The train is a Parade in Passing

with plans that required deadlines to move
we took brown bags to our faces
and inhaled ammunition

on the lines on our Achilles
where true or false blend into scabs

we used naive looks
to insist we weren't bleeding

how have we not noticed
the lives of soldiers creaking the floorboards?
or the dried iron we left
the last time we were drunk?

but with lavish instruments of design
we've fashioned our framework
so as not to include the fleshy baggage
on every elevator shaft

in what direction will judgment pass?
even in this brown bag
i'm still feeling dizzy
like a Carolina wren whose
intuition for lead lines is sending her
north for the winter

You Forgot Your Photosensative Resin

when you feel it slipping like quick bar soap
you're butterflying in egg whites
and you'd rather sleep through the slime
than stand up bow-legged

when your stomach aches in hand signs
that spell out K- A- R- M- A
you're drinking down a processed tonic
and you're hoping you can still howl
along to Elliot into the wind

when you're hanging upside down
with your wrists tied in satin
and you're feeling slightly paralyzed
in fleshy memory and fleeting decisions

were your dreams just fantasies
or were you just ears open to your stories in the waking

and now you're there
in spaces where ghosts used to sit
and you took down their message with metallic tones
you recorded your future

through 8/16th jimbay notes to yourself
stuffed in corrugated rectangles
you posted reminders of what chances
would reveal moldy gardens
puncture holes in your palm
and circles bent to fit excuses