Technicolor

I remember my mother in Technicolor,

8mm reels in an attic,

Singing, always singing.

The dreams she put aside,

Burning like distant stars

Just out of reach.

Oil And Gasoline

I used to be a slave,

Finding solace in the beds of infected men.

A disease old as the dinosaurs,

Brought back as oil and gasoline,

We fight and kill

In the back alleys

And leave the bodies to rot,

Screaming at the stars

Beyond the sun-scorched parking lots,

Fuck the seven-eleven.

Watch it burn.

Goodbye Goodnight (From Dead Stars)

Our stars are glowing red,

Burning out,

Burning bright,

And we're long gone.

Rotting husks in astronaut gear,

Orbiting distant planets,

Pummeled by the rings of Saturn.

Eyes that saw god,

Liquid crystal decay

Growing oxygen

In extraterrestrial graves.

We learned the hard way

How small our Earth is.

Our mouths exhaled

Radio waves

Broadcasting orbit gum commercials

To Pluto and Mercury.

We were the first ones here,

Holding hands in the cold,

Burning out.

Burning bright.

Flags planted in the soil,

We waited.

We grew old in the lunar night,

Our bones deforming,

Gasping until we breathed poison.

We knew god in the last light of the sun,

Blinding rays making ghosts of us.

Faraway Cars

Remember the nights

When we crashed, burning,

Into darkness,

Hands inside elastic waist bands,

Igniting fires in faraway cars?

Our lips and fingers mingling

And letting go,

Far, far

We traveled

To hear our names read from phone books.

Remember the burning beds,

Dying in the dark winter street?

Eyes full of stars and frost,

Pleading:

Don't go,

Don't leave me.

I have a box where I keep my heart,

Because this hole inside me is a grave.

Aerosol

We were saints in the night,

Painting walls with blood and art,

Shitting in the street.

We were models and trophy fucks,

Breathing and burning

And boiling alive

On the freeway exits from

Cleveland to Chicago.

We sold figurines

Of the Dalai Lama,

And when those ran out,

We sold our blood.

We were vampires in the night,

Drinking from strangers,

Words forming inside us.

We spoke in syllables that

Meant nothing outside of

Public restrooms,

Silent as the cold cosmos

Rotating far beyond our

Chemical prisons.

We were gods in the night,

Burning the ozone

With blowtorches and aerosol cans.

We lit the way,

And even the stars dimmed

Before us.

Save Us

Who are we?

Sad pieces of meat

Swimming the seas

Across the planet

Crying out

Save us

Save us

*

I went to the store today

And I saw the cookies we used to buy

And my eyes were swimming in my head.

We were human, then.

We had feelings and we were real boys.

*

Don't deny this.

I just want to know

That I wasn't alone

When the world stopped spinning.

*

Who are we?

Tiny frozen shards of humanity

Flung into space

Exploding into frosty pink bits

Across the surface of the moon.

North And Boston

My mother

Was a statue on Boston Street

All of her movements away from Portland

Yanked back by bungee cords

To the wood paneled rooms

And the drunks and lunatics

In the bars

Spilling out onto the streets at three in the morning

This is life, we tell ourselves;

Continuing even if we die,

This is life

Moving on without us,

Building Wal-mart

On our graves

And leaving downtown to grow bars like cancer

Rancid breath and burning lungs

This is life

One forgotten bill at a time

One Jack and Coke at a time

Down the throats

Into the stomachs

Growing disease

And malice and bitter memories circling

Like vultures

We were never alive,

We tell our children

Don't stay in this town, we tell them

As we tie the bungee cords to their bedposts

Like our parents before us