i spit bad fevers into cords
hung from streetlights miles below,
where big father stood on his podium
and outbid executive orders--
skin fried as he touched the switch
but couldn't wake the hio polloi

(like me with a bucket
swinging around my neck
and far over my head
to splash the dreamers with
acidic reality).

i hear what i want--
snatch it all from a night owl
with cigar-scarred legs,
tripping over pot holes
and onto glass contacts, floating in a punch
that's been hung mid-air for decades
as a balanced still frame.

i try to kiss the powerline,
but the house is slut-proof,
decomposing beside the railway tracks
to which the cars hum a meditating mantra
as my passengers try sleeping off their yesterdays
on wooden benches--

scortched
cheeks against bad wood,
screaming for flora in the night
as they learn termites have wings
withstanding fly-SWATting teams.

doctor's orders, i
take the rosebuds down
from the counter where my father's newspapers lied,
and a brown recluse spider crawled,

with appologies running through the
infrastructure of waterways and gas pipes,
glued to cold rafters and
leaking into the threshold crevasses--
hollow smoke in the foreground
begging for repentance.

now what do you see
through your eight eyes, spider lethal,
what do you see now, spider dead?