leavin new england

swept the last of everything out of the house in amherst. dusted my dust of the mantle, gathered the hairpins and worn shoes, dragged my battered bags to the curb. gathering my possessions has taken on all the cheer of dressing for a wake; loading them is like pulling the coffin.
but it is done and we are sweating a little on the grave in the latent, weary, slanted end of august sun. i wish it would stay this hot but shes gotta go, like all the rest of us.

so we pull on to the road and i am homeless, again, and the road is clear but the adventure is fading. our whiskey-shot eyes have eyes only for the chaos, the uneasiness, the half full bottle rolling and cracking in the back seat of the aged volvo im riding shotgun. i leave everything but the malaise that grows like snakes crawling up my belly.
i am not wiser, but maybe older since last august—more tired,
worn down, increasingly bowed with the unbearable lightness of being: all this heaviness in my boots, all these miles i've put on, but leaving no real footprint no matter how deep the mud.

relief

'..and then you've got your opioids.' she sits back and cracks her beefy knuckles satisfactorily, which causes her huge breasts to swell forth and strain the fabric of her faded beach-scene tshirt.
'you can take them through the three points of power,' she indicates the soft corner of her elephantine elbows, her papery mouth, her dripping delicate nose.
'opioids have been shown to give you the optimum exposure to the breath of jesus. that's why, obviously, it's illegal. if everyone was breathing with jesus there'd be no reason to pay taxes.'
she draws silent and fixes her blue gaze on yonder clouds, smiling a little, shivering and shaking with the need.

१२:००(repost)

in bed my eyes wander outside. moonlight has turned scars to pearls and rimmed our unslept undereyes with precious onyx.

this evening the silent silver highway outside my door could go anywhere and its strewn garbage could be gleaming undersea treasures wrapped in the weeds of these forgotten farms.
our overripe moon is bursting above the clearcut meadows
which are still exhaling copper dust from their conquest.
high moon midnight casts man's industry as glamorous: the factories emit rivers of warm gold, the sawmills sing shakespeare and the smokestacks billow holy odes to god in the sky...
i finally snap to as a truck thunders through, shakes the panes, and hushes the crickets:
its headlights cast a coke can as a coke can once again.

madeline-mary

i could sleep, but someone is tapping gently and persistently on the other side of the basement door. behind my squeezed shut eyes the door yawns open into empty silence breathing old air.
it is punctuated now with the delicate sound of fingernails scraping painted wood. i do not get up to answer it.

old man of king st.

even now, as you read this, he is probably sitting on his front porch.
he sits unmoving through the hot afternoon, as the lengthening shadows stripe his grizzled face, as the wind picks up and the afternoon rain soaks his stained trucker hat. he blinks eyes that are focused on some far-off time, and the water drips down his sunspotted nose, but his hands don’t move.
darkness comes, obscures him,but he remains patient and silent in his chair. the weeds—on the other hand—are restless, and growing taller by the minute in the cracks of his sidewalk that no one ever walks up.