#11/30 (86,000, pt. 1)

John Michell
December 25, 1724 – April 21, 1793

The moon also falls
But what of light?

Late night candlelight treatises
Feverish flailing quills
Spilled ink
And finally,
Knowledge that
The light also falls

A darkness so immense
That our gaze can’t turn away
Despite the overwhelming
Vision of the deep
Nothing at the center

#8/30 (Make America Great Again)

We could make America great again
When unregulated medicine
Was non-addictive heroin
And ice picks behind the eyes

We could make America great again
When men were men
Who punched in every day
And died on the clock

We could make America great again
When we didn’t humanize the heathen
The bumps on the skulls or look of their clothes
Let us know we were born better

We could make America great again
When we could accuse them
Of wanting something for nothing,
That we earned, somehow, just by being Amercian

#7/30 (1518)

The sun
The sky
Mrs. Troffea’s brow beads sweat under her coif

A twitch
A move
Mrs. Troffea’s hand moves to wipe her face

A trance
A kick
Mrs. Troffea’s feet propel her through the streets

A stillness in the town is interrupted
The frenetic haze of Mrs. Troffea’s limbs
Calls attention to itself
Her face as unmoving
Unchanged
As the sun in the sky

Mrs. Troffea is oil in water
A transfixing disturbance
The moon’s silence shines down
And leather-clad feet
Scrape rocks into earth
Punctuating the former silence

Mrs. Troffea is oil in water
Weighing down wet skin
Attracting those alike
With slipping movement
Her face is suffering
While her body celebrates
The sun
The sky

Mrs. Troffea’s body stumbles
While continuing costs coordination
While her blood pools in her shoes,
Piss and shit cake into the streets
Uncoordinated bodies
Bounce back and forth
Breathless gasps
Are heard under the silent moon

Mrs. Troffea
Opens her mouth
Like a fish
Inhale
Feet swelling
Trapped in leather
Ballooned with blood
Glassy eyes
Closing lids
Her knees collapse
Feet kick into the dirt
The piss, the shit,
Under the sun,
Under the sky

Mrs. Troffea
Open mouth
Sharp inhale
Taste dirt
Gritty tongue
Forced spit
A twitch
Sudden exhale
Dust cloud
Lungs rattle
The moon looks

Mrs. Troffea
A foot
Her face
Stumbling knee
In ribs
Eyes wide
Black ring
The sun
The sky

#6/30 (Untitled exquisite corpse)

I can’t recognize myself.
The days shift by and blur together in evasive light,
disconnected from the threads that bind me and

untethered to reality, I let go and float

Jet streams jostle the loose thinking
Levitating lessens reliance, encourage sinking
Repetitive rhetoric rustles until hectic
Panicked dendrites fence the mind, electric

Breathless, a soft shock settles in
the metronome of bone as neurons pulse in time to the fluid music of anxiety,
a sharp stalactite song, loud enough that  
The cave of the mind crumbles, threatening to bury me alive

The rushing crush ruptures the rusty tracks
Mine cart neurons stay stationary and cracked
Synapses and flashes pop their electrical static
Automatic motions flailing forward, frantic

#3/30 (Two Years, part 2)

2.
Together we learn how trust is just chemicals
and a virgin in the sky is full of darkness

Robots land on astroids
and on Titan

Even our most ambitious endeavors
are still about
just leaving Earth.

I must be lucky.
The tache noir
gives way to holes as dark
as the virgin from the stars.

You writhe and bounce,
hoping there is life in the seas of Titan.
You imagine how it smells
when it leaks out.
The pulsing quickens
as your imagination goes wild.

After all,
who doesn’t want to devour new worlds?
My ancestors,
stumbling, ravenous tetrapods,
climbed from the pits to devour the new worlds
it found on land.
Your ancestors,
stumbling, ravenous colonialists,
sailed from the isles to devour the new worlds
it found in the ocean.
My ancestors,
stumbling, ravenous adherents to tradition
walked down the road to devour the new worlds
it founds in the minds of neighbors.
Our ancestors fed.
Just like we feed.

3.
For the first time, I hear a noise that isn’t your squelching
your yelling
your violent din.

They’ve finally come for the money.

9.
The hand cannot erase
and no one knew.