New Wichita Vortex

mouldering red dream cast pallor from shallow waters
bayside. You can smell fresh death in fish scents,
wet cigarettes half-smoked in puddles, "Starbucks'
my Nom de guerre" these shards leave hearts dressed
for conquest.

Start here, before we begin...

There! It's hard, a squeal against the dense sound
dropping from overhead billboards left focused against
the boardwalks. Whistling behind the wind
lean close, this deathrattle

(you have to hear with your good ear)

In this space
With toys
And tools

Our new tense paint
The revelations of the past

it starts with a flickering clock
a digital clock. with large, red numbers and a blinking colon

at times, when I looked at this clock, it would jitter

the letters seemed to bounce. Rhythmically
I learned, once I'd learned that word. A pattern

other times it would be still, red numbers
glowing in the dark until the alarm then I'd hit 'snooze' and nine minutes would pass
before the alarm would sound again

one day, well after I'd been diagnosed and prescribed glasses, long after puppies and orchards and canyons
I realized the digital clock and the numbers on it bounced in time to the movement of my mouth. That I
directly changed what I percieved, that even my own perceptions are always in question

Today I am listening to a passing man freestyle rap in the street beneath the open window. I am centered, thinking
only of where I assign meaning in my memory to my own understanding of myself as an individual

Not my birth, or the first words - those are far too classified by state and setting. I'm disconnected from that
as if by design but more likely by circumstance. I'm disconnected now from the world I grew up in, and

in a way

I am eternally grateful. Reality is what you can get away with, a hero
or idol, or icon, or mentor-in-absentia if you will, r.a. wilson once stated,
and rightfully so - becoming who you are is an effort of will

hitting the reset button, crashing the cognitive mind, always results
in a rebirth, a time to reset and prioritize again - and I've used
this as a way to rething my noun labels

To wit:

from the west
all sunsets look like death

her through here I ushered,
shuddered against stencil smoke
grimaced, lest this mist draw compulsion out
shoulder burdens

hurts

from the east
all sunsets sink ink across the sky skin

drinking
a seven day session
(some second-guessings)

draw graphs, plot points, chart fevers and sick days
and plan for expenditures

between those bafflings
a conditional cloister

twisterpated - when yr so confluggled that
even yr frazzlegation has cruxy symptoms.
(see example)

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i was in witchita
two hours north
we felt it like an earthquake
a rumbling
from OKC

the same who murdered Kelley
who murdered Foster
who murdered in the name
of law
of shadow law
the shadows peel hearing
the fragments steal sound
our voices are silenced

Bush's promise, get me in office
I'll kill for you
erase these links between injustices
cover the past
with a patriotic sadness
divorced from culture

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