Wasteland aftertaste

Cutlery on the sly, metal on ceramic like the rhythm of a joke, keep em laughing and it glides beneath the radar. A garden of phototropic radar dishes, turning in unison to the sun. And the dishes, bowls, really, and the digitized sun waves, a joke that cuts at your meat, which is the source of metastasis?

Platoon boys ruminate on their eventual reincarnation as the enemy

Doing the social dance, like a fuken peacock. Doing the war dance, like some goddamn ferrets. Standing still in ether, like a river stone. Dead and buried to our necks. We'll meet in some stinkin desert land, turbans blowin in the iris-slicin gusts. But we won't recognize each other. No, because the dunes are dancing, too.

Failed collage adjacent to a stocks ticker

(THE INTERNET STARTED)
{what you're hungry for}[About Their Children]
[the skinny on one]
{her profound desire to make}{Substance-Induced}{Cell Death}
{it would be...}["Lightest,""driest,""deepest,"]
{Static Positions} /only 8,501 beds/
[There is plenty of grooming,]
(Reconnect){the noise level}

invisible my presence

Tampa whitewater baptism

Dirt city, malleable in afternoon wind, cemented in morning dew, and again. Dumpster fire at dawn below the highway overpass, grit combusting under press of a firehose. Smoke signaling motorists: "We, mud-caked children cracking in the sun!" A sense of extinguishing lost in transit.

On the subject of death

On a river of de-tuned piano teeth, tide pulled him from the black sediment along the bank. He came on a patch of burning oil like a lilypad, an amphibious man in boots and trousers heavy with soot.

Demography in early evening drizzle

Wipers slide, us cresting the exit ramp, our headlights curving right. Highway northbound exodus from everglade. Wipers pause, and the headlights below, sliding northbound away from us forever, blur.

Canis

Streets exhale absence.  Steam from the grates like dragging cigarette smoke, unspoken thoughts curling into the winter night.  Whole town of lonely fools, every curtain drawn. Where does one go to get warm?  Some washed up astronaut dragging a cigarette, helmet tucked under arm, cigarette tip just another star without a constellation. One can tell which stars are lonely fool astronauts by watching the chests of sleeping strays rise and fall in exhale.