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

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.

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josephmcabral.com

centerfold.

We had settled on riding the city limits.

Passing the old playground

where we first

saw a picture of a naked lady.

We were content

with the silent treatment

until we got home.

This whole experience should have been better.

“Remember that song?

Remember this?

Remember that?

Remember when we all

went to the end of the year dance

and we all got drunk and

Amy and Mark got lost in the woods

behind the gymnasium?”

Memory lane carries a toll, and some of us have over paid.

I remember that picture of a naked girl,

how Mark swiped it

from his brother’s collection

of flesh colored treasures

that was kept in secret places in his brother’s room.

We once got yelled at for sneaking about 

looking for his also secret collection of baseball cards.

Hiding away the past is a learned behavior.

I remember being unsure how to react

and the look on most of our faces

told me, I wasn’t alone.

We hooted and hollered,

mimicking the reactions

we’d seen on television.

Her pose

persuading flaccid penises

and the hidden ejaculations

accomplished only

fragile embarrassment

and the act of

rivaled excitement

that told nothing

of her talents.

Children caught in the act of pre-designed lust.

dead letters for living people

josephmcabral.com

with the smile on.

She’s a war monger’s daughter,

a smile worth a million dollars

or a thousand lives, whichever you gots,

her breed is recognizable.

Corruptible god fearers walk the aisle hand in hand.

Those people are to blame…

I got my own faults,

I admit, but in the end,

it’s all capitalism,

thems the cards we bought.

They took my dreams away.

They take everyone’s dreams here,

clean them, censor them, and put them back

before anyone realizes they’re gone.

Were living in the moments between purchases.

Most of us have already been bought.

Sitting in the America Mall,

drinking coffee with whip cream through a straw,

explaining the prophecy of a manifest destiny

colliding with a free market buy out

is no way to pass the day.

         

She’s coming for another pass, the smile,

her daddy, the general,

bought her a new toy.

The scent of another third world nation being decimated.

dead letters for living people