LAUGHTER LINES

I’ll have to say it if you don’t Bring my hammer down if you won’t Quote “It’s time for Bibi to become a ghost”
 Unquote Symbols of chaos Fox bones grenade toss
 Seance over video call
 Movie posters on the wall Rupees and rubles Eyelids drooping Only running on caffeine Looking for a legal loop hole It exists but not for you Recluse and widow Spinal fluid on a stained glass window When the preacher finally sprouted wings I speared him from the front row

Last laugh through power lines 
Thrumming along ask how I’m doing
 “Fine” they expect but instead I say “Zel Mazé” 
Pine boxes vibrating with sine waves arranged in a NEJI 
Liner notes impress upon like weaving an elegy
 Rhodes tines rusted wind chimes lacking energy
 As Mingus said “before time runs out of time”
 Sold for zero not the same as free
 Read write and arithmetic the Dao of holding out
 Paying upfront to sail the boiling sea
 Sun’s pouting in for a drought by the end of the week
 Sitting still shade of an oak tree picturesque espirit From what I see I have no doubt
 Never bowing down mil-tech from the page 
Faust for the stage courtesy of the federales 
Mayday paygrade I molded the clay traded it for a place to lay Oh my pretty little head 
Lean back imaginative play with words and images Derivative still impromptu stay hewn into a loose affinity group Pushing back like I was born to Remember I’m not a face yet I remain unbothered Take dishonor over being collared a choice made by few 
Last laugh in Honshu sparring with figments
 Don’t whine or argue
 Time runs out of time but it never shows you Y’all motherfuckers are already dead 
Now in soul soon in body Aim steady boorish blend
 Don’t care what you call me call me jihadi Slant, bitch, anything ‘cept fool
 Paper tigers and taped pennies
Calm in the face of ridicule Ate ten truths too many 
Having the time of our lives scaring catcallers and billionaires Wretched of the earth living amongst the evergreens
 Apartheid beneficiaries dropped into thin air The pound of flesh is owed to me and only me Alone

In all ten worlds I move
 Shura speaks too soon karmic debt payment due Even the cause awakened still need food Suburban family found their labradoodle drowned in the pool Your lies unspool unravel
 The rumors travel by telegram and signal Sickle held aloft slice nicotine hymnal 
 Guillotine severs spines with a sickening crack
 That’s ok it’s beneficial
 Revel in fracking and sarin gas attacks
 Baptismal crude chiropractic putrid mottled sugar Attitude erratic bottled up muted onlookers
 Poor choice of words and acts Smokestack
 Uprooted and disappeared only left tracks Thirst spells the end mannequin of paraffin wax
 Money sent to a dead account A number on a server a drought It’s not about the amount
 Owner long out password with them
 Simulated laughter lines on a djinn
 Enter your PIN kickback to crescents
 Privatized incense
 Pomp and ceremony demands presence Lotus position under persimmon tree
 No land is truly free
 Butcher serving slices of punk bitch by popular decree Monk regal in yellow silks
 Heavy metals in mother’s milk
 Shit-faced guilt and rift
 Situation precarious for all but the rich
 Two million dying for control of a ditch Brusilov worth a page or two in a book The fuselage dangles between sentences Have a look
 Skim
 A paragraph in a list
 Veteran’s grave visit on a whim Sun sets clouds above orange kissed
 Thin film adrift on the wind
 I’ve got nothing left to give except my pocket lint
 Vascular highways tinted hostile
 Tents swept by blue bloods soggy volume of Aristotle
 Blurred by speed sixty miles
 Flurry of blows greed open jaws of crocodiles 50/50 spit
 Dirty sidewalk new graffiti a city of fluorescents
 Nah just an insomniac in essence

Constricted throat anaphylaxis or conda?
 Asphyxiated either way pet stoat trembles in his cage Black mamba slithering under the couch
 Banded krait enter stage left
 Boomslang hidden somewhere else in the house
 Rinkhal crept up through the pipes
 Yellow chin of Latin America in the master bed
 Pit vipers of all types twisting through they’re warheads
 Looking underfed and angry with fangs like spears
 Saw scaled machinery turning gears
 Rearing up defensive posture hood open
 Antivenin vial broken 
 Asp soft spoken
 Victims groaning
 Adder hiss a rasp 
 Diamondback curled up rattling fast
 Medusa draws a bath
 Lays in it and laughs Black-headed strangler not seen but felt
 Talking to herself Wearing her revenge like a mask
 Wine glass filled with oceans and pills
 A prophesied potion of illness and shibboleths
 The house is a mess Shed skin sink into the depths Amorality is a lifestyle incoherence is a sin When the house always wins there’s no crime but to let it happen Blasphemy comes from the rim brimstone in cisplatin
 Dancing over cadavers and engine parts wrapped in skin
 Muscle atrophy malnourished too thin
 The holy land paved over with strip malls and gas stations The house always wins The shivs on my person are just fashion I promise
 Termites over-feasting now we vomit
 In the aftermath not even the cockroaches’ll write sonnets

Non-emotive thoughts narrated
 Migrating birds drawing patterns serrated
 Flows muted sedated eyes vacant Information outdated
 Deadpan Heron feathers clenched in my hand
 Panning for gold in bright blue sand
 Sleight of paper fans 
 Blighted ram’s horn my sigil my crest Killing each other over traffic jams Detest and ingest Splitting dams like coconuts
 Kevlar vest so what? So what? Unmarked vans cobra dust the LUT Out front there’s gunpowder on the table Gaunt and pale traces speaking propaganda on cable
 Crew cut grunt is just manipulanda So what? I am the memoranda
 Jacarandas flower while Vanda orchids wither
 Making sordid wine out of rust and wicker
 Pour it distorted down the drain The bulb overhead flickers
 The torpid liquid leaves no stains
It’s no use it’s all in vain Maimed
 Obey the sidewinder taped to the inside of your brain Leave you drooling but in tune Fooling no one syncretic fumes Synthetic wombs and crumbling tombs I’m a plume of smoke soaked into spider silk and old wounds
 Dark tulips mummified buried in the hills never to be found
 Forgotten
 Pound by pound begotten by hip bones No sound

I’ll believe it when I see it Not just a turn of phrase but an afterimage
 My patrilineage only real on paper Genes disappear like vapor Ancestor crawling out the nape of my neck
 Glowing eyes hungry panting in the dark beyond the deck Don’t ask me to stand for the flag nor your genocidaire elect
 Split atoms spit phantoms even little boy had a barrel chest Rodent bones in an owl’s nest Trojan horse called culture shock
 Cinderblocks at my behest Testing anesthetic 
 Disheveled medic putting the IV in rocks Sutures lancets no gauze just the kid’s sock
 Give it a rest you’re all talk You’re all talk
 Piano prepared with C4 and wiretaps
 Greed embodied Venus flytrap Pouring bleach uncaring like a gish gallop Fire lapping at courthouse steps Enveloped and mired in cordyceps Might fuck off and head west
 Might not
 Maybe not cynical just perceptive 
Maybe collect weapons and be a pest
 Say bye stay happy with what’s left of your flesh
 Femoral artery gushing ichor and centipedes
 I drink it like liquor trying on new identities Within complexities lie hearts that don’t stop st-st-stammering Marked for deletion “no tampering” written in parentheses

Lion dance grafter spin Metabolize yang and yin Teetering on the brink like kin I am that dew Ipecac sumo chew Yams in earth familial opera Monocular sumatra Could be a cure for cholera Oh to be sure it’s a likeness Maybe a kindness in a bind Theoretic shores of mind I am on the ascetic’s spine Sicking hounds along magnetic lines Time is ticking I am clicking tongues Pouring crimson in my lungs Ballet tap and swing shit Mold spore born muted Dandelion fluted armor numb Roses in Karakorum Pontificate with crumbs Lone toad and tadpole Arachnid pools of velvet crow’s soul Restless struggle doubles or imbues I am the few I am that dew Accused of attitude
I am delicatessens A perpetual obsession with dye I give an impression of lies In the iris are collections Processions of weaknesses speak loud Shapeshifter on Jupiter inside the sound I am outside of the cloud I have my doubts Down and out such a trifle Hind hunting rifle can’t find moonlit I am never mind shit Sacred sleep fit to reap essence Confessional registered deep illness Sink into stillness and pale Dismantle the jail enlightening Delights in sailing Kites are crying Erudite dying vast Buying what comes from the past Solar twine in fasting walk Behind the mass of warning chalk Battle ready rotting minute Titles furnished in tin Quick languid loose skin Students of Shaolin Dressed in vibrant teal deletive Relative to sanguine heretical I am psychoanalytical Medicine critical air furious I see it sheets of Asturias Call it Manchurian 
Hubris singed miracle ridicule the mark Echolocate in the dark Plagues are an art Less than should be I am slothful ghosts Post up in the scene brambles Decayed urns on the mantle
I am giant Galaxy further defiant Can’t be so reliant on hurt tapes Maw grapes of vignettes
I am vying lonely cassettes On a simmering I am parried dithering I am teaching Iconic rhapsody My whispers are profanity I am chronic sanity I am destructive Productive planet conductive pigeons I am a painting doubled visions Tibetan layers of confetti I am Tigris and Euphrates I am black machetes I am Tigris and Euphrates

Feverish sleep
 Wake up drenched in sweat and weep I sow what I’ll reap
 Fate’s not real but we all march to a beat
 Destiny calls from deep beneath the soil Tesla coil catholic mass
 Sneaking through tunnels hint of mustard gas
 Bodies for the casualty report dropping far too fast Can’t count them all bask in terror
 Digits pulling hair pulling teeth
 Shaking fingernails are last Focus on the task stand on your own two feet
 Fumigation served neat no chaser Torrential dervish hell bent rounds tracer
 Rude elation confessional verve pacemaker
 Down in Chinatown
 Stagnation worn like a ball gown Empty lot grass the color of wheat
 Man lying in the street is he dead or just asleep? Lampposts and doors painted red
 Foo dogs fed all city and tossed meds
 Orange sleeping bags and blue tents
 Strip clubs and semi-abandoned tenements
 Waterfront properties leering like hyenas
 Surrounded
 Caught in the next image schema
 Not a mirage or lost bet lanced edema Couple blocks that-a-way bourgeois sunbathers lay Never obey murals posting bail
 Oppressive heat Court’s in session please be seated
 Contrast stark beetles crawl informant bleated
 Uniform plays hopscotch copaganda conceited Corner debate repeated from yesterday Two men hair grey and unkempt
 Smoking crooked cigarettes
 Back and forth the topic their favorite King novelette
 Back and forth thinking about their mothers
 Three summers spent outside is all it took Over the body the others hover Forty four years old at most by the look
 Silent vigil
 Riddle found
 His last words in a journal they discovered
 One sentence never uttered “Brown eyed girls shouldn’t forget their colors”

INLAND TAIPAN, SPANISH DANCER: Forked tongues flicking over yellow fangs The phone never rang Pangs of hunger echo through a dead mall Shouts thrumming muster vitriol Demon’s paw stamped on pall bearers Murmur’s on the other side of the wall Nothing left to do but wait for fall Proffer riches to dead finches Cure for what ails just a lure Impure life Buer offers a helping hoof No fingers it’ll have to do Never ask for proof Collapsed roof Paimon whistling a tune in Arsuf All gone Twirled like a pawn By dawn occult songs pour out of chimney smoke and still lakes Distillation of deals made by mistake Leaves raked F for fake Take what comes as it comes don’t waste your breath on complaints Outside Asmodeus laughs at your regrets and waits Crass and pious service to the left hand of fate Open up the gates Tacky fountains still peppered with pennies from 1988 Carry the weight of the lesser key
 Golden flowers lined on balconies Tartarus pit flit about unearth Archimedes Belial sabotages the peace treaty Transparent denial no tact Pyramid burial aisle stacks Shax and Sabnock peer through masks
 Ancient dock-house door knock nefarious tasks
 Luciferian memoir cask of blood
 Storm of mud Stem and bud Seat of the inverted throne the source of the flood Halnya Andri: Slick stains, blacktop brick panes Crack spot adjacent, cellar windows The moonlight, oozing despondence A sober soul, now solely Just rememberance for broken neck dollies, forgotten Foregone plotting, window shopping in anger Cater to the masses, whiplash of betrayal I've never known future, all delusions Cemetery pollution, penitentiary institution All pslams, palms empty and clueless Fishnets, dance quietly; through silent storms Collapsing uses, am I useless? Job applications, phasing through my meager comfort Escaped the trials, daily cycle of slumber What was once hunger, is perennial occupation Just disgusted by a moment of serenity Dismembering all sentiments, delicately Bricks thrust, on threats of a memory Take it all from me, bury me in blacktop Shot dead, on the last bus stop Pull slots, to stripped copper winnings Only hope, to live to a swift ending Tears are soft beginnings, all decaying Serrated knives, serenading my wits in servitude The sharps pot, boiled over remnants It was all a lie, under qualified for life Ruminating, on death; only living through longing eyes Solemn demise, comatose with mitosis Shattering mirrors, to see both sides A body of contradiction, encapsulated by time Severe all ties, a welder's demise Twisting wires, short circuits Sometimes we die, to find a purpose

INLAND TAIPAN, SPANISH DANCER: Tear gas canisters versus umbrellas and plastic lids
 Armored vehicle Palestinian kid’s broken violin
 Shrugging off less lethals bruised skin
 Out of saline no faces shattered limb Hanoi Hannah strolling roof to roof into dim-lit hotel rooms Shrubs need pruning wilted from the fumes Motherfuckers’ll find out soon Not soon enough
 How much they paying Lindquist for rent
? Maybe scum pigs don’t charge thinking they’re heaven sent
 Agents small and weak behind their little fence
 Only way this ends is CECOT past tense Agents small and weak behind their little fence
 Only way this ends is CECOT past tense Jhay: Black angel swaying through the hallway, the image of tomorrow eats us all away. euphoria under wings, hidden ignorance with plenty gifts, shells to kids, rapid decent framed as self defense, but to what extent does existence mean burn em to death? The smell of bud creeping through the hallway, my muse was a rainy day under all I dread. “I love you” only, found through what was left. The cloud drenched, Hydrangea were I wept like heaven stretched. Reach your hand out for yesterday, the presents bent. Hate ain’t never felt the need to pretend, lament the amense. Immanent the chaos is immense, tears dense, choirs preaching through the fence, but the law don’t like its ears bent.

I make my rounds at night Melancholy makes a deafening sound 
 Watching a fight under flickering streetlight
 Siren wail fresh dirt mound Mirrored graves moon blinding white Bloodhound’s delight Blood in my teeth all there is to drink in the Mojave Pour my blood like cream in your coffee Paparazzi puzzled dead eyed like bream Bluffing that we’re living the dream Air around buzzing with electricity
 Buzzing hives of activity Casually tossing bolts at warehouses and machinery Thousands of casualties That’s just how it is with industry
 Flies held alive in the mouth
 Caustic popcorn ceiling house
 Prison to the south Tall and wide Clever mouse bides his time
 Plainclothes thinks he’s sly The golden age of cobwebbed halls and bonsais
 Days in wildfire haze close by burnt out homes piled high
 Choking on the ash of wildlife and karma I’m camera shy but can’t be fazed by suspicious eyes
 Every precious thing broken by design
 I turn to dust as we speak Rivets weak Rig leaking oil into my beak
 Wreak havoc on my coral reef Let the plastic tea steep In the deep sea vampire squids teach economics
 Watch your step even kids carry onyx blades
 Ripple in the everglades gators selling stolen arms and legs I make my rounds at night
 Flying kites I found in abandoned playgrounds
 Surrounded by discarded trash popped red balloon Fridge runs Doom but can’t save floral bloom My obsolescence planned like I’m bending spoons Blessed is the flame It burns in my veins I’m playing along with the game of staying sane The flame is blessed If you’re desperate tell them you’ll die how you lived A coward by default yeah yeah it’s on the quiz Yeah yeah that’s just how it is Data-racing mice with name tags and bellyaches Motonormative mind windshield bias opaque Carcinogens in your milkshake Your four year old wants a sip Take your pick it’s that or an earthquake Stripped screws in my fingers
 Mandate to kill fash flip the transistors Turn it to ash Dash away sequence CRISPR
 The flame asks in a whisper Will I fall deeper still or erupt with a whimper? Sputter and hiss Don’t knock just enter From the center of the frame From nerves came the bender Hell bent on anger Yeah yeah that’s my gender Blessed is the flame I’m a dame of the lazily dressed Lie flat in a crow’s nest
 The flame is blessed Live in stasis a polemic with no pages Manic faces hiss about allegedly dead phages
 Allegedly brought back from extinction Immune system rages
 Economy just a fiction we’re caged in Dereliction no problem lobotomy repetition Boxer rebellion That’s how to serve an eviction That blessed flame is ammunition

Wishbone crack
 Broken back
 Incantation spoken through drums and burlap
 Anachronistic gaps in the narrative
 Tainted by lead paint and bad faith Imperative to keep the key close The rest of your life the gaping maw of a question
 Au nom de quoi?
 Or who? No answers or just too few?
 It’s a disaster tears into tar
 Don’t take it too far we got yard work to do Chewing on a duller hue of black rainbows Saying you’re still there but I know the truth Empty room of timid “maybes” just for you

Il pleut it’s raining
 The rest of us too
 Hydroplaning chewed up
 Some survive it’s dumb luck
 Some are bayoneted by steering columns or the axel of a truck I’m found in an airbag snuck in for when time’s up It’s never enough
 Say you don’t give a fuck but I see it in your eyes
 The fear 
 The clock’s taken hostage treated rough
 I’m sucking your blood every night
 Wheel turns I’ll burn the earth It’s down-pouring mites
 I’d sacrifice my life to make the clouds into storms
 Maledicted when they’re born above
 Afflicted 
 Torn to pieces by love and commercial jets I’ve suffered too many fools I have my regrets
 The arc of the twirling pool following footsteps
 Laid to rest in frostbitten hands
 I trace the silk road back in tandem with branded cattle
 Every path a ragged gash
 Jackals slathered in the meat of stragglers
 Babbling in streams
 Mausoleum keys fractal Levitate with doves
 Eat forbidden apples
 Watch bear cubs play and learn
 They got time for now but mom’s not long for this world
 Crosshair marks her heart
 Santa La Muerte calls it an art
 The thunder a warning shout
 Bullet’s already out the barrel
 Taking the quickest route
 Feral
 No master to bow before
 No miles left to travel
 I make a home wherever I’m able
 Crossed my name out of the play bill It’s time to forget those old tunes
 Table set with long chopsticks and spoons Loyal hounds looking for scraps off my plate
 One final act of kindness
 Shuffle off into the black

Hummingbirds gulping out of my gaping head wound
 Gray matter mashed clumps pour onto the floor
 Making all the bitches like me swoon Spoke too soon Missed the proverbs exposed wires seek
 Small bones and nerves in my hands seem meek
 But that’s just shit the babbling creek said
 Bedsheets stained red that’s good luck even for the dead

Lights in the sky
 Cyanide and a pry bar 
 Stars or jets
 Doesn’t matter in the end they’re just specks 
Out of reach without a net Wherever the days went The shadows crept spent their dimes on cheap cigarettes
 Distant animal calls like a pirouette Distrust by default for the cishets Flechettes in malt liquor Ecocidal Depth of reprisal crescent lies
 Web loaded with flies some already died Failed struggle in those compound eyes
 Delicious Memories fictitious Grandfather tick tick ticking like a bomb
 Rum and riot aplomb 
 Run and sight in on a gamelan Some vets lost more than limbs in Vietnam
 Amputees return now dispossessed Now the moon rises in the west Looking down at the specks it detests Lights on the ground a mortal nest
 Rigor mortis steel matryoshka In life no less rigid no less liquid
 Playing coy huh? Constellation disconnect Hammerhead silhouette Genuflect no hesitation Mesmer bend direct desiccation Tone dreamer emulation
 Bone reader no thought stealer Dynastic eight fold no skin peeler Finger curls with misuse Caliphate in my soft tissue
 Expiration date sways in bamboo Mildew outdo out paced Mummified half truth bear mace Pursue gung fu strutting furs misplaced Aroma of pure waste Accusations written on the face I pace back and forth through space War torn torturer lit by torches Wax statues sat on porches More of the same fucking thing Mucid stars form a ring Deluded not lucid sing rat sing Clipped wings
 Kukri cuts threads and ends summer flings 
Roam the plateau rifle fire pings in the distance Same color as ohms parasitic fly coexistence Left behind in Shanghai humor dry bye and good riddance Too shy to do shit so hashtag resistance