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.

6/30: 40th and Edgeward

if not for the steel and railings
would all those cars just swerve
into Lake Union on the rainy days?

the slush of wipers, daily driving
like the treadmill pull of car wash
visuals on hold, panic, take the wheel.

if not for the high barrier spikes
Aurora would still hold suicide capital,
with it's long, cold drop,

and high walkability score. if you
want to plummet off I-5, you'd
need to steer into the void, end up

crunched in concrete. some could
try it. those cross-country trucks,
those eighteen wheelers, every

time they roll pass, a low quake
in this house beneath the bridge,
the angle not quite sharp enough

to quell windstorm thoughts of
getting crushed beneath freight as I
lay in bed rainwatching,

the trucks that break through freeway barriers
to plummet, spinning, and cave this roof
and end this speculation.

Crashing and Brackish (rough)

the town still flooded

                         tendons unspooled

across the arterials,

your arms, finally.

(in the manual,
we are the wires.
in the manual,
we are the charge.)

your legs deregulate

                        across from union station

and the armies of

neighboring cities

                       rally in mortar against

the grating.

(in the police report
we are the wires.

in the police report
we are the charge.)

hire a better crane
                          girders for monuments
rebar for rebar
and salt and Norway rats
                          running down the ropes.

I carry my entrails calmly,
though this is not how it was

supposed to go.

Migration Cycles

weird trucks
ducks in the rain
like at home
                                         on the bridge,
                                         the university one,
                                         save us from the lake
glad to be expensive birds
that only rich people eat,
especially glad we're in a recession
bills safe from the delicatessen
                                          no one type
                                          of vehicle can triumph here.
splish
splash
splosh
                                          no one type of destination
                                          on the bridge, the only goal is
                                          not to fall, not to suddenly jerk
                                          across five lanes, slick and tipping
glad to be flighted birds
imagine penguins, in the rain
burning under all that fur
                         (if it's not fur, well
                           ducks don't know from science)
                                            over into other cars, breaking the
                                            guardrail. no one is going anywhere,
                                            on the bridge, it is a moving floor like
                                            at airports, all this luggage in the trunk
                                            blind at the windshield
drip,
splish
droop,
splash
drop
splosh
                                           like at home,
                                           save us from the lake.