The flow and aesthetic
 of decay -
 inclusive to all
 species and tribes -
 
 is ugliness.

 that last gesture,
 devoid of grace and
 good deeds,
 merciless and irreversible,
 sentience last utterance,
 
 a scream, a gasp,
 a murmur,
 a moan,
 
 a vacant discard.  

 
 Nightmare Alley -
 desperate young lovers on the lam,
 a wounded veteran who has forgotten his name,
 an array of theoretical perspectives,
 ostensible acts of violence.
 
 Nocturne -
 kids with dreams, a little fractured,
 a man’s wife with nothing but larceny in her heart,
 half-hearted romance where
    “I” passes insensibly into “we,”
    “my” becomes “our,”
 and individual fate escapes commitment.
 

 Desire for - 
    mirror images,
    forlorn gazes
    dream girls with flash hawk faces
      the very sight gives new hope.
 
 Poverty Row, where
 everybody has an angle,
 social murder is legitimized by war;
 breakdown of suppressed agitation,
 codified amusement,
 and non-identity.
 
 Modernist Mortal Music - 
 all heavy swing rhythm and
 a loping low-key theme,
 pondering a watershed of dissonance; 
 The Zeitgeist Theory - 
    downbeat and overrated.
 
 Cutting Edge that unifies the technology
 of making a fast buck, with:
    psychopathic all-consuming conflagration,
    retrograde ideas,
    equally ominous
    mercenary humiliations.
 
 Having a big argument with myself,
 and losing. 

 
  
 A bellowing woolly rhino
 crashes into a Pleistocene
 clearing.
 I can't shake these beasts
 from my bones.
 
 Stuck in the illusion that
 we are changing,
 or have changed,
 or will change,
 or even want to change
 our lives,
 take a good look
 at yourself, and describe
 what you see.
 
 Energy and magnificence
 make an argument viscerally
 in a triumph over
 vulgarity and speed.
 Accomplice of a nameless
 obscenity, 
 a metaphor for 
 nonconformity that affirms dark,
 creative energies
 that orthodox 
 political-religious-scientific
 thought would repress.
 
 Diabolical energies flow
 with the most swiftness
 and potency.
 
 But in America
 there is no recent poem
 everyone in a bar
 would recognize;

 so turn up some
 unsuspected star chart
 that leads you off
 in search of
 evermore distant
 constellations. 

   empty movie theatre.
 alone I walk through the darkened lobby
 without a ticket,
 and pass the concession stand,
 unattended, with the comforting 
 chemical aroma of popcorn.
 
 I take my seat,
 always the same seat, 
 although the theatre is 
 consistently empty.
 
 then I wait.
 
 sometimes I'm excited,
 sometimes I'm bored,
 sometimes I'm agitated,
 sometimes I fall asleep.
 
 but always, 
 I wake up.