Semi-charmed kind of life

Semi-charmed kind of life (going along and under)
by Dan Raphael

loving what I can press my fingers into, open, unwrap,
strip to ledger sheets of pounded gum, pavements, table tops resil into sine waves
like a lake of supple wood grain, stroking the acreage with my sensitive wheels—
inflation is strength, appear larger and boom from the bass
sky darkening in my eyes, the compounds and force needed to cleanse
in a much compressed period rounds many structural corners,
slurring the straight and narrow, skyscrapers bow to their best defense,
backs turned, window-glaze repels not just sunlight but the outside world—
if you want to come in convince the door to open

theres a new moon every night in a different shape, complexion as complex as ever,
seeming to bubble and crawl is what I hear driving like an ant in slow motion
on this street of beer and sandwiches, dozens of shoes lost on the weekends–
seldom pairs, seldom broken–the random math of kitten on the doorstep.
do I want to know what I just bit into, american home style cooking means
they tell you what to eat & wont let you leave an unclean plate—
demand a cloth napkin and an unspotted butter knife, pretend the tv is my shirt,
a fox stole I couldn’t kill but trained well, eyeing the forest through a surveyors scope

I’m investing in carbon, burying it next to the fallout shelter greenhouse,
availability moré important than legality, give me frivolity or give me pills,
let loose the wandering pools of indigestible, unlike the oceanic trash gyres
displaying new forms of life on plastic, where the coastline meets the future,
an expanding market doesn’t mean more money only more people:
I took the hit that I was given and I bumped again, and I bumped again

takes so much more energy to stay in another dimension than to get there—
heres a part of everything we are, flesh doesn’t know what to do outside our galaxy,
arms with no comfortable position might as well detach: be here with a hunger,
be now with feet drawing from the earth, brain feeding on the wind.
many days I’m too busy to let the sun be seen,
nothing on but reruns, retreads, reversals and revisions.
I’m out of context coz context wont let all of me in,
as if standard doorways now a foot lower—
I’m too tall/articulate/confused to be from here they say, my money’s no good,
they scanned my card and got their system infected, smoke from a distant firewall.
money in a mirror is easily venom, flint knapping into arson,
abandoned towns refilled with cloud farms,
Congo must stay chaotic so we can keep replacing phones.

had my car detailed by the devil illuminating, every fingerprint, dent, chip and evidence,
as if no one every exhaled here, never ended a trip unexpectedly deforming metal and flesh,
though now the worst damage is from the air bags—
passive restraint will always bruise and disappoint, make sure the car knows whos boss,
that everyone else is above the speed limit and knows exactly where they’re going.
this beat up grey nissan can do more damage to your reality than any ten police cars
cause I’m driving, broad-casting hands free with a full spectrum of teeth,
satellites telling those in or nearing my path to turn away, to not get lost
in my perspective you wont have the words for, a sky where I cant connect the stars,
the vacant rage others gaze our way cause something this big theyve never seen before
must be stopped