Tom Pescatore

Standing in that kitchen
The cold tile glowing radiantly under the dying oven light
Late into the morning late into the evening
Leaning against the loose knobs of the cold stove top
Coming down from mushroom acid drunk trip holding a can of beer in my hand
feeling the open flesh under fingernails
Listening to you laugh and the sounds of your voices
echoing into the darkened walls of the old house I was waiting for the universe
To halt itself in momentary standstill to split into a billion known possibilities
to reach the end of its endless trek into the ever-sharpening void
Standing in that kitchen wanting to hold each of you forever screaming
into the abyss of timeless nothing-ness and shadow
Sitting here tonight alone under the foggy light of a winter moon
wishing it all had come true

marked automatically;

life passing within four walls
a leaky faucet of time

the overgrowth of yard
before the window

effortless and green

a million sown fields of pokeweed
glowing pink for a moment
in the stillborn sunrise

it’s partly cloudy today
I am superimposed over this reality

there is rain in every imaginary forecast

time is a summer storm
before the windowpane

the blackberries of july will become the winter’s snow
before I am gone

they coalesce

in the monitor rays – the plot unplugged

a pine cone lodged in our throat – burnt open by canned heat – blue lubricant
expelled for lonely hours
ozone stench of mucous membrane

sounds of laughter wafting thru headphoned doorways

paused by unresponsive fingerprints

the median stretched out like
the neck of an abandoned guitar
playing the endless discordant
song of broad street

sinking into the concrete shelf

we stood as ever older versions
of ourselves tuned through the
drug-like orange haze of street-light-
night-light-afterglow-come-down

peering into our transparent lungs
the orange line shook underworld
thoughts loose sending them like
balloons through our feet

inhaling we grasped at the strings
but they were of too many to follow
too many to see

it was the last time looking up into
the blackness of the orb-like night
i believed there wasn’t a sky

cat leaves a lasting impression on
windowsill. the wind steals into
the room through the screen. not
enough to cool my sweat. the motion
of the cars outside is static. an accident
leaves a man groaning on the sidewalk.
a woman asks did you see?
I thought
it was a bumper, he looked plastic. he
was dying. if I’d seen it move then maybe.
a body leaves an impression in the
grass. cars continue crunching fragments
of glass. the impression is his last
breath. the intake is exhaust.

headlights rise like moonlight
over the night

illuminating the trees
that shadow curve around each
wrong turn

the violet metallic tint of the car
marries the starless sky
the cityscape in the distance

the effortless
pollutants
the dome of the world contracts

the vacant universe
a rush of gasoline fumes
the nothing earth

they pulled the monster out from under the wreck

he was part of the requisitions team

arriving at the office he signed in at exactly 8:15am
exactly every day

the rescue crew transmuted sweat into tears

the cars along the riverbank refused to be turned away

each tree stood firm
buried up to their waists in sand

muttering to itself the beast fell apart &
into the future

there was a fragment of stone falling through time
untouching what can be seen
unbecoming what will be

with his last breath the monster grew skyscrapers from its eye

HR made a solemn vow

they would post the replacement job application on the web
before their tears could dry

the sun was a Pepsi-Cola sphere
painted over the tree line. hanging there
siphoning all the brown syrup color
from the river. washing every
man-made thing in highlights of
blue & red gold

the clouds were like an attentive waitress
come to take our order
as the table of the world was moved
& looking over the menu carefully
you raised your eyes
asking politely for a sunrise.

this was the first time I’d seen gangrene

afterward I had a portrait drawn of me
I paid nothing for it
tho he only needed
15 dollars to grab a bed to sleep for the night
it was 100 degrees and the air
soured

this was the first time I’d seen gangrene

it grew from his leg like fungus
hard as sponge
soft and death-like against the pants he struggled
to pull up
the color was dull
and muffled

I forced the thin white paper into my bag
knowing it would crease and tear
knowing it
would come to nothing in some trash bin
somewhere

this was the first time I’d seen gangrene

so that you ran your tongue against them
carving and chipping bone and screw

so that you were forgetful
unable to piece together what had come before

so that you pulled your knees up to your chin
blind to dirt and dust and scruff and tar

so that you took to running knifed edges across grain
drawing up curled veins

so that each needled point penetrated the skin
and left glitters of light in their path

so that with each step the surface gave slightly sinking
marking your footprints your face prints your palms

so that at night it appeared as it did before
but for the metallic taste

so that even though your outside mildewed with collapse
the inside shone brightly in the sun