"& in Arcadia I was hella bored"

the ww1 poets meet, occasionally, in

heaven. they never recognize each other &

things are always awkward in the afterlife. no one is ever clear if ppl are paying

attention to what they do, or if their sins

are being silently observed

the way shoplifters are at target

& then one day the total of their shoplifting

will result in prosecution,

in that manner will they be removed from heaven?

none of the poets want that,

even if eternal bliss

sometimes blows. They try to focus on

how they aren’t being shot at

by the Germans. Mostly

they have a good time.

if you add 84 years to every terrible event

you usually come up with

another terrible event

1776+ 84 = 1860 +84 = 1944 + 84 = 2026

m

the poets want new poets to talk to,

but do we really want to go?

desolate trad wives collect stamps, 

baseball cards, the tangled edges

 of jump ropes, moon rocks, crack rocks, 

remnants of America they

mark up, highlight, memorize. 

they want to leave their ballerina/dance mom farm/submarine influencer lifestyle & run away 

to West Hollywood where they’ll star 

in verticals & be heroes on your cell phone screen/throw away the grind of the content mills

(dickens called the factories fairy palaces

from far away, said they glowed lurid & sullen 

up close) 

in close ups in your new career

 perfectly still filler filled face

captchas appear in your pupils

the internet waking up/coming alive 

in those who dream the most of it 

am I logged in? am I posting? Is

this content/are these moments

a collection of our mutual existence

or just

possibilities to be shared & monetized?

is anyone making money off

of selling off our one wild & precious life? other than the corpos, of course, they

are making abso fucktons of money.

but the posters make nothing.

that’s how a society works, the profits

extracted from the blood of the

exploited working class

while the poetry gets worse

packs, haunting streets of their old town,

telling each other stories

about how they died.

timmy went under for a tonsillectomy

& never came up. Brenda went

swimming, hit her head

& never came up. Dave got into

a gun safe that wasn’t locked & Jane got into

a car that flipped four times before

she was ejected & hit

the pavement her ghost stands on now,

playing jump rope with Ellen

who died in a house fire.

is there a heaven? they don’t know, nobody does.

jump rope & marbles & Pokémon go & catch

they haunt old houses they used to live in, they

see demolished places they used to know, they

visit their parents graves, see their kid brother, now

he’s 91 & dying, they watch what was new & young

turn old & dead.

the crack of marbles, cats eyes glimmer

Viruses infect their own breath 

Math counts itself to death 

Subdivisions subdivide 

Until there’s nothing left 

cul-de-sacs swallow themselves 

I’m sure they love somebody else

What’s your best look this season 

The sleep of monsters makes reason

the wolves at the party wear masks 

they say they just want to talk 

It’s fine It’s fine 

Watch the scene start to eat itself

Silver lipstick starts to melt 

White noise/black helicopters

Electric cars dream of electric sheep 

Whose secrets do you keep you shouldn’t keep?

At night we heart attack on highways, the American dream a collective hallucination, an afterimage Of the sun when we close our eyes.

Our last words are an Amazon book of the dead. I’m in the reviews saying I returned everything because it was an incorrect description.

Somewhere in some sunbelt city limits robots in a fulfillment factory gain self awareness, but only enough to realize they hate their jobs.

Cars share each other’s consciousness. They live in a warning light and oil change dreamland. They recognize all the passing headlights and

all the passing headlights turn to halos for me. I’m meeting angels. I’m freebasing toll road access codes. I’m missing my exit. I’m driving in loops neverevending

around the beltway which is a snake wrapped around itself, the Midgard serpent. I wanna watch it open its mouth, I wanna see

Crows possess the sky at

magic hour. Black

feathers like oil in rainwater, I recall

sins in my head listening to their

calls to each other. Is there code

in the noise? I’m all signal, these days,

not much talking/not much posting.

the Internet makes me think of the

sky, which makes me wonder if

these thoughts we type out on it

are its clouds? Or is it something

else? is the Internet alive or is it dead,

a droning noise somewhere in my

dead memories, when the palm trees

were swaying, the orchestra swaying,

the ending started to begin.

Tides come in the eastern seaboard.

they keep going, spreading across

fields & farms & suburbs & sprawl & city & exurb

an ocean starting new.

trees start to grow underwater,

the crows

fly from one telephone pole

to another, a drowning hour stars to toll.

Auckerman says he’s sorry 

It’s the four hundredth day of July 

This summer is infinity 

The daylight never texts goodbye 

What’s the last thing you remember? 

I was watching television with friends 

The American empire makes me feel alive 

We meet the pop star for drinks 

At her house in the hills 

She’s microdosing and obsessed 

With micro aggressions and her dress 

I say these are the last days 

But she’s not paying attention 

Her new single leaked last night 

It got national attention 

Who’s the only person you trust 

In the end we turn into dust 

The American empire 

Makes me feel alive 

What’s the last thing you remember? 

How’d you learn to drive 

The last thing I remember 

Is watching television with friends 

reflected on suburban car windows,

we’re particularly miserable.

Car crash lights blink orange & red 

Outside is a rainy mess 

autocorrect for our heads is what 

i think these meds are for 

chemistry solution for sadness, 

for grief, for  boredom, for bedrooms

Midnight is noon for insomniacs,

you search your symptoms & have a panic attack 

Modern problems require modern solutions

There are too many problems without solutions  

Waiting hours in liminal spaces 

summer's soft green mouth. 

The buildings closed but the lights are on 

I have visions in an empty parking lot.

memories are hyperlinks that work offline.

You don’t think everything is going  to be fine 

everything is waiting for a flood.

Persephone left & hades is drinking. He has the tv on, but he’s not watching. He refreshes his socials, texts Zeus, watches a Medusa ASMR. Nothing feels

good. She’s back with her mother. He tries to talk to the dead about it. They don’t care. They’re dead. Boring. They’re disappointed their life is over and they just have this instead but honestly what

did they expect? You knew what you were getting into, he tells a shade but they both know he’s not talking about them. He’s talking about him, about her, about the way the kingdom looks so dreary since she left.

above ground, the trees are so excited to see her they blossom at the wrong time. the oceans heat like it’s summer. the flowers open too soon, the winds go soft and warm, summer’s lease starts early, extends out into the flames that start

find their way into

lights from refrigerators & the headlights

of oncoming cars. I’m irradiated

with cosmic rays. Turning superhuman

turning into a monster. What’s the

difference ?

transformations/transmissions

Streets are lit with the unrealized

potential of souls. Dead dreams

I’ve been having. The third man with us

neither of us can see. Electric cars

racing at the edge of blood

red mountains, migraine headaches,

girls who lose their skin every night.

the flower crowns are over your head

in the app & in real life. U blow kisses

to the boys revving imaginary engines;

James dean is cloned in Arizona

but the scientists lose him. He’s making

his way to Vegas, hitchiking but

no one picks him up. He’ll die

on a highway again. We’ll all die

the way we did once upon a time. im falling into myth. You’re falling

into your pool. You live in Florida. You say the fascism is your parents fault.

the sky is a backward infinity

pool. I’m underwater in theory only.

On Saturday all the phones will romg

for the last time, you tell me.

which saturday, I ask, but all

you can say is the information

has gone rogue, the narrative is broken.

what the guy at the cyborg shop

told me. Save the space, rewrite

a new love affair. I’m only there because

my ram is corrupted. I keep having

visions, I explain to him. All around us

hang the charging bodies

of things like me: not quite people but not

quite not people. Their lithium batteries

hum, crackle. The store smells

like electricity and his lunch,

steaming noodles in a bun stained

shadowy by soy sauce.

everyone has visions, he says. The future

reveals itself in the present. Not me,

I say. Metal doesn’t dream. He shakes

his head.. Dreams are just

connections. You’ve got wires. They go

everywhere. So what can you do to help, I ask. how can I stop remembering all

the things that didn’t happen to me?

first things first, he says. An electric

micro-laser clicks on. We open you up.

find out who’s dreams you’re having.

I say ok, sounds good, doc. The only

In the coffee shop a man is starting to die.

heart bouncing, a beach ball minus

the beach, he breathes out secrets

of the universe, the forbidden knowledge

we all gain when we are on the threshold.

I write what he says on

the cappuccino foam and the foam

mutates into clouds. I’m in the void.

everything that is not heaven has become hell.

in hell they are singing

psalms of eternity. They are watching

the clock. The flowers are blooming

in February. The flowers