24/30: Evictions

Upside down American Flag                                                       Try me, fuckers, try me.
wheatpasted next to Johnny Cash                                                Ambiguous icons. No arguments.
and a robot lady with eagle                                                         Sexy, but not. Ominous.
tattoos on a brick                                                                         Plan your wedding photos here.
building that isn't long                                                                 I am surprised you are not dead yet.
for this block.                     

The key to my room I marked with a Hot Water sticker
from work in a month when all my keys looked the same
and I was frequently drunk and every other day they
entered my room to check for pipe problems or ventilation
problems or bug problems or window problems. They did
this with all the rooms, according notes on computer paper
taped to doors, minutes within compliance of renter's rights
law.

                                                        What do you want from a home
  These apartments are made of steel,
                                                                stucco, glass, cocaine, rat corpses
                                     and Adderall. No one gets out of these
                 apartments alive because these apartments
                                                          are the entire world, you are just moving
                                     room to room to room and sometimes
                    falling out of windows.

Saul is gone. Notice on his door.
Not sure why. He was skinnier and
skinnier and more swollen and he was
friendly enough and we talked
about PJ Harvey's fucked up
relationship with Nick Cave
and he was one of the few people
on my floor that neither twitched
and muttered nor wore
a backwards baseball cap.

I am a cold ghost. I am a fire alarm. I am a broken flatscreen. I am a home invasion warning from the new security team. I am here to answer any of your questions. I am a floor and a ceiling. I am fucking in the weight room bathrooms. I am constantly tuned to CNN while an elderly polish woman endlessly folds laundry at midnight. I am a bed of roaches. I am a hall of rat tails. I am a song about the same neighborhood that sicks in your throat. I am a book about prostitutes at the turn of the century. I am your neighbor's sex life, loud and unforgiving. I am a hot plate and a broken microwave. I am a block without trees. I am a manmade waterfall. I am your neighbor's toilet flushing at five a.m. I am a gathering of poets staring at night skyscrapers. I am a constantly reconstructing view. I am in the middle of everything and sending you everywhere. I am the reason you are gone. I am the reason this building still stands. I am temporary. I am permanent.

7/30: Father John Misty Kills Me In My Sleep

If it was the maintenance guy
                    you'd think I'd recognize his voice
even stirred from sleep, the
soft blankets in the wash the
                     scratchy ones I keep because memories
waking me up when sirens
                      or neighbors fucking don't.

In the A.M. I listened to
Father John Misty
play the same two chords
over roughly the same beat
expressing largely the same
sentiment
                    (but putting forward different evidence)

and I had to agree
that it was brilliant.

                    At least, at four a.m. -- when will I
drop back off? five a.m now

shouts down the

hall, around the corner, I'm guessing, I've gotten

good at the guessing

but this one sounds more dangerous

and my window is not an escape

window, so if this is a rampage, this is how I go,

naked under scratchy

blankets, a folk singer roughly

my age

mocking me for living.

Eh well. The slow click of a vacuum.

Those maintenance guys really don't sleep, do they?

Safety

                             unless horror rules apply, in which

the vacuum

is also

                              the weapon.

Once you're in the halls, there's

a variety of stairwells, but if

a killer bursts into your studio

you're fucked.

8/30! Addison Dispatch #4!

That molson ice pile by 306 hasn't moved for two days. The dog in 312 won't shut up

but a markered note offers to shut the bitch up in exclamation points. Seriously on

behalf of us all

shut the bitch

up.                                                    (with wire, with cloroform, with a baseball bat)

Head into the glass walls, Shane remarks that the max income requirements 

(a refreshing change)

would be considered middle class
(I thought we'd disappeared!)

                                                       in another city. In another city, I wouldn't need the requirements. I am no cigar maven, flicking his ash out against a movie about new york. A skyline in highlights that silences family who don't understand; like a movie star swoop from one frame to the next, the smith, columbia, municipal, hey.

The man in the stairwell isn't moving. Isn't smiling. Is yelling. Is swaying. Is dancing. Can of hurricane ice-- must be a different guy. Howling, screaming, dancing, the lady behind me asks if she can tell him to get the fuck out of the way or is that racist. The man behind her shouts "racist nothing," falls dick forward, they both hit two walls before landing. I shrink into walls.

Hammers on the left side. Drills on the right. Sirens every day. Not our fault. Not theirs.
Stacking piles of earplugs. New eyemasks. Prop up the bed with old hymnals. Shut down the door
with strings of tape. 

The walls are thin when you're trying to sleep, thick when you need help--
(is that you,
mark?

I was hoping you were dead, cussing out 

                                                     your mother
one last time in your braindead half-drawl

as they drove you to a 

landfill where scum like you grows 

                                                and

dies)

these heights bring out the best. Nod for a year at the lease-signer before
she remembers your name, 

(you are drunk, screaming down the hall

pulling

the fire alarm--
won't make up for no coats
or morning workouts--)

possibly for the best.

Three Ticks Away From Another Renewal

The last day of September should mean something besides a sweatshirt.
The last afternoon clouds, shredded by a setting sun or God's wrath, whichever comes first.
The last of an old lease, clothespiles, the floor, the futon, paperpiles, the breakfast table,
the lamp table, the desk, the bookshelf, bookpiles, the bookshelf, the lamp table, the floor.

The next bus on the last day, full ebola.
The next bus on the last day, masked riots.
The next bus on the last day, late

late
late.

The last stop of a new old season should be something besides calendar page loss. I used to send flares up for apartment changes, the gathering of things, the significance of pizza on an empty floor in a room full of boxes, songs chosen for long laughs, cheap looks. So much peperoni, gathering in corners.

The next day, a first day.
Another three months til the moving trucks, if that,
the last bus of the first day, rolling cartons of torta.
the last bus of the first day, hiding cider in to go mugs.
the last bus of the first day, fist bumps with gloved strangers.
the last bus of the first day, just found twenty dollars,

the last bus of the first day,
late
late
late

late, but rolling.