Like Blood Does

Nightly, empty, luminous ballrooms roll back in your skull

I resigned myself to all the disappearance

I was sure the cops would come calling

Some sick shivering morning

I live in Newark now where cars speed away

And weekend freebasers bury their stems

In shaded groves and muted clearings

In Philadelphia, we didn't know

Clammy hands and beaming thresholds

And I'm visited by naked reality

In the higher gloss of the cars that cut in front of me

And depression is nothing compared to what's in store for them

Having hitched across America

Like an itinerant laborer

Or a serial killer on pulsing arterials

I numbly recline

In a filthy slicked lawn chair

As our garage yawns behind me with tunnels

The pinkest sky I'd ever seen

Still pocked with dirigibles

And flying machines that opened up

I thought it'd begun hailing but amethyst and glass

Were raining down from an unmarked aircraft

Covering the cooling tar totally

In manufactured street sheen

I've been finding clipped-off Parliaments everywhere lately

I take it as a sign that you're around

See Jane passed away

For the first time in June

And the last time last night in the Warren

As a warm, round, mournful sound

Flooded my room

Like blood does from the faucets of pitch-black bathrooms during adolescent summoning rituals