I needed to get my hands on shrooms but the only guy I knew who sold them was Old Jerry. He grew them in an aquarium. But Old Jerry ripped my brother off a few hundred bucks on a marijuana grow op and now he thinks we want to kill him. So, whenever I see him, he runs the other way.
I saw him at the gas station filling up his Chevy Cavalier.
At the end of the day I put on an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation and I take a Klonopin and I lie in bed. I pick up where I left off on Netflix. It all becomes a mish-mash of pastel colors. Patrick Stewart pointing at things and saying something—sometimes shouting.
“Turn it down,” my aunt yells, banging on the wall separating us. Two minutes after I turn it down she bangs on the wall again.
An economic depression is emotional.
We are despairing.
Our cities are afire.
Our minds are aloof.
We count our chickens before they hatch.
We gulp our food.
We wet our pants.
The once mighty people who slew the Sioux
are hiding under their beds.
My friends who claim to be masters of the human
race wash their hands of it.
Þe Hunt
dead trees provide no shade,
none for slumbersome feet.
moonless night, palpable
tension. silence to snap,
like a cord if disturbed,
like ice if thin enough.
with flickering light, flame
flirts and distorts faces
razor thin blades sharpen
to slice air tasting of
ash and cinder, blood, hate