I lie on my back in the softening time
of this morning's late life expectancy,
peacefully picking my pace,
gamelan Pacifica resounding
from the bottom of my feet speakers,
rising out of the floor and the unconscious
like The Twin Towers once
out of Manhattan

The Albuquerque company Nonsequitur CD
spins madly
like the neutron star VFTS102
inside the bleak laser light,
the room trembling
with the ominous calm beat
of the metal gamelan

I pick my teeth
with my select birch picks,
the neighbours lying flat
through their rented cubicles
like black driftwood in succumbed afterworlds,
hidden in their space allowances,
above and below
and beside each other,
their dreams feverishly fitted in concrete
for each of their capacities,
in the smell of fierce farts and the rolling roar of burps,
the physics of meat and blood
venomous vomit through this age of disinterest

The tenement blocks heave
like container ships,
heavy with suspicion and need for revenge

Anger rises
through violent seas of population
at Dylan concerts and The Wailing Wall

The gamelan hammers out time,
my eardrums ringing like Stockhausen tam-tams
as I heave on the relentless swell of myself,
my diaries floating about me like jellyfish,
light simmering behind dark yearnings
for shreds of words and lingual abscesses

Layers of toothpicks will please the archaeologists

The pencil speaks for itself

My rich friend floats helplessly ahead
in his pimped Mercedes,
his tall apparition slowly giving in
under his vertiginous gait

His coins haven't ruined him,
we connect back all the way to the mid Sixties;
are each other's opportunity to round up
and summarize, find a defining ring to ourselves,
not unlike this metal gamelan
permeating time and space
this morning of my southern retreat