The darkened highway, dark, dark, no moon, no moon for a month now, and none evermore. The moon was gone.

Now the wind was a ceaseless, howling, desperado beast with long legs marching forever down and out from the hills. And the 18-wheel trucks with their trailers and payloads now forever pounding down the lanes of the Interstates were howling, desperate beasts; and so too were the truck's drivers howling, desperate, lonely, lesser creatures, desperate for want of anything save for what their world had become.

The ghosts of murderers slunk just beyond the gray lights of the truck stops, few and far between. M. could feel them all and hear them. Ghosts of vermin, roadkill, wastrels, felons. Chittering, snarling, lurking by the guardrails and the Port-o-sans and the gas pumps.

Kill and be killed, kill kill kill kill. Feeling the ghosts was worse than seeing them, much worse, much much much worse. And what was worse, he was hungry. He felt guilt for his appetite.

He stepped into the diner just as the white girl was

Mercygraft:

By assessing the tone, form, color and content of his mustaches, his beard: this was one of the only known surefire ways to determine a motherfucker's basic whim, zeal, and veracity; the vital stuff, the core, mean intensity, the trustworthiness of any motherfucker you might happen to chance upon up in the bad streets, the ones where most of the people left still lived, such as they could.

The smooth faced, scaly, empty-eyed motherfuckers were the ones you had watch out for. In them (or with them) they carried something of the snake, the serpent. And I don't have to tell you what that means.

Of course this is all just bullshit, pure and total bullshit. You really had to be a mind reader. If you weren't, you were in trouble. Deep shit.

I knew M before he found his Device. I knew him when he was still just a man. Which in itself was something, given the times.

My mind kisses like a kumquat, the fucker. I want a replacement.

he walked up the Interstate to Exit 19, which wound down into a curb bordering manicured grass and box shrubs and miniature maple trees. the landscaping of a fast food restaurant. he could smell the burgers and fries, rich smells, and he'd never felt so hungry in his life.

won't be able to eat like this everyday but how long has it been since I been alive?

what am I?

am I human?

he approached the door of the place. a short, soft-looking man wearing square steel glasses and carrying a tiny, pudgy blond girl on his arm saw him and drew back, changed direction, slowly backed away toward his car where it was parked in the lot, a newer model, shiny, pale blue.

M got a good look at himself in his reflection. Tall. Straggly. Thin. Yellow. they must think I'm insane. I think I must smell

he was simply too hungry not to go in and eat something. he paused. he took a seat on a stone bench by a round stone table by the outsized, brightly colored shapes of the restaurant's outdoor playground. he pulled the wallet from his right side pocket, looked at its soft, round shape, its brown leather, he opened it, pulled out a single twenty dollar bill. closed it. my magic wallet, he mused, must not flaunt

inside standing before the plastic counter he looked up at the menu choice as the staff of corpulent young men and women looked lightly at him in minor key horror, major key distaste, contempt.

"I'd like a Number 4 please." Number 4 included a giant cheeseburger with three patties of beef covered in cheese and bacon and double portion of fries.

a cell phone began to loudly ring and he felt a buzzing on his chest. he jumped. he was the only person standing at the counter. the cell phone rang and rang and buzzed against his skin. it was in his shirt pocket. he did not know how it got there. he fumbled it out and opened it with fumbling fingers. he brought it to his ear.

"Hello?" he croaked.

"What you are about to eat is very bad for your corporeal health," said a Voice. "We understand that you're ravenous, so go on ahead, but after you get yourself together, you might want to think about eating other things instead. We know you know this; this is just a friendly reminder. You know, the call is yours. You always have the option to turn off the phone if you don't want to hear from us?"

The corpulent bepimpled fellow behind the register was holding a hand full of bills and coins out at him. Without quite thinking about it, M motioned for him to put the change down on the counter. The fat boy gaped up at him.

"Your change, sir."

"Keep it," said M.

"Take the change," said the Voice on the phone. "This is neither the time nor the place. Get a hold of yourself, for crying out loud."

"Can I call you back?" asked M. "I'm pretty hungry..."

His mind and perception frozen as a winter pond at midnight, with black clouds racing overhead beneath an incandescent moon.

he straggled out from the highway side the rain

the big trucks and the smaller vehicles wooshing by

cold

cold

ok, I'll need 10 thousand dollars to start, small bills

Nothing.

But 7 hours later, walking in the breakdown lane, there was the wallet, lying by the guardrail

a brand new credit card inside, with his name on it

and also with a pile of 20s in the flap

and also with a drivers license from the city and state he was born in

I'm going to need a phone

This was the device. Magic amenities for a wastrel.

I wonder how old I am? How long I been out here?

the device came to him first as a notion, a possibility, a wish

the device first came to him in a dream

(when he was 12 years old)

It was nothing he could build, only something he along with others of his kind could endeavor to elicit

and even then, it was only something he could find.

also, it was a device that only he could find

that was the the power of the device, that was what made is so special

and so powerful

what he did not realize when the dream of the device first came to him was that he'd have to decend into human wreckage, human refuse, a pariah in society, before he would be able to employ the device

before he would truly understand the device and the nature of the device

sleeping bundled in a filthy pallet quilt
snatched from a loading dock

sleeping filthy bundled in old leaves,
concealed by the tight brush and steep embankment

at the side of an Interstate. Sleeping behind drugstore
glasses picked from a dumpster,

thick plastic frames hued like earwax,
plastic lenses streaked with mud, grit,

mud caked in his long sallow beard.
his boots, fit for a corpse, bound together with gray tape.

sleeping. finally the night passes off, leaving a dark
cold heavy sky now leaking a cold drizzle,

as he awakens it is raining on his face. alright, he thinks, it's time.
I'' wait no more. I'll use

the device

Alarm it out: Synergy, Wineman.

Call it out with callow rage

for glory: The Cards' ace is our

homeboy. Glory, better

 

face it. Let the Mets'

team fail anew. One selfsame crock

of callow; the canyons

held my sway once

 

too. what

a shit drunk poem.

9/11 is a cheap card

to

 

pull in the face

of baseball;

in the face of a

very slimly read slice of Internet written while drunk

 

saddest thing is

the Mets look like

they're gonna pull

it out and force game 7

 

But fuck it. As always,

anything could happen.

All this poem is really about is hope,

thinking about the past,

 

pipe dreams,

useful rage,

wishing beggars.

And of course their horses

 

Prince: I know you all, and will awhile uphold
The unyoked humour of your idleness:
Yet herein will I imitate the sun,
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds
To smother up his beauty from the world,
That when he please again to be himself,
Being wanted, he may be more wondered at,
By breaking through the foul and ugly mists
Of vapours that did seem to strangle him.
If all the year were playing holidays,
To sport would be as tedious as to work;
But when they seldom come, they wished for come,
And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents.
So, when this loose behaviour I throw off,
And pay the debt I never promised,
By how much better than my word I am
By so much shall I falsify men's hopes;
And like bright metal on a sullen ground,
My reformation, glittering over my fault,
Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes
Than that which hath no foil to set it off.
I'll so offend to make offence a skill;
Redeeming time when men think least I will.


**

"What worries me, Billy," she said - I could hear the change in her voice - "is how your mother is going to take this."

up

in the four oh nine of the ahem
I'm gonna be tired tomorrow
I couldn't sleep
fear and digestive malady
thought too I could feel my mind changing
the script shuffling
new proof emerging
interior
metamorphosis here we
go

probably just jonesing nicotine
from those few butts I smoked
Friday night standing by a bulkhead
in Pinardville. not too bright

call me literalissimo, addled. son,
sometimes you gotta wake up at four
and invite the

verbal cliches buck up the fuckup (so what)

how I used to be
is how I still am oh yes
but better; is what we have
to tell ourselves, oh yes, and I aint written
the book yet, not even one,
but I still might, I'm telling you,
it all starts tonight, and I'll tell you why:
yes, I understand that North Korea
has evidently detonated a nuclear
bomb, but Buffalo is buried under
more than a foot of snow and that
bodes well for a motherfucker
like me. you know, there really is no spoon
and there realy is no why it just is what it is
and all we really have is what we do
and I got no problem lining up the cliches
and knocking them back like brews
because its pretty fucking
decent typing practice
and practice is what matters

I'm sitting here in my briefs
pouring coffee on a hangover
and it's a hard frost
out there but we're playing golf later anyway
as one more means of holding ourselves together
while secretly praying
each unto another
the eternal prayers of men; that we're one
and all going to make it through
to the best possible end,
one and all

it just seems like
an impossible dream to me, but once I write the first book I reckon then I'll have one to grow on and after I write the second I'll surely have one to sell and I'm telling you, I reckon I'll have to forge my own sword and selfsame shield
and then I'll be good for the gladiator yeah (but

just killing time here now, off the top of me head now, showing you my ass a bit, charming, hey? as I practice typing and here starteth the lesson this kind of shit is 1) better done and just deleted? yes or 2) ok for here. yes. I used to

brag to anonymous girls in bars that they didn't know who they were dealing with, charming, hey? How'd that work out for you, Mott? but you know, here endeth the lesson. no I mean, here it beginneth, here it all is here it all is here I all am waiting for nothing no, I know: one image, the

earliest measurable snowball
ever
in Chicago

right here on my plate

Bailey

I'm a beggar with a broken gaze,
a broken
mind, a broken
soul

This blue city is a concrete chute
An elevator shaft you
can't not fall
down

Look at you people
Look at you walking
Look at you going
Where you going to go

The cold days is coming
I didn't used to be like this
I used to be a person
The cold days is coming

The snow clarion beast
won't go away from
me now; I see him wielding his frozen chains
in the smoke

rising on the river. He got
roadkill for eyes, he got
me in his eyes, no mercy
for a stranger here, this side of

the road. Look
at you
people. Where
you

walking.
Look at you. Where
you going. Where you going
to go?

in spiritus ambergris

Driven southbound on the Everett Turnpike
Over the rivers, first the Souhegan, then the Nashua,
This fall’s foliage is the deal.

Magisterial red, orange and gold,
In gauzy trees, along brown water,
The white roadway still wants sunlight:

Shimmering red, orange and gold, white gold certainty.
Within human range, within sight. Well then, fuck
the Fermi paradox. And be, be.

Frost

Peering out from an upstairs window
In a spare room mainly owned by three cats
I spied the year's first frost,

A pale frost powdering
The short-cropped yellowy grass,
The newly cold air of the spare room

Mingling in my perception of the frost,
The organization of the frost.
Later that morning I entered

The watery chill of the October air;
Its chill seemed to me a breathing
Entity composed by some watchful

Sense of the long precise and cloudless expanse
Of the day's magnetic, somehow softly metallic sky,
The color of wild blue lupines or the

Common skull cap, or your American brooklime,
Your simple corn
Speedwell

I entered the lake of air
Trailing behind my black shepherd,
The frost now absent,

Dispersed,
But soon again to emerge
In the grass,

No doubt about that
(This year at least), so
Why ever risk becoming

A morose animal
Who lives only by feeling
Doomed and alone?

ideas you gotta listen to them

broken chords for a grain of consciousness
cry out for chronic
crib sheet laconic
melancholy mole, way down
deep in the ground. privation
be normal. have ratio

clutter all around here, clean it up
mutter, think, why envy? chance
springs eternal, one meaning, then another
words like infinity, Mammon, skin, tone, drum
slip back in just like October and the good months

call out for music the music and the music
may come

do I make myself clear yes
but how

in photo effluvia interferon soul in the foamy green
of the sea, the October sky's late and radiant
issue

I look at that guy lilting down the stairs
on lubricious knees and think
what he got that I don't got

besides
lubricious knees