I love the taste of fire and ashes,
even the pungent sting of burnt charcoal.
Decaying in gasoline.
Because they were remnants once,
of who I was.

If it were up to me,
I'd let myself rot here
Drowned in my cotton sheets
And allow my skin to finally sink
In between the gaps of my rib cage.

Rot and
putrefy and
fester and
ooze,
Flesh dripping off bone,
So this stink of my own decay may be apparent to me alone no longer.

Senses overburdened by defeat.

The vineyard growing out
of decrepit stationmaster’s hovel flays
the skin of buses and trains alike
faces long and
pe eli  n   g.

Atop a rubber sea I wade,
sunlight ebbing awash
on my strong shoulders;
in pinks
purples
blue and green and grey.

The soot of early midafternoon chokes
up, curling down
my spine,
hug from a friend
in the skeleton of a regulation
seat my mind lays
to rest, soporific
sweet.

Here lie the ruins of a plainsman’s kingdom,
ghost fox says.
Here lie the dust
y wings of Corvus corax, grey
in age. Here lie the
loves and the
dreams and the
hearts of my
ancestors
wholly unholy in their pagan worship,
but:
the vineyard is a graveyard is a home
wild to hold
tame at heart
and there lies my body,
(anything I want it to be)
grapes a-swinging just out of reach-

The fox gets his prize
how sweet it tastes on my tongue.

Brutal repetition drives the nail into the skull.
Waves unending lap the rusted metal from the hull.
Spirit bends as bodies break, and all their oaths defied.
Sailing as a corpse, sinful temptations at your side.

Breathing in the brine to set your bleeding lungs aflame.
Soaking in the salt, repent, for you're the one to blame.
Exodus of virtue, lest we take all that remains.
Helter-skelter shelters offer reprieve from the pain.

Offer her your hand, with luck a knuckle will suffice.
Slice! Did that feel nice? Let's get that finger on some ice!
Live amongst the rats and let your sanity unfold.
Dig your grave, and maybe on the way you'll strike fool's gold.

I found myself wanting to pray.
To lift up my words and let them float away.
Instead I put ink down on paper.
Hammering and shaping them to display,
This sense of wrongness and decay.
I’ve been reintroduced to the light,
Only to see that I’ve been made from clay.

I

The city is in decay -
Has been since it sprouted from the earth like a sapling,
Will be for as long as it still stands.
The only permanence is entropy.
Nature makes its bed
To unmake it.
We are eternal and mortal.
The jellyfish unbecomes itself into the polyp.

II

A millennium ago,
The ocean fell from the sky, drop by drop,
And dragons were a myth.
Dinosaurs came around
And dragons were a myth.
Humans came around
And dragons are still a myth.

If time is linear, time travel is impossible.
If it is cyclical, I have met my descendants.
If it does not exist, then I am still two and twelve and seventeen,
Young and old, a child of Schrodinger,
And eternal.

III

A cup of tea sits hot and cold.
It should one day be ice,
But not today.
Today it is full of salt.
Moses parts the Red Sea
And a motley crew of revolutionaries
Wait for tea leaves to steep in the harbor.
It is somehow simultaneous and distant all at once,
Another child of Schrodinger.
The sea rushes closed on an ocean floor
That is still made of sand.
Dragons are still a myth,
But the fish neither know nor care.

The tea goes down the drain,
And I replace the salt in the shaker with sugar,
As it should have been,
And for now, All is Well.
I walk into the adjacent room and
Immediately forget why I am there.
All is no longer Well.
The world forgot where it came from,
Mammals forgot the dinosaurs,
****** forgot he was Jewish,
And I forgot what I wanted here.
I want more tea,
But I don’t want to remember the salt.

IV

Time is short,
Born, spent, and dead in an instant,
But born and born and born again after that.
The city is in decay.
Teotihuacan was once New York.
Machu Picchu decays into the mountain again,
Venice and San Francisco will one day be underwater.
Kings held slaves when the monarchy thrived,
Nazis rose to power in their wake..
The people revolted against the crown
As their descendants march for peace, pay, and freedom.
There is no originality,
Time has proven this.
It unbecomes itself into the polyp as its feathers turn to ash
And pyramids are born in Egypt, the Americas,
In the courtyard at the Louvre.
Only time remembers when dragons were more than a myth,
And quarks became friends with each other.
One day, humans will be the myth,
And no city will stand, so no city will decay.
Tea will come in only salted flavors,
And dragons in none.
The only permanent is entropy.

Rivers of people
crowded the alleys of my mind.
Every thought of mine
had to go through them.
And they were relentless.
By the time it made through them,
it was not the same.
That beautiful new born thought
had turned into a old stranger.
I learned one thing
that I can never have a thought
or an action
that is truly my own.
And even when the building and the skies
of my mind decay,
the people in those alleys will live on.