//Locals w/Tom//

Somewhere, the sun collapses beneath a prudent eye.

Silent silhouettes sit burnt up, broken, and misled, and wake to a cracked windscreen.

They smoke and marvel, that each breath is still their own.

The truck crawls forward, low on all fours,

embracing the future, and forgetting its own.

//Washington D.C.//

//Washington D.C.//

Think

if it stood in your power

to cause clocks to regress.

A small bowl full of big fish

begets a stunted pond.

Your malaise and theirs

-are miles apart.

That's not the worst of it: Nothing ever happens.

//Faith in the Anvil//

//Faith in the Anvil//

Words flounder in decay
-how I wish they'd never flown.

The returning smile of a jackal explodes.

I quietly count my time, even though I know it isn't really there, until they name the hour, and I politely carry on.

These hours, marked by cigarette ash sometimes seem more needed than my mind -and in the best case, I make a discovery in a spare moment or a heavy trance, that's outstripped my time.

//Ghosts that we know//

Cook the animals.
See the cathedral.

Plough the fief, and die thereabouts.

When I was a kid I played all day.
Now, I tire awake.

Ghosts that we know,
chain and feed the sun.

//Start to a noir//

//Start to a noir//

One warm and rainy day in spring
I stood at the bathroom mirror, shaving.

The cat's meow is like an old screen door.

I feel like a dented can of soup,

because I never knew that my youth,

so far could reach.

Headlights, pass over the window,
and seem to incinerate the room.

This came out of the Recession-era a few years back when it felt like I was in total opposition to everything around me. Since then I've adapted: I shave strategically and less often.