gloomy Monday

I am plagued by an essential sense of being devoid of purpose, meaning, or significance.

So I rage in the opposite direction.

Sound and fury, signifying nothing.

We are all so much.

I'd love to get in the car, blast the stereo, sing like a banshee and cross so many state lines they blur.

But wherever you go...
there you are.



I am dreaming of a life and I am dreaming of waking up
there's this anger rising cancer in me standing like a wall between
the waking world I seek and this infected plane of sleep
love come like an axe to all this ice and set me free
there's a black rewarding book
beneath this stiff sheet if you look carefully
noise police white hearse tv air wave methadone
diet contact safe sex antibiotics
for your safety we've taken sharp objects
it's their object to keep you from waking
taste test serenade we dig the grave
lose weight astrologically no money down
for your enjoyment we've excised the dialogue
for your protection we've installed a camera
just keep thinking the same clean thoughts
and keep telling yourself it's allright
I am dreaming of a life
and it's not the life that's mine
in a stolen car I rocket west out past that Jersey line
and the robots in their riot gear glimmer in my rearview mirror
love came like an axe and had her way with this coarse earth
and a small deserving book she was recovered and understood
and I awoke
-Morning New Disease, Jets to Brazil

In my mind on the other side of a glass wall beyond which I do not have conscious access, I sense tiny small sibilant answers--something in the paint still staining my hands from the weekend--I'm sure it's in my bloodstream after all these years--and the way the poetry takes over when I sit at this mahcine--letting it flood out my fingertips--

If, as the Buddha says, Life is suffering, perhaps we can at least make it beautiful.

I know the answer's in me somewhere.
I know if there is a god, she is somewhere adjacent to my sternum.
I know that raging at her when she lives there will get me nowhere and do me no good.
Stabbing yourself if the chest to get out the hungry ghost.