I lie on my back in the softening time

of this morning's late life expectancy,

peacefully picking my pace,

gamelan Pacifica resounding

from the bottom of my feet speakers,

rising out of the floor and the unconscious

like The Twin Towers once

out of Manhattan

The Albuquerque company Nonsequitur CD

spins madly

like the neutron star VFTS102

inside the bleak laser light,

the room trembling

with the ominous calm beat

of the metal gamelan

I pick my teeth

with my select birch picks,

the neighbours lying flat

through their rented cubicles

like black driftwood in succumbed afterworlds,

hidden in their space allowances,

above and below

and beside each other,

their dreams feverishly fitted in concrete

for each of their capacities,

in the smell of fierce farts and the rolling roar of burps,

the physics of meat and blood

venomous vomit through this age of disinterest

The tenement blocks heave

like container ships,

heavy with suspicion and need for revenge

Anger rises

through violent seas of population

at Dylan concerts and The Wailing Wall

The gamelan hammers out time,

my eardrums ringing like Stockhausen tam-tams

as I heave on the relentless swell of myself,

my diaries floating about me like jellyfish,

light simmering behind dark yearnings

for shreds of words and lingual abscesses

Layers of toothpicks will please the archaeologists

The pencil speaks for itself

My rich friend floats helplessly ahead

in his pimped Mercedes,

his tall apparition slowly giving in

under his vertiginous gait

His coins haven't ruined him,

we connect back all the way to the mid Sixties;

are each other's opportunity to round up

and summarize, find a defining ring to ourselves,

not unlike this metal gamelan

permeating time and space

this morning of my southern retreat