no swoon

no backwards, no forwards

no rev, yes, slow motion

crusty syringe mirage
flooded the market with

buck a pound poetry
once upon a time, certain words would have power
drama would be real

no keywords
gray hair, no hair

three mouths

warping the skull from inside the cavity

vivacity, this is life on hyperdrive

who are you to judge, just

live with the palsy pain, the cerebral

deformation, you’ll get used to the shakes

he says, look at her in her gliding machine

she gets by, and somehow things hinge on

you getting by too, like you’ll let down the team

if you don’t take the baton, and on this sawtooth sprocket

in the wound-up clock of the universe

the team will be let down, cause

what ya gonna do?

nothing

rhetorical

redundant...

.

i could almost believe there’s something livable

not in the sense of ability

but in the sense of quality

if you can muffle a laugh from a non-narcotic

high on life bubble

you can call it quality

i could almost believe there’s something livable

about it, since i nearly fainted this morning

and rode it like a rollercoaster, not fighting it

but feeling it, embracing the fading

he says, you can spend a millennia

running to the left of the screen

re-appearing on the right

but the only way to get anywhere in the game

is to climb the ladder, there’s quality

in cerebral deformation, if only... you...

are smart enough, strong enough...

to?

i can only say, i’ve taught myself to hate

those words, smart, strong, if not the

qualities they describe