?

We must certainly have ideal futures

Where we capture the developing phenomena

Of our own self awareness

That cannot find a path to follow

Because normality is the expression of defeat

And it will run our sensations numb

Because we have made a compromise

With the invention of our self

You must either have nothing

Or be able to pay for all of your wanderings

To be the proud owner of physical freedom

In this world recent humans have created

If, there was never obligation

we would stare at earth

and pass the imprecise hours

absorbing the sensation of existing

Waste

We walked to the lake

To be reminded

Of what we have to rely on

If the structure of our society fails

People are so satisfied

With unnatural nature

Uniform and saturated

Shaved and malnourished

Several blocks ahead

The lake is constantly

Reflecting the sky

Purer and unclear

The rocks that have been placed

On the side of Milwaukee

Seat sculptures of finished soda cups

And the waste of a million people

You are greeted with the smell

Of the colon of Milwaukee

That is heated by the sun

So that bacteria can thrive

As well as anything

That can survive in thick poo

We must shift our waste

Or that will be me and you

Unsatisfied with open sewers

That swallow up the breathing

We head north to find beaches

But are greeted with barbed wire

Between the city bustle

There are patches of earth unpure

That remind the urban people

That their lives are strange

Being so close to one another

Walls are erected

Going against our natural instinct

To travel where we intend

We are caught in our own zoo

Unlike other animals, it is what we choose

All of the sudden

All of the sudden
There is a break in the constant dullness
That has hit us like a flood
That cannot come out of our carpets

The conversations this evening
When looked at as a whole
Form an incomplete weave
Of personal history and idealized futures

When we form a circle
We combine
And become unstable
When there are more people

They have all become silent
And one looks up from it
To see why nobody has spoken
And you make eye contact
With old friends-become-mute

They agree in silence
“I will not say a word”
Some shift
There is giggling
“come on you guys”

Some drink their drink
Light new cigarettes
Put out the old ones
Become interested in the dull scenery of life

Some are empty
And wait in the silence
Some have become self-conscious

to the worst degree
Because they have nothing to say

and neither do their friends

Someone breaks the silence
Some find themselves
In a dumb interview
Or in a museum
Because we have all become plastic dolls

There are no words that

will sustain indefinitely

If you can recognize silence
It is always fleeting
And is broken when
We become less concerned
with who we are

Initial Water

a sparrow attaches
to the screen in the bathroom
raiding a tomb of old flies

the sound of existence
in the crack of a thorax
and a pair of middle-aged teeth
clenching

and I
wearing nothing
in the whatnot of 20
yelp into the whiteness
expressing unforeseen anger
at the scourge of initial water

Oh my God,
am I really this young?