Penthouse Preoccupations

Paying in lifetimes, in volumes of unread classics,
in the deepest indigo of secret Chinese silk while
collecting your coins from a less than admirable business.
Your body ages with an air of apathy, accepting its
wages in due time, old crows walking upon foreheads and eyes.
The oceans open up and swallow us whole.

Healer

Give us your fists and your cups,
pressed tight like hands saving drips for drinking.
Parched lips press against fingers, peeling flesh gracing
present situations. Your dehydration comes at such
inconvenient times; quench it and taste nothing.
Chemically cleaning ourselves, removing impurities
with pills and berries eaten by the starvation of Africa;
trendy cups of tea from bushes redder than bleeding hands
come to the lips, away from the lips
again, again - suppression and inhalation-
lungs expand and compress as we feed our bulging bellies.
Perhaps day old dregs in assuming mugs on counters
hold keys to lifetimes of bliss.

The metal tastes sweet in my mouth.

Agents aren't really Secret.

The street lamp's pale glow revealed a figure
in the alleyway next to his shop;
he wasn't expected home for hours, but he'd been
pacing just outside in some small hope that he might
see his shadow pass through the threshold without
having to commit to the act. Returning to family,
a knife held in mother's sister's lover's hands.
Transactions gone awry.

I throw up in the bathroom, in every symbolic toilet
that is often labeled London, an aquarium,
a breeding ground of insanity.
The sacrifice and division, dancing condescension
in the stripped furniture of our living room.
Naked mahogany glares at our indecision, our every
uncertain step- our frantic systemic search party
to find the other side.
The toilet flushes, again it's gone.
Porcelain, just like doll's skin and our
volumes of discarded contents flow into
plumbing systems, saving us from our own
most human activities.

The bomb, you blew it up- the boy and the bottle too,
caps twisting and untwisting while Professors obsess
over not obsessing, detonating his own resilience in
a worn out overcoat upon his weary frame.
He hadn't eaten in days. They ate all the time.
Your anarchy grows old in my sick stomach-
his remains were strewn across the street and
Shoveled up, with Gravel, to what end.
Velvet jackets,
addresses, Agents gone awry.

Chanting: Give us, give us give us
Hope, give us words, give us strength.
Buying or repaying, selling bodies or wares and
information pouring like sweat from overworked pores-
acrid, oily, collecting dust upon our foreheads, saving remnants
of daily wars and packages purchased under the pretense of
replacing them the following day. We never really do.

Lifting up and throwing down our own humanity,
as if it were replaceable.