1. The Great How-To

I am very tired
of this ambiguous warfare
in myself. Moreso with the self
that doesn't return his gaze. Moreover
the proud glint of rural men hustling into shadows
like a long row of dirty dinosaur teeth
gleaming with crimson envy

Yes, I have entered the war
on the side of the man who is losing
but cannot lose because he has
planned it all, planned this pitched tent
and that battlefield, where the Orange
will beat the Blue
into that late summer sunset, and everything
sheds, a locust consuming herself, every
corner of the world becoming a twinge less
full of unrest and suggestions about
where-to-go or how-to-get-there.

You know, the second part--nobody
really knows, anyway. The most basic question:
How to live? How to live.

There is no How-To under the butler,
no grand map scheme or plan of plenty or
shortage of dross to re-comb

there isn't a guide here,

we are a book without an ending;

trite, but true, writing itself, where does
she want to go? who wants to be himself? wherefore
are though Romeo? Why are you Rome?

His had, her dad, our dad, looming and shrooming and
ballooning into tonics of gin and shit and herself and
crab moons on the nebula circuit, again.

I went to Circuit City to take a shit
but I couldn't find the bathroom.