you may have just won ten million dollars

he will never
hurt himself
he will absorb and
conjure and perjure and
suture and culture but
not injure or
enfeeble or dart
across the surface of
an eye or meet
soft redemption in
hands that run through
hair or asleep in
chemical tendrils be
destroyed
he will
stay
forever
trapped in some kind
of a creased permanent
stance like a specious
bookmark
made of magazine clippings
and fucking stupid taunting
habits and immature
somnambulist ideas and
sincere loathsome
molecular destruction in
a
dream
yesterday
my
left arm and hand sliced
and shredded and scarred
over a mix of
old wounds and new and
the pinky torn off
below the knuckle and the
scars like braille or dna
held down by the throat
unable to speak
or wake until
woken
i was
able to be
silent and dreaming

i remember waking up to calm
adjacent nightmares
i remember a soft breeze at night
blown over and around our
furniture and mixed in
with our breath
the sounds of partying neighbors
and backyard dogs baying and
our selves redacted to
an atomic whole
i remember rhythmic iloveyous
and passion and complacency and disinterest and
verve and thrill and pleasant boredom and
ravenous bloodthirsty boredom and elegant
sated boredom and the boredom of
knowing how not to be bored and avoidance and
the lack of faith and the loss of it and
my old dying frame a hideous
portrait and my face something to be
idly destroyed like junk mail

this is what it looks like
when i'm just walking around:

a king bullshitter
self lacerated
drunk & drugged
staring at pedestrians who
cope like master craftsmen
going through the motions of
emotions breaking up the
composite motions of
smiling hello or buying a granola bar or
taking a shit or two-stepping the subway
stairs or feeling for the right grapefruit

near the end of a given day i
expend the limit of my energies paying
for groceries with a debit
card exactly like a normal
person