commercials.

Watching the world

synthesized digitally

51 frames per second.

Catching glimpses

of chemically oriented enlightenments

that degrade synapses.

          

Overlooking past judgments on society

for an eternal fantasy.

It’s all untouched and permanent,

where happiness truly exists.

Clean air that’s inviting and pure,

its inhabitants surrounded in a

forever state of contentment

basking in a warm and forgiving light

where someone would want to

vacation,

buy in   

retire too,

die in,

or live forever.

A fading sunset,

a glorious sunrise,

what Christmas morning should be,

what living should feel like.

Death and suffering are only

concepts for entertainment

and reasons to purchase better.

A misplaced envy swells

for that life

existing within

that second to second universe

where reality is a utopian light show.

As if everything here,

amongst the flesh and meat of it all,

is less and inferior

when compared to that grand vision.

All cumulating in a sickness,

a depression,

a void,

cast from depravation for a life,

that for a few seconds,

I’m convinced I once had;

and through my own fault, I’ve lost.

dead letters for living people

blood sold.

Turnstiles are attached to the doors

to the home that was sold

before you had a chance to die.

     

You pay the entrance fee

to sleep in your own bed.

          

A son, an alligator with

your mother’s eyes,

waits for your

corpse to go on sale.

               

His take

of your pension

runs the show.

Spinning turnstiles randomly

keeping you awake at night.

     

Strangers go through

your unmentionables,

taking what they want.

          

Your son guides them through the house,

telling stories

about things that were supposed

to be kept a secret.

               

Money changes hands

and more of you walks out

the door without you.

Spectators throw coins and apples

at you as offerings of good luck.

     

The turnstiles turn

day in, day out.

You collect pennies and wait until your death is paid.

dead letters for living people

march 20, 2003.

Reign over me.

Emperor greed-fiend

whose name is engraved on the bullets.

Worms crawl to him for assurances

that we’re all beautiful and divine.

Hail to the god, the devil, and the defiler too.

Reign over me. Strike up the angelic chorus.

Harking on trumpets made of victims to a holy war.

Buying up the world

while the poor eat

the morphine

in the pudding

so the children won’t

remember what has been

committed in their names.

Rain fires. Reign people.

Popes, kings, and presidents.

Lunatics, tramps, and sinners.

Give of yourself for yourself!

Take what you want

and kill whomever gets in the way.

A whole land of worms

praying to be butterflies someday.

Reign future,

reign bullets,

reign fires

Reign over me, oh, sweet American dream.

dead letters for living people

office space.

The blinds sway

in manufactured warm, dry, air.

A hard drive echoes out an existence

through its motorized hum

of gears and circuitry..

          

It pitches then it falls.

Car alarms being heard

from a great far off distance,

ringing menacingly in a whisper

as an insulated call from the outside.

     

It’s beginning to rain again.

Drip, drip, drip, goes the window pain.

Frequently pacing,

methodically counting each and every step,

pausing when some pair

of counter steps walks past.  

I was intimately aware

of the people around me.

          

They are the inheritors

of the Magic Kingdom,

on an open road oblivion

that’s calling its disciples home.

               

The heat from our bodies creeps

 through vents in the ceiling,

 mingling with stars in the sky.

                    

I think I hear them falling.

dead letters for living people

waste.

Watch the glass shards

within blood coursing rivers

through arteries

shattering and imploding.

The innocence sold

for a glimpse of the afterlife.

Plastic voodoo people are shot down

by St. Peter’s goon squad,

shoot first

and ask for forgiveness afterwards.

The streets are over-run by rejects

that were kicked out of paradise.

    

Paper thin people

crying from the steps of the Pearly Gates;

their eye’s leaking sacred fluids

that can be injected

by eyeless junkies to get a quick fix.

There is an onion skin girl-puppet

caressing the cuts on her legs;

inserting vials of poison in the wounds.

They’ll bring a good price

from the surgeon.

The money will buy her a ticket

out of town before anyone realizes

how much poison is missing.

The air swells from the screams

as the shootings cut down the junkies supply.

Paper thin corpses blowing in the wind,

collecting at the feet

of prosthetic angels.

dead letters for living people

josephmcabral.com