5: Dreaming of the Derailing

Originally written on July 12, 2017. “Dreaming of Derailing” is the fifth part in a series of eight. All images in the sequence originally captured at Yosemite National Park.

It has taken so much to put this in front of you.

Whatever falls and whatever fails and whatever faints.

Dreams of the condensation across the glass.

Oil or spittle notwithstanding,

the smear and its greasy presence standing.

   Utter choke.

           Under and utter.

                  Spasm. What words have I flaunted this way?

I see a city on fire and a car driven off a road.

The roadways melted and the forest is burning too.

What stands beneath us and our gritty, blackened plaques?

Teeth falling out of our mouths as we spit the blood we’ve carried into the air?

From the ache of the drag of coffee to the weakness of the knees in the field,

a ghost home surrounded by dead branches rooted into fallow earth,

volcanic memories uninterrupted, unerupted, and a curse of time.

End it all now: the ruination a murmur amidst the pristine manicure.

           Landscape designed

             to be torn. Tripped,

    upon these gentle screams,

            these mused discordances.

                           It is decedent.

            Hollow. The presentation hideous.

             An entire body aches to just get along.

   I swipe the smooth of the caramel consistency of death

                    blow down the walls and pick away the portals to these miseries.

    Goodbye window, goodbye bush, goodbye wrung rags hanging to dry

              and the flies goodbye and the heart of this pulpy country goodbye.

            Stream glaze. The first wetness of media as it enters our sockets

                     and electrocutes

                         our hearts.

While we thrash our mouths soppy with salt and engorged malice as tryst of thirst

like thorns with spigots, spells without fingers, contortions without the administers and denials.

                Wrenchlike the day bows its head to the system we’ve given it

                                a spinning planet waiting to speak through grandiose deterioration

                                                and meanwhile skull props itself upon shank of shoulder

                                                                bloodied meat of structure and melted content

                                                                                drastic tickle of decay one orgasmic wormhole

                                                                                                sunsetting thoroughly paled in contrast, charm