III

the drink has turned on me
and though i fear my old friend
i buzzed, merry fruit fly,
right down the bottleneck
and sunk like an idiot mammoth
in the mire of that ancient tarpit

my little bones glistening yellow
me and my little friends floating
delicate little amber corpses
bobbing down at the bottom

a tarpit that sneaks up on you

how many surprised ladies
with their lives and homes
suddenly look to the table
and wonder how everything
got so saggy, so soggy
throw up their hands,
"o fck, take me away"

i think i can see that kind of thing coming
but you know the thing
with shadows, icebergs
lily pads too--next time look at the bottom
there are slick brown roots
that twist all the way down into the mud

one such nightmare:

walking on a road in new jersey with good friends and a guy i didnt know but who had probably thousands of tattoos of skulls and bones bad priests battle axes crying mexican women gravestones naked women and some sneering monkeys in a semicircle so i guess i kind of got to know him through his tattoos--the night was dark but you couldnt tell because they had those crime neighborhood orange lights everywhere that are supposed to light the faces of criminals and everyone looked very soft--i noticed that the tattoo guy also maybe had dreadlocks and he was talking about how he had an 8 year old kid at home doing what maybe playing wii? probably blonde and had an unusual name--but i couldnt think about it because the tattoo dad pointed out a ratty little weed creeping out of a crack in the sidewalk and said it was datura and was about to start telling us about some of his hallucinations in some desert or other but just as he began we started crossing the street and i looked to my left and saw a huge black rearing shape rushing at us so fast like liquid and i thought it was a car with its headlights off or that death the grand jokester had come to jersey swinging his scythe so i screamed a scream that was mostly silence but everyone else saw it too, and with a great collective gasp expressing shock, dismay, fright, disbelief, or maybe humor we leapt back and watched as a hispanic teenager with long black hair wheelied by on a bmx bike, and we stared after him as he continued to wheelie, disappearing in the darkness and then coming back into view when he wheelied under the creamy orange halo of the streetlights and before long he had wheelied so far that we couldn't see him but we still kept looking down the road and all of those jersey boardwalk lights sparkled and flashed some brightly and some faintly

its times like these
that keep me sitting on my ass
forever hungover on who's couch

and always waving goodbye to all my friends
and good lord help me what a sinful surprise
waits for me in every harlem mcdonalds:

but you'll know where to find me:
the pissy stairwells
carved in the cheap tympanums
face down like a weak bitch

IV

back to school burns or when i tried to purchase dead souls at the deeds of purchase station

"and your late father was also a robust individual."*

where does that put a turd of my consistency and hue?

do the magic trick in which you saw me in half:

thats what it feels like when you come back

to talk shit beneath tudor style architecture

throw in a salty phrase or two

"Here many wishes of all kinds, weighty and powerful, were visited upon him, with even some indelicate words among them"*

i shotgunned a case of the high life all at once

"Good for the constitution!"*

highfived fifteen guys in leather jackets

"I'll say, what an acquaintance!"*

commandeered an intercom and made a cruel joke

"He's stupid as a block of wood, you know!"*

rode in a firetruck and threw cigarettes to the fans

"The muzhiks were ecstatic!"*

i blacked out because i was so happy

"Oh, you bastard, you bastard! Put him in leg-irons and take him off to jail."*

*nv gogol 'dead souls'