Short Bit, Young Money

A boy swallows a dime while waiting

for the Red Line. By the time he 

steps off at Clark & Lake he's 

coughed up two nickels. Fittingly 

enough, he's five years old. His father

is five times ten. Fifty is ten lives

ahead of his own. He heads down

two flights of stairs, then takes the 

escalator deeper into the guts of

the Thompson Center. Now it's 

the Blue Line he's waiting for. 

He swallows both nickels and sits. 

The rats bumbling along the tracks

scatter into electrified shadows

and the train booms to a full stop. 

Stepping into its split sides 

his stomach kicks up five pennies.

He hands them to the first fried

soul standing to the right of him.

Then takes the nearest empty seat

to his left. Fifty times younger than

his father, but underground now, and faster. 

The old smell of who owes who lifts. 
Or is that just the stink of ancient piss?

Shyku (8/19/12)

henry sprinkler

right to left we 

wave back at you

-

what she needs

a year to herself

what she gets

-

portraits in fogged glass

fingertip leaves lines

takes them with 

-

slaves of the moon

pleasantly reserved

for yours truly

-

revenant misnomer

the ghost is the most

eye heart people personally

-

though his liver was music

Rowland a sweetheart

didn't use clean needles

-

rapunzel thyself

impostors of the known

render thine hair gravity

-

scars for Linda

a masterpiece in hay

stack never cries needle

-

photographs from a

bathtub, everything 

nudely even

-

arrows on the ground

last only so long

skew no one

-

snow in the gutter

they dissolve

look up again

-

burn this book 

ideas cremate, and 

when a map, what?

-

why a titty bar

when there are

whole women there

-

compare and explain

is that the thing

malcolm gladwell

-

empathetic misanthrope

maggots shaved from 

face, handsome

-

movies in a stare

now is never
smoking like rain in rain

 

-

sparrows in an airport

too can fly yet

land high above

Shyku (8/18/12)

Cold Mountain Nudes

cats are Zen royalty

and you 

-

I like red hair in a

friend, she said

unlike her salad

-

an omelet made of 

Fabregé eggs, yolk

yellow old money

-

easy as wind

as floridly weird

as wind made visible

-

company names its ship

Pathos, insurance 

enough it won't sink?

-

batteries removed

honest phones

ear open receiver

-

lotto thicket

tonight's person

a number

-

a network of people

who do each other favors

for what other people

-

expert asserts

amateur accepts

french fries and ketchup

-

whiskers or whiskey

paw or shot

fur inside or out 

Fare Thee

 A millennial achoo, and time

broke its temporal barrier. A sneeze

    so fast it snaps the nose. 

One New Year's it imploded

and what followed felt 

                 indistinctly familiar--

the hours and their nunless flow. 

Same kisses at midnight in the 

same old arms eleven years ago. 

A year that occurred eleven years ago

repeating exactly as it had before. 

Some caught it right off. Their

thoughts suddenly younger. Others

lived dazed in an elongating hello. 

Moved through it unraveling

     decisions

              enacting a rapt free agency

(as if doing so  

    from their own free will).

Auto-autonomously, 

the larger patterns of 

dead habit 

    snacked on them. 

Amnesiacs of the pre-New Year's. 

Except for a few

who remembered what their lives had 

    given and taken

before they were seized by alien momentum,

driven to repeat, day to day, the exact series

   of actions 

eleven years yonder. 

Some, constipated with ancient muse, 

tried to kill themselves. 

Some cheated against their will. 

Addicts fell back into cleanliness. 

Other swerved cars into traffic

or exercised compulsively, 

or got knocked up or out

or behaved like officially sanctioned 

young girls. Some 

even dipped back into grad school. 

Five year olds fell to ground

and twitched like molecules. 

A year passed, they rolled along

inside it, plankton dumbly

consenting to the curl of their wave.

Thanksgiving, Christmas, once the 

eleven year old New Year's came

they fell into step at the very crest

and cheered it. The spell lifted,

everyone woke to a naked minute. 

Dazed by the vague logic of 

some host ocean that dried up

that instant within them. 

So began 

their thirteenth year, twelfth-less. 

Divorce rates rushed to catch up.

    Religion

            ate people. Faithful, they

drank heavy. Strangely, though, 

the number of suicides fell. Time

the poltergeist of a salesman

passed through them, leaving 

traces of itself to buy and sell. 

The air between a pair of fingers

that are quoting it. "Fare well". 

Rough Ten Shyku

little rich shit

pissing families

like money

-

saddened by people

he can imitate

summertime in Poland

-

nice legs

even better the

ground they walk on

-

dying by the beak

early worm gets

the bird

-

sexually attracted to

free time, death

by call center

-

mountain climbs man

hence the molehill

on her cheek

-

those German penises

Fedja, not as large

as they seem

-

good dick bad

dick how can

muscles be moral

-

like a starlet shaving

her legs, a man alone

constant moonlight

-

flimsy backstabbing

businessman flips tie

over shoulder to eat

Instinctions 10

Rivers of madness, the center of the world.

And since materials are without feeling, he reigned.

Had she concerned herself, serving an order so noble

with lady in waking?

Mountain climbs man-nothing.

Nothing too rich to demand anything.

Old snow-nothing,

then, shoots himself, nothing.

There she goes, the center of the world.

He reigned, lady in waking

with the three tones, it was also able

in her mind, nothing.

Instinctions 8

With that had no center

in her mind, years in the mirror,

an envoy in chaos, a member of Casa Pound

--it was all in a world.

He reigned from

Mountain climbs man, a member of Casa Pound.

Up by the woods, a member of Casa Pound.

It was all younger than a fever

with street vendors,

and since materials are without feeling, nothing

she would not have felt limited from,

Lady in waking, from.