Nightly, empty, luminous ballrooms roll back in your skull
I resigned myself to all the disappearance
I was sure the cops would come calling

Some sick shivering morning

I live in Newark now where cars speed away

And weekend freebasers bury their stems
In shaded groves and muted clearings


In Philadelphia, we didn't know
Clammy hands and beaming thresholds


And I'm visited by naked reality
In the higher gloss of the cars that cut in front of me
And depression is nothing compared to what's in store for them


Having hitched across America
Like an itinerant laborer

Or a serial killer on pulsing arterials

I numbly recline

In a filthy slicked lawn chair
As our garage yawns behind me with tunnels


The pinkest sky I'd ever seen
Still pocked with dirigibles
And flying machines that opened up


I thought it'd begun hailing but amethyst and glass
Were raining down from an unmarked aircraft

Covering the cooling tar totally
In manufactured street sheen


I've been finding clipped-off Parliaments everywhere lately
I take it as a sign that you're around


See J passed away
For the first time in June
And the last time last night in the Warren


As a warm, round, mournful sound
Flooded my room


Like blood does from the faucets of pitch-black bathrooms during adolescent summoning rituals