On a windy street
or along some cold and lonely
Highway
or in a dark wilderness
of night which is haunted
by howling wraithes
and madmen.

Perhaps, instead, it will be
in the middle of some
burning and abysmal desert
where the hot white sands
are iron brands
marking each step
in unquenchable pain and
wretchedness.

You know, it could be
a murder
in some secret room
by savage angels whose
pure brutal barbarity
will now never be told.

Yet, it might be in a dirty
mud-filled trench,
w/shovel in hand and
knee deep in shit and
various other nauseating
excrement and bile.

In any event,
he will be soaring.

And then, snap!

(flash)

The fucking end.

Indeed and certainly, midflight
(while traversing destinies or
discovering unfathomed versions
of versions of things or
while living a profoundly
unheard of agony or designing
beautiful empires of cities
and lunacies and all their
infections out of complete
anomaly and blackness),
yes, he too will be cut down.

The damnable idiot.
The sociologist and acid freak.
The seeker and bum.
The utterly worthless and
hopelessly ineffectual.
The father and husband.
The guitarist.

The ex-sniffer.

Pathetically, he will be
a crumpled dead heap.

Alone.

You could not possibly be
bothered to look up to notice.

And I don’t care.

There will be others.

More will come,
swarming and horrible.

Savants of even
newer and deadlier visions
and chaos’ and their tools
and agents of distraction
will only impale and protrude
toward Illuminati
along the enervating vein
which is the decay
and the intoxication.

And it is ancient
and connects us.

It consumes us.

The Work will always
be rediscovered and its
sacred rites & duties
carried out to yet
more holiest of heavens
and most sensual of hells.

In California,
when I thought I was gonna die,
I remembered you.
My angry and stubborn dream.
My soul and only definitive
meaning.

It’s 8 years later now
& I ain’t going nowhere.

Maybe the last moment will be
while sharing a very warm and
joyous and engaging laugh
w/friends and family
when we have finally overcome
all the World’s injustices
and we’ve resolved every
social ill and equality
is everywhere rampant
and fertile.

Then again,
maybe I’m just really crazy
and I hallucinated all of this
and absolutely everything
and none of this ever happened
and the tissue of my experience
is pure heartless fantasy.

Any minute now,
I’m gonna wake up
in the bed and pajamas
and bedroom I shared w/my
brother when I was seven
and it will all be okay.

Only this time,
I’ll know exactly what to do
and when to do it.

It could happen.
You think?

Are you there?
Are you even real?

Hello?