Should I Kill Myself or Have a Cup of Coffee?

What a joke the equation has become to the machine.

But we are still alive.

The algebra of hunger. The chaos of need.

Soon, you’ll all be fighting for your planet. many of you will be dying for your planet. A few of you will be put through a fine mesh screen for your planet. They will be the luckiest of all.

The fog that creeps in through the window and turns us inside out.

The family dog eyeing your intestine.

The ghosts that haunt this building have been learning how to breathe.

I stalk these backwards alleys and hear the lost young crying out in need

I hear the whingers whincing, screaming for freedom

The freedom to make us all inconsequent and lonesome,

Torn apart from our community and the sad fate of wanting comfort and surcease

So I carry rocks in my pockets on the way to my Virginia Woolf lakeside retreat

and throw them into windows

so the people there can breathe

The answers aren’t coming with tight sealants, or an air-conditioned nightmare, or a bloodless politician’s name

The answers come from re-oxygenating a long polluted forest stream

From the pulminologist in the darkened couch basement next to you, holding hands, massaging your palm as you watch horror and nightmare on your own terms on a screen

over a dip with many layers

wearing costumes

changing names

I can bleed as well as anyone

but I need someone to help me sleep