listen to
my bitter
now

a bad brain
that can’t hold water
or thought very long now

footfalls from feet
on fire now
and for years before now

snapping fingers
beginning now
to hurt like those feet

an old voice
no one hears
because 

it gave up
flash and
volume

in favor of
subtler and
less certain words

mined from 
its most 
unquiet source and

with that surrender
lost
so much and so many

fucked up now
and so many times before
fucked up

so many ways
fucked up
falling for so long

now as
everything else
falls too

maybe I do not
look so bad for
dying this way

but
still
dying now seems a

coward’s response to such a series
of dumb moves 
when

I was the one
moving so stupidly
as to look like

a hero to 
those stupid enough
to equate 

plain old fucking up
with 
artistic vision

as I did not love hard enough
or well enough
or plainly enough

now that 
so much is
breaking inside me

and my
cavalier striding
through this

has brought me here
it’s so obvious
that what ends with me

in such stumble
was born from that stumble
I called a path

that was no path
that was a crash
and what you want to call a career

or a life
was in fact
a steaming pile of

stereotype
torture porn
mythology

forget about it
as swiftly
as you can

now I am beginning to
do just that and
cannot wait

to become
blank
with no need to begin again