And I’ll sit by and let the torn rubber and the chemical smell of spurned brakes choke out the fish in the water, seep into the drinking supply.

revenge-a measure of it-

Finally.

Gravity Rides Everything (not featuring Modest Mouse)

 

From a distant star

The flashbulb burning itself 

into the collective’s

knowing oblivion.

A blip and blop and click and sputter.

Morse in uneven distribution

of light’s focus.

Slipping into an inkwell.

Returning unblemished

Dipping again

Into an unknown.

Slept well

and

Shaken awake

At the whims of

Some unseen

dark-hearted puppeteer.

Boy in the Bubble (not featuring Paul Simon)

 

I’m a show pony

Rambling with incoherence and sweat and a directionless

chattering of my lips and teeth

slapping together

with the delirium of wisdom in a tighter space than

really should be allowed right about now

they’ll strap on my feedbag 

and send me out to the pasture

to put a pistol square on my forehead

and fire this bullet of confetti back into my brain

where I’ll dream of the range

before I was taken to be paraded

in front of the masses

shuffling and showing my gums

to check my value

against the barcode and the blue book

page

the one with the picture of me

smiling with a dead man’s grin

hugging the fence for dear life

and being so much more than they bargained for when they put the down payment on me slapped a harness on my back and corralled me with a whip and a chair to usher me out to the dusty trail

Late Registration (not featuring Known Anti-Semite Kanye West)

 All of the day

All day

Each

Moment

I am absorbed

In the clinking sound of the glass

Touching against my face

As I scream against the window

Full tilt. Belly on fire.

Even the water

Only fuels the 

Flames

In their search

For whatever remains

inside me.

Garden Song (not featuring Phoebe Bridgers)

Shake off the dew, vibrations hanging on the edges of the row of flowers. Sharp thorns running up the stem, something brittle-wooden. Uncanny in the ability to draw blood from incidental contact. Transgressions of passing.

Thorns squall around me. A Stretching color game from hell. Leaving my limbs with little purchase in their airspace. They wail in acknowledgement, unaccustomed to being denied this entitlement. 

Dug straight in from inside a well-hidden space, obscured by worn rock wall. My sullen form jitters-anticipation left to spoil.

The thorns collapse down, smelling the thrill of the hunt. I do my merit best to compress and contort away from their fall pattern. The edge of the raised, sharp-thornteeth.

New scratches and nominal droppings of blood smeared around my own edges, blots forming from my core outward. Constellations to color my form. A snarl denoting a victory across my face. I am made something uncommon. A new sense of whole. Known, smoothed out in the rush of emotion. A survivor, sipping the last few drops from the flowers. Thirst, trying to be quenched. 

Again