old-time country

Old-time country played through brand-new speakers
crackly already with dust from the sawmill uptown
Raccoons in the garbage and sleet in the gutter
backed up full of foliage vital and brown
They chitter and hiss to themselves
In a tongue they don’t own

clacking

Furious clacking fills her brain as she searches and reads, searches and reads; the clack is her fingers on the keys; the clack is the grinding gears that press ever forward in their stationary domain.

parties hosted

Parties hosted
Wienies roasted
something fatty for our guests
who like to have their flesh strips toasted;
sleepiness, it comes at last
and brings about the reign of past;
throw another future log
onto the fire, if it asks.

nascent appraisals

new vices slide in
in the places of old
neil young and the singers
on ‘harvest’: behold
a courageous carousing
canoe on day two;
nascent appraisals
of basil perfume

first he turned the screws

First he turned the screws in the robot’s back panel, then he raced into the kitchen to get a pot of coffee brewing. He watered a basil plant before rolling up a cigarette but leaving it unsmoked. He refreshed the podcast feed on his phone lit a candle before pouring his cuppa and leaving it beside the pot. He turned another screw then drew up a sketch of a landscape, then rushed out to the mall to buy paints.

every weekday

Every weekday, construction workers scurry over the skeletal building, like silent film stars viewed in the modern era. Bangs and crashes and great KAPOWs echo across the paved landscape, til the exhausting roar of a city bus, thick with human figures, obscures them.
When Saturday rolls around, only tarps flapping in the breeze move. The busses’ roars obscures that, too.