I wandered round MacArthur park,
saw the bench where we first kissed.
It cringed against my blistered touch,
and lifted its leg to piss.
One, two, three, four…
Grinning soldiers, darkened doors.
Five, six, seven, eight…
Contentment like a welded gate.
Hitched a ride from a limousine
fueled by festered gout,
traveled every wrecked highway
until the fumes ran out.
Nine, ten, eleven, twelve…
Bunker down and you’ll do well.
Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen to thirty…
Things are sacred, humans dirty.
Got out at an old motel
and checked into a room,
I stabbed the silence in the halls
and tried to eat the gloom.
Forty-eight, sixty-three…
Forget about the sacred we.
Seventy-five, eighty-nine…
Stretch your bones on every line.
Paper trails ignite,
leaving burn marks on the bed,
Hollow streets, ashen cities
skin like moldy bread.
A hundred-and-three, Two-hundred-and-ten…
These moments call for supermen!
Three-fifty-seven, five-eighty-five…
So puff your yellow chests up wide!
Brewed myself a cocktail:
star anise and mud.
Heard the president speaking,
prayed his words were duds.
Six-eighty-two, Four-fifty-one…
Sew your eyes, let’s have some fun.
Two-thousand-twenty, three-thirty-zero…
Fuck a scud and birth a hero.
Mouth stuffed with newspapers.
They taste like my last meal.
Do you also hear angels sing
in the folds of crumpled steel?
One-oh-one, eighty-two, twelve, sixteen…
Neon stink like gasoline.
Forty-five, ninety-seven, eighty to twenty…
Indulgent like the diseased plenty.
I’ve prayed for model armies
with rust and curdled hope.
I’ve rifled through a compilation
of discarded suicide notes.
A million, a thousand, five-hundred-and-six…
Scrub yourself with shattered bricks.
Ninety-eight, forty, two-seven-nine…
Your leather face will withstand time.
They say heaven has unlimited stocks
of addictive painkilling drugs.
So let’s sing out our atomic hymns,
and reincarnate as bedbugs.
Eight, seven, six, five…
Sleep away these buried lives.
Four, three, two, one…
The lights are out, this story’s done.
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