the indulgence.

It’s a turbulent nausea

washing over the skin,

as if drowning and unable to swim,

in a stagnate pool of cigarette water.

     

The air outside is a sickly wet

convulsion of humidity that gets inside a person

in a slow creeping fashion.

The barflies

rested their wings

on greasy barstools.

     

Each counting off the days by

the amount of distilled liquid

floating in their skulls

         

I cursed them out and

told them they were dead already,

 just too stupid to bury themselves.

              

The impulse was strong,

I had to get out,

seek alternative belief systems

that have an opened bar

and quiet drunks.

The road is a wicked succubus

that twists and writhes in

delirious gyrating rhythms,

she’s in a sexually orgasmic

epilepsy against the protests

of a digestive system in vertigo.

My feet catch a grown man,

he’s crying over his infant whose stomach

is starting to swell from malnutrition.

    

A meal is the new Holy Grail.

The golden calf has died

on the streets of America.

When nothing is left, can you still believe in Jesus?

Snake dancing Christian fundamentalists make

their way around me and this man.

     

These righteous worm creatures

slither from street to street

establishing religious

franchises in mini-malls.

          

They step over the child gasping for air.

These prosthetic angel’s,

who view me, this man,

and his dying child as vermin

feeding on the rotting carcass of the

golden calf that they pretend

is still alive.

The sickness of the drink passes

but the perverse contamination

clings to my skin.

     

How much were we promised,

while we banged on the doors of gods

demanding answers,

justifications, and understanding?

          

While others of our own kind

were cutting away pieces

of our souls from our backs.

Selling the pieces as trinkets to those who

didn’t even have the

courage to step up to the door and knock.

Groping the final few steps to the house,

hoping that I haven’t lost my keys, yet again.

     

A shirtless Uncle Sam is sitting on the porch,

his flesh hangs in sheets from the bone.

He’s got a beer for me and one for him, he’s waiting.

Giving up on everything

else around him,

and waiting for the dream,

himself and me to fade away.

dead letters for living people

beginning

She laid there. 
A warrior with a thick candy coated shell.
She was more than just depraved and starved; 
he was nothing to himself; yet, 
unwilling choices brought them together.
She smiled in a passive pleasure at the blood trickling off her flesh. 
She was no one when they met, yet he wanted to be her, 
touch her, 
her perfume swelled in the air. 

He looked at her, he saw himself; she knew who he was.
She allowed him to use her and yet refused him this desire. 
The sweat spilling over his body, dripping down his back, 
her flesh taunting in a perfect way that demeaned him of his own vanishing manhood;
crawling onto her, 
inhaling her, 
how he wanted to consume her and all that she meant to him.

There was the smile, 
emanating like a beacon from he knew not where. 
He grabbed at her throat; the girl could see heaven in his eyes. 
Whatever was left of her innocence was bubbling to the surface. 
After all these years, she now knew where she was going. Her release was with this
prosthetic-angel that had lost its way from heaven but could guide her home.
The man moved deeper, 
holding her tighter, he could smell her aura upon him, 
her unwashed hair, and the bruises. 
Broken pieces of her were sticking to him 
like so much garbage that it began to disgust him. 
If the eyes are the windows to the soul, he could see himself in her reflection.

So much of him was in her, and vise versa, that it made him scream out, 
she never made a sound and simply invited him in.
The control broken, 
the illusion reversed, he fell on her, exhausted, 
defeated, beaten, he let go his hold on her.
The man began to shed his own tears, the saline washing lines on her body.
His stomach wrenched, his heart, sore and darkened.
This man-child lay upon his eternal mother of us all. He lifted himself off of her,
a trail of snot, spit and tears following him from the pooled reservoir on her flesh.
Her eyes went blank,
he could see it, and they turned cold at the realization of his own inadequacies;
her face undid his own frailties.
The man knew, but was not capable of achieving
that which she had inaugurated him to do.
Her truths closed in and shadowed the light that was in her.

He moved onto the floor, lying atop the coldness of the room;
hearing the voices around him and below him,
all life contained within this building and taken away on the outside.
He lay naked upon the grime and dirt of worn souls and past lives;
he could hear her breathing and feel her heart beat in his skull.
He saw her move in the darkness of the room, the only light filtered in from the street.
The man realized her salvation was close,
the door within reach and he failed to show her the way.
He saw it shine in the dirty light.
Unbeknownst to him she had a piece of someone else’s love,
meant to protect her, and with that love, she opened her own door
and entered with a smile.
Her thoughts splattered on the wall
read by everyone who could decipher the language.
In with a bang and the building fell silent.

josephmcabral

dead letters for living people