hospital bed.

Beginnings

and endings come here

with nothing such as divinity

or blessed cans of oil and incense

baptizing our souls

into eternity.

Nothing but ugly, fleshy, mortality,

the decaying stench of defeated microbes.

In brief flashes

that shatter time,

years slither away, forming milky pools

of withered age at the bedside.

Medicated synapses

are misfiring,

sending mixed emotions

to the conscious realization of an end.

Ghosts of past friends roam

the space around

the body melting under fluorescent lights,

fragile remnants of pain

and joy destined to be lost forever.

dead letters for living people

    

room.

Sitting by the waiting line

while criminals are blindfolded

so as not to identify

who we are.

    

People are getting impatient.

Watching others through reluctant                             intercourses of cups of coffee.

Chemicals pumped in to keep us docile.

Uniformed attendants call the names

through constricted throats

some stand up

and others keep on pacing.

     

The criminals pass before us,

heads bent and wondering.

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