blue screen

Current mood: something with a d or an h

it was a new neighborhood
newly so
you could still smell the smoke and wet cardboard from where
the snow had gotten in

chessboard dopemen
dealt in bird calls
to no avail

all possible clients were asleep stoned or still at the office

the birds themselves hadn'tr made it back from the Carolinas

it would be a whole generation
before the dumpsters were salvageable

there was ceramic, tin
bathroom fixtures
smashed
do not a party make

minnie minoso and tavia wassershtrum were still hung in the air
like their wive's hairspray

smart money says lit'ler and lit'ler
breeds of
designer dogs
would stray
overtaking calicos and rats
fine by me
I don't really have a best friend anymore

all these polymer memories,
broken elastic, leaving
scars on my left wrist

I'm lefthanded
&, judging from the pen
mephisto, tophel sheqer
has nothing for me to say

we used to trust drugs and people alike
now i put up walls
this city is prone to fires

just like parts of the southside
where you can still smell carl sandbergs
under hot stars

some neighborhoods
recently new
you can still smell mesquite,
corrugated
molding from where
there should've been rooves roofing
to keep out snowflakes

Snowflake is a nickname
someones else gave to Sarah
the sun sits unkind to Michegan Irish


my first girlfriend
gave herself a 'summer name'
just like me
Junyper
but it never stuck
couldn't stand the season

it wrenched out the cooking instincts in Rogers Park men
she'd had her stomach pumped
every few houses
would tease her
of her own death
unfinished

Today
Calendon and Bittersweet
reeked
there was a fire
hot enough to consume all the conviction
of a 14 year old

it was the mass death of first-girlfriends in the city by the lake