"Roasted? Dry distillation, brief man beast. Only  quintessence remains."
"Wait. What, does...? What  remains?!"
"Her hatred of you, her love of lavender tea and that other her that cleans your nests."
"That's all?"
"Oh, her indomitable will to continue being remains as well. Death is hearing her case for vengeance even now."
"..."
"Our business is concluded, our arrangement complete. Farewell, mortal."

they can, you cannot

You’ll only ever see them in photographs. In a way, they only really exist after the fact.

Eyes. See the eyes, and a phantom sensation of long fingernails flows across the strings of your abdominal muscles. Fritzing thrum fractures next, across the ribs. Then the face. The face.

The face that regards without looking. The cold, sharp shock of recognition drilling up your spine is not what you think it is. What of the dry flavor of panic on your tongue? The screaming in your brainstem? It’s not the transparent men taking residence in your memories. That’s certain.

No worries.

Not the day-dreamy, artistic type, I hope? They like to come out and swim in distraction. It’s the worst just before sleep. Eyelids cannot hide them, the transparent men.

So I heard.

Good thing there’s no worries.

Sometimes they click.

So I hear.

Perception

Woah. I didn't know you could experience ego death on Boone's Farm and methadone.

Wait, no. This might just be regular death.

It's not. It's not. It isn't fair.

It goes on?! Echoing silence and shining dark? Always. Cold linoleum on my fingertips unending. Final taste on my tongue, sickening sweet artificial strawberry... forever?

Forever.

It goes on, and it isn't fair.

a poem presented in a particular way

Fuck Me. And fuck this coffee shop.

The last chips of glitter stick to my fingernails.
(I know, I should quit.
 Microplastics only photo-
 degrade into smaller bits.)

Life is a beautiful Cupcake
with an exquisite rose,
such delicate folds,
impressive in buttercream.

Then a cockroach falls,
from an open cabinet door
into its midst.


The comfortable chairs are never free
because somehow I'm too nervous to sit in them.

The thought, a human might
land near to me.
It falls under fear, this morning,
but disgust is always a possibility.

It was built of lines, glowing trails like overstimulated retinas.  Rubberish blue-grey flesh, however, had begun to stretch between the violent shimmering edges of its unreality.

Eyes like floating abstractions were beginning to see. Impossible mouths were beginning to hunger.

How had we hoped to control that which we cannot comprehend?

It stirs and frets in vibrating fits even now...

tis the season

I think the tainted, tepid
consumerist thrusts
of unhappy women intent on savings
gave my soul a seeping rash

if not that then,
men with gray hair and
matte windbreakers in
faded hunter green,
crisp navy, or black
with disapproving
mustache

families in layers, and layers,
(cold from the bus?)
buying desperate necessaries,
in a tired, resignéd rush

one woman, at least, was very happy to pay more than $60
for a few pounds of formed plastic and polyester
not happy, relieved, I guess
the centerpiece of christmas, she called it